Grateful That I’m Not A Wealthy Widow In Chicago (and not a Ukrainian or Syrian either)

Author’s note:  I haven’t had much to be grateful for this past Thanksgiving because I spent that time recovering from an operation that involved re-breaking my arm, realigning the bones in my left hand and having nine pins, a bone graft and a titanium plate installed.  Ouch!  So now I’m all busy trying to make up for lost time and dreaming up things to be thankful for.  Here are a couple of items I’ve come up with (besides my wonderful family of course).

To paraphrase that song by Kermit the Frog, “It’s not easy being old.” There just aren’t that many perks involved.  Your teeth fall out.  Your joints freeze up.  Say goodbye to your sex life, no matter what they claim about Viagra.  Plus no one ever invites you to parties any more and you can no longer Twerk.

However, having enough money to make yourself comfortable in your old age can surely help alleviate all those various aches and pains associated with old age — unless of course you are an elderly widow living in Chicago and have 100K or more in your savings account.  Because if that is you, then getting old is really really gonna to suck eggs.

“But, Jane,” you might ask, “why is that?”  Let me tell you.

You’ve heard of ambulance-chasing lawyers before, right?  Well, in Chicago they also have rich-widow-chasing lawyers.  These heartless scoundrels actually go out and scour through various tax and real estate records until they find clues to locating financially-solvent yet vulnerable senior citizens, preferably rich widows.  And then they move in for the kill.

The first thing they do is have their target victims declared incompetent — which is not all that hard to do when you have Chicago’s probate courts helping you out.  Then they get themselves appointed Guardian ad Litems for these vulnerable wealthy elders.  And then the fun part begins.

“First they pop these poor souls into rest homes where they are warehoused, starved, fed tranquilizers and ignored,” said one family member whose mother had been victimized in Chicago.  “Then they sell their victim’s home, empty her bank accounts and pocket the profits — calling all these ill-begotten gains their ‘fees’ for services rendered.  And then, when the victim has no more money left, they then throw her unceremoniously out of the rest home and onto the cold streets of Chicago — that is, if she is still alive.”

But there is hope.  Some relatives of the victims and other conscientious local attorneys are starting to fight back.  For instance, Joanne Denison, an honest Chicago attorney with a conscience, stumbled onto this racket about three years ago by accident and tried to do something to stop these malfesiants.  “So what did she do?” you might ask.  Denison started a blog.  That’s all she did.  She started a blog to try to expose some of these worst practices and blow the whistle on said legal vultures.

According to Denison’s blog, “40% of all psychotropic drugs are sold to nursing homes as illegal chemical restraints, and no one ever seems to do anything about it, even though they are deadly dangerous to most elders and the FDA says they are contra-indicated or not recommended for those under 20 or over 60.”

“So what happened to attorney Denison as a result?” you might ask next.  What do you think happened to her?  This is Chicago — not Utopia.  Her attorney’s license has just been suspended for three years.

Now we all know that Rush Limbaugh and Fox News can tell any lie that they want over public airwaves and/or on the internet and get away with it, right?  But if you ever dare to tell the truth and expose corruption in Chicago, you had better watch out.

And if you are a wealthy widow in Chicago, you had better really watch out!

So during this week after Thanksgiving I’m gonna be super-grateful for a lot of things — and one of those things is going to be that I’m not a widow, am not wealthy and don’t live in Chicago!

“What else are you going to be grateful for?” might be your next question.

“That I don’t live in Ukraine or Syria or any other foreign country that the US or NATO or BIBI has its eyes on.”  If there’s just one take-away that I’ve learned after enduring all this pain in my left arm, it’s that injuries to our bodies can really really hurt, really hurt a lot.  And that a human body will probably hurt even a hecka lot more if you are hit by a NATO smart-bomb in Ukraine or if an American-made cruise missile lands on you in Gaza or if you get gang-raped by American-funded ISIS in Syria — and have no pain-killers or hospitals or doctors to help you out like I did.

Do I think that the rich widows of Chicago have it bad?  Yeah.  But this sad injustice is almost minimal compared to having the vultures of Wall Street and War Street eying your assets and trying to steal them by torturing, raping and blowing up yourself and your kids.

At least the rich widows of Chicago don’t have to worry about getting hit with NATO smart bombs or having their heads chopped off!

Not really sure why I’m worried about getting old.  It’s probably not gonna happen to any of us anyway — at least not while the deep-state neo-cons who now control America, Israel and NATO are all so bound and determined to try to pick a fight with Russia, China and Iran (one that they truly can’t win).

And if all this current saber-rattling foolishness doesn’t kill us all off in a mass wave of war-induced grim reaping, then don’t forget that climate-change-run-a-muck will be sending us off to the happy hunting ground soon too.

Have the oligarchs of DC and NATO and BIBI totally lost their minds — or do they just have a death wish for peons like you and me?  Either way, these malfesiants now hold all the power and the rest of us are all screwed.

But here is the good news.

Perhaps facing WW III and/or the coming climate apocalypse might end up being a good thing.  “But how?”  Because now we’re all going to have an air-tight excuse to run down to the mall, max out our credit cards and buy all kinds of new gear to wear to the show.    How’s that for positive thinking!

