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Towards Martial Law in America
By James Corbett
Whistleblower: Coast Guard Implementing Martial Law
Earlier this month, the United States Coast Guard upheld its self-declared status as a ‘special’ branch of the military with the ability to prosecute civilians in military tribunals. This startling declaration, unreported in the media, came in a Decision on Appeal related to the case of Lieutenant Eric Shine, a commissioned Naval officer in the Merchant Marines and a graduate of Kings Point Military Service Academy, and was penned by the Vice Commandant of the Coast Guard. The decision can be downloaded and read here.
The Coast Guard began proceedings to strip Lieutenant Shine of his merchant mariner license in March, 2003, supposedly as the result of incidents related to his service on two private vessels in 2001. In actuality, as Lieutenant Shine points out, the charges were brought in retaliation for attempting to blow the whistle on illegal dumping and other practices he had been asked to engage in during his employment. The Coast Guard’s case against him rested on two hostile witnesses (who had previously been named by Shine in his whistleblower litigation) and the Chief of the Coast Guard Medical Evaluations Office, an officer in the Coast Guard who had never examined Shine but was willing to testify to his medical incompetence.
Download an interview with Eric Shine about his case, the Coast Guard and the open implementation of martial law here
The precedent-setting nature of Lieutenant Shine’s case—with the Coast Guard prosecuting him as an alleged civilian in an Article 32 military tribunal—is disturbing enough. But when this case is set in the history and context of the Coast Guard and its repeated attempts at “crossing the Rubicon,” an even more disturbing picture emerges.
In 49 B.C., Julius Caesar led the Roman Legion across the Rubicon and into Rome itself, defying the Roman Senate and soon thereafter declaring himself Emperor for life. This was the beginning of the changeover from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire and the phrase “Crossing the Rubicon” is now used to refer to a move by government toward military dictatorship and the suspension of civil liberties.
Unbeknownst to most Americans, the United States Coast Guard has been attempting to ‘cross the Rubicon’ for decades, and actually achieved that goal in a silent coup in 2003 when it was moved from the Department of Transportation into the newly-created Department of Homeland Security. This change was not merely bureaucratic; it allows the Coast Guard to now openly declare itself “one of the five armed forces of the United States and the only military organization within the Department of Homeland Security.” The problem is that the Coast Guard is now attempting to straddle the line between a civil service agency (as it was set up to be and indeed has always been, except during times when it was specifically placed in the service of the Navy) and a branch of the military, conforming to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
For those who understand how the United States military has been set up, and the laws and prohibitions against military personnel engaging in the policing of civilians, the fact that the Coast Guard wants to act as a maritime police agency at the same time as it declares itself a branch of the military is a clear indication that the United States is now officially under martial law.
In 1878, Congress passed a law known as Posse Comitatus that prohibited the use of military personnel or assets in domestic law enforcement. At the time, it was clear that the act was an attempt to prohibit the military from policing civilians on U.S. soil, as happened in the South under Reconstruction. What has been taking place in earnest since 9/11, however, is an attempt to erode the spirit and the substance of Posse Comitatus so that the Executive branch can effectively ‘cross the rubicon’ and use military personnel in domestic policing operations.
As the video below demonstrates, both Democratic and Republican demonstrations have been attempting to overcome Posse Comitatus for decades, and 9/11 was the blank cheque they needed to kick their agenda into high gear:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgMx2F41XD0
On October 23, 2001, unconvicted war criminals John Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty wrote to White House counsel Alberto Gonzales giving the legal opinion that “The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States.”
On October 23, 2001, unconvicted war criminals John Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty wrote to White House counsel Alberto Gonzales giving the legal opinion that “The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States.” The Bush Administration then tried to use that very opinion to justify sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to seize a group of men who were claimed to be working with Al Qaeda. The decision was evidently made not to pursue that course of action at that time, but the legal opinion stood and the Administration waited for the opportunity to formalize the legality of deploying troops on home soil.
That opportunity came in 2006, after years of scaremongering over the “War on Terror” (which former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge later admitted was done to influence voters at politically sensitive times). A section (1076) was slipped into the John Warner Defense Authorization Act that granted the president the authority to deploy troops domestically during “national emergencies.” In 2008, Congress attempted to take these powers away from the administration by passing legislation repealing the offending sections of the Act, but President Bush issued a signing statement when signing that legislation into law saying that his administration was not bound by it.
From that point on, the legal floodgates have been open and a stream of increasingly disturbing reports have confirmed that Posse Comitatus had been repealed and that the public is being conditioned to accept uniformed military personnel policing American civilians on the streets of America.
In September 2008, the Army Times reported that the 3rd Infantry Division’s Brigade Combat Team had been reassigned to NORTHCOM to patrol the “homeland” in crowd control and civil unrest situations.
In December of 2008, the Marine Corps Air and Ground Combat Support Group dispatched uniformed troops to aid police checkpoints in California.
In September of 2009, the Army and Air Force provided assistance to the National Guard for security at the G20 in Pittsburgh.
Also in September of 2009, the Assistant Secretary of Defense in Obama’s Defense Department requested authorization to deploy 379,000 troops inside the U.S.
But this issue is not merely an American one. There is currently a coordinated agenda across the Western world to harmonize these types of rubicon-crossing moves toward outright martial law across borders.
In March 2009, the Canadian military—which began a formal merger with the American military in February 2008 that would see American troops deployed on the streets of Canada and Canadian troops in America during ‘national emergency’—announced that it, too was preparing special reserve units to provide for ‘domestic security’ during times of civil unrest. The troops are being trained in various crowd control and emergency measures, such as how to set up and maintain internment camps for Canadian citizens in the event of such things as enforced quarantines after a bioterror attack.
Also in March 2009 it was revealed that the British Army was being readied to deal with Brits should rioting break out in the UK.
What all of this case history reveals is that there is a coordinated agenda to knock down any remaining walls separating the general population of America, Canada and the UK from their own militaries. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the way the Coast Guard has quietly shifted from a federal policing agency into a self-declared branch of the military.
As Lieutenant Eric Shine rightfully asks in his own article on the subject, how does the Revenue Cutter Service, originally located in the Department of the Treasury, merge with the Lighthouse Service, the Ice-breaking Service and other civil service agencies to become a branch of military? How does a branch of the military end up in the Department of Homeland Security, whose mission is explicitly to police the “homeland” and its residents? How does this branch of the military get away with filing charges in a military tribunal against an alleged civilian who has never served in their uniform, and then proceed to prosecute, adjudicate and act as appellate of that tribunal?
And perhaps the most important question of all: When will the American public, and the peoples of the other Western powers, realize that the Rubicon has long since been crossed and that they are already living in a military dictatorship?
James Corbett is an independent journalist in Japan whose work can be found at corbettreport.com. Information on Lt. Shine’s case can be found at crossingtherubicon.org.
Ho Hum, More Wikileaks “CHICKENFEED”
By Gordon Duff
GORDON DUFF: HO HUM, MORE WIKILEAKS “CHICKENFEED”
LAMEST WIKILEAK SO FAR…IS ISRAEL BEHIND IT?
The new Wikileaks claims the US undereported by 15,000, the deaths of Iraqi “civilians.” With the numbers listed by the military as little as 10% or less of the actual deaths, bumping up the numbers must be a joke. More leaks about torture and killings, Iraqi torture and the US “looking away?” More idiocy. With the US sending “suspects” around the world on rendition flights, sent to secret prisons and obvious to anyone with a brain, to shallow graves, this Wikileak is simply another sideshow, more “chickenfeed.”
Things have already come apart in Iraq. Why leak this now? Regular news stories are actually going much further than these “leaks.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the agenda here, an agenda with absolutely nothing to do with enlightening the world.
What does it prove, any of it? For sure, we see one thing. Everything leaked is carefully screened to have nothing of real value. With Mossad running around Mosul, operating out of Erbil, supplying and advising the terrorist PKK, not a word is mentioned. Instead, poor Iranians are swimming the Euphrates with explosives strapped to their chests.
