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Living in the Nazi world
by Abid Ullah Jan Freedom and fear are at war in a police world. We used to hear about the "police state". A "police world", however, is in making with the increasing intensity of the "War on Terrorism". Out of fear, leading world governments and the UN are threatening the very freedoms they claim to be defending. Instead of course corrections, they are rushing to embrace the same policies which increase the gulf between the world rulers and the ruled. The thought of a complete police world scares those who can zoom out of isolated events and afford a bird eye view of the global situation. The unprecedented silence over isolated events, such as ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, massacres of Muslims in India, atrocities in occupied Kashmir, referendums for whitewashing favourable dictatorships, war for imposing unrepresentative governments, crackdown on dissenters in Europe and America and granting sweeping powers to law enforcement agencies to monitor telephone, internet and email traffic, is part of a global scheme for absolute dominance - a war on freedoms. Muslim and non-Muslim countries have equally become targeted provinces of the global government. Katie Sierra's suspension from Sissonville high school in Charleston, for coming to classes in a T-shirt on which she had written "Against Bush, Against Bin Laden", is not the only incident in which the courts upheld a decision proposed by her school. The agents are preventing specific people from boarding planes on daily basis with assistance of the airlines and many innocents end up behind bars on mere suspicion shown by their neighbours. The new surveillance technology deployed in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Dubai, etc., is merely one component of the US doctrine of absolute dominance over global provinces (the used-to-be- sovereign states). Police agencies in the US and 15 European provinces will now be able to build up a complete picture of every individual's personal communications, including who that person has emailed or phoned and when, and which internet sites he or she visited. Racial profiling, specific names and make up of a particular people have become a serious threat to their freedom to live in peace. In a bid to monitor a few "dreaded people", vocal enough to criticise and able enough to resist, the US and its allies have ended up having to keep full data on everybody. The struggle for dominating the world started long before September 11. In late January 2001, a group of self-described "leading" conservatives sent a letter to Bush urging him to reject the traditional foreign policy notions of "stability" and "national interest" as overcautious and too limiting on US options. Instead the writers stressed vigorous application of military power to advance benevolent hegemony reflecting the universality of American values. Applied to governments violating these values, this approach advocated "regime change" rather than coexistence. The hegemons had global ambitions long before September 11. Far from looking for ways to take the toxicity out of the unjust US foreign policies, they revel in prospective value-based confrontation with the Muslim world in particular. To back this bellicosity they argued for annual defence spending increases of $100 billion and urged Bush to mobilize the national will for forward-leaning military deployments. Taking advantage of September 11, the new police world now hands out grades to the world’s 185 global provinces according to how well they measure up to "inter-provincial" standards in everything from the "war on terrorism" to the concept of freedom fighters, representative government, sovereignty and independence. The media war has convinced the westerners. Particularly the Americans believe their role in the world is virtuous and they insist that their motives were still honorable even when their country's actions have led to disaster both at home and abroad. But the evidence is building that in the decade following the end of the Cold War; the US seriously misread the nature of the world and its role in it. Instead of leading through diplomacy based on principles of justice and equality, the US used fear of Islam, rallied Europeans around itself and resorted at last to turn the globe into a police world. European provinces of the police world need to realise that the US is applying its police state philosophy of "Fixing Broken Windows" on a global scale. This philosophy suggests that countless secret agencies can prevent crime by preserving order through extra-judicial means. A euphemism enabling American undercover cops to hassle anyone who offends the police sense of order. Neighbourhoods which do not promptly tow abandoned cars, remove graffiti, fix broken windows and make other repairs, send a signal, inviting intense police activity to prevent such signs of "disorder". Yet, it is conceded that such methods have not led to a decrease of crime when employed. The "Fixing Broken Windows" philosophy creates an "enemy class" made up of minor offenders for cops to harass and attack based on the unproved theory that doing so prevents crime. At a global scale this enemy consists of those who dare to criticise unjust policies, occupations, repression, support to dictators, etc. Just as at state level, there is a difference between annoying conduct and "disorder", there is a difference between resistance and terrorism on the global scale. We should be mindful that the major atrocities of human history have not been committed by panhandlers, robbers or terrorists but by police states which murdered millions of their own citizens in the name of persevering order. Imagine the consequences of the same policy now applied on the global scale. Bush told Larry King on December 15, 2001 that freedom and fear are now at war. That is true. However, we have to find out who is scared and who's freedom is at stake. It is evident that the most powerful are the most scared. Freedoms of the weak are at stake in varying degrees in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya as well as in Pakistan, Egypt, Algeria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Europe and America. Western rulers openly support policies of occupation and oppression. Muslim rulers proudly support Western hegemons. Together they fear any resistance to their ruling the world with force. At the public level, people all over the world are afraid to question if what they are told by their governments is the truth or not. Since they do not want to admit to themselves that they are afraid to question the government, they refuse to see the truth behind events such as September 11, like the Germans who refused to see the truth behind the Reichstag Fire. They refuse to see the occupation of Afghanistan and continuation of war in Pakistan just as the Germans ignored the Poland invasion. Today, we are witnessing rise of the global Reich. Nazi Germany has been scaled up to the Nazi world. Ordinary people, reluctant to lose their self-image of courage, have actually lost their courage. The word "coward" is reserved for those who struggle to defend their freedoms. The Germans, too, were made to believe that they were brave. The same psychological tool is being used to lure the western public from war to war and they find that shooting long range Tomahawk cruise missles and dropping Daisy Cutters from 40,000 feet at "evil" people take less courage than standing up to tyranny. Larry King told Bush that 95 percent of Americans believe Bush is handling the war on terror "pretty well". Under Hitler, the Germans, too, assumed they were safe from a tyrant. Like Bush, his European allies and Muslim puppet leaders, when Hitler requested temporary extraordinary powers, powers specifically banned under German law, but powers Hitler claimed he needed to deal with the "terrorists", the self-deluded Germans agreed and pretended their government did not go wrong. Just as conferring those powers and that simple self-deception led an entire nation to ruins, the present generation in the east and west may well be leading the human race to face the ultimate tragedy with granting unusual powers to hegemons and with their self deception that the nazi phenomenon is not being replicated an global scale. Like any police state, the police world is dependent on one of four conditions: public support, repression, disinformation or public indifference. At present, condition three and four are prevalent; both will have to change if the police world policy, led by the US, is to change. The public need to be better informed and to care about what is done in their names. Concluded. Abid Ullah Jan is a columnist for The Statesman, The Nation, and the Pakistan Observer (Pakistan). He is also sub-editor for the Tribune International (Sydney, Australia), and is the Executive Director of the Integrated Regional Support Programme (IRSP). He can be reached at abidjan2@psh.paknet.com.pk
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