And here’s another positive thought.  Extinction of the entire human race will surely mean that we won’t have to worry about who is gonna pay for our funeral — because there will be no one left alive to attend it!  Sorry, guys, but there won’t be any “handsome corpses” on display at the local funeral chapel any more.  Rats.  I was really looking forward to that.

I am so freaking bored from sitting around doing nothing while waiting for my arm to heal that I actually checked Thomas Piketty’s new book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” out from the library.  If I’m going to be bored, I might as well be really bored.

“The main driver of inequality today [which appears to be wanky pseudo-capitalism run amuck] threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values,” sez the dust jacket.  Just one more reason why I won’t have to worry about paying for my own funeral — I won’t be able to afford it.  And neither will you.

“But if you’re so bored, then why don’t you just go see the film ‘Interstellar’ instead,” suggested one of my kids.  Good idea.  Now I can go watch our planet die on the big screen instead of having to wait to watch it die in real life. 

G 20 And BRICS Great Schism

Global trade relationships and agreements are moving in very different directions. The public relations press releases hide the undercurrents that are driving the formations of alternative economic alliances. While the G 20, markets its all inclusive umbrella policy forums, the mere formation of a BRICS counterweight forecasts deep and fundamental differences. So what is really behind the creation of a different approach to the post WWII dominate U.S. lead model? A clue can be found in an attempt to modify the operations and direction of IMF functions.

Announced in the Russian press, BRICS to propose IMF reform at G20 summit, is a pressure attempt to move the center of power away from current synergism.

“At the G20 summit in the Australian city of Brisbane on November 15-16, Russia and other BRICS countries (Brazil, India, China and South Africa) will propose alternative solutions concerning the reform of the International Monetary Fund, involving, in particular, gradual implementation of reforms, Russian G20 Sherpa Svetlana Lukash told reporters.

“The most important thing for us is the still unresolved G20 problem of the IMF reform,” Lukash said. She recalled the U.S. Congress has yet to ratify the 2010 resolution. “Not only does it thwart the process of renewing the IMF in accordance with the current reality where we see a big rise in the role of emerging economies. It also prevents the decisions to double the IMF capital from coming into force,” she said.”

The appearance of maintaining a working relationship among opposing interests may present an assuring PR message, but who really believes that the path to a new cold war is paved with mutual cooperation? Impetus for a parallel financial system is certainly based more on political objective than commerce or economic benefits.

The Washington Post describes What the new bank of BRICS is all about in this manner.

“Heads of state from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (the so-called BRICS countries) agreed to establish a New Development Bank (NDB) at their summit meeting. They will have a president (an Indian for the first six years), a Board of Governors Chair (a Russian), a Board of Directors Chair (a Brazilian), and a headquarters (in Shanghai). What is the purpose of this BRICS bank? Why have these countries created it now? And, what implications does it have for the global development-finance landscape?

The “what” is relatively straightforward. The NDB has been given $50 billion in initial capital. As with similar initiatives in other regions (see below), the BRICS bank appears to work on an equal-share voting basis, with each of the five signatories contributing $10 billion. The capital base is to be used to finance infrastructure and “sustainable development” projects in the BRICS countries initially, but other low and middle-income countries will be able buy in and apply for funding. BRICS countries have also created a $100 billion Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA), meant to provide additional liquidity protection to member countries during balance of payments problems. The CRA—unlike the pool of contributed capital to the BRICS bank, which is equally shared—is being funded 41 percent by China, 18 percent from Brazil, India, and Russia, and 5 percent from South Africa.”

China’s motivation to participate in BRICS banking is most interesting and revealing. Since it is not absolutely essential for China to be a member of BRICS, Gudrun Wacker, from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs presents this finding in a report, China’s role in G20 / BRICS and Implications, may shed an insight on their reasoning.

“The future of BRICS depends on the future performance of the G7/8 and G20: If the G20 develops into a real coordination mechanism, there might be less Chinese interest in BRICS. The future prospects of BRICS were presented as less promising than those of the G20, since BRICS will not be able to solve global problems. It is not yet clear whether the main deliverable of BRICS will be directed at cooperation among its members or at third countries. While the idea of BRIC as a group was originally picked up by Russia (the invitation to the first summit, as a move toward “extension” of the strategic triangle Russia, China. India?), its members are now all active in certain fields. For China, it is also an important effort to emerge from its isolation (Copenhagen climate summit). Another factor shaping the future of BRICS might be the development of US-China relations: While all interview partners agreed that BRICS does not aim at creating a new, anti-Western world order, it can be seen as a response to the US-led world order.”

The methodology of Mr. Wacker’s research relied upon comments from interviews. Relying on sentiments that BRICS goal is not bent on developing a counterbalance to Western banking hegemony is poppycock. Geopolitical dimensions in international affairs have Russia as the latest bogyman. Any economic analysis that ignores power brokers desperate attempt to shift the causes of a failing world economy onto the backs of enemy nations is flawed.

Also, the notion that major economic transnational corporatists operate with altruism for third world countries is sheer lunacy. All these trade organizations are attempts to position vying interests to settle for a subservient role to a subordinate structure under a global debt creation banking system.

Attempts to scare the populist into believing that Global Warming inaction are absurd. “At the G20 summit, other nations overrode host Australia’s attempts to keep climate change off the agenda and agreed to call for strong action with the aim of adopting a binding protocol at the Paris conference.” Such initiatives are pure political “PC” orthodoxy and actually diminish prosperity.

