The Smithsonian Magazine ran <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues02/feb02/red_scare.html">Crackdown!</a> (abstract only, sorry) in their February 2002 issue, talking about the red scares in 1919 and 1920. Though they don't make an explicit connection to today's situation, the timing of the article makes the implication clear: if we don't learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. <span class="notes">(I know, sooo melodramatic).</span> <span class="quote"><q> Invoking the wartime Espionage Act of 1917 and the 1918 Sedition Act, Palmer sought to flush out "Reds" and socialist supporters remotely capable of carrying out terrorist acts. In the next few months his officials conducted raids on "anarchist" organizations, schools, and gathering places in over 30 cities nationwide. Often without warrants, they rounded up some 5,000 mostly innocent resident aliens, incarcerated many and deported some back to the Soviet Union...</q></span> Luckily, a man named Louis Post had enough principle, conviction and power to defy Palmer and put an early end to the 'Red' scare. It would rear its ugly head in U.S. foreign policy more stridently after the world war as foreign intervention after foreign intervention was enacted and justified by the ambiguous and ubiquitous "Communist Threat". The full article includes the truly horrifying excerpt: <span class="quote"><q>...And when a man refused to stand for the playing of the "Star-Spangled Banner" at a My 6 pageant in Washington, D.C., a sailor shot him three times, and the audience burst into applause.</q></span> Unfortunately, I don't believe that we have truly put ourselves out of reach of repeating such events. A recent interview with Noam Chomsky finds him drawing parallels between the cries of "Terrorist" of today with the those of "Communist" in the 20th century. John Pilger's latest article, <a href="http://pilger.carlton.com/print/94988">The Colder War</a> provides more concrete examples. <span class="quote"><q>In America in the 1950s, the Red Scare was used to justify the growth of war industries, the suspension of democratic rights and the silencing of dissenters. ... That is happening now. ... Above all, the American industrial-complex has a new enemy with which to justify its gargantuan appetite for public resources...</q></span> He goes on to point out that the real "winners" of 9-11 seem to be "Alliant Tech Systems, Northrop Gruman, Raytheon (a contributor to New Labour) and Lockheed Martin." <span class="quote"><q>As the US military's biggest supplier, Lockheed Martin's share value rose by a staggering 30 per cent. ... Within six weeks of September 11, the company (with its main plant in Texas, George Bush's home state) had secured the biggest military order in history: a $200 billion contract to develop a new fighter aircraft.</q></span> The rest of the world must surely feel the "war on terror" as a painful irony, with the U.S. going to "root out evildoers" and abolish terrorism, despite its own ongoing human-rights and terrorism record. In fact, the seeds of 9-11 were sown in the late 70's by the U.S. itself, as told by President Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski: <span class="quote"><q>[He] not long ago revealed that on July 3, 1979, unknown to the American public and Congress, President Jimmy Carter secretly authorised $500 million to create an international terrorist movement that would spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and "destabilise" the Soviet Union.</q></span> And there's always that feeling that the U.S. government is increasingly staffed with the exact same folks that enjoyed the hell out of the waning days of the Cold War. Like John Poindexter. That's right, Mr. Iran Contra (along with Oliver North, who is doing quite well with a talk-radio show and huge speaking fees) is back in the saddle again (joining Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc.). <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,651977,00.html">No more Mr Scrupulous Guy</a> in the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/">Guardian Unlimited</a> reports: <span class="quote"><q>The agency which Poindexter will run is called the Information Awareness Office. You want to know what that is? Think, Big Brother is Watching You. IAO will supply federal officials with "instant" analysis on what is being written on email and said on phones all over the US. Domestic espionage.</q></span> The U.S. military budget was the biggest in the world, larger than the next 5 militaries combined last year (decent <a href="http://www.plastic.com/article.pl?sid=02/02/04/2040249&mode=nested">Plastic discussion</a> here). The $50 Billion increase makes it eclipse the next 10 now, as well. The Office of Homeland Security Budget is in excess of $80 Billion and is separate from defense. This type of buildup cannot be just to catch a disparate group of terrorists. There is another goal in mind here. <span class="quote"><q>The al-Qaeda training camps are kindergartens compared with the world's leading university of terrorism at Fort Benning in Georgia. Known until recently as the School of the Americas, its graduates include almost half the cabinet ministers of the genocidal regimes in Guatemala, two thirds of the El Salvadorean army officers who committed, according to the United Nations, the worst atrocities of that country's civil war, and the head of Pinochet's secret police, who ran Chile's concentration camps. ... There is terrible irony at work here. The humane response of people all over the world to the terrorism of September 11 has long been hijacked by those running a rapacious great power with a history of terrorism second to none. Global supremacy, not the defeat of terrorism, is the goal; only the politically blind believe otherwise.</q> <span class="notes">(Excerpted from <a href="http://pilger.carlton.com/print/94988">The Colder War</a>, mentioned above)</span></span> The watchwords are "Full Spectrum Dominance", control of air, land, sea and space. The warning signs are abundant. Let's hope they prove false and that we aren't too late.