Wondering about the Wandering Who

[Book Review by Israel Shamir of Gilad Atzmon, The Wandering Who?: A Study of Jewish Identity Politics]

Gilad Atzmon is larger than life; no delicate and sensitive artistic soul, he is rather a living volcano, a titan with a Rabelaisian sense of humor and enough energy to power a city. Nights, you will find him entertaining his fans in every corner of the globe with his masterful saxophone playing: tonight in Mexico City, tomorrow night in Sheffield. His days are spent producing a vast quantity of writing and blogging, sending out at least two letters a day to his many readers. His previous book,  , is a very funny novel with more than a touch of the macabre and grotesque. It features a roving Israeli orchestra smuggling Nazis in double bass cases. It also contains kosher pigs, sexy spies, smelly underwear, casual killings, and a row of Israeli national leaders, all with their trousers down.

The best writings of Gilad Atzmon firmly belong to the realm of Israeli literature. His preference for writing in English attennuates his essentially Israeli character, just as Beckett remained a British writer while writing in French. His merciless goading of tender Jewish sentiments recalls the much-loved Israeli playwright, Hanoch Levin; this explains why Atzmon is enjoyed more by his country-mates than by Diaspora Jews. His newest book,   is a collection of essays that revolve around Jewish-identity politics. This subject (“what does it mean to be a Jew”) holds much fascination to people of Jewish origin. Many contemporary Jewish writers indulge in this sort of reflection, usually slipping into woe and whine mixed with self-adoration, and coated over with treacle and romanticism.

Being no delicate flower (see above), Atzmon delivers robust and forceful opinions with both hands. He regains some of the lost honesty once expressed by free thinkers and Zionists of the fin-de-siècle. Early Zionists from Nordau to Herzl provided some very frank and critical assessments of Jewish society. Yet even more critical was Otto Weininger (1880 – 1903), the tragic Viennese writer who dared to connect sex and Jews in his great bestseller ; he followed up his success by committing suicide at the age of 23. Weininger has long been forgotten in Europe, and yet he holds a fascination for Israelis. A play by prominent Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol, Weininger’s Night (subtitled “The Soul of a Jew”) was a great hit in 1983; it was responsible for opening up Israeli theatre to the world. It was the first Israeli play ever staged in Moscow’s MXAT theatre (in 1990), directed by talented Gedalia Besser.

Atzmon has a loving and thoughtful essay about him. He provides some valuable insights. He turns Weininger’s “I dislike what I am” into “I dislike what I do”.  Atzmon sees Weininger’s suicide as an impetuous reaction against his womanly/Jewish side. Atzmon sympathizes with Weininger’s feeling that “Jewishness” is somewhat similar to “queerness”, and this provides a key to the book’s understanding.Jewish-identity musings, like gender-identity discussions, tend to fluctuate between the vulgar and the brazen; both can seem boring and repetitious unless the reader is directly involved, and perhaps even then.

The first essay of the collection has the freshness and sincerity of true testimony. The story of a young man trying to break free from his fiercely nationalist non-religious Jewish family background is akin to any man’s escape from stifling gender politics. Imagine a virile young man conceived in vitro and brought up by a sorority of lesbian activists, who has finally come of age and broken out into a rich and satisfying world of natural love. Clearly one might expect and forgive such a young man his unflattering depictions of “dykes” and “butches”, but such transgressions could never be forgiven by the sanctimonious gay activists and PC wardens who decide for us what is permissible and what is not.

This in fact has happened with Atzmon’s book: it has generated a significant amount of heated controversy. This kind of publicity is never bad for book sales. As for the author, he is no shrinking violet and quite up to the task; in fact, he is a pugnacious fellow, able to defend himself and always ready for a good brawl. Many of Atzmon’s critics seem to think that when we talk about Jews we must speak as we do about the dead: say something nice, or don’t say anything at all. And yet who should critique the activities and attitudes of the dead but the living? Banning all outsiders from the debate is a recipe for insipidity.

And yet, Atzmon is no outsider. An (ex-) Israeli, he has some first-hand knowledge, and he introduces us to a long obscured side of Jewishness, just as Jean Genet once reminded us about the backside of queerness. In Genet’s oevre we see the gender-confused men who are not saintly martyrs on their way to Auschwitz, but brutal criminals who kill and betray their friends in the hellish darkness of a jail. Though art is perhaps a better mode for such delivery.

One of his problems is that the Jewish subject is over-explored, and one treads on the footsteps of predecessors, even if one does not give them credit. The most interesting essay in the book contains Atzmon’s reflections on an essay by Milton Friedman. Friedman was curious as to why so many Jews had abandoned their historically Left-leaning socialist ways. To avoid the conclusion that Jews used to love Justice and Mercy, and now they have traded it for Power, Friedman instead posits that Jews are most naturally creatures of the Right. Friedman declares that while pure capitalism is the environment in which Jews thrive best, for one hundred years Jews were kept out of right-wing politics because the Right stood with the Church; the Left, anti-clerical and atheist, accepted them as they were. It was only after the Right was separated from the Church that Jews began to stream back into right-wing movements, and they ended up wholeheartedly embracing capitalism of the most brutal kind. This is a valuable observation, something that has yet to be learned by leftist philosemites like Seumas Milne, and by the Christian Right. The mass participation of Jews in a movement has a price, and this price is the rejection of the Christian Church.

Atzmon rejects Friedman’s conclusions: he would rather walk us through all the hypocrisies of the Jewish Left, as though a change in leadership would solve the problem. This attitude is very common among educated Israelis who have lived through the great betrayal of humanism by the left-wing parties, climaxing with labour leader Ehud Barak carrying water for Sharon and Netanyahu. Since the destruction of the Israeli Left can be directly attributed to these “traitors to the cause”, Atzmon might be forgiven for thinking that but for a crisis in leadership the Left would be still ruling the roost.

