<\/p>\n
By John & Nisha Whitehead
\nFebruary 13, 2024<\/p>\n
\u201cThe madmen are in power.\u201d\u2014 Philip K. Dick,\u00a0The Man in the High Castle<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The\u00a0debate over U.S. foreign aid<\/a>\u00a0is a distraction.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not to say that the amount of taxpayer money flowing to foreign countries in the form of military and economic assistance is insignificant. Even at less than 1% of the federal budget, the United States still\u00a0spends more on foreign aid<\/a>\u00a0than any other nation.<\/p>\n
The latest foreign aid spending bill includes\u00a0$95 billion<\/a>\u00a0for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.<\/p>\n
Since World War II, the U.S. has given more foreign aid to Israel than any other country\u00a0($318 billion<\/a>), with the bulk of those funds designated for Israel\u2019s military efforts.<\/p>\n
Even so, more than\u00a0150 countries around the world receive U.S. taxpayer-funded assistance<\/a>.<\/p>\n
As\u00a0Forbes<\/em>\u00a0reports, \u201cU.S. foreign aid dwarfs the federal funds spent by 48 out of 50 state governments annually.<\/a>\u00a0Only the state governments of California and New York spent more federal funds than what the U.S. sent abroad each year to foreign countries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether or not that some of that foreign aid is used for legitimate purposes, the global welfare system itself is riddled with corruption and waste. As Adam Andrzejewski rightly asks, \u201cDo taxpayers instinctively know that they are funding\u00a0choir directors<\/a>\u00a0in Turkmenistan,\u00a0filmmakers<\/a>\u00a0in Peru, aid for\u00a0poultry farmers<\/a>\u00a0Tanzania, and sex education\u00a0workshops<\/a>\u00a0for prostitutes in Ethiopia?\u201d<\/p>\n
The problem is not so much that taxpayers are unaware of how their hard-earned dollars are being spent. Rather, \u201cwe the people\u201d continue to be told that we have no say in the matter.<\/p>\n
We have no real say in how the government runs, or how our taxpayer funds are used, but that doesn\u2019t prevent the government from fleecing us at every turn and forcing us to pay for endless wars that do more to fund the military industrial complex than protect us, pork barrel projects that produce little to nothing, and a police state that serves only to imprison us within its walls.<\/p>\n
This\u00a0financial tyranny persists<\/a>\u00a0whether it\u2019s a Democrat or Republican at the helm.<\/p>\n
At a time when the government is spending money it doesn\u2019t have on programs it can\u2019t afford, the national debt continues to grow, our infrastructure continues to deteriorate, and our borders continue to be breached.<\/p>\n
What is going on?<\/p>\n
The \u201cgovernment of the people, by the people, for the people\u201d has been overtaken by a shadow government\u2014a corporatized, militarized, entrenched\u00a0global<\/em>\u00a0bureaucracy\u2014that is fully operational and running the country.<\/p>\n
This powerful international cabal made up of international government agencies and corporations\u2014let\u2019s call it the Global Deep State\u2014is just as real as the corporatized, militarized, industrialized American Deep State, and it poses just as great a threat to our rights as individuals under the U.S. Constitution, if not greater.<\/p>\n
Clearly, we have entered into a new world order: fascism on a global scale.<\/p>\n
It remains unclear whether the American Deep State (\u201ca national-security apparatus that holds sway even over the elected leaders notionally in charge of it<\/a>\u201d) answers to the Global Deep State, or whether the Global Deep State merely empowers the American Deep State. However, there is no denying the extent to which they are intricately and symbiotically enmeshed and interlocked.<\/p>\n
Consider the extent to which our lives and liberties are impacted by this international convergence of governmental and profit-driven corporate interests in the surveillance state, the military industrial complex, the private prison industry, the intelligence sector, the security sector, the technology sector, the telecommunications sector, the transportation sector, and in recent years, the pharmaceutical-health sector.<\/p>\n
All of these sectors are dominated by mega-corporations operating on a global scale and working through government channels to increase their profit margins. The profit-driven policies of these global corporate giants influence everything from legislative policies to economics to environmental issues to medical care.<\/p>\n
Global Disease<\/strong><\/p>\n
The COVID-19 pandemic propelled us into a whole new global frontier in which those hoping to navigate this interconnected and highly technological world of contact tracing, vaccine passports and digital passes find themselves grappling with issues that touch on deep-seated moral, political, religious and personal questions for which there may be no clear-cut answers.<\/p>\n
Our ability to access, engage and move about in the world has now become dependent on which camp we fall into: those who have been vaccinated against whatever the powers-that-be deem to be the latest\u00a0Disease X<\/a>\u00a0versus those who have not.<\/p>\n
