Thursday, December 01, 2011
War on drugs is a hoax: US admits to guarding, assisting lucrative Afghan opium trade
Ethan Huff
Infowars.com
December 1, 2011
Afghanistan is, by far, the largest grower and exporter of opium in the world today, cultivating a 92 percent market share of the global opium trade. But what may shock many is the fact that the US military has been specifically tasked with guarding Afghan poppy fields, from which opium is derived, in order to protect this multibillion dollar industry that enriches Wall Street, the CIA, MI6, and various other groups that profit big time from this illicit drug trade scheme.
Prior to the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Afghanistan was hardly even a world player in growing poppy, which is used to produce both illegal heroin and pharmaceutical-grade morphine. In fact, the Taliban had been actively destroying poppy fields as part of an effort to rid the country of this harmful plant, as was reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on February 16, 2001, in a piece entitled, Nation’s opium production virtually wiped out (http://news.google.com/newspapers?n…).
But after 9/11, the US military-industrial complex quickly invaded Afghanistan and began facilitating the reinstatement of the country’s poppy industry. According to the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP), opium cultivation increased by 657 percent in 2002 after the US military invaded the country under the direction of then-President George W. Bush (http://www.infowars.com/fox-news-ma…).
CIA responsible for reinstating opium industry in Afghanistan after 9/11
More recently, The New York Times (NYT) reported that the brother of current Afghan President Hamid Karzai had actually been on the payroll of the CIA for at least eight years prior to this information going public in 2009. Ahmed Wali Karzai was a crucial player in reinstating the country’s opium drug trade, known as Golden Crescent, and the CIA had been financing the endeavor behind the scenes (http://www.infowars.com/ny-times-af…).
“The Golden Crescent drug trade, launched by the CIA in the early 1980s, continues to be protected by US intelligence, in liaison with NATO occupation forces and the British military,” wrote Prof. Michel Chossudovsky in a 2007 report, before it was revealed that Ahmed Wali Karzai was on the CIA payroll. “The proceeds of this lucrative multibillion dollar contraband are deposited in Western banks. Almost the totality of revenues accrue to corporate interests and criminal syndicates outside Afghanistan” (http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/A…).
But the mainstream media has been peddling a different story to the American public. FOX News, for instance, aired a propaganda piece back in 2010 claiming that military personnel are having to protect the Afghan poppy fields, rather than destroy them, in order to keep the locals happy and to avoid a potential “security risk” — and FOX News reporter Geraldo Rivera can be heard blatantly lying about poppy farmers being financially supported by the Taliban, rather than the CIA and other foreign interests.
So while tens of thousands of Americans continue to be harmed or killed every year by overdoses from drugs originating from this illicit opium trade, and while cultivation of innocuous crops like marijuana and hemp remains illegal in the US, the American military is actively guarding the very poppy fields in Afghanistan that fuel the global drug trade. Something is terribly wrong with this picture.
This article originally appeared at Natural News.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
U.S. Invented Soviet Threat
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
September 29, 2011
According to former CIA agents and historians participating in a forum held at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, in the early 1960s the U.S. government invented the so-called “Missile Gap” and wildly over-estimated the number of ICBMs the Soviet Union had.
How many ICBMs did the Soviets actually have? Four, according to declassified documents.
The Eisenhower administration used aerial reconnaissance and imaging satellites like the Corona Satellite to discover that the Soviets did not have the advanced technology to threaten the U.S.
As a growing number of historians have realized for years, the so-called Cold War was largely an illusion – known as “policy by press release” – invented by the military industrial complex, the same folks who are selling us new wars and conjured-up threats from the likes of al-Qaeda and now the so-called Haqqani network.
“The study of the Missile Gap period is especially relevant because it relates to today’s situation in Iraq, North Korea, and Iran, said historian and author Fred Kaplan and Timothy Naftali, director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum and a former Harvard student,” writes Laya Anasu for The Crimson.
The invented Missile Gap – an extension of the supposed Bomber Gap – is part of a larger reality that we never hear about and is not revealed in most history books: the entire Soviet threat was invented by Wall Street and the international bankers.
In Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development 1945 to 1965 written by the late Antony Sutton, we discover that if not for a massive transfer of technology and money to the Bolsheviks in the 1920s and later, Russia would have remained an isolated and backwards rural society. Sutton drew his conclusions after reviewing State Department documents.
Antony Sutton: The Best Enemies Money Can Buy.
“Soviet exports in the late sixties were still those of a backward, underdeveloped country. They consisted chiefly of raw materials and semi-manufactured goods,” Sutton writes in the conclusion of his trilogy. “When manufactured goods were exported they were simple machine tools and vehicles based on Western designs, and they were exported to underdeveloped areas,” he writes.
And yet we were expected to believe at the time that the Soviet Union had developed and manufactured a burgeoning arsenal of sophisticated nuclear weapons.
“In the Bolshevik Revolution we see many of the same old faces that were responsible for creating the Federal Reserve System, initiating the graduated income tax, setting up the tax-free foundations and pushing us into WWI,” writes Gary Allen.
It was “a tiny oligarchical clique at the top” that created the Soviet Union, not because the elite are communists, but because communism is “a method to consolidate and control the wealth” and ultimately build ”an all-powerful world, socialist super-state,” a state we are now beginning to see as the bankers take down the global economy.
We need to keep this in mind as the elite, through their academics and corporate media, try to sell us new threats, for instance the Haqqani terror network recently pushed by the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, as he lectured the Senate Armed Services Committee last week.
The corporate media reports that Haqqani is a veritable arm of Pakistan’s ISI, but what they don’t tell you is that the ISI is a creation of British intelligence – shepherded by Major General Walter Joseph Cawthorn, working for MI-6 – and the terror organizations now supposedly threatening the United States (and subsequently replacing the facile threat of the Soviet Union) were created through a collaboration between the ISI and the CIA, beginning in the early 1980s, a fact admitted by none other than the New York Times and Zbigniew Brzezinski.
The elite invent scary threats and push them off on us, knowing that we will usually take the bait, as the mass hysteria – and curtailment of our liberties – demonstrated after we were sold the fairy tale that a gaggle of Muslim cave dwellers made NORAD stand down and waved a magic wand that suspended the laws of physics of September 11, 2011.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
9/11 Came From Above, Not From Below
Rand Clifford
Activist Post
September 21, 2011
An innocent bystander exposed to mainstream corporate media (CorpoMedia) during the lead-up to 9/11/11 would likely conclude that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe that nineteen Arab boys armed with box cutters achieved the horrendous destruction of 9/11/01 despite the best efforts of the entire American security apparatus.
Innocent faith in the dignity of American leadership might shield the bystander from knowing that, despite successful suicide missions, many of those Arab boys are alive and well. Faith strong enough could also shield them from knowing that a scientific opinion poll taken in October of 2006 by the New York Times/CBS News revealed that 84% of American do not believe the official government explanation of the September 11, 2001 “terror attacks” (apparently, They soon put a damper on any more independent polls).
Blind faith might render the bystander clueless about the whole diabolical nightmare that set in motion “the long war” of greed trickling down from the pinnacles of “humanity,” rather than hatred bubbling up from below.
By allowing Them to get away with 9/11, have we virtually guaranteed another, possibly even more fiendish false flag “terrorist attack”? As George W. Bush said, “Fool me once, shame on…shame on you…you fool me—can’t get fooled again.” Whatever he really meant, the bottom line seems to be: We’re begging to be fooled, again.
Arguably, it might seem that the Bush crime family has done more damage to the USA—at least more damage to the commonwealth, or common good of America—than any other agent of damage. George H. W. Bush described with uncharacteristic eloquence the malignant mantra: “The continuous consolidation of wealth and power into higher, tighter and righter hands.”
But the Bushes, despite their tenacious and smarmy inhumanity are way down in the bush leagues compared to the owners of the ultimate—yes, the highest, tightest and rightest hands. They, you might say, have the world in their hands.
Who is Them…Who are They?
They have been around a long time…as long as “money”.
President Woodrow Wilson touched on who They are:
Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States—in the fields of commerce and manufacturing—are afraid of somebody. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
President Wilson again:
A great industrial nation is controlled by it’s system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the world—no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.
Of course They are masters of low profile, with a footprint not easy to identify because it’s so huge.
They are somebody to whom this quote by Nelson Rockefeller really means something:
The secret to success is to own nothing, but control everything.
But, well, control often demands ownership. And They are the ultimate owners of the “Federal Reserve” as well as Earth’s other private “central banks” currently bleeding virtually every nation. In the words of Niall Ferguson (from The House of Rothschild):
There are now only 5 nations on the world left without a Rothschild controlled central bank: Iran; North Korea; Sudan; Cuba; and Libya.”
They are who benefited most from America’s recent $23.7 trillion bankster bailout, and who keep so many gullible millions believing it was only $800 billion. More on Bankula in a moment.
America’s president is someone They allow to be president, as They allowed Bush Junior two terms, and will Probably allow Obama two terms—but hang on, 2012 might seem like a close one.
And if a president gets headstrong enough to imagine he might actually do something about private “central bank” bloodsucking, They assassinate them—even their brother, if need be.
Mick Jagger sang, in the Rolling Stone’s song Sympathy For The Devil: “I shout it out, who killed the Kennedys? When after all, it was you and me.”
Brilliant, because after all, who’s most to blame for letting Them amass ever greater power year after year? The same timid, faithful, sheepish you’s and me’s, generation after generation. And it wasn’t just Kennedy; see what all four assassinated US presidents had in common regarding private “central banking”.
They decide what will be “news”—and perhaps more importantly, what will not be news. Their seamless “neural neutralizer” network is already tightening its tentacles throughout the Internet, choking off the People’s final access to widespread truth. But soon, it might not matter….
