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War Terms

Sat Dec 10 14:31:41 2005

The most important and manipulated war term is 'war'. The term has been broadened and blurred so that the horror of war is no longer communicated by using the term. Since their Civil War, the 'civilian' US population had no experience of war. From their perspective, war always happens somewhere else, with families at home and safe. The same model is developing in Western Europe, where the memory of the horrors of war are slowly but surely fading with the WW-II generation dying.

Defining the Term

War is not figurative, but physical violence. There can be no 'war on poverty', but there is war against dispossessed and impoverished peoples. No 'war on drugs', but persecution of specific groups of people which are being related to illegalized drugs, on the one side mainly targeting black and latino neighborhoods with police terror and mass imprisonment, on the other side peasants with paramilitaries and chemicals. There is no propaganda war, but propaganda is indispensable for the preparation and conduct of war.

The point is, that war is always armed confrontation between peoples involving the use of organized mass violence. In its high-tech form, war is organized state violence with the main goal of gaining leverage against an adversary, and create conditions for victory. It is about destroying and controlling strategic assets and terrorizing people into submission and capitulation, about inflicting death and destruction through the use of troops with weapons.

There are special cases of war or maybe not war, where one side enjoys overwhelming superiority and is not really in war itself while waging war against the others. This is especially so with the high-tech air-based warfare waged in recent years against Iraq and Yugoslavia. These aggressions were more like massacres or mass executions of defenseless victims unable to strike back. The perpetrators are far distant from the locations of impact, killing and destroying in anonymity and without any elevated risks for themselves.

War is also about the level of violence. For example, the August 1998 missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan were not escalated into war. At the same time, Sudan was still fighting the war against the SPLA, which was sponsored and supported by the US/UK and other European powers. The country continues to face massive foreign intervention and is likely to be further disintegrated. Meanwhile, Afghanistan, for the first time in decades, was on a path to peace, before it was invaded and occupied in 2001. Another example was Iraq since December 1998, which was bombed by airplanes and missiles for years before the invasion officially began. When did it turn into war?

Closely related to this question is the issues of control of information and communication, which means that all of us, who are not physically in war, have only access to highly filtered and manipulated pieces of propaganda to work with.

And finally there are also the hidden and ignored wars, some of which may be legitimate show footnote , but most being sponsored and manipulated by foreign intervention.

War as final enforcer of relations

War is part of a comprehensive strategy of intervention and domination. An important one, because it is the final enforcer of relations and fundamental for many other operations. At least since WW-II and the concept of total war we know that war is an effort of the whole society being organized and tuned to best support and complement the actual war fighting. Beyond war, disintegration and social engineering of the targeted society is the key to control its ability to resist and persist. War is to destroy and impose a situation by force, occupation to maintain control as long as necessary for other means of intervention to succeed and gradually replace brute force by more discrete means of control.

Some of the more important 'soft' means of control are:

'War on Terror' is War Propaganda

The newest war propaganda creation is the 'war on terror', which as a phrase is a contradiction in itself, because terror is an indispensable and crucial component of war. It is basically a re-branding of 'counter-terror', integrating core elements of the 'war on drugs', broadening of scope and depth of operations primarily targeting Muslim political and social movements.

The 'war on terror' is war propaganda, but it is not a war. Since the end of the Cold War, the DTS have organized and waged war on Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Rwanda/DRCongo, Sudan, Somalia, Liberia/Sierra Leone, Ethiopia/Eritrea; and Russia on Chechnya. Most of these are still at least partly occupied (FOC/Rs) and international community controlled (IC2C/Rs). And there are also the continued brutal occupations of Palestine and Kashmir, more or less 'tolerated' occupations of Haiti, Kuwait, and the wars within, examples are Columbia and Pakistan. Unfortunately the above listing is not complete.

