Green Fields Renewal Demands Exxon Act Now To Save Residents of Mayflower, Arkansas

NEWS RELEASE – (Mayflower, AR) – Green Fields Renewal, a partner company for Rebuild America, today issued a statement on the disaster. The statement urged all parties to focus on the core issues. These, the statement said, are to ensure the long term survival of residents and to clean up the spill, minimizing damage which continues to spread.

Melinda Pillsbury-Foster, an officer of Green Fields, said, “While much attention has been given to organizing a class action law suit,  the sad fact is that given the history of Exxon for the last two generations, many of the people involved could be dead before a dime is ever paid for resident’s health by Exxon. This kind of irresponsibility can no longer be tolerated.”

The statement continued, “Instead, we propose Exxon offer to relocate ALL impacted families and individuals whose homes may now be dangerous to health to new homes. For Exxon, this cost is minimal for a spill of this magnitude. For the people it might literally be life and death. Exposure to toxic Tar Sands can become a death sentence, which Exxon well knows. People in Mayflower are already struggling with health issues, bewildered, and desperate for answers.

CNN reported, few of the over 10,000 who helped clean up the Exxon Valdez Spill almost 25 years ago are alive today and Exxon has still failed to pay all of the ordered reparations. We cannot permit this to happen again.

We can make this the turning point for America, rejecting the systemic irresponsibility of corporations like Exxon, establishing accountability for oil companies to ensure that people are not dying to improve their profits.”

Pillsbury-Foster closed her comments urging people to go to their website, read it, and take action in conjunction with David Lincoln, who is on the ground in Mayflower to provide coordination. Dave can be reached by phone to 870-321-0251 and by email to davelinc@aol.com.

From: Green Fields Renewal – Goals

We propose a negotiated settlement using a Qualified Settlement Trust. This works to help you limit the damage done to you and your family so you can move on with your lives, while at the same time creating a precedent which will protect others in the future.

When citizens are affected by large pollution events, such as a pipeline spill, they are often left little recourse to ensure compensatory damages for their losses. A Qualified Settlement Trust is a tool used in negotiating an appropriate and long-term model to assist community members who have been impacted.  

The fund is established under §468B of the Internal Revenue Code. This Code section permits Exxon to deposit money or property into a trust and receive a full and complete release of liability. Once the funds are deposited, Exxon is entitled to a current deduction from income tax for the amount paid into the fund.

A QST provides a way for the entire community to stand together and be secured. Individuals can still retain legal counsel; this could bring a fair and just reaction from Exxon or the court systems in the event that Exxon does not fulfill their obligations.

This takes into account the well documented history of Exxon and other oil companies for delay and intimidation of those impacted.

Otherwise, the strategy Exxon and other oil companies follow is ruthless, and intended to avoid creating any precedent for alleviating the problems created or assisting those harmed.

This approach protects you, and everyone in your community. To learn more, talk to Dave, and sign up, go to  OUR GOALS

Our Proposal

Our proposal for you is to rebuild your homes outside the impacted area, but still within your community, to remove you permanently from the danger zone.

Your Homes

As part of the restitution for what you have already suffered, and for impacting your lives and health, we propose those homes be entirely paid for by Exxon and built to allow you to focus less on the problems you will still face, and more on ensuring your health and the health of your families is not further impacted.

Moving the subdivision should include everyone, both owners who are resident and renters. Owners who were not resident should be paid the full price for the loss of the house because all of the homes in the subdivision have been permeated with toxic fumes and are no longer safe for habitation.

Follow-Up Health Insurance

All who have been impacted, including clean-up personnel, should receive no cost to them coverage for twenty years, again paid for by Exxon along with heath professionals to provide assessments on an ongoing basis.

The Environment

The land and water remain impacted. We propose Exxon do a thorough clean-up using the technologies now in use in other parts of the world for exactly these problems. This technology leaves the land and water clean and fertile in a far shorter period of time and helps avoid the problems which are already occurring as the waste seeps into other areas downstream.

This proposal would cost Exxon far less than litigation – but would create the precedent for accountability all of us need. You can ensure this happens, benefiting yourselves and all Americans – if you stand firm.

We will provide multiple forms of documentation, proving the point, to you and to the media directly through this site.

Today, you face years of health risks. Many have died of exactly what you face today.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
WilliambMcReynolds@gmail.com 
T +1 (623) 209-2003
F +1 (623) 209-2008

Moon And Crossbones

It was Wednesday night, April 24, 2013, one day away from full moon. Under mostly clear skies, the brilliant waxing gibbous moon flew high toward the celestial meridian….

Here in Spokane, Washington, about 10:30 pm, two fresh chemtrails crisscrossed under the chin of the moon, creating a “skull and crossbones”—spectacular logo for chemtrailing. If only a skywriter had sprayed a headline to crown the scene, a certain motto…perhaps this line by Roger Waters from Pink Floyd’s The Wall:

“Mother should I trust the government?”

The government has been spraying chemtrails for years, heavier all the time, yet they call the whole chemtrail hullabaloo “conspiracy theory”. We don’t do Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering (SAG), they insist. Get over it, they’re just contrails.

So what about the Air Force training manual about chemtrails? [1]

Differences between contrails and chemtrails are dramatic. [2] And while all NATO countries are into chemtrailing, only Germany has admitted it—though they lie about what and why they are spraying.

Tacit justification for chemtrails is based on cooling Earth’s atmosphere by reflecting the sun’s energy. So what about nighttime chemtrails? The more you research chemtrail ingredients, the farther government designs blast beyond simple denial of spraying, into sinister crimes.

Perhaps a fair analogy of the simple denial: A federal agent is standing in front of you with a spray bottle, saying as he mists your face, “This is not happening. It’s conspiracy theory. Your face is not being misted. Trust me.” And there will always be people frightened by cognitive dissonance into convincing themselves that they are just getting sweaty…there’s a light drizzle…their face has reached the dew point….

Government by Contempt

Beneath the veil of sweet talk and tough love, utter contempt is the foundational sentiment Zionist-controlled politicians hold for the masses. Politicians not controlled by Zionists rarely get elected; those that stand up to the Israeli American Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) are usually unseated by AIPAC-funded stooges. And Zionist-controlled mainstream media (ZMM) manages public perceptions with such mastery to even hypnotize the masses into believing they are coming up with their own ideas.

Not to say ZMM always lies—they tell a lot of truth, backwards. For independent thinkers, gleaning truth from ZMM is easy, simply reverse whatever they say. If ZMM declares peace, that means war. If they say, “terrorists” they mean Mossad/FBI/CIA patsies. ZMM “news” is all agenda; Zionist-occupied US government is all about elite power. Ultimately, there are no laws, only power.

“Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.”

– Amschel Bauer Mayer Rothschild – 1838

It’s popular to say that the US is the world’s “Superpower”. But the more a person understands designs of power, the more likely they are to realize that when it comes to power, the US is a colony of Israel.

Rothschild Zionism, Rothschild-controlled central banks (in every nation on Earth but Cuba, North Korea, and Iran), the “Federal Reserve System”, the “City of London”—such is where dominant power resides, at least in terms of psychopathic contrivance in a system hideous in light of humanity’s potential for decency, capacity for…humanity. At the very least, humans could do better than relentlessly allowing psychopaths to rule. Pathocracy, rule by people born without a conscience, it’s rule by people whose veneration for human life is generally encompassed by their own skin. Humanity has had millennia to figure out how to keep psychopaths from power. Abject failure in that regard has built up a situation where humanity faces extinction—or at least we face the threat of humanity becoming extinct, but not humans.

A rare step in the right direction: Absolutely ban from positions of higher power anyone clearly pursuing power. Complicated challenge, sure, but at least psychopaths have very reliable markers.

Power Elite

Contempt for the masses runs so deep in the elite largely because of what we commoners allow the elite to get away with. Is there no false-flag “terrorist attack” Americans will not swallow? Everything from 9/11…to the Boston Marathon with amputee actors wearing blown-off-leg prostheses. And besides not being shy about displaying their contempt, the elite seem to revel in being above the “law”. “Too big to fail” has metastasized to include, “too big to prosecute”.

The death grip on humanity of Rothschild-controlled central banking makes the “New World Order” seem inevitable. Many people consider the Georgia Guidestones’ message to be the written-in-stone Ten Commandments of the New World Order. [3]

“Commandment” number one of the Geogia Guidestones:

“Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature”.

The inescapable question, or challenge, for the elite: How to exterminate over 90% of human population (roughly six billion people) without rendering Earth uninhabitable. The power elite’s death-and-destruction toolbox is loaded with such as Fukushima, nuclear war, climate disruption, full-spectrum pollution, GMOs, food additives, mass fluoridation, engineered diseases, vaccines…so many shock-and-awesome tools in just the toolbox top drawer. Chemtrail spraying is somewhat of a “Crescent Wrench”, a tool with enormous range of menace.

Researchers have identified many constituents of the witches’ brew routinely sprayed over us, a diabolical concoction containing:

Aluminum oxide particles, barium salts, barium titanates, ethylene dibromide, cadmium, methyl aluminum, desiccated human red blood cells, nano-aluminum-coated fiberglass, sub-micron particles (containing live biological matter), polymer fibers, unidentified bacteria, enterobacteria cloacal, enterobacteriaceae, mycoplasma, human white blood cells-A (restrictor enzyme used in research labs to snip and combine DNA), mold spores, bacilli and molds, yellow fungal mycotoxins, lead, mercury, nitrogen trifluoride, nickel, calcium, chromium, radioactive cesium, radioactive thorium, selenium, arsenic, titanium shards, silver, streptomyces, strontium, uranium….

In addition to adjustable menace, chemtrailing has apparently come up with its own signature disease. Morgellons. [4]

Zionist-occupied government is spending vast amounts of our money to spray us with witches’ brew, while the fed (Rothschild parasite disguised as part of the federal government) sprays the elite with fresh dollars charged to us at compound interest.

Natural predators take only what they need to survive, improving genetic integrity of their prey. Humanity’s psychopathic predators destroy what they need to survive.

Please consider the elite’s contempt for humanity in terms of what humanity might achieve if not being hounded by psychopaths. The elite subject humanity to continuous and vicious demonic predation, mutilation of mind, body and soul—then scorn humanity’s condition!

Doesn’t that seem…Satanic?

Some important questions during acceleration toward extinction of  humanity, perhaps, along with apparent answers:

Are chemtrails being sprayed over us day and night?  YES

Is chemtrailing considered conspiracy theory?  YES

Is the very term conspiracy theory a premier psyop?  YES

Do the masses have power the government/elite will do anything to keep from being focused—anything to keep public power from threatening elite power? YES

Do you trust the government? ____

[1]  http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/03/31/breaking-air-force-chemtrails-manual-available-for-download/

[2]  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kcTvqiMNl8

[3]  http://georgiaguidestone.blogspot.com/

[4]  https://www.google.com/search?q=morgellaons+and+chemtrails&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#client=firefox-a&hs=Jff&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=morgellons+and+chemtrails&spell=1&sa=X&ei=1eB9Uey1F-fmiwLrjoHoAw&ved=0CC8QvwUoAA&fp=1&biw=734&bih=485&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&cad=b&sei=rjh_UdrkD4egiQKCpYHACg

Saddam Hussein Offered To Leave Iraq In November of 2002. Guess Who Persuaded Him To Stay

Why Drones, foreign and domestic, became necessary to establishment politicians and corporations…

In the autumn of 2002 America was rushing toward the War in Iraq, orchestrated by the Bush Administration, especially Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. Though most people did not yet realize this, Bill Clinton already had a very cooperative relationship with the Bush family. He and Hillary were poised to become seriously monied working for the same folks who had taken over the Republican Party in the 1960s.

You don’t need to be a Straussian to embrace the strategy.

NeoConservative is the term coined by Irving Kristol, a student of Leo Strauss. The philosophy Strauss originated justifies any act which achieves the desired goal in the pursuit of power. When you understand this is a philosophy which absolutely justifies deceit and abuse of power, and extending control, the corollary becomes clear. Those using Straussianism will, ultimately, take steps to make their control perpetual because, otherwise, they will suffer at the hands of their victims.

Those accepting Straussianism knew they needed to evade exposure.

This explains the enthusiasm of both Bush and Obama for Executive Orders. Although ordinary Americans think in terms of a divide between right and left, this is an illusion. The divide has been carefully created to stymie effective corrective action by the people.

Notice how many of the measures now being put into place were being planned years ago. Homeland Security, the NSA, the militarization of our police and introduction of drones and biometrics, and the CIA and FBI do nothing to increase the security of ordinary Americans – but they are useful for controlling us.

Controlling America, and Americans, was necessary to perpetuating their power and defending them from the consequences of their deceit, beginning before the War in Iraq.

The Highly Disordered in Power

If you watched the documentary on Dick Cheney, now playing broadly on television, titled, “The World According To Dick Cheney,” you find a chilling insight into the mind of someone who is focused on centralizing and increasing the power of the presidency using all available means. Cheney has long been a self-proclaimed adherent of Leo Strauss, along with Don Rumsfeldt and most of the cadre of individuals who came in to power with the Bush Administration.

Cheney, appointed to find a vice-presidential candidate for Bush in 2000, conducted a carefully scripted process which disqualified everyone except himself. Cheney knew he could never be elected president because he lacks the social skills necessary and, if he ran, his questionable health and DUIs, among other issues, would have been exposed to the media and the public.

Always described as a ‘take-charge’ kind of man, Cheney’s entire career is defined by treating politics as war.

Karl Rove had a different agenda. While the Bush family certainly wanted the War in Iraq and had been planning for it since W. was still governor of Texas, Rove wanted a permanent hegemony over politics in America. To accomplish this, he suborned the electoral system of the United States using several different techniques.

Beginning in the late 70′s, he displaced the growing power of women moving toward social justice within the GOP, displacing this with an artificially created presence of politicized Evangelicals, galvanized and trained for political action.

For this enterprise, he enlisted Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson, long time associates through Young Republicans.

Rove spread out a network of political operatives, both within the GOP and elsewhere, in think tanks and the media. John Fund, formerly on the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal, is an example of this, as is Matt Drudge. This allowed Rove to plant disinformation at will in any part of the country. Both Rove and Cheney’s cell numbers are on Fund’s speed dial.

