Wikileaks Has Done It Again

Would you believe that the United States tried to do something that was not nice against Hugo Chávez?

Wikileaks has done it again. I guess the US will really have to get tough now with Julian Assange and Bradley Manning.

In a secret US cable to the State Department, dated November 9, 2006, and recently published online by WikiLeaks, former US ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, outlines a comprehensive plan to destabilize the government of the late President Hugo Chávez. The cable begins with a Summary:

During his 8 years in power, President Chavez has systematically dismantled the institutions of democracy and governance. The USAID/OTI program objectives in Venezuela focus on strengthening democratic institutions and spaces through non-partisan cooperation with many sectors of Venezuelan society.

USAID/OTI = United States Agency for International Development/Office of Transition Initiatives. The latter is one of the many euphemisms that American diplomats use with each other and the world – They say it means a transition to “democracy”. What it actually means is a transition from the target country adamantly refusing to cooperate with American imperialist grand designs to a country gladly willing (or acceding under pressure) to cooperate with American imperialist grand designs.

OTI supports the Freedom House (FH) “Right to Defend Human Rights” program with $1.1 million. Simultaneously through Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), OTI has also provided 22 grants to human rights organizations.

Freedom House is one of the oldest US government conduits for transitioning to “democracy”; to a significant extent it equates “democracy” and “human rights” with free enterprise. Development Alternatives Inc. is the organization that sent Alan Gross to Cuba on a mission to help implement the US government’s operation of regime change.

OTI speaks of working to improve “the deteriorating human rights situation in” Venezuela. Does anyone know of a foreign government with several millions of dollars to throw around who would like to improve the seriously deteriorating human rights situation in the United States? They can start with the round-the-clock surveillance and the unconscionable entrapment of numerous young “terrorists” guilty of thought crimes.

“OTI partners are training NGOs [non-governmental organizations] to be activists and become more involved in advocacy.”

Now how’s that for a self-given license to fund and get involved in any social, economic or political activity that can sabotage any program of the Chávez government and/or make it look bad? The US ambassador’s cable points out that:

OTI has directly reached approximately 238,000 adults through over 3000 forums, workshops and training sessions delivering alternative values and providing opportunities for opposition activists to interact with hard-core Chavistas, with the desired effect of pulling them slowly away from Chavismo. We have supported this initiative with 50 grants totaling over $1.1 million.

“Another key Chavez strategy,” the cable continues, “is his attempt to divide and polarize Venezuelan society using rhetoric of hate and violence. OTI supports local NGOs who work in Chavista strongholds and with Chavista leaders, using those spaces to counter this rhetoric and promote alliances through working together on issues of importance to the entire community.”

This is the classical neo-liberal argument against any attempt to transform a capitalist society – The revolutionaries are creating class conflict. But of course, the class conflict was already there, and nowhere more embedded and distasteful than in Latin America.

OTI funded 54 social projects all over the country, at over $1.2 million, allowing [the] Ambassador to visit poor areas of Venezuela and demonstrate US concern for the Venezuelan people. This program fosters confusion within the Bolivarian ranks, and pushes back at the attempt of Chavez to use the United States as a ‘unifying enemy.’

One has to wonder if the good ambassador (now an Assistant Secretary of State) placed any weight or value at all on the election and re-election by decisive margins of Chávez and the huge masses of people who repeatedly filled the large open squares to passionately cheer him. When did such things last happen in the ambassador’s own country? Where was his country’s “concern for the Venezuelan people” during the decades of highly corrupt and dictatorial regimes? His country’a embassy in Venezuela in that period was not plotting anything remotely like what is outlined in this cable.

The cable summarizes the focus of the embassy’s strategy’s as: “1) Strengthening Democratic Institutions, 2) Penetrating Chavez’ Political Base, 3) Dividing Chavismo, 4) Protecting Vital US business, and 5) Isolating Chavez internationally.” 1

The stated mission for the Office of Transition Initiatives is: “To support U.S. foreign policy objectives by helping local partners advance peace and democracy in priority countries in crisis.” 2

Notice the key word – “crisis”. For whom was Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela a “crisis”? For the people of Venezuela or the people who own and operate United States, Inc.?

Imagine a foreign country’s embassy, agencies and NGOs in the United States behaving as the American embassy, OTI, and NGOs did in Venezuela. President Putin of Russia recently tightened government controls over foreign NGOs out of such concern. As a result, he of course has been branded by the American government and media as a throwback to the Soviet Union.

Under pressure from the Venezuelan government, the OTI’s office in Venezuela was closed in 2010.

For our concluding words of wisdom, class, here’s Charles Shapiro, US ambassador to Venezuela from 2002 to 2004, speaking recently of the Venezuelan leaders: “I think they really believe it, that we are out there at some level to do them ill.” 3

The latest threats to life as we know it

Last month numerous foreign-policy commentators marked the tenth anniversary of the fateful American bombing and invasion of Iraq. Those who condemned the appalling devastation of the Iraqi people and their society emphasized that it had all been a terrible mistake, since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein didn’t actually possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This is the same argument we’ve heard repeatedly during the past ten years from most opponents of the war.

But of the many lies – explicit or implicit – surrounding the war in Iraq, the biggest one of all is that if, in fact, Saddam Hussein had had those WMD the invasion would have been justified; that in such case Iraq would indeed have been a threat to the United States or to Israel or to some other country equally decent, innocent and holy. However, I must ask as I’ve asked before: What possible reason would Saddam Hussein have had for attacking the United States or Israel other than an irresistible desire for mass national suicide? He had no reason, no more than the Iranians do today. No more than the Soviets had during the decades of the Cold War. No more than North Korea has ever had since the United States bombed them in the early 1950s. Yet last month the new Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel, announced that he would strengthen United States defenses against a possible attack by [supposedly] nuclear-equipped North Korea, positioning 14 additional missile interceptors in Alaska and California at an estimated cost of $1 billion. So much for the newest Great White Hope. Does it ever matter who the individuals are who are occupying the highest offices of the US foreign-policy establishment? Or their gender or their color?

“Oh,” many people argued, “Saddam Hussein was so crazy who knew what he might do?” But when it became obvious in late 2002 that the US was intent upon invading Iraq, Saddam opened up the country to the UN weapons inspectors much more than ever before, offering virtually full cooperation. This was not the behavior of a crazy person; this was the behavior of a survivalist. He didn’t even use any WMD when he was invaded by the United States in 1991 (“the first Gulf War”), when he certainly had such weapons. Moreover, the country’s vice president, Tariq Aziz, went on major American television news programs to assure the American people and the world that Iraq no longer had any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons; and we now know that Iraq had put out peace feelers in early 2003 hoping to prevent the war. The Iraqi leaders were not crazy at all. Unless one believes that to oppose US foreign policy you have to be crazy. Or suicidal.

It can as well be argued that American leaders were crazy to carry out the Iraqi invasion in the face of tens of millions of people at home and around the world protesting against it, pleading with the Bush gang not to unleash the horrors. (How many demonstrations were there in support of the invasion?)

In any event, the United States did not invade Iraq because of any threat of an attack using WMD. Washington leaders did not themselves believe that Iraq possessed such weapons of any significant quantity or potency. Amongst the sizable evidence supporting this claim we have the fact that they would not have exposed hundreds of thousands of soldiers on the ground.

Nor can it be argued that mere possession of such weapons – or the belief of same – was reason enough to take action, for then the United States would have to invade Russia, France, Israel, et al.

I have written much of the above in previous editions of this report, going back to 2003. But I’m afraid that I and other commentators will have to be repeating these observations for years to come. Myths that reinforce official government propaganda die hard. The mainstream media act like they don’t see through them, while national security officials thrive on them to give themselves a mission, to enhance their budgets, and further their personal advancement. The Washington Post recently reported: “A year into his tenure, the country’s young leader, Kim Jong Un, has proved even more bellicose than his father, North Korea’s longtime ruler, disappointing U.S. officials who had hoped for a fresh start with the regime.” 4

Yeah, right, can’t you just see those American officials shaking their heads and exclaiming: “Damn, what do we have to do to get those North Korean fellows to trust us?” Well, they could start by ending the many international sanctions they impose on North Korea. They could discontinue arming and training South Korean military forces. And they could stop engaging in provocative fly-overs, ships cruising the waters, and military exercises along with South Korea, Australia, and other countries dangerously close to the North. The Wall Street Journal reported:

The first show of force came on March 8, during the U.S.-South Korean exercise, known as Foal Eagle, when long-range B-52 bombers conducted low-altitude maneuvers. A few weeks later, in broad daylight, two B-2 bombers sent from a Missouri air base dropped dummy payloads on a South Korean missile range.

U.S. intelligence agencies, as had been planned, reviewed the North’s responses. After those flights, the North responded as the Pentagon and intelligence agencies had expected, with angry rhetoric, threatening to attack the South and the U.S.

On Sunday, the U.S. flew a pair of advanced F-22s to South Korea, which prompted another angry response from the North. 5

And the United States could stop having wet dreams about North Korea collapsing, enabling the US to establish an American military base right at the Chinese border.

As to North Korea’s frequent threats … yes, they actually outdo the United States in bellicosity, lies, and stupidity. But their threats are not to be taken any more seriously than Washington’s oft expressed devotion to democracy and freedom. When it comes to doing actual harm to other peoples, the North Koreans are not in the same league as the empire.

“Everyone is concerned about miscalculation and the outbreak of war. But the sense across the U.S. government is that the North Koreans are not going to wage all-out war,” a senior Obama administration official said. “They are interested first and foremost in regime survival.” 6

American sovereignty hasn’t faced a legitimate foreign threat to its existence since the British in 1812.

The marvelous world of Freedom of Speech

So, the United States and its Western partners have banned Iranian TV from North America and in various European countries. Did you hear about that? Probably not if you’re not on the mailing list of PressTV, the 24-hour English-Language Iranian news channel. According to PressTV:

The Iranian film channel, iFilm, as well as Iranian radio stations, have also been banned from sensitive Western eyes and ears, all such media having been removed in February from the Galaxy 19 satellite platform serving the United States and Canada.

In December the Spanish satellite company, Hispasat, terminated the broadcast of the Iranian Spanish-language channel Hispan TV. Hispasat is partly owned by Eutelsat, whose French-Israeli CEO is blamed for the recent wave of attacks on Iranian media in Europe.

The American Jewish Committee has welcomed these developments. AJC Executive Director David Harris has acknowledged that the committee had for months been engaged in discussions with the Spaniards over taking Iranian channels off the air. 7

A careful search of the Lexis-Nexis data base of international media reveals that not one English-language print newspaper, broadcast station, or news agency in the world has reported on the PressTV news story since it appeared February 8. One Internet newspaper, Digital Journal, ran the story on February 10.

The United States, Canada, Spain, and France are thus amongst those countries proudly celebrating their commitment to the time-honored concept of freedom of speech. Other nations of “The Free World” cannot be far behind as Washington continues to turn the screws of Iranian sanctions still tighter.

In his classic 1984, George Orwell defined “doublethink” as “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” In the United States, the preferred label given by the Ministry of Truth to such hypocrisy is “American exceptionalism”, which manifests itself in the assertion of a divinely ordained mission as well in the insistence on America’s right to apply double standards in its own favor and reject “moral equivalence”.

The use of sanctions to prevent foreign media from saying things that Washington has decidedshould not be said is actually a marked improvement over previous American methods. For example, on October 8, 2001, the second day of the US bombing of Afghanistan, the transmitters for the Taliban government’s Radio Shari were bombed and shortly after this the US bombed some 20 regional radio sites. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended the targeting of these facilities, saying: “Naturally, they cannot be considered to be free media outlets. They are mouthpieces of the Taliban and those harboring terrorists.” 8 And in Yugoslavia, in 1999, during the infamous 78-bombing of the Balkan country which posed no threat at all to the United States, state-owned Radio Television Serbia (RTS) was targeted because it was broadcasting things which the United States and NATO did not like (like how much horror the bombing was causing). The bombs took the lives of many of the station’s staff, and both legs of one of the survivors, which had to be amputated to free him from the wreckage. 9

Notes

1. Read the full memo. ↩
2. USAID Transition Initiatives Website ↩
3. Washington Post, January 10, 2013 ↩
4. Washington Post, March 16, 2013 ↩
5. Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2013 ↩
6. Ibid. ↩
7. PressTV news release ↩
8. Index on Censorship online, the UK’s leading organization promoting freedom of expression, October 18, 2001 ↩
9. The Independent (London), April 24, 1999, p.1 ↩

Bringing A Mass Amnesty’s Ultimate Results Into The Light

Everything about a mass amnesty allowing 20 million illegal aliens instant citizenship smolders under a cloak of hidden agendas in Washington, DC.  At present, eight U.S. senators negotiate the future of our country.  Not only will they allow illegality by making it legal, they will increase legal immigration from its current 1.2 million annually to as high as 3.1 million annually.  In other words, they will swamp this country with third world immigrants from every corner of the globe.

Few Americans realize that demographic experts project the United States adding 100 million more people by 2035 and 138 million people, net gain, to reach 438 million by 2050—a scant 37 years from now.

In our world of water shortages, energy depletion and resource exhaustion—our Congress inundates our civilization with more and more people without any appreciation of growing consequences.

Roy Beck, president of www.NumbersUSA.org offers the most comprehensive understanding of our predicament in his 10 minute video: “Immigration by the numbers–off the charts.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muw22wTePqQ

If every American viewed that video along with 535 congressional representatives, we would drastically reduce our legal and illegal immigration to less than 100,000 annually.  Why 100,000?  That’s how many egress the country annually. That would create a zero net gain of population.

Less appreciated: adding endless millions of legal and illegal immigrants guarantees ath 47 million Americans subsisting on foot stamps—will never escape their poverty.

The founder of Black Entertainment Television spoke about the indifference of Congress to incredibly high unemployment of African Americans. Federal data show that 40 percent of working-age Black Americans don’t have a job of any kind.

“But there is no Senate Gang of Eight working day and night to put those Black Americans back to work.  There is no Gang of Eight grabbing headlines by creating legislation to keep blacks from being a lost generation in the labor market,” said Beck. “No, the only Gang of Eight working day and night with top priority urgency is the one trying to shove through an immigration bill to further engorge the labor markets with obviously unneeded workers.”

Roy Beck spoke about a mass amnesty:

“The Senate Gang of Eight was doing high-fives all weekend about an agreement between business and labor lobbyists that supposedly would allow their comprehensive amnesty bill to be rushed to the Senate floor for a vote by May,” said Beck. “But suddenly, it was the Gang of Seven, with the stalwart eighth member, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), talking about the need to “do it right”… let the other 92 Senators find out what is in the bill, find out the true costs, to include the impact on JOBS and U.S. unemployment, and study whether there might be better ways to reform our immigration system.”

Rubio demanded something rather extraordinary and old-fashioned: hearings of experts, an open amendment process and a full debate before the television cameras:

Rubio said, “The success of any major legislation depends on the acceptance and support of the American people. That support can only be earned through full and careful consideration of legislative language and an open process of amendments.”

