The just-passed 2010 will be remembered as a banner year for conservatives. Here are the Top 10 successes for the conservative movement last year.
(1) GOP captures House
(2) Rise of the Tea Party
(3) States turn Right
(4) Judge rules against Obamacare
(5) Omnibus spending bill defeated
(6) Gains in the Senate
(7) DREAM Act defeated
(8) GOP diversity
(9) Cap and trade dead
(10) Obama tanks
Friday, December 31, 2010
The enemy within
The most devastating in this chronicle of enemies is the most difficult to see. As with other “in between” operations, this too succeeds by displacing facts with false beliefs. Only in this case, those beliefs were imbedded in education and over decades worked their way into law.
Known as the “Washington Consensus,” this widely shared perspective shapes economic policy worldwide. At the heart of this generally accepted truth is found the belief that money should be accountable only to itself.
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are the primary apostles of this consensus faith. The World Trade Organization (WTO) now seeks to take this belief to global scale by enforcing unrestricted free trade not only in goods and services but also financial capital.
The WTO operates like a global Sanhedrin akin to a Jewish high council accountable only to itself. What’s now emerging as a global enemy within is a finance-guided form of transnational governance marketed as free trade but accountable only to itself.
This modern-day Mindset Warfare is being waged by an enemy that is truly within. Fast globalizing financial forces now induce us to freely embrace the very forces that undermine our freedom.
By waging war on us from the inside out, the originators of this money-myopic mindset dismantled the U.S. economy, enabled vast financial pillaging and induced us to fiscal ruin.
Known as the “Washington Consensus,” this widely shared perspective shapes economic policy worldwide. At the heart of this generally accepted truth is found the belief that money should be accountable only to itself.
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are the primary apostles of this consensus faith. The World Trade Organization (WTO) now seeks to take this belief to global scale by enforcing unrestricted free trade not only in goods and services but also financial capital.
The WTO operates like a global Sanhedrin akin to a Jewish high council accountable only to itself. What’s now emerging as a global enemy within is a finance-guided form of transnational governance marketed as free trade but accountable only to itself.
This modern-day Mindset Warfare is being waged by an enemy that is truly within. Fast globalizing financial forces now induce us to freely embrace the very forces that undermine our freedom.
By waging war on us from the inside out, the originators of this money-myopic mindset dismantled the U.S. economy, enabled vast financial pillaging and induced us to fiscal ruin.
America Has Gone Away
Anyone who doesn’t believe that the US is an incipient fascist state needs only to consult the latest assault on civil liberty by Fox News (sic). Instead of informing citizens, Fox News (sic) informs on citizens. Jason Ditz reports (antiwar.com Dec. 28) that Fox News (sic) “no longer content to simply shill for a growing police state,” turned in a grandmother to the Department of Homeland Security for making “anti-American comments.”
The media have segued into the police attitude, which regards insistence on civil liberties and references to the Constitution as signs of extremism, especially when the Constitution is invoked in defense of dissent or privacy or placarded on a bumper sticker. President George W. Bush set the scene when he declared: “you are with us or against us.”
Today no one believes that our country’s success depends on an informed public and a free press. America’s success depends on its financial and military hegemony over the world. Any information inconsistent with the indispensable people’s god-given right to dominate the world must be suppressed and the messenger discredited and destroyed.
Now that the press has voluntarily shed its First Amendment rights, the government is working to redefine free speech as a privilege limited to the media, not a right of citizens. Thus, the insistence that WikiLeaks is not a media organization and Fox News (sic) turning in a citizen for exercising free speech. Washington’s assault on Assange and WikiLeaks is an assault on what remains of the US Constitution. When we cheer for WikiLeaks’ demise, we are cheering for our own.
The media have segued into the police attitude, which regards insistence on civil liberties and references to the Constitution as signs of extremism, especially when the Constitution is invoked in defense of dissent or privacy or placarded on a bumper sticker. President George W. Bush set the scene when he declared: “you are with us or against us.”
Today no one believes that our country’s success depends on an informed public and a free press. America’s success depends on its financial and military hegemony over the world. Any information inconsistent with the indispensable people’s god-given right to dominate the world must be suppressed and the messenger discredited and destroyed.
Now that the press has voluntarily shed its First Amendment rights, the government is working to redefine free speech as a privilege limited to the media, not a right of citizens. Thus, the insistence that WikiLeaks is not a media organization and Fox News (sic) turning in a citizen for exercising free speech. Washington’s assault on Assange and WikiLeaks is an assault on what remains of the US Constitution. When we cheer for WikiLeaks’ demise, we are cheering for our own.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
17 National Debt Statistics Which Prove That We Have Sold Our Children And Grandchildren Into Perpetual Debt Slavery
What we have done to future generations over the past 30 years is absolutely criminal. 30 years ago the U.S. national debt was a bit under one trillion dollars, and at that time it was considered a huge national crisis. Today, the national debt is 14 times larger and the years ahead look absolutely apocalyptic at this point. We have literally sold our children and our grandchildren into perpetual debt slavery. We have accumulated the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and our children and our grandchildren will be burdened with it for the rest of their lives. All of our politicians keep talking about how it is vitally important that we do something about all of this debt "soon", but they just can't seem to stop wildly spending our money. They keep telling us that now is not the time for deficit reduction because it would harm "the economic recovery", but the "right time" for deficit reduction never seems to come along. The national debt statistics in this article are meant to shock you. Hopefully they will shock you enough to actually take action. Up to this point, the vast majority of Americans have been extremely apathetic about the horrific crime that we are committing against future generations.
The truth is that both political parties are responsible. Both of them have voted over and over and over to keep running up these huge budget deficits.
If you have voted for big spending Democrats at any point over the past 30 years then you have contributed to the problem. If you have voted for big spending Republicans at any point over the past 30 years then you have contributed to the problem.
Now we have reached a point where a horrific financial meltdown is basically inevitable. We are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, and it is only a matter of time until it bursts.
The following are 17 national debt statistics which prove that we have sold our children and our grandchildren into perpetual debt slavery....
The truth is that both political parties are responsible. Both of them have voted over and over and over to keep running up these huge budget deficits.
If you have voted for big spending Democrats at any point over the past 30 years then you have contributed to the problem. If you have voted for big spending Republicans at any point over the past 30 years then you have contributed to the problem.
Now we have reached a point where a horrific financial meltdown is basically inevitable. We are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, and it is only a matter of time until it bursts.
The following are 17 national debt statistics which prove that we have sold our children and our grandchildren into perpetual debt slavery....
‘Death to America’: A new poem by Osama bin Laden?
A puzzling new poem, reportedly written by Osama bin Laden in the wake of 9-11, is here presented to the world for the first time in an edited translation. The reader is asked to decide whether the poem, prophesying Armageddon and the coming destruction of America, is an authentic bin Laden poem or an imitation.
Whatever the authenticity of the poem, what comes through is an almost visceral hatred of the West for its hypocrisy in wittering on about human rights while carrying on a war against Islam; for its addiction to personal vices—greed, pride, and lust; for its history of Third World exploitation; for its sponsorship of Israel, “a country whose main product is hate.” The poem is a call for jihad against the West and America in particular and it predicts victory for Islam-by “a race superior in virtue: one that practises what you only preach.”
Questions of equal importance are these, though this is obviously not the time or place to address them: Is bin Laden a paper tiger? Is Al Qaeda a myth? Are Islamic “terrorists” a figment of the neoconservative imagination? Was 9-11 orchestrated as an excuse to wage war on the Muslim world and plunder its resources? It is now a well-entrenched “conspiracy theory” that 9-11 was a false flag attack that gave the neoconservatives what they had long been looking for: a pretext to attack Iraq and Afghanistan and launch a crusade against the Islamic world. In the words of Professor David Ray Griffin, 9-11 was “the New Pearl Harbor.”
We need to ask ourselves how many Muslims, in revenge for 9-11, have now been killed and maimed by America—”supervirus of the world” and “universally despised”—in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the West Bank and Gaza. How many more innocents are expected to die “like fish in a barrel” in Iran, Syria and Lebanon in future wars orchestrated by neoconservatives in Washington (many of them with Israeli passports) for the sole benefit of Israel?
One would think that Al Qaeda, having pulled off 9-11 with such ease, would get its act together and assassinate every single neoconservative in America. To quote Paul Craig Roberts writing in VDARE, a highly respected political columnist and former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury:
Whatever the authenticity of the poem, what comes through is an almost visceral hatred of the West for its hypocrisy in wittering on about human rights while carrying on a war against Islam; for its addiction to personal vices—greed, pride, and lust; for its history of Third World exploitation; for its sponsorship of Israel, “a country whose main product is hate.” The poem is a call for jihad against the West and America in particular and it predicts victory for Islam-by “a race superior in virtue: one that practises what you only preach.”
Questions of equal importance are these, though this is obviously not the time or place to address them: Is bin Laden a paper tiger? Is Al Qaeda a myth? Are Islamic “terrorists” a figment of the neoconservative imagination? Was 9-11 orchestrated as an excuse to wage war on the Muslim world and plunder its resources? It is now a well-entrenched “conspiracy theory” that 9-11 was a false flag attack that gave the neoconservatives what they had long been looking for: a pretext to attack Iraq and Afghanistan and launch a crusade against the Islamic world. In the words of Professor David Ray Griffin, 9-11 was “the New Pearl Harbor.”
We need to ask ourselves how many Muslims, in revenge for 9-11, have now been killed and maimed by America—”supervirus of the world” and “universally despised”—in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the West Bank and Gaza. How many more innocents are expected to die “like fish in a barrel” in Iran, Syria and Lebanon in future wars orchestrated by neoconservatives in Washington (many of them with Israeli passports) for the sole benefit of Israel?
One would think that Al Qaeda, having pulled off 9-11 with such ease, would get its act together and assassinate every single neoconservative in America. To quote Paul Craig Roberts writing in VDARE, a highly respected political columnist and former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury:
Media Hit Job of the Year: Punishing White House Correspondent Helen Thomas for Criticizing Israel
“You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive,” she says now. She believes the Israel lobby controls the discourse on Israel. She cited, as an example, CNN firing a veteran editor in Lebanon for praising a popular cleric for his support for woman after he died. (CNN had no problems hiring Wolf Blitzer, a former executive director of AIPAC.)
But, to this day, there has been almost no compassion, empathy or respect shown for one of our great journalists, Helen Thomas, who has been presumed guilty and sentenced to oblivion with barely a word spoken in her defense. She admittedly misspoke and is now officially “Missing” like some disappeared priest in Argentina
A whole world may be critical of Israel. Millions may believe that the occupiers should withdraw or that that Israeli rejectionism of the peace process must end. But when a “mainstream” American reporter of great stature touches these sentiments, she is consigned to Dante’s inferno, and turned into a non-person.
How can we expect Israelis and Palestinians to reconcile if our media won’t set an example by reconciling with Helen Thomas?
But, to this day, there has been almost no compassion, empathy or respect shown for one of our great journalists, Helen Thomas, who has been presumed guilty and sentenced to oblivion with barely a word spoken in her defense. She admittedly misspoke and is now officially “Missing” like some disappeared priest in Argentina
A whole world may be critical of Israel. Millions may believe that the occupiers should withdraw or that that Israeli rejectionism of the peace process must end. But when a “mainstream” American reporter of great stature touches these sentiments, she is consigned to Dante’s inferno, and turned into a non-person.
How can we expect Israelis and Palestinians to reconcile if our media won’t set an example by reconciling with Helen Thomas?
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Closing the books on the worst Congress
Americans can give thanks in this Christmas season for an end to the reckless and destructive 111th Congress. This is the Congress that passed Obamacare, against the wishes of a substantial majority of the public, on Christmas Eve of last year. In the dead of night, Democratic lawmakers stuffed the monstrous 2,700-page bill with special-interest goodies and political payoffs like the "Cornhusker Kickback" and the "Louisiana Purchase." As we have learned since, most members were still ignorant of the bill's contents three months later, when it gained final passage in the House. No surprise that its immediate results -- both intended and unintended -- have been almost uniformly bad.
Similarly, odds are that not one member of the 111th Congress actually read the so-called "cap-and-trade" bill before it passed the House in June 2009. Even a speed-reader could not have digested House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman's last-second, 309-page amendment, which read as clear as mud: "Page 14, strike lines 1 through 3 and insert the following. ..." It was filed after 1:30 a.m. just before the vote on final passage. There is also serious doubt that any member of Congress understood the 2,000-page financial reform bill that Congress passed this summer. One of its two main sponsors, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., remarked, "No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we've done something that has been needed for a long time. ..."
And Democrats wonder why Gallup found this Congress to be the least popular in the history of its polls?
After suffering a comprehensive and humiliating defeat in the midterm election, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the unfrocked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led lame-duck congressional Democrats on a last-minute banzai charge for more federal spending, debt, earmarks, taxes and regulations. They unsuccessfully pushed for the biggest tax increase in American history, a yearlong spending bill loaded with pork, and a DREAM Act to award amnesty to certain children of illegal immigrants. We hope that voters will remember these misguided initiatives in two years.
Similarly, odds are that not one member of the 111th Congress actually read the so-called "cap-and-trade" bill before it passed the House in June 2009. Even a speed-reader could not have digested House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman's last-second, 309-page amendment, which read as clear as mud: "Page 14, strike lines 1 through 3 and insert the following. ..." It was filed after 1:30 a.m. just before the vote on final passage. There is also serious doubt that any member of Congress understood the 2,000-page financial reform bill that Congress passed this summer. One of its two main sponsors, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., remarked, "No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we've done something that has been needed for a long time. ..."
And Democrats wonder why Gallup found this Congress to be the least popular in the history of its polls?
After suffering a comprehensive and humiliating defeat in the midterm election, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the unfrocked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led lame-duck congressional Democrats on a last-minute banzai charge for more federal spending, debt, earmarks, taxes and regulations. They unsuccessfully pushed for the biggest tax increase in American history, a yearlong spending bill loaded with pork, and a DREAM Act to award amnesty to certain children of illegal immigrants. We hope that voters will remember these misguided initiatives in two years.
The Wilders Syndrome
Assuming as obvious that Muslims will not give up their religion and suddenly become good liberal Europeans, success by Wilders and similar political movements would certainly be a huge step in the right direction. Success would mean that eventually Muslims would be strongly encouraged or even forced to leave, and Europe would have a renewed sense of cultural identity.
It would then be a short step to the realization that some cultures are simply unable or unwilling to adopt contemporary liberal European values. Europeans would be much closer to the realization that their individualist, libertarian tradition is fundamentally at odds with pretty much the entire rest of the world.
Moreover, success of these parties would embolden anti-immigration sentiment throughout the West, including countries like the United States whose main immigration problem stems from the failed states of Latin America rather than Islam. There is much to be said for the slippery slope argument that once Muslims are successfully targeted as unassimilable, Europeans and other Westerners will realize that other groups, such as African-derived peoples, Latinos, and Asians, have not been successfully integrated either. One can easily see the anti-immigration movement snowballing as Europe develops a renewed sense of cultural identity and confidence.