Martial Law
Bankster bailouts…the last round of unprecedented bloodletting did nothing about the core problems, simply postponed criticality. Well, the sun is going down, and Bankula, Prince of Darkness, needs another fix; endless casino greed to cover mountains of toxic waste on the books. Problem is, the People have been bled so much already they are pasty, really watching their throats, and unlikely to gush more blood unless the scat is scared out of them, again. Well, perhaps you’ve noticed that They have increased their softening-up of us lately, serving more heaping portions of al Qaeda-flavored “…credible, though unconfirmed” reports of impending “terror attacks”.
Evidence seems to be mounting that They will pull off another 9/11—satanic enough this time for declaration of martial law to “…protect public safety.” But one might wonder, ten years after 9/11 and still no justice for Them, only reward, what good is evidence?
They pulled off 9/11 right in our faces. All the evidence—what happened before our eyes directly contradicts the “official story”. Can you think of ANY evidence that actually supports the “official story”? Ever notice how the less someone knows about what actually happened on 9/11 the more ardently they support the “official story”…and vice versa?
Shrill CorpoMedia talking heads jabbering about things they know nothing about, raving “conspiracy theory!” and spewing ad hominem attacks at “truthers”—that is NOT evidence.
Larry Silverstein, the New York real estate magnate who became the WTC leaseholder several months before 9/11 even admitted in a PBS documentary that “…they made the decision to pull” WTC 7, and they “…watched the building collapse” (more than twenty minutes after the BBC reported on a live feed that WTC 7 had already collapsed)!
WTC 7, a rock-solid 47-story steel-frame building was made ready to “pull” before 9/11. Why? Wouldn’t a discerning mind consider this fact irrefutable evidence of foreknowledge?
Foreknowledge…from certain special people being warned not to fly on 9/11 to the “lucky joke” that saved all Odigo employees, to put options on airline stocks, foreknowledge is very detailed and widespread. And rigging WTC 7 to be pulled before 9/11 is as solid as it gets—especially with Silverstein’s “confession”. Foreknowledge is what blows the “official story” to smithereens since the entire fairytale is based on 9/11 being a surprise attack.
To say the least, evidence of foreknowledge of 9/11 has such extensive scope and depth it’s hard to keep track of it all. Foreknowledge is there for all to see…or choose not to see….
While Silverstein profited enormously, check out who benefited most from official documentation destroyed by the pulling of WTC 7.(12) Yes, ultimately, it was Them. But of course They have done a superlative job of ensuring that most Americans who might actually believe the “official story” have never even heard of WTC 7; They’re good at that, and frankly, so are Americans.
Despite decently trustworthy polls and other indicators, the whole recent 9/11/11 pageant of propaganda and deceit was a spectacle predicated not only on the illusion that very few people question the “official story”, but that anyone one who does is a rabid lunatic needing to be waterboarded until confessing that they are terrorists. In all, it was a fantastically transparent example of just how far removed from reality CorpoMedia has become, as well as an example of the Prime Directive of CorpoMedia as a vehicle not to disseminate information, but to tell Americans strictly, exactly, what They want Americans to believe—truth be damned. Also, the sheer power of distraction, indirection and misdirection is immense and They use it shamelessly.
The truth…9/11 is a cancer metastasizing for ten years; a cancer that, if left untreated will consume us all. Until an actual, thorough investigation, as with most major crimes, instead of a simple whitewash, as with 9/11—until a genuine truth-seeking, “official” exposé, 9/11 will remain a horrible, lethal precedent.
How many people do you know who think for themselves, and, believe the “official story”? How many of them do you think actually know the official story, or at least the latest version of it?
If you think it’s far-fetched to believe They might pull off false flag evil even more sinister than 9/11 just for another round of massive record-breaking upward transfer of wealth, please learn as much as you can about what actually happened on 9/11—what all of the evidence says (at least evidence They weren’t able to have quickly destroyed). And, well, there is another reason…one even older than money….
War
Perpetual war gets difficult to justify, or even explain, without periodic, ever-increasing doses of fear.
9/11 ushered in the Global War on Terror…continuous war without a real adversary that, in the words of Dick Cheney, “Will likely last beyond our lifetimes.”
The war with no possibility of ever being won because there is nobody to surrender. Permanent war. Nothing produces more debt (profit) for Them, than war. Who wins a war became largely irrelevant after They started profiting from funding (indebting) both sides (oh, that magic of compound interest!). Permanent war is Their ticket to final total consolidation of Their control.
Remember that quaint old notion of peace? For Them, peace is simply a profit opportunity lost.
And it hardly matters who the new false flag atrocity is blamed on…Iran, Syria, Pakistan…the only thing that really matters is more war. War is job one.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus used force only one time.
At least the only record we have of Him using force: Jesus used a whip to drive the “money changers” from the temple (John 2:14-17). If our temple, Earth, is to continue supporting intelligent life, We!…all of us except Them, must follow the example set for us by Jesus.
For splendid reading about Them, please see The History of Money.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Sunday, September 04, 2011
Saturday, August 13, 2011
“Kids for cash” judge sentenced to 28 years in prison
A former juvenile court judge in Luzerne County, Pa., who accepted nearly $1 million to send children to for-profit detention centers has been sentenced to 28 years in prison.
News Desk August 11, 2011 20:56
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A former juvenile court judge in Luzerne County, Pa., who accepted nearly $1 million to send juveniles to for-profit detention centers has been sentenced to 28 years in prison. The court also ordered the former judge, Mark Ciavarella Jr., to pay $1.17 million in restitution.
In what became known as the “kids for cash” scandal, Ciavarella and another former judge, Michael Conahan, received payments from the owner and builder of two privately-run juvenile detention facilities to close down the county’s own juvenile detention center and direct juvenile offenders to the private facilities, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
An investigation found that thousands of juveniles were shipped to the private centers on minor or questionable charges, the Associated Press reports. Half of the children who appeared before Ciavarella were not represented by a lawyer and were never advised of their right to counsel. Of those unrepresented children, up to 60 percent were ordered by Ciavarella to serve time at a detention facility. The more children they housed, the more profit the centers made.
In 2009, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court directed that all adjudications involving the roughly 4,000 children who appeared before Ciavarella between 2003 and 2008 be vacated and their records expunged.
In February, a federal court in Scranton, Pa., convicted Ciavarella of 12 charges, including racketeering conspiracy, filing false tax returns and money laundering.
"Mr. Ciavarella abused his position of trust and inflicted a deep and lasting wound on the community he vowed to service," U.S. Attorney Peter Smith said following the sentencing on Thursday, Reuters reports.
Ciavarella has insisted that he never accepted a bribe but only a finder’s fee for introducing the owner of the detention center business to a builder who was later awarded the contract to build the juvenile centers, the Christian Science Monitor reports. "Never took a dime to send a kid anywhere.... This case was about extortions and kickbacks, not about 'kids for cash,’ ” Ciavarella said after the verdict in February, according to the AP.
Conahan pleaded guilty last year to a single count of racketeering and is awaiting sentencing.
The U.S. Attorney's office said more than 30 local and state government officials and contractors have been convicted or are awaiting trial in the case, Reuters reports.
Friday, August 12, 2011
America: “A Parasite On The World”
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com
Aug 12, 2011
If Russian prime minister Putin’s recent description of America as “a parasite on the world” were reported by the US media, little doubt that most Americans would be infuriated. We are the virtuous people. Without us good guys to police the world there would be mayhem and wars everywhere, not merely the ones we started in the Middle East, Asia, and North Africa. Without the American white hats people everywhere would be starving and dying from natural disasters. It is us chosen ones who provide the rescue operations and good deeds. How dare the former KGB monster to slander our country!
Is it merely a coincidence that on August 11 the Swiss announced that they were discarding their monetary constitution that has prevented inflation in Switzerland and that has made their currency a safe haven for people everywhere who desired to protect their wealth, both small and large, from the predatory inflation practices of their own governments? Or is the Swiss announcement a result of America’s financial irresponsibility, the behavior of a parasite?
The Swiss said that they are forced to violate their monetary constitution, because the irresponsible practices of the United States and European Union monetary authorities are driving so many dollars and euros into Swiss francs that the franc has appreciated to astronomical heights and is threatening Switzerland with the collapse of their export markets and Gross Domestic Product.
The EU says it has no choice but to bail out its private banks as that is the policy of Washington, DC, and that it must print euros in order to bail out the banks. This policy is in violation of the charter of the European Central Bank, but what do rules and laws mean in today’s world? Nothing whatsoever.
Obviously, Washington is threatening the world not merely with war but also with inflation.
After announcing a massive printing of Swiss francs to absorb the inflow of dollars and euros so that the exchange value of the franc would not rise further, the Swiss government announced that it would peg its franc to the euro. That means that the Swiss will defend the pegged rate of exchange by printing enough francs to offset the inflows of euros. I think that the Swiss chose the euro as the peg over the US dollar because the majority of Swiss exports are to Europe rather than to the US.
Years ago China pegged its yuan to the US dollar, not to protect its currency from rising as a result of flight from the dollar, but in order to demonstrate that the money of what was seen as a questionable communist currency was “as good as the US dollar.”
Not long ago China was forced off the fixed peg by the amount of Chinese money creation necessary to maintain the peg. China substituted a “moving peg” that allows the Chinese currency to slowly appreciate against the dollar. The Chinese currency is rising as the dollar falls, but the “floating peg” is behind events. Consequently, China’s currency is over-valued with regard to the “superpower” dollar, and China is importing inflation by having to create yuan in order to maintain the floating peg as the dollar is declining faster than the peg.
Oil producing countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar have their currencies in a fixed peg to the dollar. If the dollar depreciates too much in currency markets, the price of oil tends to go up. In other words, oil producers can compensate for US dollar devaluation by hiking the oil price of their main export.
So, we can begin to see what Putin means. If the Americans are irresponsible with their monetary policy, if American banks have loans and credit default swaps to threatened European banks that require bailouts from the European Central Bank in order to protect the US banks as well as the solvency of the European private banks, if the price of oil, which is priced in dollars, goes up to the rest of the world because of US monetary irresponsibility, the entire world suffers from the Americans’ inability or unwillingness to put their house in order.
If anything, Putin understated the burden that America is on the world.
