ZGram - 12/29/2003 - "Axis of Logic: Fear Factor Orange"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

December 29, 2003

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

One of my favorite websites is called Axis of Logic at 
www.AxisofLogic.com  It is a mix of carefully selected articles and 
editorials, and it consistently presents a global overview. 
Unfortunately, I don't have as much time as I would like to not only 
visit but linger, but I have bookmarked it and visit as often as 
leisure (what leisure?) allows.

Here is a nicely argued editorial - something I could relate to, 
after I tried to wind my way through absolutely ridiculous security 
at our nearest airport to see a relative off:

[START]

U.S. News/Comment

Exclusive! Fear Factor Orange: Mind and Behavior Control in America, 
Manuel Valenzuela, Christmas, 2003
By Manuel Valenzuela*
Dec 23, 2003, 07:46

[The lives and sacrifices of 3000 men and women should not be taken 
for granted. The deadly attacks of 9/11 should not be diminished. 
This article does neither. Threats do exist and concerns do arise, 
yet what we are experiencing today is much, much more than the 
government protecting us. It is manipulation, the greatest form of 
propaganda that is abusing our emotions and fears for political and 
powermongering gains.]

It is that time of the year again when the nation erupts in an 
assortment of colors marking the holiday season. Green, red and 
white, Christmas colors are upon us. Colors of cheer and joy, of 
Christmas past and present. A new color, however, seems to have made 
its most unwelcome way into the cocktail of delight and merriment, 
once again attaching itself to the nation s pulse at a time of 
supposed warmth and happiness. The most un-Christmas-like color has 
infiltrated itself into our collective holiday cheer, creating with 
its presence a most frightful time of year. Like a most unwelcome 
neighbor or relative, orange has crept inside our homes and 
communities, making its annual appearance just in time to spoil our 
most cherished and comforting holiday.

Like a bad flu, Fear Factor Orange has returned, after its 
prerequisite six month absence, just in time to instill fear into our 
Christmas cheer. Thanks to Tom Ridge and his Department of Homeland 
Insecurity we must face yet another season under cover of orange 
gloom. It is the Fear Factor, the instrument used by this 
administration that conditions us all to the coming usurpation of 
rights, freedoms and democracy and the introduction of the police 
state. It is the tool by which Bush inculcates his perceived 
leadership into our delirious brains, thereby assuring himself of our 
unwillingness to abandon the President-hero, the fighter of all evil, 
our Crusading Commander.

Fear Factor Orange assures Bush that every three to six months the 
American public s never healing scars of 9/11 will re-open, pussing 
out once again our still fragile memories of the horrific tragedy 
that the administration never fails to conjure up. With the wave of 
the propaganda wand, Bush and his megalomaniac marketers make out of 
the President a fusion of Santa Claus, George Washington, Napoleon, 
Gandhi and the Almighty itself, reincarnated out of thin air to save 
the nation from imminent peril. It is the perfect public relations 
gimmick to help assure Bush a second term in office. And fear not, 
those who have grown dependent on Fear Factor Orange, it will return 
once or twice more before November 2004.

Fear Factor Orange places in front of the masses the all too real and 
damaging emotions that we as a nation suffered on that most 
horrendous of days, where our innocence and perceived sense of 
infallibility were erased from the face of the earth. The 
construction of fear into our psyches places inside us our wanting 
for protection and salvation from those invisible yet perilous 
dangers of terrorism. It matters not that we cannot see the enemy, 
Fear Factor Orange conjures them up in our minds, full of bombs and 
bullets, hiding in every corner, ready to destroy us. In our search 
for self-preservation, therefore, we place our complete trust on the 
government to become the father figure we so desperately crave. The 
unthinking populace thus places into the hands of Bush the means to 
control and empower us. Through the use of fear Bush manipulates our 
behaviors, making us decapitated drones signing away our souls.