Thoughtful people in the West will understand that the pose of enlightened liberalism, tolerance, and pro-multiculturalism is simply a Diaspora strategy designed to diminish the power of the traditional peoples in those societies. It reflects the same brand of ethnic hardball that is being played out in Israel, but in a different context where Jews, as a minority, must make alliances with other groups.
When Westerners come to grips with this reality, it will have a transformative effect on our political culture. The opposition of the organized Jewish community to the rise of an anti-Muslim, philo-Semitic right in Europe will be seen as increasingly threadbare intellectually given the reality of what is going on in Israel. And that too will contribute to the ultimate resurgence of European ethnonationalism.
It would then be a short step to the realization that some cultures are simply unable or unwilling to adopt contemporary liberal European values. Europeans would be much closer to the realization that their individualist, libertarian tradition is fundamentally at odds with pretty much the entire rest of the world.
Moreover, success of these parties would embolden anti-immigration sentiment throughout the West, including countries like the United States whose main immigration problem stems from the failed states of Latin America rather than Islam. There is much to be said for the slippery slope argument that once Muslims are successfully targeted as unassimilable, Europeans and other Westerners will realize that other groups, such as African-derived peoples, Latinos, and Asians, have not been successfully integrated either. One can easily see the anti-immigration movement snowballing as Europe develops a renewed sense of cultural identity and confidence.
Thoughtful people in the West will understand that the pose of enlightened liberalism, tolerance, and pro-multiculturalism is simply a Diaspora strategy designed to diminish the power of the traditional peoples in those societies. It reflects the same brand of ethnic hardball that is being played out in Israel, but in a different context where Jews, as a minority, must make alliances with other groups.
When Westerners come to grips with this reality, it will have a transformative effect on our political culture. The opposition of the organized Jewish community to the rise of an anti-Muslim, philo-Semitic right in Europe will be seen as increasingly threadbare intellectually given the reality of what is going on in Israel. And that too will contribute to the ultimate resurgence of European ethnonationalism.
ALAN HART: IF…OBAMA COULD PUT AMERICA’S OWN REAL INTERESTS FIRST…
The headline is not meant to imply that I think he will. As things are he can’t because of the stranglehold on American policy for Israel/Palestine of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress, the mainstream media and many institutions of state including the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. My purpose is only to offer an answer to this question: What could happen if President Obama was able to put America’s own real interests first?
The answer has to begin with the statement (echoed by Mearsheimer and Walt and a growing number of respected and influential others) that unconditional support for the Zionist state of Israel right or wrong is not in America’s own best interests because it’s a prime cause of Arab and other Muslim hurt and humiliation, which is being transformed into a rising tide of anti-Americanism. To that can be added a related truth. America doesn’t have to have 1.5 billion Muslims (nearly one quarter of humankind) as enemies. Most Muslims do not hate America or Americans. What they do hate is the double-standard of American (and all Western) foreign policy, in particular its refusal to call and hold Israel to account for its crimes.
To put anti-Americanism into its true Arab perspective, I offered this thought in the Introduction to The False Messiah, Volume One of the American edition of my book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews (www.claritypress.com).
If it had been possible for an American President to wave a magic wand and have Israel back behind more or less its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war, with a Palestinian state in existence on the Arab land from which Israel had withdrawn as required by UN Security Council Resolution 242, and with Jerusalem an open, undivided city the capital of two states, the U.S. would have had, overnight, with one wave of that magic wand, the respect, friendship and support of not less than 95 per cent of all Arabs and very probably that of almost all Muslims everywhere. And if the President had also pressed the Arab regimes to be serious about democratizing their countries, the U.S. would have become the champion of the Arab masses, truly admired by them as it was when President Woodrow Wilson was in the White House.
The answer has to begin with the statement (echoed by Mearsheimer and Walt and a growing number of respected and influential others) that unconditional support for the Zionist state of Israel right or wrong is not in America’s own best interests because it’s a prime cause of Arab and other Muslim hurt and humiliation, which is being transformed into a rising tide of anti-Americanism. To that can be added a related truth. America doesn’t have to have 1.5 billion Muslims (nearly one quarter of humankind) as enemies. Most Muslims do not hate America or Americans. What they do hate is the double-standard of American (and all Western) foreign policy, in particular its refusal to call and hold Israel to account for its crimes.
To put anti-Americanism into its true Arab perspective, I offered this thought in the Introduction to The False Messiah, Volume One of the American edition of my book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews (www.claritypress.com).
If it had been possible for an American President to wave a magic wand and have Israel back behind more or less its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war, with a Palestinian state in existence on the Arab land from which Israel had withdrawn as required by UN Security Council Resolution 242, and with Jerusalem an open, undivided city the capital of two states, the U.S. would have had, overnight, with one wave of that magic wand, the respect, friendship and support of not less than 95 per cent of all Arabs and very probably that of almost all Muslims everywhere. And if the President had also pressed the Arab regimes to be serious about democratizing their countries, the U.S. would have become the champion of the Arab masses, truly admired by them as it was when President Woodrow Wilson was in the White House.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
No Recovery Under Rule of Bankers
There will be no economic recovery for the masses of people in the United States. A real recovery, with decent jobs at decent wages under secure terms of employment, is now impossible absent a social upheaval such as the United States has never experienced. The reason is structural, and in some ways, simple. Wall Street has effectively captured the apparatus of government, and is methodically stripping the country of both its assets and the nation’s ability to pull out of the death spiral.
When the history of the era is written, Barack Obama’s term in office will be remembered as the period when Wall Street achieved its definitive conquest of the American state, thus depriving the society of the means to avoid economic and social disaster. Two men helped give us stark evidence of the theft of the American state as it was occurring. Neil Barofsky was the former prosecutor charged with overseeing the $700 billion TARP bank bailout program. But back in the summer of 2008, just six months into Barack Obama’s presidency, Barofsky reported that the federal government had already funneled about $14 trillion to bail out financial institutions. That’s 20 times as big as the TARP bailout, about the size of the annual real economy of the United States. The Obama administration and the Federal Reserve, acting on their own, were giving the banks 20 times as large a bailout as the Congress had voted for. Then, a year later, in July of 2009, Neil Barofsky dropped another bomb: the total federal bailout of the financial class could be $23.7 trillion, about 34 times the TARP bailout and approaching twice the gross domestic product of the United States. But it gets worse.
This fall, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the other key person in providing evidence of Wall Street’s seizure of the American state, forced the Federal Reserve to submit to a one-time, snapshot audit. It showed that the Fed had provided American and foreign banks with $12.3 trillion in taxpayer money. That’s about six trillion dollars more from the Federal Reserve than Barofsky had discovered, a year before, bringing the total to about $30 trillion. That mind-boggling figure is about half the size of the entire economy of the planet Earth!
But the theft is even bigger than that. The Federal Reserve routinely lends banks money at virtually no interest, which the banks then use to buy U.S. Treasury bonds for which the banks are paid interest. This is a daily taxpayer subsidy to Wall Street that also amounts to trillions of dollars. The banksters bet some of this money in their derivatives casinos, which are valued at 600 to 1,000 trillion dollars – many times more than the real economy of the planet – and they spend a portion of their stolen loot to buy politicians to help them steal more money from the government. But they will not invest in productive enterprises that provide decent jobs, and they will not allow the government to invest in jobs, because that would reduce the amount of money the banks can steal. And that is why there will be no economic recovery worthy of the name, under the current structure of power in the United States.
When the history of the era is written, Barack Obama’s term in office will be remembered as the period when Wall Street achieved its definitive conquest of the American state, thus depriving the society of the means to avoid economic and social disaster. Two men helped give us stark evidence of the theft of the American state as it was occurring. Neil Barofsky was the former prosecutor charged with overseeing the $700 billion TARP bank bailout program. But back in the summer of 2008, just six months into Barack Obama’s presidency, Barofsky reported that the federal government had already funneled about $14 trillion to bail out financial institutions. That’s 20 times as big as the TARP bailout, about the size of the annual real economy of the United States. The Obama administration and the Federal Reserve, acting on their own, were giving the banks 20 times as large a bailout as the Congress had voted for. Then, a year later, in July of 2009, Neil Barofsky dropped another bomb: the total federal bailout of the financial class could be $23.7 trillion, about 34 times the TARP bailout and approaching twice the gross domestic product of the United States. But it gets worse.
This fall, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the other key person in providing evidence of Wall Street’s seizure of the American state, forced the Federal Reserve to submit to a one-time, snapshot audit. It showed that the Fed had provided American and foreign banks with $12.3 trillion in taxpayer money. That’s about six trillion dollars more from the Federal Reserve than Barofsky had discovered, a year before, bringing the total to about $30 trillion. That mind-boggling figure is about half the size of the entire economy of the planet Earth!
But the theft is even bigger than that. The Federal Reserve routinely lends banks money at virtually no interest, which the banks then use to buy U.S. Treasury bonds for which the banks are paid interest. This is a daily taxpayer subsidy to Wall Street that also amounts to trillions of dollars. The banksters bet some of this money in their derivatives casinos, which are valued at 600 to 1,000 trillion dollars – many times more than the real economy of the planet – and they spend a portion of their stolen loot to buy politicians to help them steal more money from the government. But they will not invest in productive enterprises that provide decent jobs, and they will not allow the government to invest in jobs, because that would reduce the amount of money the banks can steal. And that is why there will be no economic recovery worthy of the name, under the current structure of power in the United States.
ADL TO ATTACK JOURNALISTS AND PUBLICATIONS TYING ISRAEL TO WIKILEAKS
“There is a list, the Bush administration’s “working group” that green-lighted 9/11. Of the five names on it, three are Jews. “
Last week, responding to a deluge of news reports tying Israel to Wikileaks, Julian Assange announced he finally planned to release 3700 cables from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, documents previously withheld from the public. In a press release, Assange said he planned the “dump” in 6 months but didn’t indicate how many other documents involving Israel were being withheld.
Veterans Today has been informed by sources within the ADL that, in coordination with Julian Assange’s announcement, they were “tasked” by the Tel Aviv government to begin operations against journalists and online publications that had let to Wikileaks being discredited as an Israeli intelligence operation. Sources indicate that Tel Aviv values Wikileaks as a vital asset in molding public opinion and providing cover for high risk operations.
ADL’s website is loading up with warnings and attacks, all defending Wikileaks and Julian Assange and attacking news sources that print materials either critical of Julian Assange or citing Israel’s involvement in Wikileak’s agreement to allow material critical of Israel to be censored.
9/11, IS THAT THAT WHAT IS BEING HIDDEN?
With 9/11 more and more in the public eye, especially with Fox News and Jesse Ventura’s “Conspiracy Theory” building a powerful case for involvement by the Bush administration in the planning and execution of 9/11 as a “false flag” terror attack, it is likely that Israel feels particularly vulnerable. If a solid tie between Israel and 9/11 is made, Israel will have its first real security problem since 1973.
Last week, responding to a deluge of news reports tying Israel to Wikileaks, Julian Assange announced he finally planned to release 3700 cables from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, documents previously withheld from the public. In a press release, Assange said he planned the “dump” in 6 months but didn’t indicate how many other documents involving Israel were being withheld.
Veterans Today has been informed by sources within the ADL that, in coordination with Julian Assange’s announcement, they were “tasked” by the Tel Aviv government to begin operations against journalists and online publications that had let to Wikileaks being discredited as an Israeli intelligence operation. Sources indicate that Tel Aviv values Wikileaks as a vital asset in molding public opinion and providing cover for high risk operations.
ADL’s website is loading up with warnings and attacks, all defending Wikileaks and Julian Assange and attacking news sources that print materials either critical of Julian Assange or citing Israel’s involvement in Wikileak’s agreement to allow material critical of Israel to be censored.
9/11, IS THAT THAT WHAT IS BEING HIDDEN?
With 9/11 more and more in the public eye, especially with Fox News and Jesse Ventura’s “Conspiracy Theory” building a powerful case for involvement by the Bush administration in the planning and execution of 9/11 as a “false flag” terror attack, it is likely that Israel feels particularly vulnerable. If a solid tie between Israel and 9/11 is made, Israel will have its first real security problem since 1973.
PISA And Bad Students—American Schools Add Value, But Demography is Still Destiny
Every three years, the Paris-based Paris-based OECD holds its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests of the reading, math and science skills of 15-year-olds in developing and developed countries. Gurria was talking of the results of the 2009 tests.
Sixty-five nations competed. The Chinese swept the board.
The schools of Shanghai-China finished first in math, reading and science. Hong Kong-China was third in math and science. Singapore, a city-state dominated by overseas Chinese, was second in math, fourth in science.
Only Korea, Japan and Finland were in the hunt.
And the U.S.A.? America ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math, producing the familiar quack-quack.
"This is an absolute wake-up call for America," said Education Secretary Arne Duncan. "We have to face the brutal truth. We have to get much more serious about investment in education."
Sixty-five nations competed. The Chinese swept the board.
The schools of Shanghai-China finished first in math, reading and science. Hong Kong-China was third in math and science. Singapore, a city-state dominated by overseas Chinese, was second in math, fourth in science.
Only Korea, Japan and Finland were in the hunt.
And the U.S.A.? America ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math, producing the familiar quack-quack.
"This is an absolute wake-up call for America," said Education Secretary Arne Duncan. "We have to face the brutal truth. We have to get much more serious about investment in education."
Monday, December 27, 2010
The Case for Ebeneezer
S-C-R-O-O-G-E ! Though I hope that you are sophisticated enough to resist such an apparent ad hominem attack against people of wealth, such has not been the response of most men and women. Like Ayn Rand’s sniveling bureaucrat, Wesley Mouch, the name "Ebeneezer Scrooge" is designed to evoke prejudice and animosity in the mind of the reader, so that people will be predisposed to support any case against the man, no matter how ill-founded.
You are now able to see the fundamental contrast of characters presented to us by Charles Dickens. Scrooge – the only person in the novel exhibiting any creative intelligence, and the only one who produces anything – is the villain because he has not given an unearned portion of his wealth over to Bob Cratchett – a man presented to us as a victim incapable of producing much of anything! In this brief synopsis, you see the thoroughly dispirited nature of socialism, a philosophy for losers, that feeds upon, and requires the continuing nourishment of, the mindset of victimology.
At some point, we need to show some appropriate respect for the forces of natural selection that have long directed the life process. We ought to learn from the rest of nature: either we make ourselves capable of adapting to an ever-changing world – by improving the skills or other learning with which we act upon the world – or we prepare to die. Dickens’ approach, like the underlying methodology of the welfare state, does nothing to provide long-term help for the Cratchetts of the world. Scrooge’s unearned generosity will not only increase his costs of doing business – thus increasing the likelihood of his own business failure – but, upon his bankruptcy or eventual death, will leave Cratchett in the position of having to find a new host upon which to attach himself for the remainder of his parasitic life.