How much longer will the world put up with “the virtuous nation?”
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously an editor for the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Anonymous Could Unleash “Literally Explosive” Material on Bohemian Grove
Hacking collective targets secretive power brokers as part of “biggest day” in group’s history
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
The hackers’ collective Anonymous may have obtained “literally explosive” information concerning Bohemian Grove, an annual gathering of power brokers from the US and Europe set to meet this week in California, which many see as a nefarious avenue through which elitists secretly manipulate world affairs.
Bohemian Grove is a privately owned 2,700 acre compound in Monte Rio, California surrounded by giant old-growth redwood trees. Once a year it plays host to a bizarre confab attended by some of the most powerful people in the world, including many US politicians and government officials, during which participants embroil themselves in a heady mixture of plutocratic plotting and occult pagan ritual ceremonies.
The Anonymous hacking group, which has already announced its intention to occupy the entrance to the Bohemian Grove compound as a protest against the group’s secrecy, may also be about to leak a whole treasure trove of information about the organization as part of what has been dubbed “the biggest day in Anonymous’s history”.
As part of a series of hacks conducted to protest the treatment of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, to whom Anonymous has attached itself, the collective says it is about to unleash “literally explosive” material on a number of organizations, including the London Metropolitan Police and other agencies connected to the UK judicial system.
The hacks are timed to coincide with Assange’s appeal hearing against extradition, which begins today.
According to a report in the Guardian, one of the targets of the hacks could well be the Bohemian Grove club.
“Speculation centres around material claimed to have been obtained last week from contractors relating to security and secrecy of “former world leaders”, or plans to target a senior leaders’ retreat at Bohemian Grove, California,” write the Guardian’s James Ball and Charles Arthur.
Any such leak would be devastating for Bohemian Grove organizers, and could even disrupt activities at the encampment planned for the next fortnight.
Stock up with Fresh Food that lasts with eFoodsDirect (Ad)
Former Secretaries of State George Shultz and James Baker are set to give lakeside talks at the event this year, which begins Friday and runs for the next two weeks. But the details of what they say will not be covered by any media outlet, the meeting is secret and any uninvited guests are hastily dealt with by security guards and police.
Alex Jones made history in 2000 when he became the first journalist to capture on video the ‘creation of care’ ceremony, where Grove members dressed in Eyes Wide Shut-style hooded capes make a mock child sacrifice to Moloch, the pagan owl god, represented as a 50 foot statue carved out of a hollowed redwood tree.
Although Matt Oggero, the club’s general manager, told the Press Democrat this week that Bohemian Grove is merely “a group of guys out in the woods having a good time,” Presidents Nixon and Reagan both attended the elitist get-together before they captured the Oval Office. George W. Bush was also introduced to Grove power brokers in 1995 by his father five years before becoming President.
Nixon infamously later described the encampment as the “most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine,” perhaps in reference to the fact that male prostitutes and porn stars are routinely transported to the facility to “serve the moguls,” as the New York Post reported in 2004. Few women are allowed to work at the camp and those that do are prevented from accessing many areas of the site. Young men of high school and college age make up most of the temporary employees hired by Grove organizers.
Although the establishment media routinely claims the event is little more than a holiday camp, in 1942 it was the setting for the birthplace of the Manhattan Project, which led to the creation of the atomic bomb, a story often retold by Grove members who are proud of the fact that the most important scientific development of the 20th century was conceived there.
Watch the video below in which Anonymous announces its attention to protest the secrecy surrounding Bohemian Grove by occupying the entrance to the compound.
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
The hackers’ collective Anonymous may have obtained “literally explosive” information concerning Bohemian Grove, an annual gathering of power brokers from the US and Europe set to meet this week in California, which many see as a nefarious avenue through which elitists secretly manipulate world affairs.
Bohemian Grove is a privately owned 2,700 acre compound in Monte Rio, California surrounded by giant old-growth redwood trees. Once a year it plays host to a bizarre confab attended by some of the most powerful people in the world, including many US politicians and government officials, during which participants embroil themselves in a heady mixture of plutocratic plotting and occult pagan ritual ceremonies.
The Anonymous hacking group, which has already announced its intention to occupy the entrance to the Bohemian Grove compound as a protest against the group’s secrecy, may also be about to leak a whole treasure trove of information about the organization as part of what has been dubbed “the biggest day in Anonymous’s history”.
As part of a series of hacks conducted to protest the treatment of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, to whom Anonymous has attached itself, the collective says it is about to unleash “literally explosive” material on a number of organizations, including the London Metropolitan Police and other agencies connected to the UK judicial system.
The hacks are timed to coincide with Assange’s appeal hearing against extradition, which begins today.
According to a report in the Guardian, one of the targets of the hacks could well be the Bohemian Grove club.
“Speculation centres around material claimed to have been obtained last week from contractors relating to security and secrecy of “former world leaders”, or plans to target a senior leaders’ retreat at Bohemian Grove, California,” write the Guardian’s James Ball and Charles Arthur.
Any such leak would be devastating for Bohemian Grove organizers, and could even disrupt activities at the encampment planned for the next fortnight.
Stock up with Fresh Food that lasts with eFoodsDirect (Ad)
Former Secretaries of State George Shultz and James Baker are set to give lakeside talks at the event this year, which begins Friday and runs for the next two weeks. But the details of what they say will not be covered by any media outlet, the meeting is secret and any uninvited guests are hastily dealt with by security guards and police.
Alex Jones made history in 2000 when he became the first journalist to capture on video the ‘creation of care’ ceremony, where Grove members dressed in Eyes Wide Shut-style hooded capes make a mock child sacrifice to Moloch, the pagan owl god, represented as a 50 foot statue carved out of a hollowed redwood tree.
Although Matt Oggero, the club’s general manager, told the Press Democrat this week that Bohemian Grove is merely “a group of guys out in the woods having a good time,” Presidents Nixon and Reagan both attended the elitist get-together before they captured the Oval Office. George W. Bush was also introduced to Grove power brokers in 1995 by his father five years before becoming President.
Nixon infamously later described the encampment as the “most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine,” perhaps in reference to the fact that male prostitutes and porn stars are routinely transported to the facility to “serve the moguls,” as the New York Post reported in 2004. Few women are allowed to work at the camp and those that do are prevented from accessing many areas of the site. Young men of high school and college age make up most of the temporary employees hired by Grove organizers.
Although the establishment media routinely claims the event is little more than a holiday camp, in 1942 it was the setting for the birthplace of the Manhattan Project, which led to the creation of the atomic bomb, a story often retold by Grove members who are proud of the fact that the most important scientific development of the 20th century was conceived there.
Watch the video below in which Anonymous announces its attention to protest the secrecy surrounding Bohemian Grove by occupying the entrance to the compound.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Obama’s War on Libya: A Constitutional View
Michael Boldin
Tenth Amendment Center
March 25, 2011
With military action taking place in Libya right now, the essential question must be asked: Is it even Constitutional? For those of you who don’t want to read more than a sentence or two, here’s the short answer. Absolutely not.
DELEGATED POWERS
The ninth and tenth amendments, while they didn’t add anything new, defined the Constitution. In short, they tell us that the federal government is only authorized to exercise those powers delegated to it in the Constitution…and nothing more. Everything else is either prohibited or retained by the states or people themselves.
What does this have to do with Libya? Well, whenever the federal government does anything, the first question should always be, “where in the Constitution is the authority to do this?” What follows here is an answer regarding American bombs being dropped on Libya.
WHO DECIDES?
Ever since the Korean War, Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution has been regularly cited as justification for the President to act with a seemingly free reign in the realm of foreign policy – including the initiation of foreign wars. But, it is Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution that lists the power to declare war, and this power is placed solely in the hands of Congress.
Article II, Section 2, on the other hand, refers to the President as the “commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States.” What the founders meant by this clause was that once war was declared, it would then be the responsibility of the President, as the commander-in-chief, to direct the war.
Alexander Hamilton clarified this when he said that the President, while lacking the power to declare war, would have “the direction of war when authorized.”
Thomas Jefferson reaffirmed this quite eloquently when, in 1801, he said that, as President, he was “unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense.”
In Federalist #69, Alexander Hamilton explained that the President’s authority:
“would be nominally the same with that of the King of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first general and admiral of the confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war, and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies; all which by the constitution under consideration would appertain to the legislature.”
James Madison warned us that the power of declaring war must be kept away from the executive branch when he wrote to Thomas Jefferson:
“The constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the legislature.”
WORDS HAVE MEANING
If, like any legal document, the words of the Constitution mean today just what they meant the moment it was signed, we must first look for the 18th Century meaning of the words used. Here’s a few common 18th-century definitions of the important words:
War: The exercise of violence against withstanders under a foreign command.
Declare: Expressing something before it is promised, decreed, or acted upon.
Invade: To attack a country; to make a hostile entrance
What does this all mean? Unless the country is being invaded, if congress does not declare war against another country, the president is constitutionally barred from waging it, no matter how much he desires to do so. Pre-emptive strikes and undeclared offensive military expeditions are not powers delegated to the federal government in the Constitution, and are, therefore, unlawful.
HOW IT APPLIES TODAY
Here’s the quick overview of how this all plays out:
In Constitutional terms, the United States is currently at war with Libya.
Libya is not invading the United States, nor has it threatened to do so.
Congress has not declared war. Barack Obama did.
Some would claim, and news articles are already reporting on it, that the 1973 war powers resolution authorizes the President to start a war as long as it’s reported to Congress within 48 hours. Then, Congress would have 60 days to authorize the action, or extend it.
The only question you should have to ask for this would be – “where in the Constitution is congress given the authority to change the constitution by resolution?”
It doesn’t. And that resolution, in and of itself, is a Constitutional violation. More on that in a future article, of course.
James Madison had something to say about such a plan when he wrote:
“The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.” [emphasis added]
War Powers resolution or no war powers resolution – without a Congressional declaration, the president is not authorized to start an offensive military campaign. Period.
