Friday, August 31, 2012

Why Americans Must End America’s Self-Generating Wars

The most urgent political challenge to the world today is how to prevent the so-called “pax Americana” from progressively degenerating, like the 19th-century so-called “pax Britannica” before it, into major global warfare. I say “so-called,” because each “pax,” in its final stages, became less and less peaceful, less and less orderly, more and more a naked imposition of belligerent competitive power based on inequality.

To define this prevention of war as an achievable goal may sound pretentious. But the necessary steps to be taken are above all achievable here at home in America. And what is needed is not some radical and untested new policy, but a much-needed realistic reassessment and progressive scaling back of two discredited policies that are themselves new, and demonstrably counterproductive.

I am referring above all to America’s so-called War on Terror. American politics, both foreign and domestic, are being increasingly deformed by a war on terrorism that is counter-productive, producing more terrorists every year than eliminates. It is also profoundly dishonest, in that Washington’s policies actually contribute to the funding and arming of the jihadists that it nominally opposes.

Above all the War on Terror is a self-generating war, because, as many experts have warned, it produces more terrorists than it eliminates. And it has become inextricably combined with America’s earlier self-generating and hopelessly unwinnable war, the so-called War on Drugs.

The two self-generating wars have in effect become one. By launching a War on Drugs in Colombia and Mexico, America has contributed to a parastate of organized terror in Colombia (the so-called AUC, United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) and an even bloodier reign of terror in Mexico (with 50,000 killed in the last six years).1 By launching a War on Terror in Afghanistan in 2001, America has contributed to a doubling of opium production there, making Afghanistan now the source of 90 percent of the world’s heroin and most of the world’s hashish.2

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Corrupt Republicans and Principled Ron Paul

Well, the Republican National Convention is upon us. Time sure has flown. It seems like 2007 was only yesterday when I first started writing about Ron Paul. Back then I held no expectation at all that Ron Paul would receive the Republican Party nomination and wrote mostly about his message of freedom and how important it was. Times have changed. Ron Paul and his message are more popular than ever.

I have to admit, for about two seconds this year I actually felt that Ron Paul and his supporters could pull it off. I actually thought that the Ron Paul campaign knew what it was doing and the Republicans might actually be forced to run a free thinking, principled individual as their candidate rather than an obvious establishment puppet. I thought the Republican candidate just might be the person that was elected by the grassroots of the party rather than selected by the upper echelon of that party. Of course for that to have happened the Republican Party leadership would’ve had to become honest and even *gasp* followed their own rules.

For a time, even though Ron Paul supposedly lost so many primaries, I thought his supporters were really going to be able to pull off the political surprise of the decade by simply following the rules laid down by the Republican Party and taking over the delegate process. After all, we all know elections can be fixed. It is well documented that electronic voting machines can be hacked. Anyone who doesn’t believe this and still thinks that elections in this country are fair, I suggest you check out Bev Harris’ work at Black Box Voting. I’ll believe that voting is fair when we once again have paper ballots counted at the precincts at the end of the night with the general public invited to watch and independent representatives watching alongside representatives from any political party involved.

That said, I was very disappointed with the Ron Paul campaign that they didn’t follow through with demanding investigations when evidence of vote fraud was discovered in Iowa, New Hampshire and other states. I was disappointed that they didn’t make more of a big deal out of winning a plurality in a number of states. I was very disappointed that they gave up so early in the year when there was still so many primaries to be held. I wanted them to stick it out to the end and cause as much of a stir as possible. I wanted as many people as possible exposed to the message of freedom. I wanted there to be a choice of someone other than the Democrat Mitt Romney. I wanted a true Republican candidate, one who believes in the idea of a constitutional republic with a federal government of limited power.

Well I should have known better. That didn’t happen. Barring a miracle, I doubt very much that that’s going to happen. The problem with Ron Paul is that he’s too damn honest. He’s too damn principled. He couldn’t lie to save his life and he’s not about to make any promises he doesn’t plan on keeping. He doesn’t tell you what you want to hear just to get your vote, he explains to you his position and why freedom is the answer. There’s no way the Republican establishment is going to let him or anyone like him get the nomination. There was never any way that was going to happen. They want someone in there that they can control, not some maverick that wants to empower ordinary people.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Monday, August 27, 2012

2012 US Elections: Obamney vs. Rombama

A vote for Obama will bring war with Syria, Iran, and eventually Russia and China. The economy will continue to suffer in order to bolster the interests of off-shore corporate-financier interests, while the collective prospects of Americans continue to whither and blow away. A vote for Romney, however, will also bring war with Syria, Iran, and eventually Russia and China. The economy will also continue to suffer in order to bolster the interests of off-shore corporate-financier interests, while the collective prospects of Americans continue to whither and blow away. Why?