Rove also centralized the state Republican Parties, displacing community-based candidates in the primaries with chosen and well funded Rove functionaries. This was taking place in California in the early 90s. Many of these targeted candidates were social justice-oriented women.

To lock down his control, Rove ensured the move to electronic voting, which he could control remotely. This worked for him fairly smoothly from 2000 until last year.

The next level of strategy was the media. The media has been controlled through the CIA since the time of the Kennedy assassination, according to Peter Janney, in his book Mary’s Mosaic. In exhaustive detail, the book lays out how a free media was silenced through control of those who owned the media.

Planting operatives in the media, who supplied CIA approved spin and planted stories, became standard operating procedure. Continuing this practice, Rove assigned the job of deflecting questions on the visible problems with electoral fraud to John Fund, placed at the Wall Street Journal by Robert Novak in 1984.

John Fund was essential to deflecting attention from the issue of the ongoing electoral fraud because Fund wrote, “Stealing Elections,” which muddied the water on this issue. While he was only one of many operatives, he was not easily replaced because of his position at the Wall Street Journal. Therefore, political capital was expended on his protection in 2002.

People forget scandals and willingly accept explanations, given a modicum of manufactured proof. Victims and witnesses can be silenced so they can no longer defend themselves. Major events distract public attention, which, properly managed, may never be renewed.

In early September, 2001 John Connolly of Vanity Fair published, “Sex, Lies, and the Tape.” Included was ataped conversation, known as the WeaselSearch Tape, between Fund and His girl friend, Morgan Pillsbury.

As you listen to this tape, made in September, 1999, and read the accompanying article you realize both Fund and his girl friend, my disordered daughter, Morgan, lie, and are not to be trusted.

I am the individual the two are discussing. Later, in 2001 – early 2002, Fund battered and nearly killed Morgan.

All of the individuals discussed here were involved in the evolution of events surrounding this tape.

By winter 2002 Rove and associates probably believed they had managed to defuse the problem Fund’s battery of Morgan had caused. But the situation devolved because of computer hacking, leaking Saddam’s willingness to leave later the same year.

The Oncoming War in Iraq – Autumn 2002

Cheney and Rove, both Straussians, had common ground in the drive for perpetual war in 2001 – 2002, had both adopted the ideas of Strauss. Their joint commitment to a campaign of deceit was natural to each and relatively easy to carry out through 2004 since the full array of government tools were available to them and they were united.

The rush to war started with the lies you likely remember about weapons of mass destruction. In the autumn of 2002 a juggernaut for war was launched and moving.

Then, in November, an unanticipated problem raised its head.

In November of 2002 Saddam let it be known he would gladly leave, if he was paid. An email correspondence began. Max Blumenthal, for his father, Sidney Blumenthal, and through him to the Clintons, persuaded Saddam Bush was only blustering and would not invade. They did not know, at the time, someone else was reading their emails.

For me, this part of the story started when Morgan called me from the basement where she was hiding in Georgia and asked, “Mother, is Uday something like E-Bay?“ Morgan did not pay much attention to things not directly effecting her.

The John Fund Scandal, briefly, was followed by some, then dropped in the wake of 9/11. But for myself, it was a continuing problem.

Fund, an old friend of mine, had begun a sexual relationship with my daughter, lied to her, tried to dump her, and suffered the consequences anyone in the family could have told him were in the cards.

Morgan is a psychopath.  So is Fund. The reason the Weaselsearch tape was made was because I had found, to my grief, her word was not to be trusted. She made it to persuade me she had told the truth and changed her ways. This last was a lie, but she hooked me into believing her for a while.

The previous spring, 2002, I was still renting an apartment for Morgan in NY, and she had not yet fled NY, which she was forced to do because of the attempt to kill her by John Fund, aided, she was told, by Rove and Cheney.

About that time, she had put a keylogger on Sidney Blumenthal’s computer. Blumenthal was, if you remember, Clinton’s assistant and senior adviser.

This, I told her, was illegal. But she said it was payback because Blumenthal had had her computer hacked and stolen information from her about John Fund and others, to be used in his book, “The Clinton Wars.”

Someone with power had gotten to the court in New York. Ignoring the evidence, and witnesses, they had sidelined the case, though we were told Morgenthau personally held the file on his desk. If Robert Morgenthau, District Attorney in Manhattan, what could we do? Thwarted, Morgan returned the favor and put a keylogger on Blumenthal’s computer.

Morgan is disordered.  Ten years ago the problem of sociopathy and psychopathy were not nearly as widely understood as today by any of us. The disordered create chaos. But earlier the chaos Morgan created was at least localized to her family and friends. When she broadened her associations to the NeoCons, who are  also disordered,  things got worse.

In 2012 I realized psychopaths never change. I also understood much more about what had been going on with attempts to bring about the War in Iraq and why Fund, Rove, and Cheney felt endangered by Morgan’s hacking.The Bush Administration knew Morgan knew about their efforts to keep Saddam in Iraq so the war could go forward.

What Morgan Found in Sid’s Email Box

Morgan had been getting emails between Sidney and his son, Max, which were forwards from someone named Uday. She read them to me and sent one on, with the identifying origin. This email went on to a friend who could tell us where the email to Max had originated. The word came back it had originated in the Saudi Arabian Emirates, and very well could have come from Baghdad.

The emails urged Saddam to stay in Iraq, saying Bush would not invade as Saddam expressed his willingness to be paid to leave.

Morgan kept reading these messages and the husband of the couple, with whom she was staying, also saw these emails. When Morgan decided to put a keylogger on Uday’s computer this was accomplished by using the subject line, “Women without Veils,” which was the husband, Eric’s, idea. It worked. Reading the emails continued, and included emails directly from Uday. I did not ask for copies and none were sent to me.

I contacted a friend’s husband who worked at the CIA and left the matter in Morgan’s hands. She told me the FBI had gotten in touch with her and asked her to continue to monitor the correspondence, also following Uday with the new keylogger she had installed in the computer in Baghdad.

When the bunker-buster hit Saddam’s headquarters Morgan reported seeing the ‘ping’ move from Baghdad to Virginia. She was not contacted again. But they knew we knew.

There had been no release of information regarding the activities of Blumenthal and the Clintons in holding Saddam in Iraq in the media. The War in Iraq was building. I had a horrible, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Now we know Saddam had no Weapons of Mass Destruction and that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. If Saddam had been paid off to leave there would have been no war. But, of course, trillions of dollars would have been lost to the war contractors and bankers.

As you dig, the lies only get worse. If you read John Perkins’, “Confessions of an Economic Hitman,” it is clear you see what people will do to other human beings for money. Not a pretty picture.

Drones, militarized police, along with biometrics for tracking individuals, and control through the GPS component, now standard in our cell phones, are each essential to suppressing the ability of Americans to resist and fight back. These are paid for by Americans, but produced by private contractors. Today, contractors have become an essential part of government.

The world of government contractors is murky and hard to follow. We know little enough about politicians, nothing about contractors, who are unelected and nearly invisible. We need to know, we need transparency. Along with knowing who they are, we need to hold them accountable. Each of us is liable for doing harm to others. This is also true of contractors.

For the purpose of understanding one drone contractor we have chosen Green Hills Software, Inc., a silver member of the Association for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems International.

They have been involved in this story since, at least, 2002. Read my previous article, “How a Transparent World Protects us,” for details on Green Hills and their Management Team.

The company provides encryption and guidance, without which drones would not work. Green Hills is the best possible example of an errant contractor. Their relationship with John Fund began in 1999. It is likely Green Hills knew Saddam Hussein had offered to leave Iraq.

Green Hills assisted in silencing myself and Morgan with curious haste, beginning with sending the uncertified deposition, given by Morgan in 2001, to John Fund. When this took place their profits were skyrocketed with government contracts. The War in Iraq was starting.

The world would be very different today if the FED had simply printed up a billion dollars and sent it to Saddam. He would have retired and troubled us no more. Better yet, we could have looked for the real perpetrators of 9/11 and held them accountable.

What did not happen is history. Now, we understand far more clearly what the problems are we face. Out of control contractors are only one of these, but one which must be solved.

Green Hills contact information, and evidence, has been provided to attorneys in England and Pakistan who are now filing law suits. Since Green Hills is international collecting should not be a problem.

A small step, but useful in setting a new direction for America.

How A Transparent World Protects Us – Drone Action

Drone Contractor caught exposing himself in Taunton, MA, two days after Boston Marathon Explosion near Boston

John B. (Jack) Douglas, an attorney and author of the long touted,“Reebok Rules,” famously filled with advice on how to make it as a corporate counsel, caught in ‘the act,’ told the off-duty officer what he was doing was a family tradition. Officer McGowan did not find the argument compelling.

Douglas exposed himself to Officer McGowan’s wife and children as the family ate a meal together at Olive Garden Restaurant on County St, Taunton, MA.

Some will chuckle. Others will be outraged. A few will talk about the beauty of the human body and their support of nudity. But Jack Douglas revealed something about his real values and operating principles, there, between Dunkin’ Donuts and the Olive Garden, something he would prefer was not transparent to the world.

When we can see and understand the actions of those, who otherwise, we would automatically trust, we are far better able to ensure our trust is not misused.

Jack knows perfectly well what the prevailing standards are for nudity, legally and culturally. He is a seasoned and sophisticated graduate of Harvard. On June 7^th Douglas will face pre-trial in Taunton District Court.

Covert behavior which gratifies or profits individuals flies underneath a system of law and the original American culture which, localized and community based, allowed us to know each other well enough to know the predilections and motives of those around us. We knew who we could trust and how much we could extend that trust.

Modifications in our form of government and business took place over time. But this form of ‘security,’ knowing about the operating principles of those around us, which are not enumerated in their resumes and CVs, is exactly what the burgeoning centralization of government and corporations has worked diligently to suppress.

When you look at Jack’s smiling face in the line up of his fellow team members from the corporation for which he is Vice President, the last thing you would think about is him is the I image of him lifting his kilt to expose himself to a family eating their garlic bread.

But what you don’t know about those in corporations and government can, and is, killing people around the world and reducing all of us, who struggle to do the right thing, to poverty and ill-health.

Jack Douglas is Senior Vice-President for Green Hills Software, Inc., a company which provides software for war drones to the military. Using drones in an illegal, undeclared war in Pakistan which is, daily killing innocent civilians, is good for their bottom line. But this policy of death for profits both violates our Constitution and is is making America a nation, hated for its disregard of human rights, across the globe.

Green Hills took off for the big bucks in 2003 when the War in Iraq was just getting under way, at the same time they supplied uncertified documents to individuals closely associated with the Bush Administration in an attempt to protect one of their operatives, John Fund.

Look closely at these photos of the Management Team. You are going to learn some interesting things about them which will change your perception of the sheen of respectability which the presentation of their images and resumes create.

The President and CEO of Green Hills is Dan O’Dowd. Dan owns 97% of the company with his wife, Amy Chang. O’Dowd, whose life ambition is to be wealthier than Bill Gates owns other companies, purchased with his profits. Covert should be Dan’s middle name.

Unlike Gates, O’Dowd did not have a wealthy father. Dad O’Dowd was a psychologist.

Dan was a poor graduate from CalTech when, in 1982, with the financial backing of another very successful CalTech graduate, Glenn Hightower, they founded Green Hills.

Despite claims, it was not an immediate success. In fact, in 1985 it seemed likely they would have to return to Hightower for more funding, diluting his shares. It was then Craig Franklin entered Dan’s life. Franklin, ignoring Dan’s marketing, read the code and recommended it to friends in the industry, saving Dan’s equity position. Making Franklin an offer he could not refuse, Dan hired Franklin on as vice president of advanced products development in 1986.

The two men each have much to hide.

In 1998 it was Franklin who organized the walk-out of critical employees which, part of a carefully orchestrated plan, allowed O’Dowd to buy out the company from Hightower at a fraction of its real value. Hightower had been an active participant in the company, not a passive investor.

The deal between Franklin and O’Dowd was of the, “Throw Mama from the Train,” variety. Franklin assisted in defrauding Hightower and O’Dowd made sure Franklin’s wife did not receive her marital share of the stock options issued to Franklin the year before. Their actions callously, and intentionally, left her disabled, destitute, and struggling to care for a completely disabled son, who Franklin had adopted.

Today, Craig Franklin, is widely known to engage in bizarre sexual behavior and to have exposed himself to his adopted daughters. The focus of his sexual drive is young girls, and his fantasies turn on incest. Franklin’s son, Jonathan Scott Franklin, is presently serving time for the attempted murder, by hitman, of his wife.

Green Hills provides software for aerial guidance systems, high level encryption, and covert surveillance, directly to government and to other government contractors, among other products.

Today, we must openly confront the fact government contractors and other multi-national corporations have become a powerful partner in government. Therefore, the operating principles of the real, flesh and blood people who determine their corporate strategies and policies must be transparent to us, the people who supply the money which has allowed them to ramp up to billion dollar enterprises.

Those on corporate management teams, officers of the company, and members of their boards, are not private individuals. Our need to know supersedes their privacy, as it would for elected or appointed officials. The American people supply the money which pays for their corporate jets and income. On our behalf, they are making decisions which are impacting all of us.

We have it in our power to provide the transparency in this sector which is so desperately needed.  The responsibility is ours, each of ours, as individuals.  When we see wrong being done we need to speak out, informing others as we demand justice be done.

This was true in Nazi Germany.  It is true now.

Today, it is obvious just how deep and wide the corruption of our institutions has gone.  Read,  “Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever,“ by Matt Taibbi, now published in Rolling Stone Magazine, if you still doubt. It is not just war contractors. From the highest level of banking down to the seemingly honest faces of the men above, the need for transparency screams to us like a man dying for want of air, lost in an ocean of deceit, all undertaken for profit, without a shred of integrity.

As we continue the campaign to ‘get to know,’ the Management Team for Green Hills Software, remember there are 2,500 drone companies which are members of the Association for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Systems International, of which Green Hills is a Silver member.

Forget their attempts to look honest, normal and respectable.  Remember how much they have hidden, tolerated, and the murders committed in the name of money in their pockets.  Character, and values, do matter.  The lack of integrity, the real thing, not Dan’s ironically named software, can destroy all of us unless we, as individuals step up and take action.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Visit:  DroneFreeZone.info for updates.