The bottom line? By using US Military to begin hostilities with a foreign nation without a Congressional declaration of war, Barack Obama has committed a serious violation of the Constitution. While he certainly is not the first to do so in regards to war powers, it’s high time that he becomes the last.
Michael Boldin [send him email] is the founder of the Tenth Amendment Center. He was raised in Milwaukee, WI, and currently resides in Los Angeles, CA. Follow him on twitter – @michaelboldin – and visit his personal blog – www.michaelboldin.com
Tenth Amendment Center
March 25, 2011
With military action taking place in Libya right now, the essential question must be asked: Is it even Constitutional? For those of you who don’t want to read more than a sentence or two, here’s the short answer. Absolutely not.
DELEGATED POWERS
The ninth and tenth amendments, while they didn’t add anything new, defined the Constitution. In short, they tell us that the federal government is only authorized to exercise those powers delegated to it in the Constitution…and nothing more. Everything else is either prohibited or retained by the states or people themselves.
What does this have to do with Libya? Well, whenever the federal government does anything, the first question should always be, “where in the Constitution is the authority to do this?” What follows here is an answer regarding American bombs being dropped on Libya.
WHO DECIDES?
Ever since the Korean War, Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution has been regularly cited as justification for the President to act with a seemingly free reign in the realm of foreign policy – including the initiation of foreign wars. But, it is Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution that lists the power to declare war, and this power is placed solely in the hands of Congress.
Article II, Section 2, on the other hand, refers to the President as the “commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States.” What the founders meant by this clause was that once war was declared, it would then be the responsibility of the President, as the commander-in-chief, to direct the war.
Alexander Hamilton clarified this when he said that the President, while lacking the power to declare war, would have “the direction of war when authorized.”
Thomas Jefferson reaffirmed this quite eloquently when, in 1801, he said that, as President, he was “unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense.”
In Federalist #69, Alexander Hamilton explained that the President’s authority:
“would be nominally the same with that of the King of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first general and admiral of the confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war, and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies; all which by the constitution under consideration would appertain to the legislature.”
James Madison warned us that the power of declaring war must be kept away from the executive branch when he wrote to Thomas Jefferson:
“The constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the legislature.”
WORDS HAVE MEANING
If, like any legal document, the words of the Constitution mean today just what they meant the moment it was signed, we must first look for the 18th Century meaning of the words used. Here’s a few common 18th-century definitions of the important words:
War: The exercise of violence against withstanders under a foreign command.
Declare: Expressing something before it is promised, decreed, or acted upon.
Invade: To attack a country; to make a hostile entrance
What does this all mean? Unless the country is being invaded, if congress does not declare war against another country, the president is constitutionally barred from waging it, no matter how much he desires to do so. Pre-emptive strikes and undeclared offensive military expeditions are not powers delegated to the federal government in the Constitution, and are, therefore, unlawful.
HOW IT APPLIES TODAY
Here’s the quick overview of how this all plays out:
In Constitutional terms, the United States is currently at war with Libya.
Libya is not invading the United States, nor has it threatened to do so.
Congress has not declared war. Barack Obama did.
Some would claim, and news articles are already reporting on it, that the 1973 war powers resolution authorizes the President to start a war as long as it’s reported to Congress within 48 hours. Then, Congress would have 60 days to authorize the action, or extend it.
The only question you should have to ask for this would be – “where in the Constitution is congress given the authority to change the constitution by resolution?”
It doesn’t. And that resolution, in and of itself, is a Constitutional violation. More on that in a future article, of course.
James Madison had something to say about such a plan when he wrote:
“The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.” [emphasis added]
War Powers resolution or no war powers resolution – without a Congressional declaration, the president is not authorized to start an offensive military campaign. Period.
The bottom line? By using US Military to begin hostilities with a foreign nation without a Congressional declaration of war, Barack Obama has committed a serious violation of the Constitution. While he certainly is not the first to do so in regards to war powers, it’s high time that he becomes the last.
Michael Boldin [send him email] is the founder of the Tenth Amendment Center. He was raised in Milwaukee, WI, and currently resides in Los Angeles, CA. Follow him on twitter – @michaelboldin – and visit his personal blog – www.michaelboldin.com
Friday, March 04, 2011
James Woolsey denies CIA media control
Former CIA director plays dumb on Operation Mockingbird and admitted state-backed media propaganda.
Aaron Dykes
Infowars
March 3, 2011
Add one more to the bold confrontations conducted by We Are Change during the 2011 CPAC conference that include encounters with former VP Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
WeAreChange.org founder Luke Rudkowski confronts James Woolsey, former CIA Director, PNAC signatory, member the CFR and World Affairs Council, about the CIA’s historically established programs to control and influence the media.
Woolsey is asked about a statement from William Colby, CIA director from 1973-1976, who said, “The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” Woolsey denied the truth behind the statement, making reference to Colby’s untimely death by boating accident (though he didn’t die until 1996).
Moreover, Woolsey denied any knowledge of Operation Mockingbird, telling We Are Change that no such program existed ‘the way you described it.’ In the end of the encounter, Woolsey doesn’t deny the CIA’s influence over the media altogether, but deflects, claiming no policy of involvement has existed ‘for decades.’
Rudkowski writes, “If the CIA had control over media companies decades ago what do you think there role is now during the communication revolution?”
Documentation and detail over aspects of Operation Mockingbird exist in the following books, noted on Wikipedia, including Deborah Davis’ 1979 book, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and her Washington Post Empire, E. Howard Hunt’s 2007 memoir American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond, and Hugh Wilford’s 2008 The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America. Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein, famous for his investigation of the Watergate burglaries, also covers CIA & media, as some of his quotes below demonstrate.
“The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.”
–William Colby, former CIA Director, cited by Dave Mcgowan, Derailing Democracy
“You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month.”
–CIA operative, quoted in Katherine the Great, by Deborah Davis
“There is quite an incredible spread of relationships. You don’t need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are [Central Intelligence] Agency people at the management level.”
–William B. Bader, former CIA intelligence officer, briefing members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, The CIA and the Media, by Carl Bernstein
“The Agency’s relationship with [The New York] Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials. [It was] general Times policy … to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible.”
–The CIA and the Media, by Carl Bernstein
“For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the government…. I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations.”
–former President Harry Truman, 22 December 1963, one month after the JFK assassination, op-ed section of the Washington Post, early edition
Monday, February 14, 2011
Terrorist Who Trained London Bombers Was Working For US Government
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
February 14, 2011
While talking heads like Glenn Beck continue to invoke the threat of radical Islam, they habitually ignore the blindingly obvious, that radical Islam is a creature of the US military-industrial complex. Case in point – the terrorist who trained the London bombers was a US informant and has been freed after serving only four and a half years of a possible 70-year sentence.
Citing his “exceptional co-operation,” in working with US authorities, a New York Judge released Mohammed Junaid Babar despite him pleading guilty to five counts of terrorism, an outcome that has, “Raised questions over whether Babar was a US informer at the time he was helping to train the ringleader of the 7 July tube and bus bombings,” reports the London Guardian.
Babar admits to consorting with high level “Al-Qaeda” terrorists, as well as “providing senior members with money and equipment, running weapons.” He also set up a training camp in Pakistan in 2003 where alleged 7/7 ringleader Mohammad Sidique Khan learned bomb-making techniques.
“Graham Foulkes, a magistrate whose 22-year-old son David was killed by Khan at Edgware Road underground station in 2005, said: “People get four and a half years for burglary. They can get more for some road traffic offences. So for an international terrorist who’s directly linked to the death of my son and dozens and dozens of people to get that sentence is just outrageous.”
But Babar’s release makes perfect sense given the fact that he was likely working for US authorities as an informant while training one of the alleged London bombers.
“A remark from the sentencing judge that Babar “began co-operating even before his arrest”, has raised the possibility, supported by other circumstantial evidence obtained by the Guardian, that he may have been an informant for the US government before his detention by the FBI in April 2004,” writes the Guardian’s Shiv Malik, who in a separate article goes into greater depth on how, “Babar may have been working for the US security services while pretending to be a jihadi – allegations that could imply serious failures to prevent the 7 July bombings.”
The Guardian article describes how a top US terrorism lawyer has seen sealed evidence in the case which “suggests Babar could have been working for the US authorities before his arrest in April 2004.”
“Having reviewed the court transcript himself, bereaved father Graham Foulkes said: “There’s a hint from one or two of the sentences [in the transcript] that do strongly suggest [Babar's] co-operation was going well beyond his official arrest. And it looks as if the Americans may well have known in detail what Babar was up to in Pakistan [at the time] and that is a very, very serious matter.”
The fact that Babar has served less than 5 years for playing a crucial role in attacks which killed 52 people and injured hundreds more clearly indicates that he is being rewarded by US authorities for his involvement in the 7/7 bombings.
Lest we forget that the the so-called mastermind behind the 7/7 London bombings, Haroon Rashid Aswat, was a British intelligence asset. Former Justice Dept. prosecutor and terror expert John Loftus revealed that the so called Al-Muhajiroun group, based in London, had formed during the Kosovo crisis, during which fundamentalist muslim leaders (Or what is now referred to as Al-Qaeda) were recruited by MI6 to fight in Kosovo.
The revelations about Babar once again underscore the myopic and ludicrous assertions of people like Glenn Beck, who constantly invoke the threat of radical Islam, particularly in the context of recent events in Egypt, while failing to point out that radical Islam is being fostered and fomented by the US military-industrial complex.
Almost every single major terror plot over the last decade plus blamed on “radical Islam” has had the combined or individual fingerprints of US, British, Canadian and Israeli intelligence agencies and federal law enforcement bodies all over it.
9/11
Every single shred of evidence concerning the alleged 9/11 hijackers points to the fact that they were patsies controlled by informants working for the US government.
The US Special Operations Command’s Able Danger program identified the hijackers and their accomplices long before 9/11, but when the head of the program, Colonel Anthony Shaffer, tried to pass the information on to the 9/11 Commission, he was gagged and slandered and the vital information his team had passed on was ignored and buried.
