United Stasi of America Through The Echelon Prism

Signals collection has a long secretive and enigmatic history. The very definition of espionage implies spying, most closely associated with foreign sources. Since the Echelon network, the unified function of data retrieval became a given during the cold war. With the revelation of Prism, advances in sophisticated electronic devices and software algorithms provide a major leap. The article, Is PRISM the US version of Echelon?, sums up the evolution. “With this kind of setup and ambition to capture and evaluate private conversations (well, not so private now), makes Echelon that much more believable, and that PRISM is a reflection of the infamous project, but focused solely on the US.”

Bankwatch takes a sanguine attitude towards Why PRISM? ECHELON has been around since 1948 supported by US, UK, Canada, Australia. At the same time, the publication references the capacities of the original analogue technology.

“The ECHELON system is fairly simple in design: position intercept stations all over the world to capture all satellite, microwave, cellular and fiber-optic communications traffic, and then process this information through the massive computer capabilities of the NSA, including advanced voice recognition and optical character recognition (OCR) programs, and look for code words or phrases (known as the ECHELON Dictionary) that will prompt the computers to flag the message for recording and transcribing for future analysis. Intelligence analysts at each of the respective listening stations maintain separate keyword lists for them to analyze any conversation or document flagged by the system, which is then forwarded to the respective intelligence agency headquarters that requested the intercept.”

This machinery of electronic snooping has no instinctive restraint on the subject or content, when the technocratic engineers are left to design the next level of the “All Seeing Eye”. The notion that the Prism program is shocking certainly does not conform to the even increasing capacity of surveillance society that has already discarded the presumption of privacy.

The Wall Street Journal forecasts the total integration of data because Technology Emboldened the NSA, to capture all that is digital.

“At a 2009 conference on so-called cloud computing, an NSA official said the agency was developing a new system by linking its various databases and using Hadoop software to analyze them, according to comments reported by the trade publication InformationWeek.

The system would hold “essentially every kind of data there is,” said Randy Garrett, who was then director of technology for the NSA’s integrated intelligence program. “The object is to do things that were essentially impossible before.”

Nonetheless, the Director of National Intelligence issues fact sheet on PRISM in response to leaks, wants you to accept that the government is adhering to stature authority and protecting vital national security interests. “While focusing on the letter of the law and the government’s good intentions, Clapper dodges any mention of how much information (or what kind) is actually collected with the PRISM program.”

OK, only a blood brother operative of the intelligence community will challenge the proposition that the collection of electronic information is the main function of their Skynet self-aware artificial intelligence system. The true debate is whether the data collected is destined for use against targeted American citizens, for nefarious purposes.

Mashable attempts to explain the methodology of PRISM: Does the NSA Really Get Direct Access to Your Data?, and how the “so called” judicial review function of FISA Court approval is processed.

“For Ashkan Soltani, an independent privacy researcher and technologist, this is “a process for submitting [Section] 702 requests and getting responses in a machine-readable form.”

The 41-page PRISM Powerpoint presentation “could be seen as a business development deck indicating all the various providers that they currently have ‘relationships with,’” he told Mashable.

The system is “basically a data-ingestion API,” he said.

Soltani speculated that based on what we know now, PRISM is a “streamlined way” to submit Section 702 orders to the companies for them to review the requests, and it gives the NSA the ability to handle and process the response “in an automated fashion,” just like an app like TripIt, which automatically parses information from your flight reservations.”

According to the American Dream, the terminator assignment is being assembled. The disturbing use of a database maintained since the 1980s by the federal government, Main Core: A List Of Millions Of Americans That Will Be Subject To Detention During Martial Law, is the ultimate application of the individual dossiers that are generated from signals collection.

“Main Core contains personal and financial data of millions of U.S. citizens believed to be threats to national security. The data, which comes from the NSA, FBI, CIA, and other sources, is collected and stored without warrants or court orders. The database’s name derives from the fact that it contains “copies of the ‘main core’ or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community.”

Looking through the historic prism and behavioral pattern of the shadow government agencies, the lack of dramatic public outrage seems to be the only consistent factor out of the denial denizens that love to salute the flag, while willingly forfeiting their bill of right protections. This regretful conduct is seen in the example from, “Christopher Ketchum of Radar Magazine that first reported on the existence of Main Core. At the time, the shocking information that he revealed did not get that much attention. That is quite a shame, because it should have sent shockwaves across the nation…”

Now we are all supposed to empathize with the hysteria of the political careerist class over the disclosures of Edward Snowden. The bipartisan spots of the carnivore leopards never change. When John Boehner Calls Snowden a Traitor, he speaks for much of the establishment and equates loyalty to the state as the very definition of nationalism.

Again, the chronicle of the military-industrial-intelligence-complex is replete with treasonous deeds against the constitutional republic. Remember the Carnivore system implemented by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that was designed to monitor email and electronic communications? Maybe your memory goes back to the archetype whistleblower. None other than the iconic Daniel Ellsberg speaks out on the current scandal in the Guardian letter, Edward Snowden: saving us from the United Stasi of America.

“In 1975, Senator Frank Church spoke of the National Security Agency in these terms:

“I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

The dangerous prospect of which he warned was that America’s intelligence gathering capability – which is today beyond any comparison with what existed in his pre-digital era – “at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left.”

That has now happened. That is what Snowden has exposed, with official, secret documents. The NSA, FBI and CIA have, with the new digital technology, surveillance powers over our own citizens that the Stasi – the secret police in the former “democratic republic” of East Germany – could scarcely have dreamed of. Snowden reveals that the so-called intelligence community has become the United Stasi of America.”

Yes, Virginia our great founding fathers came from not only this old dominion, but had a state of mind that fought the revolutionary war against tyranny. The United Stasi of America is the definitive meaning of the evil empire that protects the globalist criminals that control the political apparatus, known as the federal government.

The echelon network of subversion and espying is but a rung on a ladder of a coercive control. The prism of deception is the false reality your controllers use to relinquish your will to oppose the repression. The secret intelligence agencies only serve their own bureaucratic interests as they obey their master operative superiors.

The disinformation culture is the permanent realism and the snitch society is an essential requirement necessary to keep the imperium in power. With the Americanization of domestic terrorists, Tea Party activists and the Patriotic Truth movement are in the sights of totalitarian gangsters.

Is there any doubt that the NSA, FBI and CIA act as if they are above the law and unaccountable? The great divide between legitimate authority and clandestine oppression is narrow and fragile. The essential question is who is the true enemy? As the surveillance technology perfects their reach and assimilates the application of their data assets, the military option under martial law intensifies. No one is safe. Big Brother has become the impending Terminator.

The Stasi Skynet engulfs everyone. There is no way out of the matrix as long as the globalists operate their spy network. The system is designed to eliminate any and all dissent. Overload the data collectors by intensifying the practice of liberty at every opportunity.

Freedom In America – Rest In Peace

Political philosopher Montesquieu (1989 – 1755) once said:

“There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.”

International, constitutional and US statute laws no longer matter. Obama declared them null and void. He does so by disregarding them.

He consigned them to the dustbin of history. They’ve been heading there for years. Post-9/11, state terror accelerated.

Bush administration rogues enacted numerous police state laws. Previous articles discussed them. Constitutionality was ignored. Obama added his own. Doing so exceeded the worst of his predecessor’s policies.

Unconstitutional mass surveillance is official US policy. What Bush began, Obama accelerated. He did so straightaway as president.

Free societies don’t tolerate these practices. Obama authorized them secretly. He subverted constitutional law. He violated the public trust. He broke a key campaign pledge.

On January 8, 2008, he promised to end Bush/Cheney practices. Under an Obama administration, he said, they’ll be no “wiretaps without warrants.”

Straightaway as president he authorized them. On Friday, he tried defending the indefensible. He fell short and then some. His comments belie his policies.

“When I came into this office,” he said, “I made two commitments that are more important than any commitment I made: number one to keep the American people safe, and number two to uphold the Constitution.”

Americans have never been less safe. Freedom is more illusion than reality. Obama’s done more to subvert constitutional law than any previous president. He made freedom a four-letter word.

“You can’t have 100% security and also then have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience,” he claimed.

“We’re going to have to make some choices as a society. I think that on balance, we have established a process and a procedure that the American people should feel comfortable about.”

Obama made all the wrong choices. He violated constitutional law doing so. America’s unsafe to live in. Police state priorities threaten everyone.

Obama claimed surveillance “help(s) prevent terrorist attacks.” He lied saying so. No terrorist threat whatever exists. It didn’t earlier. It doesn’t now.

Obama called what’s ongoing “modest encroachments on privacy.” It’s sweeping, pervasive and lawless.

He urged Americans to trust him, Congress and federal courts. Why anyone would do so, they’ll have to explain.

“When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” he said. “That’s not what this program is about. As was indicated, what the intelligence community is doing is looking at phone numbers and durations of calls.”

“They are not looking at people’s names and they are not looking at content.” Permission to do so, he claimed, requires “go(ing) back to a federal judge just like (for) a criminal investigation.”

“With respect to the Internet and emails, this does not apply to US citizens and it does not apply to people living in the United States.”

False on all counts. Civil libertarians expressed outraged. John Simpson heads Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project. He calls what’s ongoing “a completely unwarranted violation of our constitutional rights.”

Obama authorized sweeping domestic spying. He did so unconstitutionally. He institutionalized it. It’s ongoing daily. It’s warrantless.

The 2012 FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act renewed warrantless spying for another five years. It violated constitutional protections doing so.

Phone calls, emails, and other communications may be monitored secretly without court authorization.

Probable cause isn’t needed. So-called “foreign intelligence information” sought means virtually anything. Vague language is all-embracing.

Hundreds of millions of Americans are targeted. Major telecom and Internet companies cooperate. They do so willingly.

All three branches of government are involved. They’re complicit in sweeping lawlessness. Congress is regularly briefly. Bipartisan leaders are fully on board. So are US courts.

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) called what’s ongoing the most sweeping surveillance ever ordered. It’s challenging administration practices to stop them.

CCR v. Obama is currently pending before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Initially it was filed against Bush, NSA director General Keith Alexander, and heads of other major US security agencies.

At issue is lawless, secretive, warrantless surveillance. CCR sought a cease and desist injunction. In January 2007, Bush administration officials claimed the program ended. They lied saying so.

In August 2007, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) became law. Included is a Protect America Act (PAA) amendment. It permits unrestricted warrantless data-mining.

It claims to restrict surveillance to foreign nationals “reasonably believed to be outside the United States.”

Not so! The law targets virtually everyone domestically. It does so if the Attorney General or Director of National Intelligence claims they pose a potential terrorist or national security threat. No corroborating evidence is needed.

CCR challenged PAA in court. It did so in January 2006. It called NSA surveillance illegal. It lacks judicial approval or statutory authorization.

It violates “FISA’s clear criminal prohibitions.” It exceeds executive authority under the Constitution’s Article II. It breaches the First and Fourth Amendments. CCR wants data and other information collected under PAA destroyed.

On January 31, 2011, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed CCR’s case. In April, CCR appealed. The Ninth Circuit initially scheduled oral arguments on June 1, 2012.

On May 21, 2012, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a similar ACLU case. It challenged the 2008 FISA Amendments Act’s constitutionality.

The Ninth Circuit postponed arguments until the High Court ruled. On February 26, 2013, it dismissed ACLU’s case. It did so 5 – 4.

The Ninth Circuit requested supplemental CCR briefs by April 26, 2013. Previously it said it would reschedule oral arguments. On June 3, “the panel indicated that it would submit the case for resolution without oral argument.”

There’s more. Obama’s waging war on freedom globally. On June 7, London’s Guardian headlined “Obama orders US to draw up overseas target list for cyber-attacks.”

He did so by secret presidential directive. It was issued last October. A copy was leaked to The Guardian.

It says Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO) “can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging.”

Washington will “identify potential targets of national importance where OCEO can offer a favorable balance of effectiveness and risk as compared with other instruments of national power.”

It suggests operating domestically the same way. Perhaps human rights organizations, anti-war activists, social justice advocates, independent journalists, alternative media web sites, and other individuals and organizations challenging lawless government practices will be targeted.

Everyone is vulnerable. Police states operate that way. America’s by far the worst. Obama’s waging war on freedom. It may not survive on his watch.

Unrestricted surveillance, other police state laws, and global cyber attacks constitute full-scale war to destroy it.

According to Professor Sean Lawson:

“When militarist cyber rhetoric results in use of offensive cyber attack it is likely that those attacks will escalate into physical, kinetic uses of force.”

Cyberwar is official US policy. An unnamed intelligence source told The Guardian that cyber attacks are commonplace. Foreign computer systems are hacked. Doing so seeks information wanted.

“We hack everyone everywhere,” the source said. “We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world.”

Obama bears full responsibility. He signed numerous police state laws on his watch. He authorized lawless surveillance and cyberwar. He did so unconstitutionally. Claiming otherwise doesn’t wash. Documents The Guardian obtained refute his claims. US policy is do what we say, not what we do.

According to The Guardian, Obama’s “move to establish a potentially aggressive cyber warfare doctrine will heighten fears over the increasing militarization of the internet.”

On June 7, Gizmodo.co.uk headlined “Anonymous Just Leaked a Trove of NSA Documents. Included are DOD plans for Internet control. Information on NSA’s Prism program were released.

A link provided (http://thedocs.hostzi.com/) fails to gain access. Perhaps Anonymous was hacked.