Notes

Legal papers, depositions, affidavits, declarations, wills, and other proof are available at:
Just the Evidence and Ruthless People.

John B. Douglas, III Police Report  I received the report from an anonymous source.  Checked it with the local police who pointed out the article in the paper, which included the date for the pre-trial.

Foxboro man in kilt charged with open and gross lewdness in Taunton

For legal papers relating to Dan O’Dowd and Craig Franklin go to Supplemental Declaration – Exhibits and Green Hills Software, Inc.

UNPRECEDENTED Shortages Of Ammo, Physical Gold And Physical Silver

All over the United States we are witnessing unprecedented shortages of ammunition, physical gold and physical silver.  Recent events have helped fuel a “buying frenzy” that threatens to spiral out of control.  Gun shops all over the nation are reporting that they have never seen it this bad, and in many cases any ammo that they are able to get is being sold even before it hits the shelves.  The ammo shortage has already become so severe that police departments all over America are saying that they are being told that it is going to take six months to a year to get their orders.  In fact, many police departments have begun to trade and barter with one another to get the ammo that they need.  Meanwhile, the takedown of paper gold and paper silver has unleashed an avalanche of “panic buying” of physical gold and physical silver all over the planet.  In the United States, some dealers are charging premiums of more than 25 percent over the spot price for gold and silver and they are getting it.  People are paying these prices even though they are being told that delivery will not happen for a month or two in many cases.  Some dealers are feverishly taking as many orders as they can, and they are just hoping that they will be able to get the physical gold and silver to eventually fill those orders.  Personally, I have never seen anything like this.  If things are this tight now, what is going to happen when the next major financial crisis strikes and people really begin to panic?

The shortages and rationing of ammunition at gun shops all over America just seem to keep getting worse.  The following is from an article by a gun owner down in Texas named Brad Meyer…

If you’d like to see a normally sullen sales clerk chortle with derisive pleasure, just walk into just about any gun range, sporting goods store or mass merchandiser and try and buy a couple boxes of .22 ammunition.

Gun enthusiasts are up in arms about a nationwide shortage of ammunition. Handgun ammo in general is particularly difficult to find – and when you do find it, there are restrictions on the amount you can buy and how much you’re going to be paying for it.

While the list of hard to find ammo is long, .22 long rifle and 9mm handgun ammunition are particularly difficult to find in quantity. And the few places that have it are charging a premium rate and usually limiting purchases to one box, per person, per day.

Many gun owners try to find ammunition by going on the Internet, but things have gotten so tight that now any ammo that becomes available online is often gone within seconds…

There are websites where people across the country post links to where ammunition is available – and it sells out within seconds. Not minutes or hours – seconds.

Unfortunately, all of this demand is also driving up prices.  Just check out what Meyer says is happening to the price of standard .22 ammo…

The demand is driving up the cost of ammunition. Six months ago, standard .22 ammo – the most common type of bullet produced in the world – could be had in bulk for around five cents apiece. It is now going for 50 cents or more on some websites – and people are paying it.

But this shortage is not just affecting private citizens.  According toNewmax, police departments all over the nation are dealing with ammo shortages unlike anything that they have ever seen before…

Sheriff Anthony DeMeo of Nye County, Nev., was told his department’s regular order of 50,000 rounds could take up to a year to arrive.

“This is the first time ever I’ve heard that there’s a problem with a law-enforcement agency getting ammo for their agency,” DeMeo told The Las Vegas Sun.

These departments are not alone. Law enforcement agencies in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia are among many that are having to limit how much they give their officers due to the shortage.

Could you imagine waiting for “up to a year” to get more ammunition?

A recent article posted on CNSNews.com had some more examples of police departments that are reporting that there is a massive wait to get more ammo…

Chief Pryor of Rollingwood, Texas says of the shortage:

“We started making phone calls and realized there is a waiting list up to a year.  We have to limit the amount of times we go and train because we want to keep an adequate stock.”

“Nobody can get us ammunition at this point,” saysSgt. Jason LaCross of the Bozeman, Montana police department.

LaCross says that manufacturers are so far behind that they won’t even give him a quote for an order.

“We have no estimated time on when it will even be available,” LaCross says.

This is insane.

What in the world could be causing such an ammo crunch?

Well, certainly the demand for guns and ammo has been trending up in recent years – especially since Barack Obama was elected.

But that doesn’t fully account for the shortages that we are witnessing at the moment.

So what is going on?

Well, some people believe that the federal government is responsible.  It has been reported that they have signed contracts to purchase “up to” 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition.  According to Forbes, this amount of ammunition would be enough to fight a “hot war” in America for 20 years…

The Denver Post, on February 15^th, ran an Associated Press article entitled Homeland Security aims to buy 1.6b rounds of ammo, so far to little notice.  It confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security has issued an open purchase order for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition.  As reported elsewhere, some of this purchase order is for hollow-point rounds, forbidden by international law for use in war, along with a frightening amount specialized for snipers. Also reported elsewhere, at the height of the Iraq War the Army was expending less than 6 million rounds a month.  Therefore 1.6 billion rounds would be enough to sustain a hot war for 20+ years.  In America.

Could this be a way that the Obama administration is trying to restrict the amount of ammo that gets into the hands of private citizens?

That is what some people are suggesting.

According to talk radio show host Michael Savage, the ammo contracts that the federal government has signed give them priority over all other purchasers…

What Homeland Security is doing here is they’re issuing a contract to buy up to that amount of ammo if they want it…

It’s a way to control the amount of market that’s available on the commercial market at any time.

If they go to the ammo manufacturers and say give me 50 million rounds, give me another 30 million rounds… if they periodically do this in increments, they’re going to control how much ammo is available on the commercial market.

As part of their contract it stipulates in there that when the government calls and says give us another quantity, that everything they make has to go to the government priority one before any of it goes to the commercial market.

So, if  they get nervous, all they have to do is use that contract that they have in place… and they just say ‘give us some more.’

So whenever the government wants to tighten the supply of ammunition, all they have to do is invoke their contracts and order more for themselves.

Meanwhile, Obama appears to be doing other things to restrict the amount of ammo that gets into the hands of private gun owners.

For example, there are reports that the Obama administration plans to use executive orders to greatly restrict the importation of ammo from overseas.

So if anything, the shortage of ammunition is only going to get worse, not better.

Meanwhile, the “panic buying” of physical gold and physical silver that we have seen lately has really run down inventories.

According to Reuters, demand has become so intense that the U.S. Mint has suspended sales of gold coins for the first time since 2009…

The U.S. Mint said it has suspended sales of its one-tenth ounce American Eagle gold bullion coins as surging demand after bullion’s plunge to two-year lows depleted the government’s inventory. This marks the first time it has stopped selling gold product since November 2009, dealers said.

At the same time, precious metals dealers all over the country are scrambling to meet the voracious demand that they have been seeing this month.  The following is an excerpt from a letter that the CEO of Texas Precious Metals recently sent out to his customers…

The physical silver market is, in a word, ugly. There is no telling at this point when mint inventories will return to normal, but you can be sure it will not happen within the next 8 weeks. Most dealers, at this point, are selling their current customer demand forward, meaning they are selling product they do not presently have, expecting to pull from future mint allocations. Consequently, future allocations will face pressure from today’s demand. It is not my intent here to comment on the business practices of other companies, but I will say that no one can possibly predict future allocations at the time. The US mint, for example, releases its allocations weekly, and until then, dealers have no insight into allocation levels. Last week, we turned away business in excess of 100,000 ozs of silver because of stock depletion. However, we stand by the notion that it is better to lose a sale than lose a customer by delaying delivery two months (or more).

A similar thing is happening over in Asia.  According to the Financial Times, soaring demand has caused a shortage of gold at the Hong Kong Gold & Silver Exchange Society…

Haywood Cheung, president of the Hong Kong Gold & Silver Exchange Society, said the exchange had effectively run out of most of its holdings as members looked to meet a shortfall in supply amid rampant retail demand for gold products.

“In terms of volume, I haven’t seen this gold rush for over 20 years,” he told the Financial Times on Monday, adding that the exchange only had around twenty 1kg bars, and 100 five-tael bars left in its inventory. “Older members who have been in the business for 50 years haven’t seen such a thing.”

But most disturbing of all is what Jim Sinclair told King World Newsrecently.  Apparently his friend went to get his gold out of a Swiss bank the other day and they refused to give it to him…

A person that I know with significant deposits in one of the primary Swiss banks, in allocated gold, wanted to take out his gold and was just refused on the basis of directives from the central bank….

They told him the amount was in excess of 200,000 Swiss francs and the central bank had instructed them not to do it because it has to do with anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering precautions.

I really wonder whether those are precautions or whether the gold simply isn’t there. Now you tell me that a London delivery has basically failed. It has to raise our suspicions that the lack of physical gold behind the paper gold is literally so severe that we are coming to understand that it is in fact not there.

The gold that people think is stored is not stored, and the inventory of the warehouses for exchanges may not be holding deliverable gold. There has always been speculation about whether or not the physical gold the US claims to store is in fact in those vaults.

The greatest train robbery in history might be all of the gold, and it would only be something like we have described above that would happen right before gold makes historic highs.

There simply is no gold behind the paper. One example is AMRO, a second is your example with Maguire, and a third is my dear friend who was refused his gold on the basis that its value was too high. Remember this friend of mine had his gold in an allocated account in storage at a major Swiss bank. I repeat, there is no gold.

So are we going to see more of this?

Will it soon become evident that there is simply not enough physical gold to cover all of the promises that the banks have made?

Jim Sinclair sure seems to think so.

In another interview, John Embry expressed similar sentiments to King World News…

This gets back to the tip of the iceberg when the Dutch Bank ABN AMRO came out and literally said that if you have allocated gold with us, you can’t have it.

That, to me, is a default, and it gets back to what Jim Sinclair related when one of his friends went to a Swiss bank and couldn’t get his allocated gold.  I mean that’s preposterous.  If it’s allocated it should be there, but it’s clearly not there.  I think this is the beginning of the end of the massive Ponzi scheme in paper gold.  I have been talking about this for some time, and it will have an enormous impact on future gold and silver prices.

When it becomes widely known that all of the people who think they own gold in fact don’t own gold, that it’s been hypothecated and re-hypothecated so many times that there are 100 claims for every single ounce of physical gold, that is when the prices of gold and silver will really go berserk to the upside, and at that point the shorts will have serious problems.”

If those that helped engineer the recent takedown of paper gold and silver were hoping to scare people away from physical gold and silver, then they failed miserably.  For even more on this, please see my recent article entitled “10 Signs The Takedown Of Paper Gold Has Unleashed An Unprecedented Global Run On Physical Gold And Silver“.

All of this is just another example why I encourage people to get prepared while times are still relatively good.

Once disaster strikes, it may be too late to get the things that you need.

Right now there are a whole lot of people out there wishing that they had stocked up on ammo when it was much cheaper and much more readily available.

We are moving into a time when everything that can be shaken will be shaken.  Use the stability provided by the false bubble of economic hope that we are experiencing right now as an opportunity to get prepared.  The next major wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching and time is running out.

Source: The Economic Collapse

The EU’s Iffy Eastern Partners

One variant of a well-known law of bureaucracy says that the amount of time spent discussing a budgetary decision is inversely proportional to the magnitude of the budget in question. Judging by what I witnessed on March 20 at the European Parliament—at the Committee on Budgets’ hearing on the “Financing of the Eastern Partnership”—the Brussels machine functions entirely in accordance with this adage.

The money involved is substantial: 2.8 billion euros ($3.6 billion) over 5 years. The project’s stated purpose is to promote “shared values”—democracy, human rights and the rule of law—in six former Soviet states deemed to be of “strategic importance” to the European Union: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, andUkraine. Promoting the principles of market economy, sustainable development, civic society and “good governance” is also among the objectives.

In their opening remarks, the officials involved in running the Eastern Partnership Program were self-congratulatory about its alleged achievements. That much was to be expected: lots of sinecures, cushy jobs and expense-padded missions can be extracted from a few billion. Nevertheless, the entire construct’s numerous problems and shortcomings could not be concealed:

• Conceptually, there is no clear consensus within the EU on what exactly it is trying to promote in its eastern neighborhood under the bombastic slogans of “shared values, collective norms and joint ownership.” What does it all mean, if anything, in the real world?
• Empirically, the program has followed, and still follows, a “top-down” approach of deciding in Brussels what are the goals, then telling the eastern “partners” what they need to do, and finally rewarding them accordingly—rather than developing genuine partnerships based on those countries’ real needs and attainable objectives.
• Managerially, in order for the funds allocated to the “Partnership” to be optimally utilized, they would require elaborate apparatuses of deployment, supervision and evaluation. On the basis of the presentations last Wednesday, it is clear that the EU has neither the institutional mechanisms nor the supervisory bodies capable of insuring that this is the case.
• Substantially, the elephant in the room was the issue of EU enlargement—or, rather, the extreme unlikelihood of further enlargement after Croatia’s accession next July. Without the realistic prospect of an eventual path to full membership, the EU lacks meaningful leverage over the political elites in the six eastern countries to make them change their ways.

Far from being addressed, these problems are bypassed by the tendency of the EU bureaucracy to close its eyes to the reality on the ground in the countries concerned—or, worse, still, to misrepresent that reality for reasons of institutional self-preservations. The result, to put it succinctly, is that billions of European taxpayers’ cash are poured into a bottomless pit of post-Soviet corruption, graft, and pork-barrel politics. “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us,” went the old Soviet joke. Its modern-day “Eastern” equivalent should be “We pretend to reform, and they pretend that we are doing a good job.” Instead of being properly perceived as part of the problem, terminally corrupt political “elites” are treated as partners in finding solutions.

Moldova is the prime example. On per-capita basis, this backwater squeezed between Romania and Ukraine—the poorest country in Europe—has received far more money than the other five “partners,” and the EU pretends that its objectives are being met. While I was at the European Parliament, the European Commission presented its own regional report on the implementation of the Eastern Partnership. It asserted that “significant progress was made in the implementation of the Eastern Partnership” and singled out Moldova for “showing significant progress,” “stepping up efforts to implement judicial and law enforcement reform,” and “continuing to implement reforms in the areas of social assistance, health and education, energy, competition, state aid and regulatory approximation to the EU acquis.” Moldova’s government was asked to “continue to vigorously advance reforms in the justice and law enforcement systems” as well as intensify the fight against corruption.