Atzmon gets carried away by his own rhetoric when he proclaims that the Jewish Left wants to seize assets of the rich just because Jews do not respect Goyim property rights. This is plainly not true: radical leftists everywhere call for the expropriation of all banks, Jewish or otherwise, and Jewish leftists are no different in this aspect. Jews are the wealthiest minority in the world; they have the most to lose in a leftist revolution. It’s apparent to everyone except Atzmon that the Jewish move to the Right is as natural as bacon.

With zeal of a born-again Christian, Atzmon offers not the smallest fig leaf of hope for good-hearted Jews. If a Jew supports the Left, he is doing it because he wants to rob wealthy Goys with Talmudic impunity. If a Jew supports the Right, it is because he wants to steal land. If a Jew supports Palestine, he is doing it in order to take over the Palestinian movement. This is a bridge too far. This sort of self-criticism should be reserved for confession. Not all Jews are that self-serving. Yes, there are hopeless wretches like Tony Greenstein and Roland Rance, leftist British Jews whose main participation in the Palestinian struggle is constrained to battling phantom antisemitism and Holocaust rhetoric, but not all Atzmon’s adversaries are paper tigers.

However, as Atzmon wrote in his essay on Weininger, one condemns one’s own faults, so perhaps this is a form of his contrition.

Atzmon is tough on Jewish tribalism, no endearing feature to be sure, but something not all rare in the Middle East. Jews are not any more tribalist than are Armenians, and no more nationalist than Georgians. This clannishness may be less common in British/American culture, but the tribal setup of immigrant croups is well known even there. Jewish success in the US and the UK cannot be explained by expounding upon Jewish insularity; a better explanation is traditional Jewish fidelity to power.

We could do with less psychologism and Portnoy’s complaints. Discussion of English or American identity and mentality does not lead to better understanding of British and American imperial policies. Likewise, policies of the World Jewry are very relevant for us, while Jewish mental attitudes are not. Who cares what Jews feel towards their neighbours? We care what the Jews do. Instead of dealing with bees, we need to know of swarms, and this is what Atzmon fails to deliver, because this brave man gets cold feet.

Atzmon is least convincing and most dull when he pedantically constructs his castle of exceptions and explanations intended to ward off the inevitable accusations of ‘hate’ and ‘racism’. He declares his preference for “accidental Jews”, i.e. people who are Jews by accident of birth. This alibi is designed to fortify his position against attack. It is as if Nietzsche added to his famous dictum (“You are going towomen? Do not forget the whip!”) a caveat “but beware some women are able to use the whip, too”. An allegoric poetic quality of writing has been ruined, and now nobody is happy. We admire Atzmon’s fierce and fearless qualities, and it’s kind of a let-down when he chooses to be prudent now and then.

One can point out several errors of fact in his book. For instance, he claims that Jews did not write any histories until the 19^th century. This is not true: Abraham Zacuto produced his  (“Sefer Yohassin”) in the last decades of the 15^th century, and this book is available on . Still he builds some castles on this factual error, and they collapse like straw houses.

However, Atzmon’s greatest fault is narcissism, or perhaps it is a myopic solipsism. Atzmon remains locked in the very Jewish dichotomy of Jews vs. Gentiles. He does not seem to appreciate the marvellous variety of the Gentiles; he cannot recognize that the Nations of the Earth are quite different from each other. The British are not the same as the Palestinians, nor are they as French as France. And yet for Atzmon, they are all one happy crowd without specific features. In vain shall we seek to learn what are the qualities of the Palestinians that have attracted him (except perhaps the ability to make good hummus). The one all-redeeming quality that they all share is that they are not Jewish. For this reason he suggests that Jews fully adapt to the modern, generic, global cosmopolitan monoculture of multiculturalism. This is absolutely unnecessary. While we applaud acculturation, Jews should adopt the culture of the land they inhabit, become one with the folk they live with. There is no shortcut to universality. I would like to read about Atzmon hanging out with average Brits, Scouses, and Brummies, or about his adventures with Palestinian shepherds, but they are not to be found: in a diverse world, he sees only Jews.

Another problem is the absence of God. Indeed, all discourse on Jews sine God is quite useless. I am aware that in the modern British climate, if Atzmon were to publish his thoughts on God and Jews, he would not find a publisher. You may use every obscenity, but you should not mention Christ. And yet Jews are first of all a religious community; a valid analysis of Jewish identity must take religion into account. Atzmon purposely adds a disclaimer declaring he will not criticise Judaism, but this simply ducks the issue.

He does give himself permission to use the Bible against them, but his literal readings are too primitive for the sophisticated readers of the 21st century. One can’t quote bloody stories of the Conquest of Canaan from the Book of Joshua like one quotes the admissions of a criminal. So many wonderful minds have discussed these tales, from St Jerome to Edward Said, and all of them had more valuable thoughts than Atzmon has to share. Indeed, when God says: you will inherit houses you did not build and vineyards you did not plant, Atzmon says: “that’s why the Jews seized Palestine!” This is trite. We live in houses we did not build, most especially in the houses of our bodies, built by God. We enjoy many wonderful things we did not produce. For instance, we enjoy Atzmon’s saxophone, though we didn’t built it. God’s grace gave us these things. This Biblical verse reminds us all that we receive a lot of undeserved things, and that we should all work harder to justify God’s trust in us.

The bottom line is that identity musings are dry and boring stuff; Atzmon is actually a much better writer than one would conclude from reading this book. He wanted to get it off his chest. Fine! Now let us see more of his witty novels.

P.S. Naturally I side with Atzmon in his polemics against his numerous detractors, but their arguments are so senile that it would be a waste of reader’s time to dwell time and time again on the endless and fruitless assertions of ‘hate’ and ‘self-hate’. What we do is soul-searching, not hate. Non-Jews have become so over-sensitised to allegations of race hatred that they swarm with the rest even when it’s an honest discussion between Jews.

Get Ready for a New Human Species

If some of the information emerging from the technology, governmental, and academic worlds are any indication, not only is the police state here; the scientific dictatorship is right around the corner. Indeed, if recent commentsmade by Juan Enriquez are indicative of the coming state merger between technology and genetics, we have much to be concerned about.