Curt Weldon, Former U.S. Republican Congressman and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, documented how the US government tracked the hijackers’ movements before 9/11.
Louai al-Sakka, the man who trained six of the hijackers, was a CIA informant. A number of the other alleged hijackers were trained at US air bases. In the months prior to 9/11, alleged hijackers Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi were renting rooms in a house owned and lived in by an FBI informant.
In a 2002 article entitled The Hijackers We Let Escape, Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman documented how, “The CIA tracked two suspected terrorists to a Qaeda summit in Malaysia in January 2000, then looked on as they re-entered America and began preparations for September 11.”
The fact that there were numerous Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists involved in the pre-planning stages of 9/11 is unsurprising given former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds’ testimony that Bin Laden was working for the US right up until the day of 9/11.
On the very morning of 9/11, the money man behind the alleged hijackers, Pakistan’s ISI Chief Mahmoud Ahmad, was meeting with U.S. government and intelligence officials.
Indeed, even after 9/11, the so-called spiritual leader of the very hijackers who allegedly slammed Flight 77 into the Pentagon, Anwar al-Awlaki, was himself invited to dine with Pentagon top brass mere months after the attack.
UNDERWEAR BOMBER
Al-Awlaki was later involved in directing the underwear bomber, who was allowed to board the plane by order of the US State Department aided by a well-dressed man who got Abdulmutallab on the airliner despite the fact that he was on a terror watch list and had no passport. Eyewitness and Delta 253 passenger Kurt Haskell subsequently blew the whistle to state that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was given the bomb by the US government to create a pretext for the implementation of naked body scanners and boost the TSA’s budget.
FORT HOOD SHOOTING
Fort Hood shooter Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan repeatedly communicated with alleged Al-Qaeda leaders for nearly a year before his rampage. The FBI knew Hasan was sending emails to terrorists, but they did nothing, allowed him to remain on a U.S. Army base, and even invited him to participate in Homeland Security exercises. Hasan was also being handled by US agent Al-Awlaki.
FORT DIX
Lawyers in a case relating to the much vaunted 2007 terror plot to attack Fort Dix and kill “as many soldiers as possible” concluded that FBI informants were the key figures behind the operation and that the accused, six foreign-born Muslims, were merely bungling patsies. US agent Al-Awlaki was again involved in training the would-be terrorists.
TORONTO PLOT
The “Toronto 18″ terrorists turned out to be “a bunch of incompetent guys who were primarily misled by a delusional megalomaniac”. The explosive fertilizer material the terrorist cell apparently planned to use was in fact purchased by an informant working for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, agents of which had radicalized the group. US agent Al-Awlaki was again involved in the plot.
PORTLAND PLOT
The man accused of attempting to blow up a Christmas tree in Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, was a befuddled patsy, groomed and radicalized from start to finish by the FBI as part of a radicalization and entrapment program. Shortly after news of the attempted bombing broke, it emerged that the FBI had provided Mohamud with a fake bomb, van, and cell phone (to be used as a detonator) in the incident, as well as thousands of dollars in cash at every step of the plot.
MUMBAI MASSACRE
The man accused of being the mastermind behind the 2008 Mumbai massacre, David Headley, was a US government informant and was also at one time on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency.
SHOE BOMBER
Hundreds of terror suspects have been convicted in civilian federal courts, including convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid who attended the Finsbury Park Mosque in North London. The Finsbury imam at the time was Abu Hamza al-Masri who began working with British Security Services in 1997.
MIAMI PLOT
In the media-lauded Miami terror case in 2007, the supposed ringleader Narseal “Prince Marina” Batiste “had heard of Al-Qaeda, but wasn’t sure what it stood for. The FBI instigators made Batiste swear loyalty to al-Qaida; then had him call on his local buddies to form an ‘Islamic army’ in Miami. None had military training. Some could barely read. But Batiste assured the group in the midst of its collective marijuana buzz of greatness ahead,” wrote Saul Landau.
These were the men who comedian John Stewart referred to as “seven dipshits in a warehouse” after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had ludicrously told the press that the group of semi-retarded gang-bangers had planned to “wage a ground war against America”.
NEW YORK SYNAGOGUE BOMB PLOT
A group of so-called Muslim terrorists were busted in New York for supposedly planning to blow up synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military airplanes flying out of the New York Air National Guard base. The men were provided with fake explosives and inactive missiles by an FBI informant, reported the Christian Science Monitor. Two of the ringleaders of the “deadly” plot which was endlessly hyped by the media turned out to be semi-retarded potheads, exactly as we had predicted would be the case due to the innumerable past cases with the exact same modus operandi.
I could go on for pages and pages listing details of ever major terror plot since and indeed before 9/11 that were blamed on “radical Islam” yet in fact turned out to be completely contrived by the FBI, CIA, Canadian or British authorities.
It is a glaring and manifestly provable fact that radical Islam is being manufactured and provoked by the US military-industrial complex in order to provide itself with an enemy to justify billions every year in weapons sales along with giant federal government slush funds that enrich the coffers of public-private partnerships while crushing the constitutional rights of American citizens.
Glenn Beck is completely accurate when he says that radical Islam represents a direct threat to the future of freedom in the west. The ultimate “clash of civilizations” is a very real possibility. But by deliberately obscuring the fact that radical Islam is a creature of the US military-industrial complex, a bastard child of the new world order that is being strengthened by our own governments to be used as a weapon against us, Beck and others who regurgitate the same rhetoric are misleading Americans into thinking that radical Islam itself is the new world order, when in fact radical Islam is merely a tool of the new world order, being from its very inception completely owned and controlled by the US military-industrial complex.
Friday, February 04, 2011
Republicans Move to Make PATRIOT Act Permanent
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
February 4, 2011
Freshly emboldened by their mid-term congressional wins, establishment Republicans are set to extend the unconstitutional police state Patriot Act. It is set to expire in three weeks and Republicans are eager to make sections of the legislation permanent.
Rep. Ron Paul is one of a small number of members of Congress who do not support the unconstitutional PATRIOT Act.
On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a vote to continue and extend the law. “Having this debate year after year offers little certainty to agents utilizing these provisions to keep the nation safe,” said ranking member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
“Short-term reauthorizations lead to operational uncertainty and compliance and reporting problems if the reauthorization occurs too close to expiration,” Grassley continued. “If these provisions are necessary, we should provide more certainty rather than simply revisiting the law year after year given the indefinite threat we face from acts of terrorism, and that looks like decades ahead. We should permanently reauthorize the three expiring provisions.”
Grassley, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Intelligence Committee Ranking Republican Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., will introduce legislation to make the measures permanent.
The Senate leadership has initiated procedures for a vote on the legislation. “These are going to expire in a couple weeks so I would hope that all senators in both parties who have interest in that will meet with me and Sen. Grassley. None of us want to play politics on national security and we should get moving on this,” said committee chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat.
Leahy introduced a reauthorization of the unconstitutional act last week that would extend and reform some provisions set to expire on February 28. Leahy’s reforms, known as the USA PATRIOT Act Sunset Extension Act of 2011, would limit the government’s power in gathering intelligence on individuals in the United States.
Many observers, including the ACLU and the American Library Association, say the reforms do not go far enough. The ACLU has called the legislation unconstitutional.
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Latest Round of Wikileaks Docs Hype Manufactured Terror
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
February 2, 2011
It is now obvious Wikileaks is an intelligence operation and its frontman Julian Assange is a useful idiot. The latest round of documents are like the worst sort of neocon propaganda in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The corporate media today is chock full of stories about the latest round of supposed diplomatic documents purloined by a low level Army intelligence analyst. According to the documents, the CIA asset al-Qaeda has managed to acquire “workable and efficient” biological and chemical weapons and the West stands on the brink of a “nuclear 9/11.” It is said the documents detail a 2009 NATO meeting where security chiefs briefed member states that al-CIA-duh was readying “dirty radioactive IEDs” to be used against British troops in Afghanistan.
Corporate media sings praise for Assange and his disinfo campaign.
Dirty bombs were debunked years ago and it is surprising the folks behind the fake diplomatic cables are attempting to pawn this fantasy off on us again as they did in 2002 when former Chicago gangbanger Jose Padilla was arrested and paraded in the corporate media as the face of al-Qaeda in America.
Once again, Pakistan figures prominently in this scary fairy tale. “Senior British defense officials have raised ‘deep concerns’ that a rogue scientist in the Pakistani nuclear program ‘could gradually smuggle enough material out to make a weapon,” according to a document detailing official talks in London in February 2009,” the Daily Telegraph reported yesterday.
Left out of the equation is the fact Pakistan would not have nuclear weapons if not for the United States.
Back in 1979, as the CIA was in the process of cobbling together the Afghan Mujahideen that would later become al-Qaeda, the globalist and Rockefeller minion Zbigniew Brzezinski forged a new policy toward the formerly pariah Islamic state. Brzezinski said “that our security policy toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our nonproliferation policy.” Reagan also didn’t see a problem. “I just don’t think it’s any of our business,” he remarked when quizzed about Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions.
Moreover, the supposed smuggling of nuclear material out of Pakistan would face difficulty due to the fact the country’s nukes are locked down.
“Over the past six years, the Bush administration has spent almost $100 million on a highly classified program to help Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, secure his country’s nuclear weapons, according to current and former senior administration officials,” the New York Times reported on November 17, 2007. “The secret program was designed by the Energy Department and the State Department, and it drew heavily from the effort over the past decade to secure nuclear weapons, stockpiles and materials in Russia and other former Soviet states. Much of the money for Pakistan was spent on physical security, like fencing and surveillance systems, and equipment for tracking nuclear material if it left secure areas.”
In addition to dirty bombs, terrorists are planning to blow up commercial airliners with teddy bears, according to the Wikileaks documents. “Airport security staff are being urged to examine ‘children’s articles’ after US intelligence concluded that terrorists were plotting to fill them with explosive chemicals,” reports the Daily Telegraph.