Because the White House is but a public relations front for the corporate-financier interests of Wall Street and London. A change of residence at the White House is no different than say, British Petroleum replacing its spokesman to superficially placate public opinion when in reality the exact same board of directors, overall agenda, and objectives remain firmly in place. Public perception then is managed by, not the primary motivation of, corporate-financier interests.

It is the absolute folly to believe that multi-billion dollar corporate-financier interests would subject their collective fate to the whims of the ignorant, uninformed, and essentially powerless voting masses every four years. Instead, what plays out every four years is theater designed to give the general public the illusion that they have some means of addressing their grievances without actually ever changing the prevailing balance of power in any meaningful way.

The foreign policy of both Obama and Romney is written by the exact same corporate-financier funded think-tanks that have written the script for America's destiny for the last several decades.

Bush = Obama = Romney

As was previously reported, while the corporate media focuses on non-issues, and political pundits accentuate petty political rivalries between the "left" and the "right," a look deeper into presidential cabinets and the authors of domestic and foreign policy reveals just how accurate the equation of "Bush = Obama = Romney" is.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Thursday, August 23, 2012

War Fever As Seen From Iran

Absent the possibility of joining the Curiosity rover on Mars, there's nowhere to hide from the "Bomb Iran" hysteria relentlessly emanating from Tel Aviv and its Washington outposts. Now that even includes third-rate hacks suggesting US President Barack Obama should go in person to Israel to appease the warmongering duo Bibi-Barak [1].

So it's time for something completely different - and totally absent from Western corporate media; sound Iranian minds rationally analyzing what's really going on behind the drums of war - regarding Iran, Turkey, the Arab world and across Eurasia.

Let's start with ambassador Hossein Mousavian, a research scholar at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, a former spokesperson for the Iranian nuclear negotiating team from 2003 to 2005, and the author of The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: A Memoir .

Writing at the Arms Control Association website [2] , Mousavian goes straight to the point; "The history of Iran's nuclear program suggests that the West is inadvertently pushing Iran toward nuclear weapons."

In seven key steps, he outlines how this happened - starting with Iran's "entrance into the nuclear field", owed largely, by the way, to Washington; "In the 1970s, the Shah [of Iran] had ambitious plans for expanding the nuclear program, envisioning 23 nuclear power plants by 1994, with support from the United States."

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

The Destruction of the World Trade Center: Why the Official Account of 911 Cannot Be True

The Collapse of the Twin Towers

Shortly after 9/11, President Bush advised people not to tolerate “outrageous conspiracy theories about the attacks of 11 September” (Bush, 2001).[2] Philip Zelikow, who directed the work of the 9/11 Commission, has likewise warned against “outrageous conspiracy theories” (Hansen, 2005). What do these men mean by this expression? They cannot mean that we should reject all conspiracy theories about 9/11, because the government’s own account is a conspiracy theory, with the conspirators all being members of al-Qaeda. They mean only that we should reject outrageous theories.

But what distinguishes an outrageous theory from a non-outrageous one? This is one of the central questions in the philosophy of science. When confronted by rival theories---let’s say Neo-Darwinian Evolution and Intelligent Design---scientists and philosophers of science ask which theory is better and why. The mark of a good theory is that it can explain, in a coherent way, all or at least most of the relevant facts and is not contradicted by any of them. A bad theory is one that is contradicted by some of the relevant facts. An outrageous theory would be one that is contradicted by virtually all the relevant facts.

With this definition in mind, let us look at the official theory about the Twin Towers, which says that they collapsed because of the combined effect of the impact of the airplanes and the resulting fires. The report put out by FEMA said: “The structural damage sustained by each tower from the impact, combined with the ensuing fires, resulted in the total collapse of each building” (FEMA, 2002).[3] This theory clearly belongs in the category of outrageous theories, because is it is contradicted by virtually all the relevant facts. Although this statement may seem extreme, I will explain why it is not.

No Prior Collapse Induced by Fire

The official theory is rendered implausible by two major problems. The first is the simple fact that fire has never---prior to or after 9/11---caused steel-frame high-rise buildings to collapse. Defenders of the official story seldom if ever mention this simple fact. Indeed, the supposedly definitive report put out by NIST---the National Institute for Standards and Technology (2005)---even implies that fire-induced collapses of large steel-frame buildings are normal events (Hoffman, 2005).[4] Far from being normal, however, such collapses have never occurred, except for the alleged cases of 9/11.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Assange or Corzine?