Information the Guardian posted relates to nine or more major online companies cooperating with lawless NSA spying. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, Apple, YouTube and others are involved.

Prism gives NSA access to search histories, emails, file transfers and live chats. It’s gotten directly from US provider servers. Doing so facilitates mass surveillance. Google denied involvement, saying:

It “cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully.”

“From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data.”

Previous articles discussed Google’s involvement with Bilderberg. CEO Eric Schmidt’s a regular conference attendee. He’s participating now in suburban London.

Infowars reporters Paul Joseph Watson and Jon Scobie said Google and Bilderberg are “merging.” Schmidt thinks “privacy is a relic of the past.”

He wants Google transformed into “the ultimate Big Brother.” Conspiring with Bilderberg and NSA are key ways to do it. Company deniability doesn’t wash. Google operations are very suspect.

CIA funding reportedly launched them. Allying with Bilderberg shows what’s at stake. Bilderberg wants Internet control through “cyber resistance.”

It wants a ministry of truth established. It wants all public information controlled. Google’s apparently on board to help. Obama’s very much involved. He’s waging full-scale war on freedom. It may not survive on his watch.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached atlendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”

http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

Eroding Freedom In America

US democracy is illusory. America never was beautiful. It’s not the land of the free and home of the brave. It wasn’t created that way. More than ever, it’s not now.

Freedom is a four-letter word. It’s fast disappearing. It’s an endangered species. Wealth, power and privilege alone matter. America’s war on terror priorities advance them.

International, constitutional and US statute laws are spurned. Rogue state ruthlessness replaced them. Boston’s unprecedented lockdown suggests what’s coming. It covered a two hundred square mile area. An important threshold was crossed.

Martial law terrorized city residents. Constitutional rights were suspended. Perhaps it was prelude to what’s coming. It can happen anywhere across America. It can show up nationwide.

Thousands of heavily armed militarized police, National Guard troops, FBI Swat teams, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operatives, Drug Enforcement Administration agents, and perhaps other federal, state and local enforcers showed what full-blown tyranny looks like.

Defying public diktats risked arrest or getting shot. Helicopters hovered low over neighborhoods. House-to-house searches ordered pajama-clad families outside.

Without probable cause, some were handcuffed and/or placed face down on sidewalks. Others were publicly strip-searched. Imagine what’s coming next time. Freedom in America’s on the chopping block for elimination.

What’s ongoing already includes:

• numerous police state laws;

• waging war on humanity;

• indefinite detentions without evidence, charges or trials;

• forced disappearances;

• targeted assassinations;

• torture and other forms of abuse;

• Big Brother surveillance;

• warrantless searches;

• other privacy invasions;

• false flag national security abuses;

• war on terror fear-mongering;

• military commission trials, including for US citizens;

• domestic military force deployments;

• secret FEMA concentration camps;

• racial profiling and persecution;

• militarized local police;

• criminalizing whistleblowers; and

• targeting non-believers for supporting right over wrong.

Tyranny isn’t in the eye of the beholder. It’s escalating in plane sight. It’s just a matter of time until it’s full-blown. Washington’s bipartisan criminal class plans it.

It’s hard-right, unbridled, reactionary, and pro-corporate. It’s anti-democratic, anti-dissent, anti-freedom, anti-civil and human rights, anti-social justice, anti-environmental sanity, and anti-government of, by and for everyone.

It’s dangerous living in America at the wrong time. Supporting right over wrong is threatened. Anyone can be targeted for any reason or none at all. Guilt by accusation is policy. Diktat authority has final say.

The National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms (NCPCF) includes national and local organizations. Its mission is:

“To educate the public about the erosion of civil and political freedoms in the society, and the abuses of prisoners within the US criminal justice system especially after 9/11, and to advocate for the preservation of those freedoms and to defend those rights according to the US Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its related UN Conventions, and the Geneva Conventions.”

Civil liberties are threatened, it warns. Public safety at the expense of freedom assures neither.

Post-9/11, thought crime prosecutions followed. Individuals and groups were targeted for “their beliefs, thoughts, or associations.”

Doing so violates constitutional protections. First Amendment freedoms are compromised. They’re fundamental. Without them, all others are at risk.

They include free speech, a free press, free thought, culture and intellectual inquiry, assembly, freedom to practice the religion of one’s choice, and to petition government for redress of grievances.

The Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) “defend(s) the rule of law and rights and liberties challenged by overbroad national security and counter-terrorism policies.”

It “support(s) an ideologically, ethnically, geographically, and generationally diverse grassroots movement to protect and restore these principles by encouraging widespread civic participation; educating people about the significance of our rights; and cultivating grassroots networks to convert concern, outrage, and fear into debate and action.”

Its “Campaign for the Constitution” headlines: “Building a Movement. Restoring Rights. Reclaiming Our Constitution.” At issue is restoring lost rights. Bipartisan complicity compromised them en route to eliminating them altogether.

Rule of law protections “withered under warrantless surveillance, rampant racial and religious profiling, and torture – and even human experimentation – with impunity.”

The ACLU highlights lost digital age civil liberties. New technologies compromised existing protections. Post-9/11, they’ve undergone serious erosion.

Web site visits are tracked. Cell phones log our movements. Emails and social network communications are monitored and stored. Warrantless spying is policy.

“Things we once thought could only happen in far-away enemy states or distant dystopias are suddenly happening here in America” said ACLU.

Privacy laws haven’t kept up with technology. War on terror priorities matter most.

Protecting civil liberties in the digital age requires “ensur(ing) that expressive, associational, and privacy rights are strengthened rather than compromised by new technology.”

It’s also about “protect(ing) these core democratic rights against intrusive corporate and government practices that rely on new technology to invade these rights.”

They’re being systematically destroyed. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Washington “consistently (doesn’t) recognize the protections afforded by the US Constitution and international law, and in doing so, it has failed in its responsibility to maintain a democratic society that is both open to, and accountable to, the people.”

Government is shrouded in secrecy. Checks and balances no longer matter. Bill of Rights freedoms are fading. They’re fundamental in democratic societies.

War on terror priorities breached First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment freedoms. At issue are search and surveillance authority, indefinitely detaining citizens and non-citizens uncharged, and undermining free expression, due process, and equal protection.

Washington’s criminal class is bipartisan. Ahead expect much worse. Old time radio listeners recall a memorable Jack Benny skit. “Your money or your life,” a robber asked?

After a pause, he was asked again. He responded saying “I’m thinking it over.”

Today no one’s asked. It isn’t either-or. It’s both.

A Final Comment

Fixing America’s dysfunctional system demands fundamental change. It starts by reforming the nation’s sham electoral process. Throwing out bums assures new ones.

Both major parties are two sides of the same coin. Not a dime’s worth of difference separates them. Secrecy and back room deals substitute for a free, fair and open process. Duopoly power rules.

Party bosses chose candidates. Big money owns them. Voters have no say. They get the best democracy money can buy. It happens every time.

The entire process was constitutionally flawed by design. Over time, things got worse. Bipartisan politics serves serves wealth, power, and privilege. Popular interests go begging.

Money power runs America. It games the system. It does so destructively. Controlling money, credit and debt for private enrichment assures speculation, booms, busts, inflation, deflation, instability, crisis, recessions and depressions.

It assures transferring enormous amounts of wealth from ordinary people to corporate giants and super-rich elites already with too much.

Washington is Wall Street occupied territory. What financial giants want, they get. They’re waging financial war on humanity. They’re more powerful than standing armies.

Economies are strip-mined for profit. Communities are laid waste. Ordinary people are impoverished and left out. Vital needs go begging.

Money power in private hands and democracy can’t co-exist. Complicit politicians betray the public trust. They do so for benefits they derive.

Social injustice defines official policy. Class war rages more than ever. America’s on a fast track toward tyranny. Stopping it requires free, fair and open elections. It’s also about returning money to public hands where it belongs.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

 

Source: ICH

The Ideological War For Freedom Is Over

It Lost…

“Wherever private property disappears, man’s liberty is gone.  Man is placed completely at the mercy of the state.  Wherever private ownership is weakened, man’s liberty is weakened also.  There is an essential relationship between liberty and property.”  R. J. Rushdoony

The Heritage Foundation provides an excellent summary of property rights.  They describe a rating of 100 this way: “Private property is guaranteed by the government. The court system enforces contracts efficiently and quickly. The justice system punishes those who unlawfully confiscate private property. There is no corruption or expropriation.”  At 50, “The court system is inefficient and subject to delays. Corruption may be present, and the judiciary may be influenced by other branches of government. Expropriation is possible but rare.”  At 0, “Private property is outlawed, and all property belongs to the state. People do not have the right to sue others and do not have access to the courts. Corruption is endemic.

In 1995 world property rights were rated at 56.  In 2013 they are rated at 43, a reduction of over 20 percent. (See the graph in the Heritage Link below.)

Though freedom is tending down throughout the world it remains highest in Western nations and lowest in the Third World. 

The Heritage link rates the United States of America tenth behind Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, Chile, Mauritius, and Denmark.  

Click here for the Heritage Foundation Property Rights link.

The U. S. Government now owns over 50 percent of the nation’s land and the incremental incursion of United Nation’s Agenda 21 continues to add to the coffer.  On Michael Shaw’s “Freedom Advocates”page he writes, “Agenda 21 seeks to transform America while eliminating the middle class. It plans to reach these goals on several fronts: by restructuring agriculture, creating broad wildlife corridors void of human activity, determining where and how people live, controlling human reproduction and human movement, constraining and controlling energy consumption and water use—in short, by eliminating private property.”

“The institution of private property makes possible three things essential to our liberty:  It encourages productive activity, allowing us to turn our ideas into actions and to realize the benefits of those actions. It allows us to engage in voluntary trade with others, multiplying the benefits of individual action a thousand-fold.  It enables us to safeguard and develop our resources responsibly and to secure peace and prosperity as a result. To appreciate the importance of private property in your own life, you need only to consider the significance of these two facts:  Private property represents everything you obtain through productive effort or voluntary trade.  Its essence is your right to determine its use”

The right to private property is being eroded in the United States and around the world.  World government seeks to exert absolute control; treating people like herds of cattle to be used as labor on the world plantation.  Like a bee hive the world will be filled with worker bees whose sole task is to provide an opulent leisure for the ruling class.  National pride will give way to a multicultural social order with intermarriages blurring racial identities. Only the Nation of Israel will remain intact.  Other nations and races are destined to become worker bees indistinguishable from one another.  This is the plan.  It is the logic behind the deliberate dumbing down of America and the massive push for multicultural integration. It is the impetus for the destruction of Christianity with its emphasis on the individual. The plan is diabolical, a direct download from Satan himself.

The snake of humanism is very prolific when it invades a society rationality disappears and as humans stray farther and farther from their Creator, foolishness grows with exponential rapidity.

We live with and have accepted an increasing number of social insanities: Our president who may be Constitutionally ineligible has been elected to a second term; our government has enslaved its citizens with a national debt of $16 trillion dollars which amounts to over $50 thousand per citizen; in direct defiance of the natural order we are training women to fight against men in defense of our nation and sanctioning homosexual marriage; the hallowed halls of our educational institutions have accepted the weakening results of multiculturalism as a desirable goal;  our citizens have been convinced that relatively weak and militarily insignificant nations in the Arab world are a danger to us; with text book insanity Americans continue to participate in a political system that is progressively enslaving them; and while all this subterfuge goes on our government supports an international court that prosecutes crimes against humanity while they are the biggest perpetrator.

Most Americans harbor a lackadaisical confidence that things will improve.  They ignore the world debt crisis and fail to consider that ultimately the lenders will call on the citizens of the United States to pay the debt their government has accumulated. Think of the austerity required for an American family of four to pay off a debt of $200,000.00.  That figure is quickly rising as our politicians continue to use the public credit card.  The debtor is a slave to the lender and the United States of America is a plantation populated by slaves whose willful ignorance allows them to go about their daily tasks as if all were well. 

The One True God is at odds with the new world order; it seeks to tyrannize us while He seeks to free us through obedience to His Commandments.  When God and His Law are forsaken despotism is inevitable.  We were not created to govern ourselves and since we have failed to encode this truth we are experiencing the results of our failure.

Partisan politics warned us about the dictatorial nature of the Obama Administration but the erstwhile Bush cabal was equally malignant.  Changing political partoes is useless. We have long ago lost control of our government and our opinions no longer matter.   Congress persons and senators vote the will of the money powers and the money powers reward them with re-election.

In Boston and Watertown, Massachusetts local, state, and federal authorities deployed a frightening array of coordinated force to apprehend two young men they described as terrorists.  Acting as judge and jury they violated the legal rights of the suspects and encroached on property rights by invading homes and restricting the movement of their occupants.  The entire operation resembled aiming a howitzer at a house fly.

The citizens of the United States of America have been put on notice that neither they nor their properties can claim protections from the unrestrained power of those that rule them.

Several times I have written that Americans need to repent from theirs and their father’s wicked ways. This admonition has fallen on deaf ears and some have advised me that I should stop writing about it because it will never happen.

In a recent email from American Vision Dr. Joel McDurmon wrote that “a corrupt government is the product of a corrupt people”. He quoted H. L. Mencken, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what They want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” and went on to contend that God often punishes a wicked populace by exposing them to their own sins. “Thus do the politically deluded live in a denial which dismisses even God’s Word in favor of the assertion of human wisdom.  So often do men shelter their pet political beliefs from even divine criticism.  So often do men deny God’s Word to advance their own desires. So often do men rest on false assurances built on their own godless dreams.  And just as often do societies weather and decay from the blights of human vanity.”   Read here.