This is surreal, on par with the Soviet Communist Party congresses exalting the great and glorious achievements of socialism in the years of terminal decline under Brezhnev. In reality, Moldova is one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, according to independent analysts, who also claim that the majority of EU assistance is being misused by local officials. The Warsaw-based EaP Institute warns that the EU is devoting considerable sums to Moldova for very little return in terms of progress in the country’s reform process: “It begs the question: Why is the EU throwing money like this at a black hole of corruption, when there is so much to do in the EU’s own member states?”

It does, indeed. Moldova has already received some €482m from the EU Eastern Partnership, which is about 110 euros ($145) for every man, woman and child in the dirt-poor country—the equivalent of an average two-weekly wage. Nobody knows for certain where it went, but we have a fair idea. Recent opinion polls say that the majority of citizens of Moldova consider their current coalition government as “totally corrupt.” According to the Transparency International 2012 report, Moldova is among the most corrupt places in Europe, with Kosovo, Albania and Bosnia topping the list. But the EU says it is doing well, because an unhealthy symbiotic relationship has been developed between the unelected and mostly unaccountable bureaucrats managing enormous funds earmarked for nebulous purposes and their foreign “clients” who gloat at the mouth-watering prospect of placing a major portion of those funds into their own pockets.

After last Wednesday’s introductory presentations, several experts and members of European Parliament (MEPs) expressed misgivings about the Eastern Partnership policy. Olaf Osica, director of the centre for eastern studies in Warsaw, declared that “in four years the policy had failed to produce any tangible political or social results.” A prominent Polish MEP and former senior government minister, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, said the entire edifice should be “completely revised”:

There are a whole multitude of projects which, as we have heard at the hearing, no one seems able to follow or understand… What we are doing is creating the illusion that the EU is helping to transform these eastern European countries when, in fact, the naked truth is that the EU is losing its eastern neighbors. What is actually needed is for the EU—and that means both the Commission and Parliament—to totally revise and revisit its Eastern Partnership policy.

All this was in stark contrast to the earlier assurances by senior officials that the current picture was “confused,” but the EU was nevertheless “doing quite well” in addressing concerns about the transparency and accountability of its funding for the six countries (Marcus Cornaro); or that the EU was determined to push ahead with closer cooperation with those countries that have “demonstrated a commitment to the reform process” (Richard Tibbels).

The lenient attitude of EU officials regarding the patchy record of their “Eastern partners” on corruption, democratisation, and the rule of law is in stark contrast with the ever-moving goal posts for a half-dozen aspiring EU members in the Western Balkans. None of them will join the EU for a decade at least, of course, and a realistic reassessment of their political and economic policies is long overdue. The EU is in a state of chronic institutional and financial crisis, and trying to get on board at this point is equal to betting on Romney last November 5. Alternatives do exist, but they call for the cold-blooded diversification of long-term strategies. Belgrade and Kiev in particular should take note.

White And Wrong In Philly

When your article inspires a big-city mayor to refer your case to a “human-relations commission,” you know you’ve hit a nerve. And when that article is the recent “Being White in Philly” piece by liberal Robert Huber, you know it doesn’t take much truth to hit that nerve.

That’s the scary part. Huber’s article contains mostly tepid examples of whites’ negative experiences with blacks and primarily black neighborhoods, such as a Philadelphia resident whose grill was stolen from her backyard but “blames herself” for not fencing it in. Its tone is basically apologetic, absolving a drug dealer of responsibility because he was just “trying to get by” and describing the US’ racial history as “horrible and daunting.” Yet this wasn’t good enough for Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter and his comrades. They still want Huber silenced.

Oh, they won’t get what they want…at least not exactly and not yet. But, nonetheless, writes Philly.com, “In a scathing letter, Mayor Nutter last week requested that the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission consider whether the magazine and Huber deserved to be rebuked for the article.” Why is this significant? Well, when we hear about Englishmen, Canadians, Australians, Swedes, or other Westerners being imprisoned or fined for criticizing Islam or homosexuality — yes, this does happen — guess what the instruments of their oppression are.

Human-relations commissions.

Of course, they’re usually called “human-rights” commissions, and the entities that actually judge those charged with “hate speech” are called “tribunals.” And they have proliferated in the West. You can bet your state has one, and your county may, too. But, no, you won’t be silenced by them — at least not exactly and not yet. We have that pesky thing called the First Amendment (for now).

But Huber certainly was rebuked. In a Monday panel discussion moderated by the editor of his Philadelphia Magazine, Tom McGrath, he was criticized by what appear to be promising future human-rights-tribunal judges. Fellow journalist Solomon Jones scored the publication for having a “history of racial insensitivity,” while People’s Emergency Center president Farah Jimenez said that the “[m]agazine, which has an all-white editorial staff, was not the right ‘messenger’ for a story encouraging racial dialogue,” writes Philly.com. I wonder, does anyone ever say that the all-black NAACP or Congressional Black Caucus is the wrong agent of racial dialogue? Huber’s goal was to bring white people’s feelings and beliefs on race to light, and for this white people may be the ideal messengers.

Critics at the discussion even questioned whether the individuals cited only by first name (or pseudonym) in the article were real. I suppose they wanted full names, addresses, and telephone numbers, which surely would have encouraged honesty in racial dialogue. But when whites are portrayed in history as slave owners and oppressors, or when blacks charge discrimination today, do the powers-that-be question whether the stories are true? Why, there wasn’t even the necessary skepticism in the Duke Lacrosse rape frame-up case. Of course, though, why even ask? White privilege ensures that whites never, ever have bad experiences with black people.

Not surprisingly, the magazine and its “defenders” responded to the lynch mob with deference. McGrath opened the discussion with an apology, and journalist Christopher Norris said, writes Philly.com, “that he understood the outrage over the article, but simply viewed the piece as the work of an older white man writing about his experience.” Yes, and Nutter’s actions are simply the outrage of an older black man airing his complaints. Jimenez’ comments are simply a middle-aged Hispanic woman expressing her feelings. How did that sound? Should we try to discover truth or just dismiss messengers based on race?

Having said all this, Huber gets no sympathy from me. He says in his piece that white people are stuck being “dishonest by default” on race and that “[w]e need to bridge the conversational divide so that there are no longer two private dialogues in Philadelphia — white people talking to other whites, and black people to blacks — but a city in which it is okay to speak openly about race.” Yet his expressed desire for open conversation rings hollow. When John Derbyshire was fired from National Review for speaking openly about race, or Rush Limbaugh lost his position as an NFL commentator for saying far less, did Huber defend them? Did he even defend their comments as part of that initiation of racial dialogue? I suspect that he was happy to see a political opponent twist in the wind. But if Huber now wants to have that conversation on race, okay, let’s have it.

At the beginning of his piece, Huber speaks of a young woman he calls Susan and writes:

She lost her BlackBerry in a biology lab at Villanova and Facebooked all the class members she could find, “wondering if you happened to pick it up or know who did.” No one had it. There was one black student in the class, whom I’ll call Carol, who responded: “Why would I just happen to pick up a BlackBerry and if this is a personal message I’m offended!”

Huber explains that Carol assumed Susan targeted her because she was black and for a long time thereafter gave Susan the cold shoulder. Here is what Huber didn’t have the guts to say: such paranoia is the result anti-white bigotry. It’s just as when a person is irretrievably biased against someone in his personal life and then sees the individual through colored glasses. Every innocent misstep is then interpreted as a malicious act: “Why, that’s just the kind of thing he would do!” is the thinking. With whites, they’re always “racist” because that’s just the way they are.

And this has consequences. It’s easy to justify hatred of and discrimination against people whom you believe are inherently biased against you, and whites suffer as a result of this phenomenon all the time. Oh, Huber won’t talk about this, and it is why, if you want the truth, forget his article. Read the comments under it. For while the anonymity of the Internet enables some ugly talk, it also encourages expression of some ugly truths.

Just about a year ago I investigated a racially motivated fire attack on a 13-year-old Missouri boy named Allen Coon, who was one of fewer than 20 white children attending East High school in Kansas City. During the course of extensive interviews with parents and students, I learned that Coon and other white children had been subjected to severe racial harassment not just by classmates, but also teachers. One teacher called the tow-headed Allen “Casper” and encouraged other students to participate in the teasing; other times students would initiate the harassment and the teachers would chime in. I also spoke with two sisters, ex-Texans, who were verbally attacked in front of their class by a teacher who said, “Everybody from Texas is ignorant rednecks” and that all white people were responsible for a 1998 attack upon a black man in Jasper, TX (the James Byrd killing) because “[their] skin is white.”

And similar ugly truths are revealed in “Being White in Philly’s” comments section. There’s the white poster who said that in fifth grade in his primarily black school, the teacher would purposely ask him questions too difficult for his grade level and then, when he couldn’t answer, make him stand in front of the class wearing a sign reading “White Dunce.” And here are a few other examples (edited for punctuation and grammar), with respondents identified by screen name:

White kid in blackgradeschool

I was targeted daily throughout my childhood because of my race — that was made explicitly clear (verbally). Even teachers in my school were unsympathetic and would look the other way. And the manner in which race was spoken about in an all black school really inflamed students to the point where everything done to me was completely justified in their minds because, as a white person, I was finally getting mine, and some of the teachers I know felt that way too.

Under the bus

I couldn’t open my mouth in class without half of the kids shouting “Shut-up, white boy,” or many similar things. … [T]he majority of my teachers just looked the other way, and many, though not all, black teachers seemed to support it.

SaraEdward45

The demographics at my daughter’s school suddenly changed one year with black children becoming the majority, and she became a target.

Xena

I attended a small elementary school in Georgia. …I was bullied daily by black kids. Several loudly expressed that they hated white kids, yet could not articulate WHY.

JenB

[T]here was the black librarian who joined in with the [black students'] bullying. I had never experienced a teacher who was openly hostile to the white students. …I had to sit there surrounded by the librarian’s favorite black bullies, while she bullied as well.

Of course, we’ll now be told that these testimonials are invalid because, well, you know, these might not even be real people. It’s always nice to have full names so that those who dare speak truth can be scorned, ostracized, condemned, and fired from employment. As SaraEdward45 put it, “No one wants to [air these problems] out loud because you are automatically labeled as a racist and your experience is invalidated, leaving you to feel bullied once more.”

But, hey, it’s great that we’re having this conversation.

Take Action: End The Threat of Drones Overhead

We all know about the kind of threat represented by the purchase and use of drones in our communities. We also know the potential for profit with drone technology is measured in the billions of dollars.

Visit this site and see how many such contractors there are today.

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International shows you just how serious a threat this is to our real security and freedom. When this many corporations are lined up, hands out, to grab the largess, you know the money available is only beginning.

What kind of people would, today, be ready to sell their fellow Americans down the river and into bondage so they can profit? The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International provides a list of their members, to which we linked. At Drone Free Zone we would like to google map these ‘businesses,’ making them visible in their communities so their fellow Americans, congregants, club members, neighbors, and family members with conscience, can let them know, face to face what they think of how drone enablers make their money. They must be stopped. We must do this in every way possible, including direct, personal, confrontation.

It takes integrity to be willing to stand up for what we believe. It is not always easy. There are over 2,000 contractors and we need a team to find and catalog locations and other contact information.

Additionally, we need to research the people in positions of authority within these corporations. Are they persons of rectitude? Or are they the kind of people who will do anything for the buck? We need the evidence.

Please help us roll out a protest to close the doors of those who are locking down our skies and lives. We need to expose those whose lives lack integrity.

The meaning of the word, Integrity.

in·teg·ri·ty

n.
1. Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code.
2. The state of being unimpaired; soundness.
3. The quality or condition of being whole or undivided; completeness.

The word has profound meaning. Many attempt to hide behind words, which is true of the man we use as an example, Dan O’Dowd, owner of Green Hills Software, Inc., a drone contractor.

If a man engages in a scheme to violate the law, suborning the justice system to gain power and wealth, while destroying the lives of an entire family and putting some of them at risk of their lives, does he have any claim to ‘integrity?’

And what if the list of crimes the man enabled and covered for includes placing uncounted women and girls at  risk?  What if he is known to have paid off victims, or intimidated them into silence?

And if such a man hides behind the cloak of power to cover his crimes, what is he then?  And who if such a man had the audacity to name his technology, INTEGRITY?

Our country, today, is waking up to question those who have been entrusted with power.  One of the first questions to be asked is what can be proven of their integrity?  Have  they honored their obligation to follow the law, used power in ways which made all of us safer, more secure in our homes and lives?  The evidence will speak for itself.

Go to “Craig Franklin and Green Hills Software“

Contact me through DroneFreeZone.com” if you can help. It will be very much appreciated.

Banning the drones locally is already happening, as you see below.

According to this article, ”Thomas Jefferson’s Home Town First to Ban Drone Surveillance,“ the movement to stop drones, used domestically, is now launched.

Banning drones is a defensive move, important, but it does not deliver the slap down so desperately needs to be delivered to those now profiting or prevent the next scheme from being rolled out.

For those without INTEGRITY it is  all about the money, greed, and an unbridled lust for power and control.  If one scheme fails, they will more on to the next.

America needs individuals who use their discernment to question what they are asked to do and theintegrity to say, ‘no,’ even when they stand to profit.  For this to happen we need to ensure only those with integrity are entrusted with power.

Our institutions, government, courts, commerce, should be always in the hands of those possessing only the highest integrity.  This must be true in government and in corporations.

As you read about what one man, Dan O’Dowd, did, using one corporation, you will understand the urgency of this project.

If any man guilty of such offenses then uses the word, INTEGRITY, for his main product, what does that say about him? Yet this man became enormously wealthy through his actions.

The use of the word could well be an attempt to cover, even possibly, to himself, the full import of his actions.

This is the question we will answer, starting with drone corporations.

Gun Owners Refuse To Register Under New York Law

After Democrats in New York rammed a sweeping assault on the right to keep and bear arms through the legislature that failed to exempt police officers from the draconian restrictions, gun owners and even some lawmakers are planning what has been dubbed potentially the largest act of civil disobedience in state history. According to news reports, gun rights activists are urging everyone to defy far-left Governor Andrew Cuomo’s new registration mandate while daring authorities to “come and take it.”