For those that are unfamiliar with Enriquez, he may not be the most flashy of the science superstars currently on the scene, but he is not exactly a nobody either. Enriquez was the founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project and is currently chairman and CEO of Biotechonomy LLC., a “life sciences research and investment firm” and managing director of Excel Venture Management. He is the author of numerous books, including As The Future Catches You: How Genomics And Other Forces Are Changing Your Life, Work, Health, and Wealth and The Untied States of America: Polarization, Fracturing, and Our Future.

Enriquez also serves on the boards of Cabot Corporation, The Harvard Medical School Genetics Advisory Council, The Chairman’s International Council of the America’s Society, the Visiting Committee of Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center, Tuft University’s EPIIC, and Harvard Business School’s PAPSAC.

Enriquez is a Harvard graduate himself who has previously served as CEO of Mexico City’s Urban Development Corporation, Coordinator General of Economic Policy and Chief of Staff for Mexico’s Secretary of State. Enriquez also boasts of working closely with Craig Venter, who is generally credited with the mapping of the human genome.

Obviously, Enriquez has established quite the résumé in the academic and business worlds.  This, combined with his appearances on the very popular TED conference talks, only add to his qualifications in the field of culture creation which is most likely his role. Indeed, much like the other scientific superstars provided to the public by the culture industry, it appears Mr. Enriquez may be more talented in the area of delivering messages than making discoveries. This is why Enriquez’s comments during the interview with Technology Review’s Emily Singer are somewhat disturbing.

The interview was conducted after Enriquez’s speech at a Technology Review conference where he mentioned that, as described by Singer, “Our newfound ability to write the code of life will profoundly change the world as we know it.”  According to Enriquez, because we as humans can engineer both our environment and ourselves, humanity is now breaking the “boundaries” of our own natural existence and development which, of course, is described as “Darwinian evolution,” itself a questionable strand of ahighly suspect theory to begin with.

Nevertheless, when asked why he thought there is going to be a new human species, Enriquez responded in typical eugenicist fashion. He said,

The new human species is one that begins to engineer the evolution of viruses, plants, animals, and itself. As we do that, Darwin’s rules get significantly bent, and sometimes even broken. By taking direct and deliberate control over our evolution, we are living in a world where we are modifying stuff according to our desires. 

He goes on to discuss the manner in which humans are already influencing their own “evolution.” He says:

If you turned off the electricity in the United States, you would see millions of people die quickly, because they wouldn’t have asthma medications, respirators, insulin, a whole host of things we invented to prevent people from dying. Eventually, we get to the point where evolution is guided by what we’re engineering. That’s a big deal. Today’s plastic surgery is going to seem tame compared to what’s coming.

Enriquez’s comments in this regard are a bit puzzling if the reader does not fully understand the position from which he is coming. The fact that millions of people are attached to electronic devices on which their lives depend is not a testament to guided or enhanced evolution at all. If anything, this would indicate a move in the opposite direction.

Keep in mind that Enriquez is a Darwinian Evolutionist, so he is keenly aware of the process by which Darwinian evolution allegedly progresses. For that reason, his comments may seem to be a contradiction of his own belief system to some. However, when one reads the rest of the interview, Enriquez’s statement begins to make more sense.

During the course of the short interview, Enriquez makes reference to how the new technology, as it emerges, will change virtually everything in society as we know it.

And he means everything. Not just industries. Not just economic disparity. Everything.

This includes morality itself. In fact, Enriquez even goes so far as to define this shift in morality as the “new ethics.”

Enriquez saves the best for last, however, when he explains how the “new ethics” will come into play.

He says:

The issue of [genetic variation] is a really uncomfortable question, one that for good reason, we have been avoiding since the 1930s and ’40s. A lot of the research behind the eugenics movement came out of elite universities in the U.S. It was disastrously misapplied. But you do have to ask, if there are fundamental differences in species like dogs and horses and birds, is it true that there are no significant differences in humans? We are going to have an answer to that question very quickly. If we do, we need to think through an ethical, moral framework to think about questions that go way beyond science.

This statement alone echoes the same mentality that was accepted and promoted during the early half of twentieth century to justify mass sterilization, institutionalization, social segregation, even .

Although eugenics is now allegedly abhorred by academia and the mainstream media, the fact is that it still plays as much a role in both science and government policy as it ever did. Only the names have changed.

Instead of “eugenics” and “racial hygiene,” the scientific community now promotes “social biology” and “sociobiology.” “Deficient” genes now replace the term “inferior” genes.  “Family planning” now replaces “abortion” and “sterilization.”

As quoted above, Enriquez stated that eugenics were disastrously misapplied in the 1930s and 1940s. Although he does not clarify whether he is referring to the American or the German version (or both), we can reasonably assume that he meant that the program was often race-based, as opposed to being based simply on “inferior genetics” across the board. Or, perhaps he is merely referring to the public relations issues that arose from these systems.  At this point, it is difficult to determine.

Regardless, he openly questions whether or not some humans are so different from one another that they may be considered an entirely different species. This, in and of itself, is reminiscent of a language used in eugenics campaigns in both Europe and America years ago.

Considering the fact that Enriquez is in favor of the creation of a “new ethics,” this statement alone, if his philosophy gains any traction, is quite concerning.

In light of the increase in propaganda masquerading as science and being peddled by science superstars like Enriquez, there is no doubt the world’s population is being prepped for a eugenics-based future. This time, of course, the system will be assisted by a much more sophisticated technological machine and, thus, a much more efficient system of eugenics. After years of non-stop television, media repetition, and “experts” who tout the benefits ofmerging man and machine, as well as the cost of inheriting “inferior” genes, there is also little doubt that the world’s population will march into this future willingly.

Although greatly improved in terms of implementation and public perception, we have seen this system before and, unfortunately, what Juan Enriquez labels a “new ethics” may not be very new at all.

Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Mullins, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University where he earned the Pee Dee Electric Scholar’s Award as an undergraduate. He has had numerous articles published dealing with a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, and civil liberties. He also the author of Codex Alimentarius – The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies and Five Sense Solutions. 

Source: Brandon Turbeville | activistpost.com

More On Government Gunrunners

My column last week focused on the federal government’s covert program to directly supply firearms to Mexican drug cartels. The program was discovered by a congressional investigation after a Mexican gang using a firearm–or firearms–supplied to it by the ATF, murdered a US Border Patrol agent.

A subsequent article written by Justin Raimondo sheds even more light on this disgusting debacle. Raimondo writes, “While the US military is being sent overseas in search of monsters to destroy, ignoring the good advice of the Founders, closer to home another war is brewing–right on the US-Mexican border. Border Patrol agent Brian A. Terry, killed on Dec. 21 near Rio Rico, Arizona, was murdered by drug cartel gunmen–using weapons smuggled across the US-Mexican border under the auspices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF).

“While the cartels shoot up half of Mexico, and terrorize the other half, it seems they’ve been getting a helping hand from those geniuses in Washington, whose ‘law enforcement’ agencies knowingly allowed sophisticated firearms to be smuggled across the border, into Mexico. As BATF special agent John Dodson told the House Oversight Committee:

“‘This is not a matter of some weapons that had gotten away from us or allowing a few to walk so that we could follow them to a much larger significant target. Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals was the plan. This was the mandate.

“‘ATF is supposed to be the guardians–the sheep dogs that protect against the wolves that prey upon us–especially along our southern border. But rather than meet the wolf head on, we sharpened his teeth, added number to his claws, all the while we sat idly by watching, tracking, and noting as he became a more efficient and effective predator.’

“This goes way beyond mere ‘blowback’–the CIA’s terminology for actions that produce unintended and unpleasant consequences. Because it’s hard to fathom exactly what was intended–unless it was the desire to sow chaos in Mexico and create a new threat to US citizens in the border states.”

Raimondo goes on to write, “Governments don’t allow such large weapons shipments to pass over their borders to foreign customers without having some foreign policy objective in mind–and, when it comes to the empire-builders in Washington, what other purpose could it be than the expansion of the imperial frontiers?

“Brushing aside the official explanation and excuses, when you look at what Operation Fast and Furious actually accomplished–the arming and consolidation of a military force currently fighting Mexico’s armed forces–the conclusion that we are actively involved in destabilizing the Mexican government is hard to avoid. It is a simple statement of fact.”

Raimondo continues, “The embattled Mexican government has barely been able to keep order, as the cartels rampage through the country, slaughtering thousands and dominating entire provinces: dead bodies keep turning up in droves, and it seems like a day hardly passes without some spectacular display of violence in a major Mexican city. Whole police forces are deserting, not out of disloyalty but out of fear–fear that the government is losing its grip and the drug cartels are about to take over.

“In this context, to put thousands of weapons in the hands of highly-organized criminals is inconceivable-unless the plan is to bring the Mexican government down and create chaos.”

Then, Raimondo draws a particularly astute observation by saying, “For years, our elites have been trying to forge links among the three nations that make up North America: ‘free trade’ zones that aren’t free, coordination of military and law enforcement agencies, etc. Some are even proposing a somewhat loopy-sounding ‘North American Union,’ supposedly with its own currency–the ‘Amero’–although officials (and the mainstream media) deny it, claiming it’s a rumor started by the hated ‘conspiracists.’ In the face of this criminal conspiracy carried out with the collaboration of several US government agencies, however, one has to wonder about the real purpose of Operation Fast and Furious.

“With Mexico at the mercy of US-armed drug gangs, and the central government in Mexico City about to lose control, the introduction of US troops to ‘keep order’ is entirely within the realm of possibility. In that case, the North American Union will become a reality, in fact if not in the formal sense–and the latter can be arranged quickly enough.

“Call me a ‘conspiracist,’ if it makes you feel better, but when it comes to the crack-brained schemes of our wise rulers, it seems to me there’s no limit to their ability to sow tragedy and terror wherever they tread. They did it in Iraq, they’re doing it in Afghanistan, and they’ve been doing it for decades throughout the world–why should Mexico be immune?”

See Raimondo’s column at: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/08/30/fast-and-furious/

I ask readers, can the US government’s foreign policy get any worse? The answer is probably YES! It’s been getting worse for a long time, and absent a President in Washington, D.C., with the mental acumen and the internal fortitude to put a stop to it, it WILL get a lot worse!

Globalist elitists have been extremely influential in America’s foreign policy since the administration of Woodrow Wilson, and they have thoroughly dominated America’s foreign policy since the administration of George Bush I. Surprisingly, the last President to attempt to defy the globalists might have been John F. Kennedy. And look what happened to him.

I had a retired US Air Force Brigadier General–who had experience in both the Pentagon and the White House–tell me that Kennedy was murdered for three reasons: 1) He wanted to abolish the Federal Reserve, 2) He wanted to dismantle the CIA, 3) He wanted to bring US forces home from Vietnam. All three of those plans, if enacted, would have struck at the very heart of the globalists’ evil machinations for America. A phony, fiat money system, constant foreign entanglements and intervention, and perpetual foreign wars is the holy trifecta of the globalist agenda.

When will voters, especially conservative and Christian voters, wake up to the reality that electing a “conservative” or “Christian” President is absolutely meaningless unless this President understands the globalist make-up of America’s current foreign policy and would be willing to risk his life to undo it! This is why Ron Paul is the only Presidential candidate who would make any difference in Washington, D.C. Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, Huntsman, Palin, Perry, Romney, and Santorum are either clueless in this regard, or in the case of Gingrich and Perry, are active fellow-travelers in the march toward a globalist New World Order. Ron Paul is the only candidate who not only “gets it” but also is adamantly opposed to it.