The claim against my client is without substance, and should be dismissed with prejudice. It is the industrial revolution’s version of a scapegoating action, grounded more in bigotry than in fact or reason. In the end, I can offer no better answer to such charges than those provided by my client himself: "bah, humbug!"
The defense rests.
You are now able to see the fundamental contrast of characters presented to us by Charles Dickens. Scrooge – the only person in the novel exhibiting any creative intelligence, and the only one who produces anything – is the villain because he has not given an unearned portion of his wealth over to Bob Cratchett – a man presented to us as a victim incapable of producing much of anything! In this brief synopsis, you see the thoroughly dispirited nature of socialism, a philosophy for losers, that feeds upon, and requires the continuing nourishment of, the mindset of victimology.
At some point, we need to show some appropriate respect for the forces of natural selection that have long directed the life process. We ought to learn from the rest of nature: either we make ourselves capable of adapting to an ever-changing world – by improving the skills or other learning with which we act upon the world – or we prepare to die. Dickens’ approach, like the underlying methodology of the welfare state, does nothing to provide long-term help for the Cratchetts of the world. Scrooge’s unearned generosity will not only increase his costs of doing business – thus increasing the likelihood of his own business failure – but, upon his bankruptcy or eventual death, will leave Cratchett in the position of having to find a new host upon which to attach himself for the remainder of his parasitic life.
The claim against my client is without substance, and should be dismissed with prejudice. It is the industrial revolution’s version of a scapegoating action, grounded more in bigotry than in fact or reason. In the end, I can offer no better answer to such charges than those provided by my client himself: "bah, humbug!"
The defense rests.
Best, worst of YouTube politics
1. "I'll take you out!"
Throughout his campaign to become New York's governor, Republican Carl Paladino never shied from speaking his mind, and, when it came to the New York Post's state editor, Fred Dicker, he definitely didn't mince words (the Paladino campaign viewed Dicker as Cuomo's "stalking horse"). In September, Paladino accused the reporter of having dispatched "one of [his] goons" to photograph the candidate's daughter and, in a moment that likely confirmed people's best or worst suspicions about Paladino (depending on your point of view), warned Dicker, "I'll take you out."
2.) "Who are you?"
When two young men approached Rep. Bob Etheridge in June with the cameras rolling, they clearly caught the North Carolina Democrat on a bad day: He instantly became aggressive with the men, and physically grabbed one of them, while the cameras captured the act. The incident caused enough of a stir for Etheridge to hold a press conference soon thereafter, apologizing for his actions. Etheridge lost his reelection bid to Republican Renee Ellmers and blasted the "dirty politics" at work during the campaign. After the election, it was revealed that GOP operatives were behind the video.
6.) "I don't wear high heels."
Colorado Republican Senate candidate Ken Buck put his foot in his mouth while talking about footwear in July by telling a voter to support him because, unlike his female opponent Jane Norton, he said, "I do not wear high heels." "I have cowboy boots," said Buck. "They have real bulls--- on them." Buck was pushing back against a Norton ad questioning whether he was "man enough," but that context was missing from some versions of the video that went viral. Buck went on to beat Norton, but ultimately lost to Sen. Michael Bennet.
8.) "Demon sheep."
Some videos are meant -- or destined -- to go viral. Others get there by accident. Such was the case with Carly Fiorina's web ad accusing her Republican primary opponent, Tom Campbell, of being a "fiscal conservative in name only." To illustrate the point, Fiorina's ad played up the "wolf in sheep's clothing" trope all too literally in a spot that made you wonder whether it was serious or a spoof. It wasn't a joke, even though the sheep in the ad had glowing, demon-like red eyes. Fiorina ultimately failed in her bid to become California's next U.S. senator.
Throughout his campaign to become New York's governor, Republican Carl Paladino never shied from speaking his mind, and, when it came to the New York Post's state editor, Fred Dicker, he definitely didn't mince words (the Paladino campaign viewed Dicker as Cuomo's "stalking horse"). In September, Paladino accused the reporter of having dispatched "one of [his] goons" to photograph the candidate's daughter and, in a moment that likely confirmed people's best or worst suspicions about Paladino (depending on your point of view), warned Dicker, "I'll take you out."
2.) "Who are you?"
When two young men approached Rep. Bob Etheridge in June with the cameras rolling, they clearly caught the North Carolina Democrat on a bad day: He instantly became aggressive with the men, and physically grabbed one of them, while the cameras captured the act. The incident caused enough of a stir for Etheridge to hold a press conference soon thereafter, apologizing for his actions. Etheridge lost his reelection bid to Republican Renee Ellmers and blasted the "dirty politics" at work during the campaign. After the election, it was revealed that GOP operatives were behind the video.
6.) "I don't wear high heels."
Colorado Republican Senate candidate Ken Buck put his foot in his mouth while talking about footwear in July by telling a voter to support him because, unlike his female opponent Jane Norton, he said, "I do not wear high heels." "I have cowboy boots," said Buck. "They have real bulls--- on them." Buck was pushing back against a Norton ad questioning whether he was "man enough," but that context was missing from some versions of the video that went viral. Buck went on to beat Norton, but ultimately lost to Sen. Michael Bennet.
8.) "Demon sheep."
Some videos are meant -- or destined -- to go viral. Others get there by accident. Such was the case with Carly Fiorina's web ad accusing her Republican primary opponent, Tom Campbell, of being a "fiscal conservative in name only." To illustrate the point, Fiorina's ad played up the "wolf in sheep's clothing" trope all too literally in a spot that made you wonder whether it was serious or a spoof. It wasn't a joke, even though the sheep in the ad had glowing, demon-like red eyes. Fiorina ultimately failed in her bid to become California's next U.S. senator.
WikiLeaks, Michael Lind, and the ‘New’ Nationalism
The international debate engendered by WikiLeaks’ ongoing publication of classified US diplomatic cables has sent most American liberals into hiding. Gone AWOL when it comes to the Obama administration’s escalation of the federal government’s war on civil liberties, mainstream liberal defenders of WikiLeaks are few and far between.
On the cable news circuit, Rachel Maddow, the supposed “foreign policy wonk,” devoted a brief segment to the issue, echoing the MSM’s party line that There’s Nothing New Here. (Earth to Rachel: Since only a small percentage of the cables have so far been published, isn’t it a little premature for such a pronouncement? Just asking .) Her fellow MSNBCer, Chris Matthews, confined himself to a few snarling comments about Julian Assange – “a rapist” – with only Keith Olbermann (who can hardly be called “mainstream,” in any event) openly defending the last remaining symbol of what had once been a free society.
By far the most consistent and effective champion of WikiLeaks on what passes for the “left” these days has been the heroic Glenn Greenwald: not only in his widely-read columns for Salon.com, but in numerous media appearances in which he has taken on the worst of the very worst – and, yes, I do indeed mean John F. Burns, of the New York Times. Glenn has been everywhere, a libertarian gladiator up against the Empire’s pundit warrior-slaves, and winning every time.
Lind’s “new nationalism,” is, I’m afraid, the same as the “old” nationalism: a flag-waving, hysterical, ingrown doctrine of delusion and rationale for unbridled militarism. It is an ideological instrument that makes repression easier to justify, even as the epitome of an enlightened “liberalism.” Like all statists, his is the idolatry of Authority, which requires secrecy as a matter of course. His socialistic vision of a highly centralized American state, which controls much of the economy and society, far from curtailing US intervention around the globe, would make it far easier for our government to marshal national resources around an aggressive foreign policy. Once they grab power, these sorts of “liberals” are usually the first to make the most of it. In Lind’s rabid ultra-nationalism, we are seeing the future of “liberalism” as it exists under President Obama – and what a discredited, foul creature it is!
On the cable news circuit, Rachel Maddow, the supposed “foreign policy wonk,” devoted a brief segment to the issue, echoing the MSM’s party line that There’s Nothing New Here. (Earth to Rachel: Since only a small percentage of the cables have so far been published, isn’t it a little premature for such a pronouncement? Just asking .) Her fellow MSNBCer, Chris Matthews, confined himself to a few snarling comments about Julian Assange – “a rapist” – with only Keith Olbermann (who can hardly be called “mainstream,” in any event) openly defending the last remaining symbol of what had once been a free society.
By far the most consistent and effective champion of WikiLeaks on what passes for the “left” these days has been the heroic Glenn Greenwald: not only in his widely-read columns for Salon.com, but in numerous media appearances in which he has taken on the worst of the very worst – and, yes, I do indeed mean John F. Burns, of the New York Times. Glenn has been everywhere, a libertarian gladiator up against the Empire’s pundit warrior-slaves, and winning every time.
Lind’s “new nationalism,” is, I’m afraid, the same as the “old” nationalism: a flag-waving, hysterical, ingrown doctrine of delusion and rationale for unbridled militarism. It is an ideological instrument that makes repression easier to justify, even as the epitome of an enlightened “liberalism.” Like all statists, his is the idolatry of Authority, which requires secrecy as a matter of course. His socialistic vision of a highly centralized American state, which controls much of the economy and society, far from curtailing US intervention around the globe, would make it far easier for our government to marshal national resources around an aggressive foreign policy. Once they grab power, these sorts of “liberals” are usually the first to make the most of it. In Lind’s rabid ultra-nationalism, we are seeing the future of “liberalism” as it exists under President Obama – and what a discredited, foul creature it is!
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Manning’s message on Christmas Eve: ‘I greatly appreciate everyone’s support’
Pvt. Bradley Manning, the lone soldier who stands accused of stealing millions of pages of secret US government documents and handing them over to secrets outlet WikiLeaks, wants his supporters to know that they've meant a lot to him.
"I greatly appreciate everyone’s support and well wishes during this time," he said in a Christmas Eve statement released by his lawyer.
"I'm also thankful for everything that has been done to aid in my defense," Manning continued. "I ask that everyone takes the time to remember those who are separated from their loved ones at this time due to deployment and important missions.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has suggested that US authorities want Manning to take a plea deal in exchange for claiming Assange was involved in the initial leak of sensitive information.
Assange claimed he had never even heard the soldier's name until after he was arrested, and that WikiLeaks, by its very nature as a technology platform, protects the anonymity of its sources.
"I greatly appreciate everyone’s support and well wishes during this time," he said in a Christmas Eve statement released by his lawyer.
"I'm also thankful for everything that has been done to aid in my defense," Manning continued. "I ask that everyone takes the time to remember those who are separated from their loved ones at this time due to deployment and important missions.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has suggested that US authorities want Manning to take a plea deal in exchange for claiming Assange was involved in the initial leak of sensitive information.
Assange claimed he had never even heard the soldier's name until after he was arrested, and that WikiLeaks, by its very nature as a technology platform, protects the anonymity of its sources.
US Government Report Argues for Police Force for American Interventions Overseas
In May 2009, the federally financed RAND Corporation published a 183-page report, “A Stability Police Force for the United States: Justification and Options for Creating US Capabilities”. The report, conducted for the US Army’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) at the Army War College, examined the need for a “stability police force” (SPF), which it described as “a high-end police force that engages in a range of tasks such as crowd and riot control, special weapons and tactics (SWAT) and investigations of organized criminal groups.” Most soldiers do not possess the specialized skills an SPF officer needs to prevent violence, the report notes. “Most soldiers are trained to apply overwhelming force to secure victory, rather than minimal force to prevent escalation.” The SPF would also train indigenous police forces, much like what occurs today in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to the study led by Terrence K. Kelly, a senior researcher at RAND, the United States clearly needs an SPF. “Stability operations have become an inescapable reality of US foreign policy,” the report states. The RAND report estimates that creating such a paramilitary police force would cost about $637 million annually, require about 6,000 personnel and that it should be headquartered inside the US Marshals Service (USMS), not the US Army.
“Of the options considered,” the RAND report argues, “this research indicates that the US Marshals Service would be the most likely to successfully field an SPF, under the assumptions that an [military police] option would not be permitted to conduct policing missions in the United States outside of military installations except under extraordinary circumstances and that doing so is essential to maintaining required skills.” The idea here is that members of an SPF would be a “hybrid force” and could be embedded in police and sheriff departments nationwide to retain their policing skills when not deployed overseas. When needed, a battalion-sized SPF unit could be deployed in 30 days.
This recommendation did cause a small number of libertarians to take notice of the report after it was published because of the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids using the military for domestic policing inside the United States. Libertarian William Grigg blogged on LewRockwell.com that he feared that an SPF could be used domestically. “If ‘peacekeepers’ end up patrolling American streets, they probably won’t be foreigners in blue berets, but homegrown jackboots commanded by Washington,” Grigg wrote. Chris Calabrese, a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, was less fearful of an SPF, but he told Truthout that the report’s recommendation to headquarter “a super police force that would be deployed both foreign and domestically in the US Marshals Service” did violate the spirit of the Posse Comitatus Act.
According to the study led by Terrence K. Kelly, a senior researcher at RAND, the United States clearly needs an SPF. “Stability operations have become an inescapable reality of US foreign policy,” the report states. The RAND report estimates that creating such a paramilitary police force would cost about $637 million annually, require about 6,000 personnel and that it should be headquartered inside the US Marshals Service (USMS), not the US Army.
“Of the options considered,” the RAND report argues, “this research indicates that the US Marshals Service would be the most likely to successfully field an SPF, under the assumptions that an [military police] option would not be permitted to conduct policing missions in the United States outside of military installations except under extraordinary circumstances and that doing so is essential to maintaining required skills.” The idea here is that members of an SPF would be a “hybrid force” and could be embedded in police and sheriff departments nationwide to retain their policing skills when not deployed overseas. When needed, a battalion-sized SPF unit could be deployed in 30 days.
This recommendation did cause a small number of libertarians to take notice of the report after it was published because of the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids using the military for domestic policing inside the United States. Libertarian William Grigg blogged on LewRockwell.com that he feared that an SPF could be used domestically. “If ‘peacekeepers’ end up patrolling American streets, they probably won’t be foreigners in blue berets, but homegrown jackboots commanded by Washington,” Grigg wrote. Chris Calabrese, a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, was less fearful of an SPF, but he told Truthout that the report’s recommendation to headquarter “a super police force that would be deployed both foreign and domestically in the US Marshals Service” did violate the spirit of the Posse Comitatus Act.
Wikimania and the First Amendment
WikiLeaks is also creating anxiety in the corporate suites. A cover story in the December 20, 2010, issue of Forbes magazine reports that early next year a large amount of embarrassing material will be sent to the media by WikiLeaks about a major U.S. bank, followed by masses of exposé material on other global corporations.
Will these releases inform the people about very bad activities by drug, oil, financial, and other companies along with corruption in various countries? If so, people may find this information useful. We can only imagine what sleazy or illegal things our government has been up to that have been covered up. Soon, people may reject the those who would censor WikiLeaks. Many people do want to size up what’s going on inside their government in their name and with their tax dollars.
Wasn’t it Jefferson who said that "information is the currency of democracy" and that, given a choice between government and a free press, he’ll take the latter? Secrecy — keeping the people and Congress in the dark — is the cancer eating at the vitals of democracy.