Our animal emotions are resurrected every time ominous Fear Factor 
Orange glows from our television monitors. The rational, human brain 
is replaced by our primitive, older one that places the primordial 
necessity and interest of self-preservation ahead of the analytical, 
abstract-thinking side that makes us question authority and its 
sinister intentions. Our ability to weight complexities is forgotten, 
threats are too much to handle; we refuse to believe the reality of 
the absurdity and refuse to listen to the absurdity of the fantasy. 
This enables Bush and company to further induce cooperation and 
acquiescence to each and every mandate they enact from average 
Americans who do not realize, to their great detriment, the continued 
erosion of their once sacrosanct freedoms, rights and democratic 
institutions.

Since 9/11, we have been told that in order to be made safe, in order 
to live in tranquility, we must place our undying trust in Bush and 
our government. In Bush We Trust. We must do as our government 
dictates for only it knows what is good for us. Fed insecurity and 
fear on an almost constant basis, either through government or 
corporate media propaganda, we are systemically brainwashed into 
believing that nobody is safe, that our nation is being attacked and 
that the future of our children is in peril. Forces of evil greater 
than anything we have ever faced are said to be invisibly flying 
throughout the nation, like winds carrying a deadly virus or toxin 
intent on destroying our way of life from within. Only by following 
the dictates of Bush, only by ignorantly and blindly obeying his 
commands will salvation be in our grasp. Only then will we be 
delivered from evil into the valley of heavenly safety.

In order to achieve that which cannot be reached, we are told to 
sacrifice our freedoms, rights and liberties so we can be made safe. 
In truth, we are setting free onto the world and surrendering over to 
the authorities that control us the powers inherent in the people, 
those democratic principles passed down through generations of 
struggle and sacrifice that have for centuries saved us from the 
growing threat of autocracy we now face. That we continue to blindly 
relinquish the remaining freedoms that have not already been taken 
from us in the name of security and safety should only add to our 
growing concern at the direction this nation is heading in.

Like drooling Pavlovian dogs, we are hypnotically following the 
glimmer of Fear Factor Orange down the road to fascism. Fear has been 
used wisely by this administration to rob us of the ingredients 
necessary to prevent and fight totalitarian governance from ever 
rising out of the fires of Hades. Like a flaming phoenix, however, 
this form of power is quickly rising, fed by our irrational give-away 
of that which we hold most dearly. Into the skies the phoenix flies, 
gorging on America s remaining ways of life. Smelling a most 
frightened nation on its journey from coast to coast, like a wild 
animal it grows ever more powerful, brave and confident, ready to 
attack our collective jugular and enjoy the tasty morsels and blood 
of a most satisfying kill.

Our construct of reality has vanished in a haze of fog called fear. 
We are scared for the present, future, our children and ourselves. 
Anxiety runs in our blood, filling our veins and minds. The buttons 
of fright and terror being pushed by Bush drive us from normalcy to 
panic in a cruel game of tug-of-war whose only end result is the 
political manipulation towards re-election and psychological 
domination by exploitation. The takeover of the American mind, 
designed to make subservient slaves without thinking brains out of 
all of us, is gaining momentum, cruising like a monstrous freight 
train in its sojourn through the country, robbing and raping all who 
appear in its wake, infecting us with the fantasies of fear and 
insecurity that are slowly digging our graves.

Through the abuse and manipulation of fear, domestic and foreign 
policy are being concocted to suit conservative ideology. Social 
programs and services are being imploded by those who have for years 
wished them away. A police state is emerging that is subverting 
freedoms once deemed inalienable. Police officers now punish with 
impunity those who dare protest the evils of the elite. Patriot Act 
I, and now II, are giving the government powers once thought 
unimaginable, the stuff of Orwellian fiction. Government secrecy is 
now the norm, accountability is a thing of the past. Detentions, 
surveillance, intrusions and privacy annihilation, is this the 
America of yesteryear? Are we approaching 2004, or 1984?

Dissent and opposition are being curtailed, the nation is being 
wrapped around the flag. To support the pillage of our rights is to 
be patriotic, to fight the oligarchy is to cavort with the enemy. Our 
wages and soldiers are being sacrificed for the sake of the 
Leviathan, education is but a hollow dream that is leaving all 
children behind. Fascism is spreading like an epidemic, imperialism 
is rising its tentacles and the basic tenets of American life are 
being gobbled up by the corporate Leviathan. Meanwhile, Fear Factor 
Orange glows in the night sky, warning us all to be vigilant spies, 
untrusting of neighbors, aloof in our ways, living life paranoid at 
best and scared shitless at worst.