So, while Americans are focused on Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Yemen (and, yes, these wars fit in with the globalists’ agenda as well), the US government is busy stirring up war and revolution a whole lot closer to home. And if you think it doesn’t matter whether a constitutionalist President (Christian or not) is elected, you might want to speak to the family of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

‘Global Economic Crisis’ exposes plans for a global military dictatorship

Review of: The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century
Editors, Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall
Publisher: Global Research, 2010 (391 pp)

There’s a certain irony to my reading this book while waiting at the Food Stamp office. I’m part of an increasing number suffering under the New World Order’s systematic destruction of the planet’s middle classes so as to concentrate wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer families. While global uprisings now threaten global governance under a single currency, scheming rulers have long anticipated this reaction. In The Global Economic Crisis, we learn exactly how a planet-wide military dictatorship plans to enforce its feudal vision.

Neatly organized into five sections comprising 20 essays by fifteen different authors, Global Economic Crisis carefully ties militarization with the planned economic meltdown. Client states and the U.S. itself have openly and sometimes secretly developed the legal framework for martial law. Testifying before a US Senate committee on Intelligence in early 2009, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, warned that civil unrest owing to the economic collapse posed a greater threat than Arab terrorism. One of the book’s essayists, Bill Van Auken, points out that this is the first time in several years that Al Qaeda did not top the list of threats to national security.

The book’s major theme, supported by well-documented sources (and we expect nothing less from Global Research), hammers out the connection between military dominance and planned economic crises. Cuts in social spending augment the buildup of arms. Intellectual property laws bolster control of the world’s food supply by a handful of multinational corporations. Captured by transnational corporations that escape national anti-trust laws, the “free market” has given way to corporate control of prices, while driving down wages. Social protest of such polices is met by military and police violence.

In GEC, we learn that today’s global economy is driven by trade in oil, arms, drugs, and slavery (including prostitution). Where neoliberalism flourishes, so do these sectors. On the drug trade, Michel Chossudovsky writes, “The underlying military and intelligence objective is to protect the cocaine and heroin markets, which feed billions of narco-dollars into the Western banking system.” Indeed, a recent report by Bloomberg News exposed how Bank of America and Wachovia (now owned by Wells Fargo) finances Mexico’s drug cartels:

“They are multinational businesses, after all,” says [Mexican Senator Felipe] Gonzalez, as he slowly loads his revolver at his desk in his Mexico City office. “And they cannot work without a bank.”

One can travel to any major city in the world and buy supposedly illegal drugs, arms, prostitutes or slaves. The level of infrastructure required for such a ubiquitous global market implies government and banking support.

Those writing about the social and economic ramifications of globalist actions will greatly appreciate Peter Phillips’ essay, “Poverty and Social Inequality.” It’s chock full of charts laying out facts and statistics.

One of the more intricate essays, “The Political Economy of World Government,” details how economic classes are being restructured, with the potential for the middle classes to unite “using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes.” In this piece, Andrew Gavin Marshall shows how various private interest groups like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg group and the Trilateral Commission are deliberately restructuring society to make national borders irrelevant.

On par, Ellen Brown’s piece, “The Towers of Basel: Secretive Plan to create a Global Central Bank” shows how a shadowy global banking committee can break national economies, or boost them if the country does what the moneylenders dictate.

Not entirely an easy read, Global Economic Crisis nonetheless exposes the deep underworkings of a criminal class of bankers and industrialists who serve their own economic interests at the expense of everyone else, backed up by an expanding global military presence.

The last book to get me this angry was John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Like Confessions, strategies to circumvent and overturn the globalists’ plans are offered inGEC. The “Cook Plan,” for example, emphasizes the need to dissolve the debt-based monetary system – a theme often discussed by Ellen Brown. Claudia von Werlhoff also offers alternatives, describing the various labor and peasant movements that restore local economies while protecting the environment from the ravages of corporate ecocide.

By fully digesting the information presented, the world’s people can best strategize effective resistance. Nonviolence has been a key feature of street protests and strikes that started in Greece and France last year, though often met with violence by police and military. But the stark “austerity” measures neoliberals are foisting on the globe, while they rake in trillions of dollars in bankster bailouts and no-bid contracts, have emboldened populists across Northern Africa. Austerity has even inspired the otherwise anemic US labor movement, with protests spreading from Wisconsin to Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and beyond.

Such street action must also be coupled with direct measures taken at the local level, however. It is here that the ideas presented in Global Economic Crisis can be of most use. By understanding how banks engineered this “bloodless coup,” we find impetus for restoring national sovereignty and a more sane and equitable economy.

The Unreported War In Mexico

15 Men Decapitated in Acapulco…

Fifty one people were killed over the weekend in drug-related violence across Mexico.. In the beach resort of Acapulco, a gruesome record was set when the bodies of 15 men were found in a local shopping center all of who had been decapitated. Their severed heads were clumped together nearby. The flurry of homicides add to the more-than 30,000 deaths since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006. The daily death toll in Calderon’s failed drug war now exceeds that of Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

Ciudad Juarez has become the murder capital of the world, a fact that is omitted in the US media because its casts doubt on US/Mexico drug policy. President Barack Obama could put an end to the bloodletting by simply changing the policy, but he won’t do that because he supports the militarization of the drug war as enthusiastically as did George W. Bush. So the killing continues unabated.

The uptick in violence can be traced back to the Merida Initiative, a $1.4 billion US/Mexico program aimed at fighting narco-trafficking. Plan Mexico–as Merida is also called– was signed in 2007 by President Bush and his Mexican counterpart, Calderon. It led to the deployment of more than 50,000 Mexican troops to areas where the drug cartels carry out their operations. Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas Policy Program in Mexico City, says that the Obama administration has increased its funding of Merida even though 200,000 civilians have fled Juarez, business and tourism have dried up, and the city has devolved into a Mad Max, free-fire zone. Here’s what Carlsen said:

“The Obama administration has supported Plan Mexico and even requested, and received from Congress, additional funds beyond what the Bush administration requested. In the three years since Calderon launched the war on drugs in Mexico with the support of the US government drug related violence has shot up to over 15,000 executions and formal reports of violations of human rights have increased sixfold…..Washington recognizes serious problems with the drug war model and yet continues to claim, absurdly, that the rise in violence in Mexico is a good sign–it means that the cartels are feeling the heat…..”