“The Gang of Seven has not embraced Rubio’s attempt to slow-down the fast-track process by which pro-amnesty supporters have planned to rush the still-secret bill through the Judiciary Committee in a couple of weeks and get a vote on the Senate floor within a month with little debate and amending,” said Beck.  “The fast-track approach always attempts to side-track the public while giant amnesties and immigration increases are created in secret and then hurried through the legislative process before most elected officials even know what is in the thick bills.

“Sen. Leahy (D-Vt.), the Judiciary Committee chairman, announced last week that he did not intend to hold any hearings on the Gang of Eight bill once he receives it and that he would not allow opponents to slow-down his plan to get it to the floor by May.”

So, the “process” is the big issue of the moment and maybe this entire week.

“This is comforting news for those of us who oppose a bill that would further harm the 20  million Americans who can’t find a full-time job… and the millions more whose wages are depressed by a labor market glutted with 26 million foreign-born workers,” said Beck. “Many Floridians who suffered through years of Marco Rubio killing immigration enforcement legislation when he was in the state legislature doubt their junior Senator’s sincerity in his flap with other amnesty supporters. Others believe he will hop off the amnesty train if his demands for an open process are not met.”

Rubio’s letter included this:

“I respectfully suggest that such a process must begin with a careful examination in the Committee including: hearings that explore taxpayer-costs and multiple perspectives on the scope of the problems we face and the efficacy of the solutions we propose, markups in which a broad range of amendments can be considered, and a robust floor debate.”

“All of this, and any Conference Committee deliberations, should occur in the full view of the American people, broadcast on CSPAN, and streamed live on the internet.”

Rubio says about that claim:

“I am certain that those hearings deepened your knowledge of these issues and will guide much of your work this Congress. But they cannot be a substitute for fresh hearings to consider specific legislation as part of a national conversation.”

We desperately need  a  national discussion as to whether or not we will maintain ourselves as a sovereign country or “destination” for the world’s human population overload.  We must ask ourselves if we want to add 100 million immigrants into our country.  We must ask ourselves if we can survive the water, energy, resource and environmental consequences.  If we don’t, we will become victims of our own apathy and stupidity.

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.

Our Chavez: Huey Long

Where’s the Kingfish Now That We Really Need Him?

Americans are committed to capitalism and prefer free market solutions whenever possible.

Wrong. The truth is that support for capitalism has been steadily eroding since the Great Crash of  ’08 when markets tumbled and housing prices plunged wiping out $8 trillion in home equity and leaving 5 million homeowners facing foreclosure. After that dose of cold water in the face, support for the free market system dropped precipitously from 80% (in 2002) to a titch above 54% by 2010. Interestingly, in France (according to the Economist) only 6% of the people now “strongly” support the free market. Here’s more from the article in the Economist:

“Capitalism’s waning fortunes are starkly visible among Americans earning below $20,000. Their support for the free market has dropped from 76% to 44% in just one year. The research was conducted by GlobeScan, a polling firm. Its chairman Doug Miller says American business is “close to losing its social contract” with average families.” (“Market of Ideas: Capitalism’s waning popularity”, The Economist)

“Social contract”? What social contract? You mean the social contract that allows the banks to fleece your ass at every opportunity with no chance of being held accountable?

While the report is 2 years old, it indicates something that’s fairly obvious to many, that Americans are generally pragmatic people who judge a system by its results not by the public relations blabber issuing from the business channel. “Show me the beef”, that’s what the average working slob cares about, not some horseshit about “the wondrous symmetry of the self-correcting market”. What a load of malarkey. If we’d applied the theories of the market fundamentalists after Lehman Brothers collapsed, the 10 biggest banks in the country would have been euthanized (as they should have been) and we’d be well on our way to a true recovery. Instead, the economy is still hopelessly mired in a long-term slump that shows no sign of ending. The only thing that’s “corrected” is the profit margins on Wall Street which are at record highs. Get a load of this from the WSWS:

“As the US government prepares to furlough 1 million federal workers and slash hundreds of billions in social spending, corporate executives in the United States are receiving among the highest payouts in history. USA Today reported Thursday that at least ten CEOs took in $50 million apiece in 2012, largely as a result of cashing in stocks that have soared in value with the rising market. According to the newspaper, “Early 2013 proxy filings detailing 2012 compensation show a growing number of CEOs reaping $50 million or more, gains that could prove unmatched in breadth and size since the Internet IPO craze enriched tech company executives more than a decade ago…..

Among the top pay packages according to preliminary calculation is that of Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, which included stock options valued at $103.3 million this year, on top of $30 million in other compensation and stock, as well as $10.2 million in vested shares, according to USA Today.” (“US corporate executives cash in”, World Socialist Web Site)

Geez, I sure hope Mr. Starbucks can make ends meet on a measly $130 mil a year. He might have to cutback on his trips to Walmart, don’t you think?

The whole thing is laughable. This is a free market? Give me a break! The Fed is pumping $85 billion per month into financial assets pushing up stock prices, while everyone else faces the grinding deprivation of austerity. Who can support a system like that? Everything about it is a lie. Now take a look at this from Trimtabs:

“…there has been a record number of buybacks announced since the start of February. There have also been a bumper crop of new cash takeovers. The number of shares grows when companies and or insiders sell new shares. …

Here’s why this is such a big deal. In essence over the last seven weeks companies have given shareholders $120 billion in cash in exchange for shares. Compare that $120 billion with just $50 billion of new money going into all equity mutual and exchange traded funds so far for all of 2013.

Remember, 80% of US stocks are held by institutions. Institutions typically have a constant rate of cash holdings, whether 1% or 5%. When the number of share held by institutions shrinks by $100 billion, or around 80% of $120 billion, that means those institutions have more money with which to buy the fewer shares available in the equity markets. Therefore, the price of the remaining shares should go up.” (“Record Buybacks Creating Massive Float Shrink”, Trimtabs)

There’s your great stock market rally in a nutshell. 100% fake. The Fed is juicing the system, so the guys with money are following Bernanke’s lead and buying back their own stinking shares, thus, pushing prices even higher. They make boatloads of cash while you and I get bupkis. That’s fair, isn’t it?

The whole thing is a joke. There’s no free market; it’s just PR-hype geared to dupe people out of their hard-earned money. Did you know that the nation’s biggest corporations are giving record amounts of cash back to investors via dividends because they don’t have anything to invest in? Here’s the story:

“The New York Times reported earlier this month that S&P 500 companies are expected to hand investors $300 billion in dividends this year, an increase over last year’s payout of $282 billion. American corporations bought back $117.8 billion in their own stock last month, the highest total on records going back to 1985.”

Of course, the reason they have nothing to invest in because everyone is broke. Unemployment is still high, wages are falling, and the average working family is up-to-their-eyeballs in debt. So, where’s the demand for more widgets? There isn’t any. The behemoth financial institutions have cannibalized the system to the point where nothing is left but a stripped carcass. There’s no sense in investing in plants and machinery when everyone is flat busted. You’re better off just giving money back to your rich friends so they can buy another bauble at Tiffany’s. And, that’s what they’re doing.

But, at least housing rebounding, right? I mean, it’s not all bad. Here’s the scoop from the country’s Number 1 housing cheerleader, Calculated Risk, from a post titled “Existing  Home Sales in February: 4.98 million SAAR, 4.7 months of supply”:

“Sales in February 2013 (4.98 million SAAR) were  0.8% higher than last month, and were 10.2% above the February  2012 rate. “

Sounds pretty good, eh? Prices are up, sales are up, and all is well with the world. There’s only one little glitch; it’s all bullshit. In fact, disproving the “Housing is Back” theory is so easy, it’s ridiculous. If you can read a chart, you can grasp why housing is NOT rebounding. Look carefully at the chart above. See where we are now as far as existing housing sales. Sales are back to what they were in 2002, right? Now–ask yourself this– what  happened in 2002 that might have impacted housing sales?

Does “housing bubble” ring a bell?

There was a sharp uptick in sales due to the fact that the banks started selling homes to anyone who could fog a mirror, right? Remember the subprimes, ARMs, no-down, interest only, liar’s loans, piggybacks, ALT As, and the whole panoply of freakish mortgages that boosted sales and sent housing prices into the stratosphere?  That all started right around 2002. In other words, the bubble was caused by extending credit to people who were not creditworthy to begin with, people who the banks knew, would never be able to repay the loan. THEY KNEW THAT. That WAS the scam. Sure, low interest rates did play a role, but not nearly as big a role as criminally lax lending standards that put people in homes that they would eventually lose to foreclosure.

So, now sales are back to their historic trend, which is good. But it’s silly to expect prices and sales to return to bubble-era highs unless regulations are jettisoned (again) and the banks start issuing loans to anyone who stumbles into their office. That’s not to imply, that the banks and industry leaders are not working as hard as they can to weaken lending rules and to gut the new “Ability to Repay” provision of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) “Qualified Mortgage” regulation. They are! In fact, they appear to be making great strides in that regard. (See: MBA Applauds Bill to Clarify Points and Fees Calculation for Qualified Mortgage Rule, RISMedia.)

But the point is, unless the banks are able to sabotage the new guidelines for lending, (for gov-insured mortgages) there is not going to be another housing bubble. At best, prices will rise at their traditional 1 to 2% appreciation per year. And at worst, they will resume their downward slide when the speculators (who now make up roughly 25% of all sales) flee the market for greener pastures.  Bottom line: There’s nothing in the recent data that suggests that housing prices will continue to rise. It’s all interest rate stimulus, inventory suppression and aggressive mortgage mods. (keeping underwater borrowers in their homes)

When the average guy reflects on the way he got raped in the housing swindle, or the twisted way the banks were bailed out, or the way the Fed forks over $85 billion per month to his crooked friends on Wall Street (while teachers, firefighters and other public workers get their pink slips month after month); he doesn’t get a real warm and fuzzy feeling about the system. He knows the system is rigged against him,  that Bernanke’s thumb is planted on the scale, and that he’s getting bent-over by lowlife vipers and miscreants. He knows all that, which is why his support for free market capitalism is tenuous at best.  Just take a look at this recent survey by Gallup and you’ll see that majorities on both sides of the aisle support big government programs that put people back to work.

Majority of Party Groups Favor Each Jobs Proposal

A majority of Democrats, Republicans, and independents support each of the three job creation proposals tested in a new Gallup poll. Republicans are much more supportive of business tax breaks than the new job programs, and Democrats are more likely to favor the job creation programs, while independents show roughly equal support for all three.

Implications: “Job creation  proposals enjoy widespread public support, including majority backing among all  party groups, even when the issue of government spending is raised in an era  when deficit reduction is one of the major priorities for the federal  government.” (Gallup)

Can you believe it? Even the Republicans support government jobs programs. So all that gibberish about “hating big government and loving the free market” is just a load of crap.  Americans don’t hate socialism; What they hate is the word which conjures up images of the Berlin Wall, Joe Stalin and  Soviet troops marching through Red Square.  One of the country’s greatest political visionary’s was died-in-the-wool socialist;  a man who worked his entire life to put the rich in their place and spread the wealth to ordinary working stiffs. He was America’s Hugo Chavez and his name was Huey P. Long, Governor of Louisiana, aka the “Kingfish”. Here’s a short video of Long giving speech to Congress.

Huey P. Long:

“How many men ever went to  a barbecue and would let one man take off the table what’s intended for 9/10th   of the people to eat? The only way to be able to feed the balance of the people is to make that man come back and bring back some of that grub that he ain’t  got no business with!

Now we got a barbecue. We have been praying to the Almighty to send us to a feast. We have knelt on our   knees morning and nighttime. The Lord has answered the prayer. He has called   the barbecue. “Come to my feast,” He said to 125 million American people. But Morgan and Rockefeller and Mellon and Baruch have walked up and took 85 percent   of the victuals off the table!

Now, how are you going to feed the balance of the people? What’s Morgan and Baruch and Rockefeller and   Mellon going to do with all that grub? They can’t eat it, they can’t wear the clothes, they can’t live in the houses.

Giv’em a yacht! Giv’em a Palace!   Send ‘em to Reno and give them a new wife when they want it, if that’s what   they want. [Laughter] But when they’ve got everything on God’s loving earth   that they can eat and they can wear and they can live in, and all that their   children can live in and wear and eat, and all of their children’s children   can use, then we’ve got to call Mr. Morgan and Mr. Mellon an Mr. Rockefeller   back and say, come back here, put that stuff back on this table here that you  took away from here that you don’t need. Leave something else for the American   people to consume. And that’s the program.”

Where’s Kingfish now that we need him?

“Every man a king, but no one wears a crown.” – Huey P. long, Governor of Louisiana

Why The NRA Is Right About Hollywood

Upstate New York’s Catskill Mountain Range is a bucolic place near and dear to my heart. It’s where storybook character Rip Van Winkle enjoyed his legendary slumber, and its scenery hasn’t changed much since he was born of Washington Irving’s fertile imagination. Yet, like Van Winkle, if I’d fallen asleep for 20 years when first arriving in that verdant heaven, I, too, would have noticed some profound changes upon awakening.

About two decades ago, many rural Catskill teens — sons of farmers and hunters and fishermen — suddenly started donning baggy pants and reflecting “gangsta’” counter-culture despite living nowhere near any large urban center. The following generation of teens experienced today’s recent cultural evolution and often sport multiple tattoos and body piercings despite living nowhere near NYC’s grungy East Village. Yet I’m wrong in a sense: those places were actually very close — a television set away.

My old hinterland haunt was once place where, if you wiggled the rabbit-ear antenna just right, you could pull in one or two TV stations. And what could you see? Perhaps reruns of The Brady Bunch, perhaps the news. But about a quarter century ago came VCRs and video stores; then cable and satellite TV; and, finally, the Internet. The serpent had entered Eden.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, much fire has been directed at gun advocates in general and the National Rifle Association in particular. In response, the organization has implicated Hollywood and popular culture in general for mainstreaming mindless violence. Yet even many Second Amendment advocates part company with the NRA on this point. After all, blaming entertainment for crime smacks of blaming guns. Yet there’s quite a profound difference: guns don’t transmit values. But how we use guns— and knives, fists and words — on screen certainly does.

This message is often a tough sell, however, as it’s very natural to defend one’s entertainment. We grow up with certain shows, movies, characters and music and often become emotionally attached to them; in fact, we may identify with them so closely that an attack upon them can be taken personally. It’s the same phenomenon that causes an avid sports fan to defend his favorite team as if it’s his favored son. And it is then we may hear that old refrain, “It isn’t the entertainment; it’s the values learned at home” (they’re actually one and the same since entertainment enters the home with, in the least, the parents’ tacit approval).