This is what M.I.T. professor Ramesh Raskar refers to as the new \u201ccurrency for health<\/a>,\u201d an apt moniker given the potentially lucrative role that Big Business (Big Pharma and Big Tech, especially) will play in establishing this pay-to-play marketplace. The airline industry has been working on a Travel Pass. IBM is developing a Digital Health Pass. And the U.S. government has been all-too-happy to\u00a0allow the corporate sector to take the lead<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is the\u00a0latest status symbol<\/a>. Flash it at the people, and you can get access to concerts, sports arenas or long-forbidden restaurant tables. Some day, it may even help you cross a border without having to quarantine,\u201d writes Heather Murphy for the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>. \u201cThe new platinum card of the Covid age is the vaccine certificate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Global Surveillance<\/strong><\/p>\n
Spearheaded by the National Security Agency, which has shown itself to care little for constitutional limits or privacy, the surveillance state has come to dominate our government and our lives.<\/p>\n
Yet the government does not operate alone. It cannot. It requires an accomplice. Thus, the increasingly complex security needs of our massive federal government, especially in the areas of defense, surveillance and data management, have been met within the corporate sector, which has shown itself to be a powerful ally that both depends on and feeds the growth of governmental bureaucracy.<\/p>\n
Take AT&T, for instance. Through its vast telecommunications network that crisscrosses the globe, AT&T provides the U.S. government with the complex infrastructure it needs for its mass surveillance programs. According to\u00a0The Intercept<\/em>:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company\u2019s \u2018extreme willingness to help.\u2019\u00a0It is a collaboration that dates back decades.<\/a>\u00a0Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T\u2019s customers. According to the NSA\u2019s documents, it values AT&T not only because it \u2018has access to information that transits the nation,\u2019 but also because it maintains unique relationships with other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T\u2019s massive infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Now magnify what the U.S. government is doing through AT&T on a global scale, and you have the \u201c14 Eyes Program<\/a>,\u201d also referred to as the \u201cSIGINT Seniors.\u201d This global spy agency is made up of\u00a0members from around the world<\/a>\u00a0(United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Israel, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, India and all British Overseas Territories).<\/p>\n
Surveillance is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to these global alliances, however.<\/p>\n
Global War Profiteering<\/strong><\/p>\n
War has become a huge money-making venture, and America, with its vast military empire and its incestuous relationship with a host of international defense contractors, is one of its biggest\u00a0buyers<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0sellers<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth. For example, while erecting a security surveillance state in the U.S., the military-industrial complex has perpetuated a worldwide military empire with American troops stationed in 177 countries (over 70% of the countries worldwide).<\/p>\n
Although the federal government obscures so much about its defense spending that accurate figures are difficult to procure, we do know that since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $1.8 trillion in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (that\u2019s $8.3 million\u00a0per hour<\/em><\/a>). That doesn\u2019t include wars and military exercises waged around the globe, which are expected to\u00a0push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The illicit merger of the global armaments industry and the Pentagon that\u00a0President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us against more than 50 years ago<\/a>\u00a0has come to represent perhaps the greatest threat to the nation\u2019s fragile infrastructure today. America\u2019s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than\u00a0$15 billion a month<\/a>\u00a0(or $20 million an hour)\u2014and that\u2019s just what the government spends on foreign wars. That does not include the cost of maintaining and staffing the\u00a01000-plus U.S. military bases spread around the globe<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Incredibly, although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost\u00a050% of the world’s total military expenditure<\/a>, \u00a0spending\u00a0more<\/a>\u00a0on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined. In fact, the\u00a0Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined<\/a>\u00a0spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. There\u2019s a good reason why\u00a0\u201cbloated,\u201d \u201ccorrupt\u201d and \u201cinefficient\u201d are among the words most commonly applied to the government<\/a>, especially the Department of Defense and its contractors.\u00a0Price gouging<\/a>\u00a0has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just the American economy that is being gouged, unfortunately.<\/p>\n