Washington hawks continue to support Merida despite its clear record of failure. Here’s a short clip from a speech by the American Enterprise Institute’s Roger F. Noriega which explains how hardliners view the present policy:

“The violence that Mexico’s antidrug offensive unleashed is tangible evidence that President Felipe Calderón ended the unwritten policy of past Mexican political leaders who kept the peace with “narcos” by turning a blind eye to their criminal activities……While it may be fair to liken Calderón’s initial tactics to swatting a hornet’s nest, it is impossible to estimate the costs of the past policy of tolerating criminality….

Congress should show more support for the Mexican government’s courageous campaign. …..Calderón can reassure the United States of his seriousness if he redoubles efforts to secure his northern border from the illegal crossings that are a major part of the illicit drug trade and an irritant to security-conscious conservatives in Congress…

As Congress reviews the drug-trade problem, it will likely recognize that additional funds, hardware, and technical support are desperately needed in Central America….The Obama administration has conceived a follow-up program of roughly $500 million for Mexico and Central America. But that level of support is not commensurate with the challenge of preventing these Central American states from becoming ungovernable territories where criminals operate with impunity.” (“Latin American Action Agenda for the New Congress”, Roger F. Noriega , American Enterprise Institute)

In other words, the policy is only failing because of lack of funding, not because it is the wrong policy. But that’s clearly not the case. Plan Mexico has been in operation for four years now and the violence is getting worse not better. More than 30,000 civilians have been killed already. So, what is the benchmark for failure; 60,000? 120,000? 1,000,000? The fact is, the military is not the right tool for fighting crime. Anyone can see that.

Take a look at some of the recent statistics and see what a mess Calderon has made of things. According to Stop the Drug War: “The city and the surrounding Valle de Juarez ended the year with 3,111 murders. Of these, 304 were women, 149 were members of the various law enforcement bodies that operate in the city, and 187 were minors. The most violent month in the city was October, during which time 359 people were murdered.” (“Mexico Drug War Update”, stopthedrugwar.org)

Many of these lives could have been saved if traditional investigative and policing tactics were used rather than hamfisted military force. How many drug kingpins are nabbed at army checkpoints anyway? Zero.

In truth, the Merida Initiative is just a smokescreen. The real purpose of the War on Drugs is to keep poor people in line. Counterpunch editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair sum it up as well as anyone in a 1998 article from their book “Whiteout”:

“Domestically, the ‘drug war’ has always been a pretext for social control, going back to the racist application of drug laws against Chinese laborers in the recession of the 1870s when these workers were viewed as competition for the dwindling number of jobs available….

“President Nixon was helpfully explicit in his private remarks. H.R. Haldeman recorded in his diary a briefing by the president in 1969, prior to launching of the war on drugs: ‘Nixon emphasized that you have to face the fact the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.’

“So what was ‘the system’ duly devised? The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, with its 29 new minimum mandatory sentences, and the 100-to-1 sentencing ratio between possession of crack and powder cocaine, became a system for locking up a disproportionate number of black people.

“So to call for a ‘truly open and honest dialogue’ about drug policy, as all those distinguished signatories in the advertisement requested, is about as realistic as asking the U.S. government to nationalize the oil industry. Essentially, the drug war is a war on the poor and the dangerous classes, here and elsewhere. How many governments are going to give up on that?”

The war on drugs is a fraud, but its costs are quite real. Just ask any of the family members of its 30,000-plus victims.

It’s The Law Mr. President and Congress: Enforce It!

“Corruption becomes a mechanism by which Third World societies like Mexico function as a normal aspect of daily life. With millions of them illegally coming to America and operating along with their peers—it’s little wonder we face massive fraud of social security cards, green cards and counterfeited driver’s licenses. Lawlessness becomes a standard operating procedure throughout American business. In effect, America duplicates Third World behavior and ultimately, becomes a Third World country.”

That ‘kind’ of corruption now operates in the halls of Congress and engulfs the majority of our Senate and House of Representatives. In effect, the majority of 535 elected officials earn “D-“ to “F” on their report cards for their lack of upholding America’s immigration laws.  Check for yourself and your Congress critters: www.NumbersUSA.org

How do we know this to be true? Simple—we’ve got 20 million illegal aliens operating in our country with horrific consequences. We’ve got 14 million unemployed Americans. We’ve got H-1B, H-2B and L-1 visas given out to over one million foreigners that have displaced our own IT workers. Illegal aliens work for major food manufacturers as well as fast food corporations. Illegals work in every sector of our country while they steal jobs from Americans and depress wages against the Middle Class. All along, our elected Congressional elite vote for outsourcing, insourcing and offshoring as if it was a game while we play the pawns. The U.S. Congress ruthlessly rips the Middle Class to shreds while we are made to pay for illegal alien medical costs, schooling (2.3 million illegal alien kids attend our schools at $7,000.00 per child per year), crime, drugs, loss of tax revenues, anchor babies, chain migration and diversity visas.

What does all this illegal immigration have in common: IT’S AGAINST THE LAW.

What do all the H-1B, H-2B and L-1 visas as well as insourcing, outsourcing and offshoring have in common: They are used against American citizens to displace them from jobs.

“A person (including a group of persons, business, organization, or local government) commits a federal felony when she or he: assists an illegal alien she/he should reasonably know is illegally in the U.S. or who lacks employment authorization, by transporting, sheltering, or assisting him or her to obtain employment, or encourages that illegal alien to remain in the U.S. by referring him or her to an employer or by acting as employer or agent for an employer in any way, or knowingly assists illegal aliens due to personal convictions.” Federal Law–Section 8 USC 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv)(b)(iii)

Who is breaking this law? Every company, corporation, business and person who hires an illegal alien violates Federal Law. This President Obama and Congress stand in violation of their oath of office for not enforcing it.

Right now our current laws are NOT enforced and they are sufficient to secure our borders.