The great schism in trade among nations is that some countries are not willing to lie down with diseased parasites. This should not be construed to favor the emergence of the BRICS union as a shining future. However, what it does purport is that the road to the NWO modeling for globalism by entrenched financial elites has produced opposition.

Conflict is the normal human condition, and especially when money is used as a medium of world control and domination is the goal. The G 20 is useless. Breaking the banking monopoly that fosters endless terror and war is the universal objective for the inhabitants of this planet. Another unsavory photo op for world leaders just produces more nausea.

Sparking Anger In Syria

Avoidable Humanitarian Crisis at Lebanon Border Crossing…

Chest high metal crowd control barriers manned by armed guards—since late September they have stood outside the Arrivals Hall on the Lebanon side of the Masnaa border crossing with Syria. For Syrian and Palestinian refugees fleeing the continuing violence next door and trying to get into Lebanon the message is clear:

Don’t come within 40 meters of the Immigration building, and don’t even dream about coming to the staffed counter with any documents. None of you is welcome. Ninety eight percent of you will not be allowed in, and those who are better leave within 24 hours and have a valid airline ticket to prove your intention to depart.

Over the past few years, this observer has crossed at the Masnaa border crossing fairly frequently. Yet never have I seen such an avoidable humanitarian disaster for families seeking to get out of war-torn Syria. And it is reportedly much the same at the Jordanian border. Many refugees have found themselves squatting here—first in the heat, and now in the cold autumnal nights that increasingly are seeing cold rainfall. No other option seems available to them than to try to enter Lebanon, this as they express the forlorn hope that God in his mercy will help them.

And so here they sit, bewildered, outside the Immigration building, exhausted, little if any money in their pockets or purses, with their children thirsty, hungry, and often crying. Nearby are the local offices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), but the staff are overwhelmed, and the fact that Lebanon hasn’t signed the 1951 Refugee Convention doesn’t make things any easier for them. Extending humanitarian assistance to refugees has never been embraced by certain anti-Palestinian politicians in Lebanon, who apparently see no value in it for themselves, but that being said, it is a fact that the sheer numbers of refugees entering Lebanon now has added to pre-existing problems with respect to infrastructure, chronic water and electricity shortages, massive unemployment, exploding sectarian conflicts, and the like.

All of which can make for some harrowing scenes at the border checkpoint. During this observer’s most recent crossing, a Syrian gentleman sat on the roadside with his wife, five children, and one grandchild, explaining to me how the family had lost everything in Homs. No other choice had they than to try and seek safety in Lebanon, since Egypt and Jordan are refusing entry to Syrian refugees. His oldest child, a lovely girl named ‘Rasha,’ who appeared to be in her mid-20s, sat nursing her infant son as we talked. Rasha’s husband, he informed me, had been killed by a mortar last spring on a day he had gone out shopping for food near the old city of Homs. In desperation, the gentleman suggested that I purchase his daughter and her baby, because he saw no future for them and he could no longer provide a home for them. Plus the baby appeared ill.

After my long explanation of why, for several reasons, this was not possible, he stated his belief that my being an American meant that the Lebanese guards would allow me to enter with Rasha and her baby; they in turn could live with me until the crisis ended, and on second thought, I did not even have to pay him anything. Just save her and her baby. With respect to the Lebanese border guards, his idea was unrealistic. Most Americans do tend to be liked around these parts, and most of us try to be goodwill ambassadors because we love our country and her ideals. But it is not the case that Americans can bend immigration regulations, nor should it be. Before the crisis, Syrians and Lebanese could simply take a road not patrolled, avoiding border crossings and formalities altogether, but these days that is very dangerous.

I gave the gentleman my card and a little money in case his family and he were somehow able to get over the border, and promised him that if they were successful I and friends would try to help. I have heard nothing more from him. But I have learned, from a couple of NGOs, that encounters such as I experienced are not all that uncommon these days, with women and children stuck at the Syrian-Lebanese border being bought and sold—and with bribes sometimes offered, and occasionally paid. The frequency of this is difficult to assess, and the reality may be exaggerated, but certainly not exaggerated are the facts of the increasingly inhumane conditions that Syrian and Palestinian refugees face in Lebanon—a country in which they are denied some of the most basic, elementary rights by the government, and where they also run the risk of harmful brushes with various militias and hooligans.
Discussions I have had—with staff at the central.

Immigration office in Damascus as well as Syrian human rights associations and Syria-based Arab journalists who have researched and written about this subject—reveal not only a bleak picture of the humanitarian situation, but also a growing level of disgust in Syria over what is happening to their countrymen in Lebanon. Cases of Lebanese discrimination and harassment targeting Syrian refugees, including violations of international customary law and the 1951 Refugee Convention, have become commonplace. In addition, Syrians increasingly are falling prey to violence. Human Rights Watch said it had documented a string of attacks by Lebanese residents against Syrian refugees in August and September. Those interviewed described being stabbed, shot and beaten, and several claimed that they were either too afraid to report the crimes, or that they had and their stories had been dismissed by security forces when they did. HRW said that attacks it documented were most often carried out by private citizens, but in several cases they appeared to have “the tacit support” of authorities, and the international organization has urged security forces and local authorities to step up protection of Syrian refugees.