Analysts say the legislation, passed in a frenzy last week in the wake of the Newtown shooting, represents the most brazen infringement on the right to keep and bear arms anywhere in the nation. Among other points, the so-called SAFE Act seeks to limit magazines to just seven bullets, require virtually all of the estimated one million semi-automatic rifles in the state to be registered with authorities, mandate reporting of patients who express indications that they may have thoughts about hurting themselves or others by doctors, and more.

Aside from being unconstitutional, experts on gun violence also point out that the draconian schemes are a bad idea: Studies have repeatedly shown that more guns lead to less crime, and the phenomenon is obvious across America — just compare Chicago or D.C. to Alaska or Wyoming. The mandated reporting requirements for doctors, meanwhile, have come under fire from across the political spectrum. Whether it will even be possible to enforce the bill, however, remains to be seen.

Preparations are already being made for mass resistance. “I’ve heard from hundreds of people that they’re prepared to defy the law, and that number will be magnified by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, when the registration deadline comes,’’ said President Brian Olesen with American Shooters Supply, among the biggest gun dealers in the state, in an interview with the New York Post.

Even government officials admit that forcing New Yorkers to register their guns will be a tough sell, and they are apparently aware that massive non-compliance will be the order of the day. “Many of these assault-rifle owners aren’t going to register; we realize that,’’ a source in the Cuomo administration told the Post, adding that officials expect “widespread violations” of the new statute.

Threats of imprisoning gun owners for up to a year and confiscating their weapons are already being issued by governor’s office, headed by a rabid anti-Second Amendment extremist who suggested before the bill passed that “confiscation” of all semi-automatic rifles was being considered. If tens or even hundreds of thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens refuse to comply, however, analysts say New York would either have to start raising taxes and building a lot more prisons, or give up on the scheme that experts say will do nothing to reduce violence and that lawmakers say is aimed at eventual confiscation.

Activists involved in the state-wide boycott against the unconstitutional statute who spoke to the Post almost taunted authorities, saying gun owners would essentially dare authorities to “come and take it away.” According to the paper, leaders of some of the state’s hundreds of gun clubs, dealers, and non-profit organizations, citing the New York Constitution’s guarantee that gun rights “cannot be infringed,” are currently involved in organizing the resistance. Among the primary concerns is that, with registration, authorities would know where to go for confiscation, an idea already proposed openly by Governor Cuomo himself.

“They’re saying, ‘F— the governor! F— Cuomo! We’re not going to register our guns,’ and I think they’re serious. People are not going to do it. People are going to resist,” explained State Rifle and Pistol Association President Tom King, who also serves on the National Rifle Association board of directors. “They’re taking one of our guaranteed civil rights, and they’re taking it away.”

The NRA itself, while saying that it did not participate in organizing resistance to the law, admitted that it was not surprised by the open defiance among gun owners. “I will say this: Historic experience here and in Canada shows that when you try to force gun owners into a registration and licensing system, there’s usually mass opposition and mass noncompliance,” NRA President David Keene told the Post. “I think it’s going to be very difficult for the governor to get mass compliance with this new law.”

Throughout the short discussion on the bill, GOP legislators warned about the prospect of resistance — potentially resulting in violence. Indeed, even some lawmakers have already promised to defy the new unconstitutional statute. Republican state Assemblyman Steve Katz, for example, told his colleagues during the debate that the legislation’s attempt to re-define semi-automatic rifles as banned “assault weapons” creates “a new class of criminals overnight.” However, he also mentioned that he had no intention of complying with the arbitrary seven-bullet maximum demanded under the legislation.

“I leave my wife and three young daughters home alone for days at a time to represent my constituents here,” Katz said on the floor of the Assembly. “After what happened to the young mother in Loganville, Georgia who defended her two young children against an intruder, this bill will turn me into a criminal because you can bet that before I leave to do the people’s work, there will be more than seven bullets in the magazine of my wife’s firearm.”

He concluded his plea for respecting gun rights with some quotes about the reason for the Second Amendment and New York state’s even more overt prohibition on infringements. The first one he read came from George Washington: “A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.”

As in the rest of the United States, law enforcement has also been speaking out about infringements on the right to keep and bear arms — especially after the SAFE Act was rammed through so hastily that, according to analysts, “oops,” police officers are now in violation of the law too. New York sheriffs have become outspoken about the rights of citizens, as well, expressing serious concerns about violations of unalienable rights contained in the new state statute.

“This law has some issues pertaining to the Second Amendment,” explained Putnam County Sheriff Donald Smith, one of many to express reservations about the new rules. “I’m deeply concerned in haste to pass the law, they may have missed the point on some of the mental health issues and are dealing with some ammunition and gun issues and law-enforcement issues.”

Steuben County Sheriff David Cole, meanwhile, released a statement backed by the local police union criticizing the highly controversial statute as well. “These laws will now make it so thousands and thousands of law-abiding citizens, who go to work, pay their taxes, and [are] concerned about their children’s future, will now be considered criminals if they choose to stand up for the Second Amendment rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution,” Sheriff Cole noted, echoing widespread concerns being heard throughout the state.

Ironically, even some anti-gun extremists who openly support lawlessly infringing on unalienable rights have criticized the legislation. The ultra-far-left Center for American Progress, funded by billionaire statist George Soros, for example, complained about the provisions purporting to obligate doctors to report their patients to authorities if they express violent or suicidal thoughts — all in violation of the traditional doctor-patient confidentiality relationship.

Doctors belittled the provision, too, noting that it could discourage people who otherwise would seek help from talking to healthcare providers out of fear that the police could show up at their door and confiscate their weapons. “The people who arguably most need to be in treatment and most need to feel free to talk about these disturbing impulses, may be the ones we make least likely to do so,” Dr. Paul Appelbaum at Columbia University told the Associated Press. Critics say the provision will turn New York into a “psychiatric police state.”

Meanwhile, at the national level, some Democrat lawmakers and President Obama are seeking draconian new gun bans and a wide array of other infringements on the right to keep and bear arms. State governments and sheriffs nationwide, however, are speaking out, working to nullify any assault on gun rights, and if needed, arrest federal officials trying to enforce unconstitutional rules. With the amount of resistance already expressing itself in New York, analysts say attempting similar schemes at the federal level would be literally insane. Still, that does not mean it will not be attempted.

Source: Alex Newman | The New American“

Burn, Burn – Africa’s Afghanistan

LONDON – One’s got to love the sound of a Frenchman’s Mirage 2000 fighter jet in the morning. Smells like… a delicious neo-colonial breakfast in Hollandaise sauce. Make it quagmire sauce.

Apparently, it’s a no-brainer. Mali holds 15.8 million people – with a per capita gross domestic product of only around US$1,000 a year and average life expectancy of only 51 years – in a territory twice the size of France (per capital GDP $35,000 and upwards). Now almost two-thirds of this territory is occupied by heavily weaponized Islamist outfits. What next? Bomb, baby, bomb.

So welcome to the latest African war; Chad-based French Mirages and Gazelle helicopters, plus a smatter of France-based

Rafales bombing evil Islamist jihadis in northern Mali. Business is good; French president Francois Hollande spent this past Tuesday in Abu Dhabi clinching the sale of up to 60 Rafales to that Gulf paragon of democracy, the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The formerly wimpy Hollande – now enjoying his “resolute”, “determined”, tough guy image reconversion – has cleverly sold all this as incinerating Islamists in the savannah before they take a one-way Bamako-Paris flight to bomb the Eiffel Tower.

French Special Forces have been on the ground in Mali since early 2012.

The Tuareg-led NMLA (National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad), via one of its leaders, now says it’s “ready to help” the former colonial power, billing itself as more knowledgeable about the culture and the terrain than future intervening forces from the CEDEAO (the acronym in French for the Economic Community of Western African States).

Salafi-jihadis in Mali have got a huge problem: they chose the wrong battlefield. If this was Syria, they would have been showered by now with weapons, logistical bases, a London-based “observatory”, hours of YouTube videos and all-out diplomatic support by the usual suspects of US, Britain, Turkey, the Gulf petromonarchies and – oui, monsieur – France itself.

Instead, they were slammed by the UN Security Council – faster than a collection of Marvel heroes – duly authorizing a war against them. Their West African neighbors – part of the ECOWAS regional bloc – were given a deadline (late November) to come up with a war plan. This being Africa, nothing happened – and the Islamists kept advancing until a week ago Paris decided to apply some Hollandaise sauce.

Not even a football stadium filled with the best West African shamans can conjure a bunch of disparate – and impoverished – countries to organize an intervening army in short notice, even if the adventure will be fully paid by the West just like the Uganda-led army fighting al-Shabaab in Somalia.

To top it all, this is no cakewalk. The Salafi-jihadis are flush, courtesy of booming cocaine smuggling from South America to Europe via Mali, plus human trafficking. According to the UN Office of Drugs Control, 60% of Europe’s cocaine transits Mali. At Paris street prices, that is worth over $11 billion.

Turbulence ahead 

General Carter Ham, the commander of the Pentagon’s AFRICOM, has been warning about a major crisis for months. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. But what’s really going on in what the New York Times quaintly describes as those “vast and turbulent stretches of the Sahara”?

It all started with a military coup in March 2012, only one month before Mali would hold a presidential election, ousting then president Amadou Toumani Toure. The coup plotters justified it as a response to the government’s incompetence in fighting the Tuareg.

The coup leader was one Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo, who happened to have been very cozy with the Pentagon; that included his four-month infantry officer basic training course in Fort Benning, Georgia, in 2010. Essentially, Sanogo was also groomed by AFRICOM, under a regional scheme mixing the State Department’s Trans Sahara Counter Terrorism Partnership program and the Pentagon’s Operation Enduring Freedom. It goes without saying that in all this “freedom” business Mali has been the proverbial “steady ally” – as in counterterrorism partner – fighting (at least in thesis) al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

Over the last few years, Washington’s game has elevated flip-flopping to high art. During the second George W Bush administration, Special Forces were very active side by side with the Tuaregs and the Algerians. During the first Obama administration, they started backing the Mali government against the Tuareg.

An unsuspecting public may pore over Rupert Murdoch’s papers – for instance, The Times of London – and its so-called defense correspondent will be pontificating at will on Mali without ever talking about blowback from the Libya war.

Muammar Gaddafi always supported the Tuaregs’ independence drive; since the 1960s the NMLA agenda has been to liberate Azawad (North Mali) from the central government in Bamako.

After the March 2012 coup, the NMLA seemed to be on top. They planted their own flag on quite a few government buildings, and on April 5 announced the creation of a new, independent Tuareg country. The “international community” spurned them, only for a few months later to have the NMLA for all practical purposes marginalized, even in their own region, by three other – Islamist – groups; Ansar ed-Dine (“Defenders of the Faith”); the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO); and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

Meet the players

The NMLA is a secular Tuareg movement, created in October 2011. It claims that the liberation of Azawad will allow better integration – and development – for all the peoples in the region. Its hardcore fighters are Tuaregs who were former members of Gaddafi’s army. But there are also rebels who had not laid down their arms after the 2007-2008 Tuareg rebellion, and some that defected from the Malian army. Those who came back to Mali after Gaddafi was executed by the NATO rebels in Libya carried plenty of weapons. Yet most heavy weapons actually ended up with the NATO rebels themselves, the Islamists supported by the West.

AQIM is the Northern African branch of al-Qaeda, pledging allegiance to “The Doctor”, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Its two crucial characters are Abu Zaid and Mokhtar Belmokhtar, former members of the ultra-hardcore Algerian Islamist outfit Salafist Group for Predication and Combat (SGPC). Belmokhtar was already a jihadi in 1980s Afghanistan.

Abu Zaid poses as a sort of North African “Geronimo”, aka Osama bin Laden, with the requisite black flag and a strategically positioned Kalashnikov featuring prominently in his videos. The historical leader, though, is Belmokhtar. The problem is that Belmokhtar, known by French intelligence as “The Uncatchable”, has recently joined MUJAO.

MUJAO fighters are all former AQIM. In June 2012, MUJAO expelled the NMLA and took over the city of Gao, when it immediately applied the worst aspects of Sharia law. It’s the MUJAO base that has been bombed by the French Rafales this week. One of its spokesmen has duly threatened, “in the name of Allah”, to respond by attacking “the heart of France”.

Finally, Ansar ed-Dine is an Islamist Tuareg outfit, set up last year and directed by Iyad ag Ghali, a former leader of the NMLA who exiled himself in Libya. He turned to Salafism because of – inevitably – Pakistani proselytizers let loose in Northern Africa, then engaged in valuable face time with plenty of AQIM emirs. It’s interesting to note in 2007 Mali President Toure appointed Ghali as consul in Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia. He was then duly expelled in 2010 because he got too close to radical Islamists.

Gimme ‘a little more terrorism’ 

No one in the West is asking why the Pentagon-friendly Sanogo’s military coup in the capital ended up with almost two-thirds of Mali in the hands of Islamists who imposed hardcore Sharia law in Azawad – especially in Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal, a gruesome catalogue of summary executions, amputations, stonings and the destruction of holy shrines in Timbuktu. How come the latest Tuareg rebellion ended up hijacked by a few hundred hardcore Islamists? It’s useless to ask the question to US drones.

The official “leading from behind” Obama 2.0 administration rhetoric is, in a sense, futuristic; the French bombing “could rally jihadis” around the world and lead to – what else – attacks on the West. Once again the good ol’ Global War on Terror (GWOT) remains the serpent biting its own tail.

There’s no way to understand Mali without examining what Algeria has been up to. The Algerian newspaper El Khabar only scratched the surface, noting that “from categorically refusing an intervention – saying to the people in the region it would be dangerous”, Algiers went to “open Algerian skies to the French Mirages”.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Algeria last October, trying to organize some semblance of an intervening West African army. Hollande was there in December. Oh yes, this gets juicier by the month.

So let’s turn to Professor Jeremy Keenan, from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at London University, and author of The Dark Sahara (Pluto Press, 2009) and the upcomingThe Dying Sahara (Pluto Press, 2013).