America and its people have supported illegal aggression and encouraged murderous wars.  We have pride fully maintained our national superiority and encouraged the use of weapons of mass destruction. We have supported our government in the role of a deity and now, since we have granted it that role, it has begun reflecting it in action.  We have winked at sin, dallied in its fringes, and taken an occasional bath.  Dishonest measurements have been accepted for decades; our buildings are constructed with dishonest two-by-fours that are actually only one and a half by three and three quarters.  Now even our Pound Cakes weigh only fourteen ounces.  Dishonesty has permeated our culture!  Our media uses lies, gross omissions, and misrepresentations in reporting the news and our government regularly distorts facts and figures.  While all this defiance of God continues our churches disregard their proper function by seeking peace and respectability.  Abortion is a horrendous sin but it is only one sin; our cancerous pride covers scores of others.

One of my nieces is married to a lawyer.  He employs a logical mind that makes conversation interesting.  He is a Democrat who supports Obama and believes he is doing a reasonably good job.  His approach to life is pragmatic, he considers himself moral, and understands that there is room for disagreement.  We did not set parameters for our talk but I believe he would agree with Democrat Harry Reid that government is inherently good and with Libertarian Jacob Hornberger that it should be constrained by natural law.

Natural law alone would never have created the freedom and order the United States of America has enjoyed.  It was Christianity and the Laws God gave to Moses that buttressed a secular government and made our nation great. Though not always pronounced it was almost universally supported even by many whose personal beliefs were different.  Pragmatism is a pagan procedure that allows compromise with evil and the end to justify the means.  Freedom is always endangered by pragmatism.

Because we are no longer a righteous nation we are quickly losing our freedom. The longer we linger in secular humanism the greater the constraints.  Private property was flagrantly invaded in Watertown, Massachusetts. When tyrants are successful in exercising inordinate power they will continue to do so.

We no longer have private property in America.  The internet is devoid of privacy with everything subject to the prying eyes and ears of big brother.  Private homes are no longer sanctuaries but can now be invaded by heavily armed, jack booted government troops who can kill with impunity.  Public safety trumps individual rights leaving citizens without privacy or even the right to occupy of their own property. 

Life is no longer restrained by absolutes.  Power prevails and the full force of the United States military can be used to enforce the whims of those that wield it.

When we forsake God’s Law we subject ourselves to the whims of human power!

How Zionists Manage To Get Away With Their Myths And Lies

Jewish power is the unique capacity to stop us from discussing or even contemplating Jewish power. It is the capacity to determine the boundaries of the political discourse and criticism in particular.

In his new book, “The Invention Of The Land of Israel”, Israeli academic Shlomo Sand, manages to present conclusive evidence of the far fetched nature of the Zionist historical narrative – that the Jewish Exile is a myth as is the Jewish people and even the Land of Israel.

Yet, Sand and many others fail to address the most important question: If Zionism is based on myth, how do the Zionists manage to get away with their lies, and for so long?

If the Jewish ‘homecoming’ and the demand for a Jewish national homeland cannot be historically substantiated, why has it been supported by both Jews and the West for so long? How does the Jewish state manage for so long to celebrate its racist expansionist ideology and at the expense of the Palestinian and Arab peoples?

Jewish power is obviously one answer, but, what is Jewish power? Can we ask this question without being accused of being Anti Semitic? Can we ever discuss its meaning and scrutinize its politics? Is Jewish Power a dark force, managed and maneuvered by some conspiratorial power? Is it something of which Jews themselves are shy? Quite the opposite – Jewish power, in most cases, is celebrated right in front of our eyes. As we know, AIPAC is far from being quiet about its agenda, its practices or its achievements. AIPAC, CFI in the UK and CRIF in France are operating in the most open manner and often openly brag about their success.

Furthermore, we are by now accustomed to watch our democratically elected leaders shamelessly queuing to kneel before their pay-masters. Neocons certainly didn’t seem to feel the need to hide their close Zionist affiliations. Abe Foxman’s Anti Defamation League (ADL) works openly towards the Judification of the Western discourse, chasing and harassing anyone who dares voice any kind of criticism of Israel or even of Jewish choseness. And of course, the same applies to the media, banking and Hollywood. We know about the many powerful Jews who are not in the slightest bit shy about their bond with Israel and their commitment to Israeli security, the Zionist ideology, the primacy of Jewish suffering, Israeli expansionism and even outright Jewish exceptionalism.

But, as ubiquitous as they are, AIPAC, CFI, ADL, Bernie Madoff, ‘liberator’ Bernard Henri Levy, war-advocate David Aaronovitch, free market prophet Milton Friedman, Steven Spielberg, Haim Saban, Lord Levy and many other Zionist enthusiasts and Hasbara advocates are not necessarily the core or the driving force behind Jewish Power, but are merely symptoms. Jewish power is actually far more sophisticated than simply a list of Jewish lobbies or individuals performing highly developed manipulative skills. Jewish power is the unique capacity to stop us from discussing or even contemplating Jewish power. It is the capacity to determine the boundaries of the political discourse and criticism in particular.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not ‘right wing’ Zionists who facilitate Jewish power, It is actually the ‘good’, the ‘enlightened’ and the ‘progressive’ who make Jewish power the most effective and forceful power in the land. It is the ‘progressives’ who confound our ability to identify the Judeocentric tribal politics at the heart of Neoconservatism, American contemporary imperialism and foreign policy. It is the so-called ‘anti’ Zionist who goes out of his or her way to divert our attention from the fact that Israel defines itself as the Jewish State and blinds us to the fact that its tanks are decorated with Jewish symbols. It was the Jewish Left intellectuals who rushed to denounce Professors Mearsheimer and Walt, Jeff Blankfort and James Petras’ work on the Jewish Lobby. And it is no secret that Occupy AIPAC, the campaign against the most dangerous political Lobby in America, is dominated by a few righteous members of the chosen tribe. We need to face up to the fact that our dissident voice is far from being free. Quite the opposite, we are dealing here with an institutional case of controlled opposition.

In George Orwell’s 1984, it is perhaps Emmanuel Goldstein who is the pivotal character. Orwell’s Goldstein is a Jewish revolutionary, a fictional Leon Trotsky. He is depicted as the head of a mysterious anti-party organization called “The Brotherhood” and is also the author of the most subversive revolutionary text (The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism). Goldstein is the ‘dissenting voice’, the one who actually tells the truth. Yet, as we delve into Orwell’s text, we find out from Party’s ‘Inner Circle’ O’Brien that Goldstein was actually invented by Big Brother in a clear attempt to control the opposition and the possible boundaries of dissidence.

Orwell’s personal account of the Spanish Civil War “Homage To Catalonia” clearly presaged the creation of Emmanuel Goldstein. It was what Orwell witnessed in Spain that, a decade later, matured into a profound understanding of dissent as a form of controlled opposition. My guess is that, by the late 1940’s, Orwell had understood the depth of intolerance, and tyrannical and conspiratorial tendencies that lay at the heart of ‘Big Brother-ish’ Left politics and praxis.

Surprisingly enough, an attempt to examine our contemporaneous controlled opposition within the Left and the Progressive reveal that it is far from being a conspiratorial. Like in the case of the Jewish Lobby, the so-called ‘opposition’ hardly attempts to disguise its ethno-centric tribal interests, spiritual and ideological orientation and affiliation.

A brief examination of the list of organisations founded by George Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI) presents a grim picture – pretty much the entire American progressive network is funded, partially or largely by a liberal Zionist, philanthropic billionaire who supports very many good and important causes that are also very good for the Jews. And yet, like staunch Zionist Haim Saban, Soros does not operate clandestinely. His Open Society Institute proudly provides all the necessary information regarding the vast amount of shekels it spreads on its good and important causes.

So one can’t accuse Soros or the Open Society Institute of any sinister vetting the political discourse, stifling of free speech or even to ‘controlling the opposition’. All Soros does is to support a wide variety of ‘humanitarian causes’: Human Rights, Women’s Rights. Gay Rights, equality, democracy, Arab ‘Spring’, Arab Winter, the oppressed, the oppressor, tolerance, intolerance, Palestine, Israel, anti war, pro-war (only when really needed), and so on.

As with Orwell’s Big Brother that frames the boundaries of dissent by means of control opposition, Soros’ Open Society also determines, either consciously or unconsciously, the limits of critical thought. Yet, unlike in 1984, where it is the Party that invents its own opposition and write its texts, within our ‘progressive’ discourse, it is our own voices of dissent, willingly and consciously, that are compromising their principles.

Soros may have read Orwell – he clearly believes his message – because from time to time he even supports opposing forces. For instance, he funds the Zionist-lite J Street as well as Palestinian NGO organisations. And guess what? It never takes long for the Palestinian beneficiaries to, compromise their own, most precious principles so they fit nicely into their paymaster’s worldview.

The Visible Hand

The invisible hand of the market is a metaphor coined by Adam Smith to describe the self-regulating behaviour of the marketplace. In contemporary politics. The visible hand is a similar metaphor which describes the self-regulating tendency of the political-fund beneficiary, to fully integrate the world view of its benefactor into its political agenda.

Democracy Now, the most important American dissident outlet has never discussed the Jewish Lobby with Mearsheimer, Walt, Petras or Blankfort – the four leading experts who could have informed the American people about the USA’s foreign policy domination by the Jewish Lobby. For the same reasons, Democracy Now wouldn’t explore the Neocon’s Judeo-centric agenda nor would it ever discuss Jewish Identity politics with yours truly. Democracy Now will host Noam Chomsky or Norman Finkelstein, it may even let Finkelstein chew up Zionist caricature Alan Dershowitz – all very good, but not good enough.

Is the fact that Democracy Now is heavily funded by Soros relevant? I’ll let you judge.

If I’m correct (and I think I am) we have a serious problem here. As things stand, it is actually the progressive discourse, or at least large part of it. that sustains Jewish Power. If this is indeed the case, and I am convinced it is, then the occupied progressive discourse, rather than Zionism, is the primary obstacle that must be confronted.

It is no coincidence that the ‘progressive’ take on ‘antisemitism’ is suspiciously similar to the Zionist one. Like Zionists, many progressive institutes and activists adhere to the bizarre suggestion that opposition to Jewish power is ‘racially motivated’ and embedded in some ‘reactionary’ Goyish tendency. Consequently, Zionists are often supported by some ‘progressives’ in their crusade against critics of Israel and Jewish power. Is this peculiar alliance between these allegedly opposing schools of thoughts, the outcome of a possible ideological continuum between these two seemingly opposed political ideologies? Maybe, after all, progressiveness like Zionism is driven by a peculiar inclination towards ‘choseness’. After all, being progressive somehow implies that someone else must be ‘reactionary’. It is those self-centric elements of exceptionalism and choseness that have made progressiveness so attractive to secular and emancipated Jews. But the main reason the ‘progressive’ adopted the Zionist take on antisemitism, may well be because of the work of that visible hand that miraculously shapes the progressive take on race, racism and the primacy of Jewish suffering.

We may have to face up to the fact that the progressive discourse effectively operates as Israel’s longest arm – it certainly acts as a gatekeeper and as protection for Zionism and Jewish tribal interests. If Israel and its supporters would ever be confronted with real opposition it might lead to some long-overdue self-reflection. But at the moment, Israel and Zionist lobbies meet only insipid, watered-down, progressively-vetted resistance that, in practice, sustains Israeli occupation, oppression and an endless list of human rights abuses.

Instead of mass opposition to the Jewish State and its aggressive lobby, our ‘resistance’ is reduced into a chain of badge-wearing, keffiyeh-clad, placard-waving mini-gatherings with the occasional tantrum from some neurotic Jewess while being videoed by another good Jew. If anyone believes that a few badges, a load of amateur Youtube clips celebrating Jewish righteousness are going to evolve into a mass anti-Israel global movement, they are either naïve or stupid.

In fact, a recent Gallup poll revealed that current Americans’ sympathy for Israel has reached an All-Time High. 64% of Americans sympathise with the Jewish State, while only 12% feel for the Palestinians. This is no surprise and our conclusion should be clear. As far as Palestine is concerned, ‘progressive’ ideology and praxis have led us precisely nowhere. Rather than advance the Palestinian cause, it only locates the ‘good’ Jew at the centre of the solidarity discourse.

When was the last time a Palestinian freedom fighter appeared on your TV screen? Twenty years ago the Palestinian were set to become the new Che Guevaras. Okay, so the Palestinian freedom fighter didn’t necessarily speak perfect English and wasn’t a graduate of an English public school, but he was free, authentic and determined. He or she spoke about their land being taken and of their willingness to give what it takes to get it back. But now, the Palestinian has been ‘saved’, he or she doesn’t have to fight for his or her their land, the ‘progressive’ is taking care of it all.

This ‘progressive’ voice speaks on behalf of the Palestinian and, at the same time, takes the opportunity to also push marginal politics, fight ‘Islamism’ and ‘religious radicalisation’ and occasionally even supports the odd interventionst war and, of course, always, always, always fights antisemitism. The controlled opposition has turned the Palestinian plight into just one more ‘progressive’ commodity, lying on the back shelf of its ever-growing ‘good-cause’ campaign store.