Yet it appears few really believe that refrain. Sure, depending on our ideology, we may disagree on what entertainment is destructive, but that it can be destructive is something on which consensus exists. Just consider, for instance, that when James Cameron’s film Avatar was released, there was much talk in the conservative blogosphere about its containing environmentalist, anti-corporate and anti-American propaganda. At the other end of the spectrum, liberals wanted the old show Amos ‘n Andy taken off the air because it contained what they considered harmful stereotypes. Or think of how critics worried that Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ would stoke anti-Jewish sentiment or that Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ would inspire anti-Christian feelings, and how the Catholic League complained that The Da Vinci Code was anti-Catholic. Now, I’m not commenting on these claims’ validity. My only point is that when our own sacred cows are being slaughtered, few of us will say, “Well, yeah, the work attacks my cause, but I don’t care because it’s the values taught at home that really matter.”

The truth? Entertainment is powerful. This is why Adolf Hitler had his propaganda filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, and why all modern regimes have at times created their own propaganda films. It’s why the ancient Greeks saw fit to censor the arts and American localities traditionally had obscenity laws. And it is why, while “The pen is mightier than the sword” and a picture mightier still, being worth a “thousand words,” we have to wonder how many words moving footage coupled with sound would be. How mighty art thou, Tinseltown? Well, we worry that a child witnessing one parent continually abuse the other will learn to be violent, as children learn by example. Yet often forgotten is that while a person can model behavior seven feet away from the television, he can also model it seven feet away through the television.

And what effect do our entertainment role models have? Much relevant research exists, and the picture it paints isn’t pretty. For instance, a definitive 1990s study published by The Journal of the American Medical Association found that in every society in which TV was introduced, there was an explosion in violent crime and murder within 15 years. As an example, TV had been banned in South Africa for internal security reasons until 1975, at which point the nation had a lower murder rate than other lands with similar demographics. The country’s legalization of TV prompted psychiatrist Dr. Brandon Centerwall to predict “that white South African homicide rates would double within 10 to 15 years after the introduction of television….” But he was wrong.

By 1987 they had more than doubled.

Then the Guardian told us in 2003 that, “…Bhutan, the fabled Himalayan Shangri-la, became the last nation on earth to introduce television. Suddenly a culture, barely changed in centuries, was bombarded by 46 cable channels. And all too soon came Bhutan’s first crime wave — murder, fraud, drug offences.” The serpent had struck again.

And exactly how it strikes is interesting…and scary. Lt. Col. David Grossman, a former West Point military psychologist and one of the world’s foremost experts on what he calls “killology,” explains the process well. In his essay “Trained to Kill,” he speaks of how the military learned that during WWII only 15 to 20 percent of riflemen would actually shoot at an exposed enemy soldier. Yet this rate was increased to 55 percent during the Korean War and then 90 percent in Vietnam. How? By applying psychological principles, says Grossman, identical to the forces our children are exposed to through entertainment. They are (all quotations are Grossman’s):

• Brutalization and desensitization: this occurs in boot camp where the training is designed “to break down your existing mores and norms and to accept a new set of values that embrace destruction, violence, and death as a way of life.” Entertainment can perhaps be even more effective when doing this to children because the process often starts when they’re too young to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Grossman explains:
• To have a child of three, four, or five watch a “splatter” movie, learning to relate to a character for the first 90 minutes and then in the last 30 minutes watch helplessly as that new friend is hunted and brutally murdered is the moral and psychological equivalent of introducing your child to a friend, letting [him] play with that friend, and then butchering that friend in front of your child’s eyes.
• Classical conditioning: the Japanese employed this during WWII. Soldiers would have to watch and cheer as a few of their comrades bayoneted prisoners to death. All the servicemen were then “treated to sake, the best meal they had had in months, and to so-called comfort girls. The result? They learned to associate committing violent acts with pleasure.” Likewise, today “[o]ur children watch vivid pictures of human suffering and death, learning to associate it with their favorite soft drink and candy bar, or their girlfriend’s perfume.”
• Operant conditioning: “When people are frightened or angry, they will do what they have been conditioned to do…. [It’s] stimulus-response, stimulus-response.” Thus, one of the ways the military increased riflemen’s willingness to shoot exposed enemies was to switch from the bull’s-eye targets of WWII training to “realistic, man-shaped silhouettes that pop into their field of view.” The soldiers have only a split-second to engage this new “stimulus” with the response of firing reflexively. As for kids, “every time a child plays an interactive point-and-shoot video game, he is learning the exact same conditioned reflex and motor skills.” This can help explain, says Grossman, why robbers under stress will sometimes reflexively shoot victims even when it wasn’t “part of the plan.”

If the above seems at all simplistic, note that it’s a life’s work boiled-down to 500 words. Suffice it to say, however, that entertainment has an effect. And do we really consider today’s entertainment benign? We’ve transitioned from a pre-TV America where boys sometimes brought real guns to school for target shooting to a TV-addicted America where boys bring toy guns to school and get suspended. And, of course, the reasons for this societal sea change are complex. But if we’re going to point to one factor, is it wiser to blame the AR-15 than PG-13?

Ignoring Whistleblowers

A government whistleblower, disclosing classified secrets, risks criminal charges. Defining restricted material usually includes a broad scope of information that casts officials or agencies in a compromising embarrassment. The idea that public servants may be engaged in violating laws is no excuse for blowing the whistle on such abuses if it involves “National Security”. This protect the state attitude at all cost argument, is the very definition of institutional cover-up. In war, truth is the first casualty, so said Aeschylus.

So throwing the book at Bradley Manning comes as no surprise. Why should anyone be concerned about the intentional dissemination of raw evidence about war crimes, committed in the name of the War of Terror? Most would fail to be moved by the motivations of a stoic prisoner, who uploaded secured computer files to WikiLeaks. Many would cheer his interminable incarceration for disclosing military records.

Yet, before you slam the jail shut, reflect upon the Secretly Recorded Audio Leaked of Bradley Manning’s Court Statement. Listen to the Full Statement.

 

Also, view the YouTube video, Bradley Manning Tells Court Public Have the Right to Know About US War Crimes.A cogent reaction from another renowned whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers fame, carries the weight of a brave man from another era.

“It’s important to remember through all this that Manning has already pled guilty to ten charges of violating military regulations (few of which, if any would be civilian crimes) and faces twenty years in jail. Yet the prosecutors are still going ahead with the absurd charge of “aiding the enemy,” a capital offense, of which the prosecutors are asking for life in prison.

Nixon could have brought that charge against me too. I was revealing wrongdoing by our government in a public way, and that information could have been read by our enemies in Vietnam. Of course, I never had that intent and Manning didn’t either. We both leaked information to provoke a domestic debate about military force and government secrecy. And to say we did so to aid the enemy is absurd.”

In any political trial, the spirit of the law is sacrificed for the expediency of protecting a debased regime. Balance in prosecution is a concept unknown to a government consumed with punishing any perceived enemy of the state.

Attorney Floyd Abrams and Professor Yochai Benkler provide a thoughtful perspective and legal opinion in The New York Times editorial - Death to Whistle-Blowers?

“Under the prosecution’s theory, because Private Manning knew the materials would be published and that Al Qaeda could read them once published, he indirectly communicated with the enemy. But in this theory, whether publication is by WikiLeaks or The Times is entirely beside the point. Defendants are guilty of “aiding the enemy” for leaking to a publishing medium simply because that publication can be read by anyone with an Internet connection.

Private Manning’s guilty plea gives the prosecution an opportunity to rethink its strategy. The extreme charges remaining in this case create a severe threat to future whistle-blowers, even when their revelations are crystal-clear instances of whistle-blowing. We cannot allow our concerns about terrorism to turn us into a country where communicating with the press can be prosecuted as a capital offense.”

No such mercy from the imperial empire, Manning must suffer the supreme wrath for his transgressions. His admissions acknowledge expected official sanctions, but the sentiment of Daniel Ellsberg reflects the standpoint of many Manning supporters.

“…For the third straight year, Manning has been nominated for the Noble Peace Prize by, among others, Tunisian parliamentarians. Given the role the WikiLeaks cables played in the Arab Spring, and their role in speeding up the end of the Iraq War, I can think of no one more deserving who is deserving of the peace prize.

He’s also deserving of the Congressional Medal of Honor. This medal, awarded by Congress-and not the executive branch-is given to military personnel, who during wartime, do what they should do for their country and their comrades, at the greatest risk to themselves.”

 

Another target of recrimination, seen in the Sibel Edmonds dismissal is a classic example of punishing the whistleblower. Edmonds took a job as a translator at the FBI shortly after 9-11. Her story, stated in the YouTube interview, The Government Is Raping You: Sibel Edmonds, is compelling.

Sibel Edmonds Finally Wins, documents her observation in the book, “Classified Woman” and offers a disturbing assessment of her fellow workers.

“Edmonds found at the FBI translation unit almost entirely two types of people. The first group was corrupt sociopaths, foreign spies, cheats and schemers indifferent to or working against U.S. national security. The second group was fearful bureaucrats unwilling to make waves. The ordinary competent person with good intentions who risks their job to “say something if you see something” is the rarest commodity. Hence the elite category that Edmonds found herself almost alone in: whistleblowers.”

This characterization of morally challenged federal employees is a direct consequence of a system that protects the cover-ups, while punishing disclosure of conflicting evidence of outright corruption. The silent culture of concealment or the worse incentive system of collusion runs the governing bureaucracies.

The presstitutes in the establishment media enable the warmongering protection racket as a condition of employment. Their lack of investigative reporting is only superseded by their ominous distortion of real patriotic loyalty. Whistleblowers function as detectives doing the job that reporters abdicate. Woefully, so few citizens of conscience are willing to jeopardize their individual circumstance for the courage of genuine national security.

The always insightful, William F. Jasper of the New American writes in Sibel Edmonds’ “Classified Woman”.

“Unfortunately, most of Edmonds’ contributing editors at BoilingFrogs are decidedly left of center, and their anti-globalist, anti-war, anti-police-state arguments and analyses tend to range from the “progressive” to the Marxoid. However, when she went public and came under attack, it wasn’t Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh who came to her defense; it was the anti-Bush Left that rallied to her aid. In fact, the faux conservatives at FOX, National Review, and the radio talk show universe alternately ignored and attacked her; they were busy cheerleading George W. Bush’s unconstitutional wars abroad and his unconstitutional police-state measures at home. Sympathetic coverage for Edmonds from alternative media on the Right has been woefully lacking, with a few exceptions.

In April 2011, Sibel Edmonds submitted her manuscript for Classified Womanto the FBI for review, as required by terms of her employment agreement. Under that agreement, the FBI has 30 days to approve and/or require deletions and revisions. After waiting over 340 days with no response from the bureau, Edmonds took the path that few others have taken; she published anyway. However, with every publisher afraid to touch it, she was forced to publish it on her own. She knows that any day now the Obama administration, which has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined, may come after her.”

Forget about the false left-right paradigm. The “War of Terror” being waged by the imperium empire is designed to crush whistleblowers, and keep the brain dead in a zombie trance. Just consider the impact on the Afghanistan campaign if the FBI acted upon the evidence unclosed by Sibel Edmonds that cuts to the heart of the 911 myth assumptions.

The military-industrial-security-intelligence complex closes ranks to protect their “Splendid Little Wars“. The whistleblowers that expose the lies out of the War Party establishment are only a minor distraction, as long as the public sleeps in their self-induced coma. The Army Times item, Hagel to order review of drone medal precedence, is one such interlude, while the control and command structure continues to aim their weapons at imaginary threats.

Who would doubt that the Bradley Mannings and Sibel Edmonds, squealers of state secrets, would be prime quarries for the hunt to eliminate enemies of the state? The only good government snitch is a Gitmo captive. So goes the claims of the governance prosecutors.

How many people have actually examined the information in the Manning WikiLeak disclosures or read the Edmonds account of 911-treason complicity? Oh no, the discomfort of confronting the fake reality of the official story of make believe is too disturbing for most people.

Loyalty of country is a very dangerous attitude, when your government sponsors state terrorism as a normal activity. The fear to face up to the horrors of administration deceit is the prime activity of the flag waving drones that cheer for more carnage.

When Edmonds describes the traitors within the national security structure, the fearful bureaucrats facilitate the ongoing treachery that passes for nationalism. When Manning exposes the documents that prove a genocide policy is in effect, the penalty demanded by the bellicose command is his execution.

An honorable whistleblower is a citizen hero. Disobeying dishonest laws is true patriotism. In the end, A Different Philosophy of Civil Disobedience, is needed. Complacency is the countrywide disease of choice. Real patriots oppose jingoistic orders. Stand down.

Barbarian Rhapsody: Ten Years Deeper Into Hell

US and UK Drowned Iraq in Blood…

All forms of political media — in print, on line, on the air — have been awash in recent weeks with retrospectives on the tenth anniversary of the American-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Amidst the mountainous heap of drivel and falsehood such an occasion inevitably produces among the vast and vapid army of analysts who happily spend their days chewing the cud of whatever happens to be the conventional wisdom of the day, there have been a few outstanding pieces that put this continuing war crime in stark perspective.

One of the better short pieces I’ve seen on the subject comes from — of all people — an actual Iraqi. Sami Ramadani, a dissident forced into exile by Saddam, has been one of the most insightful observers — and vociferous opponents — of the atrocities inflicted on his country by Western elites and their local collaborators (including, of course, for many decades, Saddam Hussein). From the Guardian:

Ten years on from the shock and awe of the 2003 Bush and Blair war – which followed 13 years of murderous sanctions, and 35 years of Saddamist dictatorship – my tormented land, once a cradle of civilisation, is staring into the abyss.

Wanton imperialist intervention and dictatorial rule have together been responsible for the deaths of more than a million people since 1991. And yet, according to both Tony Blair and the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, the “price is worth it”. Blair, whom most Iraqis regard as a war criminal, is given VIP treatment by a culpable media. Iraqis listen in disbelief when he says: “I feel responsibility but no regret for removing Saddam Hussein.” (As if Saddam and his henchmen were simply whisked away, leaving the people to build a democratic state). It enrages us to see Blair build a business empire, capitalising on his role in piling up more Iraqi skulls than even Saddam managed.

As an exile, I was painfully aware of Saddam’s crimes, which for me started with the disappearance from Baghdad’s medical college of my dearest school friend, Hazim. The Iraqi people are fully aware, too, that Saddam committed all his major crimes while an ally of western powers. On the eve of the 2003 invasion I wrote this for the Guardian:

“In Iraq, the US record speaks for itself: it backed Saddam’s party, the Ba’ath, to capture power in 1963, murdering thousands of socialists, communists and democrats; it backed the Ba’ath party in 1968 when Saddam was installed as vice-president; it helped him and the Shah of Iran in 1975 to crush the Kurdish nationalist movement; it increased its support for Saddam in 1979…helping him launch his war of aggression against Iran in 1980; it backed him throughout the horrific eight years of war (1980 to 1988), in which a million Iranians and Iraqis were slaughtered, in the full knowledge that he was using chemical weapons and gassing Kurds and Marsh Arabs; it encouraged him in 1990 to invade Kuwait…; it backed him in 1991 when Bush [senior] suddenly stopped the war, exactly 24 hours after the start of the great March uprising that engulfed the south and Iraqi Kurdistan…”

But when it was no longer in their interests to back him, the US and UK drowned Iraq in blood.