The United States won’t prosecute Corzine for raiding segregated customer accounts, but will happily convene a Grand Jury in preparation for prosecuting Julian Assange for exposing the truth about war crimes.

From the New York Times:

A criminal investigation into the collapse of the brokerage firm MF Global and the disappearance of about $1 billion in customer money is now heading into its final stage without charges expected against any top executives. After 10 months of stitching together evidence on the firm’s demise, criminal investigators are concluding that chaos and porous risk controls at the firm, rather than fraud, allowed the money to disappear, according to people involved in the case.

Corzine is considering opening a new hedge fund, though the notion that anyone — even a slack-jawed muppet happy to buy whatever Goldman ‘s prop traders want to sell — would seed Corzine money so he can trade or steal it away seems absurd — rather like putting a child molester in charge of a day-care.

But nobody knows how much dirt Corzine has on other Wall Street crooks. Not only may Corzine get away with corzining MF Global’s clients’ funds, he may well end up with a whole raft of seed money to play with from those former colleagues and associates who might prefer he remain silent regarding other indiscretions he may be aware of.

But the issue at hand is the sense that we have entered a phase of exponential criminality and corruption. A slavering crook like Corzine who stole $200 million of clients’ funds can walk free. Meanwhile, a man who exposed evidence of serious war crimes is for that act so keenly wanted by US authorities that Britain has threatened to throw hundreds of years of diplomatic protocol and treaties into the trash and raid the embassy of another sovereign state to deliver him to a power that seems intent not only to criminalise him, but perhaps even to summarily execute him. The Obama administration, of course, has made a habit of summary extrajudicial executions of those that it suspects of terrorism, and the detention and prosecution of whistleblowers. And the ooze of large-scale financial corruption, rate-rigging, theft and fraud goes on unpunished.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Grover Norquist Takes On the War Party

Grover Norquist is a bit of a punching bag for both the Hollywood-DC left and the neoconservative right. On the left, he’s often held up as an example of everything that’s supposedly wrong with the conservative movement and the GOP: his “no tax hike” pledge is excoriated by the Huffingtonpost-MSNBC-TPM axis of Obamaism as typical of “know-nothing” conservatism. On the neocon right, he’s viciously attacked as an “Islamist,” a secret member of the Muslim Brotherhood far more dangerous than, say, Huma Abedin — in part because he’s an influential conservative married to an Arab woman. For both groups, he’s a bit of a Rasputin, with his weekly meetings of Washington-based conservative activists characterized as something between the right-wing equivalent of the Bilderbergs (or is that Bilderbergers?) and Opus Dei.

Now he’s gone and done something bound to induce paroxysms of rage — or disbelief — in members of both groups: he’s denouncing the newly-minted Republican ticket — particularly Paul Ryan and his infamous budget — for refusing to countenance cuts in the military, and he’s doing it in style. In a talk given at the Center for the National Interest (formerly the Nixon Center), he ripped into Ryan for refusing to consider cuts in the military budget.

First, some background: The Budget Control Act, passed in 2011, calls for “sequestration,” i.e. across-the-board cuts in both military and domestic spending in order to (eventually, in theory) balance the federal budget. The usual suspects have been decrying this, especially Republican hawks like Lindsey Graham and the powerful Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who want to increase military spending. Their solution? Close “tax loopholes” and end deductions to avoid sequestration. To our Washington grandees, any income they allow you to keep for yourself is a “loophole,” since they own you, body and soul — and they will close it if the alternative is giving up another war in the Middle East.

Norquist throws down the gauntlet at these spendthrift imperialists: “We can afford to have an adequate national defense which keeps us free and safe and keeps everybody afraid to throw a punch at us, as long as we don’t make some of the decisions that previous administrations have, which is to over extend ourselves overseas and think we can run foreign governments.” Washington can’t give marching orders to its own citizens with much effect, he averred, so why do we think we can do it in faraway Afghanistan?