Writing in the January edition of New African, Keenan stresses, “Libya was the catalyst of the Azawad rebellion, not its underlying cause. Rather, the catastrophe now being played out in Mali is the inevitable outcome of the way in which the ‘Global War on Terror’ has been inserted into the Sahara-Sahel by the US, in concert with Algerian intelligence operatives, since 2002.”

In a nutshell, Bush and the regime in Algiers both needed, as Keenan points out, “a little more terrorism” in the region. Algiers wanted it as the means to get more high-tech weapons. And Bush – or the neo-cons behind him – wanted it to launch the Saharan front of the GWOT, as in the militarization of Africa as the top strategy to control more energy resources, especially oil, thus wining the competition against massive Chinese investment. This is the underlying logic that led to the creation of AFRICOM in 2008.

Algerian intelligence, Washington and the Europeans duly used AQIM, infiltrating its leadership to extract that “little more terrorism”. Meanwhile, Algerian intelligence effectively configured the Tuaregs as “terrorists”; the perfect pretext for Bush’s Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiative, as well as the Pentagon’s Operation Flintlock – a trans-Sahara military exercise.

The Tuaregs always scared the hell out of Algerians, who could not even imagine the success of a Tuareg nationalist movement in northern Mali. After all, Algeria always viewed the whole region as its own backyard.

The Tuaregs – the indigenous population of the central Sahara and the Sahel – number up to 3 million. Over 800,000 live in Mali, followed by Niger, with smaller concentrations in Algeria, Burkina Faso and Libya. There have been no less than five Tuareg rebellions in Mali since independence in 1960, plus three others in Niger, and a lot of turbulence in Algeria.

Keenan’s analysis is absolutely correct in identifying what happened all along 2012 as the Algerians meticulously destroying the credibility and the political drive of the NMLA. Follow the money: both Ansar ed-Dine’s Iyad ag Ghaly and MUJAO’s Sultan Ould Badi are very cozy with the DRS, the Algerian intelligence agency. Both groups in the beginning had only a few members.

Then came a tsunami of AQIM fighters. That’s the only explanation for why the NMLA was, after only a few months, neutralized both politically and militarily in their own backyard.

Round up the usual freedom fighters

Washington’s “leading from behind” position is illustrated by this State Department press conference. Essentially, the government in Bamako asked for the French to get down and dirty.

And that’s it.

Not really. Anyone who thinks “bomb al-Qaeda” is all there is to Mali must be living in Oz. To start with, using hardcore Islamists to suffocate an indigenous independence movement comes straight from the historic CIA/Pentagon playbook.

Moreover, Mali is crucial to AFRICOM and to the Pentagon’s overall MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa) outlook. Months before 9/11 I had the privilege to crisscross Mali on the road – and by the (Niger) river – and hang out, especially in Mopti and Timbuktu, with the awesome Tuaregs, who gave me a crash course in Northwest Africa. I saw Wahhabi and Pakistani preachers all over the place. I saw the Tuaregs progressively squeezed out. I saw an Afghanistan in the making. And it was not very hard to follow the money sipping tea in the Sahara. Mali borders Algeria, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Senegal, the Ivory Coast and Guinea. The spectacular Inner Niger delta is in central Mali – just south of the Sahara. Mali overflows with gold, uranium, bauxite, iron, manganese, tin and copper. And – Pipelineistan beckons! – there’s plenty of unexplored oil in northern Mali.

As early as February 2008, Vice Admiral Robert T Moeller wassaying that AFRICOM’s mission was to protect “the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market”; yes, he did make the crucial connection to China, pronounced guilty of ” challenging US interests”.

AFRICOM’s spy planes have been “observing” Mali, Mauritania and the Sahara for months, in thesis looking for AQIM fighters; the whole thing is overseen by US Special Forces, part of the classified, code-named Creek Sand operation, based in next-door Burkina Faso. Forget about spotting any Americans; these are – what else – contractors who do not wear military uniforms.

Last month, at Brown University, General Carter Ham, AFRICOM’s commander, once more gave a big push to the “mission to advance US security interests across Africa”. Now it’s all about the – updated – US National Security Strategy in Africa, signed by Obama in June 2012. The (conveniently vague) objectives of this strategy are to “strengthen democratic institutions”; encourage “economic growth, trade and investment”; “advance peace and security”; and “promote opportunity and development.”

In practice, it’s Western militarization (with Washington “leading from behind”) versus the ongoing Chinese seduction/investment drive in Africa. In Mali, the ideal Washington scenario would be a Sudan remix; just like the recent partition of North and South Sudan, which created an extra logistical headache for Beijing, why not a partition of Mali to better exploit its natural wealth? By the way, Mali was known as Western Sudan until independence in 1960.

Already in early December a “multinational” war in Mali was on the Pentagon cards.

The beauty of it is that even with a Western-financed, Pentagon-supported, “multinational” proxy army about to get into the action, it’s the French who are pouring the lethal Hollandaise sauce (nothing like an ex-colony “in trouble” to whet the appetite of its former masters). The Pentagon can always keep using its discreet P-3 spy planes and Global Hawk drones based in Europe, and later on transport West African troops and give them aerial cover. But all secret, and very hush hush.

Mr Quagmire has already reared its ugly head in record time, even before the 1,400 (and counting) French boots on the ground went into offense.

A MUJAO commando team (and not AQIM, as it’s been reported), led by who else but the “uncatchable” Belmokhtar, hit a gas field in the middle of the Algerian Sahara desert, over 1,000 km south of Algiers but only 100 km from the Libyan border, where they captured a bunch of Western (and some Japanese) hostages; a rescue operation launched on Wednesday by Algerian Special Forces was, to put it mildly, a giant mess, with at least seven foreign hostages and 23 Algerians so far confirmed killed.

The gas field is being exploited by BP, Statoil and Sonatrach. MUJAO has denounced – what else – the new French “crusade” and the fact that French fighter jets now own Algerian airspace.

As blowback goes, this is just the hors d’oeuvres. And it won’t be confined to Mali. It will convulse Algeria and soon Niger, the source of over a third of the uranium in French nuclear power plants, and the whole Sahara-Sahel.

So this new, brewing mega-Afghanistan in Africa will be good for French neoloconial interests (even though Hollande insists this is all about “peace”); good for AFRICOM; a boost for those Jihadis Formerly Known as NATO Rebels; and certainly good for the never-ending Global War on Terror (GWOT), duly renamed “kinetic military operations”.

Django, unchained, would be totally at home. As for the Oscar for Best Song, it goes to the Bush-Obama continuum: There’s no business like terror business. With French subtitles, bien sur.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His most recent book is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com

Source: Asia Times Online

Society Is Crumbling Right In Front Of Our Eyes And Banning Guns Won’t Help

What in the world is happening to America?  I have written many articles about how society is crumbling right in front of our eyes, but now it is getting to the point where people are going to be afraid to go to school or go shopping at the mall.  Just consider what has happened over the past week.  Adam Lanza savagely murdered 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.  42-year-old Marcus Gurrola threatened to shoot innocent shoppers and fired off more than 50 rounds in the parking lot of Fashion Island Mall in Newport Beach, California.  After police apprehended him, he told them that he “was unhappy with life”.  Earlier in the week, a crazy man wearing a hockey mask and armed with a semi-automatic rifle opened fire on the second floor of a mall in Happy Valley, Oregon.  He killed two people and injured a third.  On Saturday morning, a lone gunman walked into a hospital in Alabama and opened fire.  He killed one police officer and two hospital employees before being gunned down by another police officer.  So have we now reached the point where every school, every mall and every hospital is going to need armed security?  How will society function efficiently if everyone is constantly worried about mass murderers?

In response to the horrible tragedy in Connecticut, many in the mainstream media are suggesting that much stricter gun laws are the obvious solution.

After all, if we get rid of all the guns these crazy people won’t be able to commit these kinds of crimes, right?

Unfortunately, that is not how it works.  The criminals don’t obey gun control laws.  Banning guns will just take them out of the hands of law-abiding American citizens that just want to protect their own families.

Adam Lanza didn’t let the strict gun control laws up in Connecticut stop him from what he wanted to do.  Connecticut already has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, and Adam Lanza broke at least three of them.

However, if there had been some armed security officers or some armed teachers at that school, they may have had a chance to protect those dear little children from being brutally gunned down.

If gun control was really the solution to our problems, then cities that have implemented strict gun control laws should be some of the safest in the entire country.

But sadly, just the opposite is true.

For example, Chicago has very strict gun laws.  But 10 people were shot in the city of Chicago on Friday alone.  Chicago is now considered to be “the deadliest global city“, and the murder rate in Chicago is about 25 percenthigher than it was last year.

So has gun control turned Chicago into a utopia?

Of course not.

And it won’t solve our problems on a national level either.

You can find more statistics about the futility of gun control right here.

Well, how would things be if we did just the opposite and everyone had a gun?

Would gun crime go through the roof?

That is what liberals were warning of when the city of Kennesaw, Georgia passed a law requiring every home to have a gun.  But instead of disaster, the results turned out to be very impressive…

In March 1982, 25 years ago, the small town of Kennesaw – responding to a handgun ban in Morton Grove, Ill. – unanimously passed an ordinance requiring each head of household to own and maintain a gun. Since then, despite dire predictions of “Wild West” showdowns and increased violence and accidents, not a single resident has been involved in a fatal shooting – as a victim, attacker or defender.

The crime rate initially plummeted for several years after the passage of the ordinance, with the 2005 per capita crime rate actually significantly lower than it was in 1981, the year before passage of the law.

Prior to enactment of the law, Kennesaw had a population of just 5,242 but a crime rate significantly higher (4,332 per 100,000) than the national average (3,899 per 100,000). The latest statistics available – for the year 2005 – show the rate at 2,027 per 100,000. Meanwhile, the population has skyrocketed to 28,189.

When criminals know that everyone has guns, they are much less likely to try something.  And often armed citizens are able to prevent potential mass murderers from doing more damage.  You can find several examples of this right here.

But of course most of our politicians are not interested in common sense.  Instead, they are obsessed with the idea that gun control will make our country “safe” again.

Senator Diane Feinstein says that she is ready to introduce a strict gun control bill in January that will “ban the sale, the transfer, the importation and the possession” of many types of firearms.

Will such a law keep the criminals from getting guns?

No way.  Just look at what is happening with the cartels down in Mexico.  The criminals are always able to get guns.

If our “leaders” were really interested in stopping these mass murders, they would take a look at the role that mind-altering pharmaceutical drugs play in these incidents.  If you look at the mass murders that have occurred over the past several decades, in the vast majority of them the murderer had been using mind-altering pharmaceutical drugs…

The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) has raised concerns about severe acts of violence as side effects of anti-psychotic and antidepressant drugs not only on individuals but on society as well.

Just a month ago PRWeb described drug induced violence as ”medicine’s best kept secret.” 

And the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHRI) is calling for a federal investigation on its web page which links no less than 14 mass killings to the use of psychiatric drugs such as Prozac and Paxil.

And guess what?

According to the Washington Post, one neighbor says that Adam Lanza was “on medication”.

But will our politicians ever consider a law against such drugs?

Of course not.  The big corporations that produce those drugs give mountains of money to the campaign funds of our politicians.

So the focus of the debate will remain on guns.

And a lot of liberals would have us believe that our society could be transformed into some type of “utopia” if we could just get rid of all the guns.

Unfortunately, that is simply not true.  Our society is in an advanced state of moral decay, and this moral decay is manifesting in our society in thousands of different ways.  The corruption runs from the highest levels of society all the way down to the lowest.

For those that believe that gun control would somehow “fix America”, I have some questions for you…

Down in Texas, one set of parents kept their 10-year-old son locked in a bedroom and only fed him bread and water for months.  Eventually he died of starvation and they dumped his body in a creek.

Would banning guns have kept that from happening?

A pastor in north Texas was recently assaulted by an enraged man who beat him to death with an electric guitar.

Would banning guns have kept that from happening?

Police up in New Jersey say that a man kept his girlfriend padlocked in a bedroom for most of the last 10 years.

Would banning guns have kept that from happening?

A 31-year-old man up in Canada was found guilty of raping an 8-year-old girl, breaking 16 of her bones and smashing her in the face with a hammer.

Would banning guns have kept that from happening?

According to the FBI, a New York City police officer is being accused of “planning the kidnap, rape, torture and cannibilization of a number of women”.

Would banning guns have kept that from happening?

A Secret Service officer that had been assigned to protect Joe Biden’s residence has been charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl.

Would banning guns have kept that from happening?

Over in Texas, a very sick 29-year-old man stabbed his girlfriend to death and then burned his one-year-old baby alive because she had gone to court and filed for child support.

Would banning guns have kept that from happening?

Over in Utah, a 21-year-old man is accused of stabbing his grandmother 111 times and then removing her organs with a knife.

Would banning guns have kept that from happening?

There are more than 3 million reports of child abuse in the United States every single year.

Would banning guns keep that from happening?

An average of five children die as a result of child abuse in the United States every single day.

Would banning guns keep that from happening?

The United States has the highest child abuse death rate on the entire globe.

Would banning guns keep that from happening?

It is estimated that 500,000 Americans that will be born this year will be sexually abused before they turn 18.

Would banning guns keep that from happening?

In the United States today, it is estimated that one out of every four girls is sexually abused before they become adults.

Would banning guns keep that from happening?

If there was a way to take all of the guns away from all of the criminals, I would be all in favor of it.  Unfortunately, no government on the planet has been able to do that.

Instead, we have seen that criminals thrive whenever gun bans are instituted and the guns are taken away from law-abiding citizens.

But the bottom line is that our social decay will not be solved either by more guns or less guns.

Our social decay is the result of decades of bad decisions.  We have pushed morality out of our schools, out of government and out of almost every aspect of public life.  Now we are experiencing the bitter fruit of those decisions.

And this is not a problem that our government is going to be able to fix.  Violent crime increased by 18 percent in 2011, and this is just the beginning.

As our economy gets even worse, the rot and decay that have been eating away the foundations of America are going to become even more evident.  The number of Americans living in poverty grows with each passing day, and millions upon millions of people are becoming very desperate.

Desperate people do desperate things, and crime, rioting and looting are going to become commonplace in the United States in the years ahead.