…We haven’t even counted the dead yet, let alone the injured, displaced and traumatised. Countless thousands are still missing. Of the more than 4 million refugees, at least a million are yet to go back to their homeland, and there still about a million internal refugees. On an almost daily basis, explosions and shootings continue to kill the innocent. … Lack of electricity, clean water and other essential services continues to hit millions of impoverished and unemployed people, in one of the richest countries on the planet. Women and children pay the highest price. Women’s rights, and human rights in general, are daily suppressed.

And what of democracy, supposedly the point of it all? The US-led occupying authorities nurtured a “political process” and a constitution designed to sow sectarian and ethnic discord. Having failed to crush the resistance to direct occupation, they resorted to divide-and-rule to keep their foothold in Iraq. Using torture, sectarian death squads and billions of dollars, the occupation has succeeded in weakening the social fabric and elevating a corrupt ruling class that gets richer by the day, salivating at the prospect of acquiring a bigger share of Iraq’s natural resources, which are mostly mortgaged to foreign oil companies and construction firms.

Warring sectarian and ethnic forces, either allied to or fearing US influence, dominate the dysfunctional and corrupt Iraqi state institutions, but the US embassy in Baghdad – the biggest in the world – still calls the shots. Iraq is not really a sovereign state, languishing under the punitive Chapter VII of the UN charter.

Yes, it has certainly been, as Barack Obama memorably characterized it, a “remarkable achievement.” It is also, more and more, a forgotten “achievement.” America’s amnesia regarding the war crime in Iraq and its continuing ramifications — not only the repression and death still going on there, but also the catastrophic impact of this atrocity on America itself, including the tsunami of suicide, homelessness and PTSD among its soldiers, and the back-breaking costs of this orgy of corruption and war-profiteering — is indeed remarkable. It is no longer a reality — a living, anguished, ongoing human tragedy — but simply fodder for commentary, for partisan point-scoring, for barroom blather. This has always been the case with our misbegotten wars of imperial domination (for an especially acute and egregious example of our chronic amnesia, see this review of Nick Turse’s new book, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam), going back to the 19th century. And the “paradigm-changing” iadvent of the internet has done nothing to change that; despite today’s easy access to unprecedented levels of information about the realities of the Iraq war (and other high crimes and atrocities), the amnesia and willful ignorance remains as profound as ever.

So here we are. Ten years on from the frenzied paroxysm (or was it an orgasm?) of mass violence — which was itself the culmination of years of the bipartisan war-by-sanctions that American officials have openly acknowledged killed more than half a million Iraqi children — what is the central “moral” issue of our national politics today? This once-unimaginable, horribly depraved and obscene question: Should the president be allowed to murder any American citizen he chooses, or should there perhaps be be some kind of secret Congressional oversight of the secret killing program? (The idea of restricting the president’s power to kill any filthy foreignerhe chooses is not in question anywhere in our national politics, of course; Rand Paul wasn’t filibustering against that idea. No, any debate on the “ethics” of state murder is restricted to its application to Americans, who, as we know, are the only fully human beings on the face of the earth.)

Given the current trajectory of our plunge into barbarism, I predict that in just a few years we’ll be “debating” whether the president has the right to stick the severed heads of “terrorists” on spikes outside the White House, or if the heads should be passed around discreetly to members of the relevant Senate committees before being dumped in the ocean.

Source: Empire Burlesque

If Gov’t Can Make Bullets Disappear From Stores, Why Can’t It Make Food And Medicine?

I know some of you folks don’t shoot, but to the many of you who do, I would like to pose a question.

Have you tried to purchase any ammunition lately?

All calibers are disappearing from store shelves, but .22 long rifles, in bulk, can’t be found at all anywhere, even the most dependable internet super dealers are out of stock and are making no promises about when they’ll be available again, and it’s my opinion that soon the same thing will be true about the other calibers.

I readily admit that one of the reasons is that Barack Obama’s outright war on guns, the “feel good” juvenile antics of Governor Cuomo of New York and the childish Democrats in the Missouri and Wisconsin state legislatures have scared legal gun owners into stockpiling ammunition, justly fearing that it will get hard, if not impossible to get.

But, can somebody please tell me why Homeland Security and many other, supposedly benign government agencies have bought over two billion rounds and are ordering millions more of all calibers, even the smaller ones?

Why does a shoot-to-kill outfit like Homeland Security need tiny caliber bullets like .22′s that are made for hunting small game? Is Homeland Security going to start exterminating squirrels or rabbits, and why does an agency like Social Security need any kind of ammunition?

Is this a back door attempt at gun control, a way around a Congress that is scared to death of gun legislation? Another presidential backstreet move to have his way by hook or crook and blame it on free market demand? Just dry up the ammo and the guns will be useless?

My information is that the manufacturers are straining every nerve trying to keep up with the demand, but with Homeland Security commandeering so much of their production, the task is impossible.

Is this the beginning of the weaning of America?

It’s a scary scenario, but let me relate an even scarier one.

If the government can make bullets disappear from store shelves, why couldn’t it make food disappear, or fuel or medicine, or anything else for that matter?

The point being that big government can do just about anything they want to and there’s little the minority of us who fear it can do about it as long as the majority who don’t fear it keeps tripping down the primrose path with their heads in the clouds and their hands out.

There is a little known piece of legislation that passed Congress a while back called The Food Safety Modernization Act and the provisions are shadowy at best, having to do with agriculture and the production of food in America.

I checked into it when I found out about it only to find the bill had just cleared the Senate and was on President Obama’s desk. What struck me as strange was the fact that our two Tennessee Senators were split on the vote; Bob Corker voted against it and Lamar Alexander voted for it.

I was assured by Senator Alexander’s office that “Senator Alexander would never do anything to hurt the farmers.” Well, does that mean that Senator Corker would do something to hurt the farmers by voting against it? Which means that one of the Senators voted against the farmers of Tennessee. Which one?

The provisions of the bill are said to protect the food supply, but what does that mean when it’s taken out of government speak and translated into plain English?

Personally, I believe the government has taken upon itself the power to interrupt agriculture at any time it chooses under the guise of keeping tainted or otherwise unsafe food out of the market – up to, and including, the planting and harvesting of private home gardens.

The flow of medicine could easily be interrupted by claiming it contained impurities and harmful substances.

We’ve already seen how fuel can be rationed – just slow down the availability and delivery.

Big government can bring this nation to its knees in a matter of days. And, with a passive Senate and an ever more acquiescent Supreme Court, the power to do so is falling into the hands of one man.

Shaky ground for a free nation.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

Source: cnsnews.com

Does Religion Use People Or Do People Use Religion

God’s Role In The World…

In an interview about his book “Suicide of a Superpower” Dr. Kevin Barrett confronted Pat Buchanan with evidence of a manipulation involving the tragedy of 9/11.  Buchanan said he would never consider a false flag operation involving his friend former Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?  Isaiah 2:22.

Quoting this scripture, R. J. Rushdoony writes, “It is God the Lord who alone is infallible, omnipotent, and all wise.  He alone should command our trust and our faith.  The generations of old looked to Him, and they were strengthened and made blessed, God has not grown old since the days of Moses and David, nor has His arm grown short with the years.  As far as our feet will stretch and as far as our feet will carry us, He is there.” R. J. Rushdoony, “A Word in Season”

“Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.” – Psalm 146:3

Using this scripture in a Blog entitled “The Fallibility of All Men” Christine Smith writes, “There is turmoil among some Catholics due to the announced resignation of Pope Benedict. It reminds me of the sadness, dismay, disappointment and sometimes shock I saw in many a Christian following the 2012 presidential election. Yet both reactions, from those who profess a faith in God, demonstrates not the strength of God within them but the weakness of men who, though claiming God as almighty, actually behave as if man on earth is the most powerful.”  (Emphasis mine)

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. 2 Timothy 3:5

America is being prepared for a system of control that will make feudalism look like freedom.  We watch helplessly as our government uses questionable events to destroy our freedom under the aegis of protecting us from terrorism  Over eight years ago I wrote an article comparing our government with the government of Nazi Germany, “America – The Fatherland”. Today there are many comparisons being made between the rise of the Third Reich and Twenty First Century United States of America. Technology that was not available in Hitler’s Germany is now commonplace and offers tyrants the ability to impose ever more frightening controls.

My Merriam Webster dictionary defines “religion” as “a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith”.   That definition describes religion but does not define religious practice.  There is a link to “Rely” which is defined as “to be dependent”,” to have confidence based on experience” a better definition of religion as it is practiced.

For many years I believed that people who said they were atheists or agnostics had rejected religion by denying or rejecting the existence of god.  I thought of them as devoid of religion.  I also believed that the First Amendment to our constitution created a religiously neutral government.  This was my belief until in the latter third of my life I was disabused from the Charismatic Movement and confronted with R. J. Rushdoony’s “Institutes of Biblical Law”, a book that matured my theology and filled the gaping hole that had plagued my Christian outlook from the beginning.

Dr. Rushdoony’s Institutes begins by establishing all law as religious because it sets the meaning of justice and righteousness in society.  The source of law is the god of a society.  Any change in law is a change of religion.  He writes that, “—no disestablishment of religion as such is possible in any society.  A church can be disestablished, and a particular religion can be supplanted by another, but the change is simply to another religion.  Since the foundations of law are inescapably religious, no society exists without a religious foundation or without a law system that codifies the morality of its religion.”

There cannot be a religious void!  Every person and every society places ultimate confidence in someone or something.

A nation that wishes to be Christian must zealously guard its legal codes.  Reverend Rushdoony writes, “—there cannot be tolerance in a law system for another religion.  Toleration is a device used to introduce a new law-system as a prelude to a new intolerance.

The United States began with at least a passing regard for Biblical Law.  For several decades the Puritans and Pilgrims lived under Biblical mandates.  Blackstone’s Commentaries retained a modified dependence on the Laws God gave to Moses.  For instance the description of marriage made a husband and wife one and suspended a woman’s legal existence during marriage.  He modified the parent child relationship but retained some obligation of a child to a parent.   His writings are still used but have been replaced in the classroom with Black’s Law Dictionary a more secular document.  .

Up into the 1930s some states still enforced the Blue Laws which among other sinful practices prohibited fornication, adultery, and sodomy.  Blasphemy against God was also listed as a crime as was defiling the Sabbath.  These laws provided our country with a palpable Christian flavor.  They are now forgotten.  A list of these statues is difficult to find on the internet; any reference to them is filled with mocking and jeering.   Many of these Biblical standards remained in state statutes long after they were ignored.

Now, we are witnessing the accelerated introduction of a new legal system. President Obama is following in the steps of President George W. Bush in writing Executive orders that allow the state to exert divine control over citizens.  Feminism successfully defied Biblical law and now homosexuality is being imposed. States have murdered millions of their own citizens but Christians become more aroused at the idea that a single reprobate should be stoned to death than they do over the cruel and useless deaths of millions of innocent civilians by their own governments.

Our President is urging California to approve homosexual marriage which would amount to a state sanction of sodomy a practice condemned by the God of the Bible. We are being returned to the days of Rex Lex with Obama, whose religious affiliation is as cloudy as his background, as the king.

Pat Buchanan’s needs to revise his priorities; esteem for Dick Cheney makes it impossible for him to entertain the possibility Cheney might be involved in nefarious activities.  Friendship and loyalty are important virtues but they should never hold truth and righteousness hostage.  The tendency of people to think well of their friends and of their government is often used for evil purposes.  Human beings are fragile, sinful, and unreliable, placing ultimate faith in their performance and behavior will end in regret.

Christine Smith points to a pivotal flaw: Christians talk the talk but fail to walk the walk.  While claiming God is still on His throne and in control of His creation they behave as if man is more powerful than God.

As our government becomes more aberrant and dangerous to its citizens Christians, not noticing their continual failure, continue to work as if the government is outside God’s control.

The State has become a major idol that draws the primary dependence of the majority of American Christians and their leaders.  We attribute tyrannical laws and dissolute government to political parties instead of realizing that a sovereign God is allowing these evils to come upon us in response to our own evil actions..

Yesterday I listened to a YouTube video of a well-known leader of the truth telling movement interviewing a highly intelligent, Christian, women with a Doctor’s degree from our highest rated Ivy League school. She claimed that the end times are coming and there is nothing we can do about it.  She could be right; but I don’t think she is.  Such talk is anathema to proper role of God’s people in these evil times.  This influential lady is nullifying her effectiveness by promoting a theology that paralyzes Christians and defies God’s exclusive right to such actions.

Arminianism and Dispensationalism are not only heretical theologies but they are insidious forces against the effectiveness of the Christian religion.  Arminianism injects humanism into Christianity and Dispensationalism created an entirely new system of theology that distorts the Biblical narrative and promotes heretical doctrines.

By predicting the end times this influential Christian lady usurps God’s sovereignty and attempts to occupy His throne.  Because Dispensationalism has robbed her of her God given Christian mission her entire testimony consists of her healing and warning about the end times.  What if she is entirely wrong?  What if it is not the end times but God’s judgment?  What if our sins have found us out?   What if there are numerous other grievous sins besides the millions of babies that we have murdered?  What if these sins involve our people, our fathers, and our nation?  What is we have distorted the Christian religion so that we are no different than the Pharisees?  What if the same judgment that Jesus made toward the Pharisees He has made toward us as Christians?  What if we are hypocrites?  What if?

Instead of urging repentance which is the Biblical antidote to captivity she commits the disastrous error of blaming it on the end times leaving Christians helpless in the face of Satanic darkness. We are often urged to pray for our leaders.  Over the years I have often prayed for our nation and its leaders.  Those prayers and the prayers of thousands of other Christians have gone unanswered, God answers prayers that conform to His Will but He ignores those that do not.  We are missing the mark!

It is time for Christians to stop using religion and allow religion to use them.  God is not our servant!  We are His servants and it is our role to obey His Commandments and work to bring about His peace and order in His creation.  Instead of blaming our present dilemma on the end times we need to understand that these events might be God’s response to our sins and what is needed is repentance and proper behavior.   We need to scrutinize our lives and the actions of our nation and repent from our sins so that if He does come again soon we will be ready.

God will not be mocked.  We cannot ignore His Law, falsely profess His Will, destroy His creation, murder His creatures, elect and obey a pagan government, and arrogantly claim His blessing on our sin.  When we do these things we can expect to suffer His wrath.

Gun Rights: Are There Any Peaceful Solutions Left?

Throughout history, citizen disarmament generally leads to one of two inevitable outcomes:  Government tyranny and genocide, or, revolution and civil war.  Anti-gun statists would, of course, argue that countries like the UK and Australia have not suffered such a result.  My response would be – just give them time.   You may believe that gun control efforts are part and parcel of a totalitarian agenda (as they usually are), or, you may believe that gun registration and confiscation are a natural extension of the government’s concern for our “safety and well-being”.  Either way, the temptation of power that comes after a populace is made defenseless is almost always too great for any political entity to dismiss.  One way or another, for one reason or another, they WILL take advantage of the fact that the people have no leverage to determine their own cultural future beyond a twisted system of law and governance which is, in the end, easily corrupted.