He takes aim squarely at the Ryan budget, which has been adopted by the House GOP and is now at the center of the presidential campaign, characterizing it as typical of the Graham-McKeon spend-spend-spend mentality, which is an echo of the Bush years. Ryan’s proposed budget would increase military spending by $20 billion and is bereft of cost-cutting reforms. As Norquist put it:

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Monday, August 13, 2012

Global Warlords are the Enemy of Mankind

Wars kill people – the living human beings, destroy humanity of the man enforcing barbarism and cruelty, practically denying all prospects of peace and co-existence. Previous wars of centuries were aimed at annihilation of political and economic enemies but the 21st century conflicts are ready-made recipes not only to eliminate the mankind but also the environment in which human beings survive and the planet Earth that sustains life. Given the strategic know-how and the scientific-technological developments, it is an established fact that any futuristic global warfare will end the very existence of man and humanity on this planet. Wars appear to be the outcome of sinister minds, devilish individual plans and monstrous scheme of things against the very humanity of which theses people are a living part. With massive news media propaganda campaigns and falsification of the facts of human life, common folks and even the intelligent ones do not seem to have the rational understanding of the wars and their consequential impacts on life and the universe. One would have imagined that more knowledgeable people become, more rational world will emerge in the coming ages of rational thinking. Not so, we continued to be occupied with false images and misleading rationale of the global conflicts. Like always, few cynical and mentally unbalanced people plan and wage wars against others, not imagining the end results of their intrigues and conspiracies against life, human rights and dignity and futuristic possibilities for survival on the planet.

Those who plan and wage wars, know what they are engaged in, they are not innocent belligerent or without knowledge. Those who go to farfetched lands to bomb the innocent people, divide and massacre men, women and children, fully understand what they are doing. Perhaps, common people are misled by the warmongers enabling them to sustain their war agendas under false political perceptions and imagery as is the case in the US. The undeniable tv imagery – the massacres of innocent Afghan women and children and innocent victims of the US drone attacks in Pakistan are fast becoming media entertainment and staged opera to the American audience and of the scheme of militarization of the culture. In his article Professor Camillo "Mac" Bica, School of Visual Arts, New York City and an activist of Peace and Justice (“Atrocity and War”, OpenedNews, 4/28/2010) offers a penetrating insight:

“…war is not accessible through the understanding, rationally, intellectually, by watching a film or by reading a book. To "know" war, you have to experience it, live it, feel it in your gut the anxiety, fear, frustration, boredom, hopelessness, despair, anger, rage, etc. In truth, warriors exist in a world totally incomprehensible to those who have never had the misfortune of experiencing the horrors of the battlefield.”

Some scholars argue that wars are planned in a cycle of chauvinistic historical events – every now and then wars are repeated – the “worst time in human history.” Paul Buchheit author of America Wars: Illusions and Realities believes that War or Revolution happen in Every 75 Years. It's Time Again. (Common Dream, June 11, 2012). He thinks of various developmental cycles including the revolution against inequality, French Revolution, time of Great Depression, WW2, and now after: “nearly 75 years after we started World War 2 production, we again feel the agony of a wealth gap expanding, like grotesquely stretched muscle, to intolerable limits. If history repeats itself, we will be part of another revolution of long-subjugated people. Indeed, it has already begun, in Europe and Canada and with the Occupy Movement. The face of plutocracy has changed, but not the consequences. Just before the French Revolution, Paris and London were dismal places for the masses, with islands of unimaginable splendor for aristocrats, who, like the multi-millionaires of today, found it hard to relate to the commoners.”

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Smoking Gun: The HAARP and Chemtrails Connection

Located on an United States Air Force site near Gakona, Alaska, the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Project (HAARP) is the world's largest and most functional ionospheric heater. Construction began in 1993. Today, HAARP can generate super high powered beams of directed energy. HAARP is designed to shoot these energy beams 200 kilometers up into the sky; affecting an area known as earth's ionosphere. In doing this, HAARP can perform a number of functions.

The known uses of HAARP are: weather modification, power beaming, earth tomography (mapping of our planet's interior), Star Wars-type defense capabilities, enhanced communications, communication disruptions and mind control. For an in-depth discussion about what HAARP does and how it does it, you must read the 1995 book Angels Don't Play this HAARP by Dr. Nick Begich and journalist Jeane Manning. You can freely access a searchable .pdf here: http://freedomfchs.com/adpthaarp.pdf

Although lesser ionospheric heaters do not generate energy beams as powerful or possess the same functionality as HAARP, similar facilities are located around the world. Along with a smaller facility located near Fairbanks, Alaska, other ionospheric heater locations include: Puerto Rico, Norway, Russia, Tajikistan, Peru and the Middle East. The latest word is that Russia, China and the United States have set up HAARP-like facilities in Antarctica. (Source)

In order to increase functionality and effectiveness, ionospheric heaters are used in combination.