For the Jewish progressive discourse, the purpose behind pro-Palestinian support is clear. It is to present an impression of pluralism within the Jewish community. It is there to suggest that not all Jews are bad Zionists. Philip Weiss, the founder of the most popular progressive pro-Palestinian blog was even brave enough to admit to me that it is Jewish self -interests that stood at the core of his pro Palestinian activity.

Jewish self-love is a fascinating topic. But even more fascinating is Jewish progressives loving themselves at the expense of the Palestinians. With billionaires such as Soros maintaining the discourse, solidarity is now an industry, concerned with profit and power rather than ethics or values and it is a spectacle both amusing and tragic as the Palestinians become a side issue within their own solidarity discourse.

So, perhaps before we discuss the ‘liberation of Palestine’, we first may have to liberate ourselves.

Drone World

In the not so distant future, America’s skies will be full of . . . drones.

What could go wrong?

“Although the prospect of drones flying over U.S. cities is generating cries of spies in the skies,” writes the Los Angeles Times, “groups from California to Florida are fiercely competing to become one of six federally designated sites for testing how the remotely piloted aircraft can safely be incorporated into the nation’s airspace.”

It’s just technology and technology is neutral, or so the forces of mainstream capitalism assure us. Drones are an emerging market, with worldwide sales expected to double in the next decade, to $11 billion, if not much more. And these will be good drones, the kind that look for lost children or leaks in pipelines, the kind that catch criminals.

What disturbs me about all this — what feels utterly unexamined in the mainstream coverage of this looming techno-makeover of our world — is:

A. Why is there such an emerging market for drones?

B. Why does the fact that some people will make lots of money on drones make their domestic mega-debut a done deal and what are the implications of the fact that potential profit for the well-connected is the lodestar of our future?

C. What might Drone World look like 10 or 20 years — or seven generations — down the road? And why does that not seem to be a concern of government; that is to say, why in an alleged democracy is there so little public discussion about the world we’re creating for our children and all succeeding generations?

Even the red flags of concern — about privacy or “Big Brother” — that some people are waving about domestic drone proliferation seem depressingly limited, especially because this is the only downside the corporate media bother to acknowledge. Passing legislation that prohibits drone surveillance without a warrant is a good idea, of course, but I have no faith in the power of law to protect us from the sort of social forces that drones enable.

Even unarmed drones are extraordinary tools of domination. But how strange, how naïve, to ponder the future of domestic drones without bothering to notice their current widespread usage as tools of murder and terror.

They’ve seduced the Obama administration into playing video game war in Central Asia on the pretense that killing alleged terrorists, and anyone else in the vicinity, is keeping America safe. Drones are more than just useful tools; the fact that they bestow such remarkably precise power on those who control them makes them truly dangerous appendages if the controllers are smitten with their own righteousness.

And righteousness combined with lethal power is militarism — which Jeff Cohen, in a recent speech at the National Conference on Media Reform in Denver, called “the elephant in the room” and “arguably our country’s biggest problem.” Only the rest of the world is aware of the U.S. addiction to militarism. In the circles of consensus power that govern the United States, including the mainstream media, there’s no such thing. In those circles, there are only our economic interests and our security, which add up to perpetual war.

We live in a society that requires enemies, and my guess is that, however much the promoters of drone technology extol the positive uses of drones — finding lost children and lost hikers, aiding in wildfire containment, natural disaster rescue assistance, monitoring the weather, scouting film locations (!) — their primary use will be in us-vs.-them situations. People who live in gated communities, secure in their “us” status, may see no problem with this, but for members of oft-targeted groups, the concerns about domestic drone usage, and the possibility of what the ACLU called “mission creep,” are hardly abstract.

“Even when laws do apply, constraints on law enforcement have a tendency to slacken when communities of color are the subjects of observation,” Seth Freed Wessler and Jamilah King note on the website Colorlines.

Citing a warning from digital watchdog group Electronic Frontier Foundation, they add that “there’s currently no legal firewall stopping the government from equipping drones with rubber bullets, tasers or other so-called ‘non-lethal weapons’ that research suggests get deployed on people of color at higher rates and that mirror other kinds of police violence.”

How hard is it to imagine the “war on terror” going domestic? It already has, of course, by other names. My point is that it’s absurdly naïve to envision domestic Drone World without factoring the dark side of U.S. militarism into the mix. Drones do not empower empathy. They empower its opposite.

Even the LA Times story quoted above, about the competition among states to get selected by the FAA as a drone test site, alludes — humorously — to the militarism lurking behind the drone craze. The story pointed out that Ohio’s pitch to get a test site included the fact that the state “was home to development of the ‘world’s first unmanned aerial system,’ a sort of flying bomb known as an ‘aerial torpedo’ developed in 1918.”

The fun is just beginning.

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His new book,Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com, visit his website at commonwonders.com or listen to him at Voices of Peace radio.

Source: Common Wonders

America Is Being Systematically Transformed Into A Totalitarian Society

If someone were to ask you for an example of a “totalitarian society”, how would you respond?  Most Americans would probably think of horribly repressive regimes such as the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Communist China, East Germany or North Korea, but the truth is that there is one society that has far more rules and regulations than any of those societies ever dreamed of having.  In the United States today, our lives are governed by literally millions of laws, rules and regulations that govern even the smallest details of our lives, and more laws, rules and regulations are constantly being added.  On January 1st, thousands of restrictive new laws went into effect all over America, but most Americans have become so accustomed to the matrix of control that has been constructed all around them that it does not even bother them when even more rules and regulations are put into place.  In fact, a growing number of Americans have become totally convinced that “freedom” and “liberty” must be tightly restricted for the good of society and that “the free market” is inherently dangerous.  On the national, state and local levels, Americans continue to elect elitist control freaks that are very eager to tell all the rest of us how to run virtually every aspect of our lives.

According to Merriam-Webster, the following is one of the ways that the word “totalitarian” is defined: “of or relating to a political regime based on subordination of the individual to the state and strict control of all aspects of the life and productive capacity of the nation especially by coercive measures”.  And that is exactly what we are witnessing in America today – nearly all aspects of our lives and of the economy are very tightly controlled by a bunch of control freaks that just keep tightening that control with each passing year.  We still like to call ourselves “the land of the free”, but the truth is that we are being transformed into a totalitarian society unlike anything the world has ever seen before.  Where will we end up eventually if we keep going down this road?

If you still believe that America is “free”, just consider some of the things that are illegal in America today…

-Starting on January 1st, it is now illegal to make or import 75 watt incandescent light bulbs anywhere in the United States.

-In Oregon, it is illegal to collect rainwater that falls on your own property.

-In New Jersey, it is illegal to have an “unrestrained” cat or dog in your vehicle while you are driving.

-If you milk your cow and sell some of the milk to your neighbor, you could end up having your home raided by federal agents.

-In Miami Beach, Florida you must recycle your trash properly or face huge fines.

-All over the United States, cops are shutting down lemonade stands run by children because they don’t have the proper “permits”.

-Down in Tulsa, Oklahoma one unemployed woman had her survival garden brutally ripped out and carted away by government thugs because it did not conform to regulations.

-Over in Massachusetts, all children in daycare centers are mandated by state law to brush their teeth after lunch.  In fact, the state even provides the fluoride toothpaste for the children.

-At one public school down in Texas, a 12-year-old girl named Sarah Bustamantes was arrested for spraying herself with perfume.

-A 13-year-old student at a school in Albuquerque, New Mexico was arrested by police for burping in class.

-All over the United States cities have passed laws that actually make it illegal to feed the homeless.

With each passing year, the number of decisions that we are allowed to make for ourselves gets smaller and smaller.

This includes some really fundamental things such as basic health decisions.

For example, the CDC will soon be recommending that nearly every single American be vaccinated for the flu every single year.  The following is from a recent Natural News article…

An advisory panel to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended that every person be vaccinated for the seasonal flu yearly, except in a few cases where the vaccine is known to be unsafe.

“Now no one should say ‘Should I or shouldn’t I?’” said CDC flu specialist Anthony Fiore.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 11-0 with one abstention to recommend yearly flu vaccination for everyone except for children under the age of six months, whose immune systems have not yet developed enough for vaccination to be safe, and people with egg allergies or other health conditions that are known to make flu vaccines hazardous.

These “recommendations” are often made into mandatory requirements by school districts and employers all over the country.  Will employers all over the nation soon require all of their employees to take these vaccines each year based on these CDC “recommendations”?  This is already happening in the healthcare field.  Hundreds of healthcare professionals all over the nation are being firedfor refusing to take certain vaccines.  It doesn’t matter that there is atremendous amount of evidence that many of these vaccines are dangerous.  Many health professionals today are being faced with the choice of either submitting to the “recommendations” of the “experts” or losing their jobs.

We see this kind of “creeping totalitarianism” in the business world as well.  As I have written about previously, small businesses all over the country are being absolutely suffocated by mountains of laws, rules and regulations.

One of the biggest changes that small businesses will be dealing with in the next couple of years is Obamacare.  Many small businesses have been cutting back hours in an attempt to get around the new requirements contained in Obamacare.  The following is one example from a news story that was published earlier this week…

Around 100 local Wendy’s workers have learned their hours are being cut. A spokesperson says a new health care law is to blame.

“Thirty-six to 37 hours a week.” That’s how many hours T.J. Growbeck works at the 84th and Giles Wendy’s restaurant. The money he earns helps him pay for the basics, but that’s not the case for all his co-workers. “There are some people doing it trying to get by.”

The company has announced that all non-management positions will have their hours reduced to 28 a week. Gary Burdette, Vice President of Operations for the local franchise, says the cuts are coming because the new Affordable Health Care Act requires employers to offer health insurance to employees working 32-38 hours a week. Under the current law they are not considered full time and that as a small business owner, he can’t afford to stay in operation and pay for everyone’s health insurance.

But the IRS has announced that it is going to make it very hard for employers to avoid these new Obamacare regulations.  According to new IRS rules, all firms that “have at least 50 full-time employees or an equivalent combination of full-time and part-time employees” will be required to provide healthcare for their employees and their dependents.  The following is from a recent New York Times article…

Under the rules, employers must offer coverage to employees in 2014 and must offer coverage to dependents as well, starting in 2015.

The new rules apply to employers that have at least 50 full-time employees or an equivalent combination of full-time and part-time employees. A full-time employee is a person employed on average at least 30 hours a week. And 100 half-time employees are considered equivalent to 50 full-time employees.

Thus, the government said, an employer will be subject to the new requirement if it has 40 full-time employees working 30 hours a week and 20 half-time employees working 15 hours a week.

So conceivably an employer could have only part-time employees and still be required to provide healthcare coverage under Obamacare.

Of course many small businesses will not be able to afford to do this, so expect to see a significant number of them shut down or to try to survive with skeleton crews in 2014 and 2015.

As the number of laws, rules and regulations that govern our lives continues to multiply, the control freaks that run things will continue to try to use technology to watch us all and make sure that we are obeying their rules.

One way that they are doing this is with automated traffic cameras.  Of course much of the time the performance of these cameras is terribly flawed.  Just consider the following example which recently appeared in the Baltimore Sun…

The Baltimore City speed camera ticket alleged that the four-door Mazda wagon was going 38 miles per hour in a 25-mph zone — and that owner Daniel Doty owed $40 for the infraction.

But the Mazda wasn’t speeding.

It wasn’t even moving.

The two photos printed on the citation as evidence of speeding show the car was idling at a red light with its brake lights illuminated. A three-second video clip also offered as evidence shows the car motionless, as traffic flows by on a cross street.

But even though technology sometimes fails, the control freaks that run things seem absolutely obsessed with using it to monitor us.  After all, there are so many of us and watching all of us is a very big job.

For example, did you know that listening devices are being installed on public buses all over the United States?  The following is from a recent Wired article…

Transit authorities in cities across the country are quietly installing microphone-enabled surveillance systems on public buses that would give them the ability to record and store private conversations, according to documents obtained by a news outlet.

The systems are being installed in San Francisco, Baltimore, and other cities with funding from the Department of Homeland Security in some cases, according to the Daily, which obtained copies of contracts, procurement requests, specs and other documents.

According to the article, some of these systems are incredibly advanced and pair the audio that is being recorded with video that is being taken at the same time…

In Eugene, Oregon, the Daily found, transit officials requested microphones that would be capable of “distilling clear conversations from the background noise of other voices, wind, traffic, windshields wipers and engines” and also wanted at least five audio channels spread across each bus that would be “paired with one or more camera images and recorded synchronously with the video for simultaneous playback.”

But that is just one example of how the surveillance of the American people is rapidly growing.  For many more examples, please see my previous article entitled “29 Signs That The Elite Are Transforming Society Into A Total Domination Control Grid“.

If America continues down the path that it is on right now, the United States will eventually be transformed into a “Big Brother society” that is far more restrictive than anything George Orwell ever dreamed of.

We need a fundamental cultural revolution in this nation.  We need a revival of the principals of liberty and freedom that were so important during the founding days of this country.  We need to teach people that even though liberty and freedom may be unpredictable at times, such an environment is greatly preferable to a society where all of our decisions are made for us by a tiny elite.

Please share this article with as many people as you can.  Time is running out, and we need to wake up as many as we can while there is still time.

Source: The American Dream

Americans Snatching Up Russian AK-47s In record Numbers

I’ll never forget the first thing my ex-wife’s father said to me: “Wanna go shoot an AK?”

I obliged.