What is remarkable about all the official hullabaloo by government officials, who leak plenty themselves, is that there never is any indictment or prosecution of government big wigs who continually suppress facts and knowledge in order to carry out very devastating actions like invading Iraq under false pretenses and covering up corporate contractors abuses. The morbid and corporate-indentured secrecy of government over the years has cost many American lives, sent Americans to illegal wars, bilked consumers of billions of dollars and harmed the safety and economic well-being of workers.
Will these releases inform the people about very bad activities by drug, oil, financial, and other companies along with corruption in various countries? If so, people may find this information useful. We can only imagine what sleazy or illegal things our government has been up to that have been covered up. Soon, people may reject the those who would censor WikiLeaks. Many people do want to size up what’s going on inside their government in their name and with their tax dollars.
Wasn’t it Jefferson who said that "information is the currency of democracy" and that, given a choice between government and a free press, he’ll take the latter? Secrecy — keeping the people and Congress in the dark — is the cancer eating at the vitals of democracy.
What is remarkable about all the official hullabaloo by government officials, who leak plenty themselves, is that there never is any indictment or prosecution of government big wigs who continually suppress facts and knowledge in order to carry out very devastating actions like invading Iraq under false pretenses and covering up corporate contractors abuses. The morbid and corporate-indentured secrecy of government over the years has cost many American lives, sent Americans to illegal wars, bilked consumers of billions of dollars and harmed the safety and economic well-being of workers.
Friday, December 24, 2010
The Abolition of Christmas
A concerted effort is currently being made by some cultural dissidents to expose the wide-ranging campaign undertaken by our betters to expunge all aspects of Christ from the holiday of Christmas, and what's more, to eradicate all aspects of Christmas from the gift-exchanging season of late December. In fact, this "war on Christmas" has been ranging for decades, epitomized in the numerous instances of newly renamed "holiday trees," corporate-mandated salutations of "happy holidays" or "season's greetings" instead of "merry Christmas," and forced removals of manger scenes from public places.
It is quite true, as Samuel Francis has recently pointed out, that the campaign against Christmas is a mere skirmish in the more widespread war against the West. Christmas is, after all, a Christian holy day, and Christianity is the spiritual foundation upon which Western civilization was built; hostility toward unabashed celebration of the birth of Christ does indeed spring from a hatred of all things Occidental. But it is a bit more complicated, and more bizarrely perverse, than that. For the war against the West is largely being waged by ... Westerners.
We are hastening our own demise by embracing the idea that it's tacky to believe in Christmas, or, at least, to be too open about about our religion in public, in front of "those who might believe differently." But it isn't representatives of opposing religions who are spearheading this movement against Christianity. Instead, it is mostly nominal Christians — that is to say, Christian Westerners who have lost the faith of their fathers but occasionally step into a church to witness a relative's funeral or a friend's wedding — who want to remove the baby Jesus from the proverbial inn and banish him to the proverbial manger.
For those folk, their very cultural identity (white, Western, and at least historically Christian) is a source of no pride but only endless embarrassment; they will do whatever they can to distance themselves from their heritage. Ironically, in so doing they are only embracing what it means to be a white, Western, nominal Christian in the post-modern 21st-century Western world. In their very diffidence and opportunistic self-loathing (opportunistic, since being anti-white, anti-Western, and anti-Christian is the only way to exhibit oneself as a "respectable" person these days, if one is white, Western, and of Christian heritage), they increasingly embody the debased, degenerated disposition of their own kind. They personify the suicide of the West.
It is quite true, as Samuel Francis has recently pointed out, that the campaign against Christmas is a mere skirmish in the more widespread war against the West. Christmas is, after all, a Christian holy day, and Christianity is the spiritual foundation upon which Western civilization was built; hostility toward unabashed celebration of the birth of Christ does indeed spring from a hatred of all things Occidental. But it is a bit more complicated, and more bizarrely perverse, than that. For the war against the West is largely being waged by ... Westerners.
We are hastening our own demise by embracing the idea that it's tacky to believe in Christmas, or, at least, to be too open about about our religion in public, in front of "those who might believe differently." But it isn't representatives of opposing religions who are spearheading this movement against Christianity. Instead, it is mostly nominal Christians — that is to say, Christian Westerners who have lost the faith of their fathers but occasionally step into a church to witness a relative's funeral or a friend's wedding — who want to remove the baby Jesus from the proverbial inn and banish him to the proverbial manger.
For those folk, their very cultural identity (white, Western, and at least historically Christian) is a source of no pride but only endless embarrassment; they will do whatever they can to distance themselves from their heritage. Ironically, in so doing they are only embracing what it means to be a white, Western, nominal Christian in the post-modern 21st-century Western world. In their very diffidence and opportunistic self-loathing (opportunistic, since being anti-white, anti-Western, and anti-Christian is the only way to exhibit oneself as a "respectable" person these days, if one is white, Western, and of Christian heritage), they increasingly embody the debased, degenerated disposition of their own kind. They personify the suicide of the West.
Florida Fusion Center Surveilled Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty
Public Intelligence, an international consortium of independent researchers, reports that a fusion center in Florida snooped on Ron Paul supporters and other political groups.
“Several restricted documents produced by the Central Florida Intelligence Exchange (CFIX) and obtained by Public Intelligence indicate that a variety of protests and political events are monitored by the regional fusion center for potential threats and violent activity,” the site reports.
Unit set-up to fight terrorism and crime mentions a Campaign for Liberty event held at the Rosen Center Hotel in Orlando, Florida.
“These events span the political spectrum from a summit hosted by Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty to anti-war protests conducted by Code Pink and Veterans for Peace. While the documents make no mention of specific threats arising from the events, they do indicate that the fusion center monitors political action in a variety of forms and sometimes requests law enforcement officers to report on constitutionally-protected activities.”
The Central Florida Intelligence Exchange was established with the assistance of an $850,000 Department of Homeland Security grant.
“Several restricted documents produced by the Central Florida Intelligence Exchange (CFIX) and obtained by Public Intelligence indicate that a variety of protests and political events are monitored by the regional fusion center for potential threats and violent activity,” the site reports.
Unit set-up to fight terrorism and crime mentions a Campaign for Liberty event held at the Rosen Center Hotel in Orlando, Florida.
“These events span the political spectrum from a summit hosted by Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty to anti-war protests conducted by Code Pink and Veterans for Peace. While the documents make no mention of specific threats arising from the events, they do indicate that the fusion center monitors political action in a variety of forms and sometimes requests law enforcement officers to report on constitutionally-protected activities.”
The Central Florida Intelligence Exchange was established with the assistance of an $850,000 Department of Homeland Security grant.
NATO weaves South Asian web
What the summit meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) at Lisbon last month brought to mind almost instinctively was that the persistent rumors about the alliance's death were indeed greatly exaggerated. The striking thing was the degree of internal unity and outward determination among the alliance's 28 members.
In recent years, derisive dismissals have featured galore in international discourse about the "dysfunctional irrelevance" of NATO and an alliance characterized as a "Cold War relic". In South Asia - Indian, in particular - this almost resulted in an intellectual ellipsis while dwelling on the overall United States regional strategies in the overlapping Afghanistan-Pakistan conflicts. In fact, NATO hardly figured in the Indian discourses on Afghanistan as an issue of consequence.
Facile impressions gathered in the South Asian strategic community that the US was desperately seeking an "exit strategy" in Afghanistan and was about to "cut and run" from the Hindu Kush.
The NATO summit in Lisbon at the end of November, therefore, came as an eye-opener for South Asians. Voices in the transatlantic space that questioned the continued the raison d'etre of the alliance have fallen completely silent.
In recent years, derisive dismissals have featured galore in international discourse about the "dysfunctional irrelevance" of NATO and an alliance characterized as a "Cold War relic". In South Asia - Indian, in particular - this almost resulted in an intellectual ellipsis while dwelling on the overall United States regional strategies in the overlapping Afghanistan-Pakistan conflicts. In fact, NATO hardly figured in the Indian discourses on Afghanistan as an issue of consequence.
Facile impressions gathered in the South Asian strategic community that the US was desperately seeking an "exit strategy" in Afghanistan and was about to "cut and run" from the Hindu Kush.
The NATO summit in Lisbon at the end of November, therefore, came as an eye-opener for South Asians. Voices in the transatlantic space that questioned the continued the raison d'etre of the alliance have fallen completely silent.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Assange calls for criminal charges against ‘shock jock’ Fox hosts
Julian Assange has accused Fox personalities Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin, among others, of committing terrorism through their calls to hunt down and kill the WikiLeaks founder.
In an interview with MSNBC's Cenk Uygur, Assange referred to the politicians-turned-Fox-personalities as "shock jocks" who should be charged for inciting violence against him and his organization.
Assange went on to address the question of Bradley Manning, the Army private held in solitary confinement for the past seven months over allegations he was the source for WikiLeaks' release of 260,000 State Department cables.
"If we are to believe the allegations, then this man acted for political reasons. He's a political prisoner in the United States. He has not gone to trial. ... Human rights organizations should be investigating the conditions under which he is held and, really, is there due process there?" Assange said.
The United Nations office that deals with torture issues on Wednesday said that it is investigating a complaint over Manning's detention.
In an interview with MSNBC's Cenk Uygur, Assange referred to the politicians-turned-Fox-personalities as "shock jocks" who should be charged for inciting violence against him and his organization.
Assange went on to address the question of Bradley Manning, the Army private held in solitary confinement for the past seven months over allegations he was the source for WikiLeaks' release of 260,000 State Department cables.
"If we are to believe the allegations, then this man acted for political reasons. He's a political prisoner in the United States. He has not gone to trial. ... Human rights organizations should be investigating the conditions under which he is held and, really, is there due process there?" Assange said.
The United Nations office that deals with torture issues on Wednesday said that it is investigating a complaint over Manning's detention.
The Social Basis of America's Imperial Politics: Rethinking Imperialist Theory
The ‘fluidity’ of US power relations with Latin America is a product of the continuities and changes in Latin America. Past hegemony continues to weigh heavy, but the future augurs a continued decline. The current balance of power will however be determined by shifts in world markets, in which the US is destined to play a lesser role. Hence the greater probability of more divergences in policy, barring major breakdowns within Latin America.
Almost all theories of contemporary imperialism lack any but the crudest sociological analyses of the classes and political character of the governing groups which direct the imperial state and its polices. The same is true about the theorizing of the imperial state which is largely devoid of institutional analyses.
Most theorists resort to a form of economic reductionism in which ‘investments’, ‘trade’, ‘markets’ are presented as ahistorical disembodied entities comparable across space and time. The changing nature of the leading classes are accounted for by general categories such as “finance”, “manufacturing”, “banking”, “service” without any specific analysis of the variable nature and sources of financial wealth (illegal drug trade, money laundering, real estate speculation, etc.).
The shifts in the political and economic orientation of governing capitalist politicians, resulting in linkages with different capitalist/imperialist centers, which have major consequences in the configuration of world power, are glossed over in favor of abstract accounts of statistical shifts of economic indicators measuring capital flows.
Imperial theorizing totally ignores the role of non-economic socio-political power configurations in shaping imperial policy, over and against major economic institutions like MNC, up to and including major military commitments. The role of zionist power configurations and militarist ideologues in shaping US Middle East policy (2000-2010) is a crucial consideration in discussing contemporary imperialism in theory and practice.
Almost all theories of contemporary imperialism lack any but the crudest sociological analyses of the classes and political character of the governing groups which direct the imperial state and its polices. The same is true about the theorizing of the imperial state which is largely devoid of institutional analyses.
Most theorists resort to a form of economic reductionism in which ‘investments’, ‘trade’, ‘markets’ are presented as ahistorical disembodied entities comparable across space and time. The changing nature of the leading classes are accounted for by general categories such as “finance”, “manufacturing”, “banking”, “service” without any specific analysis of the variable nature and sources of financial wealth (illegal drug trade, money laundering, real estate speculation, etc.).
The shifts in the political and economic orientation of governing capitalist politicians, resulting in linkages with different capitalist/imperialist centers, which have major consequences in the configuration of world power, are glossed over in favor of abstract accounts of statistical shifts of economic indicators measuring capital flows.
Imperial theorizing totally ignores the role of non-economic socio-political power configurations in shaping imperial policy, over and against major economic institutions like MNC, up to and including major military commitments. The role of zionist power configurations and militarist ideologues in shaping US Middle East policy (2000-2010) is a crucial consideration in discussing contemporary imperialism in theory and practice.
Bank Bailout A Boondoggle of Billions
What the tax package proves conclusively is that the President, the House and the Senate have absolutely no intention of getting their fiscal house in order. We will address the lurid details later. There is no change in the policies of borrowing continuously in order to sustain current consumption and to keep the economy from collapsing. As far as we are concerned the hold up in the package was to load it up with pork and stimulus. Some call it bells and whistles – we call it irresponsible. The Fed and all the players are buying time and 70% of the public knows that and they are going along with it. Very few want to face the music.
The Fed, via the “President’s Working Group on Financial markets” is targeting asset prices, if possible, and the equities market. This is really the only bastion of wealth that the public recognizes. Wait until government and Wall Street go after their retirement plans, then they will get a wake-up call. Mr. Bernanke believes a strong stock market will spur spending, leading to higher income and profits. They had best have some heavy propaganda ready because 4th quarter GDP will probably come in around 2%. Inventories are building production is again stagnant, railroad traffic is off over 1% and the Baltic Index is down. Consumer credit has expanded more than $3 billion the first two-month rise in more than two years, although that number was aided by one off student loans, which accounted for all of October’s gains. In reality consumer credit fell more than $32 billion, the lowest level since late 2004. If you cut away the student loans consumer credit fell about $75 billion over the past three months.
What may seem odd to you is that a federal judge’s rejection of mandatory insurance, a keystone provision of the Obama Health Care Reform Package, is bullish for the stock market. The bill is enormously unpopular and the gutting of this part of the bill neuters it. It is on to the Supreme Court, where unfortunately it will be upheld, by our bought and paid for socialist activist judges. It reminds us in many ways of the Warren Court. The judges may take the case for decision by next June.
Irrespective, temporary fiscal stimulus has been just that, temporary. We ask, why would the result be any different this time? All the exercise, a very expensive exercise of $2.5 trillion annually, is doing is buying time. The result will be more inflation and unemployment and the beginning of demonstrations and violence as we have seen all over Europe for the past few years. Incidentally, both are worsening and next year will reach a level not seen since 1968 in Paris. Riots are on the way in America, just be patient, they will come in good time. This is the result of austerity from the bottom up and the rich getting richer. Washington and NYC had best re-read French history starting in 1788.
