Instilling Fear: The Exercise of Terror on Unwitting Individuals.

Teachers gathered for a meeting on April 26 were horrified when two masked men wearing hoodies and wielding handguns burst into the Pine Eagle Charter School in Halfway Oregon on April 26, and began firing blanks. The 15 instructors did not realize that it was an emergency drill and not a real attack.

Why?

To prepare teachers for the real thing, of course. The exercise was a drill, designed to test Pine Eagle's preparation for an assault by "active shooters" who were, in reality, members of the school staff. School officials say they will train teachers to better respond to a surprise attack. Thank God, students were not present on school grounds when the drill occurred, as they were home for an in-service day.

That's right. Two men wearing masks and hooded sweatshirts stormed the meeting room and began firing. At first, the teachers didn't know what was happening until they noticed that the shooting was not drawing blood, thus, part of a test. 

"Principal Cammie DeCastro said it became clear very quickly just how many of the school's 15 teachers would have survived. The answer: "Not many," she said.

Elementary teacher Morgan Gover, 31, said only two teachers would have lived to tell the tale. She admitted being scared, and also acknowledged she would have been among the casualties, having taken several fake direct hits from the shooters.

"I'll tell you, the whole situation was horrible," she said. "I got a couple in the front and a couple in the back."

Imagine if someone in attendance had a heart attack, or, in a moment of panic, did some serious damage to someone else. What if one of the teachers, already in fear of an attack, was armed? What about the emotional trauma? And, where is the anger? To be sure, someone(s) is/are angry; however, we'll never hear from those people because that would ruin everything!

Sadly, this abusive "exercise" has more to do with instilling fear in the population because a fearful public is much easier to control and manipulate.

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No Worries. It's Just President Sanctioned Extrajudicial Murder.

Last month, the New York Times published an article about President Obama's "secret kill" list.   This list includes Americans and two teenagers, of which the one "looked even younger than her 17 years".   One has to ask what is the objective here? Why does our top secret government want this information made public?   Moreover, why hasn't there been any follow-up?  And why aren't more people demanding discussion on this issue?

In answer to the first couple of questions, there are a few possibilities. One, they're trying to rile us up into revolution in order to crack down and declare martial law. This possibility is clearly not working. Two, when the slaughtering state sets you in its sight, you cannot say you were not warned.  Three, it's a continuation, and I might add, an escalation, of the desensitization process, which is clearly working. Four, to instill terror, ensuring obedience to a ruthless state, plain and simple. Five, all of the above.

As to the rest of my questions, either we don't care, we don't take it seriously, or we would rather not face the fact that the Obama administration has just announced that it signed off on extrajudicial murder of people all over the world.

Could it be that the apathy of citizens, the lack of any kind of reaction is primarily due to this president's political affiliation: the Democratic party?  I mean, imagine, if you will, this "kill list" article  coming out at the time President Bush occupied the White House.  Somehow, I think there would be outrage, and rightly so.

Now, is President Obama the first president in the history of the US to have a secret kill list? Absolutely not. To be sure, both former President Bush's, and Reagan had their secret kill lists. What makes President Obama's kill list stand out is the deliberate publication of such a list, not to mention the method by which he creates it on a weekly basis.

And to think this is an election year should tell you all you need to know.

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Pervasive Fear

Even in a crisis situation, where one would think that change is the obvious solution, the biggest obstacle is pervasive fear...a fear that those in power know how to fully exploit.

Since the Reagan years, the international financial elite manipulated the markets to create obscene rewards for themselves, at the expense of poor and middle class people across the world.

They use/used devious derivatives, cunning CDOS, and other trickery and siphoned off ever-larger portions of the surplus value created by the producers of real goods and services.

However, when their own greed blew up in their faces, annihilating, in slow motion, the corrupt system built to serve them, what did we do? Bail them out. Help them rebuild their corrupt system. In other words, nothing's changed.

Our consumer-based, materialistic-driven model of society is deteriorating, yet we offer nothing in its place. Why? Because we've allowed those who, if anything continue to benefit from our suffering, to scare us away from  eliminating the old systems that no longer work.   

It's time to confront the fear-mongers and  swap out useless, worthless, derivatives for buildings, bridges, highways, health care facilities, public transportation, etc. It's time to take on unemployment and repair our nation’s infrastructure.

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Where is the Moral Courage of the West?

In addition to using massive layoffs of professionals, including academics, to try and crush the protest movement, still going strong after last June’s re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran hanged two dissidents last week and sentenced nine others to death. Yet, as Iran sends peaceful dissidents to the gallows, so many courageous Iranians continue to risk death to oppose the Islamist tyranny.

What is it that makes people, agents of moral courage? Is it the complete absence of fear? The mobilizing energy fear often engenders? The effort to transcend fear? Extraordinary perseverance? Or something else?

"Sixteen defendants currently facing a “show trial” in Tehran have been selected to intimidate specific groups of dissidents and pave the way for applying the charge of Mohareb, or “enemy of God,” to large numbers of dissidents and protestors, charges that can lead to their execution, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said today. Five of the sixteen defendants prosecuted in the post-Ashura trials of 30 January face the death penalty, having been charged with that crime."

We, the people are free to express ourselves in the face of injustice. We can assemble, protest, and use just about any form of peaceful demonstration there is to speak truth to power, without the fear of violence and death as retribution. Yet, even though we have plenty of reason to balk, we rarely manifest our discontent. Rather, we watch as our government serves corporate and moneyed interests at the expense of the American people and rarely do we stand up and demand that our government serve us. Why?

Elie Weisel once stated, “Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.” Has America aligned herself with indifference, ignorance, and/or denial. Have we lost our critical thinking skills to the forces of consensus? Mistaken unity with uniformity? Has moral relativity eroded our sense of right and wrong? Or are we more oppressed than we would like to believe? Maybe a combination of all of the above.

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