So you can pretend that the government is going to be able to keep our society from crumbling all you want, but that is not going to help you when a gang of desperate criminals has invaded your home and is attacking your family.

We definitely should mourn for the victims in Connecticut.  It was a horrible national tragedy.

But this is just the beginning.  The fabric of our society is coming apart at the seams.  The feeling of safety and security that we all used to take for granted has been shattered, and the streets of America are going to steadily become much more dangerous.

I hope that you are ready.

Source: The Economic Collapse

Are Black Friday Riots A Preview Of The Civil Unrest That Is Coming When Society Breaks Down?

If Americans will trample one another just to save a few dollars on a television, what will they do when society breaks down and the survival of their families is at stake?  Once in a while an event comes along that gives us a peek into what life could be like when the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is stripped away.  For example, when Hurricane Sandy hit New York and New Jersey there was rampant looting and within days people were digging around in supermarket dumpsters looking for food.  Sadly, “Black Friday” also gives us a look at how crazed the American people can be when given the opportunity.  This year was no exception.  Once again we saw large crowds of frenzied shoppers push, shove, scratch, claw, bite and trample one another just to save a few bucks on cheap foreign-made goods.  And of course most retailers seem to be encouraging this type of behavior.  Most of them actually want people frothing at the mouth and willing to fight one another to buy their goods.  But is this kind of “me first” mentality really something that we want to foster as a society?  If people are willing to riot to save money on a cell phone, what would they be willing to do to feed their families?  Are the Black Friday riots a very small preview of the civil unrest that is coming when society eventually breaks down?

Once upon a time, Thanksgiving was not really a commercial holiday.  It was a time to get together with family and friends, eat turkey and express thanks for the blessings that we have been given.

But in recent years Black Friday has started to become even a bigger event than Thanksgiving itself.

Millions of Americans have become convinced that it is fun to wait in long lines outside retail stores in freezing cold weather in the middle of the night to spend money that they do not have on things that they do not need.

And of course very, very few “Black Friday deals” are actually made in America.  So these frenzied shoppers are actually killing American jobs and destroying the U.S. economy as well.

The absurdity of Black Friday was summed up very well recently in a statement that has already been retweeted on Twitter more than 1,000 times…

It has gotten to the point where it is now expected that there will be mini-riots all over the country early on Black Friday morning each year.  The following are a few examples of the craziness that we saw this year…

-”Fights break out when stores open on Black Friday”

-”Black Friday madness at Georgia Wal-Mart”

-”Black Friday Frenzy: 2 Run Down in Washington, Man Pulls Gun in Texas”

-”Black Friday 2012: Rush at Victoria’s Secret Pink at Oak Park Mall in Overland Park, Kan.”

-”Black Friday shoppers smash door at Urban Outfitters”

-”Black Friday Shopping Hysteria From Around The Country [PHOTOS]”

-”Disturbance leads to scare at Westroads Mall”

-”Teens In Custody After Woodland Mall Fight”

-”Boy Robbed During Black Friday Shopping At Arundel Mills”

-”Shoppers Were So Obsessed With Black Friday Deals They Left Their Infants Unattended”

Fortunately, many Americans are starting to get fed up with Black Friday.  In fact, one activist named Mark Dice actually went out and heckled Black Friday shoppers this year.  I found the following You Tube video to be very funny, and I think most of you will too…

In the end, it is not that big of a deal that people want to fight with one another to save 50 dollars on a cell phone.

But this kind of extreme selfishness and desperation could become a massive problem someday if society breaks down and suddenly millions of extremely selfish and desperate people are scrambling for survival.

With each passing day our economy is getting even weaker, and the next wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching.  What are people going to do when the next spike in unemployment hits us and nobody can find work?

To get an idea of where things are headed, just look at Europe.  In both Greece and Spain the unemployment rate is over 25 percent and civil unrest has become almost a constant problem in both of those countries.

So what kind of riots will we see in the United States when the economy gets much worse than it is now?

Already there are signs of social decay all around us, and most Americans are completely unprepared for what will happen if a major disaster or emergency does strike.

Sadly, the reality is that most Americans live on a month to month basis.  Most families do not have any emergency savings to speak of, and one recent poll found that 55 percent of all Americans only have enough food in their homes to survive for three days or less.

To me, that is an absolutely insane number.

We just came through a summer of extreme drought and global food supplies have dropped to a 40 year low.  Our world is becoming increasingly unstable, and the global financial system could fall apart at any time.  Most of us just assume that there will always be huge amounts of very cheap food available to us, but unfortunately that simply is not a safe assumption.  The following is from a recent article in the Guardian…

Evan Fraser, author of Empires of Food and a geography lecturer at Guelph University in Ontario, Canada, says: “For six of the last 11 years the world has consumed more food than it has grown. We do not have any buffer and are running down reserves. Our stocks are very low and if we have a dry winter and a poor rice harvest we could see a major food crisis across the board.”

“Even if things do not boil over this year, by next summer we’ll have used up this buffer and consumers in the poorer parts of the world will once again be exposed to the effects of anything that hurts production.”

When I watch my fellow Americans trample one another to get a deal on a television or a video game, it makes me wonder what they would be willing to do if they went to the store someday and all the food was gone.

Desperate people do desperate things, and someday if there was a major economic breakdown in the United States I think the level of desperation in this country would be extremely frightening.

Source: The Economic Collapse

Agenda 21: The Latest Sleight of Hand Trick by Corporate Elite

When the Corporate Elite tells us we need to be afraid of something, they almost always expect to make some money off our fear.

From the same people who brought us the “Ground Zero Victory Mosque,” FEMA concentration camps, and every single George Soros conspiracy theory, comes a brand new hyper-paranoid threat-to-America’s-sovereignty that, they say, should scare the hell out of all of us.

It goes by the name of Agenda 21, which just so happens to be the title of Glenn Beck’s new dystopic novel.

Billed as, “more frightening than anything Orwell could have envisioned,” Beck’s Agenda 21 paints a disturbing picture of America following the implementation of the United Nation’s Agenda 21, which is actually a real life UN initiative, though not nearly as nefarious as Beck would have us all believe.

The book’s tagline reads: “This used to be called America. Now it is just ‘the Republic.’ There is no president. No congress. No freedom.”

Over at GlennBeck.com you can watch a movie trailer made specifically for the book featuring grizzled Americans lined up on the streets in a post-Soviet winter landscape reeking of desperation, waiting for tiny morsels of food to be parceled out by “the authorities.” Reminiscent of both Nazi concentration camps and the Book of Revelation, everyone’s foreheads are tattooed with identification numbers – and in homage to Sarah Palin’s “death panels,” one scene in the trailer depicts an emaciated, scraggly-haired old man loaded on to a conveyor belt and sent into a burning furnace.

Of course, this is all fiction. Whether you like him or not, Beck has made a fortune off sensationalism – and more recently televangelism – and this book will tap into a wellspring of paranoia on the fringe Right that will undoubtedly make a lot more money for multimillionaire Mr. Beck himself.

But whether Beck really believes in his depicted Agenda 21 future for America isn’t all that important. What’s important is that a lot of other powerful people do believe in it. To them, there’s nothing fictional at all when it comes to Agenda 21.

On October 11th this year, the Georgia state Capitol building hosted a four-hour briefing for Republican state senators on the issue of…Agenda 21. It was emceed by a man named Field Searcy who, according to MotherJones, is a local Conservative activist, whose Tea Party leadership was revoked after endorsing birther and truther conspiracy theories. But on that day, Searcy had the attention of his state’s most powerful lawmakers – including the Republican Party’s Senate Majority Leader, Chip Rogers – to warn them of President Obama’s wicked plot to use Agenda 21 to hand the United States off to the United Nations.

Searcy told the Georgia Republicans, and later spoke of it on the Thom Hartmann Radio Program, that President Obama is using a mind control procedure known as the “Delphi Technique” to slowly condition Americans to submit to the control of the United Nations’ Agenda 21, which will, according to Searcy, force mass migrations of Americans out of the countryside and into the cities, while handing over control of our rural lands to an international, one-world government.

The goal of the presentation was to influence Georgia lawmakers to follow in the footsteps of Tennessee and Kentucky Republican lawmakers who’ve already passed legislation to block Agenda 21 from being implemented in their states. In fact, earlier this year Republican Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers introduced legislation in Georgia to do just that.

Also on the “Fear Agenda 21″ bandwagon is newly-elected Tea Party Senator from Texas, Ted Cruz. He devoted an entire section of his website, TedCruz.org, to Agenda 21 fearmongering. Under the title, “Stop Agenda 21: The Constitution should be our only ‘Agenda,” Cruz writes:

“The originator of this grand scheme is George Soros, who candidly supports socialism and believes that global development must progress through eliminating national sovereignty and private property… Agenda 21 attempts to abolish ‘unsustainable’ environments, including golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads. It hopes to leave mother earth’s surface unscratched by mankind. Everyone wants clean water and clean air, but Agenda 21 dehumanizes individuals by removing the very thing that has defined Americans since the beginning—our freedom.”

Oh no! Not the golf courses! Luckily for the golfing community, Ted Cruz is headed to the United States Senate to stop George Soros and the UN from confiscating Augusta National.

Though, hopefully, someone will notify Cruz, perhaps by removing his tinfoil hat, that the United Nations has no interest whatsoever in turning Augusta National into a sustainable bio-dome. Likewise, hopefully someone will tell Mr. Field Searcy that the UN has no interest in forcibly removing Americans from the country-side, either.

Concerns coming from the Right about American sovereignty in the face of the United Nations aren’t anything new.

It’s true that FDR pushed the idea after World War Two, and Democratic President Harry Truman signed us up for the UN in 1945, and it’s also true that in signing up for the United Nations, the United States surrendered a small amount of our sovereignty, inasmuch as we can no longer unilaterally declare war on another nation – unless they attack us first – without getting the approval of the UN. Of course, this is true of every other nation in the UN as well. The UN was created to promote world peace, an idea that doesn’t sit well with the neocons and chickenhawks.

But, here’s what Agenda 21 really is. Standing for “Agenda 21st Century,” it’s a completely non-binding UN agreement that aims to address climate change and inequality by calling on local and federal governments, NGOs, and businesses, to develop plans to create more sustainable environments in their respective nations. The UN believes that by working together, and giving financial assistance to developing nations to promote sustainable living, wealth disparities can be reduced, indigenous populations can be protected, and the deterioration of ecosystems around the globe can be reversed.

If you ask the environmentalists who are growing more and more concerned with a warming, crowded planet what they think of Agenda 21, they’ll say it doesn’t go nearly far enough. Especially after new reports by the UN about record levels of greenhouse gases and the atmosphere, and a report by the World Bank on the global economic impacts of a planet that’s 7-degrees warming by 2100 as a result of climate change.

But, as you’d expect from a plan to reduce poverty worldwide and use resources and land in more eco-friendly ways, wealthy oil barons and banksters are opposed to it. When people, governments, or organizations talk about things like sustainable energy, corporate responsibility, and educating the world’s children, billionaires like the Koch brothers get a little uneasy.

So, right-wingers have employed their best charlatans in America, people like Glenn Beck, to reinvent Agenda 21 as something completely different: a nefarious plot by communist globalists to force redistribution of wealth and confiscation of private property, and ultimate devour American sovereignty. Or, according to Glenn Beck, an Orwellian takeover to purge the nation of its sick and elderly.

And it just so happens that legislation passed in Tennessee and Kentucky to block Agenda 21 comes straight from model legislation produced by the notoriously loony, yet well-funded, John Birch Society. The Koch Brothers dad, Fred Koch, who had no problem with state-controlled economies when he made his fortune working with Joe Stalin in the Soviet Union, was one of the founding members of the Jon Birch Society back in 1958.

The UN has provided right-wing fear mongers a lot of grandstanding opportunities over the years, but the UN has never lived up to their warnings that it’s coming to destroy America. Most people think of it as a toothless international body that’s been hijacked by the United States to protect its own interests and the interests of its allies.

And while the Bircher billionaire class continues to fret over the UN, they stay silent over the actual threat to our nation’s sovereignty in the form of the World Trade Organization, which has enforced free trade agreements through international courts that have overturned laws passed by our elected Congress and signed by our elected President. For example, laws banning the importation into the United States of poisonous additives to gasoline, products made by child labor, and tuna caught at the expense of dolphins have all been overturned by the “one-world government” that is the WTO.

Yet, not a peep from the same wealthy elite who are warning us about Agenda 21. That’s because there’s a lot of money to be made in so-called Free Trade, and not so much to be made in promoting sustainable living.

The same is true of why Glenn Beck isn’t writing a book about the $67 trillion global shadow banking system, which is extremely dangerous to our sovereign economy – yet making billions of dollars for banksters.

The point is, this latest scheme by the Corporate Elite to scare the hell out of all of us with Agenda 21 is just like every other scare tactic by the Corporate Elite – it’s meant to distract us. It’s a sleight-of-hand technique to keep us focused on bogeymen, while their ranks of Texas oilmen, outsourcing CEOs, and Wall Street banksters carry out the true destruction of the United States of America: the pillaging of the Middle Class at home and the construction of a WTO-style one-world corporate government to promote unfettered capitalism and free trade everywhere on the planet.

And in the process, useful quacks like Glenn Beck and Field Searcy can make a lot of money feeding the paranoid, Fox News-watching masses their latest conspiracy theories.

Source: TruthOut

Secession Movement Explodes: WhiteHouse ’Secede’ Petitions Reach 675,000 Signatures, 50-State Participation

Less than a week after a New Orleans suburbanite petitioned the White House to allow Louisiana to secede from the United States, petitions from seven states have collected enough signatures to trigger a promised review from the Obama administration.

By 6:00 a.m. EST Wednesday, more than 675,000 digital signatures appeared on 69 separate secession petitions covering all 50 states, according to a Daily Caller analysis of requests lodged with the White House’s “We the People” online petition system.

A petition from Vermont, where talk of secession is a regular feature of political life, was the final entry.