The Fed, via the “President’s Working Group on Financial markets” is targeting asset prices, if possible, and the equities market. This is really the only bastion of wealth that the public recognizes. Wait until government and Wall Street go after their retirement plans, then they will get a wake-up call. Mr. Bernanke believes a strong stock market will spur spending, leading to higher income and profits. They had best have some heavy propaganda ready because 4th quarter GDP will probably come in around 2%. Inventories are building production is again stagnant, railroad traffic is off over 1% and the Baltic Index is down. Consumer credit has expanded more than $3 billion the first two-month rise in more than two years, although that number was aided by one off student loans, which accounted for all of October’s gains. In reality consumer credit fell more than $32 billion, the lowest level since late 2004. If you cut away the student loans consumer credit fell about $75 billion over the past three months.
What may seem odd to you is that a federal judge’s rejection of mandatory insurance, a keystone provision of the Obama Health Care Reform Package, is bullish for the stock market. The bill is enormously unpopular and the gutting of this part of the bill neuters it. It is on to the Supreme Court, where unfortunately it will be upheld, by our bought and paid for socialist activist judges. It reminds us in many ways of the Warren Court. The judges may take the case for decision by next June.
Irrespective, temporary fiscal stimulus has been just that, temporary. We ask, why would the result be any different this time? All the exercise, a very expensive exercise of $2.5 trillion annually, is doing is buying time. The result will be more inflation and unemployment and the beginning of demonstrations and violence as we have seen all over Europe for the past few years. Incidentally, both are worsening and next year will reach a level not seen since 1968 in Paris. Riots are on the way in America, just be patient, they will come in good time. This is the result of austerity from the bottom up and the rich getting richer. Washington and NYC had best re-read French history starting in 1788.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Naked emperor and a conspiracy of silence
America is exceptional - utterly and absolutely exceptional - because the rest of the world depends on American guns, American money and American mediation in a way that no other country or combination of countries possibly might replace. Any other power that suffered the setbacks that America sustained during 2010 under the Barack Obama presidency would have been pushed off the top of the hill. The reason America still has diplomatic currency to spend in Asia as well as actual currency to borrow demonstrates its indispensable role: no one, least of all Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao or Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, wants America to fail.
That is why a conspiracy of silence surrounds the observation that the emperor is naked. But the facts are depressingly clear.
Never before in the course of strategic events have so few done so much damage to so many in such a short period of time. The "few", to be precise, are Obama and the tiny coterie of advisors through whom he runs the government. Obama was true to his baffling words before the United Nations General Assembly on September 23, 2009: "No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation," Obama told the United Nations on September 23. "No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold."
America's competitors have seen the erosion of American power as if through a time-lapse camera, and they don't like it at all. Obama's self-shrinkage of American influence may give us a civil war in Iraq, a new Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon, a nuclear-armed Iran, a replay of the Cuban missile crisis in Venezuela, an unshackled rogue state in North Korea, an ungovernable Pakistan, and - worst of all - another American recession as the US Treasury struggles to fund a government deficit in excess of 12 percentage points of gross domestic product. Confronted with the consequences of a naked emperor in Washington, the other powers of the world can only avert their eyes and hope he will get some clothes before it is too late.
That is why a conspiracy of silence surrounds the observation that the emperor is naked. But the facts are depressingly clear.
Never before in the course of strategic events have so few done so much damage to so many in such a short period of time. The "few", to be precise, are Obama and the tiny coterie of advisors through whom he runs the government. Obama was true to his baffling words before the United Nations General Assembly on September 23, 2009: "No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation," Obama told the United Nations on September 23. "No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold."
America's competitors have seen the erosion of American power as if through a time-lapse camera, and they don't like it at all. Obama's self-shrinkage of American influence may give us a civil war in Iraq, a new Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon, a nuclear-armed Iran, a replay of the Cuban missile crisis in Venezuela, an unshackled rogue state in North Korea, an ungovernable Pakistan, and - worst of all - another American recession as the US Treasury struggles to fund a government deficit in excess of 12 percentage points of gross domestic product. Confronted with the consequences of a naked emperor in Washington, the other powers of the world can only avert their eyes and hope he will get some clothes before it is too late.
The Illuminati's Ideology of Enslavement
Adolf Hitler and Aleister Crowley, the two great black magicians of the 20th century, shared a satanic ideology based on in "the survival of the fittest" and the enslavement of the masses.
Both men were initiates in Luciferian secret societies. Crowley entered every secret organization that would let him join: Freemasonry, the Order of the Golden Dawn and the Ordo Tempi Orientis, a German satanic group. He also founded his own magical order: the Astrum Argentum, or Silver Star. After WWI, Hitler was initiated into the Thule Society. Members included judges, police chiefs, professors, and industrialists. The Master of the Temple was the bald, opiate-addicted occultist Dietrich Eckhart. He trained Hitler in many of the teachings of the ancient mystery religions. As Eckhart lay dying in December, 1923, he famously said:
"Follow Hitler! He will dance, but it is I who have called the tune! I have initiated him into the 'Secret Doctrine', opened his centers of vision and given him the means to communicate with the Powers. Do not mourn for me: for I shall have influenced history more than any other German.
Hitler acknowledged Eckhart's influence in his Mein Kampf. The final sentence in the final chapter is reserved for his occult Master:
"I should like to mention the name of a man who devoted his life to reawakening his and our people, through his writing and his ideas and finally through positive action. I mean: Dietrich Eckart."[
Both men were initiates in Luciferian secret societies. Crowley entered every secret organization that would let him join: Freemasonry, the Order of the Golden Dawn and the Ordo Tempi Orientis, a German satanic group. He also founded his own magical order: the Astrum Argentum, or Silver Star. After WWI, Hitler was initiated into the Thule Society. Members included judges, police chiefs, professors, and industrialists. The Master of the Temple was the bald, opiate-addicted occultist Dietrich Eckhart. He trained Hitler in many of the teachings of the ancient mystery religions. As Eckhart lay dying in December, 1923, he famously said:
"Follow Hitler! He will dance, but it is I who have called the tune! I have initiated him into the 'Secret Doctrine', opened his centers of vision and given him the means to communicate with the Powers. Do not mourn for me: for I shall have influenced history more than any other German.
Hitler acknowledged Eckhart's influence in his Mein Kampf. The final sentence in the final chapter is reserved for his occult Master:
"I should like to mention the name of a man who devoted his life to reawakening his and our people, through his writing and his ideas and finally through positive action. I mean: Dietrich Eckart."[
Britain's Police State: London arrests based on CCTV identification. Britain adopts Chinese model of policing protest?
The real threat comes not from CCTV but from its application to identifying citizens, then tracking and recording their lives. This phase of CCTV is only just beginning, but will be heavily upon us, very soon.
We can get a glimpse of this in China, as described by Naomi Klein:
Chinese citizens will be watched around the clock through networked CCTV cameras … Their movements will be tracked through national ID cards with scannable computer chips and photos that are instantly uploaded to police databases and linked to their holder's personal data. This is the most important element of all: linking all these tools together in a massive, searchable database of names, photos, residency information, work history and biometric data. When Golden Shield is finished, there will be a photo in those databases for every person in China: 1.3 billion faces.
China's All-Seeing Eye
Naomi Klein, May 14th, 2008, Rolling Stone
Authors such as Naomi Klein and Greg Walton have pointed out the role of the West in supplying this surveillance technology to China. Our governments have shown no moral scruples and far too much interest in this convenient field-trial of repression.
If we can’t trust the morality or ethics of our governments, can we really trust them with the enormous power they are assembling?
We can get a glimpse of this in China, as described by Naomi Klein:
Chinese citizens will be watched around the clock through networked CCTV cameras … Their movements will be tracked through national ID cards with scannable computer chips and photos that are instantly uploaded to police databases and linked to their holder's personal data. This is the most important element of all: linking all these tools together in a massive, searchable database of names, photos, residency information, work history and biometric data. When Golden Shield is finished, there will be a photo in those databases for every person in China: 1.3 billion faces.
China's All-Seeing Eye
Naomi Klein, May 14th, 2008, Rolling Stone
Authors such as Naomi Klein and Greg Walton have pointed out the role of the West in supplying this surveillance technology to China. Our governments have shown no moral scruples and far too much interest in this convenient field-trial of repression.
If we can’t trust the morality or ethics of our governments, can we really trust them with the enormous power they are assembling?
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
How Stupid Is The No Labels Movement?
There’s an old story in the British Army about a cavalry officer who was so stupid that the other cavalry officers started to notice it. In the same vein, I’ve written that I once knew an “ex-alcoholic, ex-lumberjack who told me that when he was a lumberjack, his nickname was “Psycho.” I said “Excuse me, do you mean that you were so crazy that the other lumberjacks called you ‘Psycho’?”
So, how stupid is David Frum’s No Labels movement? So stupid that John Podhoretz started to notice, and so stupid that Frank Rich thinks it’s stupid. Rich’s column in today’s New York Times is called The Bipartisanship Racket, the title of which reminds us why the NoLabels movement is stupid–“IN AMERICA, WE have a two-party system,” a Republican congressional staffer is supposed to have told a visiting group of Russian legislators some years ago.
“There is the stupid party. And there is the evil party. I am proud to be a member of the stupid party.”
He added: “Periodically, the two parties get together and do something that is both stupid and evil. This is called—bipartisanship.”[Immigration policy stupid, evil and hurting Americans, By Peter Brimelow, Contra Costa Times, December 4, 1999]
So, how stupid is David Frum’s No Labels movement? So stupid that John Podhoretz started to notice, and so stupid that Frank Rich thinks it’s stupid. Rich’s column in today’s New York Times is called The Bipartisanship Racket, the title of which reminds us why the NoLabels movement is stupid–“IN AMERICA, WE have a two-party system,” a Republican congressional staffer is supposed to have told a visiting group of Russian legislators some years ago.
“There is the stupid party. And there is the evil party. I am proud to be a member of the stupid party.”
He added: “Periodically, the two parties get together and do something that is both stupid and evil. This is called—bipartisanship.”[Immigration policy stupid, evil and hurting Americans, By Peter Brimelow, Contra Costa Times, December 4, 1999]
The Coming Storm
The trappings of fascism spread. General David Petraeus, commander of the Eastern Front, poses with the President in the White House in combat fatigues. The country is now the Homeland, reminiscent of the Nazi Fatherland and the Soviet Motherland. We hear of American Exceptionalism, the ritual self-idolizaton beloved of pathological nationalism. Blood and Soil. The American Dream. Ubermenschen. All we need is a short Austrian.
It will play out against a backdrop of totalitarian watchfulness all too imaginable. A digital world lends itself to tyranny, making it, I think, inescapable. For practical purposes, the capacity to store data is infinite, to network it across the world, to track, to scan, to watch. This is not the place for a disquisition on the technology of surveillance. Just note that the machinery exists for a totalitarian watchfulness beyond Stalin’s wettest dreams. The government wants this, pushes for it daily, and gets it. You can’t spend a dollar, take a flight, or send an email without a federal federal office watching. It is getting worse and cannot be stopped. Surveillance is too easy.
The only free press in America is the internet, and the government does not like it. Washington now moves to “regulate” it. To promote fairness, you see, to prevent piracy, and to maintain national security. Then it will be found necessary to suppress “hate sites.” Just now you are reading a site that has been blocked on many federal installations for promoting hate. There is no recourse.
How will this play out? America retreats behind its emotional borders, gazes over the ramparts, frightened and hostile. In those outlets of the media than pander to The Heartland, to the manipulable unlettered, the nationalist drumbeat grows apace. That America’s bankrupty results from America’s economic policies, that the country is everywhere hated because of wilfully chosen behavior—this does not occur to people who do not read, who do not so much as know the dates of World War II. They will find someone else to blame. Liberals. Mohammedans. Mexicans.
It will play out against a backdrop of totalitarian watchfulness all too imaginable. A digital world lends itself to tyranny, making it, I think, inescapable. For practical purposes, the capacity to store data is infinite, to network it across the world, to track, to scan, to watch. This is not the place for a disquisition on the technology of surveillance. Just note that the machinery exists for a totalitarian watchfulness beyond Stalin’s wettest dreams. The government wants this, pushes for it daily, and gets it. You can’t spend a dollar, take a flight, or send an email without a federal federal office watching. It is getting worse and cannot be stopped. Surveillance is too easy.
The only free press in America is the internet, and the government does not like it. Washington now moves to “regulate” it. To promote fairness, you see, to prevent piracy, and to maintain national security. Then it will be found necessary to suppress “hate sites.” Just now you are reading a site that has been blocked on many federal installations for promoting hate. There is no recourse.
How will this play out? America retreats behind its emotional borders, gazes over the ramparts, frightened and hostile. In those outlets of the media than pander to The Heartland, to the manipulable unlettered, the nationalist drumbeat grows apace. That America’s bankrupty results from America’s economic policies, that the country is everywhere hated because of wilfully chosen behavior—this does not occur to people who do not read, who do not so much as know the dates of World War II. They will find someone else to blame. Liberals. Mohammedans. Mexicans.
Two Californias
Victor Davis Hansen’s National Review article “Two Californias.” He describes a rural California that exists in a parallel universe to the coastal cities—indeed to all of White America. Decades of immigration and White dispossession have resulted in a Mexican sub-culture that has simply transplanted itself from Mexico to California. Spanish is the first language, and the schools (among the worst in the state) are almost completely Mexican. The small White farmers have been displaced by mechanized agriculture and the White working class has seen their manufacturing jobs shipped overseas.
Aided by generous welfare benefits, these immigrants have many of the gadgets of the middle class. But there the similarity ends. It’s a culture that is completely unregulated–garbage strewn everywhere, animals roaming around without fencing, and no construction or business codes, and no tax collection. White California is ruled by an elitist culture of the well-heeled left in political alliance with non-Whites; it loves regulating business in the name of moral virtue (like the recent deluge of anti-global warming laws). Meanwhile, the areas inhabited by their Mexican clients are completely unregulated.
In short, the Third World has simply transferred itself to California. (Coming soon, if not already arrived, to a state near you.)
In both America and Europe parallel societies have been created–completely outside the White mainstream and indifferent (Mexifornians) or hostile (European Muslims) to the White culture that so generously subsidizes their Third World lifestyle. The time bomb is ticking.
Aided by generous welfare benefits, these immigrants have many of the gadgets of the middle class. But there the similarity ends. It’s a culture that is completely unregulated–garbage strewn everywhere, animals roaming around without fencing, and no construction or business codes, and no tax collection. White California is ruled by an elitist culture of the well-heeled left in political alliance with non-Whites; it loves regulating business in the name of moral virtue (like the recent deluge of anti-global warming laws). Meanwhile, the areas inhabited by their Mexican clients are completely unregulated.
In short, the Third World has simply transferred itself to California. (Coming soon, if not already arrived, to a state near you.)
In both America and Europe parallel societies have been created–completely outside the White mainstream and indifferent (Mexifornians) or hostile (European Muslims) to the White culture that so generously subsidizes their Third World lifestyle. The time bomb is ticking.