We have current law on the books that provides for:

1. Severe treatment for foreigners who attempt to interfere with interior US law as the Mexican government is doing every day in many states.
2. Severe prison and economic punishment for employers of illegals; harsh treatment for in-state tuition violations.
3. Severe treatment for financial institutions who accept Matricular Consular as legal ID.
4. Severe treatment for any landlords who offer housing to illegals.
5. Severe treatment for financial institutions that fund homes for illegals.
6. Severe treatment for any who authorize taxpayer money for benefits for illegals.
7. Deportations for illegal aliens whether via expired visas or invading across the border.
8. Economic and legal punishment of sanctuary cities that are violating current law.

As one citizen said, “The point is…..we do not want to see more babble and time wasting. We want our laws enforced instead of being a joke and selectively ignored. Our federal and state governments now enforce only the laws they wish to enforce and down that path lays total disrespect for any law and eventual chaos. Our government is creating this situation that will end in the streets with revolt and guns. Stop it now while you can. Restore respect for the law.”

ILLEGAL ENTRY: USC 8 Section 1325 states—Any alien who:

1. Enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or
2. Eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or
3. Attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under Title 18 or imprisoned not more than six months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under Title 18, or imprisoned not more than two years or both.

(b) Improper time or place, civil penalties – Any alien who is apprehended while entering (or attempting to enter) the United States at a time or place other than as designated by immigration officers shall be subject to a civil penalty of –

(1) at least $50 and not more than $250 for each such entry (or attempted entry); or

(2) twice the amount specified in paragraph (1) in the case of an alien who has been previously subject to a civil penalty under this subsection. Civil penalties under this subsection are in addition to, and not in lieu of, any criminal or other civil penalties that may be imposed.

(c) Marriage fraud – Any individual who knowingly enters into a marriage for the purpose of evading any provision of the immigration laws shall be imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or fined not more than $250,000 or both.

(d) Immigration-related entrepreneurship fraud – Any individual who knowingly establishes a commercial enterprise for the purpose of evading any provision of the immigration laws shall be imprisoned for not more than 5 years, fined in accordance with title 18, or both.

ILLEGAL HIRING: Section 1324a states: “Any person who knowingly hires/harbors/transports any illegal alien is guilty of a felony punishable by 10 years jail + $2000 fine per illegal alien + forfeiture of the vehicle or property used to commit the crime”.

Section 1324c states: “All officers whose duty it is to enforce criminal laws shall have authority to make arrests for a violation of any provision of this section” (affirmed US v Perez-Gonzalez 2002 Fed App 0360, 6th Circ.).

Section 1644: same title states, “No local ordinance, rule, or measure shall stop law enforcement officers from enforcement of this section” (affirmed Southern District Court of NY, US v Rudy Guiliani,1996).

If every law officer neglected his job like the president of the United States does today, America would be a land of anarchy. If every police officer failed his sworn duty like the majority of our senators and congressmen fail theirs, America would be no better than any other Third World country.

With 20 million illegal aliens now, imagine when your actions Mr. President and Congress cause 40 million more illegal aliens? At what point does the total displacement of American workers satisfy this president and Congress? Are you excited about civil war in our streets? Are you thrilled about Los Angeles becoming another Mexico City? How do you feel about your part in the growing MS-13 crime wave and drug distribution to our kids? Do you have any moral or ethical responsibility to those of us who live our lives by adhering to our laws?

If you will not abide by your oath of office Mr. President and Congress, if you don’t abide by our immigration laws, if you fail in your duty as a U.S. citizen in elected office—we will vote candidates into office that will serve America. In the meantime, we will follow you and demand you to serve the U.S. Constitution. You are a servant of the people Mr. President and Congress. You work for us and we pay your paycheck. What is the highest office in America? It’s CITIZEN. We will not go quietly into the night.

Australia’s Demographic Suicide

In a recent story by Josh Gordon, Sydney Morning Herald, he reported that, “Population growth is inevitable.”

Did that “choice” or “resignation to fate” work out for the Chinese, Indians, Bangladeshis, Africans, Mexicans and other overpopulated areas on our finite planet?  Did it work out for people living in 60 mile traffic jams last month in China?  How about the 22 million people living in Mexico City where every breath equals toxic poisoning of their lungs?  What about the 18 hour gridlock traffic in Chicago, Houston, Dallas and Los Angeles?  How about the ‘crush’ of humanity in overloaded, bloated and horrifically unhealthy cities around the planet?  What about the 80 to 100 species every day suffering extinction worldwide because of human encroachment on their habitat?

How’s the quality of life working out for 18 million humans starving to death annually from population overload?  What about the 100 million sharks killed by humans every year around the world—driving that creature to the brink of extinction?  How about water shortages, species extinction and climate destabilization via carbon footprint?  Anyone connecting the dots?

Any Australian with an IQ exceeding two digits understands that you cannot allow even one extra person to fly in an airplane beyond the ‘carrying capacity’ of the aircraft.  You cannot add one more person into a pool that exceeds its design.  A bathroom can only hold so many people at one time.

Australia enjoys an amazing, and vanishing lifestyle as well as quality of life—with every added person to its already parched and dry continent.  Why hasn’t anyone asked the basic question?

How many immigrants can Australia import before it too transforms into the same overpopulated and unsustainable civilization that the immigrants flee?  Dr. Otis Graham said it best, ““Most Western elites continue urging the wealthy West not to stem the migrant tide [that adds 80 million net gain annually to the planet], but to absorb our global brothers and sisters until their horrid ordeal has been endured and shared by all—ten billion humans packed onto an ecologically devastated planet.”  Quoted from:  Unguarded Gates

”Given the powerful global forces driving the Australian economy, net immigration figures well in excess of that low number are probably inescapable,” the briefing said.

Hogwash!  Twaddle!  Balderdash!

Australians possess the ability to defend and preserve their civilization.  It’s called ‘common sense’ ;  “taking action from lessons of the past” ; “using your votes to move the country toward a viable future.”