It turns out Americans are turning to AK ‘s in droves to fill their home armories.

Russia doesn’t mind, and neither do it’s arms companies, like Izhmash, which are quickly shifting from military to civilian fabrication in order to fill all the orders.

Overall it’s been a good deal for American enthusiasts, and for Russian investors, since existing laws banning Chinese imports essentially subsidizes Russian businesses.

Andrew E. Kramer of New York Times reports ”And in the United States, Izhmash cannot be underpriced by Chinese competitors. The federal government has banned most imports of Chinese handguns and rifles since 1994.

Selling Saigas in the United States is integral to the enterprise’s evolving business model of making single-shot civilian guns to occupy workers and equipment in between government orders for fully automatic assault rifles. About 70 percent of the factory’s output is now civilian rifles, up from 50 percent two years ago. Of the civilian arms, about 40 percent are exported to the United States.”

To be clear, we’re talking about perfectly legal to import, and to own in some states, civilian versions of the AK-47. One shot, semi-automatic. These companies have cut back on their fully automatic, military versions in order to supply the U.S. market.

Due to the Second Amendment and America’s widespread culture of gun ownership, the US market for civilian weaponry is among the largest on the globe. The AK has not only a violent history, but a history of consistency and reliability.

Kalashnikov rifles can be buried in beach sand, dug up, loaded, and fired. Rinse, repeat, and it’ll fire still. Russian brandname Saiga AK’s saw a sales rise of 50 percent just last year.

Josh Laura, a former Marine from Maryville, Tenn., told the Times, “I bought a Saiga because it was made in Russia, right beside its big brothers, the AKs. No rifle in the world has been as reliable as this one.”

Even in combat, Marine have been known to use confiscated Kalashnikov ‘s instead of their own general issue M16′s. The preference, no doubt, is due to consistency of performance and caliber, which, at 7.62mm, packs a bit more of a punch than the NATO 5.56 mm.

Source: Business Insider

What Everyone Forgets When Debating Gun Control

In the wake of the Auroramass shooting, the usual pattern is playing out with respect to gun control.  People such as Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Piers Morgan and Bill Moyers are beating the drum to restrict firearm ownership, as others try to beat them back.  One side says we’d be safer if guns were rarer; the other says that more guns equal less crime.  One side says guns kill people, the other that people kill people.  Facts and feelings are bandied back and forth (although one side specializes in the facts and the other in the feelings), but in all the commentary, some of which is very good, one point is universally missed.

For the sake of argument, let’s accept the supposition that outlawing firearms would save lives.  Does it logically follow from this that guns should be restricted or banned?

Well, it would certainly save lives and countless injuries if people didn’t engage in mountain-climbing, hang-gliding, motorcycle-racing, trampolining, big-wave surfing, cave-diving, heli-skiing and a host of other dangerous activities.  And, like guns, knives and baseball bats are common murder weapons.  Does it logically follow that these items and activities should be banned?

The point is that we never treat saving lives as the only imperative when devising policy.  If we did, we’d perhaps consider reducing speed limits on highways to 5 mph, since this might save most of the 43,000 lives lost on the road each year.  Speaking of which, since 40 percent of those deaths are alcohol related, we can consider resurrecting Prohibition, too.

Now, since gun-control advocates think they have morality on their side, they may want to ponder a question: is it moral to sacrifice 43,000 lives just so we can be free to zip around at 55 or 65 mph?  The answer here is that the safety imperative is balanced against an economic one, in that too much productivity would be lost with a five-mph speed limit.

But sometimes far more trivial things trump the safety imperative.  No one needs to drink alcohol, go rock-climbing, or play baseball when doing so necessitates the availability of a dangerous weapon.  So, imagine that, we’re actually placing fun and enjoyment ahead of saving lives.  In fact, some among us will even tolerate death on a massive scale if we think the reason is good enough.  An example is when the anti-gun left is willing to accept 1.2 million killings a year through abortion.

So if we’ll accept death through fun, should we question death through the gun?  As with dangerous recreation, the enjoyment justification exists with firearms, too, in the form of target and sport shooting.  As with driving, an economic justification exists in that revenue is collected from hunters and because some poorer rural Americans help feed themselves through hunting.  But there is something here that is a true imperative, one that’s greater than most any other:

Thwarting evil.

The apocryphal saying, “God made some men big and others small, but Samuel Colt made them equal,” gets at the point here.  Whether it’s a smaller person or group, firearms tend to even the odds.  They help create parity, and that’s not what criminals want—they want easy prey.  Thus, like a predator in the wilds that generally won’t attack a creature more than half its size, even if a criminal is armed himself, he’ll be reluctant to tackle a target that can target him back.

Even more significantly, as Prohibition, prostitution and drugs have proven, illegal isn’t synonymous with unavailable.  So, again, let’s assume a gun criminalization that left firearms in the hands of a few criminals did save lives overall.  What should we conclude if those armed miscreants could nonetheless ply their dark trade with little resistance?  What should we feel if good people were declawed and rendered powerless to thwart their evil?

A virtuous, justice-oriented person should find this intolerable to the point of outrage.

He should quote Emiliano Zapata and say, “It’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”  Yet better still is to live on your feet.  And a gun in the hand makes that more likely.

As for debating the Second Amendment, there’s nothing wrong with using facts to refute the notion that more guns equal more deaths.  But this should be only part of the debate, not the debate itself.  Otherwise we miss some great principles, one of which is that life at all costs is too great a cost.  Living is about more than just life, and whether the matter is sports that can kill, drink that can kill or guns that can kill, you can’t really live if you’re suffocated with a Big Brother bubble-wrap mentality.

The Un-American Sin of Property Taxes

When North Dakotanswent to the polls on Tuesday, they had a chance to strike a blow for freedom and make their state the first in the nation to ban all property taxes.  Unfortunately, though, the referendum was defeated soundly.  With such levies having become a fixture on the American landscape, the proposal was seen as just being too radical.  But was it, really?

I say it is property taxes themselves that are radical.

I’ve always objected to property taxes because they do violence to the concept of property ownership.  After all, what am I describing when saying the following: I have to pay a fee on a regular basis to stay in a home or apartment, and if I don’t I will be evicted from it?

That is the status of a renter—not a landowner.

Any which way you slice it, property tax is rent you pay to the government.  Sure, we don’t call it that.  But if the effect is the same, what’s the difference?  And government, with its “surcharges” and “assessments,” is infamous for conjuring up euphemisms for its excessive and unjust taxes.

Note that in my fourth-paragraph question I wrote, “I have to pay a fee on a regular basis to stay in a home or apartment….”  There’s a good reason why I didn’t write “my home or apartment.”  After all, if I can be evicted for not paying rent-by-another name, do I truly own it?

In reality, our property-tax system smacks of Old World Manorialism, which became “patroonship” in colonial New York and New Jersey—only Big Brother is now the Lord of the Manor.  And woe betide the peasant who can’t pay his rent.

Just consider the plight of a responsible American family that, due to illness, our poor economy or the death of a breadwinner, can no longer afford to pay rent to the Big Brother of the Manor.  Their home may be paid off; they may have lived in it for 20 years.  But none of that matters when you don’t really own it but are just a renter.  They’ll be out of luck and perhaps out on the streets, joining the ranks of the homeless.

Despite all this, many find it unfathomable that we should end our modern-day manorial system.  As The New York Times wrote prior to the vote on the ND proposal:

An unusual coalition of forces, including the North Dakota Chamber of Commerce and the state’s largest public employees’ unions, vehemently oppose the idea, arguing that such a ban would upend this quiet capital [Bismarck].  Some big unanswered questions, the opponents say, include precisely how lawmakers would make up some $812 million in annual property tax revenue; what effect the change would have on hundreds of other state laws and regulations that allude to the more than century-old property tax; and what decisions would be left for North Dakota’s cities, counties and other governing boards if, say, they wanted to build a new school, hire more police, open a new park.

Ah, the old “where will the government get the money?” line.  Frankly, I don’t worry about such things because that should never be the first question when pondering tax issues.  It should be: where will the people get the money?  It is, after all, theirs, and isn’t this supposed to be a government of, by and for the people?

Of course, the elimination of property taxes would mean that governments would have to adjust their tax structure.  But so what?  Doesn’t the citizen who falls on hard times (often due to bad government policy, mind you) and whose home is seized by Big Brother of the Manor have to adjust?  Does government worry how the people will adjust when making some sweeping policy change (e.g., ObamaCare)?  It’s time for the government to do some adjusting for a while.

Unfortunately, the elimination of modern-day Manorialism is a tough sell even among many conservatives.  To be “conservative,” after all, is to oppose big changes and preserve the status quo.  As an example, the Times wrote, “For his part, Gov. Jack Dalrymple, a Republican, said he opposed the property tax ban.  ‘It’s mind-boggling, really,’ he said, in an interview, of the effects of such a ban.  ‘We’d be changing everything, frankly.’

All I can say is that were it not for a willingness to change “everything,” our nation would never have been founded (see Washington, Hamilton, Paine, Madison, Adams, Henry et al.).

The First Continental Congress’s Declaration on Colonial Rights stated that by “the immutable laws of nature” we are “entitled to life, liberty and property: and… have never ceded to any foreign power whatever, a right to dispose of either without…consent.”  Shouldn’t the same apply to a domestic power?

And then we have to ask: how foreign have our domestic powers become?

One Nation Under Surveillance

America prides itself in being called “the land of the free.” But, what, exactly, does it mean to be free? Does it mean owning a car and having a job? People in communist countries own a car and have a job. Does it mean going to a mall to shop. People in communist countries go to a mall to shop. Does it mean going to an amusement park to recreate? People in communist countries go to amusement parks. Does it mean going to the polls and voting? People in communist countries go to the polls and vote. In reality, many, if not most, of the things that most Americans would identify as marks of freedom are commonly practiced in the most oppressed communist countries of the world. So, what does it mean to be free?

Obviously, the freedom of speech is a crucial element of freedom, so much so that it is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. And the truth is, freedom of speech is not at all what it used to be in this country. If you doubt that, just ask the hundreds and thousands of journalists, news anchors, sportscasters, business executives, religious leaders, non-profit organization heads, teachers, scientists, government employees, etc., who have lost their positions for saying something politically incorrect. If you could, ask the late Howard Cosell or the late Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder. Ask Judge Andrew Napolitano, Glenn Beck, or Lou Dobbs. There are literally millions of people across America who daily “bite their tongues” and refuse to speak for fear of demotion, dismissal, retaliation, persecution, or worse! You call that freedom of speech? Gag!

Another critical element of freedom enshrined in the First Amendment is the right to worship freely. But, this, too, is not what it used to be. Can anyone remember when pastors and church leaders were free to say what they wanted in regard to issues that tread into government? If you do, you are probably over 50 years old or attend a non-501c3 church. On the whole, pastors and church leaders today are literally “scared silly” to broach any topic that might have political overtones, which means a sizeable percentage of the Bible is either ignored or spiritualized away by the vast majority of America’s pulpits. You call this freedom of worship? Barf!

Of course, the right of the people to keep and bear arms is one of the most crucial ingredients of a free society. It is this right that, for the most part, separates the United States from the oppressed nations of the world. And, of course, the Powers That Be have been chipping away at this fundamental tenet of liberty for nearly half a century, to the point that there are literally tens of millions of Americans who are forbidden by law from owning or possessing a firearm due to a conviction or plea bargain for some “crime” in which no one—nada–was injured. And in many states, even those who have never run afoul of the law are forbidden from owning–and especially–possessing a firearm. Can anyone say Massachusetts or California?

Government attacks against the Second Amendment notwithstanding, I am absolutely convinced that the ownership and possession of more than 100 million firearms in the hands and homes (and hearts) of the American citizenry is the main thing that has kept the overt forces of tyranny somewhat at bay to this point in our country. I suggest that even you folks who do not really care anything about guns and shooting, but who claim to love liberty, go purchase a firearm and learn the fundamental elements of firearm safety and usage–if for no other reason than because you are an American who believes in freedom and who understands that only free men own guns!

The right to be secure in your homes, papers, effects, etc., is also an essential element of liberty. But this right has been largely expunged in the United States–especially since 9/11/01. The NDAA (and other federal laws and executive orders) suspends the right to a trial by jury and the right to not be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, among other essential liberties.

But perhaps the most essential element of liberty is the right to be left alone, the right to privacy, the understanding that a man’s home is his castle, the right of free people to live their lives without Big Brother looking over their shoulder. Without the right to be left alone, liberty does not exist! And ladies and gentlemen, it is this freedom that is under attack the most in this country.

This is an issue that cuts across all political, social, racial, and religious lines. It doesn’t matter to a hill of beans whether one is liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, white or black, or Protestant or Catholic. The right of free men to be left alone without government sticking its nose into our personal and private business is the quintessential ingredient of a free society. And in this regard, do you really believe America is still the “land of the free”? You’re kidding, right?

America is no longer “one nation under God.” Today, America is “one nation under surveillance.” Cameras monitoring our every movement, satellites taking pictures of our homes, listening devices being used to record our conversations, hi-tech computers capturing virtually every piece of correspondence, banking institutions forwarding our private financial records to Big Brother, and now armed drones flying over the neighborhoods of the American citizenry all reveal that America is anything but the “land of the free.” The following My Way News report is merely another example of this repulsive reality:

“The U.S. intelligence community will now be able to store information about Americans with no ties to terrorism for up to five years under new Obama administration guidelines.