Monday, December 20, 2010
The Globalization of Militarism
Many Americans still believe that US foreign policies are designed to maintain peace, to safeguard human rights and to spread democracy around the world. Regardless of their officially stated objectives, however, those policies often lead to opposite outcomes: war, militarism and dictatorship. Evidence of the fact that US policy makers no longer uphold the ideals they state publicly is overwhelming.
Those who continue to harbor illusions about the thrust of US policies around the world must be oblivious to the fact that the United States has been overtaken by a military-industrial-security-financial cabal whose representatives are firmly ensconced in both the White House and the US Congress. The ultimate goal of the cabal, according to their own military guidelines, is “full spectrum dominance” of the world; and they are willing to wage as many wars, to destroy as many countries and to kill as many people as necessary to achieve that goal.
The liberal hawks and petty intellectual pundits who tend to defend US foreign policies on the grounds of “human rights” or “moral obligations” are well served to pay attention (among other evidence) to the US foreign policy documents that are currently being disclosed by the Wikileaks. The documents “show all too clearly that,” as Paul Craig Roberts puts it, “the US government is a duplicitous entity whose raison d’etre is to control every other country.” In essence, the documents show that while the US government, like a global mafia godfather, rewards the pliant ruling elites of the client states with arms, financial aid and military protections, it punishes the nations whose leaders refuse to surrender to the wishes of the bully and relinquish their national sovereignty. US foreign policies, like its domestic policies, are revealed as catering not to the broader public or national interests of the people but to the powerful special interests that are vested primarily in the military capital and the finance capital.
US foreign policy architects are clearly incapable of recognizing or acknowledging the fact that different peoples and nations may have different needs and interests. Nor are they capable of respecting other peoples’ aspirations to national sovereignty. Instead, they tend to view other peoples, just as they do the American people, through the narrow prism of their own nefarious interests. By selfishly dividing the world into “friends” and “foe,” or “vassal states,” as Zbigniew Brzezinski put it, powerful beneficiaries of war and militarism compel both groups to embark on a path of militarization, which leads inevitably to militarism and authoritarian rule.
It follows that under the kleptocratic influence of the powerful interests that are vested in the military-security-financial industries the US government has turned into an ominous global force of destabilization, obstruction, retrogression and authoritarianism.
Those who continue to harbor illusions about the thrust of US policies around the world must be oblivious to the fact that the United States has been overtaken by a military-industrial-security-financial cabal whose representatives are firmly ensconced in both the White House and the US Congress. The ultimate goal of the cabal, according to their own military guidelines, is “full spectrum dominance” of the world; and they are willing to wage as many wars, to destroy as many countries and to kill as many people as necessary to achieve that goal.
The liberal hawks and petty intellectual pundits who tend to defend US foreign policies on the grounds of “human rights” or “moral obligations” are well served to pay attention (among other evidence) to the US foreign policy documents that are currently being disclosed by the Wikileaks. The documents “show all too clearly that,” as Paul Craig Roberts puts it, “the US government is a duplicitous entity whose raison d’etre is to control every other country.” In essence, the documents show that while the US government, like a global mafia godfather, rewards the pliant ruling elites of the client states with arms, financial aid and military protections, it punishes the nations whose leaders refuse to surrender to the wishes of the bully and relinquish their national sovereignty. US foreign policies, like its domestic policies, are revealed as catering not to the broader public or national interests of the people but to the powerful special interests that are vested primarily in the military capital and the finance capital.
US foreign policy architects are clearly incapable of recognizing or acknowledging the fact that different peoples and nations may have different needs and interests. Nor are they capable of respecting other peoples’ aspirations to national sovereignty. Instead, they tend to view other peoples, just as they do the American people, through the narrow prism of their own nefarious interests. By selfishly dividing the world into “friends” and “foe,” or “vassal states,” as Zbigniew Brzezinski put it, powerful beneficiaries of war and militarism compel both groups to embark on a path of militarization, which leads inevitably to militarism and authoritarian rule.
It follows that under the kleptocratic influence of the powerful interests that are vested in the military-security-financial industries the US government has turned into an ominous global force of destabilization, obstruction, retrogression and authoritarianism.
Here’s Why FBI Is Orchestrating Fake Terror Plots
The U.S. government comes up with a plot and an accused, and then tortures him until he confesses, or the government fabricates a case and takes it to jurors who know that they cannot face their neighbors if they let off a media-declared “terrorist.”
Perhaps the most obvious of these cases is “the Miami seven,” a pathetic group of Christian-Zionist-Muslims that called themselves the “Seas of David” and were quietly living in a Florida warehouse awaiting what they regarded as biblical end-times. Along came the FBI posing as al Qaeda and offered them $50,000 and an al Qaeda swearing-in ceremony.
The answer is many agendas. One agenda is to justify wars of aggression that are war crimes under the Nuremberg standard created by the U.S. government itself. One way to avoid war crime charges is to create acts of
terrorism that justify the naked aggressions against “terrorist countries.”
Another agenda is to create a police state. A police state can control people who object to their impoverishment for the benefit of the super-rich much more easily than can a democracy endowed with constitutional civil liberties.
Another agenda is to get rich. Terror plots, whether real or orchestrated, have created a market for security. Dual Israeli citizen Michael Chertoff, former head of U.S. Homeland Security, is the lobbyist who represents Rapiscan, the company that manufactures the full body “porno-scanners” that, following the “underwear bomber” event, are now filling up U.S. airports.
Perhaps the most obvious of these cases is “the Miami seven,” a pathetic group of Christian-Zionist-Muslims that called themselves the “Seas of David” and were quietly living in a Florida warehouse awaiting what they regarded as biblical end-times. Along came the FBI posing as al Qaeda and offered them $50,000 and an al Qaeda swearing-in ceremony.
The answer is many agendas. One agenda is to justify wars of aggression that are war crimes under the Nuremberg standard created by the U.S. government itself. One way to avoid war crime charges is to create acts of
terrorism that justify the naked aggressions against “terrorist countries.”
Another agenda is to create a police state. A police state can control people who object to their impoverishment for the benefit of the super-rich much more easily than can a democracy endowed with constitutional civil liberties.
Another agenda is to get rich. Terror plots, whether real or orchestrated, have created a market for security. Dual Israeli citizen Michael Chertoff, former head of U.S. Homeland Security, is the lobbyist who represents Rapiscan, the company that manufactures the full body “porno-scanners” that, following the “underwear bomber” event, are now filling up U.S. airports.
Columbia journalism profs: Don't prosecute WikiLeaks
One of the most prominent journalism schools in the United States is asking President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder not to prosecute WikiLeaks because it would set a "bad precedent for reporters."
"We all believe that in publishing diplomatic cables WikiLeaks is engaging in journalistic activity protected by the First Amendment," according to a letter signed by 19 Columbia Journalism School professors.
Holder is an alum of both the undergrad program and Columbia Law School.
"As a historical matter, government overreaction to publication of leaked material in the press has always been more damaging to American democracy than the leaks themselves," the letter says. READ THE LETTER
The letter argues that prosecuting WikiLeaks would result in "chilling" investigative journalism everywhere, and that legal action against the organization would "greatly damage American standing in free-press debates worldwide and would dishearten those journalists looking to this nation for inspiration."
"We all believe that in publishing diplomatic cables WikiLeaks is engaging in journalistic activity protected by the First Amendment," according to a letter signed by 19 Columbia Journalism School professors.
Holder is an alum of both the undergrad program and Columbia Law School.
"As a historical matter, government overreaction to publication of leaked material in the press has always been more damaging to American democracy than the leaks themselves," the letter says. READ THE LETTER
The letter argues that prosecuting WikiLeaks would result in "chilling" investigative journalism everywhere, and that legal action against the organization would "greatly damage American standing in free-press debates worldwide and would dishearten those journalists looking to this nation for inspiration."
Saturday, December 18, 2010
UN considers panel of governments to set policies for policing the Internet
A United Nations task force formed last week said it was considering the creation of a new inter-governmental working group to help further international cooperation on policies to police the Internet.
The discussion was undertaken to "enhance" and extend the work of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), a UN-sponsored organization that makes recommendations on how governments should deal with the Internet. The IGF's mandate is due to expire soon, so members of the UN's Commission on Science and Technology for Development Bureau took up the issue and formed a task force to determine what the new IGF should look like.
The bureau's members, however, decided their task force would be limited to governments only, with no representation by civil or industry groups.
The decision drew a sharp warning from search giant Google, which insisted that the next IGF, if comprised only of governments, could result in them obtaining a "monopoly" on how the Internet is run, as opposed to the current model where innovation flows from the bottom up. Google's blog said the firm had joined a petition of other industry groups in opposing the composition of the UN's task force.
The discussion was undertaken to "enhance" and extend the work of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), a UN-sponsored organization that makes recommendations on how governments should deal with the Internet. The IGF's mandate is due to expire soon, so members of the UN's Commission on Science and Technology for Development Bureau took up the issue and formed a task force to determine what the new IGF should look like.
The bureau's members, however, decided their task force would be limited to governments only, with no representation by civil or industry groups.
The decision drew a sharp warning from search giant Google, which insisted that the next IGF, if comprised only of governments, could result in them obtaining a "monopoly" on how the Internet is run, as opposed to the current model where innovation flows from the bottom up. Google's blog said the firm had joined a petition of other industry groups in opposing the composition of the UN's task force.
TAPI Pipeline - The Real Reason for 4 More Years of War
As I have reported since shortly after 9/11, the real reason for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is to build and secure a 1,080-mile long gas pipeline designed to carry trillions of dollars of Israeli-owned gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India. In a 2009 article entitled "Why Afghanistan" I wrote about the role of Israeli intelligence in the TAPI gas pipeline project and its connection to 9/11:
Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Israeli agents sought to gain control of the strategic assets of the newly independent Soviet republics. In mineral-rich Turkmenistan, a Mossad agent named Yosef A. Maiman was very successful in gaining control of the republic's immense resources of natural gas.
Yosef Maiman, born in Germany in 1946, grew up in Peru and studied in the United States before becoming an Israeli citizen in 1971. As an agent of Israeli intelligence, Maiman heads a network of Mossad-controlled companies that serve Israeli interests. As the chief executive of the Merhav Group, Maiman has controlled the development of Turmenistan's gas resources. Maiman's key colleagues at Merhav are the former head of the Mossad, Shabtai Shavit, and Nimrod Novik, chief adviser to Shimon Peres, the current president of Israel.
Maiman was described as "a leading miner" of Central Asian gas fields by the Jerusalem Post in 2004. Given their control of the immense gas resources of Turkmenistan, Maiman, Merhav, and the Mossad would all profit if and when the U.S.-led coalition were able to "pacify" and control Afghanistan so that the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline could be built allowing the gas of Turkmenistan to be sold to energy-hungry India. The TAPI pipeline project would bring billions of dollars into Mossad coffers every year. This is the real reason for the war in Afghanistan and why the Zionist-controlled Obama administration has increased the war effort in Central Asia. It has nothing to do with terrorism or 9-11.
Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Israeli agents sought to gain control of the strategic assets of the newly independent Soviet republics. In mineral-rich Turkmenistan, a Mossad agent named Yosef A. Maiman was very successful in gaining control of the republic's immense resources of natural gas.
Yosef Maiman, born in Germany in 1946, grew up in Peru and studied in the United States before becoming an Israeli citizen in 1971. As an agent of Israeli intelligence, Maiman heads a network of Mossad-controlled companies that serve Israeli interests. As the chief executive of the Merhav Group, Maiman has controlled the development of Turmenistan's gas resources. Maiman's key colleagues at Merhav are the former head of the Mossad, Shabtai Shavit, and Nimrod Novik, chief adviser to Shimon Peres, the current president of Israel.
Maiman was described as "a leading miner" of Central Asian gas fields by the Jerusalem Post in 2004. Given their control of the immense gas resources of Turkmenistan, Maiman, Merhav, and the Mossad would all profit if and when the U.S.-led coalition were able to "pacify" and control Afghanistan so that the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline could be built allowing the gas of Turkmenistan to be sold to energy-hungry India. The TAPI pipeline project would bring billions of dollars into Mossad coffers every year. This is the real reason for the war in Afghanistan and why the Zionist-controlled Obama administration has increased the war effort in Central Asia. It has nothing to do with terrorism or 9-11.
ALIPAC: Read the Fine Print; Dream Act Amnesty Would Permit Obama to Amnesty All Illegals
ALIPAC is rallying talk radio show listeners and American citizens to call the US Senate to oppose the Dream Act Amnesty today. The bill contains a waiver that would allow the Secretary of Homeland Security and President Obama to grant Amnesty to most illegal immigrants in America.
“The Dream Act Amnesty is a Nightmare already and would displace several million innocent American students, workers, and voters,” said William Gheen, President of ALIPAC. “But now we find a waiver on page 5, line 21 of HR 5281 that allows Obama to grant Amnesty for most of the 12-20 million [sic] illegal aliens in America!”
Close inspection of HR 5281, which passed the house last week by a narrow margin, finds a blanket waiver provision on page 5 line 21 Sec. 6 (a)(2). Immediately following all of the promises in the bill that only illegal aliens that claim they are under 30, claim they have been in the US 5 years, and claim they were brought here by others when they were under 16, and claim they are going to college or into the military, the waiver allows all of these considerations to be dropped.
“(2) WAIVER.—With respect to any benefit under this section and sections…the Secretary of Homeland Security may waive the… ground of inadmissibility …and the ground of deportability… for humanitarian purposes or family unity or when it is otherwise in the public interest.”
“The Dream Act Amnesty is a Nightmare already and would displace several million innocent American students, workers, and voters,” said William Gheen, President of ALIPAC. “But now we find a waiver on page 5, line 21 of HR 5281 that allows Obama to grant Amnesty for most of the 12-20 million [sic] illegal aliens in America!”
Close inspection of HR 5281, which passed the house last week by a narrow margin, finds a blanket waiver provision on page 5 line 21 Sec. 6 (a)(2). Immediately following all of the promises in the bill that only illegal aliens that claim they are under 30, claim they have been in the US 5 years, and claim they were brought here by others when they were under 16, and claim they are going to college or into the military, the waiver allows all of these considerations to be dropped.
“(2) WAIVER.—With respect to any benefit under this section and sections…the Secretary of Homeland Security may waive the… ground of inadmissibility …and the ground of deportability… for humanitarian purposes or family unity or when it is otherwise in the public interest.”
Friday, December 17, 2010
Zionist lobby’s new orders for Obama
After his appointment as Chairman of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, California’s representative Howard Berman told The Forward, “Even before I was a Democrat, I was a Zionist.” This is the man, one of the Zionist lobby’s most influential stooges in Congress, who introduced House Resolution 1734 which gives President Obama his new orders.