“Lebanon’s security forces should protect everyone on Lebanese soil, not turn a blind eye to vigilante groups who are terrorizing refugees,” said HRW Deputy Middle East Director Nadim Houry.

One especially taxing problem is the financial cost exacted by Lebanon for Syrian refugees to register a baby. In Syria, anyone from Lebanon, or from any country for that matter, can register a newborn for the equivalent of 1,000 Lebanese lire (around 66 US cents). The process takes around fifteen minutes. But not so in Lebanon. According to a report by the Taanayel General Hospital in central Bekaa, the number of new babies born to Syrian refugees, since March 2011 when the crisis began, has exceeded 15,000, just in the Bekaa Valley alone. In North Lebanon, the UNHCR estimates more than 5,000 births, and the Syrian Embassy in Beirut says there are now approximately 6,000 births per year among displaced Syrians in Lebanon. But for many of these parents, the registration process is nearly impossible.

First they must obtain a certificate from the hospital or midwife indicating the date of birth—generally not a big problem, but then the baby must be registered at the office of the local Muktar. That is if they can prove legal residence, and if the local Muktar is willing to help, which is not always the case. Sometimes he wants a fee, and in some reported cases a bribe, in order to forward the paperwork to the Directorate of Personal Status. If the parents are lucky, their application might then be sent to the Exterior Ministry for another approval, and finally may reach the Syrian Embassy to complete the process of registering the newborn. But the process can be delayed or scuttled along the tortuous procedural path for any number of reasons, including escalating anti-Syrian sentiment in government offices and among certain confessions and political parties. According to one Syrian refugee, the minimal fees charged by Lebanon, plus the traveling back and forth to different offices and locations so as to follow up on the procedures, can cost close to $500, with no success guaranteed. The amount is a fortune for most refugees, but an even greater concern for Syrian parents is having no nationality for their children. Says Joelle Eid, of the UNHCR press office, the offspring risk being added to “the stateless Kurds of Syria, since 1960, whose number of births in Lebanon is currently around 840 children.”

One chilling reason that the Kafkaesque procedures violate basic humanitarian principles is that they are forcing Syrian refugees to smuggle their babies into Syria in bags, since of course the infants would not be allowed to cross the border from Lebanon without full documentation. It is estimated that over the past 24 months more than 50 Syrian newborns, passing through Masnaa, have died from suffocation or drug overdose while being hidden from immigration officials. Parents usually are not sure how much of what drug to give their babies in order to keep them quiet and sleeping as they sneak them through the border, and too many are not waking up—all so that the parents can make it back over the border, back into their perilous, war-torn homeland, so that they may register their children’s births—in Syria, since it’s practically impossible to do so in Lebanon.

It is but one of the current abuses that are causing outrage in Syria and among advocates of human rights everywhere but it is not the only one. Both the UNHCR and HRW are accusing the Lebanese Army of committing “serious” violations against refugees, including in Ersal, where more than 200 Syrian refugees, including minors, were arrested without charge. The arrests took place September 19-24. Other reports accuse the Army of evicting, without any pretense of due process, a large number of refugees living in private homes. Then on September 25, the retaliatory measures reached a peak with a crackdown in the area of Ras al-Jafar, affecting nine informal communities with a total population of around 5000. One report states that during the raids, tents were burned in one of the random communities, completely destroying 96 tents. The raids were coupled with a large campaign of arrests targeting especially males. Some 300-500 people were detained, and while most, though not all, have been released, reports have emerged of physical and verbal assault, intimidation, and humiliation—claims that are corroborated by UNHCR photographs, including of shackled Syrian refugees laying on the ground exposed to the elements.

An Army spokesperson has dismissed as “lies” another allegation about the torching of tents in Ersal last week, yet random raids are becoming commonplace at scores of these “informal tent settlements,” as UNHCR refers to the fetid, sewage-soaked camps—camps which soon will be covered in snow and ice. Often in these camps more than 20 people will live in a tent that is intended for one family. Most of the tents are covered with nothing more than nylon, and more than 50,000 Syrian refugees in the Bekaa Valley are now living in these kinds of settlements—that’s 50,000 out of a registered total 275,000 in the area.

In addition to these calamities, more than 45 municipalities have imposed curfews on Syrian nationals, a move widely seen as a racist practice and one also in violation of international humanitarian law and the 1951 Convention. HRW comments that the curfews “contribute to a climate of discriminatory and retaliatory practices against” the refugees. Curfew violators are reportedly given a warning or, in some cases, are “taken to the municipality for questioning” where they may be detained for hours.

The reports have fueled anger among lawyers in Damascus, at the Lawyers Syndicate across from the Cham Palace Hotel, where seminars have discussed the legal problems facing Syrian refugees in Lebanon. In addition, the Faculty of Law at Damascus University is considering setting up a legal defense team to help Syrians in Lebanon challenge arbitrary and discriminatory applications of Lebanese laws.

“Syria helped them (the Lebanese) many times during their 15-year civil war and during the 2006 July war!” commented a teacher at a government primary school visited by this observer last week. “We gave them everything they needed. Our government buildings, social services, free medical care, free education, schools, hygienic conditions, peace and quiet, food and sometimes cash stipends. What about us? Is this the Lebanese way of saying ‘thanks’ to the people of Syria?”