Petitions from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas residents have accrued at least 25,000 signatures, the number the Obama administration says it will reward with a staff review of online proposals. (RELATED: Will Texas secede? Petition triggers White House review)

The Texas petition leads all others by a wide margin. Shortly before 9:00 a.m. EST Wednesday, it had attracted 94,700 signatures. But a spokesperson for Gov. Rick Perry said Tuesday afternoon that he does not support the idea of his state striking out on its own.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/14/white-house-secede-petitions-reach-660000-signatures-50-state-participation/#ixzz2CCvWggvc

MAP of U.S.States petitioning for secession:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4358712057342&set=a.4187690941921.159646.1573992709&type=1&ref=nf

Source: investmentwatchblog.com

In Amerika There Will Never Be A Real Debate

God help them if Obama and Romney ever had to participate in a real debate about a real issue at the Oxford Union. They would be massacred.

The “debates” revealed that not only the candidates but also the entire country is completely tuned out to every real problem and dangerous development. For example, you would never know that US citizens can now be imprisoned and executed without due process. All that is required to terminate the liberty and life of an American citizen by his own government is an unaccountable decision somewhere in the executive branch.

No doubt that Americans, if they think of this at all, believe that it will only happen to terrorists who deserve it. But as no evidence or due process is required, how would we know that it only happens to terrorists? Can we really trust a government that has started wars in 7 countries on the basis of falsehoods? If the US government will lie about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in order to invade a country, why won’t it lie about who is a terrorist?

America needs a debate about how we can be made more safe by removing the Constitutional protection of due process. If the power of government is not limited by the Constitution, are we ruled by Caesar? The Founding Fathers did not think we could trust a caesar with our safety. What has changed that we can now trust a caesar?

If we are under such a terrorist threat that the Constitution has to be suspended or replaced by unaccountable executive action, how come all the alleged terrorist cases are sting operations organized by the FBI? In eleven years there has not been a single case in which the “terrorist” had the initiative!

In the eleven years since 9/11, acts of domestic terrorism have been miniscule if they even exist. What justifies the enormous and expensive Department of Homeland Security? Why does Homeland Security have military-equipped Special Response Teams with armored vehicles? Who are the targets of these militarized units? If eleven years of US government murder, maiming, and displacement of millions of Muslims hasn’t provoked massive acts of domestic terrorism, why is Homeland Security creating a domestic armed force of its own? Why are there no congressional hearings and no public discussion? How can a government whose budget is deep in the red afford a second military force with no defined and Constitutionally legal purpose?

What is Homeland Security’s motivation in creating a Homeland Youth? Is the new FEMA Corps a disguise for a more sinister purpose, a Hitler Youth as Internet sites suggest? Are the massive ammunition purchases by Homeland Security related to the raising of a nationwide corps of 18- to 24-year-olds? How can so much be going on in front of our eyes with no questions asked?

Why did not Romney ask Obama why he is working to overturn the federal court’s ruling that US citizens cannot be subject to indefinite detention in violation of the US Constitution? Is it because Romney and his neoconservative advisers agree with Obama and his advisers? If so, then why is one tyrant better than another?

Why has the US constructed a network of detainment camps, for which it is hiring “internment specialists”?

Why does the US Army now have a policy for “establishing civilian inmate labor programs and civilian prison camps on Army installations”? 

Here is Rachel Maddow’s report on how Obama criticizes the neoconservative Bush/Cheney regime for violations of the US Constitution and US statutory law and then proposes the same thing himself.

How did the presidential debates avoid the fact of Predator Drones flying over us here in the domestic United States of America? What is the purpose of this? Why are the smallest police forces in the most remote of locations being equipped with armored cars? I have seen them. In small lilly-white communities north of Atlanta, Georgia, communities of sub-million dollar MacMansions have militarized police with armored cars and automatic weapons. SWAT teams in full military gear are everywhere. What is it all about? These small semi-rural areas will never see a terrorist or experience a hostage situation. Yet, they are all armed to the teeth. They are so heavily armed that they could be sent into combat against the Third Reich or the Red Army.

Any such questions run afoul of the assumption of America’s moral perfection. No such debate will ever happen. But if “it is the economy, stupid,” why is there no economic debate?

Last month the Federal Reserve announced QE3. If QE1 and QE2 did not work, why does anyone, including the Federal Reserve chairman, think that QE3 will work?

Yet, the utterly irrational financial markets, which haven’t a clue about anything, were overjoyed at QE3. This can only be because what rules the equity market is propaganda, spin, and disinformation, not facts. The vaunted stock market is incapable of making any correct decision. The decisions are made by the fools in the market operating on a short-run basis. The only safe path to take is to run with the lemmings. This strategy insures that a portfolio manager is always in the middle of his peers and, therefore, he doesn’t lose clients.

How wonderful it would have been for Obama and Romney to have confronted in a real debate how QE3, designed to help insolvent “banks too big to fail,” can help households operating, with two earners, on real incomes of 45 years ago, which is where the current real median household income stands.

How does saving a bank, designated as “too big to fail,” help the family whose jobs or main job has been exported to China or India in order to maximize corporate profits, executive performance bonuses and shareholders’ capital gains?

Obviously the working population of the US has been sacrificed to the profits of the mega-rich.

An appropriate debate question is: Why has the livelihood of working Americans been sacrificed to the profits of the mega-rich?

No such question will ever be asked in a “presidential debate.”

In the 21st century, US citizens became nonentities. They are brutalized by the police whose incomes their taxes pay. They, for protesting some injustice or for no cause at all, are beaten, arrested, tasered and even murdered. The police, paid by the public, beat up paralyzed people in wheel chairs, frame those who call them for help against criminals, taser grandmothers and small children, and shoot down in cold blood unarmed citizens who have done nothing except lose control of themselves, either through alcohol, drugs, or rage.

Brainwashed Americans pay large taxes at every level of government for protection against gratuitous violence, but what their taxes support is gratuitous violence against themselves. Every American, except for the small number of mega-rich who control Washington, can be arrested and dispossessed, both liberty and property, on the basis of nothing but an allegation of a member of the executive branch who might want the accused’s wife, girlfriend, property, or to settle a score, or to exterminate a rival, or to score against a high school, college, or business rival.

In America today, law serves the powerful, not justice. In effect, there is no law, and there is no justice. Only unaccountable power.

What is the point of a vote when the outcome is the same? Both candidates represent the interests of Israel, not the interests of the US. Both candidates represent the interests of the military/security complex, agribusiness, the offshoring corporations, the suppression of unions and workers, the total demise of civil liberty and the US Constitution, which is in the way of unbridled executive power .

In the US today, the power of money rules. Nothing else is in the equation. Why vote to lend your support to the continuation of your own exploitation? Every time Americans vote it is a vote for their own obliteration.

Source: Paul Craig Roberts

A Plan To Topple Hugo?

There’s no better time to read Cindy Sheehan’s heartfelt and galvanizing new book “Revolution, A Love Story” than today, just hours before Venezuela’s presidential elections. The author provides a riveting summary of Latin American history dating back to the Conquistadors focusing particular attention on Washington’s myriad interventions and the rise of the region’s second greatest protagonist, Hugo Chavez. Sheehan–who is a self-confessed Chavez admirer–opines that the charismatic Venezuelan leader “like Simon Bolivar before him, not only dreams of a united Latin America, but is showing the way.” Regrettably, the United States has repeatedly tried to derail Chavez’s reform agenda by funding anti-Chavez groups via non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that pretend to be working for human rights or democracy promotion. The real purpose of these US-funded saboteurs is to topple the democratically-elected Chavez. Barack Obama supports this type of subversion as enthusiastically as did his predecessor, George W. Bush. The only difference is that Obama is more discreet.

Here’s an excerpt from an article by author and attorney Eva Golinger with more of the details:

“In Venezuela, the US has been supporting anti-Chavez groups for over 8 years, including those that executed the coup d’etat against President Chavez in April 2002. Since then, the funding has increased substantially. A May 2010 report evaluating foreign assistance to political groups in Venezuela, commissioned by the National Endowment for Democracy, revealed that more than $40 million USD annually is channeled to anti-Chavez groups, the majority from US agencies….

Venezuela stands out as the Latin American nation where NED has most invested funding in opposition groups during 2009, with $1,818,473 USD, more than double from the year before….Allen Weinstein, one of NED’s original founders, revealed once to the Washington Post, “What we do today was done clandestinely 25 years ago by the CIA.” (America’s Covert “Civil Society Operations”: US Interference in Venezuela Keeps Growing”, Eva Golinger, Global Research)

In “Revolution, A Love Story” Sheehan provides a long list of Chavez’s achievements including a steep reduction in unemployment (from 12 percent in 1998 to 6.1 percent in 2010), a sharp rise in the minimum wage (which is the highest in Latin America), bigger pensions for retiring workers, an increase in literacy to 99.6 percent, universal health care, and a poverty-rate that is less than half of what it was when Chavez took office.

Naturally, the successes of Bolivarian Revolution have incensed Venezuela’s 1 percent who want to return to the golden era of plutocratic rule where the nation’s wealth was plundered by a Mafia of unelected oligarchs. It’s this amalgam of bandits to which Washington has hooked its wagon. Venezuela’s elites are expected to challenge the election results shortly after the ballots have been counted (on October 7) and Chavez is declared the winner. Whether the plan goes forward or not is anyone’s guess, but here’s what’s going on below the radar according to an article in Green Left titled “Venezuela: Ex-US ambassador outlines intervention plans”:

“In an extraordinary paper released in September, former US ambassador to Venezuela, Patrick Duddy, outlined a range of military, financial and diplomatic measures that the US should be prepared to take against the Chavez government after the October 7 elections. In the paper, published by the Council on Foreign Relations, Duddy’s recommendations include that in the event of “an outbreak of violence and/or interruption of democracy” the US should use various means to “to communicate to the Venezuelan military leadership that they are obliged to uphold their constitution, respect human rights, and protect their country’s democratic tradition” and “organize a coalition of partners to limit an illegitimate Venezuelan administration’s access to government assets held abroad as well as to the international financial system”.

Isn’t this the same strategy that the State Department used in Egypt when Mubarak was deposed? Didn’t the US send signals to the Egyptian military that Washington would support them if they followed their instructions?

More from Green Left:

“In the paper… Duddy suggested the US “could also arrange for the proceeds of Venezuelan government–owned corporate entities to be held in escrow accounts until democracy is restored [and] … block access to [Venezuelan government owned] CITGO’s refining facilities in the United States and consider prohibiting [Venezuelan state] oil sales to the United States”.

So the administration plans to carry out an agenda dictated by big oil? Now there’s a surprise.

More from Green Left: “…there are obvious concerns that this fits neatly with the objectives of those inside the right-wing opposition in Venezuela who are planning for the non-recognition of the coming elections if, as expected, Hugo Chavez wins.

With polls showing strong leads for Chavez, a campaign is already under way by sections of the right-wing opposition coalition to present any electoral defeat as being down to Chavez-led fraud.”

Haven’t we seen this movie before? The CIA-funded opposition immediately appears on the streets of the capital in the thousands; sets up their tents, their food stalls, and their rock bands, while the western media films every minor skirmish, every act of police violence, every sign-waving protester decrying the brutal, repressive regime of…”fill in the blanks.” (Ukraine, Lebanon, Georgia etc) It’s all so tedious, but effective nonetheless. Toppling democratically-elected governments (“color-coded revolutions) has become Washington’s favorite pastime. Is that what’s in store for Hugo Chavez?

Keep in mind that, according to former US President Jimmy Carter, Venezuela’s electoral system is “the best in the world”. So we can be reasonably confident that the ballot-count will be fair and accurate. What we should be more concerned about is what happens after the votes have been tallied. That’s when the real trouble will begin.

The western media has been trying to create the illusion that the race between Chavez and right-wing challenger Henrique Capriles Radonski is close. It isn’t. The media is lying. Chavez is ahead by a wide-margin although you wouldn’t know it by reading the strumpet press. The polls currently show Chavez holding a 12% lead over his opponent. He also has a presidential approval rating of over 65 percent which means that, barring foul play, he should win in a landslide.

Here’s more from an article in Venezuelanalysis:

“In August 2012, the Japanese finance organisation, Nomura Holding published a client analysis stating that Hugo Chavez has a “large lead” against Henrique Capriles Radonski which they found “unlikely to be closed …before the October 7 election”. Likewise a Bank of America Merrill Lynch report earlier this year described “President Chavez’s commanding lead in the polls and high level of electoral support”.

This lead in the polls is undoubtedly linked to Venezuela’s expanding economy, which is growing at 6% per year, as well as new social policies which address the ongoing needs of Venezuela’s poor majority. For example in the past year alone 250,000 new social houses have been built, state pensions made available for all and the minimum wage increased by 30%. These follow the policies that have successfully delivered free healthcare and education for all, slashing poverty rates in recent years.”

As we noted earlier, Chavez’s opponent, Capriles Radonski, is a right-wing stooge who is committed to strengthening relations with Washington while implementing structural reforms that lower living standards. A leaked document linked to Radonski’s party, the MUD
(Roundtable of Democratic Unity), indicates that a change of leaders would result in more privatisations of public services and assets and an end to many of Chavez’s popular social programs. In other words, more welfare for corporate chieftans and more austerity for everyone else. Chavez referred to the secret document– called “the packetazo” –in a recent speech saying:

“Behind Capriles Radonski’s democratic mask is the most horrendous thing in politics. Behind his deceptive message of progress and social welfare is the most savage neoliberal capitalist package that has been known in Venezuela and Latin America.” Chavez said he would fight against the packetazo and “deliver a knock-out punch to neoliberalism which will never again be implemented in Venezuela.”

This is why Washington hates Chavez, because he’s raised living standards for the poor and given ordinary working people hope that they can break-free from US domination and the power of big money. Chavez summed it up like this in an interview with Cindy Sheehan who asked “Why do you think the Empire makes such a concerted effort to demonize you?”

Chavez answered: “Because the Empire is afraid that the people of the United States will find out the truth. …that a Bolivarian movement, or a Lincoln movement, or a movement of conscoius citizens could erupt in their own country and transform the system….

They fear the truth. They fear the contagious effect. They fear an awakening of the people in the United States. They fear a revolution in the United States.”

It will be interesting to see what Obama has up his sleeve. Will he support the will of the people and accept that Chavez has been chosen as president for another 6 years or launch another color coded revolution to implement regime change? Only time will tell. In the meantime, grab a copy of Sheehan’s “Revolution, A Love Story”. It’s a great read.

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