Thoroughly disingenuous, the resolution, which was drafted by AIPAC and in my view is an indication of panic on its part, was approved unanimously by the House of Representatives on 15 December. It
- strongly and unequivocally opposes any attempt to seek recognition of a Palestinian state by the United Nations or other international forums;
- calls upon the Administration to continue its opposition to the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state;
As M.J. Rosenberg predicted (http://america-hijacked.com/2010/12/15/aipacs-palestinian-bashing-bill-rushed-to-floor-today) the Berman bill passed overwhelmingly, actually unanimously, “because that is how things work in a city where policy is driven by campaign contributions – and not just on this issue.” He added: “The only difference between how AIPAC lobbyists dictate U.S. Middle East policy and pretty much every other major lobby is that AIPAC works to advance the interests of a foreign country. In other words, comparisons to the National Rifle Association would only be applicable if the gun owners that the NRA claims to represent lived in, say, Greece. Oh, and NRA-backed bills usually take longer than a day to get to the House floor.
Thoroughly disingenuous, the resolution, which was drafted by AIPAC and in my view is an indication of panic on its part, was approved unanimously by the House of Representatives on 15 December. It
- strongly and unequivocally opposes any attempt to seek recognition of a Palestinian state by the United Nations or other international forums;
- calls upon the Administration to continue its opposition to the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state;
As M.J. Rosenberg predicted (http://america-hijacked.com/2010/12/15/aipacs-palestinian-bashing-bill-rushed-to-floor-today) the Berman bill passed overwhelmingly, actually unanimously, “because that is how things work in a city where policy is driven by campaign contributions – and not just on this issue.” He added: “The only difference between how AIPAC lobbyists dictate U.S. Middle East policy and pretty much every other major lobby is that AIPAC works to advance the interests of a foreign country. In other words, comparisons to the National Rifle Association would only be applicable if the gun owners that the NRA claims to represent lived in, say, Greece. Oh, and NRA-backed bills usually take longer than a day to get to the House floor.
A Tremendous Blow to Obamacare
Earlier this week, Judge Henry Hudson of Virginia drew first blood against Obamacare, ruling that the federal government has no constitutional authority to force individual citizens to buy a bureaucrat-approved health care policy.
How big of blow was it? "A tremendous blow," according to Newt Gingrich, in an exclusive sit-down with Human Events.
“If the federal government cannot require you to carry insurance, you undermine the entire financing structure of the Obama takeover of health-care. And so the [White House] is now faced with a very, very big challenge about whether or not the very core structure of the system works without it.
"In addition, it’s one more body blow that reminds the average American, ‘This thing needs to be repealed.’ ”
Gingrich believes that the House Republicans will repeal Obamacare by “March or April” of next year and send it to the Senate, where chances of repeal are highly, highly unlikely.
GLOBALISTS SAY IT’S THEIR TIME
International financiers are subtly pursuing their goal of global government, under cover of darkness. They plan to keep the world in a recession at least through 2011 so hungry people will accept world rule to avoid starvation. Their efforts are exposed in their own words, during unguarded moments. “If all goes according to plan, the UN Framework Commission Convention on Climate Change will establish a global framework,” the Bilderberg-controlled Washington Post reported from a UN meeting in Cancun, Mexico Dec. 8.
Post publishers have attended every secret Bilderberg meeting since the 1950s, on a promise to report nothing. Since 1954, the Bilderberg group, with the collaboration of the mainstream corporate media, has been meeting behind closed and heavily guarded doors, to make decisions affecting virtually everyone on Earth. “They are ripe for the harvest,” Brazilian climate official Sergio Serra said during the meeting in Mexico, referring to efforts to establish a global department of energy and climate under the UN.
“We know deforestation is a global problem, and the only way to address that is with an international mechanism,” said Rebecca Chacko, attending for the environmental group Conservation International.
“Now we finally have a moment where, if we’re successful, we can move forward.” World government is also being pushed on the “peace front.” At a summit in Lisbon, Portugal, NATO announced it would fight terrorism “around the globe,” as members advocated a world defense ministry under the UN. The White House said this was a “full embrace” of Obama’s views.
Post publishers have attended every secret Bilderberg meeting since the 1950s, on a promise to report nothing. Since 1954, the Bilderberg group, with the collaboration of the mainstream corporate media, has been meeting behind closed and heavily guarded doors, to make decisions affecting virtually everyone on Earth. “They are ripe for the harvest,” Brazilian climate official Sergio Serra said during the meeting in Mexico, referring to efforts to establish a global department of energy and climate under the UN.
“We know deforestation is a global problem, and the only way to address that is with an international mechanism,” said Rebecca Chacko, attending for the environmental group Conservation International.
“Now we finally have a moment where, if we’re successful, we can move forward.” World government is also being pushed on the “peace front.” At a summit in Lisbon, Portugal, NATO announced it would fight terrorism “around the globe,” as members advocated a world defense ministry under the UN. The White House said this was a “full embrace” of Obama’s views.
Prof: Hispanics Should Replace ‘Old White Men’
A UCLA professor has given public speeches in support of the DREAM Act in which he has made inflammatory statements, including the suggestion that Hispanics should replace “old white men” in positions of power and that Republican leaders in the Senate who oppose the immigration bill are racists.
On the UCLA website, Kent Wong is listed as the director of the Center for Labor Research and Education at UCLA, where he teaches Labor Studies and Asian-American Studies.
On Dec. 13, Wong gave a speech at a pro-illegal immigration rally at McArthur Park in Los Angeles in which he endorsed the DREAM Act in racist terms, according to a video first surfaced by Eyeblast.tv.
Toward the end of his speech calling for the DREAM Act to be passed by Congress, Wong proclaimed to the rally, “When that day happens, the young people of the DREAM Act movement will go on to accomplish and do great things with our lives. You will go on to become lawyers, teachers, doctors and members of the U.S. Congress to replace those old white men. (Applause) You are the hope and future of this country. You represent the hope and future of your generation.”
The website of the Center for Labor Research and Education includes as major funders, with donations of $10,000 or more, George Soros’ Open Society Institute and the Tides Advocacy Fund, as well as the city of Los Angeles and the Ford Foundation.
On the UCLA website, Kent Wong is listed as the director of the Center for Labor Research and Education at UCLA, where he teaches Labor Studies and Asian-American Studies.
On Dec. 13, Wong gave a speech at a pro-illegal immigration rally at McArthur Park in Los Angeles in which he endorsed the DREAM Act in racist terms, according to a video first surfaced by Eyeblast.tv.
Toward the end of his speech calling for the DREAM Act to be passed by Congress, Wong proclaimed to the rally, “When that day happens, the young people of the DREAM Act movement will go on to accomplish and do great things with our lives. You will go on to become lawyers, teachers, doctors and members of the U.S. Congress to replace those old white men. (Applause) You are the hope and future of this country. You represent the hope and future of your generation.”
The website of the Center for Labor Research and Education includes as major funders, with donations of $10,000 or more, George Soros’ Open Society Institute and the Tides Advocacy Fund, as well as the city of Los Angeles and the Ford Foundation.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Christmas Story: Mary and Joseph in Palestine, 2010
And thus the child was born, as Joseph watched in awe.
It came to pass that shepherds, returning from their fields, heard the mingled cries of birth and joy and hurried to the stable carrying both their rifles and fresh goat milk, not knowing whether it was friend or foe, Jew or Arab. When they entered the stable and beheld the mother and infant, they put aside their weapons and offered the milk to Mary who thanked them in both Hebrew and Arabic.
And the shepherds were amazed and wondered: Who were these strange people, a poor Jewish couple, who came in peace on a donkey cart inscribed with Arabic letters? The news quickly spread about the strange birth of a Jewish child just outside the Wall in a Palestinian’s stable. Many neighbors entered and beheld Mary, the infant and Joseph.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers, equipped with night vision goggles, reported from their watchtowers overlooking the Palestinian neighborhood, “The Arabs are meeting just outside the Wall, in a stable, by candle light”.
The gates under the watchtowers flew open and armored carriers with bright lights followed by heavily armed solders drove out and surrounded the stable, the assembled villagers and the Palestinian woman’s house. A loud speaker blared, “Come out with your hands up or we’ll shoot.” They all came out from the stable together with Joseph, who stepped forward with his hands stretched out to the sky and spoke, “My wife, Mary cannot comply with your order. She is nursing the baby Jesus”.
It came to pass that shepherds, returning from their fields, heard the mingled cries of birth and joy and hurried to the stable carrying both their rifles and fresh goat milk, not knowing whether it was friend or foe, Jew or Arab. When they entered the stable and beheld the mother and infant, they put aside their weapons and offered the milk to Mary who thanked them in both Hebrew and Arabic.
And the shepherds were amazed and wondered: Who were these strange people, a poor Jewish couple, who came in peace on a donkey cart inscribed with Arabic letters? The news quickly spread about the strange birth of a Jewish child just outside the Wall in a Palestinian’s stable. Many neighbors entered and beheld Mary, the infant and Joseph.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers, equipped with night vision goggles, reported from their watchtowers overlooking the Palestinian neighborhood, “The Arabs are meeting just outside the Wall, in a stable, by candle light”.
The gates under the watchtowers flew open and armored carriers with bright lights followed by heavily armed solders drove out and surrounded the stable, the assembled villagers and the Palestinian woman’s house. A loud speaker blared, “Come out with your hands up or we’ll shoot.” They all came out from the stable together with Joseph, who stepped forward with his hands stretched out to the sky and spoke, “My wife, Mary cannot comply with your order. She is nursing the baby Jesus”.
America's Special Envoy: What the Establishment Media Won’t Tell You About Richard Holbrooke
What they left out is that Richard Holbrooke was as Special Envoy, in a many regards, a war criminal; an exporter of misery and suffering to millions of people.
Over the course of nearly five decades, Holbrooke supported and took part in—often playing quite substantial roles—some of the most horrifying crimes of the latter half of the twentieth century. For six years in the 1960s he worked to advance the brutal U.S. pacification of South Vietnam. In addition to serving as an aide to multiple U.S. ambassadors in the Saigon embassy, Holbrooke worked as a USAID operative in the Mekong Delta. USAID programs provided training for South Vietnamese police, intelligence agents, and death squads to help these U.S.-directed forces ruthlessly terrorize and slaughter hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese peasants in an effort to stop the population from supporting Ho Chi Min and the National Liberation Front (also known as the “Viet Cong”).
USAID also played a significant role in facilitating CIA involvement in “Operation Phoenix”—the infamous program of mass torture and political murder which claimed several tens of thousands of victims. In all, the U.S. and its surrogate forces in Vietnam ended up killing upwards of three to four million human beings throughout the war, including many children. Holbrooke also helped implement this campaign by serving as a high level advisor to then-President Lyndon Johnson. .
In the late 1970s, Holbrooke served as President Jimmy Carter’s Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. The unprovoked Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor, beginning in 1975, was largely a U.S. project designed to maintain traditional U.S. political and economic interests in the region. The U.S. provided Indonesia with upwards of 90 percent of their military hardware and, until 1999, successfully blocked all international efforts in the United Nations to bring about an Indonesian withdrawal from East Timor.
Holbrooke served as the top Carter administration official responsible for U.S. policy in Indonesia and East Timor. On the military end, Holbrooke authorized crucial arms shipments to Indonesia which allowed the invading forces to attack largely undefended, civilian targets. As part of the political campaign to conceal these genocidal atrocities, Holbrooke testified before Congress in 1979, lying to the American people about the mass starvation the U.S.-backed Indonesian forces were imposing on the East Timorese general public. According to sources from the UN, Amnesty International, and the Catholic Church, some 200,000 East Timorese were killed, with hundreds of thousands more tortured and rendered homeless in what amounted to, proportionally, one of the most comprehensive genocides since the Nazi Holocaust.5
Over the course of nearly five decades, Holbrooke supported and took part in—often playing quite substantial roles—some of the most horrifying crimes of the latter half of the twentieth century. For six years in the 1960s he worked to advance the brutal U.S. pacification of South Vietnam. In addition to serving as an aide to multiple U.S. ambassadors in the Saigon embassy, Holbrooke worked as a USAID operative in the Mekong Delta. USAID programs provided training for South Vietnamese police, intelligence agents, and death squads to help these U.S.-directed forces ruthlessly terrorize and slaughter hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese peasants in an effort to stop the population from supporting Ho Chi Min and the National Liberation Front (also known as the “Viet Cong”).
USAID also played a significant role in facilitating CIA involvement in “Operation Phoenix”—the infamous program of mass torture and political murder which claimed several tens of thousands of victims. In all, the U.S. and its surrogate forces in Vietnam ended up killing upwards of three to four million human beings throughout the war, including many children. Holbrooke also helped implement this campaign by serving as a high level advisor to then-President Lyndon Johnson. .
In the late 1970s, Holbrooke served as President Jimmy Carter’s Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. The unprovoked Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor, beginning in 1975, was largely a U.S. project designed to maintain traditional U.S. political and economic interests in the region. The U.S. provided Indonesia with upwards of 90 percent of their military hardware and, until 1999, successfully blocked all international efforts in the United Nations to bring about an Indonesian withdrawal from East Timor.
Holbrooke served as the top Carter administration official responsible for U.S. policy in Indonesia and East Timor. On the military end, Holbrooke authorized crucial arms shipments to Indonesia which allowed the invading forces to attack largely undefended, civilian targets. As part of the political campaign to conceal these genocidal atrocities, Holbrooke testified before Congress in 1979, lying to the American people about the mass starvation the U.S.-backed Indonesian forces were imposing on the East Timorese general public. According to sources from the UN, Amnesty International, and the Catholic Church, some 200,000 East Timorese were killed, with hundreds of thousands more tortured and rendered homeless in what amounted to, proportionally, one of the most comprehensive genocides since the Nazi Holocaust.5
Holbrooke or Milosevic: Who is the Greater Murderer?
The Dayton Peace Accords were presented as a heroic victory for peace extracted by the brilliant Holbrooke from a reluctant Milosevic, who had to be "bombed to the negotiating table" by the United States. In reality, the U.S. government was fully aware that Milosevic was eager for peace in Bosnia to free Serbia from crippling economic sanctions. It was the Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic who wanted to keep the war going, with U.S. military help.
In reality, the U.S. bombed the Serbs in order to get Izetbegovic to the negotiating table. And the agreement reached in the autumn of 1995 was not very different from the agreement reached in March 1992 by the three ethnic groups under European Community auspices, which could have prevented the entire civil war, if it had not been sabotaged by Izetbegovic, who withdrew his agreement with the encouragement of the then U.S. ambassador Warren Zimmermann. In short, far from being the great peacemaker in the Balkans, the United States first encouraged the Muslim side to fight for its goal of a centralized Bosnia, and then sponsored a weakened federated Bosnia – after nearly four years of bloodshed which left the populations bereft and embittered.
The real purpose of all this, as Holbrooke made quite clear in To End a War, was to demonstrate that Europeans could not manage their own vital affairs and that the United States remained the "indispensable nation". His book also made it clear that the Muslim leaders were irritatingly reluctant to end war short of total victory, and that only the readiness of Milosevic to make concessions saved the Dayton talks from failure -- allowing Holbrooke to be proclaimed a hero.