Terrorists are attempting to manufacture nitrocellulose, a chemical which can become highly explosive if tightly packed. Details of how to prepare the chemical, which cannot be detected by airport X-ray machines, have been found in al-Qaeda training manuals.
You may remember the original al-Qaeda training manual. It was located in Manchester, England, and brought to our attention with much absurd fanfare. It was later revealed that the document was penned in the 1980s around the same time the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI were collaborating in Afghanistan, well before the CIA decided to create al-Qaeda from a database of Mujahideen warriors.
In short, more sexual molestation and naked body porno scanners will be required at airports if we are going to stop al-CIA-duh as it continues to plan sensationalistic terror events that either never occur or are executed by mentally impaired operatives and dim-witted patsies.
The Wikileaks documents are also designed to rekindle the hysteria manufactured by the government after September 11, 2001. According to the documents, a group of Qataris conducted surveillance on the targets of 9/11 and provided support for the phantom hijackers who were trained at U.S. military bases. “Details of the unknown 9/11 alleged plotters has never previously been disclosed,” reports the Daily Telegraph.
Here is a detail that has been previously disclosed (although assiduously ignored by the corporate media) – Osama bin Laden and the Taliban shared “intimate relations” with the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence right up until the morning of September 11, 2001, according to the most gagged woman in America, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds.
The CIA groomed manufactured enemies from China to Chechnya, Albania, and Kosovo, Edmonds revealed, but you won’t find that in Assange’s mass of documents.
For all its dutiful work in the service of the globalist empire, Wikileaks has been nominated for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize by Norwegian politician Snorre Valen, who said the shady outfit played an instrumental role in freedom of speech.
“WikiLeaks is one of this century’s most important contributors to freedom of speech and transparency,” the NTB news agency quoted Valen as saying today.
It also played a role in perpetuating cover stories used by government as pretexts to further erode our liberties and engage in wanton mass murder around the world.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Globalist Stooge ElBaradei Prepares To Hijack Egyptian Revolution
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
January 31, 2011
Zbigniew Brzezinski has called for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to step down as globalist stooge Mohammed ElBaradei prepares to act as the pied piper for a revolution that has been hijacked by the global elite.
Speaking with fellow CFR member Christiane Amanpour, Brzezinski told ABC News’ This Week that Mubarak must be convinced by “outside advice” that “It is in his interest as well as in Egypt’s interest that he goes and that he sets in motion a process which facilitates that.”
Although Brzezinski warned of a “global political awakening” during a CFR meeting last year that threatened to topple the existing international order, it is unsurprising that Brzezinski is calling for the ousting of Mubarak despite the fact that he has been a dutiful servant to the new world order elite.
It became known in Brzezinski’s globalist circles at least three years ago that Egypt was teetering on the edge of revolt and that another political entity would fill the inevitable vacuum of power if the elite didn’t get ahead of the game.
That’s why the American Embassy trained rebel leaders to infiltrate opposition groups from the very beginning, as the Telegraph revealed on Saturday.
The geopolitical maneuverings of the US military-industrial complex don’t take away from the fact that the revolt in Egypt is driven by genuine grievances relating to spiraling food prices, high unemployment, policy brutality and the grass-roots drive to unseat a 30 year dictatorship.
However, if they allow globalist carpetbagger Mohammed ElBaradei to seize power, demonstrators are ensuring that their actions are in vain and ultimately worthless.
Addressing protesters in Cairo yesterday, ElBaradei demanded Mubarak step down and promised “change within days”.
“You are the owners of this revolution. You are the future,” ElBaradei declared. “Our essential demand is the departure of the regime and the beginning of a new Egypt in which each Egyptian lives in virtue, freedom and dignity.”
Egyptians may be the owners of the revolution, but the owners of ElBaradei himself are busy hijacking that revolution by installing a puppet that will be just as compliant with Egypt continuing as a globalist client state as Mubarak has been for the past 30 years. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Won’t get fooled again?
ElBaradei serves on the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group, who on Friday issued a press release protesting the decision on behalf of Egyptian authorities to place ElBaradei under house arrest.
International Crisis Group is a shadowy NGO (non-governmental organization) that enjoys an annual budget of over $15 million and is bankrolled by the likes of Carnegie, the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as George Soros’ Open Society Institute. Soros himself serves as a member of the organization’s Executive Committee.
In other words, this is a major geopolitical steering group for the global elite.
The fact that their man ElBaradei is being primed to head up the post-Mubarak government should set alarm bells ringing in the ears of every demonstrator who is protesting in the name of trying to wrestle Egypt away from the clutches of new world order control.
Indeed, even Mubarak himself is now seemingly catching on to the understanding that his usefulness to the global power elite has run its course, remarking during a national address Saturday that the protests were “part of a bigger plot to shake the stability and destroy the legitimacy” of the political system.
ElBaradei is the central figure in a long term plot to subvert and steer the outcome of a revolution that the global elite knew was coming three years ahead of time. Although his installation as puppet president may see political freedoms temporarily restored as a symbolic gesture, Egypt’s destiny will still be firmly under the control of the same parties that have pulled Mubarak’s strings for the past three decades.
Sham Afghanistan-style rigged elections will ensue where the Egyptian people are given the false decision of choosing between two globalist-controlled puppets. The international media will hail the event as a momentous occasion for democracy in the Middle East and broadcast endless images of purple fingers, but the true legacy of the revolution will be eviscerated and Egyptians will eventually realize that they were the victims of a cruel deception.
—
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Pathocracy: Tyranny at the Hand of Psychopaths
Jack Mullen
Activist Post
January 25, 2011
Were people consciously aware something was about to change in a very bad way just before Lenin and Trotsky appeared on the scene in Petrograd in the spring of 1917? Did the German people realize accepting the ‘hope’ of Hitler would result in something so hideous and evil that tens of millions of people would die and a permanent bloodstain would appear on the history of Germany? What was life like months or years before the Armenians suffered genocide at the hands of the Turks, did they know that government imposed gun control was really disarmament before extermination? How about the Chinese before the tyrant Mao, or the North Koreans before the Kim Jung il family infestation? Did these people know what was coming, but didn’t know what they could do?
Most of written history is written on pages of blood. I think today, right now, is another one of those moments just before something very bad is about to happen. And, this time, we have the written historical records of bad news to learn potentially lifesaving, culture-rescuing information before we slip into another example of blood and carnage insanity.
Although Sigmund Freud introduced the world to the word psychopath in his book Psychopathology of Everyday Life, published in 1901, it wouldn’t be until forty years later that a true definition of psychopathology was developed to include the personality type of psychopath: a scientific understanding that sheds light on past and current events.
One of the first researchers to study and document the nature of personality types called psychopaths was Hervey Cleckley, MD, in his book The Mask of Sanity, published in 1941. In this classic work, Cleckley spent considerable time with prison inmates in Georgia; prisoners that “little agreement was found as to what was actually the matter with them.” And, according to Cleckley, “[the prisoners] continued, however, to constitute a most grave and a constant problem to the hospital and to the community.”
In addition to Cleckley, others in the time since 1941 have contributed significantly to our understanding of the psychopathic personality type. One such heroic researcher was Andrew M. Lobaczewski, born 1921 in Poland. After suffering Nazi occupation during WWII, and Russian occupation after Germany’s defeat, Lobaczewski entered college to be trained as a psychologist, and soon thereafter began research into the nature of the psychopath. Lobaczewski and his colleagues risked severe penalties, including death, for documenting their research and experimentation.
Many decades would pass trying to get the work published (and many attempts were made by groups to destroy it). But, finally, in 1998, circumventing attempts of Zbigniew Brzezinski to stop the publication, Lobaczewski’s book Political Ponerology: A science on the nature of evil for political purposes was published. The book begins with an examination of prisoners, much like Cleckley’s work covers, but this time scientists correlated the behavior of psychopaths with the depravity of massively oppressive political regimes; the results of which culminated in a new science he called Ponerology, the study of evil in man. Political Ponerology, then, is the nature of evil in politics.
According to Lobaczewski, organizations can become infested with psychopathic personality types who, if given the proper amount of time and growing conditions, will busily fill all positions of power within it. In the case of governments, what emerges is defined as a pathocracy: tyranny at the hand of psychopaths. Lobaczewski defined governance by a pathocracy as a macrosocial disease, something unhealthy and brutally deadly if untreated.
The book Political Ponerology provides a scary explanation for periodic times of brutal insanity in the history of the world. It is a light to scientifically expose a particular personality type within populations — a type, if left alone, will infest positions of power, pushing out normal personalities until they dominate the power structure. From a position of total domination, psychopaths will aggressively and brutally protect the power they have gained. In the case of government, that means taking steps to eradicate any perceived opposition to their control and authority. Since true psychopaths are emotionally dead, and work empathy-free (see Dr. Robert Hare’s book Without Conscience; The Disturbing World of Psychopaths), the task of cleaning house to prevent loss of control can quickly evolve into the 20-million-plus killed in the Russian Holocaust, the 60-million-plus killed in the Chinese Holocaust, or the extermination camps of the Jewish Holocaust. Although not on the same scale, recent mass murders such as the Waco Texas massacre, the Oklahoma City bombings, or the 9-11 false flag terror-murders should sound the warning alarms. Psychopaths are afoot.
This brings me to the deplorable historical events in the United States, especially since 1913. Are psychopaths running the show? Lets look at some facts.
To set the stage, in 1912 bankers rig the presidential election and Woodrow Wilson, the bankers president, moves into the White House. This is a strategic move to ensure prompt penmanship on banker bills.
Then, two days before Christmas, while Congress was conveniently low on members gone for the break, a private banking cartel shrewdly gave the Federal Reserve control over the issuance of United States currency. The finagling was done using deception and bribery, and the trick of bringing bills to vote when congressional attendance was very low. As of today, ‘banker currency’ has lost 98 percent of its original purchasing power; purchasing power lost by dollar holders was transferred as wealth to government and owners of the Federal Reserve.