Get real.
Thousands of tons of explosives were “mislaid” in Iraq. The US failed to secure Saddam’s weapons depots which were looted. These stockpiles were vast. The idea that anyone would need to bring weapons into Iraq is insane, simply another Israeli ploy to pre-stage an attack on Iran. Any fool can see this in seconds.
- In fact, there are more assault rifles in Iraq than people.
While trying to blame Iran, is Wikileaks reporting the hundreds of thousands of weapons bought by the US that simply disappeared in Iraq? It is easier to buy an assault rifle or RPG in Iraq than to get potato chips. This need to blame Iran, the idea that “secret agents” are smuggling ordnance into Iraq, a country loaded with explosives, is insane. Who would believe it? The idiotic controlled press?
What will we see if we watch the stories coming out? Where will the press be told to manipulate the public to look? Americans proved long ago that they were immune to guilt about torture and killing. In fact, polls show that the more religious an American, the more willing they are to accept brutality, and few countries are as “religious’ as America. No other country in recent times as killed as many people as America, even overshadowing the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda and Bosnia or the “situation” in Israel.
As with the earlier “leak,” Wikileaks has the ability to go through hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, carefully eliminating any blackmarket dealings, drug running or, as with Iraq, the massive corruption and theft of oil.
- There are dozens of subjects that seem to be carefully screened from any Wikileak. Even the Department of Defense, not so secretly, thanks Wikileaks for holding back really embarrassing information. “Held back” information is, of course, blackmail.
Who is Wikileaks?
Is Wikileaks Israel?
Only Israel has the penetration of the Department of Defense that would allow this kind of spying. Not only can they do it, they also have so many spies in the American chain of command, they could easily prevent it. Who has the facilities to gather and filter this much data? Who would want to?
With the biggest story in Iraq the falsified intelligence on “weapons of mass destruction,” why didn’t Wikileaks get us documents on this? We know that the military had orders to try to falsify documents showing that they found fully operating nuclear, biological and chemical warfare facilities. These would have made good reading along with the thousands of pages of reports about how these stories would be fabricated. Even the “controlled press” wouldn’t touch them although they are still out there.
The lies.
Exposing this real Iraq scandal would so some good, except for one thing, friends of Israel inside the Pentagon were the creators of this program. Is this why Wikileaks dodges the real issues? Is it because the trail for much of what happened in Iraq heads directly to Tel Aviv?
Who even cares about Iraq this many years later?
Look at the watered down reports about American support of Al Qaeda. The US is blamed for accidentally helping Al Qaeda by organizing the Sons of Iraq. In truth, the US actually reorganized the Baathists, something far worse than the imaginary construct “Al Qaeda.” Not a word is said about this.
One of the biggest scams of the Iraq “experience” was the looting of oil resources. Most easily verified is the theft of oil from the Kirkuk fields through the Kirkuk/Ceyhan pipeline, which goes to the Mediterranean through Turkey. Ships that load oil are shown on locator sights run by insurance companies and even the US Coast Guard. Their tonnage is available, how many ships, how long. When doing the math, how much oil is loaded compared to how much is paid for, billions and billions of dollars of oil is missing.
When Americans were paying $4 a gallon for gas, how many knew the oil that made the gasoline was “free” to the oil companies? Who spit the take on this? Who was paid? How much was stolen through Basra? Were the British involved?
Then we have Fallujah. We are told America “carpet bombed” civilians and “ethnically cleansed” the area, as we are now informed, for no reason. The version the Army told is being debunked along with the phony stories of the “embedded” press. Nothing on this hit Wikileaks either.
We are also noting high levels of radiation there and a health crisis that can only be described as shocking. Where is wikileaks on this REAL story?
There is little doubt that Wikileaks is a “sideshow’ run by an intelligence agency with dozens of agents inside the Department of Defense. Only Israel has this capability, having penetrated Defense to such a degree they run it as their own. What is the agenda of Wikileaks? Is it revealing the truth? If so, why is the truth censored and watered down to such a degree as to be “non-news” as the earlier leak had been. In fact, most stories about leaks are simply speculation and most “leaks” are little than “chickenfeed.”
The last leak was an attack on Pakistan. Wikileaks tried to make a case for Pakistan running the Taliban in Afghanistan. However, the Taliban are Pashtun and don’t care much for Pakistan, they are “blood enemies.” Because of this, Israel and India have found them useful allies against Pakistan, the only Islamic nuclear power. Aid of all kinds gets to the Taliban from the Mossad and RAW, something Wikileaks worked hard to keep secret.
- Real leaks by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds proved that documents exist showing that rendition flights were used to ferry terrorists around, move drugs and tons of cash. With bales of cash leaving Afghanistan every day, why is it that not one page, not one word of any of this, things we know are in American files, hit Wikileaks?
Why does Wikileaks spend more time hiding things than revealing them? When the story dies down, are the Julian Assange rape allegations going to be dragged out again to give the story more play? Last time they “double dipped” on that one, first charges, then no charges, then charges. It was like a badly written “soap opera.”
What about this new “leak?”
This one may be aimed at Iran.
Anyone surprised or shocked to find that Iraqi security forces killed or tortured people is living on their own private planet. These were Saddam’s killers and torturers first. Then they became ours. What do killers and torturers do?
There was one reason for the invasion of Iraq with all the lies, all the killing, all the corruption. Israel wanted Iraq destroyed. Will Wikileaks ever get to something real?
America’s False Consciousness
By Charles Sullivan
An essay authored by Patrick Martin, and published at the World Socialist Web Site on October 13, 2010, revealed some interesting findings regarding the approval ratings of Democratic and Republican members of Congress. Martin’s piece was titled Demagogy and Duplicity: The Democrats in the 2010 Elections. He cites data from a Zogby International Poll of independent voters which found that “only 13% gave a favorable rating to congressional Democrats and only 5% to Congressional Republicans.” Considering that the U.S. is the most conservative developed nation on earth, these are astonishing revelations.
Poll after poll indicates that voters have lost faith in the Democratic and Republican Parties, whose respective approval ratings have fallen to historical lows. The Zogby findings indicate a repudiation of right-wing politics by those who are not wed to either of the major political parties.
No one associates liberalism with the Republicans; however, it is equally clear that the Democrats do not have a functioning left-wing either. The electoral choices are between right-wing candidates in the Democrat and Republican parties, despite the offerings of political parties and organizations operating outside of the mainstream. As a result, all of the contests are between pro-corporate candidates who occupy the extreme right of the political spectrum. The only message that reaches the public ear is that of the ruling class. Thus the continuity of results is assured.
The paradox is that while independent working class people have overwhelmingly rejected right-wing policies, the country nevertheless continues to lurch further to the right. This happens when people mistake people like Obama for a liberal or a Socialist. Conservative and liberal working class people should be philosophically and ethically opposed to any political party that undermines their social and economic interests.
Almost inexplicably, conservatives continue to identify themselves with Republicans and liberals with Democrats. Traditional conservatives and traditional liberals, while still in existence, are politically extinct. Neither conservatives nor liberals are organized into a viable political force. They are fighting one another while the super-rich are looting the public treasure and privatizing the public domain. Traditional conservatives and traditional liberals were replaced by neoconservatives and neoliberals, which are entirely different animals. We behave as if the terms ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ and the parties they were traditionally associated with continue to exist and function the way they did in the past.
Liberalism no longer finds articulation in the Democratic Party. Cynthia McKinney may have been the last truly liberal Democrat. McKinney, like the liberal wing of the party itself, was abandoned when the party sold out its liberal base to pursue corporate bribes in order to compete with the Republicans. As a result, the left continues to ineffectually grope for political expression.
The trouble is that the people do not comprehend who or what the real enemy is. Let me clarify it for them: The enemy is the ruling class, its social, financial, and political institutions, and the capitalist system that spawned them. Its enemy is the corporate state and the commercial media in its various forms of expression.