“Until now, the National Counterterrorism Center had to immediately destroy information about Americans that was already stored in other government databases when there were no clear ties to terrorism.

“Giving the NCTC expanded record-retention authority had been called for by members of Congress who said the intelligence community did not connect strands of intelligence held by multiple agencies leading up to the failed bombing attempt on a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas 2009.

“‘Following the failed terrorist attack in December 2009, representatives of the counterterrorism community concluded it is vital for NCTC to be provided with a variety of datasets from various agencies that contain terrorism information,’ Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in a statement late Thursday. ‘The ability to search against these datasets for up to five years on a continuing basis as these updated guidelines permit will enable NCTC to accomplish its mission more practically and effectively.’

“The new rules replace guidelines issued in 2008 and have privacy advocates concerned about the potential for data-mining information on innocent Americans.

“‘It is a vast expansion of the government’s surveillance authority,’ Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said of the five-year retention period.

“The government put in strong safeguards at the NCTC for the data that would be collected on U.S. citizens for intelligence purposes, Rotenberg said. These new guidelines undercut the Federal Privacy Act, he said.

“‘The fact that this data can be retained for five years on U.S. citizens for whom there’s no evidence of criminal conduct is very disturbing,’ Rotenberg said.”

See the report at:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20120323/D9TLT6VG0.html

Go to any oppressed country, and what will you find? A surveillance society! This is the most glaring characteristic of an Orwellian state. And ladies and gentlemen, Communist China or Red Russia has nothing over the United States when it comes to the development and implementation of a surveillance society. And the truth is the US would have already plummeted into overt oppression if it were not for the fact that there are so many guns in the possession of the American citizenry. But, I say again, without the right to be left alone, liberty does not exist.

Folks, we must start paying attention to this surveillance society that it quickly taking shape in this country. No! Not just start paying attention to it, start RESISTING it! A surveillance society cannot emerge without the cooperation of State governors, attorney generals, legislators, senators, county sheriffs, city mayors, police chiefs, etc. And where are America’s pastors to sound the alarm bells from the church houses regarding this attack against our liberty? Where are the college professors? Where are the journalists and reporters? Where are the retired military personnel who were willing to sacrifice their lives on foreign shores? What good is it to fight for freedom overseas, if we are not willing to fight for freedom at home?

So, the next time you hear someone shout out that America is the “land of the free,” ask them if they have given any thought to the fact that virtually everything they do, everything they say, everywhere they go, and every financial transaction they make is being monitored, scrutinized, and surveilled by the federal government and the private institutions they control. Ask them what they are doing to resist this sinister surveillance society that is quickly enveloping this country. Ask them what their pastor is doing to resist this burgeoning surveillance society. Ask them what kind of country do they think their children and grandchildren are going to grow up in one day. Then ask them if they truly understand what it means to be free. And maybe more importantly, ask them if they understand what it takes to keep America free, because people who are not left alone are not free!

1984 Is NOW: A Cyber Conversation With Roy Tov

Ever since my first of seven trips to Israel Palestine, I begin every day wondering what would Dorothy Day report today regarding USA policy vis-à-vis Israel Palestine?

I have no doubt that Day would be praying for and reporting on two particular brothers born of different Jewish mothers –one Moroccan and the other South American.

In 1963, Vanunu’s family planned on moving to “the land of milk and honey” but were banished to the ethnically cleansed village of Beersheba, which had been envisioned to be a part of the Arab state in the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. Following the declaration of Israel’s independence, the Egyptian army amassed its forces in Beersheba as a strategic and logistical base but in October 1948, Israeli Forces conquered the city.

Ro’i Tov was born in South America but grew up in a tight-knit communist kibbutz along the Jordan Valley. Against the odds, he graduated from Tel Aviv University and also the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Tov’s second book, The Cross of Bethlehem II: Back in Bethlehem shares “how he was caught between staying steadfast in his Christian faith and remaining obedient to his country’s military. Caught in a military that challenges his spiritual and moral beliefs, Tov achieved the rank of captain while serving in the IDF. When he left Israel and threatened to disclose the details of what he’s witnessed to the world, Tov became a refugee, traveling to Thailand, China, the United States and Bolivia, where he became first a refugee, and afterwards a political prisoner.”

For decades Tov has been monitored, followed, trapped, poisoned and brutally beaten to get him to shut up, and although he has been silenced from speaking in public due to the damage inflicted upon his throat he cannot be silenced on the Internet or on printed page, because he is driven to share the story of his soul.

Regarding the ongoing violence against him, Tov explained:

“You could ask why I wasn’t assassinated during the 2009 attack. The attack was predicted. I told Bolivia’s refugees office that I was about to be attacked already in March, four months before the violent event. They laughed at me; understandably so since the Bolivian government was a side to the attack. I asked for help from my congregation. They denied it, despite my request not being financial; they have been bought by the aggressors. Since the attack was predicted I took precautions. Substantially before it, I asked for political asylum in Iran. They got copies of all my documents. They have copies of documents I don’t have anymore. This is what saved my life. I was treated by them seriously and even met the ambassador. Neither Israel nor Bolivia knows what would have happened following a successful assassination. As far as they know, Iran may come out and
credibly have denounced the crime. Instead, they inflicted a slowly killing wound.”

In another email Roy wrote:

“I don’t have a Facebook account, because after I
 opened one, it was deactivated in less than two hours. This is not a coincidence. Victor Ostrovsky disclosed the 
fact that American Jews are used by Mossad as ‘sayanim,’ (‘helpers’ in
Hebrew, the word bears connotations of ‘traitors’ as well).

Previously Roy wrote:

“Is Zuckerberg Mossad?

“I care very little about Mark Zuckerberg’s formal statistics; he was born – at least in spirit – in 1984. On September 2010, he gave an interview to the Oprah Winfrey Show. Among other things he suggested not to talk about politics or religion.

“Politics can be defined as ‘the peaceful solution of conflicts.’ The only alternative to politics is violence and war. Religion defines ones attitude toward God and his fellow humans. As such religion is the base for our politics. There is no other choice for each one of us to be actively involved in both. Any other claim takes us straight into the criminal hands of the Big Brother; then, every year would become 1984.”

In The Cross of Bethlehem, Roy explained:

“The year was 1983, but at school we were already studying Orwell’s 1984, a book which frightened us by its similarity to life in Israel. The Lebanon War, which had begun a year earlier, was still called ‘the War for the Peace of Galilee’ by the government. The Hebrew possessive contraction brought together the two words which sounded exactly like ‘War-Peace,’ creating a perfect Orwellian oxymoron. We all skipped the obvious contemporaneous context of the book in our commentaries; such semantics could belong only to the enemy and we lived in an enlightened society.

“Our government could not have made such an Orwellian choice consciously. And yet a little voice in my head told a different story, one that must be kept to myself. The glitch allowing such a subversive book to be on our reading list could only be interpreted as some inconsistency of the system.

“However, a frightening alternative explanation was that 1984 had been placed on the Education Ministry’s official list of books intentionally, so that we would forever fear authority and behave. It was our first lesson in government manipulation of its people.”

Orwell’s nightmare titled, “1984″ was published in 1949. When I reread it a few years ago, I was struck at how much Vanunu reminded me of Winston Smith, Orwell’s man with an independent thought that Big Brother found so threatening that they tortured him beyond his endurance in order to break him, brainwash him and strip him of his humanity.

In 1987, from Ashkelon Prison, Vanunu wrote:

I had no choice. I’m a little man, a citizen, one of the people, but I’ll do what I have to. I’ve heard the voice of my conscience and there’s nowhere to hide…yes, it’s there all right. I’m all right. I do see the monster. I’m part of the system. I signed this form. Only now I am reading the rest of it. This bolt is part of a bomb. This bolt is me…Who else knows? Who has seen? Who has heard?” [1]


”


A working prophet, is able to see deeper than most of us into the human soul. Orwell in 1948 understood that despite the Axis defeat, the will to fascism had not gone away…the irresistible human addiction to power were already long in place…the means of surveillance in Winston Smith’s era…are primitive next to the wonders of computer technology…most notably the Internet.” [2]

“Universal peace and justice are the goals of man, and the prophets have faith that in spite of all errors and sins…[and] although under the illusion of fighting for peace and democracy…all the fighting nations lost moral considerations…the unlimited destruction of civilian populations…atomic bombs…can human nature be changed so that man will forget his longing for freedom, dignity, integrity, love-can man forget that he is human?” [3]

The Orwellian named “Fabric of Life Road” in occupied Palestine is in reality an apartheid road; separate and unequal. Palestinians must travel through sewage and tunnels, but Israelis ride on only well maintained contiguous highways. On The Wall that divides Jerusalem from her sister city the little town of Bethlehem, the Ministry of Tourism had draped a doublespeak sign that proclaimed “Peace be with you” but there is no peace in the Holy Land, for Justice has not been done unto the indigenous people.

In Orwell’s epic, Winston Smith played the role of the archetype of all threats to Big Brother; an individual with an open and free mind, independent thought, memory of history, a voice of dissent and willing to take bold action. Orwell’s Big Brother tortured all threats in order to get inside their head and then to brainwash them into accepting doublethink as truth.

The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki cannot compare to the 21st century slaughter that could be achieved by thermonuclear weapons with capacities to wipe out 100% of a country within minutes. The Industrial Military Complex cranks out new weapons about every five years and soon the minds driven mad with doublethink-”war is peace”- will create 100 or 1,000 megaton bombs!

“Orwell demonstrates the illusion of the assumption that democracy can continue to exist in a world preparing for nuclear war…leaders…have only one aim, and that is power…and power means to inflict unlimited pain and suffering to another human being……how can a minority of one be right?…we spend a considerable part of our income and energy in building thermonuclear weapons, and close our minds to the fact that they might go off and destroy one third or one half of our population and that of the enemy…another example of doublethink-from a Christian standpoint” is the evil of killing any other. [Ibid]

From emails Vanunu wrote between March 24-27, 2008:

“Court hearing postponed to May 13, 2008-the appeal against 6 month prison sentence for speaking to foreign media. I found out about the change a few days before Easter, but not until Easter Day, did I learn about the day for the next hearing. My lawyer and prosecutor want to move it to different day.

“I think the hearing was postponed because, from the beginning of the trial until now, they really don’t know what they want. All was a game to try to put me under new pressure to see if they can gain something by holding me here…

“All this means is that Israel just continues what they have done since my release in 2004, delaying and holding me here…instead of sending me for real freedom…they want me very poor and angry, but I am surviving…One thing is very clear: my case is over. They should let me go free…There is a lot of suffering here…Israel wants to hide so much because it is not good for its image as a democracy and a friend of America…

“1984, yes I read it many times and many years ago. 1984 is here now…”

Tov continues:

“In The Cross of Bethlehem I describe two technologies transfers to Israel, which I saw from very close. The one from America cost me my earthly life; I became a refugee.

“Given this background, the life story of Mark Zuckerberg looks slightly different from what mainstream media claims. He was born into a Jewish family; his compromise to Judaism was so big that he had a Bar Mitzvah at the age of 13. Don’t laugh at this; this isn’t just a familiar event with good food. A Bar Mitzvah is the formal acceptance of Judaism from those born into Jewish families. It isn’t a familiar obligation, but an act of choice. Growing up in a Communist Kibbutz, I must tell that only a minority of its kids chose to participate in such a questionable event. Yet, Mark was happy to participate.

“That means Mark Zuckerberg was in an excellent position to become a formal ‘sayan’ of the Mossad. Did he become one? Let’s see. He entered Harvard, and violated its computers, robbing an important database. He belonged to Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish fraternity. Then, Harvard students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra accused Zuckerberg of intentionally making them believe he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com (later called ConnectU); in such a way, Mark Zuckerberg stole the technology that allowed him to build Facebook.

“One could claim that Mossad wanted to get formal access HarvardConnection.com technology. It is useful for monitoring and controlling social networks, as I recently discovered after opening a Facebook account. Spotting Zuckerberg as a cooperative individual wasn’t hard. Giving him an informal tip on how to break into Harvard’s computers was even easier. Explaining him how to trick out the technology from Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra – none of them would have cooperated with Mossad – was also easy. Afterwards, the marketing of Facebook against other social media networks was easy due to the Harvard connection, everybody wanted to share the splendor.

“Facts speak for themselves: Zuckerberg stole technology in a method not unknown to Mossad. It belongs to the most faithful recruitment base of that organization. Let me ask you, Mr. Zuckerberg: are you Mossad?” [4]

I doubt Roy will ever receive a reply but I am well acquainted with Zionist trolls all over the Internet and the primary reason I was Primary Administrator of the Facebook Cause: Free Mordechai Vanunu [currently with 5,417 MEMBERS ] was precisely to send a message to Israel that the World would not ignore or forget Vanunu.

LEARN MORE:
Martial Law, Karma, Facebook and Vanunu

On July 28, 2011, Tov’s lawyer wrote:

“Roy, have a look at this report of what a UN torture investigation agency is doing for a US soldier in solitary confinement here:

“The United Nations is investigating a complaint on behalf of Bradley Manning that he is being mistreated while held since May in US Marine Corps custody pending trial. The army private is charged with the unauthorized use and disclosure of classified information, material related to the WikiLeaks, and faces a court martial sometime in 2011.

“The office of Manfred Nowak, special rapporteur on torture based in Geneva, received the complaint from a Manning supporter; his office confirmed that it was being looked into. Manning’s supporters say that he is in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day; this could be construed as a form of torture. This month visitors reported that his mental and physical health was deteriorating.