Catatonic we have become in our understanding of the war on terror. 
Fear Factor Orange, that color signifying a high threat of terrorist 
attack, spooks and terrorizes, creating a belief that evil people 
want to kill us. That the threat is even more remote than being 
struck by lightning does not matter to a citizenry that still suffers 
the post-traumatic fatigue of 9/11. Not to minimize the atrocities by 
any means, but it must be mentioned that only a minute part of 
Manhattan was struck, only a small side of the Pentagon was attacked. 
Those 3000 we will never forget, heroes to all, symbols of what makes 
this country great. Yet we are 285 million strong, spread over vast 
terrains. We must realize that the 3000 men and women are being 
politicized for cynical purposes, to use fear as a political tool in 
the game of power and control. Do not forget that.

Terrorists are not nation-states, their resources are finite, their 
numbers small. We are told to be vigilant, to be on the lookout for 
suspicious activity. This, consequently, places the eyes of hundreds 
of millions of citizens squarely, consciously or not, on the millions 
of Arab men and women who live in this country as Americans. Fear 
Factor Orange and paranoia combine to make of these citizens walking, 
breathing targets of unfair stereotypes, real or imagined, that 
fester in the American consciousness. Profiling and labeling thus 
combine to segregate moral, law abiding citizens. For them, Fear 
Factor Orange is indeed a time to fear and grow anxious.

Bush should not be allowed to control our lives or our destinies. 
Ashcroft and Ridge should not dictate our stresses and concerns. Our 
government should not shamelessly insert fear into our already hectic 
lives. The threat of attack will always linger, a strike is most 
likely inevitable thanks to our foreign policy and arrogance, but to 
constantly alter our way of being, to give up our freedoms for our 
security, to create a world in which our children will never breathe 
the same rights we once had, is to acknowledge that the terrorist 
elements have already won. They have succeeded in terrorizing, in 
instilling fear, in having our government change the basic structure 
of our democracy. We must fight Bush s attempts to bankrupt us of all 
we cherish. We must keep living our dreams, keep pursuing our goals 
and we must never allow our democratic principles to dissipate like 
stone eroded by the sands of time. Our children must live in freedom, 
they must savor their rights. They must enjoy the fruits of the 
labors and sacrifices of descendents long gone and those built by our 
hands and minds because if forced to live in a world devoid of 
freedoms, they will never know what their parents once had, and you 
cannot miss something you never had. Thus, they will never fight and 
sacrifice for that which they never knew existed.

If an attack manifests itself, whether it is today or ten years from 
now, we must simply rise like we always do, united as one, standing 
proud and strong, ready to mourn, pick up and keep on living. This is 
America, after all, the land of the free and the home of the brave. 
Suffering and mourning is the story of man, whether in World War I 
and II Europe or Civil War America, in hundreds of revolutions, 
battles or fights for freedom, to honor a people s way of life is to 
sacrifice and mourn, to evolve and stand strong. It is what 
determines the character of a people, the strength of a nation. Ask 
the world, nothing comes easy.

We cannot allow those who would do us harm to triumph in altering our 
way of life, and we cannot allow Bush and company to assist in this 
endeavor. Our security is important, but not at the expense of our 
freedoms, rights, liberties and democracy. It is not at the expense 
of creating a police state where we are all potential suspects and 
victims. The loss of our freedoms and rights should not come at the 
expense of the rise of a fascist state under the guise of comfort and 
refuge. For if we allow this to happen, we will have neither and the 
great reality that is the United States will fade away into dusty 
memories of oblivion. In the long history of mankind our era will be 
but a small blur buried and forgotten by the sands of time. Don t let 
Bush succeed. Decry fearmongering. Remember, what does not kill you 
makes you stronger. Fear not, for life is all about conquering that 
which we most fear.

[END]

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