The unawake and the unaware among us will also argue that revolution or extreme dissent against the establishment is not practical or necessary, because the government “is made of regular people like us, who can be elected or removed at any time”.

This is the way a Republic is supposed to function, yes.  However, the system we have today has strayed far from the methods of a Free Republic and towards the machinations of a single party system.  Our government does NOT represent the common American anymore.  It has become a centralized and Sovietized monstrosity.  A seething hydra with two poisonous heads; one Democrat in name, one Republican in name.  Both heads feed the same bottomless stomach; the predatory and cannibalistic pit of socialized oligarchy.

On the Republican side, we are offered Neo-Con sharks like George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, who argue for “conservative” policies such as limited government interference and reduced spending, all while introducing legislation which does the exact opposite.  The recent passage of the “Safe Act” in New York with extensive Republican support proves that Republicans cannot be counted on to defend true conservative values.

The Democrats get candidates like John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, who claim to be anti-war and against government abuse of civil liberties, and yet, these same “progressive and compassionate” politicians now froth at the mouth like rabid dogs sinking their teeth into the flesh of the citizenry, expanding on every tyrannical initiative the Republicans began, and are bombing more civilian targets in more foreign countries than anyone with a conscience should be able to bear.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; the government is not our buddy.  It is not our ally or friend.  It is not a “part of us”.  It is now a separate and dangerous entity.  A parasite feeding off the masses.  It has become a clear threat to the freedoms of average Americans.  It is time for the public to grow up, snap out of its childish delusions, and accept that there is no solace or justice to be found anymore in Washington D.C.

Once we understand this fact, a question then arises – What do we do about it?  If we cannot redress our grievances through the election process because both parties favor the same authoritarian direction, and if our street protests are utterly ignored by the mainstream media and the establishment, and if civil suits do nothing but drag on for years with little to no benefit, then what is left for us?  Is the way of the gun the only answer left for the American people at this crossroads?

I cannot deny that we are very close to such a conclusion.  Anyone who does deny it is living in a candy coated fantasy land.  However, there are still certain options that have not been exhausted, and we should utilize them if for no other reason than to maintain the moral high ground while the power elite continue to expose their own despotic innards.

State And County Nullification

The assertion of local authority in opposition to federal tyranny is already being applied across the country.  Multiple states, counties, and municipalities are issuing declarations of defiance and passing legislation which nullifies any future federal incursions against 2nd Amendment protections.  For instance, the Gilberton Borough Council in PA in conjunction with Police Chief Mark Kessler has recently adopted a resolution defending all 2nd Amendment rights within their municipal borders up to and including the denial of operations by federal officers:

http://oathkeepers.org/oath/2013/02/03/first-molon-labe-town-in-america/

Approximately 283 county Sheriffs and multiple police officers have taken a hard stand, stating that they will either not aid federal enforcement officials with gun control related activities, or, that they will not allow such activities within their county, period:

http://cspoa.org/sheriffs-gun-rights/

This trend of dissent amongst law enforcement officials debunks the nihilistic view promoted by disinformation agents that “no one in law enforcement will have the guts to stand up to the government no matter how sour it turns”.   It has also shaken the Obama Administration enough that the White House is struggling to counter it by wining and dining police unions and sheriffs departments in order to form their own “coalition of the willing”.  Obama seems to believe that holding press conferences using children or police as background props will somehow earn him political capital in the battle for gun rights, but I have my doubts:

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-asks-police-help-pass-183056466.html

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/55716645-90/com-congress-doing-enforcement.html.csp

Multiple states have legislation on the table to nullify as well, and it would seem that the violent push by the establishment to extinguish the 2nd Amendment has actually sharply rekindled the public’s interest in States Rights and the 10th Amendment.

This does not mean, though, that we should rely on nullification alone.  While the gun grabbers are stumbling into severe resistance at the national level, some representatives are attempting to supplant gun rights at the state level, including New York, California, Washington State, and Missouri.  The goal here is obvious; counter states rights arguments by using anti-gun legislators to impose federal controls through the back door of state legislation.

They will claim that if we support states rights, then we have to abide by the decisions of regions like New York when they ban and confiscate firearms.  It’s sad how gun grabbers lose track of reality.  Neither federal authority, nor state authority, supplants the legal barriers of the Constitution itself, meaning, no federal or local authority has the right or power to remove our freedom of speech, our freedom of assembly, our freedom of privacy, OR our freedom to own firearms (including firearms of military utility).  The Constitution and the Bill of Rights supersede all other legal and political entities (including treaties, as ruled by the Supreme Court).  At least, that’s what the Founding Fathers intended when they established this nation.  The point is, a state is well within its rights to defy the Federal Government if it is enacting unconstitutional abuses, and the people are well within their rights to defy a state when it does the same.

Economic Nullification

There is actually a fantastic economic opportunity to be had by states and counties that nullify gun control legislation.  Many gun manufacturers and retail businesses are facing financial oblivion if the establishment has its way, and moving operations outside the U.S. is not necessarily practical for most of them (gun manufacturing is one of the last business models we still do better than the rest of the world).  Municipalities could offer safe haven to these businesses, allowing them to continue producing firearms and high capacity magazines, fulfill expanding public demand, and create a surging cash flow into their area while at the same time giving the federal government the finger.

This strategy does not come without dangers, though.  Many states and counties are addicted to federal funding, and some would go bankrupt without it.  The obvious first response by the feds to protesting local governments will be to cut off the river of cash and starve them into subservience.

This brand of internal financial warfare can be countered by local governments by nullifying a few other unconstitutional regulations, including those issued by the EPA and the BLM.  States and counties could easily disable federal land development restrictions and begin using resource development as a means to generate supplemental income.  North Dakota is essentially doing this right now in the Bakken Oil Fields, becoming one of the few states in America that is actually creating legitimate high paying jobs (instead of part time wage slave jobs), and growing more prosperous every year.

This tactic is not limited to state governments either.  Counties also have the ability, with the right officials involved, to regain control of their economic destinies anytime they want.  All it takes is the courage to rock the establishment boat.

Refuse All Registration Schemes

National firearms registration and gun databases are almost always followed by full gun confiscation.  The process is usually done in a standardized manner:  First demand extensive registration and cataloging of gun owners.  Second, ban more effective styles of weaponry, including semi-automatics and high capacity rifles (Let the sport hunters keep their bolt actions for a time, and lure them onto your side with the promise that they will get to keep their .270 or their 30-06).  Then take all semi-auto handguns.  Then, ban high powered magnum style bolt actions by labeling them “sniper rifles”.  Then demand that the gun owners that still remain allow official “inspections” of their home by law enforcement to ensure that they are “storing their weapons properly”.  Then, force them to move those weapons to a designated “warehouse or range”, locked away for any use other than recreational shooting.  Then, when the public is thoroughly disconnected from their original right to bear arms, take everything that’s left.

Keep in mind that the federal government and certain state governments are acting as if they would like to skip ALL of the preliminary steps and go straight to full confiscation.  I am not discounting that possibility.  But, they may feign certain concessions in the near term in order to get the one thing they really want – full registration.

Registration must be the line in the sand for every single gun owner in this country, whether they own several semi-automatics, or one pump action shotgun.  Once you give in to being registered, fingerprinted, photographed, and tracked wherever you decide to live like a convicted sexual predator, you have shown that you have no will or spirit.  You have shown that you will submit to anything.

After a full registration has been enacted, every gun (and maybe every bullet) will be tracked.  If confiscation is utilized, they know exactly what you have and what you should not have, and exactly where you are.  Criminals will still acquire weapons illegally, as they always have.  The only people who will suffer are law abiding citizens. It’s a recipe for dictatorship and nothing more.

Gun Barter Networks

The retail firearms and ammo markets are Sahara dry right now, and will probably remain that way in the foreseeable future.  Anything that is available for purchase is usually twice the price it was last year.  Extremely high demand is removing retail from the picture before any legislation is even passed.  Enter barter…

Cash will remain a bargaining tool for as long as the dollar remains the world reserve currency and holds at least some semblance of value (this will end sooner than most people think).  That said, as gun items become scarce, the allure of cash may be supplanted.  The signs of this are already evident.

Gun owners are now looking more to trade firearms and accessories for OTHER firearms and accessories, because they know that once they sell an item, they may never see it again, and the usefulness of cash is fleeting.  Gun Barter is not only a way for firearms enthusiasts to get what they need, it is also a way for them to move around any future gun sale restrictions that may arise.  Private gun sales are legal in some states, but do not count on this to last.  Barter leaves no paper trail, and thus, no traceable evidence of transaction.  For those who fear this idea as “legally questionable”, all I can do is remind them that an unconstitutional law is no law at all.  If it does not adhere to the guidelines of our founding principles, our founding documents, and our natural rights, then it is just a bunch of meaningless words on a meaningless piece of paper signed by a meaningless political puppet.

3D Printing And Home Manufacturing

3D Printing is now available to the public and for those with the money, I recommend they invest quickly.  Unless the establishment wants to make the possession of these printers illegal, as well as shut down the internet, there will be no way to stop data streamers from supplying the software needed to make molds for every conceivable gun part, including high capacity mags.  This technology has been effectively promoted by the Wiki Weapons Project:

http://defensedistributed.com/

According to current ATF law, the home manufacture of gun parts is not technically illegal, as long as they are not being produced for sale.  But in a state or county where federal gun laws have been nullified, what the ATF says is irrelevant.

Home manufacturing of gun parts and ammo would be a highly lucrative business in such safe haven areas.  And, the ability to build one’s own self defense platform is a vital skill in a sparse market environment.  The ultimate freedom is being able to supply your own needs without having to ask for materials or permission from others.  It should be the goal of every pro-gun activist to reach this independence.

Force The Establishment To Show Its True Colors

While some in the general public may be incensed by the trampling of our freedoms by government, many (including myself) would view direct action and aimless French Revolution-style violence as distasteful and disastrous.  The moral high ground is all that any dissenting movement has.  It will be hard enough to keep this ground with the constant demonization of liberty minded people that is being espoused by propaganda peddlers like the SPLC and numerous media outlets.  We do not need to help them do their jobs.

Now, to be clear, I have NO illusions that the above strategies will defuse a confrontation between those who value freedom, and those who desire power.  The hope is that enough people within our population will refuse to comply, and that this will make any future despotism impossible to construct.  However, it is far more likely that these acts of defiance will elicit a brutal response from the government.  And in a way, that is exactly what we want…

The Founding Fathers went through steps very similar to those I listed above and more to counter the tightening grip of the British Empire during the first American Revolution.  The idea is simple:

Peacefully deny the corrupt system’s authority over your life by supplying your own needs and your own security, rather than lashing out blindly.  Force them to show their true colors.  Expose their dishonor and maliciousness.  Make them come after you like the predators they are, and then, once they can no longer play the role of the “defending hero” in the eyes of the public, use your right to self defense to send them a message they won’t forget.

Skeptics will claim that physical defense is useless against a technologically advanced enemy.  They will claim that we need a “majority” we do not have in order to prevail.  These are usually people who have never fought for anything in their lives.  They do not understand that the “odds” are unimportant.  They mean nothing.  No revolution for good ever begins with “majority support”.  Each is fought by a minority of strong willed and aware individuals.  When all other methods of protest have been dismantled, the system leaves us with only two options: stand and fight, or kneel and beg for mercy.  All you need to know is what YOU would do when faced with that choice.

There is no other culture on earth that has the capacity, like Americans currently do, to defeat centralists, defend individual liberty, and end the pursuit of total global power in this lifetime.  We are the first and last line.  If freedom is undone here, it is undone everywhere for generations to come.  This is our responsibility.  This is our providence.  There can be no complacency.  There can be no compromise.  There can be no fear.  It ends on this ground.  One way, or another.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

Killer Dorner’s Supporters Are Par For The Left’s Course

While I was a conservative by age 12, for some time thereafter I viewed liberalism as most do, as just another ideology. Sure, it was an irritating ideology, but an ideology nonetheless. But then something happened. I don’t quite remember if I was 20, 21, or 22, but some experiences in my life and much pondering of the issues and the human condition led to an insight. It hit me like a bolt of lightning:

Liberalism is what evil is masquerading as in our time.

I won’t go into the labyrinthine details of the matter here, but it was a life-changing epiphany that ultimately led to a transition from secular-conservative/libertarian to man of faith and walking, talking anachronism. And it made me realize that liberals aren’t just misguided, which they are — they’re also in bed with evil.

This is apparent in much of what they do, and the support that murdering fugitive Christopher Dorner is receiving from the left is a good example. It doesn’t matter that Dorner is clearly an unhinged man blaming others for his own failures; it doesn’t matter that he shot innocent people; it doesn’t matter that the only sin of one of those innocents, Monica Quan, was being the daughter of a man who Dorner thought didn’t represent him adequately during an LAPD review process; and that another’s only sin was agreeing to become Quan’s fiancé. None of this matters because Dorner possesses all the qualifications of a leftist zero hero: he’s pro-gun control, admires other zeroes such as Barack Obama and Piers Morgan, and is anti-cop.

Thus are there Facebook pages dedicated to Dorner, such as “We Are All Chris Dorner” (if this means all of the left, it’s a tenable theory), whose creator calls the killer “the victim of a manhunt and smear campaign.” One poster at the page named Aaron Hughes writes, “this guy is a hero.” Another page is “We Support Christopher Dorner,” with postings such as this one from a James McCarthy: “I support you and good hunting ,, tou [sic] are a true patriot.” This is just a small sampling, mind you.

There are also pictures, with captions such as:

SO WE’LL HATE HIM

Because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight.

Then there’s:

WANTED

FOR TAKING OUT THE TRASH

Once again, this is but a sampling.

Of course, we’ll hear that these are just “exceptions,” but the left has a funny knack for turning exceptions into the rule. And as far as patterns go, it certainly is the rule. Just consider many leftists’ response to a very cute pre-election video of a six-year-old boy giving ten reasons not to vote for Barack Obama. Here’s a handful of their YouTube postings (excerpted from a PatriotUpdate.com article):

And here is one I have to print so it can be cleaned up (as much as liberals’ messes can be):

GO F*** YOUR MOTHER YOU LITTLE ****SUCKING HOMOPHOBIC GUN LOVING ****SUCKER IF YOU WERE MY F****** KID I WOULD BE GIVING THE BIGGEST S**T KICKING OF A LIFETIME YOU LITTLE GOOD GOD FEARING GOOD FOR F****** NOTHING F****** ****SUCKER!!!!!!

TheSwordplaya

I want to reiterate that we’re talking about a cute, innocent six-year-old child here. And, again, we’ll be told that such sentiments aren’t representative of the left, but are they really all that unrepresentative of the passionate left?