She then exclaimed, “Someone must stop these attacks on our families.”

A savvy graduate student in Damascus by the name of “Ahmad” commented to this observer and to his Palestinian friend from Yarmouk camp, who having lost her own home due to shelling, now volunteers helping Syrian refugees forced to live in some of the parks in Damascus, that ISIS (Da’ish) and al-Nusra will almost assuredly be cognizant of these problems, and poised to capitalize on them, as they prepare to extend their caliphate into Lebanon—and he probably has a point.

Among the many reasons Lebanon should immediately desist in the targeting of Syrian and Palestinian refugees is that they are pushing many toward supporting those that the Lebanese government claims to be opposing.

The Islamist State

You can’t believe a word the United States or its mainstream media say about the current conflict involving The Islamic State (ISIS).

You can’t believe a word France or the United Kingdom say about ISIS.

You can’t believe a word Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, or the United Arab Emirates say about ISIS. Can you say for sure which side of the conflict any of these mideast countries actually finances, arms, or trains, if in fact it’s only one side? Why do they allow their angry young men to join Islamic extremists? Why has NATO-member Turkey allowed so many Islamic extremists to cross into Syria? Is Turkey more concerned with wiping out the Islamic State or the Kurds under siege by ISIS? Are these countries, or the Western powers, more concerned with overthrowing ISIS or overthrowing the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad?

You can’t believe the so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels. You can’t even believe that they are moderate. They have their hands in everything, and everyone has their hands in them.

Iran, Hezbollah and Syria have been fighting ISIS or its precursors for years, but the United States refuses to join forces with any of these entities in the struggle. Nor does Washington impose sanctions on any country for supporting ISIS as it quickly did against Russia for its alleged role in Ukraine.

The groundwork for this awful mess of political and religious horrors sweeping through the Middle East was laid – laid deeply – by the United States during 35 years (1979-2014) of overthrowing the secular governments of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. (Adding to the mess in the same period we should not forget the US endlessly bombing Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.) You cannot destroy modern, relatively developed and educated societies, ripping apart the social, political, economic and legal fabric, torturing thousands, killing millions, and expect civilization and human decency to survive.

Particularly crucial in this groundwork was the US decision to essentially throw 400,000 Iraqis with military training, including a full officer corps, out onto the streets of its cities, jobless. It was a formula for creating an insurgency. Humiliated and embittered, some of those men would later join various resistance groups operating against the American military occupation. It’s safe to say that the majority of armored vehicles, weapons, ammunition, and explosives taking lives every minute in the Middle East are stamped “Made in USA”.

And all of Washington’s horses, all of Washington’s men, cannot put this world back together again. The world now knows these places as “failed states”.

Meanwhile, the United States bombs Syria daily, ostensibly because the US is at war with ISIS, but at the same time seriously damaging the oil capacity of the country (a third of the Syrian government’s budget), the government’s military capabilities, its infrastructure, even its granaries, taking countless innocent lives, destroying ancient sites; all making the recovery of an Assad-led Syria, or any Syria, highly unlikely. Washington is undoubtedly looking for ways to devastate Iran as well under the cover of fighting ISIS.

Nothing good can be said about this whole beastly situation. All the options are awful. All the participants, on all sides, are very suspect, if not criminally insane. It may be the end of the world. To which I say … Good riddance. Nice try, humans; in fact, GREAT TRY … but good riddance. ISIS … Ebola … Climate Change … nuclear radiation … The Empire … Which one will do us in first? … Have a nice day.

Is the world actually so much more evil and scary today than it was in the 1950s of my upbringing, for which I grow more nostalgic with each new horror? Or is it that the horrors of today are so much better reported, as we swim in a sea of news and videos?

After seeing several ISIS videos on the Internet, filled with the most disgusting scenes, particularly against women, my thought is this: Give them their own country; everyone who’s in that place now who wants to leave, will be helped to do so; everyone from all over the world who wants to go there will be helped to get there. Once they’re there, they can all do whatever they want, but they can’t leave without going through a rigorous interview at a neighboring border to ascertain whether they’ve recovered their attachment to humanity. However, since very few women, presumably, would go there, the country would not last very long.

The Berlin Wall – Another Cold War Myth

November 9 will mark the 25th anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. The extravagant hoopla began months ago in Berlin. In the United States we can expect all the Cold War clichés about The Free World vs. Communist Tyranny to be trotted out and the simple tale of how the wall came to be will be repeated: In 1961, the East Berlin communists built a wall to keep their oppressed citizens from escaping to West Berlin and freedom. Why? Because commies don’t like people to be free, to learn the “truth”. What other reason could there have been?

First of all, before the wall went up in 1961 thousands of East Germans had been commuting to the West for jobs each day and then returning to the East in the evening; many others went back and forth for shopping or other reasons. So they were clearly not being held in the East against their will. Why then was the wall built? There were two major reasons:

1) The West was bedeviling the East with a vigorous campaign of recruiting East German professionals and skilled workers, who had been educated at the expense of the Communist government. This eventually led to a serious labor and production crisis in the East. As one indication of this, the New York Times reported in 1963: “West Berlin suffered economically from the wall by the loss of about 60,000 skilled workmen who had commuted daily from their homes in East Berlin to their places of work in West Berlin.”