The HAARP website explains the differences between HAARP and other ionospheric heaters like this, "HAARP is unique to most existing facilities due to the combination of a research tool which provides electronic beam steering, wide frequency coverage and high effective radiated power collocated with a diverse suite of scientific observational instruments." HAARP can be remotely operated. HAARP employs technology originally envisioned and demonstrated by American inventor Nikola Tesla

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Should Obama & Congress Be Arrested Under The NDAA?

Let’s ask the question here: Should Barack Obama and the Congress be arrested and sent to Gitmo for violating the NDAA. After all the Congress passed it and Barack Obama signed it. I’m sure much of you believe that more than that should happen and it wouldn’t just be dependent upon the NDAA, but does what happened last week indicate that such persons as Barack Obama, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain should be wearing and orange jump suit an some leg irons soon?

Understand something, Congress passes some 55,000 pages a year in new laws! Yet, for the most part they never read one page of them. They passed the NDAA into law. What’s worse is that GOP presumptive nominee Mitt Romney said that he supported NDAA as written, thus withholding the rights of citizens to due process, under the Constitution, because he says so.

The NDAA text affirms the President’s authority to detain, via the Armed Forces, any person,

“who was part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,” and anyone who commits a “belligerent act” against the U.S. or its coalition allies, under the law of war, “without trial, until the end of the hostilities authorized by the [AUMF].”

The text also authorizes trial by military tribunal, or

“transfer to the custody or control of the person’s country of origin,” or transfer to “any other foreign country, or any other foreign entity.”

Friday, August 3, 2012

They Really Do Want To Implant Microchips Into Your Brain

Are you ready to have a microchip implanted into your brain? That might not sound very appealing to you at this point, but this is exactly what the big pharmaceutical companies and the big technology companies have planned for our future.

They are pumping millions of dollars into researching "cutting edge" technologies that will enable implantable microchips to greatly "enhance" our health and our lives. Of course nobody is going to force you to have a microchip implanted into your brain when they are first introduced.

Initially, brain implants will be marketed as "revolutionary breakthroughs" that can cure chronic diseases and that can enable the disabled to live normal lives. When the "benefits" of such technology are demonstrated to the general public, soon most people will want to become "super-abled". Just imagine the hype that will surround these implants when people discover that you can get rid of your extra weight in a matter of days or that you can download an entire college course into your memory in just a matter of hours.

The possibilities for this kind of technology are endless, and it is just a matter of time before having microchips implanted into your brain is considered to be quite common. What was once science fiction is rapidly becoming reality, and it is going to change the world forever.

But aren't there some very serious potential downsides to having microchips implanted into our brains?

Of course there are.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Nothing Succeeds Like ‘Success’

The anti-interventionist movement, if we can refer to such an amorphous creature, is at a crossroads at the start of this election season. On the left, the remnants of the antiwar movement have been dispersed and absorbed into the Democratic party, where they have become foot soldiers for Obama — a President who has taken up the foreign policy of his immediate predecessor and injected it with some pretty strong steroids. Left-wing antiwar activism has almost disappeared entirely, except for the marginal protests of a few Marxist-Leninist grouplets. Indeed, some on the left are even jumping on the interventionist bandwagon,claiming the Western-backed Syrian rebels are really Marxist “revolutionaries,” and not Osama bin Laden-wannabees.

On the right, the only significant anti-interventionist mass movement in decades, the Ron Paul campaign, has been bushwhacked by the Romneyites, who have taken harsh administrative measures against Paul’s supporters and outright stolen a good number of their delegates to the Republican national convention, ensuring that the Paulians will be kept in a well-guarded corral in Tampa.

Ron Paul’s campaign has been a lodestar for anti-interventionists of the left as well as those on the right: it has inspired us, heartened us, and given us that most essential fuel — hope. Now it is giving us a lesson in how the political system in our “democratic” country really works.

The two-party system is playing the role it was designed for: to keep the national discourse within “acceptable” bounds, and make sure nothing too “radical” is presented to the American public for their consideration. Aside from domestic issues, what this means is that our foreign policy of perpetual war is not up for debate: Romney’s straining to define some significant difference between himself and the administration on, say, Afghanistan, or Syria, underscores this filtering process at work.

By privileging two state-sanctioned “parties,” the Democrats and the Republicans, with automatic ballot status and government subsidies, the political Establishment has rigged the game, and nothing proves this better than the experience of the Ron Paul campaign in the GOP this past primary season. The Paulians played by the rules: they organized at the grassroots level and got their people to the various local and state conventions, where the real delegate selection process took place. Highly organized, and dedicated to their candidate and their cause, the Paulians showed up in record numbers — and the Republican party bosses freaked out.