Driven by a greedy defense sector, the American homeland has been transformed into a battlefield with militarized police and weapons better suited to a war zone. President Biden, marching in lockstep with his predecessors, has continued to expand America\u2019s military empire abroad and domestically in a clear bid to pander to the powerful money interests (military, corporate and security) that run the Deep State and hold the government in its clutches.<\/p>\n
Global Policing<\/strong><\/p>\n
Glance at pictures of international police forces and you will have a hard time distinguishing between American police and those belonging to other nations. There\u2019s a reason they all look alike, garbed in the militarized, weaponized uniform of a standing army.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a reason why they act alike, too, and speak a common language of force: they belong to a global police force.<\/p>\n
For example, Israel\u2014one of America\u2019s closest international allies and one of the primary yearly recipients of\u00a0more than $3 billion in U.S. foreign military aid<\/a>\u2014has been at the forefront of a little-publicized exchange program aimed at training American police to act as occupying forces in their communities. As\u00a0The Intercept<\/em>\u00a0sums it up, American police are \u201cessentially taking lessons from agencies that enforce military rule rather than civil law<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n
This idea of global policing is reinforced by the\u00a0Strong Cities Network program<\/a>, which trains local police agencies across America in how to identify, fight and prevent extremism, as well as\u00a0address intolerance<\/a>\u00a0within their communities, using all of the resources at their disposal. The cities included in the\u00a0global network<\/a>\u00a0include New York City, Atlanta, Denver, Minneapolis, Paris, London, Montreal, Beirut and Oslo.<\/p>\n
The objective is to prevent violent extremism by targeting its source: racism, bigotry, hatred, intolerance, etc. In other words, police\u2014acting as extensions of the United Nations\u2014will identify, monitor and deter individuals who exhibit, express or engage in anything that could be construed as extremist.<\/p>\n
Of course, the concern with the government\u2019s anti-extremism program is that it will, in many cases, be utilized to render otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist.<\/p>\n
Keep in mind that the government agencies involved in ferreting out American \u201cextremists\u201d will carry out their objectives\u2014to identify and deter potential extremists\u2014in concert with\u00a0fusion centers<\/a>\u00a0(of which there are 78 nationwide, with partners in the private sector and globally), data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition,\u00a0predictive policing<\/a>, biometrics, and behavioral\u00a0epigenetics<\/a>\u00a0(in which life experiences alter one\u2019s genetic makeup).<\/p>\n
This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it\u2019s been a long time coming.<\/p>\n
Are you starting to get the picture now?<\/p>\n
The government and its global partners have struck a deal that puts the American people on the losing end of the bargain.<\/p>\n
On almost every front, whether it\u2019s the war on drugs, or the sale of weapons, or regulating immigration, or establishing prisons, or advancing technology, or fighting a pandemic, if there is a profit to be made and power to be amassed, our freedoms are being eroded while the Global Deep State becomes more entrenched.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long\u2014sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs\u2014that it\u2019s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we\u2019re certainly on that downward slope now, and things are moving fast.<\/p>\n
Given the dramatic expansion, globalization and merger of governmental and corporate powers, we\u2019re not going to recognize this country 20 years from now.<\/p>\n
As I make clear in my book\u00a0Battlefield America: The War on the American People<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and in its fictional counterpart\u00a0The Erik Blair Diaries<\/em><\/a>, the U.S. government will not save us from the chains of the Global Deep State. It\u2019s too busy selling us to the highest bidder.<\/p>\n
WC: 2210<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD<\/h5>\n
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of\u00a0The Rutherford Institute<\/a>. His most recent books are the best-selling\u00a0Battlefield America: The War on the American People<\/a>, the award-winning\u00a0A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State<\/a>, and a debut dystopian fiction novel,\u00a0The Erik Blair Diaries<\/a>. Whitehead can be contacted at\u00a0staff@rutherford.org<\/a>. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at\u00a0www.rutherford.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n