It is irrational, if not delusional, for working class people to support candidates and polices to which they are philosophically opposed. And yet that is what they are doing. As recent polls make clear, neither conservatives nor progressives want to have their social security benefits cut. They do not want to see their retirement benefits reduced, or their Medicare and Medicaid payments slashed. The unemployed do not want their unemployment checks cut or eliminated, as some Republican members of Congress advocate. Workers do not want the retirement age raised. They do not want to see college tuition priced out of reach to all but the wealthy.
The working class consists of liberals and conservatives. It encompasses the devoted followers of Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh. However, Beck, Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and all of the other right-wing crackpots support such policies, as do most Democrats, including President Obama. Why would any working class person, Democrat or Republican, support any of these charlatans?
Why would they support a social and economic system that exploits and subjugates them? Clearly they do not understand that system or the alternatives that are available to it.
The answer is that Americans are too indoctrinated to see clearly. The majority exists in a media-induced state of false consciousness. To them, up is down and down is up. Brown is white and white is brown. The people are confused and disoriented. They are misled and lied to. They are looking for quick and easy fixes to complex problems that were long in the making. For the reasons outlined above, voting cannot cure what ails America. The game is fixed. The appearance of choice is an illusion, an utter hoax.
Political and media demagogues portray liberals (progressives & Socialists), which continue to be miscast as democrats, as the enemy of the working class. Working people do not comprehend that the benefits they are fighting to preserve were the result of progressive policies, many of them stemming from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Conservatives, neoconservatives, and neoliberals have always opposed these policies and have fought to end them since the day of their inception. Let us not forget that FDR was accused by one of his adversaries of being “a traitor to his class.”
It would be a mistake, however, to confuse FDR for a genuine progressive. Certainly he was no socialist. It was his Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, a Democratic Socialist, not FDR, who was the principal architect of The New Deal. It should be noted, too, that The New Deal excluded most blacks. It was essentially affirmative action for whites. Spooked by the social unrest engendered by The Great Depression, FDR, an avowed capitalist, perceived these policies as the only way to save capitalism from the socialist threat of his time. Roosevelt was correct in his assessment. It would have been better for the nation in the long run if FDR did not enact The New Deal. If he had not, it is likely that massive social upheaval would have ensued, and Socialism may well have supplanted capitalism as the dominant paradigm.
Before any of my readers point out the failure of Soviet Socialism, particularly under the murderous Stalin regime, let me state that this was not Socialism as Marx, Engels, and Trotsky envisioned it; it was state capitalism.
Similarly, if President Obama did not bail out America’s financial institutions with public funds, global capitalism would have collapsed. Predicated upon greed and exploitation, these institutions should have been allowed to fail, bringing down the global capitalist economy. If Adam Smith’s much ballyhooed, ‘invisible hand of the market’ actually existed, the world today would look very different than it did a few short years ago. We might actually be in recovery. Now we are waiting for the next onslaught.
History demonstrates that free (deregulated) markets, the Holy Grail of Milton Friedman’s capitalism, do not actually exist. They never have. Free market capitalism is an ideological myth that is reified in our culture. Markets are always manipulated by elites for the sole benefit of elites. Otherwise the global economy would have fallen like a row of dominoes two years ago. What we witnessed was Socialism (public funds) propping up capitalism (privately owned financial institutions). All of the benefit, to the tune of $13.8 trillion, went to the financial institutions and to the elite. Working people were rewarded with government-imposed austerity. This has occurred not only in the U.S. but elsewhere in the world.
The international financial aristocracy is laying the foundation for global governance. The public domain is being privatized. The poor are no longer part of the social and political discourse.
As a result of these policies, there is social turmoil in every capitalist nation on earth, except the U.S. Compared to the rest of the world, Americans are comatose, which is the result of so many people being informed by Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and other wealthy demagogues working the airwaves on behalf of the ruling class. Most Americans are informed by ideology, not by facts.
This is what Friedrich Nietzsche meant by conviction. Reality pales before the shadow of belief and false hope. Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” comes to mind. Fantasy becomes the norm. Capitalism would not long endure in the presence of collective true consciousness. It exists by deceit.
Charles Sullivan is a naturalist and free-lance writer residing in the hinterlands of geopolitical West Virginia.
A Few Words
By Jon Bourn
Editor of Jericho Rendezvous Blog
All that is left in America is pain. The coup d’etat is over. I personally stand at a cross road where my chances of survival have dwindled and the likelihood of loosing everything has risen dramatically. I’ll know the answer in the next few months along with millions of others who just disappear, and are left to fend in a world fraught with corruption. If you wonder why nothing changes, you may have part of the answer. Without money, evil says you are evil. I don’t buy it. It’s bad medicine. Work truly has nothing to do with it, we all want to do something. Hate mongers will tell you to get a job, but if the job doesn’t suffice, it is you that is to blame.
Our fear-induced elections, a sort of epitasis in the techo-stream of death will change nothing as Americans sleep through life to appease the evil that bestows them. Oblivious to knowledge, their moralism reigns. Why have we not learned what knowledge truly is? A simple description is that of the ladder and the position we take upon it. It’s length is perpetual traveling in both direction beyond sight leaving only one direction where morality remains and described by G. I. Gurdjeiff in the following quote:
“The more moral a man is, the more immoral does he think other moral people.”
Morality begins the process of discerning knowledge where reason is also developed and that which separates us homogeneously from non-human life. Our semantic world outlines how this is established in the mind. We begin the assumption with the root stem me-1 (pronounced like me), and this is immediately reflected as mē-1 (pronounced like measure), a derivative of moral. As we climb the ladder, our confusion is addressed between me-2 and mē-2. It is here that money is placed. The next two versions of me (mē-3, and mē-4) explain what happens once this is done; a total of 52 words in six root groups of the lexicon.
Surprisingly, this is an analogy to the universe built out of the lexicon as a pentimento of metaphorical efficiency. As an example, all measurement today is based on money, and it is here that the picture is painted. A glance at where our thoughts develop might change that picture and reveal the truer nature of the spirit and soul of our indigenous world. Money itself has no brain, it depends on us to make it real and this is called slavery to something that is unable to think.
Obama’s Finest Hour: Killing Innocent People For “Made-Up Crap”
October 18, 2010: By Chris Floyd
Obama’s Finest Hour: Killing Innocent People For “Made-Up Crap”
If ever I am tempted by the siren songs of my tribal past as a deep-fried, yellow-dawg Democrat, and begin to feel any faint, atavistic stirrings of sympathy for the old gang, I simply think of things like the scenario below, sketched last week by Johann Hari, and those wispy ghosts of partisanship past go howling back to the depths:
Imagine if, an hour from now, a robot-plane swooped over your house and blasted it to pieces. The plane has no pilot. It is controlled with a joystick from 7,000 miles away, sent by the Pakistani military to kill you. It blows up all the houses in your street, and so barbecues your family and your neighbours until there is nothing left to bury but a few charred slops. Why? They refuse to comment. They don’t even admit the robot-planes belong to them. But they tell the Pakistani newspapers back home it is because one of you was planning to attack Pakistan. How do they know? Somebody told them. Who? You don’t know, and there are no appeals against the robot.
Now imagine it doesn’t end there: these attacks are happening every week somewhere in your country. They blow up funerals and family dinners and children. The number of robot-planes in the sky is increasing every week. You discover they are named “Predators”, or “Reapers” – after the Grim Reaper. No matter how much you plead, no matter how much you make it clear you are a peaceful civilian getting on with your life, it won’t stop. What do you do? If there was a group arguing that Pakistan was an evil nation that deserved to be violently attacked, would you now start to listen?
…[This] is in fact an accurate description of life in much of Pakistan today, with the sides flipped. The Predators and Reapers are being sent by Barack Obama’s CIA, with the support of other Western governments, and they killed more than 700 civilians in 2009 alone – 14 times the number killed in the 7/7 attacks in London. The floods were seen as an opportunity to increase the attacks, and last month saw the largest number of robot-plane bombings ever: 22. Over the next decade, spending on drones is set to increase by 700 per cent.