Note that liberals often use children to spread their message; everything is “for the children”…and by the children and of the children. Obama just surrounded himself with them when signing gun-control executive orders and had little tykes reading statements. We had to watch in 2008 as kids marched for him in videos and sang “Barack Hussein Obama, mm, mm, mm!” But did you ever see conservatives post vile sentiments anytime, anywhere about how they wanted to abuse or kill these children? I spend many hours on the Internet and have never seen such a thing. Of course, a leftist may unearth an example — and I wouldn’t be surprised if such a thing were manufactured NBC style — but the point is that exceptions on the right actually are just that. Exceptions on the left are everywhere.

They’re in the history books, too. Maximilien Robespierre was an ardent opponent of the death penalty; that is, until he and his fellow French revolutionaries took power and he used the guillotine to murder thousands. The communists in the Soviet Union murdered at least 20 million and the Maoists in China approximately 70 million. And the Khmer Rouge exceptions in Cambodia exterminated one third of their nation’s population between 1975 and ‘79. As for anticipated futures, the people Obama ally Bill Ayers was breaking bread with theorized that they may have to kill 25 million “capitalists” in order to complete a communist revolution in America. Hey, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, right?

This is why I’ve long had a different take, a philosophical one, on sociopathy. I believe that it may simply be the result of taking liberalism — or, to be precise, the relativism central to it — to its logical conclusion. After all, if what we call right and wrong is simply man’s preferences and thus doesn’t really exist, it makes no sense to have a conscience. For there is nothing to be conscientious about.

What is for sure, however, is that modern liberalism is moral dysfunction.

The U.S. Economy Is Now Dangerously Detached From Reality

Recently I was asked to give a presentation on the current state of the global economy to a local group of concerned citizens here in Northwest Montana.  I was happy to oblige but when composing my bullet points I realized that, in truth, there were no legitimate economic numbers to examine anymore.  You see, financial analysts have traditionally used multiple indicators of employment, profit, savings, credit, supply, and demand in their efforts to divine the often obscured facts of our financial system.  The problem is, nearly every index we used in the past, every measure of capital flow and industry, is absolutely useless today.

We now live in an entirely fabricated fiscal environment.  Every aspect of it is filtered, muddled, molded, and manipulated before our eyes ever get to study the stats.  The metaphor may be overused, but our economic system has become an absolute “matrix”.  All that we see and hear has been homogenized and all truth has been sterilized away.  There is nothing to investigate anymore.  It is like awaking in the middle of a vast and hallucinatory live action theater production, complete with performers, props, and sound effects, all designed to confuse us and do us harm.  In the end, trying to make sense of the illusion is a waste of time.  All we can do is look for the exits…

There is some tangible reality out there, but it is difficult to find, and there are few if any mainstream numbers to verify.  One has to remember always that the fundamental world of money and trade revolves around real people and real circumstances.  No matter how corrupt our economic system is, as long as there are human beings, there will always be supply and demand that cannot be hidden.  We have to look past the “official numbers” and look at the roots of trade.  Where has demand fallen?  Where has supply diminished?  Where are the tangible goods and needs and how have they changed?

Let’s first start with the mainstream version of our system, looking at each aspect of the economy that no longer represents the truth of our situation…

Employment, Savings, And Debt 

Much of this information is old news to those of us in the Liberty Movement, who tracked the progress of the global collapse long before the general public even knew of its existence.  However, it is useful to take a step back and look at the basic picture every once in a while.

According to numbers issued by the Department of Labor, weekly unemployment reports have dropped to a five year low, and the overall employment rate is holding at 7.9%.  This would seem to be a vast improvement over the dreadful bloodletting in the system only a few years ago.  Has the private Federal Reserve and the Obama Administration really done it?  Have they turned back the tide on the greatest fiscal crisis the U.S. has seen since the Depression?

No.  They haven’t.

They have only changed how the data is disseminated to the public. In order to understand how the employment statistics con is being engineered, it is important to understand the difference between “Adjusted” and “Unadjusted” numbers.

Labor Department data is “seasonally adjusted”, using a series of statistical assumptions including something called “Trend Cycle Analysis”.  Trend Cycle Analysis is, basically, a sham, but a sham put together in a very complex and confusing manner.  If you ask a mainstream economist what it is, you’ll likely get a three hour long dissertation filled with financial babble and very little concrete explanation.  So let me break it down as simply as I can…

Imagine that you are going to estimate how much profit you plan to make in a particular month, but you don’t just consider your current pay rate and pop it into a calculator; you also throw in the possibility of a few pay raises, an inheritance from a grandma who might kick the bucket, and, your exaggerated expectations of the entire year’s profit on top of that.  You may also take into account future bad weather, a mugging, a nuclear war….whatever.  All hypothetical situations not based in reality.  Basically, you decide that a particular trend in your income is inevitable, then, mold your statistical analysis around that assumption.

When your real profit numbers come in (the unadjusted numbers) and they do not meet your expectations, you simply change them according to what you believe SHOULD have happened.  If you insist that your profits are going to go up for the year, and they go down for a couple months instead, you change the variables you use to calculate the statistical average so that the results match your expectations, assuming that it will all balance out in the end.

Now, this sounds utterly insane for the common person out there trying to make a living.  If you ran your household this way, without accepting the cold hard unadjusted numbers in front of you, you’d find yourself broke and on the street in no time.  Unfortunately this is EXACTLY how our government handles most financial data; by coming to a final conclusion before hand, and then forcing the numbers to fit that conclusion.

This is why in February of 2013, “adjusted” first week unemployment rate was reported at 366,000 – a 5000 person drop from the week before.  A seeming improvement in the trend.  But, unadjusted numbers came in at 386,176 – a 16,000 person spike from the week before.  When one examines real unemployment numbers, he finds that the divergence between the adjusted and unadjusted statistics is growing larger with each passing quarter.  That is to say, the contradiction is becoming so blatant between the hard numbers and the Labor Department’s fantasy numbers that one must question whether or not the government is lying to us outright about the state of the economy (hint – they are lying).

These same methods are used by the government to calculate progress in the housing market, disposable income, etc.

The claim of “recovery” in the jobs market simply doesn’t jive with other indicators, like 2012 Christmas retail, which had the worst showing since the crash in 2008 (and these are still mainstream numbers!):

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/26/us-holiday-retail-sales-growth-weakest-since-2008/ 

Average household savings continue to scrape the bottom of the barrel, indicating that the public is not spending or withholding cash.  They are simply broke:

And the overall GDP of the U.S. contracted in the fourth quarter of 2012 for the first time in three years (again, according to official numbers, meaning the reality is much worse):

http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/30/news/economy/gdp-report/index.html

The downturn in consumption and industry also seems to be supported by the Baltic Dry Index, a measure of global shipping and rates.  The BDI has fallen to near historic lows THREE TIMES in the past year, which to my knowledge, has never happened before.  In the past, the BDI has been a strong prophetic indicator of future market volatility.  Usually, around a year after a severe decline in the index, a dangerous economic event takes place.  The BDI made its first sharp drop to all time lows at the end of January 2012, exactly a year ago.

U.S. household debt was recently reported to have fallen to a 29 year low, but the ratio used by the Federal Reserve applies a statistic for disposable income that is derived from the Trend Cycle boondoggle method.  While markets cheer, the truth is, the only reason household debt obligations have fallen at all is because bank lending and credit issuance remains frozen.  Consumer debt falls when there is no money to borrow.  In fact, the Federal Reserve actually pays large banks NOT to lend to the public; an activity which was exposed by Dennis Kucinich in 2009 on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.  An activity that continued through 2012:

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/the-fed-should-stop-paying-banks-not-to-lend/

Keep in mind, one of the primary arguments the Federal Reserve used when promoting the bailout concept was that it would “free up credit markets” so that lending could pick up again and fuel a recovery, and yet, at the same time, they were paying banks to NOT lend.

Meanwhile, the supposed job recovery has produced an astonishing increase in welfare recipients in the U.S., including a record 46 million Americans on foodstamps (approximately 15% of our population):

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/report-15-americans-food-stamps-980690

If we are to apply any “trend” to our calculations on overall economic health, then we should include the extreme level of government handouts, and poverty levels which are now at all time highs.  The facts are undeniable; the number of people who have much less than they did in 2008 has grown.  How then could the U.S. be considered “in recovery”?

National Debt And The Fiat Lie

With the Dow Index hovering near highs of 14,000 our system truly looks to be on a rocket ship to pre-2008 money market bliss.  In a mere five years we have returned to equity spikes that stagger the mind and the wallet.  At least, that’s how it all appears…

What needs to be taken into account, though, is the amount of fiat money being created by the Federal Reserve, and how much of that printed pixie dust currency is fueling our magical flight to Neverland.  Since 2008, our official national debt has increased from $10 trillion to $16.4 trillion, and some estimate $17 trillion to $18 trillion by the end of 2013 (unless, of course, a collapse occurs).  Which means our national debt, which took decades to reach the $10 trillion mark, will have nearly doubled in only six years!

So, what has a doubling of our national debt in such a short span of time bought us?  Well, credit markets remain frozen, property markets remain stagnant, poverty is at historic levels, welfare recipients are at epic highs, and consumer activity and GDP is back at 2008 lows.  Where did all that printed money go?  Where was it spent?  To answer that question, we only need to find what area of the economy has seen the most positive (or fantastical) activity.  What sector is seeing a massive boost while the rest tumbles?

I suggest that a large portion of QE1 through QE3 has gone to prop up the stock market, and nothing else.  I suggest that American taxpayers are fronting the bill for the equities bonanza we see today.  I suggest that the Dow is being used as a Red Herring to distract the populous for as long as possible while real assets are being snapped up and hoarded by international banks and foreign entities.  I suggest that we are being leached dry and that the parasites are almost ready to move on…

When will it all end?  Perhaps sooner than many people think.  The decision by D.C. to delay talks on the so-called “Fiscal Cliff” until March may not be coincidence.  Extensive cuts in federal spending are absolutely necessary and cannot be dismissed forever, but, because the last vestiges of our system that still operate do so through government money, such cuts will cause immediate damage to the economy, including possible default and dollar devaluation.  Refusal to make cuts will result in credit downgrades, currency inflation, and a loss of the greenback’s world reserve status.  There is no “right” way out of this quandary.

When this collapse is initiated, it would certainly behoove all parties involved, including central banks, international banks, and criminal politicians, to have a scapegoat handy for the citizenry to direct their rage at.

Event Horizon Economics 

An “Event Horizon” in physics is a moment or singularity in spacetime at which a gravitational pull becomes so great that there is no way to escape it.  It is a point of no return.  I believe America’s economy has reached its own Event Horizon.  Our system is now entirely fiat driven, with very little or no true economy left.  Without constant injections from the Fed, and perpetually low interest rates, the country would implode tomorrow.  This is not recovery.  Actually, I’m not sure what to call it.

Today, independent economic analysts cannot look to the numbers to determine future trends.  Most are fake, and the rest are ugly, and I’m not sure much else can be said in their regard.  Instead, we must now look to events, rather than statistics, because our country has been maneuvered into a position of utmost frailty.  Like an avalanche shelf waiting for that perfectly timed disturbance to trigger its roaring collapse.  All that is needed is a macro-crisis, and it is no great feat for such a thing to be created in our tension filled global environment.

War in Syria and Iran leading to a tripling of energy prices.  Sanctions and strife with North Korea leading to Chinese economic retribution.  Conflict between China and Japan, again leading to Chinese economic warfare and perhaps real warfare.  An opportune “cyber attack” which could be used as an excuse for a market crash and even an internet shutdown.  A “political impasse” between Reps and Dems which leads to a default of U.S. credit.  Any one of these catastrophes could easily occur (with a little nudge from some well placed people) and feed a wider global tragedy.  The important thing to remember is that while this event will be blamed for the breakdown, it was international banks, the Federal Reserve, and elements of our own government that made the domino effect possible.  They put the pieces in place.  The act that knocks them over is secondary.

I have spent the past seven years writing about “potential” threats to our overall system, but these dangers were always just beyond our sight.  Just around the corner.  Today, it is as if the journey is over, and all those threats have materialized right before my eyes as real, and imminent.  I am watching that which I warned of come to fruition, and this is certainly not a pleasant thing.  What is valuable, though, is what we have all done in the Liberty Movement with the time that we had.  From when I began writing for the movement until now, I have seen an overwhelming increase in public awareness.  It may not be obvious to newer activists, but it is there all the same.  While we still face disparaging odds, and millions upon millions of oblivious bystanders, there is, amidst these darker moments, a steadfast community of free men and women forming.  I have full faith in the future.  Much more so than I ever did before.  Our economy may be detached from reality, but our endeavors as individuals will not be.  Our resolve will be the great game changer.  Not fiscal calamity.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

American Foreign Policy – Have Our War Lovers Learned Anything?

Over the past four decades, of all the reasons people over a certain age have given for their becoming radicalized against US foreign policy, the Vietnam War has easily been the one most often cited. And I myself am the best example of this that you could find. I sometimes think that if the war lovers who run the United States had known of this in advance they might have had serious second thoughts about starting that great historical folly and war crime.

At other times, however, I have the thought that our dear war lovers have had 40 years to take this lesson to heart, and during this time what did they do? They did Salvador and Nicaragua, and Angola and Grenada. They did Panama and Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan and Iraq. And in 2012 American President Barack Obama saw fit to declare that the Vietnam War was “one of the most extraordinary stories of bravery and integrity in the annals of military history”. 1

So, have they learned nothing? When it comes to following international law, is the United States like a failed state? The Somalia of international law? Well, if they were perfectly frank, the war lovers would insist that the purpose of all these interventions, and many others like them, was to keep the atheists out of power – the non-believers in America’s god-given right to rule the world – or to at least make life as difficult as possible for them. And thus the interventions were successful; nothing to apologize for; even the Vietnam War achieved its purpose of preventing that country from becoming a good development option for Asia, a socialist alternative to the capitalist model; precisely the same reason for Washington’s endless hostility toward Cuba in Latin America; and Cuba has indeed inspired numerous atheists and their alternatives for a better world.

If they were even more honest, the war lovers might quote George Kennan, the legendary State Department strategist, who wrote prophetically during the Cold War: “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.” 2

But after all these years, after decades of American militarism – though not a day passes without some government official or media acolyte expressing his admiration and gratitude for “our brave boys” – cracks in the American edifice can be seen. Some of the war lovers, and their TV groupies would have us believe that they have actually learned something. One of the first was Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in February 2011: “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.”

And here’s former Secretary of State George Shultz speaking before the prestigious Council of Foreign Relations last month (January 29): “Iraq and Afghanistan cannot be the template for how we go about” dealing with threats of terrorism.

A few days earlier the very establishment and conservative Economist magazine declared: “The best-intentioned foreign intervention is bound to bog its armies down in endless wars fighting invisible enemies to help ungrateful locals.”

However, none of these people are in power. And does history offer any example of a highly militaristic power – without extreme coercion – seeing the error of its ways? One of my readers, who prefers to remain anonymous, wrote to me recently:

It is my opinion that the German and Japanese people only relinquished their imperial culture and mindset when they were bombed back to the stone age at the end of WWII. Something similar is the only cure for the same pathology that now is embedded into the very social fabric of the USA. The USA is a full-blown pathological society now. There is no other cure. No amount of articles on the Internet pointing out the hypocrisies or war crimes will do it.