It matters little where the ‘growthists’ need more workers or the corporate tycoons demand higher profits.  If your environment swirls into the toilet and your quality of life degrades down to that of a third world refugee camp—what have you gained by all the money in the world?

Has anyone in Australia heard about “quality of life”?  It stems from living within the carrying capacity of the land. If you overload it, Harvard scholar and biologist E. O. Wilson said, “The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical construct.  To say, as many do, that the difficulties of nations are not due to people, but to poor ideology and land-use management is sophistic.”

Can Sydney, Perth or Melbourne grow without consequences?  What happens when they experience their first 10 mile traffic jam, 20 mile traffic jam and worse?  What about the number of accidents guaranteed to occur from too many cars overloading the highway systems?  How much dirty air can your lungs tolerate?

In the end, what positive points will an added 10 million people bring to Australia?  Will it lower water costs and create more wells?  Will it lower the cost of  homes and goods?  Will it lower the ‘carbon footprint’ that will allow our oceans to recover?  Can 10 million more people create a healthier climate for humans and animals in Australia?  Will the cost of a gallon of gas decline? Fat chance!

U.S. demographic expert Dr. Albert Bartlett, www.albartlett.org , asks the definitive  question: “Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases of population, locally, nationally, or globally.”

As I traveled throughout all the great cities in the world, I can answer unequivocally: added population creates unsolvable problems with irreversible consequences.

“A simple look at the upward path of global greenhouse emissions indicates we will continue to squeeze the trigger on the gun we have put to our own head.”  Eugene Linden, The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather and the Destruction of Civilization

No!  Population growth must not be ‘inevitable’.  Australia may choose!  Choose to move toward a viable, sustainable and positive civilization that allows humans, plants and animals the ability to pursue their lives as well as you expect to live yours.

Our cities too big for quality of life

On my coast to coast bicycle trip across America this past summer, I discovered amazing dynamics that need addressing if Americans expect to lead productive, fulfilling and happy lives in the 21^st century.

In my latest book, America on the Brink: The Next Added 100 Million Americans, I discussed mega-cities around the world such as Tokyo, Japan; Mexico City, Mexico; Beijing, China; Hong Kong, China; New York City, New York; Los Angeles, California; San Paulo, Brazil; Paris, France and many more.  I’ve traveled through all of them.

What kind of quality of life do mega-cities present to their citizens?  What qualities do they bring to parents and children?  How do they address the spirit of humanity at the personal level?

From their inception, large sky-scraper-dominated and sprawling cities around the world represent the worst of humanity.  Ayn Rand, in her bestselling book, Atlas Shrugged, praised sky-scrapers as humanity’s highest achievement.

But another author Itzhak Bentov wrote Stalking the Wild Pendulum, a book on how modern man, living in cities, cuts himself off from the natural vibrations of life.  We humans walk on concrete instead of grass. We live in square, wooden or blocked homes and tiny apartments—totally alien to our animal heritage.  We drive cars at 70 miles per hour and gaze through glass windows from steel encased prisons.

The rich may escape for a weekend camping trip to recalibrate their natural vibrations and refresh themselves, but the average city dwellers remain in the endless din, sirens, honking horns, televisions’ ubiquitous blaring and the many negative aspects of city life.

Thus, humans, when confronted with such aberrant surroundings respond with overeating such that two out of three Americas suffer obesity; heart disease, cancer and diabetes grow epidemic, smoking, drinking, drugs and coffee used as mind and body altering states, and for those that visit the drug stores—a million prescriptions of valium a week along with Prozac, Viagra and Excedrin.

On the violence side, look at the mayhem in cities!  How about the killings, schools as victims for drug gangs and bullies, car accidents, breathing of toxic air and loss of community?

In other words, cities drive human beings completely out of their minds.  Bentov said, “Cities create the most abnormal and aberrant living conditions on the planet…no wonder we’re methodically going crazy in the Western world.”

America’s first environmentalist, the eminent John Muir, who lived in Yosemite and the wilds most of his life, said, “Tell me what you will of the benefactions of city civilization, of the sweet security of streets—all as part of the natural upgrowth of man towards the high destiny we hear so much of.  I know that our bodies were made to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found. If the death exhalations that brood the broad towns in which we so fondly compact ourselves were made visible, we should flee as from a plague.  All are more or less sick; there is not a perfectly sane man in all of San Francisco.”  JM, Sept. 1874

George B. Leonard in his book Transformation, said, “This books shows how our present crippling and devastating character structure has come about, and how it rendered us only partially human and has made us deprived and discontent.”

Then, talk about an environmental crisis compounded by large cities!  The United States add 100 million people within the past 40 years to create its own mega-cities—but it’s not done—as it adds another 100 million within 25 years, and on and on!

While Americans cognitively realize growth causes a growing global problem, we dance around it.  From 1950 to 2010, humans escalated their numbers from 2.5 billion to 7 billion today.  We outbreed our life support systems, food sources and destroy much of the natural world and other species sharing this planet with us.

While it may ‘look’ okay on the surface, every time we add another American, we must destroy 12.6 acres of land to support that person known as ‘ecological footprint’. When you tally another 100 million, that equals 1.26 billion acres of wilderness destroyed for human use.  But then, what about the animals and their right to life, freedom, food and habitat?  The bigger our cities, the more we destroy other life.

How can we move toward a balanced, sustainable future?  Easy!  Since the American female has averaged 2.03 children since 1970, it’s not us adding millions to our country.  Our U.S. Congress forced this massive growth rate via immigration of 1.5 million legal immigrants annually—from a line that grows by 77 million every year.  It’s time to reduce all immigration to a zero net gain of 100,000 a year since that’s how many egress the country annually.

Would you rather live in a quiet, tree-filled town of 10,000 or a car-infested, forever-noisy,  people-packed city like Los Angeles?  I found small towns and cities much more fun, lively and people actually said, “Hi!”

If we continue on our current path, we doom future generations to an ugly mega-city living experience beyond anyone’s understanding.