The functional role of the Holbrooke’s diplomacy was to prove that diplomacy, as carried out by Europeans, was bound to fail. His victory was a defeat for diplomacy. The spectacle of bombing plus Dayton was designed to show that only the threat or application of U.S. military might could end conflicts.
In reality, the U.S. bombed the Serbs in order to get Izetbegovic to the negotiating table. And the agreement reached in the autumn of 1995 was not very different from the agreement reached in March 1992 by the three ethnic groups under European Community auspices, which could have prevented the entire civil war, if it had not been sabotaged by Izetbegovic, who withdrew his agreement with the encouragement of the then U.S. ambassador Warren Zimmermann. In short, far from being the great peacemaker in the Balkans, the United States first encouraged the Muslim side to fight for its goal of a centralized Bosnia, and then sponsored a weakened federated Bosnia – after nearly four years of bloodshed which left the populations bereft and embittered.
The real purpose of all this, as Holbrooke made quite clear in To End a War, was to demonstrate that Europeans could not manage their own vital affairs and that the United States remained the "indispensable nation". His book also made it clear that the Muslim leaders were irritatingly reluctant to end war short of total victory, and that only the readiness of Milosevic to make concessions saved the Dayton talks from failure -- allowing Holbrooke to be proclaimed a hero.
The functional role of the Holbrooke’s diplomacy was to prove that diplomacy, as carried out by Europeans, was bound to fail. His victory was a defeat for diplomacy. The spectacle of bombing plus Dayton was designed to show that only the threat or application of U.S. military might could end conflicts.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
The Great Recession vs. The Great Depression
Americans are in a foul mood. They're unhappy with their economic prospects, convinced the country is headed in the wrong direction, upset with the federal government, and equally annoyed at Congress.
Their attitudes are understandable. After the worst economic downturn since the Depression, who wouldn't be this gloomy?
Folks from the Great Depression, apparently. According to a trove of early Gallup surveys compiled by the Roper Center, Americans in the 1930s were not nearly as down on government as we are today. They wanted more, not less, from Washington in the way of services and protection from the private market. Incredibly, despite their much deeper recession, Americans were more optimistic than we are today.
Optimistic 'Socialists' ...
Between the Great Depression and the Great Recession, the United States underwent dramatic technological changes. In the 1930s there was the TVA--but no TV, and, of course, no Internet. More than half of the predominately-male, overwhelmingly-white sample surveyed in a series of polls in 1936-37 by the then-new Gallup organization had average incomes or better. But 46% had no telephone, 43% lacked a car, and 38% still preferred the old black-and-white movie variety to color.
Their attitudes are understandable. After the worst economic downturn since the Depression, who wouldn't be this gloomy?
Folks from the Great Depression, apparently. According to a trove of early Gallup surveys compiled by the Roper Center, Americans in the 1930s were not nearly as down on government as we are today. They wanted more, not less, from Washington in the way of services and protection from the private market. Incredibly, despite their much deeper recession, Americans were more optimistic than we are today.
Optimistic 'Socialists' ...
Between the Great Depression and the Great Recession, the United States underwent dramatic technological changes. In the 1930s there was the TVA--but no TV, and, of course, no Internet. More than half of the predominately-male, overwhelmingly-white sample surveyed in a series of polls in 1936-37 by the then-new Gallup organization had average incomes or better. But 46% had no telephone, 43% lacked a car, and 38% still preferred the old black-and-white movie variety to color.
Obama's Last Card -- Will He Play It?
President Obama ought to have trouble sleeping at night knowing that by allowing Israel to continue its illegal settlement activity on the occupied West Bank he has made himself, and his country, openly complicit in the Zionist state’s defiance of international law. In a different America that ought to be enough to have any president removed from office.
Do I have a picture in my mind of a different America? Yes. In a recent interview with Der Spiegel, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser, said that most Americans are “stunningly ignorant” about the world. By definition a different America would be one in which Americans were aware of the fact that almost everything they have been conditioned to believe about the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel is Zionist propaganda nonsense. (Properly informed Americans would understand, for example, why continued, unconditional White House and Congressional support for the criminal state of Israel is not in America’s own best interests and is, actually, provoking a real and growing threat to them).
My main point comes down to this. Now that he doesn’t have to honour any of the promises Secretary of State Clinton is said to have made to Prime Minister Netanyahu in a desperate (and predictably doomed) effort to persuade him to deliver a 90-day settlement freeze, Obama does have one last card that he could play.
For an Israel that is becoming a pariah state in the view of many people around the world, the promise that mattered most was that Obama would go on doing what all of his predecessors have done – veto any resolution in the Security Council that was not to Israel’s liking.
Do I have a picture in my mind of a different America? Yes. In a recent interview with Der Spiegel, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser, said that most Americans are “stunningly ignorant” about the world. By definition a different America would be one in which Americans were aware of the fact that almost everything they have been conditioned to believe about the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel is Zionist propaganda nonsense. (Properly informed Americans would understand, for example, why continued, unconditional White House and Congressional support for the criminal state of Israel is not in America’s own best interests and is, actually, provoking a real and growing threat to them).
My main point comes down to this. Now that he doesn’t have to honour any of the promises Secretary of State Clinton is said to have made to Prime Minister Netanyahu in a desperate (and predictably doomed) effort to persuade him to deliver a 90-day settlement freeze, Obama does have one last card that he could play.
For an Israel that is becoming a pariah state in the view of many people around the world, the promise that mattered most was that Obama would go on doing what all of his predecessors have done – veto any resolution in the Security Council that was not to Israel’s liking.
Holbrooke’s Legacy
It was under the Clintons, and Holbrooke, that the US first embarked on its post-cold war crusade to inflict righteousness on the world’s peoples and export “democracy” at gunpoint. In a PBS documentary entitled “Give War a Chance,” which tells the story of Holbrooke’s career juxtaposed to that of Admiral Leighton “Snuffy” Smith, who was on the ground in the Balkans as the Clintonites rushed to war, the Admiral tells viewers how the preening Holbrooke screamed that he and his IFOR troops must stop the burning of Sarajevo. As the Bosnian Muslims carried out their program of ethnically cleansing the Bosnian capital, the Serbs set fire to their own homes before they fled, and Holbrooke wanted it stopped. As Admiral Smith recalls:
When Admiral Smith – who described the Bosnian intervention as “the biggest damn mess in the world: absolutely, completely unworkable” – told the Clinton administration that they had run out of Level I targets to bomb, Holbrooke called him a liar. “If we can’t say precisely what we think to the political people,” said Smith to PBS, his face reddening with anger, “that give us the orders, and say, ‘Look, this is not a good idea,’ if we can’t tell them what it’s going to cost in terms of commitment and time, commitment and resources, lives; if we can’t be honest with the politicians and have them accept it as a professional military judgment, we are in a sorry state of affairs.”
Holbrooke, and the Clintons, weren’t interested in anyone’s professional military judgment: they wanted Serb blood. Holbrooke pushed back, hard, and demanded more intrusive and intense bombing raids. Smith told him he didn’t take orders from either Holbrooke or his military aide, Wesley Clark, but from NATO headquarters. Holbrooke went directly to the President, and the rest is some pretty bloody and shameful history.
This ghoulish regime is the legacy of Richard Holbrooke, and, indeed, of the bloody “humanitarian” interventionists of the Clinton era, who are, today, running our foreign policy. Kosovo is a nightmarish society in which human vampires, aided and abetted by the US-installed-and-supported “government,” tear out their victims’ organs and sell them on the open market. During the US-supported war of “liberation,” KLA units captured Serbs, spirited them across the border to Albania, and harvested their organs, the inquiry revealed. Also exposed: “Prime Minister” Thaci is the “boss” at the center of Europe’s vast heroin smuggling trade. Critics of the Balkan intervention long ago identified the KLA as nothing more than a criminal gang, yet this has never been officially acknowledged up until now. Indeed, Carla del Ponte was prevented from investigating the crimes of Thaci and the KLA: the Council of Europe’s inquiry was commissioned when she threw in the towel.
When Admiral Smith – who described the Bosnian intervention as “the biggest damn mess in the world: absolutely, completely unworkable” – told the Clinton administration that they had run out of Level I targets to bomb, Holbrooke called him a liar. “If we can’t say precisely what we think to the political people,” said Smith to PBS, his face reddening with anger, “that give us the orders, and say, ‘Look, this is not a good idea,’ if we can’t tell them what it’s going to cost in terms of commitment and time, commitment and resources, lives; if we can’t be honest with the politicians and have them accept it as a professional military judgment, we are in a sorry state of affairs.”
Holbrooke, and the Clintons, weren’t interested in anyone’s professional military judgment: they wanted Serb blood. Holbrooke pushed back, hard, and demanded more intrusive and intense bombing raids. Smith told him he didn’t take orders from either Holbrooke or his military aide, Wesley Clark, but from NATO headquarters. Holbrooke went directly to the President, and the rest is some pretty bloody and shameful history.
This ghoulish regime is the legacy of Richard Holbrooke, and, indeed, of the bloody “humanitarian” interventionists of the Clinton era, who are, today, running our foreign policy. Kosovo is a nightmarish society in which human vampires, aided and abetted by the US-installed-and-supported “government,” tear out their victims’ organs and sell them on the open market. During the US-supported war of “liberation,” KLA units captured Serbs, spirited them across the border to Albania, and harvested their organs, the inquiry revealed. Also exposed: “Prime Minister” Thaci is the “boss” at the center of Europe’s vast heroin smuggling trade. Critics of the Balkan intervention long ago identified the KLA as nothing more than a criminal gang, yet this has never been officially acknowledged up until now. Indeed, Carla del Ponte was prevented from investigating the crimes of Thaci and the KLA: the Council of Europe’s inquiry was commissioned when she threw in the towel.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Copyright Extortionist Righthaven Sues Drudge: Backed by CFR, Rockefeller, and Monsanto Money
Shady Las Vegas copyright infringement company, Righthaven LLC, seems to be a small-time legal firm using a canned lawsuit to slap down bloggers for copyright infringement for meager settlements. But now they are going after alternative news kingpin and globalist critic Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report.
Righthaven claims that Drudge knowingly misused a Denver Post copyrighted photo of a TSA agent groping the crotch of a male traveler, along with a link to a story about airport security on the Las Vegas Review-Journal website. Righthaven is seeking copyright infringement damages of $150,000 and forfeiture of his domain name.
Drudge Report was instrumental in inciting the recent TSA revolt by repeatedly posting stories that exposed rights abuses by Big Brother, or "Big Sis" when referring to DHS Sec. Janet Napolitano. It seems, this time, Drudge went too far by posting the obvious headline to the groping photo; TSA XXX: Airport Wants 'Opt Out.'
According to the Las Vegas Sun, a newspaper competitor of Las Vegas Review-Journal, these lawsuits are a new type of legal enterprise:
The Review-Journal's copyright enforcement partner, Las Vegas company Righthaven LLC, has sued 98 North American websites and blogsites in federal court in Las Vegas since March -- typically demanding $75,000 in damages and forfeiture of the defendants' website domain names.
Righthaven claims that Drudge knowingly misused a Denver Post copyrighted photo of a TSA agent groping the crotch of a male traveler, along with a link to a story about airport security on the Las Vegas Review-Journal website. Righthaven is seeking copyright infringement damages of $150,000 and forfeiture of his domain name.
Drudge Report was instrumental in inciting the recent TSA revolt by repeatedly posting stories that exposed rights abuses by Big Brother, or "Big Sis" when referring to DHS Sec. Janet Napolitano. It seems, this time, Drudge went too far by posting the obvious headline to the groping photo; TSA XXX: Airport Wants 'Opt Out.'
According to the Las Vegas Sun, a newspaper competitor of Las Vegas Review-Journal, these lawsuits are a new type of legal enterprise:
The Review-Journal's copyright enforcement partner, Las Vegas company Righthaven LLC, has sued 98 North American websites and blogsites in federal court in Las Vegas since March -- typically demanding $75,000 in damages and forfeiture of the defendants' website domain names.
THIS IS JUSTICE?
I’ve been doing quite a lot of reading about the Edgar Steele case lately (the North Idaho murder-for-hire case in which attorney Steele is accused of plotting with and hiring his neighbor Larry Fairfax to kill his wife and her mother). I wouldn’t call it research. Just browsing news reports and blogs along with statements made by his wife Cyndi Steele, the FBI, the Federal prosecuting attorney, judges, and of course the “lead actor” in this mess, would-be car bomber Larry Fairfax (“Larry the plumber;” the Steele’s “hillbilly handyman”).
As a result, I have not only learned some things; I have developed a number of impressions, questions, suspicions, and “reasonable doubts.”
In summary, it seems that the Edgar Steele case is an ongoing gross (and possibly even deliberate?) miscarriage of justice. It looks as though he is being railroaded because of his beliefs, writings, and speeches; and possibly because of investigations he had been conducting that he planned to publish in the near future. And it even seems a reasonable possibility that certain elements of the U.S. Government may have joined Larry Fairfax et al in initiating and carrying out that crime.
It does seem possible that all this is being done at the behest of the Jews that control certain elements of the U.S. Government (ZOG); in collusion with the key Negroes-in-charge: Eric Holder, Attorney General (likely); and President Barack Obama (conceivably and possibly). Hard as it might be to believe, it appears as though these factions of the government jumped on this case when it was initiated by Fairfax (or by Fairfax in collusion with the ADL and/or the FBI) as a way to “get” Steele after they couldn’t find anything else to nail him with.
We may never know the real facts and truth in regard to this case. But it strikes me that what has been lacking up to this point is real, rigorous and intensive, and unbiased investigation of all the elements, and especially of the claims and actions of Larry Fairfax. And here I’m thinking of honest and competent investigation by both the local press (investigative journalism) and by the FBI (the Federal Bureau of Investigation).
As a result, I have not only learned some things; I have developed a number of impressions, questions, suspicions, and “reasonable doubts.”
In summary, it seems that the Edgar Steele case is an ongoing gross (and possibly even deliberate?) miscarriage of justice. It looks as though he is being railroaded because of his beliefs, writings, and speeches; and possibly because of investigations he had been conducting that he planned to publish in the near future. And it even seems a reasonable possibility that certain elements of the U.S. Government may have joined Larry Fairfax et al in initiating and carrying out that crime.
It does seem possible that all this is being done at the behest of the Jews that control certain elements of the U.S. Government (ZOG); in collusion with the key Negroes-in-charge: Eric Holder, Attorney General (likely); and President Barack Obama (conceivably and possibly). Hard as it might be to believe, it appears as though these factions of the government jumped on this case when it was initiated by Fairfax (or by Fairfax in collusion with the ADL and/or the FBI) as a way to “get” Steele after they couldn’t find anything else to nail him with.
We may never know the real facts and truth in regard to this case. But it strikes me that what has been lacking up to this point is real, rigorous and intensive, and unbiased investigation of all the elements, and especially of the claims and actions of Larry Fairfax. And here I’m thinking of honest and competent investigation by both the local press (investigative journalism) and by the FBI (the Federal Bureau of Investigation).
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