Friends, it’s very simple: if you support Barack Obama and the Democrats — even if reluctantly, even if you’re just being all sophisticatedly super-savvy and blogospherically strategic about it, playing the “long game” or eleven-dimensional chess or what have you — you are supporting the outright murder of innocent people who have never done anything against you or yours. You have walked into a house, battered down the bedroom door, put the barrel of a gun against the temple of a sleeping child, and pulled the trigger. That is what you are supporting, that is what you are complicit in, that is what you yourself are doing.
But hey, let’s be all super-savvy and eleventh-dimensional ourselves here for a moment. Let’s be pragmatic, and technocratic, let’s be grown-ups, let’s not get sidetracked by a bunch of jejune, dorm-room, hippy-dippy moralizing. No, let’s concentrate on practicalities, let’s get down to brass tacks, let’s be serious and focus on “what works” to protect our national security. OK, so here’s the practical result of the illegal campaign of mass murder that Obama is waging on the sovereign territory of one of America’s allies:
… Drone technology was developed by the Israelis, who routinely use it to bomb the Gaza Strip. I’ve been in Gaza during some of these attacks. The people there were terrified – and radicalised. A young woman I know who had been averse to political violence and an advocate of peaceful protest saw a drone blow up a car full of people – and she started supporting Islamic Jihad and crying for the worst possible revenge against Israel. Robot-drones have successfully bombed much of Gaza, from secular Fatah to Islamist Hamas, to the brink of jihad.
Is the same thing happening in Pakistan? David Kilcullen is a counter-insurgency expert who worked for General Petraeus in Iraq and now advises the State Department. He has shown that two per cent of the people killed by the robot-planes in Pakistan are jihadis. The remaining 98 per cent are as innocent as the victims of 9/11. He says: “It’s not moral.” And it gets worse: “Every one of these dead non-combatants represents an alienated family, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially as drone strikes have increased. … It could be poised to get even worse: Bob Woodward’s Obama’s Wars says the US has an immediate plan to bomb 150 targets in Pakistan if there is a jihadi attack inside America.
Why, it’s almost as if the drone campaign was designed to create more and more enemies — and more and more contracts for war profiteers to build more and more drones, which can then be used to create more and more enemies, which means more and more contracts for …. say, it is a practical plan, after all! A practical plan to create terrorism, not quell it.
And what is the “evidence” used by the Administration militarists as they draw up their target lists for the defenseless villages in Pakistan? What is the “intelligence” produced by the $75 billion lavished on our 200,000 security apparatchiks every year? On what basis is Barack Obama killing people in Pakistan? Hari reports:
..[The] press releases uncritically repeated by the press after a bombing always brag about “senior al-Qa’ida commanders” killed – but some people within the CIA admit how arbitrary their choice of targets is. One of their senior figures told The New Yorker: “Sometimes you’re dealing with tribal chiefs. Often they say an enemy of theirs is al-Qa’ida because they want to get rid of somebody, or they made crap up because they wanted to prove they were valuable so they could make money.”
That’s right: Barack Obama is killing hundreds of innocent civilians in Pakistan on the basis of crap made up for money. Made-up crap. For money. That’s why a child who is just as precious as your child is to a parent who is just as real a person as you are was killed this week, by Barack Obama and the Democratic Party and the entire bipartisan foreign policy establishment of the United States of America: crap made up for money.
And of course, it’s not just tribal chiefs making up crap for blood money: the entire aforementioned bipartisan foreign policy establishment is now and has for years been making up crap “so they could make money” — for themselves, for their corporate patrons, for their government agencies, for their defense and “security” stockholdings, for the perpetuation of their bloated, belligerent, pig-ignorant domination of world affairs and American society — by killing innocent people all over the world.
“But oh my gosh, oh my lord, we have to support Obama! What if those Tea Party Republicans get into power? What would happen then?” What would happen? The same goddamned thing that’s happening right now, that’s what. More and more war, more and more murder, more and more domination by a militarist kleptocracy. As Glenn Greenwald notes this week, Obama and the Tea Partiers (and the neocons, and the liberal hawks, and the Bush Regime war criminals) are in lockstep (even goosestep) on keeping the War Machine stoked and rolling.
That’s why the opposition to the Tea Party Republicans has been so anemic, focused almost entirely on personality flaws or asinine comments or resume padding or stupid things they did in college. The Democrats can’t possibly attack them on substance — i.e., the fact that the Tea Partiers are rabid warmongers who delight in murder, torture and repression and believe that the poor, the sick, the old, the weak, the unlucky, and the vulnerable should just eat shit and die already — because these are the same positions the Democrats hold! Who “reformed” health care into a gargantuan, guaranteed boondoggle for rapacious conglomerates? Who bailed out the bankers and left millions in the hands of savage “robo-signers?” Who set up the “Catfood Commission” and stocked it from top to bottom with long-time, deep-dyed haters of the poor and the weak? It wasn’t Dick Cheney, bub.
I don’t want to see the Tea Partiers in power. But I’m not going to support one faction of murderers and plunderers just to keep out another faction of murderers and plunderers. Hari makes this good analogy about the drone program:
Yet many people defend the drones by saying: “We have to do something.” If your friend suffered terrible third-degree burns, would you urge her to set fire to her hair because “you have to do something”? Would you give a poisoning victim another, worse poison, on the grounds that any action is better than none?
Similarly, I say: would you support one murderer — who likes to break into children’s bedrooms and blow their brains out — in order to stop another murderer, who would do the same thing, from taking over a vicious gang of murderers? What would be the basis, the reason for your support? That the first murderer wears nicer suits? Digs cooler music? Throws better street parties? Leaves a pretty little flower next to the blown-out brains?
For a system sunk so deeply in evil, there is no “lesser” evil to choose. The militarist kleptocracy itself is evil, and every political faction that does not denounce it and seek to dismantle it is complicit in this evil. The choice is to stand outside such factions; the choice is non-cooperation with evil, as advocated by Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, King. I’m not going to spend my brief time here on earth standing with blood-soaked killers, no matter what factional name they give themselves, or what loyalties they might claim on our myth-clouded memories of the past. I’m not going to teach my children that all we can do is to grovel before one child-murdering maniac or another, to keep quiet, to never speak the truth, to sell their votes, their dignity and their souls to murderers who would pervert every good instinct — and every bad instinct — every worthy hope and every nasty fear, to keep themselves in power.
Dead children. Made-up crap. For money. That’s what our leading “dissidents” want us to support. There is much that could be said about the utterly puerile arguments being offered for this murder-abetting stance; but in the interests of brevity, and civility — and my own sanity — I will forbear, and simply say: no thanks.
Israeli Policies are Manifestly Evil: Philip Giraldi
Interview By Kourosh Ziabari for Intifada Palestine
Israeli Policies are Manifestly Evil: Philip Giraldi
Philip Giraldi is a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Now, he chairs the Council for the National Interest as the Executive Director. CNI is a nonprofit organization that advocates for the transformation of United States’ Middle East policy.
As a CIA officer, Giraldi served in different countries including Turkey, Italy, Germany and Spain. He is now a Francis Walsingham Fellow at The American Conservative Defense Alliance. He has appeared on several radio and TV programs including Good Morning America, MSNBC, NPR, Fox News, BBC, Al-Jazeera and 60 Minutes.
Giraldi works with the American Conservative magazine as a contributing editor and writes a regular column for the Antiwar website. He is an outspoken critic of the hawkish policies of the United States and has publicly decried Washington’s unconditional support for the state of Israel.
Philip Giraldi joined me in an exclusive interview to discuss the latest developments of the Middle East, the prospect of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the possibility of a peaceful compromise between Iran and the United States and the impact of Israeli lobby on the long-term policies of the White House.