It should be noted that in 1999, USA Today reported: “When the Berlin Wall crumbled [1989], East Germans imagined a life of freedom where consumer goods were abundant and hardships would fade. Ten years later, a remarkable 51% say they were happier with communism.” Earlier polls would likely have shown even more than 51% expressing such a sentiment, for in the ten years many of those who remembered life in East Germany with some fondness had passed away; although even 10 years later, in 2009, the Washington Post could report: “Westerners [in Berlin] say they are fed up with the tendency of their eastern counterparts to wax nostalgic about communist times.”

It was in the post-unification period that a new Russian and eastern Europe proverb was born: “Everything the Communists said about Communism was a lie, but everything they said about capitalism turned out to be the truth.”

It should be further noted that the division of Germany into two states in 1949 – setting the stage for 40 years of Cold War hostility – was an American decision, not a Soviet one.

2) During the 1950s, American coldwarriors in West Germany instituted a crude campaign of sabotage and subversion against East Germany designed to throw that country’s economic and administrative machinery out of gear. The CIA and other US intelligence and military services recruited, equipped, trained and financed German activist groups and individuals, of West and East, to carry out actions which ran the spectrum from juvenile delinquency to terrorism; anything to make life difficult for the East German people and weaken their support of the government; anything to make the commies look bad.

It was a remarkable undertaking. The United States and its agents used explosives, arson, short circuiting, and other methods to damage power stations, shipyards, canals, docks, public buildings, gas stations, public transportation, bridges, etc; they derailed freight trains, seriously injuring workers; burned 12 cars of a freight train and destroyed air pressure hoses of others; used acids to damage vital factory machinery; put sand in the turbine of a factory, bringing it to a standstill; set fire to a tile-producing factory; promoted work slow-downs in factories; killed 7,000 cows of a co-operative dairy through poisoning; added soap to powdered milk destined for East German schools; were in possession, when arrested, of a large quantity of the poison cantharidin with which it was planned to produce poisoned cigarettes to kill leading East Germans; set off stink bombs to disrupt political meetings; attempted to disrupt the World Youth Festival in East Berlin by sending out forged invitations, false promises of free bed and board, false notices of cancellations, etc.; carried out attacks on participants with explosives, firebombs, and tire-puncturing equipment; forged and distributed large quantities of food ration cards to cause confusion, shortages and resentment; sent out forged tax notices and other government directives and documents to foster disorganization and inefficiency within industry and unions … all this and much more.

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, of Washington, DC, conservative coldwarriors, in one of their Cold War International History Project Working Papers (#58, p.9) states: “The open border in Berlin exposed the GDR [East Germany] to massive espionage and subversion and, as the two documents in the appendices show, its closure gave the Communist state greater security.”

Throughout the 1950s, the East Germans and the Soviet Union repeatedly lodged complaints with the Soviets’ erstwhile allies in the West and with the United Nations about specific sabotage and espionage activities and called for the closure of the offices in West Germany they claimed were responsible, and for which they provided names and addresses. Their complaints fell on deaf ears. Inevitably, the East Germans began to tighten up entry into the country from the West, leading eventually to the infamous wall. However, even after the wall was built there was regular, albeit limited, legal emigration from east to west. In 1984, for example, East Germany allowed 40,000 people to leave. In 1985, East German newspapers claimed that more than 20,000 former citizens who had settled in the West wanted to return home after becoming disillusioned with the capitalist system. The West German government said that 14,300 East Germans had gone back over the previous 10 years.

Let’s also not forget that while East Germany completely denazified, in West Germany for more than a decade after the war, the highest government positions in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches contained numerous former and “former” Nazis.

Finally, it must be remembered, that Eastern Europe became communist because Hitler, with the approval of the West, used it as a highway to reach the Soviet Union to wipe out Bolshevism forever, and that the Russians in World War I and II, lost about 40 million people because the West had used this highway to invade Russia. It should not be surprising that after World War II the Soviet Union was determined to close down the highway.

For an additional and very interesting view of the Berlin Wall anniversary, see the article “Humpty Dumpty and the Fall of Berlin’s Wall” by Victor Grossman. Grossman (née Steve Wechsler) fled the US Army in Germany under pressure from McCarthy-era threats and became a journalist and author during his years in the (East) German Democratic Republic. He still lives in Berlin and mails out his “Berlin Bulletin” on German developments on an irregular basis. You can subscribe to it at. His autobiography: “Crossing the River: a Memoir of the American Left, the Cold War and Life in East Germany” was published by University of Massachusetts Press. He claims to be the only person in the world with diplomas from both Harvard University and Karl Marx University in Leipzig.

Al Franken, the liberal’s darling

I receive a continuous stream of emails from “progressive” organizations asking me to vote for Senator Franken or contribute to his re-election campaign this November, and I don’t even live in Minnesota. Even if I could vote for him, I wouldn’t. No one who was a supporter of the war in Iraq will get my vote unless they unequivocally renounce that support. And I don’t mean renounce it like Hillary Clinton’s nonsense about not having known enough.

Franken, the former Saturday Night Live comedian, would like you to believe that he’s been against the war in Iraq since it began. But he went to Iraq at least four times to entertain the troops. Does that make sense? Why does the military bring entertainers to soldiers? To lift the soldiers’ spirits of course. And why does the military want to lift the soldiers’ spirits? Because a happier soldier does his job better. And what is the soldier’s job? All the charming war crimes and human-rights violations that I and others have documented in great detail for many years. Doesn’t Franken know what American soldiers do for a living?