So, while the United States is busy building bases and anti-missile sites in Europe, Asia and Africa, deploying space-based and other hi-tech weapons systems, trying to surround Russia, China, Iran and any other atheist that threatens American world hegemony, and firing drone missiles all over the Middle East I’m busy playing games on the Internet. What can I say? In theory at least, there is another force besides the terrible bombing mentioned above that can stop the American empire, and that is the American people. I’ll continue trying to educate them. Too bad I won’t live long enough to see the glorious transformation.

Afghanistan: Manufacturing the American Legacy

“A decade ago, playing music could get you maimed in Afghanistan. Today, a youth ensemble is traveling to the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. And it even includes girls.”

Thus reads the sub-heading of a Washington Post story of February 3 about an orchestra of 48 Afghan young people who attended music school in a country where the Taliban have tried to silence both women and music. “The Afghan Youth Orchestra is more than a development project,” the article informs us. For “the school’s many international donors, it serves as a powerful symbol of successful reconstruction in Afghanistan. And by performing in Washington and New York, the seats of U.S. political and financial power, the orchestra hopes to showcase what a decade of investment has achieved.”

“The U.S. State Department, the World Bank, the Carnegie Corporation and Afghanistan’s Ministry of Education have invested heavily in the tour. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul awarded nearly $350,000 footing most of the estimated $500,000 cost. For international donors, the tour symbolizes progress in a country crippled by war.”

The State Department’s director of communications and public diplomacy for Afghanistan and Pakistan declares: “We wanted Americans to understand the difference their tax dollars have made in building a better future for young people, which translates into reduced threats from extremists in the region.”

“There’s a lot of weariness in the U.S. and cynicism about Afghanistan,” said William Harvey, an American violinist who teaches at the school, where 35 of 141 students are girls. “What are we doing there? What can be achieved? These concerts answer those questions in the strongest way possible: Cooperation between Afghanistan and the international community has made it safe for young girls and boys to learn music.”

There can be no question that for the sad country of Afghanistan all this is welcome news. There can also be little doubt that a beleaguered and defensive US foreign policy establishment will seek to squeeze out as much favorable publicity as possible from these events. On the issue of the severe oppression of women and girls in Afghanistan, defenders of the US occupation of that desperate land would have you believe that the United States is the last great hope of those poor females. However, you will not be reminded that in the 1980s the United States played an indispensable role in the overthrow of a secular and relatively progressive Afghan government, one which endeavored to grant women much more freedom than they’ll ever have under the current Karzai-US government, more probably than ever again. Here are some excerpts from a 1986 US Army manual on Afghanistan discussing the policies of this government concerning women:

• “provisions of complete freedom of choice of marriage partner, and fixation of the minimum age at marriage at 16 for women and 18 for men”
• “abolished forced marriages”
• “bring [women] out of seclusion, and initiate social programs”
• “extensive literacy programs, especially for women”
• “putting girls and boys in the same classroom”;
• “concerned with changing gender roles and giving women a more active role in politics”. 3

The US-led overthrow of this government paved the way for the coming to power of Islamic fundamentalist forces, which led directly to the awful Taliban. And why did the United States in its infinite wisdom choose to do such a thing? Because the Afghan government was allied with the Soviet Union and Washington wanted to draw the Russians into a hopeless military quagmire – “We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War”, said Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser. 4

The women of Afghanistan will never know how the campaign to raise them to the status of full human beings would have turned out, but this, some might argue, is but a small price to pay for a marvelous Cold War victory.

Guantánamo Bay

People on the left never tire of calling for the closing of the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The fact that President Obama made the closing a promise of his 2008 campaign and repeated it again in the White House, while the prison still remains in operation, is seen as a serious betrayal. But each time I read about this I’m struck by the same thought: The horror of Guantánamo is not its being open, not its mere existence. Its horror lies in its being the site of more than 10 years of terrible abuse of human beings. If the prison is closed and all its inmates are moved to another prison, and the abuses continue, what would have been accomplished? How would the cause of human rights be benefitted? I think that activists should focus on the abuses, regardless of the location.

The War on Terror – They’re really getting serious about it now

For disseminating classified materials that exposed war crimes, Julian Assange is now honored as an official terrorist as only America can honor. We Shall Never Forget 9/11, Vol. II: The True Faces of Evil – Terror, a graphic coloring novel for children, which comes with several pages of perforated, detachable “terrorist trading cards”. Published by Really Big Coloring Books Inc. in St. Louis, the cards include Assange, Timothy McVeigh, Jared Lee Loughner, Ted Kaczynski, Maj. Nidal Hasan, Bill Ayers, and others. 5

Superpower – the film

Starring Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Michel Chossudovksy, Karen Kwiatowski (Pentagon “defector”), William Blum, Sergei Khrushchev (son of Nikita), Kathy Kelly, and many others:https://vimeo.com/55141496 (enter password when prompted: barbarasteegmuller) – 2 hours long.

New Book and talk

The eagerly awaited (I can name at least three people) new book by William Blum is here at last. “America’s Deadliest Export – Democracy: The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else” is made up of essays which are a combination of new and old; combined, updated, expanded; many first appeared in one form or another in the Anti-Empire Report, or on my website, at various times during the past ten years or so.

As mentioned in the book, activists like myself are sometimes scoffed at for saying the same old things to the same old people; just spinning our wheels, we’re told, “preaching to the choir” or “preaching to the converted”. But long experience as speaker, writer and activist in the area of foreign policy tells me it just ain’t so. From the questions and comments I regularly get from my audiences, via email and in person, I can plainly see that there are numerous significant information gaps and misconceptions in the choir’s thinking, often leaving them unable to see through the newest government lie or propaganda trick; they’re unknowing or forgetful of what happened in the past that illuminates the present; or knowing the facts but unable to apply them at the appropriate moment; vulnerable to being led astray by the next person who offers a specious argument that opposes what they currently believe, or think they believe; and, perhaps worst of all, many of them suffer pathetically from an over-abundance of conspiracy thinking, often carrying a justified suspicion or idea to a ridiculous level; virtually nothing is taken at face value.

The choir needs to be frequently reminded and enlightened to be better able to influence others, to be better activists.

To order a signed copy directly from me you can go to my website: http://killinghope.org.

I’ll be speaking about the new book at Politics and Prose bookstore, 5015 Connecticut Ave., NW, in Washington, DC, Saturday, March 2 at 1 pm.

Notes

1. May 28, 2012, speaking at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington ↩
2. George Kennan, Wikipedia entry ↩
3. US Department of the Army, Afghanistan, A Country Study (1986), pp.121, 128, 130, 223, 232 (Library of Congress Call Number DS351.5 .A34 1986) ↩
4. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Wikipedia entry ↩
5. View the press release; see the cards ↩

US Officials Confess To Targeting Iran’s Civilian Population

Condemned By Every Syllable They Utter…

Tehran — Azadeh, a graduate law student from Tehran University, on the sidelines of Iran’s Third Annual Hollywoodism (www.hollywoodism.orghttp) reminded her interlocutors, of the obvious damming admissions last week by two US politicians:

“It would be a defense lawyer’s worst nightmare wouldn’t it? I mean to have one’s clients, in this case the Vice-President of the United States and the outgoing Secretary of state confess so publicly to serial international crimes against a civilian population?”

The confessions and the crimes, she correctly enumerated to her audience, were those admitted to by US Vice-President Joe Biden and outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this past week.

Both of the US officials, in discussing US relations with the Islamic Republic, openly admitted that the US-led sanctions against Iran (and Syria) are politically motivated and constitute a “soft-war” against the nearly 80 million people of Iran (23 million people in Syria) in order to achieve regime change.

Mrs. Clinton, was the first of the dynamic duo to be heard from. She acknowledged that the harsh US sanctions were intended to target and send the people of Iran a message. “So we hope that the Iranian people will make known their concerns… so my message to Iranians is do something about this.”

Some listening concluded she meant food riots and inflation riots to overthrow the Iranian government. An Australian Broadcasting Company interviewer asked Clinton on January 31 of last year: “If you have issues with the government of Iran, why destroy the Iranian people with the current sanctions in place? It’s very difficult to find certain medicines in Iran. Where is your sense of humanity?”

What the Clinton interrogator had in mind, she explained later, were the US-led sanctions reducing Iran’s GDP growth (-1.1% GDP) resulting in an inflation of 21.0% that is being felt mostly by the civilian population. As well as periodic food shortages in the supermarkets of such staples such as rice, there are price rises on everything. For example, per page printing for students is up as much as 400% and the cost of a used car up 300%. In general, supermarket items have risen 100 to 300 percent or higher over the past twenty-four months and, devastating for many, certain lifesaving medicines are no longer available.

Clinton: “Well, first, let me say on the medicine and on food and other necessities, there are no sanctions.” This statement is utter nonsense and Mrs. Clinton knows it.

The targeting process by the US Treasury Department is well entrenched in Washington. When dear reader is next in Washington, DC, perhaps on a tour bus riding down NW Pennsylvania Avenue following a visit to the US Capitol, consider getting off the bus at 15th and Pennsylvania at the US Department of the Treasury. Walk around the main building and you will see an Annex building. This building, as Clinton knows well, and like Biden, has visited more than once, houses the Office of Financial Assets Control (OFAC). The well-funded agency’s work includes precisely targeting “food and medicines and other necessities” in order to force the civilian population of Iran to achieve regime change.

For more than two hundred years, since the War of 1812, when OFAC was founded to sanction the British, the office has become expert at imposing sanctions and it has done so more than 2000 times. OFAC currently uses a large team of specialists and computers to think-up, design, test, and send to AIPAC and certain pro-Zionist officials and members of congress their work-product topped off by recommendations.

OFAC and its Treasury Department associates have had a hand in virtually every US sanction applied to Iran since President Jimmy Carter issued Executive Order 12170 in November 1979 freezing about $12 billion in Iranian assets, including bank deposits, gold and other properties. From the State Sponsor of Terrorism Designation Act in 1979 to the Syria Accountability Act of 2004, more than a dozen Presidential Executive Orders including the 2011-2012 Executive orders which froze the US property of high-rankling Syrian and Iranian officials and more broadly E.O. 13582 which froze all governmental assets of the Syrian government and prohibited Americans from doing business with the Syrian government and banned all US import of Syrian petroleum products.

What OFAC does with its data base is science not art. It can calculate quite precisely the economic effect on the civilian population of a single action designating one company, bank, government entity or infrastructure system of a country. OFAC, on behalf of its government, electronically wages a cold war against its civilian targets.

This week OFAC  and the Treasury Department blacklisted Iran’s state broadcasting authority, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, responsible for broadcast policy in Iran and overseas production at Iranian television and radio channels,  potentially limiting viewing and listening opportunities for Iran’s civilian population. Its director, Ezzatollah Zarghami, was included
in the action. Additionally sanctioned are Iran’s Internet-policing agencies and a major electronics producer. David S. Cohen, the pro-Zionist Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, who oversees the OFAC sanctions effort, reportedly following meetings with Israeli officials, said last week’s actions were meant to “tighten the screws and intensify the economic pressure against the Iranian regime.”

In reality, the sanctions target the civilian population and the “Iranian regime” won’t be much affected. The same applies to Syria. Despite the public relations language that “food and medicine are exempted from the brutal US-led sanctions, as OFAC well knows, the reality is something else. They know well the chilling effects of the sanctions on international suppliers of medicines and food stuffs with respect to a targeted country. The US Treasury department has thousands of gigabytes of data confirming that the boards of directors of international business do not, and will not allow their companies to risk millions of dollars in profits by technically violating any of the thousands of details in the sanctions — many of which are subject to interpretation — for the sake of doing business with Iran or Syria. This is why there are severe shortages of medicines and certain foodstuffs in these sanctioned countries and to state otherwise is Orwellian News-Speak.

OFAC does not operate in a vacuum. It works closely with other US agencies including the 16 intelligence agencies that together make up the UN Intelligence Community. Together they have applied sanctions of great breadth and severity against the civilian populations of Syria and Iran. These sanctions have been bolstered on occasion by several direct and/or green-lighted Israeli assassinations and cyber-assaults, hoping to foment civil unrest to achieve regime change and other political goals.

A few days after Mrs. Clinton’s somewhat inadvertent confession that the US government intentionally targets the civilian population of Iran, Vice President Joe Biden chimed in on the 4th of February that the US was ready to hold direct negotiations with Iran but added the caveat, “We have also made clear that Iran’s leaders need not sentence their people to economic deprivation,” acknowledging as did Hillary that the US sanctions are intended to target and harm the Iranian and Syrian people. A senior Obama administration official described the latest step as “a significant turning of the screw,” meaning that the people of Iran face a “stark choice” between bowing to US demands and reviving their oil revenue, the country’s economic lifeblood or more and more sanctions will follow until they do.

This targeting of Iran’s and Syria’s civilian population by US-led sanctions is a massive violation of the principles, standards and rules of international law and their most fundamental underpinnings which is the protection of civilians.

Some examples:

The 1977 Additional Protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions prohibit any measure that has the effect of depriving a civilian population of objects indispensable to its survival. Article 70 of Protocol I mandates relief operations to aid a civilian population that is “not adequately provided” with supplies and Article 18 of Protocol II requires relief operations for a civilian population that suffers “undue hardship owing to a lack of supplies essential for its survival, such as foodstuffs and medical supplies.”

Prohibition on Starvation as a Method of Warfare

• Under international humanitarian law, civilians enjoy a right to humanitarian assistance during armed conflicts.

• Art. 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention obligates states to facilitate the free passage and distribution of relief goods including medicines, foodstuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under 15, expectant mothers, and maternity cases.

• Art. 70 of Additional Protocol I prohibits interfering with delivery of relief goods to all members of the civilian population.

• US-led sanctions are prohibited by the principle of proportionality found in Arts. 51 and 57 of Additional Protocol I.

• Under the terms of Art. 3 common to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, humanitarian and relief actions must be taken. Pursuant to Art. 18(2) of Additional Protocol II, relief societies must be allowed to offer their services to provide humanitarian relief

• The US-led sanctions violate the Rule of Distinction between civilians and combatants

The Right to life

The US-led sanctions violate the right to life incorporated in numerous international human rights instruments including Art. 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966; Art. 2 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, 1950; and Art. 4 of the African Charter of Human Rights, 1981.

The Rights of the Child

One of the groups most vulnerable to US-led sanctions in Syria and Iran are children. The rights of children are laid down in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989, which currently stands as the most widely ratified international agreement. Most relevant in the context of the US-led sanctions are Arts. 6 and 24 of the Convention, according to which every child has the inherent right to life and the right to the highest attainable standard of health and access to medical services.

If “terrorism” means, as the United States government defines it as the targeting of civilians in order to induce political change from their government, what is it called when the American government itself applies intense economic suffering on a civilian population, causing malnutrition, illnesses, starvation and death in order to induce regime change?