Kourosh Ziabari: Why is the Israeli lobby so powerful, influential and authoritative? Almost all of the major media conglomerates in the United States own to well-off Jews who are committed to maintaining the interests of the state of Israel in the U.S. Some experts say that Israel is the representative of the United States in the Middle East region, but some others suggest that it’s Israel which determines the future of political developments in the United States. What’s your take on that?
Philip Giraldi: The Israel Lobby is so powerful because it deliberately set out to establish control over key elements in the United States. It has demonstrated a number of times that politicians who are perceived as being unfriendly to Israel will face serious problems in being reelected because the Lobby mobilizes to provide money and media support to opponents. This means that congress is afraid to oppose anything that Israel and its Lobby wants. The same holds true for the presidency. Every presidential candidate must be seen as friendly to Israel or he will be attacked in the media and denied millions of dollars in political contributions, making it a safer option to support Israel. Finally, pro-Israeli interests control much of the media and, more important, dominate the opinion and editorial pages, making the only narrative that most Americans hear about the Middle East highly favorable to Israel and highly critical of all Israel’s enemies. As a result, Israel is able to control U.S. foreign policy as it relates to the Middle East and also much of the Muslim world.
KZ: The recent call by the Iranian President on framing a fact-finding group to probe into the 9/11 attacks sparked intense controversy around the United States. Is it because the United States considers 9/11 a red line which should not be crossed?
PG: Many Americans believe that 9/11 was never properly investigated. Some believe that the U.S. and, or Israeli governments were actually involved. The Federal government does not want the case to be reopened because a truly open investigation might reveal things that it would like to keep hidden. I do not know what exactly those things might be, but, at a minimum, there was a high level of incompetence within the government in the lead up to the attacks, both by Democrats and Republicans.
KZ: The former Italian President had once said that Mossad had played a role in the 9/11 attacks. Is there any convincing evidence that Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks? Can we rely on some implications including the five dancing Israelis who were seen cheering while the Twin Towers collapsed, or the closure of Zim Shipping Company’s headquarters at the World Trade Center two week before the 9/11 attacks?
PG: Most intelligence officers believe that Israel, which was conducting a massive and illegal spy operation inside the U.S. aimed at Arabs living here, knew at least parts of the 9/11 conspiracy. It did not share that information and it is also clear that leading Israeli politicians welcomed the attacks because they made Washington a totally committed ally in full agreement with the Israeli view of Islamic terrorism. The Israel view, i.e. that anyone hostile to Israel is a terrorist, has done great damage to the United States because it has created enemies where no enemies previously existed.
KZ: What’s your take on the exercise of double standards by the U.S. over Israel’s nuclear issue?
PG: There is no justification for Washington’s hypocrisy over Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Israel should be held to the same standard as everyone else, but the action of the Israeli Lobby means that it will never be accountable for anything as long as Washington is in a position to protect it.
KZ: As someone who has closely worked with one of the most sensitive parts of the U.S. government, do you like the continuation of belligerence and hostility between Iran and the United States? Are these two nations fated to be at odds forever? Can you foresee promising horizons of reconciliation and friendship?
PG: I do not believe that Washington and Tehran are natural enemies. I believe that they have been turned into enemies by the media and the activity of the Israel Lobby. Unfortunately, that situation will not change until Washington completely overturns its policies in the Middle East, something that might not happen in our lifetimes. Many young Iranians, the bulk of the population, do not harbor any real hostility towards the United States and if the policies were to change I believe the two countries could again become friendly.
KZ: Is it plausible to be a former CIA officer at the same time as being an outspoken critic of the U.S. administration? You’ve been quite forthright in your criticism of the U.S. foreign policy, especially with regards to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Haven’t been any pressure on you to soften your tone or retreat from your stance?
PG: I have never been pressured to soften my criticism of the US government’s foreign and security policies. There are many former intelligence officers who have also been highly critical of developments since 9/11. It is because intelligence officers quickly recognize lies when they hear them and are not very tolerant of a government that lies its way to war.
KZ: Iran marked the 20th anniversary of the conclusion of 8-year war with Iraq last month. Iranians well remember that it was the United States and its European allies, who persuaded, equipped, funded and aided Saddam Hussein in invading Iran. 20 years later, they came together to topple the very Saddam they had supported in war with Iran. Saddam killed more than 400,000 Iranians. My uncle was one of them. Can you put yourself in the place of an Iranian citizen who witnessed the war? What would be your feeling then?
PG: For the United States, the support of Saddam Hussein against Iran was a quid pro quo that goes back to the holding of the U.S. Embassy hostages in Tehran after the Islamic revolution. It was revenge pure and simple in hopes that Iraq would prove victorious and bring down the Iranian government. As an Iranian, you have a right to be outraged by what happened but the Embassy seizure was also outrageous. The U.S. response was, as it often is, disproportional and I am ashamed of my government’s support of wars to fix political disputes.
KZ: and for the final question, how do you estimate the prospect of Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
PG: There is no hope for resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict as long as the United States continues to permit the Israelis to expand and commit crimes against humanity directed towards the Palestinian people. Evil is evil no matter how you try to dress it up and the Israeli policies are manifestly evil. The Palestinians cannot ever accept a peace settlement that requires being held in a large outdoor prison camp by the Israelis supported by the United States.
Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist and media correspondent. His articles and interviews have appeared on a number of media outlets and news websites including Tehran Times, Press TV, Global Research and Foreign Policy Journal.
Related stories:
October 14, 2010: How CNN was Taken Over by the Neocons and Zionists
Evidence Refutes the Official 9/11 Investigation: The Scientific Forensic Facts
October 13, 2010: By Richard Gage and Gregg Roberts
Evidence Refutes the Official 9/11 Investigation: The Scientific Forensic Facts
AE911Truth Delivers the Evidence to the Media: Press Conference – National Press Club – Washington DC
Good afternoon, my name is Richard Gage, AIA. I’m a member of the American Institute of Architects; I’ve been a licensed architect for 22 years; And I’m the founder of the non-profit organization, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth).
As a group, we now have more than 1,270 architect and engineer petition signers. Collectively, we have more than 25,000 years of building and technical experience. This press conference is being given by our petition signers and supporters today in 65 [it turned out to be 67] locations around the world, including 30 states and 4 countries.
Today, we’re here to inform you that we have uncovered evidence that the official investigations into what happened to the World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11 were deeply flawed, or worse. The scientific forensic facts we have discovered have very troubling implications.
For example, a technologically advanced, highly energetic material has been discovered in World Trade Center dust from the 9/11 catastrophe.
This follows the discovery, by the United States Geological Survey and others, of high concentrations of unusual previously molten iron-rich microspheres in the WTC dust. These microspheres can only have been formed during the destruction of the World Trade Center at temperatures far higher than can be explained by the jet fuel and office fires. Those fires, we are told by engineers employed by NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, were allegedly the cause of the World Trade Center’s destruction. The discovery of this advanced energetic material, in the form of red/gray chips distributed throughout the dust, both explains the iron-rich microspheres and confirms the inadequacy of the official account of what happened that tragic day.
Even before the microspheres and red/gray chips had been identified and brought to our attention, we were deeply concerned about other aspects of the destruction of these iconic buildings, and how they were investigated. More than two dozen firefighters, engineers, and other witnesses reported seeing substantial quantities of molten iron or steel, flowing like lava in the debris under all three World Trade Center high-rises. Office fires and jet fuel cannot possibly reach the temperatures necessary to liquefy iron or steel. A mixture called thermite, consisting of pulverized iron oxide and aluminum, CAN generate temperatures above 4000°F — far more than is needed to melt iron or steel, which melts at about 2750°F.