A year after the US invasion in 2003, Franken criticized the Bush administration because they “failed to send enough troops to do the job right.” What “job” did the man think the troops were sent to do that had not been performed to his standards because of lack of manpower? Did he want them to be more efficient at killing Iraqis who resisted the occupation? The volunteer American troops in Iraq did not even have the defense of having been drafted against their wishes.

Franken has been lifting soldiers’ spirits for a long time. In 2009 he was honored by the United Service Organization (USO) for his ten years of entertaining troops abroad. That includes Kosovo in 1999, as imperialist an occupation as you’ll want to see. He called his USO experience “one of the best things I’ve ever done.” Franken has also spoken at West Point (2005), encouraging the next generation of imperialist warriors. Is this a man to challenge the militarization of America at home and abroad? No more so than Barack Obama.

Tom Hayden wrote this about Franken in 2005 when Franken had a regular program on the Air America radio network: “Is anyone else disappointed with Al Franken’s daily defense of the continued war in Iraq? Not Bush’s version of the war, because that would undermine Air America’s laudable purpose of rallying an anti-Bush audience. But, well, Kerry’s version of the war, one that can be better managed and won, somehow with better body armor and fewer torture cells.”

While in Iraq to entertain the troops, Franken declared that the Bush administration “blew the diplomacy so we didn’t have a real coalition,” then failed to send enough troops to do the job right. “Out of sheer hubris, they have put the lives of these guys in jeopardy.”

Franken was implying that if the United States had been more successful in bribing and threatening other countries to lend their name to the coalition fighting the war in Iraq the United States would have had a better chance of WINNING the war.

Is this the sentiment of someone opposed to the war? Or in support of it? It is the mind of an American liberal in all its beautiful mushiness.

Notes

1. Derived from William Astore, “Investing in Junk Armies”, TomDispatch, October 14, 2014
2. New York Times, June 27, 1963, p.12
3. USA Today, October 11, 1999, p.1
4. Washington Post, May 12, 2009; see a similar story November 5, 2009
5. Carolyn Eisenberg, “Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944-1949” (1996); or see a concise review of this book by Kai Bird in The Nation, December 16, 1996
6. See William Blum, “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II”, p.400, note 8, for a list of sources for the details of the sabotage and subversion.
7. The Guardian (London), March 7, 1985
8. Washington Post, February 16, 2004
9. Star Tribune, Minneapolis, March 26, 2009
10. Huffington Post, June 2005
11. Washington Post, February 16, 2004

America, For Sale Cheap: $2 Billion Oughta Do It

With election time almost upon us, here’s a rather sobering thought:  By spending as little as a mere two billion dollars, anyone with that amount of money can now afford to buy an entire American election — Congress, the White House, governorships and all.

“But Jane,” you might ask, “why would anyone even want to do that?”  Why?  Just look at all the immense amount of loot you can score with just this tiny investment.  Access to national park land, bank deregulation, profits from weapons production, corporate monopoly status, pro-pollution laws, judges’ rulings in your favor…need I go on?

For instance, eleven trillion dollars has been recently spent on escalating and pursuing fake wars.  So if you “invest” in American elections and still only receive, say, just ten percent of those eleven trillion singles for your weapons-manufacturing services or whatever the heck else companies like Halliburton do, you still have just grown your measly two-billion-buck investment at least a thousand times over.  Forever War really pays off!

Or if you are guys like Obama, Bush and Cheney — and can’t resist playing with war toys?  Then you get to buy your very own wars!  Lots and lots of wars.  You get to play with actual life-sized GI Joe dolls and call yourself “Commander in Chief”.  You get to bomb Libya and Ukraine and Iraq and Syria.  What fun!  Two billion dollars can buy you a hecka lot of war toys — eleven trillion dollars worth to be exact.

“Who’s your daddy, ISIS?”

Or let’s say that your net worth is approximately 100 billion dollars, like, say, the Koch brothers’ worth is.  You spend less than three percent of that money on buying elections — and voila!  You too get over a thousand percent return on every dollar you spend.  What kind of crazy-good investment is that!

Or let’s say you are a member of the notorious WalMart family, worth hundreds of billions of dollars.  You spend just a few paltry billion on election buyouts — and suddenly us taxpayers are paying for all of your employees’ healthcare.  And we’re throwing food stamps into the bargain too.  Brilliant idea!

Or what if you own a giant coal company, oil company, car company, power company or some other major polluter?  Common sense tells us voters that we need to cut down on polluting the atmosphere so as to avoid drastic climate change that even now threatens to kill off the whole human race.

We could have been using solar power all this time for instance — and also cleaned up our rivers and even eliminated the need for fossil fuel.  But no.  For a few (billion) dollars more at election time, you can potentially doom the entire human race.  America, are we having fun yet?

Or let’s say for instance that you are AIPAC, that Israeli political action committee.  Spend just two billion dollars to buy every election in America — up to and including the dog catcher?  What a deal!  And since Israel is already receiving three billion dollars every year from America, guaranteed, voted by Congress, you don’t even have to risk using your own moolah.  You can use ours.  Fabulous investment. 