And let us also list some of measures being widely used by the states, united in crime, under the label GWoT:

Terrorist and Legitimate: the power to define

It may be impossible these days to talk about the use of terrorist attacks in a way that avoids triggering the responses being implanted into public opinion through propaganda. All begins with White Supremacy in the role of the judge to decide whose violence is legitimate. Building on this, there is a general concept of monopolization of violence under the state, meaning authorized or non-authorized violence. The use of violence for whatever reasons is thereby bound to the judgement of the authorizing agencies and institutions controlled by the DTS.

There is no common definition of what attacks are being called terrorist. There can be no agreement about this because dialogue is neither intended nor possible, simply because there is no justice and no hope that the mighty will ever retreat from their positions of hegemony and privilege without being forced to. To be labeled terrorist means to have lost any right and voice. But without a dialogue including those being labeled terrorist how could there be a definition of terrorist which is not just propaganda serving those with the power to define?

There are those who define terrorist based on moral principles. This approach can be coherent when those principles are defined as absolute, concrete and clear instead of abstract and fuzzy, being applied straight and consistent. Practically, this approach is quickly blocked because the DTS will never accept to be measured according to the same principles as those challenging their rule.

Terrorist Attacks are a Means

Terrorist attacks are a technique and tactic, neither a strategy nor a goal, but a means. It is used either by non-state actors fighting against state policies or state actors as part of their covert operations. Further we can see two distinct and sometimes contradicting aspects of terrorist attacks. On the one side the propaganda effects on the other the damage and disruption effects, both of which tend to be very difficult to evaluate regarding effectiveness as a means within the overall struggle.

The Global Totalitarian Order (GTO), dominated by the DTS and their M/TNCs, uses 'terrorism' to demonize all struggles of peoples to free themselves and challenge the totaliarian order. Massive privacy intrusions and harassment through all kinds of 'security' make clear to everyone that this is a no-compromise situation. Collectives being suspected of disloyalty or even engine for resistence are being targeted with mass imprisonment and overwhelming violence.

At this point it is important to clarify two crucial assumptions being made here. First, we regard the question of whodidit largely irrelevant. Second, we are not concerned with laws nor ethics.

The Predator Societies don't Listen Anyway

With the increasing concentration, intensity and effectiveness of propaganda under the DTS, the propaganda aspect of terrorist attacks has been adjusted. Most notably, it used to be that groups put out statements claiming responsibility, explaining why and what their demands are. This is no longer the case.

These days the public usually doesn't have access to credible information and explanation. Sometimes messages are put out but we cannot verify the authenticity and origin of these messages. Al-Qaeda and Zarqawi appear as characters in a fictious reality being created through mass media in order to give the enemy face and voice and disturb the silence, which makes people question and which reveals too much about those who always talk their agenda and never listen.

But this tightening of propaganda comes at a price. The more mainstream propaganda is streamlined and either eclipsing or being obviously out of sync with experienced realities, the more we can expect the rift between official and inofficial public opinion to widen, and, without a unifying movement, resulting in increased disorientation and sectarianism.

The same rotten ideologies and theories are constantly being recycled, remixed and replayed, although the contradictions between speech and practice are clearly visible for all who care to look. But most don't want to know so they can say they didn't know. Virtual realities are being created and maintained, blurred with spiritual and material realities, so that people turn mentally unable to keep virtual and physical realities apart.

The propaganda effects of terrorist attacks can only be understood in the context of overall propaganda and mind control, and neither public opinion ratings nor the endless repetition of the same talk of condemnation and compassion tell us how people think and feel. This is especially so in a climate of fear and repression being promoted by anti-terror policies.

The Strongest Forces are Lust and Greed

But however the propaganda, the strongest force remains money, offering access to social status through property and satisfaction through consumption and entertainment. This is the essence of the American Way of Life, which, in combination with the American Dream of individual opportunity of upward mobility, remains unchallenged as the dominant aspiration and motivation worldwide. This is both pathetic and embarrassing, subordinating everything to the lowest common denominator, devastating relations and squeezing dignity and respectability.