The energetic material that was found in the WTC dust by an international team of scientists (led by Niels Harrit of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark) was reported in the peer-reviewed Bentham Open Journal of Chemical Physics. It consists of nano-engineered iron oxide and aluminum particles 1000th the size of a human hair, embedded in another substance consisting of carbon, oxygen, and silicon. The sizes of the iron oxide particles are extremely uniform, and neither they nor the ultra-fine-grain aluminum platelets could possibly have been created by a natural process such as a gravitational collapse or the impact of jetliners. The red/gray chips in which these particles were found exhibit the same characteristics as advanced energetic materials developed in US national laboratories in the years leading up to 9/11. They have no reason to be in this dust. Given all the horrific costs in human lives, lost civil liberties, and trillions of tax dollars spent in response to the official account of 9/11, there can be no more urgent need than for our country and the world to find out who put those materials in the World Trade Center – and why.
This need makes it all the more disturbing that top engineers in charge of the government’s investigation would avoid dealing straightforwardly with ALL the evidence that AE911Truth and others have repeatedly brought to their attention, much of which has been available in the public record since the beginning. John Gross, NIST co-project leader, has denied the existence of – or even any reports of – molten iron or steel at the World Trade Center.
They stopped their analysis of the towers’ complete and highly energetic destruction at the very point when the destruction began. And they have dismissed or avoided serious analysis of the additional evidence with which we are concerned, such as:
- 1. Both Twin Towers were completely dismembered and destroyed in just 10 to 14 seconds – which occurs at near free-fall acceleration. For this to happen, all 47 of their massive core columns as well as a large fraction of their external columns would have to be compromised with explosives beforehand.
2. More than 100 first responders reported hearing explosions and seeing flashes of light at the onset of destruction. Light flashes indicate explosive detonations. These witnesses are documented in NYC’s “Oral Histories” by City Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen
3. Multi-ton steel perimeter wall sections were ejected laterally at 60 mph to a distance of 600 ft. That speed and distance indicates that a high-pressure explosion initiated the ejection.
4. 90,000 tons of concrete and metal decking was pulverized in mid-air, again indicating explosions.
5. World Trade Center 7, a 47-story building which was not hit by an aircraft, fell at free-fall acceleration for more than 100 feet – a significant fact that NIST’s Shyam Sunder was forced to admit after being presented with our research. Yet NIST has failed to review or acknowledge the obvious implications of this fact, which is that the columns must have been explosively severed within fractions of a second of each other.
6. The complete destruction and dismemberment of Building 7, collapsing in just 6 ½ seconds—which is near freefall acceleration—through the path of what was greatest resistance, symmetrically vertical, including 2 ½ seconds of pure free-fall (zero resistance), is an occurrence only possible with expertly-placed explosives.
There are other falsehoods and omissions in NIST’s official report:
- 1. NIST overstated the severity and duration of the fires in all three skyscrapers, apparently in order to more credibly attribute the destruction to the fires, yet without exaggerating them enough to account for molten iron or steel.
2. NIST and FEMA did not follow the National Fire Protection Association’s standard procedures for fire and explosion investigations and test building debris for explosive residues.
3. NIST did not test for explosives when explosive demolition was the most likely hypothesis.
4. NIST’s animated computer model of Building 7’s destruction, showing the outer walls crumpling inward like a piece of foil, bears no resemblance to the actual collapse as seen in the videos.
5. NIST claims that the falling section of each of the Twin Towers, above the jetliner impact zones, crushed the much larger and more massive intact lower section. But [in the case of the North tower,] video analysis reveals clearly that the upper [section] disintegrated in waves of explosions prior to any crushing of the lower [section]. This indicates that the top sections could not have been the cause of the destruction of the lower [section].
6. NIST’s technical analysis into the twin towers’ collapses stops at the “initiation of collapse.” There is no technical analysis of the structural behavior of the building during the collapse itself. In response to our Request for Correction on this matter, NIST acknowledged that they were “unable to provide a full explanation of the total collapse.”
In short, NIST’s official technical explanation is fraudulent and inconsistent with the basic laws of physics. By contrast, the hypothesis of controlled demolition is consistent with all of the available technical evidence.
This week, here in Washington, DC, we personally delivered our DVD “9/11: Blueprint for Truth – The SF Press Conference Edition,” which included highlights of the forensic evidence, into the hands of staffers for the science advisors of every elected representative on Capitol Hill. In addition, we have sat down with over a dozen of them and presented in detail the overwhelming evidence of explosive controlled demolition. We have personally invited over 400 of them to today’s event. How many Congressional science advisors are here today? [None].
I urge you to go to our website AE911Truth.org for more information, including comments by our members on the problems with the official investigation. At this point, we are calling for Attorney General Eric Holder to ask a federal grand jury to investigate those responsible for the NIST report, including Lead Investigator Shyam Sunder and Co-Project Leader John Gross.
We’d like any and all reporters who will be covering this story to know that Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth are here to give you any technical support you need.
Finally, I’d like to thank the thousands of scientists, senior level members of the military, intelligence and other government officials, pilots and aviation professionals, firefighters, scholars and university professionals, 9/11 survivors and their family members and concerned citizens here and around the world for their continuing support.
We also want to thank our growing family of more than three hundred sustaining financial supporters. We could not do this without you.
Now, I will answer any quick questions you may have. Keep in mind that most of your questions will probably be answered during the Mock Debate – which will be starting in just a minute. Also, more detailed information is available in our DVD, 9/11: Blueprint for Truth – The Architecture of Destruction, which is available on our website AE911Truth.org.
© Copyright Richard Gage, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, 2010
The Top Censored Stories From 2009-2010
By Project Censored
The Top Censored Stories From 2009-2010
1. Global Plans to Replace the Dollar
2. US Department of Defense is the Worst Polluter on the Planet
3. Internet Privacy and Personal Access at Risk
4. ICE Operates Secret Detention and Courts
5. Blackwater (Xe): The Secret US War in Pakistan
6. Health Care Restrictions Cost Thousands of Lives in US
7. External Capitalist Forces Wreak Havoc in Africa
8. Massacre in Peruvian Amazon over US Free Trade Agreement
9. Human Rights Abuses Continue in Palestine
10. US Funds and Supports the Taliban
11. The H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic: Manipulating Data to Enrich Drug Companies
12. Cuba Provided the Greatest Medical Aid to Haiti after the Earthquake
13. Obama Cuts Domestic Spending and Increases Military Corporate Welfare
14. Increased Tensions with Unresolved 9/11 Issues
15. Bhopal Water Still Toxic Twenty-five Years After Deadly Gas Leak
16. US Presidents Charged with Crimes Against Humanity as Universal Jurisdiction Dies in Spain
17. Nanotech Particles Pose Serious DNA Risks to Humans and the Environment
19. Obama Administration Assures World Bank and International Monetary Fund a Free Reign of Abuse
20. Obama’s Charter School Policies Spread Segregation and Undermine Unions
21. Western Lifestyle Continues Environmental Footprint
22. 1.2 Billion People in India to be Given Biometric ID Cards
23. Afghan War: Largest Military Coalition in History
24. War Crimes of General Stanley McChrystal
25. Prisoners Still Brutalized at Gitmo
Censored 2011- New Book Release on 9/15
Project Censored’s “Censored 2011: The Top Censored Stories of 2009-2010″ is now available for pre-order here! This year’s volume is truly Media Democracy in Action. Not only does it cover the most under-reported stories the corporate media ignore, but this year’s Censored Deja Vu, Junk Food News and News Abuse, Signs of Health, and FAIR’s 10th anniversary of Fear and Favor in the News Room. A full Truth Emergency section debuts this year for “Censored 2011″ to address State Crimes Against Democracy as well as analysis of the corporate media spin that led to the Iraq War and continues to hide US allied atrocities in the Middle East. Project Censored now has over 30 college and university affiliates contributing on our expanding websites and we introduce this year the Project Censored International section of the book, reviewing global trends in media control and censorship. Former director Peter Phillips and new director Mickey Huff describe the new directions of the Project and research methodology plus an update from Dave Mathison on Being the Media, London’s Index on Censorship and much, much more! From now to September 15th, anyone donating $30 or more to the Project will receive a signed copy of “Censored 2011″ by the editors. Regular orders can be sent through the store on the Project Censored website for $19.95 plus $3 shipping and handling. Mail orders can be sent to Media Freedom Foundation, P.O. Box 571, Cotati, CA 94931. Thank you for your support of Project Censored and for helping fight media censorship.
available for pre-order here!