Since 1913, the United States has started or insinuated (through false flag events) itself in non-retaliatory wars on the average of one every 15 years including: WWI, WWII, the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War, the first Gulf War, and the second Gulf War. All of these wars were funded with borrowed money from the very same banks issuing the currency, thus saddling tax payers with interest and principal in addition to the cost of lives. Even after the wars, US underwriters have funded the continued exportation of war and empire through occupation, building more than 1000 military bases in over 150 nations around the world.
In addition to the offshore wars, the United States has prosecuted an ever increasing war on its citizens, including relentless assaults on freedoms provided by the Constitution and Bill Of Rights, the effective disempowering of congress via geometric growth in governance by Executive Order, and continuing attempts to disarm citizens, using deception and fear to legislate away the right to keep and bear arms.
The war on US citizens is prosecuted around the clock with assaults on many fronts, including a deliberate effort to dumb down the educational system, debasing health through contamination of foods (hormones, pesticides, GMOs, chemically adulterated water, cancerous additives such as aspartame), then protecting food cartels that provide fewer food choices while controlling your right to grow food. Healthcare choices are restricted by legal protection of pharmaceutical cartels marketing drug and medical procedures responsible for hundreds of thousands of needless deaths each year. The government directly attacks the individual immune system by mandating and promoting criminally contaminated vaccines — immune system damaging vaccines that may also cause long term brain dysfunction or damage, or result in delayed cancer.
Personal finances are attacked with escalating tax rates levied by exponentially growing mega-state(s); taxes draining the vital economic blood needed for growth, while shackling citizens to increasing hours of work; depreciating dollars and falling wages. And don’t expect any help from the free market; it’s been outlawed. The government (federal, state, local) is now the largest employer in the nation and private manufacturing is deliberately off-shored to foreign countries. Open borders inviting the deliberate influx of millions of illegal aliens are overwhelming social service and legal systems and pressuring wages lower as illegals compete with unfair wage advantages. Financial disaster is manufactured, as private bankers in charge of our monetary system invent and market fraudulent financial products, encourage fraudulent loans, and produce a false bubble in home prices. Then, as the deflating bubble exposes the fraud, ownership becomes uncertain when we learn property titles were criminally misplaced. Finally, let’s note the 2 million homes in foreclosure or foreclosed upon since the housing bust, and another 2 million in the pipe. Most of these properties are held off market by banks and government agencies (Fannie and Freddie). That puts the government and the Federal Reserve in charge of the largest real estate holdings in the country. Disturbing fact: Socialist and Communist regimes provide no right of private property — the state owns it all.
Americans are deliberately terrified as government, controlled by bankers, creates false terror and criminally incites fear to restrict travel, destroy privacy, control the Internet and news content, manipulate the voting process, and silence free speech. Americans are assailed by false government promises made during elections and by a growing prison-police-industrial cartel incarcerating growing numbers of citizens, while using prisoners as slaves. More people are incarcerated in the United States than any other nation on earth and the rate of incarceration is growing. Prison manufacturing now constitutes 35% of total United States manufacturing. Autogenous terror is no less scary or health disturbing than real terror — a deliberate assault on the American psyche.
For the elderly and persons of retirement age, the assault has just begun — pensions and retirement accounts are being gutted and stolen by bankers and a bankrupt government. Just as the baby boomers are hitting retirement age their pensions and retirement investments are stolen, squandered and deflated. Promises made while stealing your income will never be kept, as the economic life blood is sucked dry by bankers and criminally bankrupt governments from the many states to Washington DC. Finally, the assault continues as the USG, slowly dying from bankruptcy and rampant corruption, relentlessly (and against popular support) continues to prosecute two illegal, non retaliatory, wars six thousand miles from home. These wars support a growing worldwide hatred of the insane, brutal and irrational acts of the United States, while exploiting Americans through promotion of illegal drugs mainlined through government transportation and distribution; drugs sold at monopoly prices because of the deliberate War On Drugs, resulting in the prosecution of drug users to fill prisons at an increasing rate.
Just when you think it couldn’t get more in your face comes the outright theft in broad daylight of TRILLIONS of dollars through pretended efforts to ‘save the economy.’ Most of the money has been created from nothing only to reduce purchasing power of the dollar and simultaneously create a need to raise taxes to cover interest on the newly minted debt. The stolen TRILLIONS are hastily sent to crony banks both at home and off shore. When Americans asked, “Where did the money go?” the arrogant criminals-in-charge continue to flatly refuseto reveal the recipients. This crime against all Americans is deliberate and aggressive, as it is done in the light of day, taunting anyone to try and stop it.
The financial crisis has been prosecuted deliberately for so long now that the economy likely is only one major economic shock away from several possible financial catastrophes — the most likely being a debt-related collapse, say, an insolvent and bankrupt large corporation (GE) or bank (BAC)? The result would be a financial derivatives chain reaction leaving a slew of companies around the world in financial ruin, while those events cause a run on the dollar or a move to dump treasuries; the last manufactured bubble popping like faulty rivets exploding as the Titanic bobs for the last time, slipping terminally into the sea. After that, the crisis would take on a life of its own with food and oil prices skyrocketing and Homeland Security rounding up early discontents for incarceration in already pre-planned and ready-made prisons strategically located throughout the United States.
Since 1913 bankers and crony corporations have consolidated and now control all mainstream media. TV, satellite, radio, newspapers and magazines — all controlled by the same 5 or 6 corporate media companies. Can we expect truthful news and responsible journalism?
Taken individually it may be possible to argue that mistakes in thinking resulted in poor choices giving license to bad endings, but the history of deliberate lies, endless bloodshed in manufactured wars, aggression against people using food, health, and finances, the non-stop assault on personal liberties using false flag terror, is a plain-as-day indication that Americans will face a deadly crisis in the near future. For the record: moves to disarm citizens always precede escalating physical control by a maniacal state. Always.
I submit that the United States government is under the control of psychopaths, and the infestation is nearing completion; the point at which nothing can stop the oncoming violence. But that’s not all, because above the federal government is a ruling cartel of off-shore psychopaths that have secretly been planning a one-world tyranny for more than 100 years. This is not a rant; it is a plea: take time to read the material.
According to Lobaczewski:
In a pathocracy, all leadership positions, (down to village headman and community cooperative managers, not to mention the directors of police units, and special services police personnel, and activists in the pathocratic party) must be filled by individuals with corresponding psychological deviations, which are inherited as a rule. However, such people constitute a very small percentage of the population and this makes them more valuable to the pathocrats. Their intellectual level or professional skills cannot be taken into account, since people representing superior abilities (who are also psychopaths) are even harder to find. After such a system has lasted several years, one hundred percent of all the cases of essential psychopathy are involved in pathocratic activity; they are considered the most loyal, even though some of them were formerly involved on the other side in some way.
Under such conditions, no area of social life can develop normally, whether in economics, culture, science, technology, administration, etc. Pathocracy progressively paralyzes everything. Normal people must develop a level of patience beyond the ken of anyone living in a normal man’s system just in order to explain what to do and how to do it to some obtuse mediocrity of a psychological deviant who has been placed in charge of some project that he cannot even understand, much less manage. This special kind of pedagogy – instructing deviants while avoiding their wrath – requires a great deal of time and effort, but it would otherwise not be possible to maintain tolerable living conditions and necessary achievements in the economic area or intellectual life of a society. Even with such efforts, pathocracy progressively intrudes everywhere and dulls everything. [...]
Therefore, to mitigate the threat to their power, the pathocrats must employ any and all methods of terror and exterminatory policies against individuals known for their patriotic feelings and military training; other, specific “indoctrination” activities such as those we have presented are also utilized. Individuals lacking the natural feeling of being linked to normal society become irreplaceable in either of these activities. Again, the foreground of this type of activity is occupied by cases of essential psychopathy, followed by those with similar anomalies, and finally by people alienated from the society in question as a result of racial or national differences.
The phenomenon of pathocracy matures during this period: an extensive and active indoctrination system is built, with a suitably refurbished ideology constituting the vehicle or Trojan horse for the purpose of pathologizing the thought processes of individuals and society. The goal – forcing human minds to incorporate pathological experiential methods and thought-patterns, and consequently accepting such rule – is never openly admitted. This goal is conditioned by pathological egotism, and the possibility of accomplishing it strikes the pathocrats as not only indispensable, but feasible.
From the murder of John F. Kennedy to the trail of dead bodies uncovered during the Clinton and Bush regimes, and now Obama — the sanity of American government has taken a terrible turn toward Pathocracy. Normal Americans have to stop making excuses for what is plain view.
It is time that humanity faces what it already knows: Historic suffering throughout the ages is related to the evil of the psychopath. We must never consent to being disarmed. Thomas Jefferson said: “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
Next, I call on psychology and psychiatry professionals to make claims regarding the mental health of members of government — it is incumbent on those qualified to take a stand against a rising, bloody, tyranny. The facts speak for themselves: mental health must be called into consideration based on the actions of our leaders in recent years.
Finally, there are other powerful, peaceful ways to reign in the power of psychopaths. First and foremost, remember that it is the overwhelming numbers of normal people that enable their power, working and slaving away in a system designed as life support for a class of vampires. I submit that we can stop paying their bills.
Start by cutting off the fuel supply, i.e., their funding. Banks are power lines connected directly to the coven of vampires; currency is the current flowing through the power lines. Begin today by removing any savings you might have in banks and in various investment markets (stocks, bonds, hedge funds, etc. ), then use those dollars to buy physical gold and silver and long term food supplies. These commodities hold their value in the face of deliberately depreciating currency. Next — this is the interesting part — never convert your gold and silver back into dollars. Instead, when the time comes spend your silver and gold. Go out and find small local stores that will trade gold and silver for supplies. Remember, if you convert your gold and silver back into money the vampires get power — the IRS will tax your trade, and the banks end up with money streaming down the power lines to the coven of vampires.
