We Must Close Down the National-Security State
2011 February 20
by Steve Beckow
Many of us are concerned with a number of developments that are happening at the moment. Joseph Paul Watson, Alex Jones, Jesse Ventura, Alfred Webre, Mike Adams and many others have been drawing our attention to TSA body scanners, surveillance technology, interference with the Internet, and other developments and we have been addressing these issues one by one.
But it seems to me that we have been overlooking something more basic, something that David Ickes has been addressing , although he may use slightly different words for it.
Do you remember the Washington Post series perhaps last Spring or Summer in which they detailed the really huge growth and multiplication of personnel, organizations, and technologies which I'd like to call, for short, the "national-security state"? The national-security state is the creation of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower and President Kennedy warned us about.
Everyone here is very much familiar with the national-security state and the military-industrial complex. There are many articles in the righthand column that introduce you to the subject if you're a new reader.
The point I wish to make is that this effusion of surveillance systems, Internet interference technologies, scanners and so on is, it seems to me, testimony to the tremendous growth, budgeting, staffing, and work of that very structure that the Washington Post described - let me call it the NSS for short to avoid repeating myself.
For many reasons, not the leas of which is the security of the American people, but another compelling reason for which is the ending of a huge budget drain, we must close down the national security state.
Now by that I don't mean closing down the military. For now we need a military until such time as we close down crime and reduce political friction in the world. But we do not need the NSS.
Just the other day, I listened to an economist on CNN say, whatever we do, we cannot reduce the defense dollar. Oh, no. I beg to differ. Whatever we do, we must reduce the defense dollar. It is not butter we need to spend less on. It is guns.
The whole notion of defense, the whole notion of a war on terror, of the need for aircraft carriers, fighter jets, surveillance systems, tanks, depleted-uranium weapons, on and on and on, all of it must go. All of it must be ended. And it must be ended because we the people say so.
This NSS, this national-security state, is itself the problem. There are no terrorists lurking under bushes here and there. There may be people defending themselves against our aggression. There also may be some dark groups which we ourselves have created through our bogus "war on terror," etc. But the NSS is itself creating its enemies in order to keep its funding up and the citizens of the world in a state of confusion and we need to get honest about that and to stop refusing to address it.
- DU weapons
This national-security state, which has grown up since 9/11, which you and I know was itself engineered by the NSS to provide a "new Pearl Harbor" that spur the growth of the defense industry and the military, must be closed down. And, if it were, immediately prosperity would return to America and the threat of war would end on the planet.
Make that first on your list please. It's time to stop talking about the nickels and dimes that are spend on social programs. If we want to save money, the way to do it is to close down the defense industry globally and with it the national security state. When we do that - and we will - the money to send each child to university, to create a universal medicare system, to see that everyone is well fed, well sheltered, and well cared for will be there.
We are being myopic and we are allowing ourselves to be misled. The NSS has no future and you and I know it. The NSS must be closed down and closed down immediately. It's the source of threat in the world and the source of our problems. I request that we refuse any longer to participate in the debate about austerity on any other grounds before the total closure of the national-security state is accomplished. Close the NSS down first and then let's take a second look at the state of the union.
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