“I would make sense to make a similar complaint to the UN about your Bolivia treatment. I was unaware that the UN investigated individual human rights cases. The one above concerns solitary confinement in a US prison… The fact that the UN is helping 1 man does not mean they will help all…”

LEARN MORE: Before Manning and Assange: There was Vanunu Mordechai
Read more…

Roy added:

“In The Cross of Bethlehem II there is one chapter dedicated to 
Mordechai Vanunu, a true hero of our era. I expand there on the
 reasons for his and our persecution.

“On three other central chapters in
 the book I expand on what he has described as ‘psychological torture,’
 but I prefer to call ‘psychological warfare.’”

Roy concluded, “In another show of the 
pettiness and ungodliness of its culture, Israel won’t allow the 
rise—or even respect their basic human rights —of any of its own
 preaching for the Lord. One advantage People of God have is their capability to rejoice in the Kingdom of God, where ‘there shall be no
 more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be anymore pain’ (Revelations 21:4).

“I have faith we both will emerge
 victorious out of our respective tests and enjoy the best coffee in the universe at Celestial
Jerusalem. My prayers are for him and all other victims of evil.” ###

My faith compels me to pray for Tov and Vanunu and to work to have their stories known.

I do believe that The TRUTH and only The TRUTH can and WILL SET US ALL FREE.
+ Godspeed on it!

 

CONTACT:
Roy Tov 
  http://roytov.com/

Notes

1. http://vanunu.com/

2. Thomas Pynchon, Foreword, Centennial Edition 1984

3. Erich Fromm, Afterword, Centennial Edition 1984

4. http://www.roytov.com/articles/zuckerberg.htm

At the Crossroads of War: Do NOT Say You Were NOT Warned

Last week The New York Times published an opine by Ronen Bergman, who answered his own question in “Will Israel Attack Iran?”

“After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012. Perhaps in the small and ever-diminishing window that is left, the United States will choose to intervene after all, but here, from the Israeli perspective, there is not much hope for that. Instead there is that peculiar Israeli mixture of fear — rooted in the sense that Israel is dependent on the tacit support of other nations to survive — and tenacity, the fierce conviction, right or wrong, that only the Israelis can ultimately defend themselves.” [1]

And only Israel can save itself or destroy itself, for as a Hebrew prophet once warned that those who live by the sword will die by it too.

Bergman began his oped with the missed opportunity to educate the reader with the failure to respond with facts to Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak after he said, “The Iranians are, after all, a nation whose leaders have set themselves a strategic goal of wiping Israel off the map.”

In 1948, Israel began to wipe Palestine off the map by ethnically cleansing over 500 Palestinian villages and towns.

In 2006, Virginia Tilley, Professor of political science explained:

“In his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word ‘map’ or the term ‘wiped off.’ According to Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing services like MEMRI, what he actually said was ‘this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.’

“In this speech to an annual anti-Zionist conference, Mr. Ahmadinejad was being prophetic, not threatening. He was citing Imam Khomeini, who said this line in the 1980s-a period when Israel was actually selling arms to Iran, so apparently it was not viewed as so ghastly then.

“Mr. Ahmadinejad had just reminded his audience that the Shah’s regime, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein had all seemed enormously powerful and immovable, yet the first two had vanished almost beyond recall and the third now languished in prison.

“So, too, the ‘occupying regime’ in Jerusalem would someday be gone. His message was, in essence: ‘This too shall pass.’”

Bergman instead mentions “to Barak the opinion voiced by the former Mossad chief Meir Dagan and the former chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi — that the Iranian threat was not as imminent as he and Netanyahu have suggested and that a military strike would be catastrophic (and that they, Barak and Netanyahu, were cynically looking to score populist points at the expense of national security), Barak reacted with uncharacteristic anger. He and Netanyahu, he said, are responsible ‘in a very direct and concrete way for the existence of the State of Israel — indeed, for the future of the Jewish people.’”

In 1986, Israel’s Nuclear Whistle Blower, Mordechai Vanunu, acted on conscience to alert the world about Israel’s clandestine seven-story underground weapons of mass destruction facility in the Negev Valley so as to avert a nuclear holocaust and ‘for the future of the Jewish people’ as he wrote in his first of 18 years in prison for telling the truth:

I Am Your Spy

by Mordechai Vanunu

I am the clerk, the technician, the mechanic, and the driver.
They said, Do this, do that, don’t look left or right,
don’t read the text. Don’t look at the whole machine. You
are only responsible for this one bolt. For this one rubber-stamp.
This is your only concern. Don’t bother with what is above you.
Don’t try to think for us. Go on, drive. Keep going. On, on.

So they thought, the big ones, the smart ones, the futurologists.
There is nothing to fear. Not to worry.
Everything’s ticking just fine.
Our little clerk is a diligent worker. He’s a simple mechanic.
He’s a little man.
Little men’s ears don’t hear, their eyes don’t see.
We have heads, they don’t.

Answer them, said he to himself, said the little man,
the man with a head of his own. Who is in charge? Who knows
where this train is going?
Where is their head? I too have a head.
Why do I see the whole engine,
Why do I see the precipice–
is there a driver on this train?

The clerk driver technician mechanic looked up.
He stepped back and saw — what a monster.
Can’t believe it. Rubbed his eyes and — yes,
it’s there all right. I’m all right. I do see
the monster. I’m part of the system.
I signed this form. Only now I am reading the rest of it.

This bolt is part of a bomb. This bolt is me. How
did I fail to see, and how do the others go on
fitting bolts. Who else knows?
Who has seen? Who has heard? — The emperor really is naked.
I see him. Why me? It’s not for me. It’s too big.

Rise and cry out. Rise and tell the people. You can.
I, the bolt, the technician, mechanic? — Yes, you.
You are the secret agent of the people. You are the eyes of the nation.
Agent-spy, tell us what you’ve seen. Tell us what the insiders, the clever ones, have hidden from us.
Without you, there is only the precipice. Only catastrophe.

I have no choice. I’m a little man, a citizen, one of the people,
but I’ll do what I have to. I’ve heard the voice of my conscience
and there’s nowhere to hide.
The world is small, small for Big Brother.
I’m on your mission. I’m doing my duty. Take it from me.

Come and see for yourselves. Lighten my burden. Stop the train.
Get off the train. The next stop — nuclear disaster. The next book,
the next machine. No. There is no such thing. - 1987, Ashkelon Prison

The New York Times gave print to Barak’s alarm and also provided an opportunity I seize!

Barak said if the world waits to act on Iran, “It will not be possible to use any surgical means to bring about a significant delay. Not for us, not for Europe and not for the United States. After that, the question will remain very important, but it will become purely theoretical and pass out of our hands — the statesmen and decision-makers — and into yours — the journalists and historians.”

And well war should be in the hands of historians and journalists who act in the interests to avoid it for the sake of ALL people and Mother Earth.

“I would never have become an historian if I thought that it would become my professional duty to go into the past and never emerge, to study long-gone events and remember them only for their uniqueness, not connecting them to events going on in my time.”-Howard Zinn

A little history of US-Israel nuclear insanity as understood by Lewis Mumford:

“You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased to obey the laws of life.”-1946
This August 6th and 9th will mark the 67th anniversary of the most brutal acts of terrorism upon innocent people; America’s atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

On Armistice Day, 1948 General Omar Nelson Bradley warned, ”We live in a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants, in a world that has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. We have solved the mystery of the atom and forgotten the lessons of the Sermon on The Mount. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about dying than we know about living.”

In 1995 and still in Ashkelon Prison, Vanunu noted: ”A radioactive cloud consumed rubbed out Hiroshima…A live nuclear test sentenced you. A nuclear laboratory…children women trees animals in and under a nuclear mushroom…burning… burned…flattened to ground radioactive ash-Hiroshima…Nuclear weapons gamblers win against you…Hollywood doesn’t know you – you are not a Jewish Holocaust.” [2]

Barak went on: “The moment Iran goes nuclear, other countries in the region will feel compelled to do the same. The Saudi Arabians have told the Americans as much, and one can think of both Turkey and Egypt in this context, not to mention the danger that weapons-grade materials will leak out to terror groups…And if a nuclear Iran covets and occupies some gulf state, who will liberate it? The bottom line is that we must deal with the problem now.”

Israel is a nuclear state that covets and also occupies other gulf states properties so, why NOT deal with THAT problem which is the root cause of WHY Israel feels so insecure.

And as Vanunu explained, “Many journalists come here to the American Colony, from CNN and NY Times. They all want to cover my story, but their EDITORS say no…CNN wants to interview me; but they say they can’t do it because they don’t want problems with the Israeli censor. BBC is doing the same thing.

“Sixty Minutes from the United States from the beginning they wanted to do a program, but because of the censor situation they decide not to do it. Also big media from Germany, France, Italy, Japan. None of them wants problems with the Israelis.”

Bergman also wrote, “Defense Secretary Leon Panetta expressed this explicitly when he said that Iran would be able to reach nuclear-weapons capabilities within a year.”

Speaking on “60 Minutes” on January 29, Panetta said it would probably take Iran another two to three years to produce a missile or other vehicle that could deliver the weapon to a target.

Iran’s leadership denies any effort to make a nuclear weapon and Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said that international inspectors will be allowed to visit any site in Iran that they wished.

Currently there is a team of inspectors from the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Iran and on Sunday, Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani said the IAEA’s visit is a “test” for the agency, adding that Iran would cooperate if the IAEA acted “professionally” and not as “a tool of the West.”

In his State of the Union Address last week, President Barack Obama warned Tehran, “Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal” and he reiterated America’s commitment to Israel’s security.

The only option conscience can allow is to demand of Israel what is demanded of Iran and to work for the establishment of a Nuclear Free Middle East and World.

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/magazine/will-israel-attack-iran.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

2. http://vanunu.com/poems/mvpoemhiroshima.html

3. The “Big Get” Don Hewitt and “60 Minutes” Didn’t Get

In Praise of a Do-nothing Congress

Here’s a question: how can we expect to have small government if we condemn Congress for not growing it?

It’s always a disturbing experience when you’re accosted with a picture of Harry Reid, as I was upon logging on to Drudge last Monday afternoon.  But at least his image bore a fitting caption: “MOST FUTILE EVER.”  I then clicked the link and found myself at The Washington Times – normally a quite sane organ of the media – and learned the meaning of the caption: the Times was lamenting a do-nothing Congress and presented Reid as its poster boy.  Writes the paper, “It’s official: Congress ended its least-productive year in modern history after passing 80 bills – fewer than during any other session since year-end records began being kept in 1947.”

Writes Duke, “It’s official: conservatives are completely confused about what begets big government.”

The paper then expanded on its theme, pointing out that Congress set a record for “legislative futility” according to something called the “futility index.”

I’ll tell you what’s futile: complaining about a loss of freedom while chastising legislators for not spawning enough bills.

Perhaps I’m missing something, but my understanding is that a “bill” that’s signed by the president becomes a law.  I also have this goofy notion that, except for certain housekeeping measures and repeals of old legislation, a law is by definition a removal of a freedom, as it states that there’s something you must or must not do.  Ergo, enslaved as I am by the old math, my figuring informs that the more laws we have, the less free we are.  It then seems to follow – at least using my white male linear logic – that since we continually enact more laws but hardly ever rescind any, every year the progressives make us progressively less free.

Thus, when I see “do-nothing” and “Congress” in close proximity, it occurs to me that “do” has many definitions.  And when government doeth, I think of the definition in the following Lord of the Flies dialogue: “The Chief and Roger….  They hate you, Ralph.  They’re going to do you.”

So if you complain about a do-nothing Congress, I ask, what is it exactly that you want them to “do,” whom do you think they’ll “do” it to, and what do you think will be done to you?  Our current Congress passed 80 bills.  How many more do you want and how many more until we’re done for?

The good news is that many of 2011′s bills were simply housekeeping measures – such as spending reauthorization acts or extensions of already existing laws – so we probably didn’t lose as many freedoms this time around as the bod…er…bill count would indicate.  Really, though, what does it say about third-millennium America when Uncle Sam disgorges 80 pieces of legislation and we, like good little masochists, bend over and say, “Thank you, sir!  May I have another?”?

The reality is that we should want a do-nothing Congress.  In fact, we should want a do-nothing president, do-nothing bureaucrats and hope that our military, police, firefighters and judges have to do little.  And let’s just think about where we’d be today if we actually had a do-nothing government for the last many years.

First and foremost, we wouldn’t have ObamaCare.  We wouldn’t have had the bailouts that transferred trillions of dollars from the middle class to rich fat cats and Barack Obama cronies.  Billions wouldn’t have been wasted on Solyndra and numerous other green-energy scam companies.  We wouldn’t have McCain-Feingold, Dodd-Frank or the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  We wouldn’t have the October 2009 federal hate-crimes bill, which, like all such legislation, is an effort at thought control.  We wouldn’t have No Child Left Behind.  We’d be free of the new taxes and plethora of regulations that Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus said would make it impossible for him to start his company today.  There wouldn’t be the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which gives unelected bureaucrats at the FDA the power to regulate the tobacco industry.  There wouldn’t be the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010, which gives Big Brother unprecedented control over the people’s ability to grow food.  And we wouldn’t have the National Defense Authorization Act, which empowers the government to detain American citizens indefinitely without trial.  Are we “done” yet?