Moving out of the banking matrix toward barter and transactions based in real money will protect your privacy and purchasing power, while decreasing energy available for evil. A grade ‘A’ investment for the average American (aside from food) is silver; silver is the currency of the little man — it is the silver bullet against the vampire of psychopathic government.
This is a critical time in the history of humanity; a time when you have to educate yourself and have courage to take non-violent action against a very violent infestation of the worst possible personality types. Think about the Russians, Germans, Chinese and so many others that might have been able to prevent a blood bath of agony with just some responsible action prior to the onslaught. I would also say it is important to understand that psychopaths have no emotions and no empathy. Think about what kind of person would order the deliberate down-the-pants aggression of “security” agents. These people are not protecting you — they are groping you like animals; animals that have no future other than food for the psychopaths.
Monday, January 24, 2011
“Eisenhower’s Worst Fears Have Been Realized.. His Warnings Given For Naught”
Washington’s Blog
Jan 21, 2011
President Eisenhower’s warned us about the growing threat from the powerful military-industrial complex – and it’s threat to our prosperity – 50 years ago.
As NPR notes:
On Jan. 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower gave the nation a dire warning about what he described as a threat to democratic government. He called it the military-industrial complex, a formidable union of defense contractors and the armed forces.
***
Eisenhower used the speech to warn about “the immense military establishment” that had joined with “a large arms industry.”
***
Another concern … was the possibility that as the military and the arms industry gained power, they would be a threat to democracy, with civilians losing control of the military-industrial complex.
Eisenhower also said:
Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
As James Ledbetter wrote in the New York Times last month:
It is not a stretch to believe that this armaments industry — which profits not only from domestic sales but also from tens of billions of dollars in annual exports — manipulates public policy to perpetuate itself. But Eisenhower was concerned about more than just the military’s size; he also worried about its relationship to the American economy and society, and that the economy risked becoming a subsidiary of the military.
***
Eisenhower warned that the influence of the military-industrial complex was “economic, political, even spiritual” and that it was “felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government.” He exhorted Americans to break away from our reliance on military might as a guarantor of liberty and “use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.”
On this score, Eisenhower may well have seen today’s America as losing the battle against the darker aspects of the military-industrial complex. He was no pacifist, but he was a lifelong opponent of what he called a “garrison state,” in which policy and rights are defined by the shadowy needs of an all-powerful military elite.
The Independent pointed out Monday:
If you doubt, half a century on, that Dwight Eisenhower had it right, then consider the advertisements on WTOP, the Washington region’s all-news radio station. Every big metro area in the US has one, where car dealerships tout their bargains, and fast food chains promote a new special offer.
WTOP has all that. But it boasts other advertisers too, with names such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics.
***
In reality, the dangers of Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” are not new; from the earliest days of the Republic, political leaders have warned of them. “Overgrown military establishments,” George Washington said in his own farewell address of 1796, “are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty.”
As the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation told Democracy Now today, the big defense contractors “recycle our money into the political system”. He pointed to one example:
[The Lockheed companies] spend about $12 million per election cycle, either on lobbying or on candidates. And they have people like Buck McKeon, who runs the Armed Services Committee now. They’re the biggest donor to him. They’re the biggest donor to Daniel Inouye, who runs the Appropriations Committee in the Senate.
And investment legend Jeremy Grantham’s most recent newsletter argues that President Eisenhower’s worst fear have come true, and makes some hard-hitting points about finance and government as well:
Historians may well look back on this period, say, from 1960 on, as the “Selfish Era” – a time when individualism and materialism steadily took precedence over social responsibility. (To be fair, in the period from 1960 to 1980, the deterioration was slow, and the social contract dating back to the mid-1930s was more or less intact.) Personal debt grew slowly at first but steadily accelerated, even though it can be easily demonstrated that consumers collectively are better off saving to buy and that the only beneficiary of a heavy debt society is the financial industry, whose growth throughout this period was massive, multiplying its share of a growing pie by a remarkable 2.2 times…
The financial industry, with its incestuous relationships with government agencies, runs a close second to the energy industry. In the last 10 years or so, their machine, led by the famously failed economic consultant Alan Greenspan – one of the few businessmen ever to be laughed out of business – seemed perhaps the most effective. It lacks, though, the multi-decadal attitude-changing propaganda of the oil industry. Still, in finance they had the “regulators,” deregulating up a storm, to the enormous profit of their industry. Even with the biggest-ever financial fiasco, entirely brought on by the collective incompetence they produced (“they” being the financial regulators and the financial industry leaders working together in some strange, would-be symbiotic relationship), reform is still difficult. Even with everyone hating them, the financial industry comes out smelling like a rose with less competition, profits higher than ever, and not just too big to fail, but bigger still.
Other industries, to be sure, are in there swinging: insurance and health care come to mind, but they seem like pikers in comparison. No, it’s energy and finance in coequal first place, military-related companies an honorable third, and the rest of the field not even in contention. And now, adding the icing to the corporate cake, we have the Supreme Court. Formerly the jewel in the American Crown, they have managed to find five Justices capable of making Eisenhower’s worst nightmare come true. They have put the seal of approval on corporate domination of politics, and done so in a way that can be kept secret. The swing-vote Senator can now be sand-bagged by a vicious advertising program on television, financed by unknown parties, and approved by no stockholders at all!
All in all it appears that Eisenhower’s worst fears have been realized and his remarkable and unique warnings given for naught. From now on, we should tread more carefully. Honoring President Eisenhower’s unique warnings, we should perhaps not take this 50-year slide lying down. Squawking loudly seems preferable.
Jan 21, 2011
President Eisenhower’s warned us about the growing threat from the powerful military-industrial complex – and it’s threat to our prosperity – 50 years ago.
As NPR notes:
On Jan. 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower gave the nation a dire warning about what he described as a threat to democratic government. He called it the military-industrial complex, a formidable union of defense contractors and the armed forces.
***
Eisenhower used the speech to warn about “the immense military establishment” that had joined with “a large arms industry.”
***
Another concern … was the possibility that as the military and the arms industry gained power, they would be a threat to democracy, with civilians losing control of the military-industrial complex.
Eisenhower also said:
Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
As James Ledbetter wrote in the New York Times last month:
It is not a stretch to believe that this armaments industry — which profits not only from domestic sales but also from tens of billions of dollars in annual exports — manipulates public policy to perpetuate itself. But Eisenhower was concerned about more than just the military’s size; he also worried about its relationship to the American economy and society, and that the economy risked becoming a subsidiary of the military.
***
Eisenhower warned that the influence of the military-industrial complex was “economic, political, even spiritual” and that it was “felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government.” He exhorted Americans to break away from our reliance on military might as a guarantor of liberty and “use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.”
On this score, Eisenhower may well have seen today’s America as losing the battle against the darker aspects of the military-industrial complex. He was no pacifist, but he was a lifelong opponent of what he called a “garrison state,” in which policy and rights are defined by the shadowy needs of an all-powerful military elite.
The Independent pointed out Monday:
If you doubt, half a century on, that Dwight Eisenhower had it right, then consider the advertisements on WTOP, the Washington region’s all-news radio station. Every big metro area in the US has one, where car dealerships tout their bargains, and fast food chains promote a new special offer.
WTOP has all that. But it boasts other advertisers too, with names such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics.
***
In reality, the dangers of Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” are not new; from the earliest days of the Republic, political leaders have warned of them. “Overgrown military establishments,” George Washington said in his own farewell address of 1796, “are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty.”
As the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation told Democracy Now today, the big defense contractors “recycle our money into the political system”. He pointed to one example:
[The Lockheed companies] spend about $12 million per election cycle, either on lobbying or on candidates. And they have people like Buck McKeon, who runs the Armed Services Committee now. They’re the biggest donor to him. They’re the biggest donor to Daniel Inouye, who runs the Appropriations Committee in the Senate.
And investment legend Jeremy Grantham’s most recent newsletter argues that President Eisenhower’s worst fear have come true, and makes some hard-hitting points about finance and government as well:
Historians may well look back on this period, say, from 1960 on, as the “Selfish Era” – a time when individualism and materialism steadily took precedence over social responsibility. (To be fair, in the period from 1960 to 1980, the deterioration was slow, and the social contract dating back to the mid-1930s was more or less intact.) Personal debt grew slowly at first but steadily accelerated, even though it can be easily demonstrated that consumers collectively are better off saving to buy and that the only beneficiary of a heavy debt society is the financial industry, whose growth throughout this period was massive, multiplying its share of a growing pie by a remarkable 2.2 times…
The financial industry, with its incestuous relationships with government agencies, runs a close second to the energy industry. In the last 10 years or so, their machine, led by the famously failed economic consultant Alan Greenspan – one of the few businessmen ever to be laughed out of business – seemed perhaps the most effective. It lacks, though, the multi-decadal attitude-changing propaganda of the oil industry. Still, in finance they had the “regulators,” deregulating up a storm, to the enormous profit of their industry. Even with the biggest-ever financial fiasco, entirely brought on by the collective incompetence they produced (“they” being the financial regulators and the financial industry leaders working together in some strange, would-be symbiotic relationship), reform is still difficult. Even with everyone hating them, the financial industry comes out smelling like a rose with less competition, profits higher than ever, and not just too big to fail, but bigger still.
Other industries, to be sure, are in there swinging: insurance and health care come to mind, but they seem like pikers in comparison. No, it’s energy and finance in coequal first place, military-related companies an honorable third, and the rest of the field not even in contention. And now, adding the icing to the corporate cake, we have the Supreme Court. Formerly the jewel in the American Crown, they have managed to find five Justices capable of making Eisenhower’s worst nightmare come true. They have put the seal of approval on corporate domination of politics, and done so in a way that can be kept secret. The swing-vote Senator can now be sand-bagged by a vicious advertising program on television, financed by unknown parties, and approved by no stockholders at all!
All in all it appears that Eisenhower’s worst fears have been realized and his remarkable and unique warnings given for naught. From now on, we should tread more carefully. Honoring President Eisenhower’s unique warnings, we should perhaps not take this 50-year slide lying down. Squawking loudly seems preferable.