The US-led sanctions against Iran and Syria are illegal, inhumane, ineffective, immoral and outrageous. They must be resisted every day by every person of good will, everywhere, until they are withdrawn.

Gun Confiscation – Last Refuge of The Tyrant

Few polarizing subjects are more hotly debated than gun control. Usually lost in the fray of emotional diatribes to ban guns, are the historic empirical foundations of our forefathers who fought a revolution to escape from imperial tyranny. The true reality in today’s AmeriKa is that individual liberty is the most despised activity that any citizen can exert in their lives. Both the popular state worship culture and the authoritarian hoodlums that run the government are so fearful of armed independent citizens, that they are eager to burn the Bill of Rights. Face it, the government is committed to force you to be a ward of the state and will kill you if you resist.

Because of government school propaganda, those indoctrinated during the last several decades are woefully lacking in the knowledge of their own heritage. Phyllis Schlafly writes in, The Founding Fathers On Right To Bear Arms, and reminds of the essence in the Second Amendment.

James Madison: Americans have “the advantage of being armed” — unlike the citizens of other countries where “the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”

Patrick Henry: “The great objective is that every man be armed. . . . Everyone who is able may have a gun.”

George Mason: “To disarm the people [is] the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”

Samuel Adams: “The Constitution shall never be construed . . . to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”

Alexander Hamilton: “The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.”

Richard Henry Lee: “To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.”

“The chief reason America has remained a free country is the widespread private ownership of firearms. Individual ownership of guns made the American Revolution possible. The principal purpose of the Second Amendment was to maintain our freedom from government. It is an insult to our heritage to imply that the Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment just to protect deer hunters.”

End of story, but the beginning of the gulag. Before bleeding hearts start their vicious attacks on the gun toting culture, a critical examination of your own national allegiance must be questioned. Do you freely give your loyalty to the principles upon which the nation was founded or do you simply pledge your obedience to an imperium empire?

Consider that public officials are terrified of an armed citizenry because they are well aware that their personal safety might someday be confronted. Their outlaw edicts and coercive submission is recognized as a dictatorship. However, an armed insurrection is so remote, based upon the overwhelming lack of character and courage of most populace denizens. Facing an enemy on a battlefield would be more an exercise of genuflection and public remorse for daring to oppose the institutional establishment.

The current state of the art of weaponry, as any viewer of the TV military channel knows, is so advanced that open conflict against the Federal Stasi would result is suicide by cop. Homeland Security is designed to be the domestic Gestapo. Any thinking and liberty-loving person must conclude that President Barack Obama acts as if he is a potentate.

Rule by executive orders is a formula for tyrannical governance. Gun registration builds the database for constabulary confiscation. An organized knock at the door means that abolition of banned munitions from the “Cold Dead Hands” will look more like a visit from an IRS tax auditor than an assault from the nearest SWAT team.

Too many people accept that subjects must be intimidated into compliance of surrender. The threat of armed defiance is less likely than meek regimentation for transport to a FEMA camp. All those body bags will be used more effectively, when people’s opposition to being re-educated fails, than for dragging out your remains from your own house.

The practical prospects to use violence against a well funded and equipped force of government storm troopers is problematic at best. The solution to marital law thuggery is to repatriate the military legions stationed globally in the expansion of the empire. Somewhere within the ranks of the active military, the means to confront Emperor Obama exists. The military oath states:

“I, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

Careerist politicians, a tenured judiciary and an entrenched and escalating bureaucracy that consolidates the central government monster have systematically dismantled the Constitution. The repressive regime would have you believe that the Bradley Manning’s in the military machine are traitors just as much as Benedict Arnold. Hitherto, the certainty that going it alone resistance allows for the enormous capacities of the Intelligence Community apparatus to target any lone individual.

Remember the predictive example of the American crypto-anarchist, James Dalton Bell. “He created the idea of arranging for anonymously sponsored assassination payments via the Internet, which he called “assassination politics”. Since the publication of the “Assassination Politics” essay, Bell was targeted by the federal government of the United States. He was imprisoned on felony charges of tax evasion in 1997.”

Folks, let’s get real. Violent subversion just provides an excuse for even greater levels of repression. Likewise, gun confiscation has more to do with instilling universal fear in the minds of ordinary law abiding; translate – valid constitutional laws, than removing firepower out of your home.

Since the system dreads an armed citizenry, the criminal syndicates that divvy up their ruling fiefdoms, fear an informed population even more. Knowledge is required, but action must accompany an awakening that the totalitarian government thrives because civil society obeys the despotism of their feudal master.

Per the pernicious mass media, civil conduct is defined as surrendering your guns in order to repent out of a fictitious guilt or a bogus empathy for innocent victims. Insultingly, the pressitute media professes to be the purveyor of altruism. Never will you hear one utterance about the foundations of individual natural rights that underpins rightful authority for personal and community liberty.

The Second Amendment of the Constitution was written to protect society from the instinctual tendencies of a tyrannical government. Where is the outrage from a horror-struck public? The laundry list of dictatorial politicians from California to Illinois and in New York has identified themselves as enemies of the people.

The disgusting “Gabby Gifford’s” executive order that is being engineered by the Biden comrades will prohibit the manufacture and sale of a comprehensive range and types of weapons and accessories. Administrative fiat out of the barrel of a government regulation is more dangerous than a Glock pistol pointed at your head from a FBI agent. Many civil servants still restrain their oppressive actions to the appearance of legal conduct. However, the tyrants that make policy are bent on destroying the will of the public to oppose the transformation of America into a total police state.

The system will implode when enough genuine patriotic resistors organize a modern day Committee of Correspondence. The Tree of Liberty requires heroes. Unfortunately, most compliant citizens are cowards.

The rush to purchase guns demonstrates that a groundswell of public awareness is growing. The hoops designed to make gun ownership burdensome or personal carry permits nearly impossible to obtain, need to be endured and applied for in greater numbers.

By sending a loud and clear message to the establishment elitists, the righteous citizen militia will undertake the legitimate role of the Minute Men. Treason against the people has been official policy for decades. Now is the time to revolt against the TSA mindset that is calculated to condition the acquiescent and the timid from exercising their basic rights.

A countrywide day of protest leading up to a national strike of civil disobedience is the inherent response to government tyranny. Engage in a public dialogue at your local assembly. Organize events that demonstrate the resolve and bravery of our ancestors. Stand up to oppressive authority and defy the illicit tactics of the goon squads.

The system is playing a bluff. Push back now will spare bloodshed later. Never initiate any action that can be construed as violent behavior. Public political speech is the most skillful weapon to use, when exposing the oppressors.

The “War on Liberty” needs to be fought for the minds and hearts of all judicious thinking citizens. Guns are not the issue, recapturing your heritage and exercising your God given rights is the struggle. The state of war is on. Fight it with fervor, while maintaining your dignity. Nothing less would dishonor your defiant forebearers.

Governments And Guns Are Socially Analogous

People Control Both…

Libertarianism has become popular.  But is it really the answer to the despotic regimes that have characterized the history of human society?  Some who claim the name are close but many are far into utopian fantasies.

I like Lou Rockwell.  His internet page is always a source of truth and commendable prose. I saved a quote where he said that the “moral law applies across the board, and that one is not exempted from it by a government suit.”  That is a good starting point as long as the source of the moral law is the Word of the Christian Triune God.  Unfortunately, God’s Law is rarely, if ever, mentioned in Libertarian circles.   

Most Libertarians are pedagogic, articulate, intellectual, and industrious; they have no peers in chronicling the swift deterioration of our nation.  Their primary moral code is that coercion is evil and freedom is righteous.  Most envision a society free from restraints where everyone considers the rights of their fellows. Their objective is attractive and though its realization is murky and imprecise their ranks are growing.

Libertarianism has roots in the Godless intellectualism of the Enlightenment.  Seventeenth Century French intellectual Rene Descartes declared   “I think, therefore I am”. Deification of the human mind began the tragic and irrational march toward human divinity.  Thomas Paine called it “The Age of Reason” and with the irreverence of a rebel and the brilliance of an intellectual he discarded the formal religion of the ages in favor of his own deistic opinions.

Intellectualism spawned the Enlightenment and like its progenitor Libertarianism is steeped in intellectualism.  Free trade ala Ludwig von Mises takes on an almost divine character.  The fractured condition of the movement provides insight into the results of the deification of the human mind.

Libertarian ranks include Liberals, Conservatives, Paleo-Conservatives, Anarchists, Minarchists, limited government rebels, mislead Christians, freedom loving intellectuals, and rebellious youth.  There are Socialist Libertarians and Capitalist Libertarians.  European definitions tend to be anarchic and politically left while American definitions are broader supporting free market capitalism.  All tend to resist coercion and emphasize freedom, liberty, and voluntary association.  There are moral Libertarians and immoral Libertarians.  There are Koch Libertarians and Rockwell Libertarians.  As with many Godless intellectual movements there is a wide acceptance of free sex.

Former Congressman Ron Paul has done as much as anyone to popularize the Libertarian Movement. His run for the Presidency was filled with wisdom and honesty that would serve us well but his defeat was programmed before he began his campaign.  Peter Theil, an openly gay member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group, provided major support.  I voted for Ron Paul and thought his financing was a result of large quantities of small contributions from internet sources.  I now wonder if it was a setup to insure the election of Barak Obama.

Libertarianism lacks an anchor and is plagued with the anarchy of human opinion.  When organizations become fractured by opposing opinions they become weak through diversity.  Power results from a clear objective.  There are too many voices in the movement. In a Business Insider article Eric Zuesse writes that Libertarians “entirely avoid the real question, which is: What type of government is good? As an “ideology,” libertarianism doesn’t even make it to first base: it’s fake, from the get-go. That’s why libertarianism fails.”

Allegiance to God’s overarching legal system provides an anchor and a big step forward for freedom. Opinions are a form of coercion with each proponent striving to dominate.  Anthony Wile at the Daily Bell recently posted a fascinating interview with George Guilder.  Guilder is a consummate insider who lost his father to WWII and was parented by David Rockefeller.  Some of Guilder’s opinions are compatible with patriots, new world order opponents, and some Libertarians.  The interview is here.   It is an interesting interview of a very smart man.  However, I am not as much interested in the interview itself as I am with the demeanor of Gilder’s responses. He responds with the assurance of the wealthy elite and Wile accepts his responses with the demeanor of the proletariat.  Though they are just opinions Gilder expects them to be heeded; there is tyranny in his manner.  An interview with Walter Block provides another example of dominate opinion.  Block has the lofty credentials of an academic. He expects respect for his positions but with less dominance.  Read his interview here.

Rejection of the Christian doctrine of original sin undergirds scores of disastrous social and political ventures. The government of the United States of America was founded and has been conducted under the assumption that government is a human domain.  We live in a Democratic Republic which depends on the voting public to elect individuals who will abide by a Constitution.

God provided Commandments, not opinions.  Commandments are authoritative and dominating, they demand compliance.  Opinions vary from man to man and are subject to rejections.  Commandments vest authority in God while opinions vest authority in the creature.  One is God centered, the other is humanistic.  God’s Commandments are simple and immutable; human law is voluminous, complex, emendable, and often obtuse.

The United States Constitution is a man made document that is being shredded by men and women who have taken a sacred oath to uphold it.  These are evil, dishonest people.  This kind of behavior is typical of the majority of kings, queens, and dictators that have enslaved and abused the earth’s population from antediluvian times.  It would create severe problems in an anarchic Libertarian society.

Absolute freedom is like infinity, it is beyond the kin of mankind.  We are captives in a body and captives in a universe.  We had nothing to do with our birth and baring suicide we have little to do with our death. Our inclination is to fall into a captivity of action that imprisons our lives.  Some of us become obsessed with business, some with learning, some with drugs, some with sex, some with ego, etc.  A mature person in a properly governed society should be free to choose where he will use his life.

Al Benson began one of his recent columns with this paragraph: “We see in operation today two kingdoms in the world—the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of man (the state). There are few legitimate governments anymore that really comprise the “state.” Most of the legitimate ones are gone, having been replaced with dictatorships, oligarchies, or fake “republics” that fool people with charades they refer to as elections and whose results have already been predetermined long before the “election” takes place. We recently had one of those in the United States.”

The human freedom being pursued by the Libertarian agenda is at war with the Kingdom of God and in spite of its popularity it cannot realize its objective. Freedom is rooted in Christianity.  It is rooted in individual responsibility and obedience to God’s Commandments.  God’s government is the opposite of the new world order; His government is decentralized. The family is the basic unit.  The state acts as protector and the church is God’s agent.

The universal application of Law is the key to freedom.  All of society; the individual, the church, and the state, must abide by God’s Law.  Government cannot be allowed to pass laws to which they, themselves, are not subject; it always ends in tyranny.

Christians have been living in a dream world and the next few months and years may bring a big change in their religious perception.  God’s Judgment has fallen on our world!   R. J. Rushdoony wrote that “the Moloch state is a product of apostasy.”  We are in the grip of a product of apostasy that is abolishing our freedom and conducting a war against God and His people.  Hobby Lobby is resisting the new health care law which demands support for abortion.  The Moloch state will require a massive daily fine for non-compliance.  The state does not worship the Christian God of Hobby Lobby; its god is the anti-Christ.

Hundreds of thousands of Dispensational Christians are expecting world government to bring the Rapture and the Second Coming of Christ.  It could happen but it is likely it will not.  If they are wrong they will be shocked to find themselves living in a police state run by an evil cabal that hates their Savior.  The dictionary defines apostasy as abandonment of a previous loyalty.  We have abandoned the orthodox Reformed Christian Faith that was bequeathed by our fathers and followed a heresy that has allowed the humanistic hand of evil to invade our religion, our lives, our homes, and our nation.

As the horrors of the new world order afflict the Western World people will realize that government is not the source redemption.  They will concede that we have not followed the gift of salvation with obedience and dominion; and that if we expect to live in freedom again we must turn from our sin and repent of our wicked ways.

Christians often quote 2 Chronicles 7:14 where God promises to remove His judgment “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”.   I get many emails quoting this Bible passage but none of them specify what is meant by turning from our wicked ways.   God’s judgment is not confined to abortion or to homosexuality or to disobeying the often questionable personal guidance that comes from God “speaking to” individuals.  Judgment comes for disobedience to His Commandments (His Law).

We have lost our nation to Moloch because we have allowed a foreign religion to change our laws legalizing the evils of abortion, homosexuality, murder, dishonesty, theft, injustice, war, genocide, hate, pugnacity, greed, torture and independence.   When a society allows its government to disobey God’s Law that society is on the road to ruin.

Freedom is not realized by abandoning government and allowing moral evil to run rampant, it is not a product of a lack of laws, nor can it be produced by intellectual endeavor.  Freedom is a result of obedience to the Commandments of our Creator.  Libertarians put the rational product of their minds above the Law of God.  They are not the only ones who believe their opinions are superior to God’s. Our society is full of legal standards, folkways, and mores that are at odds with God.  We are living in a cesspool created by our own vain laxity and many have not yet smelled the stench.

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