If Osama bin Laden had not already existed, the 1% would have been forced to invent him

The manipulation of image and public perception is in a period of wretched excess. Our government's extrajudicial killing of a symbolic Al Qaeda mastermind is presented to the U.S. public not only as acceptable, but actually as something to gloat about. A takedown. With gusto. Of a guy who just happens to be a charismatic-looking, very wealthy Saudi. How conveniently cartoonish.

Sending in a team of specialists to storm down doors and make the hit is the old way to do things, and can be risky. The new order calls for using drones for allegedly targeted assassinations, or even general guesses about who might be killed – the so-called signature strikes. Drones have already killed thousands of innocent people, and are often flown and triggered by remote control pilots half the globe away. Apparently this is how we operate now. Our tax dollars at work.

Here's Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK this week protesting a government official calling drone strikes “wise” and being thrown out of the hearing for it. She gets in a powerful speech before being hauled away. "Why are you lying to the American people and not saying how many innocents have been killed?" "I love due process!...I love my country!"

Medea had just concluded participating in a major international drone summit where she reported on her research in a new book Drones, Killing by Remote Control.
 
While the ghosts of due process stalk the halls of our courtrooms, absent from the story, as if no longer important. And not just for bin Laden. Anyone deemed a terrorist doesn't get due process anymore under NDAA. And anyone can be strip searched in custody, according to the Supreme Court. Our checks and balances, bought and paid for. This is the “democracy” we're supposedly exporting?

The burial at sea – why was that necessary? What we lack in rule of law we aim to make up for in lurid detail? Such staged, reported events serve a communication purpose that glimmers dimly on the horizon, just out of reach.

Here is an official photo the public was shown and told that it shows the president, members of the cabinet, and members of the military holed up in a room watching bin Laden fall.

Who looks scared in this picture? Who looks like they are working while paying scant attention -- maybe because they know what's going to happen? Who looks like they are watching the bin Laden assassination as Roman spectacle?

And what was it about if not partly the opportunity for newsertainment channels to churn out endless anniversary specials about the killing of one larger than life person?

This year just prior the annual event the president made a surprise! visit to Afghanistan to sign a big agreement falsely presented as heralding the forseeable “end” of the war. (Except for a bunch of troops and advisors and subcontractors that are and will be still there protecting U.S. interests.) Also, no insurgents or Taleban were in on the agreement, just the crony-ridden government hunkered down in Kabul. Corporate-military force is applied to make the law makers of countries “accept” a deal on what is not called but assuredly is a huge, expensive permanent presence. The agreement must still pass the formality of being ratified by the senates of both countries, where big money has an enormous influence.

Here's what the image masters thought would appeal to the public listening to a bunch of hooey about success in a war the U.S. has been bled by for a decade. Overcompensation much?

Signing a "long-term strategic partnership" allows contracts to flow and also creates a space for the repetition of meaningless “withdrawal” dates and troop numbers packaged as news reporting. But the truth is that the U.S. is and has been buildingprisons and bases in Afghanistan steadily while drone bombing the life out of the people just going about their lives on the ground below. How many of them hate the U.S. after getting bombed? Aerial bombing of civilians is a proven marketing strategy for endless war.

Where in the globe does the U.S. taxpayer not pay for listening outposts? Fortified embassies with their own subcontractor guards, justified with official lies, coupled with dragging out those exercising their right of free speech to tell the truth. Media hype and certain prescribed stories (bin Laden, whether Iran is building a bomb) that don't let much truth leak through.

I have just one word to say about the diabolical plans of the 1%:

     ======> OCCUPY!!

William Hessian