Quotes – The oh-so-secret national security state

“One of the characteristics of tyranny is the monitoring and surveillance of citizens. Done primarily as a means of control, this has existed in every authoritarian state, not to mention totalitarian dictatorship, which seeks total control of the population. The defense is almost always based on national security grounds.”
– William F. Pepper in his book An Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King

“Nesting within the executive is that most virulent purveyor of state power: the national security state, an informal configuration that usually includes the Executive Office of the White House, special White House planning committees, the sixteen intelligence agencies, the Pentagon, Joint Chiefs of Staff, director of national intelligence, National Security Council, and other such units engaged in surveillance, suppression, covert action, and forceful interventions abroad and at home. The president operates effectively as head of the national security state as long as he stays within the parameters of its primary dedication – which is to advance the interests of corporate investors and protect the overall global capital accumulation process.”
– Michael Parenti

“A nearly seamless political transition to fascism is well underway in the United States. The mass media, the electoral machinery, and both major political parties are under corporate control… The Constitution and its Bill of Rights are being rendered meaningless by plans for perpetual war, by presidential signing statements and the theory of the unitary executive, extraordinary rendition, government surveillance programs and the like. Programs based on democratic principles like the public schools, Social Security, and Medicare are being starved to death… Blackwater is the growing private military force of the ruling class, protecting them in Baghdad and patrolling the streets of New Orleans for them now. Because there are too many sons and daughters of the working class in the US military it can not be trusted by the bourgeoisie when the order is given to attack the American people. Likely the two militaries will one day face each other in combat.”
– Malcolm Martin

“The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second.”
– Chris Hedges

“While U.S. combat forces prepare to draw-down in Iraq, military intelligence units are coming home to apply their combat-tempered surveillance skills to our expanding homeland security state, while preparing to counter any future domestic civil disturbances here.”
– Alfred W. McCoy

“The middle classes will vanish and poverty will reign supreme, while the rich become immeasurably richer and more powerful. Naturally, people will rise up, take to the streets, protest, demonstrate, riot, even rebel and revolt. As sure as the people will resist, the state will repress with police, the military and the ‘Homeland Security State’ apparatus of surveillance and control. Make no mistake: this is the ‘Thirdworldization’ of the West: the ‘Post-Industrial Revolution’.”
– Andrew Gavin Marshall

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