Please make your tax deductible donation using paypal below using a credit card or bank account:
or Checks to: Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored, P.O. Box 571, Cotati, CA 94931
© Copyright Project Censored, Project Censored, 2010
Wrecking the American Dream
October 6, 2010: By Steve Lendman
Long planned, the current economic storm erupted violently in late 2007. It wasn’t by accident. It was engineered years back, so financial racketeers could profit from wrecking global economies and destroying their middle class, including America’s.
On February 1, 2009, former high-level Wall Street and government insider, Catherine Austin Fitts, explained it an article headlined, “Financial Coup d’Etat,” saying:
A global financial cabal “engineered a fraudulent housing and debt bubble; illegally shifted vast amounts of capital out of the US; and used ‘privatization’ as a form of piracy – a pretext to move government assets to private investors at below-market prices and then shift private liabilities back to government at no cost to the private liability holder….Clearly, there was a global financial coup d’etat underway,” its magnitude overwhelming and incomprehensible to most people, as planned.
Many trillions of dollars have been stolen, shifted from public to elitist private hands – by far, the greatest ever wealth transfer in history, a global heist, sucking capital out of one country after another, including America. It’s an ongoing “de-moderniz(ation)” process, transforming Western countries into third world ones – in real time, in plain sight, yet few people understand.
In stark terms, Fitts says it’s more than just “a process designed to wipe out the middle class. This is genocide (by other means) – a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by the scoundrels of our history texts.”
It’s a government-business cabal for enormous profits through “legislation, contracts, regulation (or lack of it), financing, subsidies,” and massive handouts to Wall Street favorites. Carefully rigged for powerful elitists, the public is so cleverly harmed that few understand what’s happening – literally that their livelihoods, welfare and lives are being destroyed in real time. The America older generations knew no longer exists, the dream of millions wiped out, and it’s also happening throughout Europe.
In his September 30 article titled, “The Neoliberal Experiment and Europe’s anti-Austerity Strikes,” Michael Hudson explained sinister plans “to drastically change the laws and structure of how European society will function for the next generation. If (successful, they’ll) break up Europe, destroy the internal market, and render that continent a backwater. This is how serious the financial coup d’etat has become. And it is going to get much worse – quickly….The bankers are demanding that (governments) rebuild their loan reserves at labor’s expense.” It’s also Obama’s scheme, shifting greater wealth to the rich, impoverishing the rest.
Throughout the West, neoliberals are in control. “From Brussels to Latvia, (they) aim to shrink their economies to roll back wage levels by 30 percent or more – depression-style levels – (for) ‘more surplus’….to pay in debt service,” tribute to global bankers, turning Europe “into a banana republic.” It’s also planned for America.
“This requires dictatorship.” Labor is targeted for destruction. “Europe (like America) is entering an era of totalitarian neoliberal rule.” So-called “free markets” aren’t possible without it. But wait – “This is economic suicide, taxing labor, not the rich, and at the same time “slash(ing) wages and pensions, cut(ting) back public spending and employment, and shrink(ing) the economy,” turning Western societies into dystopian backwaters, a dark future unfolding in real time.
In his October 2 International Forecaster report, former insider and long-time financial expert Bob Chapman adds more about America, saying:
“There is no question that those who control our government from behind the scenes are bound and determined to take over the $6 trillion in private pension plans. Whether they’ll be successful remains to be seen. The Department of Labor wants to force all IRAs and 401ks into the arms of a corporate fascist government, that knows (best what’s) good for you.” They want public investments exchanged for “a guaranteed, government annuity that is not worth the paper it is written on.”
“Small amounts would go into” government retirement R-bonds, the larger portion earmarked for Wall Street – the usual suspects profiting, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and other giants for even greater market control than already, and far more capital to manipulate for profit. Chapman calls it “monopoly control and subjugation of worldwide investments, a total hold on the control of all investments” to scam the public more than ever and head them deeper into poverty, exactly what Washington and Western governments propose.
On the pretext of reform, destroying Medicare and Social Security are also planned by privatizing them, earmarking them for Wall Street, the same way 401ks killed corporate pensions.
The House Republicans’ “Pledge to America” aims to wreck them by promising to save them, including by “reviewing Social Security and other entitlement programs” – meaning, let Wall Street bandits, not Washington run them.
A longtime GOP priority, congressional Republicans, Reps. Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, and Eric Cantor explained it in their book, titled “Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders,” proposing privatizing Social Security and replacing Medicare with a voucher system that amounts to the same thing. If enacted, of course, it will leave workers and seniors high and dry by providing Wall Street racketeers with a new opportunity for pillage.
Democrats have the same plan, to be unveiled in the lame duck session on the pretext of deficit reduction and fiscal austerity, ideas Obama endorses. On February 18, he signed an Executive Order, establishing a “bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform” (a deficit reduction commission) to slash social spending, focusing heavily on Medicare and Social Security.
Stacked with neoliberal ideologues, Congress will get its recommendations during the lame duck session, and according to observers, then enact legislation before the 112th body’s first session in January. On the pretext of saving the economy, bipartisan chicanery plans to wreck it, leaving millions high and dry on their own.
Fiscal responsibility means class warfare, the agenda Professor Carroll Quigley explained in his 1966 book, titled “Tragedy and Hope,” saying:
“(T)he powers of financial capitalism (have a) far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands to dominate the political system of each country and the (entire world economy). This system (would) be controlled in a feudalist fashion by (global, privately run central banks), acting in concert” secretly.
With bipartisan support, their plan is virtually complete. It will be advanced in the lame duck session, then further by the 112th Congress until all social programs end and finance capital has full control.
America’s Economic Landscape
On September 19, the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), “determined that a trough in business activity occurred in the US economy in June 2009. The trough marks the end of the recession that began in December 2007.”
Stacked with corporate economists (practicing what Michael Hudson calls “junk economics”), the types featured on business channels and in mainstream publications, the NBER is a Wall Street tool.
Non-member David Rosenberg has another view, saying “it is very difficult (getting) excited about (today’s) economic landscape.”
Unemployment is dangerously high. It’ll worsen, not improve, and there’s “absolutely no recovery in bank lending – especially to households.” In fact, consumer loans and real estate credit keep dropping, hardly a sign of recovery, besides disturbing consumer sentiment levels, a deep housing depression, and any number of other indicators showing a hugely troubled economy. It’s why independent observers like Hudson and Chapman expect worse to come, a tsunami of economic pain, hitting ordinary people hardest.
In 2008/09, the Fed’s near zero interest rate policy and quantitative easy money (QE1) failed. Sustainable economic growth, job creation, revived consumer spending, and normalized housing haven’t happened. No matter. Though already underway, on September 21, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announced QE2, saying:
“Measures of underlying inflation are currently at levels somewhat below those the Committee judges most consistent, over the long run, (and are) likely to remain subdued for some time….”
“The Committee will continue to monitor the economic outlook and financial developments and is prepared (read has already begun providing) additional accommodation (as) needed to support the economic recovery….”
In other words, money creation and asset buying will continue even though nearly two years of doing it failed. Key indicators show deep economic weakness. Gold is at record highs, and bond markets are signaling a depressed economic climate.
According to investment analyst Claus Vogt, the economic picture is “bleak….With the housing market in shambles, bank lending contracting, and consumers tapped out, there is no base for a sustainable recovery.”
“Will QE2 help? QE1’s failure showed even “the mighty Fed was not strong enough to” reverse the trend. “I can’t see a single reason” to think this time is different. “If anything, I expect the Fed’s efforts to prove even more ineffective this time around” because QE2 is its only remaining tool. QE1’s failure proved it ineffective.