Note that the above examples are just a (very) short list, are virtually all unconstitutional, and all cost us dearly in terms of money, rights or both.  And how many freedoms did we lose, from No Child Left Behind to Obama’s kicking of the Constitution’s behind?  I’m not sure, but I’m guessing it’d probably take Deep Blue or Rain Man to crunch those numbers.

So should we really be lamenting a government that isn’t “productive” when the word doesn’t quite mean in government what it does elsewhere?  When an auto company is more productive, you get more cars.  When a footwear maker is more productive, you get more shoes.  When yours truly is more productive, you get more sage and scintillating prose.  And when the state is more productive?

You get fewer freedoms.

This is why congress’ legislation count is just like a golf score: the lower, the better

But if the Times really thinks it’s like a bowling score, don’t blame Dirty Harry Reid for 2011′s lack of liberty strikes.  After all, I can assure you that he aspires to be a very “productive” man.  And if he and his gang retain the Senate and presidency and regain control of the House, they’ll “do” a lot.  In fact, they may do ya’ permanent.

Place the blame for the 112^th Congress’ relatively law-less state where it belongs: on the Tea Party types in power.  They just don’t do.

US Economic Forecast for 2012 and the Election Year Cycle

When it comes to business cycles, the former rules no longer seem to apply. The seminal events that changed the economic landscape after the 2008 financial crash still points to an uncertain future and marginal recovery. If you watch CNBC or Bloomberg business news, you hear that a modest recovery is in place. Accepting this kind of reporting may temporarily make you feel better, but in the real economy, the prospects for a rebound are mere fiction. Prosperity only exists for the chums of the insider financial system, who are immune from actual market conditions. Under the privileged and favoritism model, political subsidies and bailouts are more important than creative industry or innovative execution.

The businesses that produce and service the everyday functions of society flounder in a sea of uncertainty and a desert of capital illiquidity. Within this context, the only realistic way to examine the prospects for 2012, must factor in the political component. Yet the promoters of the corporatist system build up false hope, while fudging the numbers.

Analyze the valid question; Can We Trust The Moderate Growth Forecasts?

“Another day, another economic forecast. The 35 economists polled for the latest Livingston Survey via the Philadelphia Fed project that real GDP for the U.S. will grow at an annualized 2.5% rate for the second half of 2011. That’s down from June’s 3.2% second-half 2011 forecast. Down, but still not out.Looking ahead to 2012, the Livingston survey forecasters “see the growth rate of economic output slowing to 2.1 percent (annual rate) in the first half of 2012, and they predict that it will then increase to 2.5 percent (annual rate) in the second half of the year.” The economists also expect “a slow recovery in the labor market, with the unemployment rate at 9.0 percent in December 2011 and at 8.9 percent in June 2012.”

Lakshman Achuthan, chief operations officer of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, talks with Bloomberg about the next year in the U.S. Economic Outlook, Labor Market video.

Mr. Achuthan continues in a second video interview on the Daily Ticker - Says New Recession Unavoidable.

“It’s too soon to predict just how bad it’s going to get, but he expects another spike in unemployment and further expansion of the federal government’s $1 trillion deficit. This forecast has huge ramifications for the 2012 election and the already struggling U.S. consumer and Achuthan says a “mild” recession is the best-case scenario.”

This type of analysis is typical of traditional media. But, for a more daring and intense approach that factors political pandemonium into the economic projections, Gerald Celente fills the bill. Mac Slavo writes about Celente Warns Of 2012: Economy Will Crash, Banks Will Close, Chaos Will Ensue, Military Will Take Over.

“If you’ve followed trend forecaster Gerald Celente for any period of time you’ve probably realized he knows what he’s talking about. For the better part of two decades Celente and his Trends Journal have been forecasting political, financial, economic and social trends with an uncanny ability for accuracy.”

Celente provides his list of projection. Read them in the Top 12 Trends 2012.

1. Economic Martial Law:

2. Battlefield America:

3. Invasion of the Occtupy:

4. Climax Time:

5. Technocrat Takeover:

6. Repatriate! Repatriate!:

7. Secession Obsession:

8. Safe Havens:

9. Big Brother Internet:

10. Direct vs. Faux Democracy:

11. Alternative Energy 2012:

12. Going Out in Style:

Another perceptive publication projects The Economic Collapse in A Very Scary Christmas And An Incredibly Frightening New Year, sums it up this way.

“The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christian Lagarde, recently stated that we could soon see conditions “reminiscent of the 1930s depression” and that no country on earth “will be immune to the crisis”….

“There is no economy in the world, whether low-income countries, emerging markets, middle-income countries or super-advanced economies that will be immune to the crisis that we see not only unfolding but escalating”

The first six months of 2012 are going to be a very key time. National governments and big European banks are scheduled to roll over huge mountains of debt. But if they can’t find any takers that could bring the global financial system to a moment of great crisis very quickly.”

Reject the Marc Faber Gloom Boom & Doom Report viewpoint of analysis if you wish, but dismiss these forecasts at your peril. However, what you cannot ignore are the disastrous political consequences of failed public inept intrusions into the private sector that never turns the economy around. Even in an election year, the normal pump priming expenditures, just hit a dry hole. The enormous debt build up in the last three years has done nothing to revive Main Street business.The partisan formula of an incumbent to buy off voters with an easy money injection into the economy, will not work this time. Yes, the dependency voters may cast their ballot for a second Obama term, but the engine of economic growth, namely; small business is slated for a fire sale under the corporatist prototype of the globalist economy.

Implementing constructive government policies that would unleash merchant small business will not happen in 2012 for a very simple reason. The goal of Wall Street and their handpicked political operatives want private independent enterprises to die on the vine. Social discontent grows daily because the public no longer believes that the political class can provide any viable economic future for the average family. Unfortunately, this attitude misses the mark. Government never produces prosperity. Nevertheless, most people who do voter want to trust in their elected officials. Maybe this fact explains why so many Americans refuse to vote anymore.

The break, with the nostalgia, that the next generation will have it better than the previous one is now shared by even the most optimistic romantic. This election cycle forecasts that economic salvation is illusory. Stock markets may rise, but inflation in stable goods is here to stay. Your money buys less so that the banks can speculate. Government policies and fiscal manipulation, by design, results in dire prospects for 2012. Remember this fact when you vote next November.

Draghi’s Real Goal in the Eurozone

Crush Labor and Impose Austerity…

Imagine if your banker offered to lend you a $150,000 to make up for the money that you’d lost on your home since the housing bubble burst in 2006. And, let’s say, he agreed to lend you this money for 3 years at rock-bottom rates of 1 percent provided that you post the contents of your garage  (ie. rusty bikes, a bent basketball hoop, an old dollhouse, and rodent-infested luggage) as collateral on the loan.

Would that seem like a good deal to you?

On Wednesday, the European Central Bank (ECB) made this very same offer to over a hundred underwater banks in Europe, awarding them $640 billion (489 euros) in dirt-cheap 3-year loans in exchange for all manner of dodgy collateral for which there is currently no market. Now you, dear reader, know that when you try to sell something on Craig’s List and there’s very little interest; you have to drop the price in order to attract a buyer. That’s just how supply-demand dynamics work in a free market, right?

Au contraire. In fact, this rule never applies to bankers. When the junk assets on a bank’s balance sheet begin to fall in value, the banks just ring-up their big brother at the ECB or the Fed and demand a bailout, er, I mean, “swap liquidity for collateral that is temporarily impaired.” But the truth is, the garbage that the banks have accumulated–particularly the sovereign bonds from Italy, Spain, Greece, etc–is not merely “impaired”. These bonds will never regain their original value because the loans were made at the peak of a bubble.  So, there’s as much chance that Greek bonds will bounce back in three years as there is that that tacky $650,000 McMansion you bought in Encinito in 2005 will claw its way back to par.

That’s not going to happen.

So, the $640 billion that the ECB forked out on Tuesday, is basically a whopping-big gift to the banksters that will probably never be repaid. And if you have any doubt about this, then just take look at the Fed’s balance sheet which has exploded to nearly $3 trillion. You’ll notice that the $1.45 trillion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that Bernanke bought from the banks two years ago has not gone down at all, mainly because no one in their right-mind would buy these turkeys. And, if the Fed were to put their stash of MBS up for auction; the sale would further depress the assets on the banks balance sheets triggering another financial crisis. (In fact, this actually happened about a year ago when the government experimented with bonds from the AIG fund. Not only did the auction fail, but it also sent the equities markets into a nosedive) So, just as the Fed will eventually have to account for the losses on their pile of MBS,  so too will EU banks have to writedown the losses their sovereign bonds. That will push many of the banks into bankruptcy, which will undoubtedly trigger another round of loans. When financial institutions are insolvent, their only choice is to extend and pretend. Obviously, the ECB sees its job as helping with this fakery.

This is a familiar pattern with central banks. They create the easy money and loose regulatory environment where bubbles emerge, and then they provide “limitless” liquidity so their friends don’t lose money on the inflated value of their assets. That’s what Tuesday’s  $640 billion boondoggle was really all about, propping up toxic bonds that are worth a mere fraction of their original value.

So far, though, Draghi’s Long-Term Refinancing Operation (LTRO) has been a spectacular flop. While interbank lending rates have dropped ever-so-slightly (3-month Euribor fell from 1.404 to 1.410 percent), the banks have not been using the loans to buy more sovereign bonds (which would push down bond yields for struggling sovereigns) or to increase their lending.   Instead, they’ve parked a good portion of the money in overnight deposits at the ECB. Here’s the scoop from the Wall Street Journal:

“Use of the European Central Bank’s overnight deposit facility reached a new record high for the year Thursday, suggesting recent measures by central banks and policy makers still aren’t enough to restore confidence in inter-bank lending markets.

Banks deposited €346.99 billion ($453.38 billion) in the overnight deposit facility, up from €264.97 billion a day earlier and a previous high for the year of €346.36 billion, reached earlier this month.

The high level reflects ongoing distrust in inter-bank lending markets, where banks prefer using the ECB facility as a safe haven for excess funds rather than lending them to other banks.

The high deposit level also suggests markets aren’t fully convinced that the ECB’s massive long-term loan allotment is enough to fortify the currency bloc’s banking sector. The central bank extended nearly half a trillion euros in long-term loans to euro-zone banks Wednesday, hoping to ease fears of a new credit crunch as banks struggle to borrow from markets.” (“ECB Overnight Deposits Reach New 2011 High”, Wall Street Journal)

Can you believe it? So, while most of the loans were used to roll over existing debt, $453.38 billion was stuck back in the vaults of the ECB for safekeeping.  In other words, the banks are just as distrustful of each other as they were before the lending facility was launched. And the same is true of the yields on Spanish and Italian debt which Draghi thought would drop after he pumped a half a trillion euros into the banking system. Here’s the story from Reuters:

“Spanish and Italian bond yields crept higher on Thursday and underperformed German debt as markets grew sceptical that banks would use funds borrowed from the European Central Bank to buy lower-rated government bonds.

Banks borrowed a huge 489 billion euros from the ECB at an unprecedented offer of three-year loans on Wednesday, which some had expected to be reinvested in Spanish and Italian debt and help ease borrowing costs.

But, those looking for an immediate boost to Italy and Spain were likely to be disappointed. Traders said the preference was to reinvest some of the funds into safe-haven paper rather than pick up the higher yields on offer from some of Europe’s more troubled states.

“What happened yesterday is not a silver bullet to the crisis… but it is too soon to see the impact yet,” said Niels From, strategist at Nordea in Copenhagen.” (“EURO GOVT-Spain, Italy yields rise; hope of ECB relief wanes”, Reuters)

Unbelievably, the benchmark Italian 10-year BTP rose above the 7 percent mark again on Friday morning signalling renewed stress in the bond market. So while Draghi’s program may have breathed new life into a few teetering banks, it has failed miserably of all its main objectives.

So why has Draghi handled the crisis the way he has?  Why did he sit on his hands for so long while interbank lending slowed,  overnight deposits climbed to new records,  sovereign bond yields skyrocketed, and all the gauges of market stress got so much worse?

The obvious answer to this question is that Draghi’s been using the crisis to pursue his own agenda.  He wants to push through his so called  ”fiscal compact” that enshrines harsh budget discipline and  labor-battering austerity measures into law so that national budgets will come under the control of financial elites (aka–ECB-designated “technocrats”) Naturally, nations aren’t going to surrender that kind of authority without a fight, so Draghi let the crisis get out-of-hand so there would be less resistance. Here’s how economist Dean Baker sums it up:

“The people who gave us the eurozone crisis are working around the clock to redefine it in order to profit politically. Their editorials – run as news stories in media outlets everywhere – claim that the euro crisis is a story of profligate governments being reined in by the bond market. This is what is known in economics as a “lie”.

The eurozone crisis is most definitely not a story of countries with out of control spending getting their comeuppance in the bond market…It is a story of countries victimized by the mismanagement of the ECB….People should recognize this process for what it is: class war. The wealthy are using their control of the ECB to dismantle welfare state protections that enjoy enormous public support”.

Draghi’s real goal is to implement the labor reforms and “adjustments” that big finance demands. He’s already succeeded in deposing two democratically elected leaders in Greece and Italy and replacing them with bank-friendly stooges that will carry out his diktats. Now, he’s on to bigger things, like slashing the social safety net, crushing the unions, and reducing the eurozone to third world poverty.

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