Moreover, Bernanke knows it, having argued (with former Fed vice chairman Alan Blinder) against this type multiplier in 1988. In addition, bank reserves aren’t being loaned. They’re being stockpiling or held at the Fed for above-market rates. As a result, QE2 ad infinitum won’t work without lending, what’s not happening, nor will it under Bernanke’s scheme to prevent it. Further, under the fractional reserve system, banks don’t need credit to make loans. They do it by creating money out of thin air every time they issue one.
Thus, expect stagnation and more slowdown ahead, exacerbating existing problems, especially with bipartisan support for fiscal austerity at a time massive stimulus is needed. In addition, the Fed needs to put its money where our mouths are instead of handing it over to Wall Street.
Instead counterproductive policies are planned, Rosenberg saying, “It does not leave us with a very warm and fuzzy feeling.” In other commentaries, he’s expressed alarm, believing economic conditions describe depression, a conclusion he’s repeated several times.
A Final Comment
On September 28, the US Census Bureau provided more evidence of economic trouble, reporting America’s highest ever income gap. In 2009, median household income fell nearly 3% from $51,726 to $50,221, the second consecutive annual drop.
Moreover, among all developed nations, America has the highest income disparity, and it’s showing up in record numbers needing Medicaid, food stamps, and emergency food help. In addition, higher levels of poverty, homelessness and other worrying signs show economic weakness, not strength.
Yet, with growing human depravation, bipartisan indifference cares only about serving wealth and privilege. Expect that attitude to harden post-election, leaving growing millions on their own, out of luck, and if new legislation passes as expected, eventually without Social Security and Medicare, once Wall Street bandits gets their hands on them.
On September 18, Obama explained it when he told the Congressional Black Caucus, “You didn’t elect me to do what was popular. You elected me to do what was right,” his hidden message meaning populism will be sacrificed for privilege. As a result, expect lots tougher times ahead because political leaders plan it – wrecking the American dream for business at the public’s expense unless enough outrage erupts to stop it.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
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October 8, 2010: America’s Third World Economy by Paul Craig Roberts
March to Nowhere
October 5, 2010: By Chris Hedges
We can hold One Nation marches every week. It will not make any difference until we revolt against the formal structures of power.
The liberal preoccupation with positive forms of propaganda ignores the root of our problem. The tea party and hate mongers on Fox such as Glenn Beck, however repugnant, are the manifestation of the crisis, not its cause. The forces assaulting the remnants of American democracy will not be cowed or discredited with rallies, such as the one in Washington on Saturday. We will blunt these rising anti-democratic forces only when we organize outside conventional systems of power. It means dismantling the permanent war economy and the corporate state. It means an end to foreclosures and bank repossessions. It means a functional health care system for all Americans. It means taking care of our poor and unemployed. And it means a system of government that is freed from corporate interests.
Mass support for anti-democratic movements and public acceptance of open violations of human rights are not caused, in the end, by the skillful dissemination of misinformation or brainwashing. They are caused by the breakdown of a society and the death of a liberal class that once made reform and representative government possible. The timidity of our liberal class was on public display during the march in Washington. Speakers may have called for jobs, but none would call on citizens to abandon the rotting hull of the Democratic Party and our moribund political system or put Wall Street speculators in prison. The speakers at the rally proposed working within the current electoral system, although most Americans are aware that it has been gamed by corporate interests. This is hardly a call, especially given the failures of the Obama administration, that will fire up the unemployed and underemployed.
“We need jobs,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said at the march. “We’ve bailed out the banks. We bailed out the insurance companies. Now it’s time to bail out the American people.”
But Sharpton and the other speakers, too close to the power elite in the Democratic Party, did not call for rebellion. There was no war cry against Wall Street and the purveyors of death in the defense and health industry. There was no acknowledgement that unfettered capitalism and globalization are killing our ecosystem and creating a worldwide system of neo-feudalism. There was no acceptance that the corporate state must be dismantled if we are to save ourselves. Any effective resistance must begin with a condemnation of our political elite and liberal institutions, including the press, the universities, labor, the arts, religious institutions and the Democratic Party, for selling us out. But the speakers on the mall in Washington would not go there. And I suspect, for this reason, the Americans who are hurting most found nothing they said of interest.
All totalitarian movements, even those that are openly criminal, succeed because they have widespread mass support. They are the expression of a yearning that sweeps through a nation that has been convulsed by economic dislocation, a loss of hope and flagrant political corruption. And in these times of lament and deprivation the absurdities, crimes and excesses of reactionary forces do not matter. It wasn’t hard to find out what Slobodan Milosevic was doing in Bosnia. It wasn’t hard in Nazi Germany to hear about the widespread massacres of Jews in Poland. It is not a secret to most Americans that Muslim detainees, held for years without charges, are tortured in black sites around the world. The murder of tens of thousands of civilians by our forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan is tacitly acknowledged by the public as the price of war. The massive human suffering in the open-air prison that is Gaza is not a mystery. We know what happens to the millions of undocumented workers who live as stateless citizens among us and have become a kind of modern day slave labor force.
The rising proto-fascist movement in America is caused by a hatred and alienation so profound that the crimes of the state, along with the buffoonish antics of those who defend and champion these crimes, do not matter. We will not discredit the right-wing with facts, a demand for a respect of law or rational discussion. Propaganda or counter messages of tolerance are not the issue. The issue is societal collapse. This issue is a corporate state that has carried out a coup d’etat. The issue is the rupture of all mechanisms within the political process to protect citizens from accelerating impoverishment, internal control and corporate abuse. Those who refuse to acknowledge this bleak reality cannot offer solutions.
The right-wing propagandists have not created the problem. They have tapped into the moral void that has left tens of millions of Americans yearning for a profound and radical change. And if torture, war, racist attacks on immigrants, gays and Muslims, along with increased repression against internal dissidents, is the price for moral and economic renewal, many Americans are ready to sign on. If those who lead this rising proto-fascist movement insist on a Christian nation, teach creationism and believe in the physical existence of Satan, many Americans will sign on for this too. Hatred, when mobilized, is a very effective political force. And hatred, including the hatred for a liberal class that abandoned the working class, is what we face.
The decimation of our working class through outsourcing and globalization dynamited two of the most important props of the democratic system—class consciousness and class conflict. This has left traditional political parties, which once represented differing class interests, with nothing to offer the public beyond fringe issues such as abortion or gay marriage. Those in the liberal class who cling to the corpse of the Democratic Party do so not because they believe in the policies of the party—it does not differ in any significant way from the Republican Party—but because they hope against hope that the party will somehow restore itself to its former position as a defender of liberal values and the working class interests. It is the politics of nostalgia.
Our political theater has orphaned citizens who once looked to political parties to express and defend their interests. It has engendered apathy toward traditional social and political structures and an inchoate rage. This mixture of apathy and rage is a volatile cocktail. It finds its expression outside normal systems of dissent and in leaders who, in times of prosperity and stability, would be dismissed as lunatics.
No rally, no positive message, no effort to expose the idiocies of those arrayed against us will work until we restore to the political process mechanisms by which ordinary citizens can be heard. Hannah Arendt in “The Origins of Totalitarianism” cites the collapse of traditional political mechanisms, which now plagues us, as the opening needed for all totalitarian movements:
“The fall of protecting class walls transformed the slumbering majorities behind all parties into one great unorganized, structureless mass of furious individuals who had nothing in common except their vague apprehension that the hopes of party members were doomed, that, consequently, the most respected, articulate and representative members of the community were fools and that all the powers that be were not so much evil as they were equally stupid and fraudulent.”
The One Nation March in Washington, which lacked moral and political courage, did nothing to educate or rally our most important constituency—those out of work, those being foreclosed, those without hope. It refused to confront the real, corporate structures of power. It refused to disown Barack Obama and the Democrats. And in the end it only confirmed what those who hate us think of liberals.
Jericho Rendezvous 