Plus you also get permission to bomb Gaza, take over the West Bank, design America’s stupid “Bomb Syria” policy, have red-carpet access to the entire Middle East (as in red carpets of blood) and get away with committing all kinds of other violations of the Nuremberg precedents and Geneva war crime conventions too.  

According to Middle East expert Paul Larudee, “Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu infamously bragged that ‘America is a thing you can move very easily’.”  Apparently all you need is just two billion bucks.   Hell, Attila the Hun never even had that kind of power.  Or even Josef Stalin.  All he ever got out his American investments was the freaking Cold War.

But don’t worry, Josef!  The Cold War is about to heat up again, thanks to AIPAC.  Hell, now AIPAC is even an unofficial member of NATO (and apparently its most influential member too).  And, as such, Israeli war hawks seem hell-bent on fomenting World War III.  Does the American public really want to go there?  I think not.

Or you could invest your capital in running America’s prison-industrial complex?  Just think of all the cheap labor you’ll get!  For much less than two billion in folding money, you don’t even have to ship your goods over from China any more.  Plus you get to have them stamped “Made in America” too.  Definitely a win-win for you.

Or what if you are Monsanto or Big Pharma or Bank of America or CitiCorp or Goldman Sachs or General Electric?  For far less than two billion dollars, you can get rid of unions, create your own monopolies, write your own “regulations”, appoint your own “regulators” and rake in the profits.  And if you are Big Media, our publicly-owned airwaves now belong to you.  Think Rupert Murdock.  Or net neutrality up in smoke.  Think AT&T.  Boo-yah!

Yep, America is for sale for really cheap these days.  The total assets of the United States of America is currently 188 trillion dollars.  And just think.  For just a mere two billion simoleons, all that can be yours!  Buy a little false advertizing, do a bit of voter-suppression, get your hands on a few electronic voting machines, tell a few lies on Fox News and CNN and, boom shake the room, you can own all of that.  All $188,000,000,000,000.00 worth.  “Worth playing for?”  Yeah.

My country these days has become like some aging cheap whore, selling herself on street corners to the first two-bit John who comes along and offers her a couple of dollars.

America these days isn’t even a high-priced call girl any more.

Who Owns The Nukes If Wall Street Owns The Government?

Maybe it’s Time to Take Back the Government…

Paul Craig Roberts is not a fool. Nor is he a card-carrying Communist. His conservative credentials at least once were impeccable – a senior researcher at the Hoover Institute, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, one of the economists responsible for President Reagan’s supply-side economics, and Reagan’s Assistant Treasury Secretary for economic policy, working for development of the tax policies that were central to everything that followed in the US.

That is why he cannot be dismissed lightly when he says the United States and Russia are already at war over the Ukraine, and the US is planning nuclear war, based upon a transparent pretense. He is not alone. Now there are almost daily expressions of concern that the US is positioning itself to take the first strike in a nuclear war with Russia; see, e.g. Stern,”Threats Against Russia Increase Danger Of Nuclear War ,”http://www.countercurrents.org/stern300814.htm

Nuclear war between the United States and Russia has been hanging over our heads now for over half a century. The great majority of the world’s humans have had that possibility lurking in the background of everything they do for all their lives – the knowledge that if they live in any major urban area they are subject to annihilation by nuclear weapons on perhaps half an hour’s notice., and that those who are far enough away from urban centers to survive that half hour are facing unknown terrors such as the abrupt disappearance of modern civilization and/or “nuclear winter.” This is totally insane, and is pretty much proof positive that President Kennedy was wrong in his immortal American University speech (perhaps not coincidentally shortly before he was assassinated,) .

Kennedy described the insanity as all of us have lived with it for most of our lives:

“Total war makes no sense in an age where great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age where a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the Allied air forces in the second world war. [The US and Russia are now in possession of comparable numbers, with a total of ninety thousand Allied World War IIs, by Kennedy’s count, .] It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.”

And he gave his prognosis for ending the insanity:

“Our problems are man-made. Therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.” www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau150614.htm

In the last half century, little has changed about the insanity of nuclear war, but our ability and determination to solve the problem has waned and it no longer appears within our capacity. We are no longer certain man-made problems can be solved by man, and in particular, the worst of all, that we may be unable to undo catastrophic global warming, which threatens to turn our lush, green, beautiful world into a hot, dry uninhabitable wasteland.. But let’s leave that aside for the moment and focus on nuclear war.

We have all lived with the threat of nuclear war for all or most of our lives, but it has only been a threat. What Kennedy described has always been a threat to winner and loser alike. Realistic visions of the outcome include destruction of all the major cities of both Russia and the United States, followed by possible “nuclear winter” everywhere – instant destruction of the urban half of each nation involved, and slow destruction by starvation and undoubted socioeconomic chaos of much of the other half in months and years to follow. Not most folks’ idea of a win, even for the sociopaths presumably involved in the planning of our wars.

“Our” wars? Perhaps not. We have “outsourced” to China millions of jobs that will never come back because we cannot compete with Chinese wages. We have given to China, with the resettlement of the likes of Pfizer, rights to uncounted numbers of patents developed as a result of centuries of carefully nurtured American ingenuity. . We left in Afghanistan and Iraq, after “our” wars, hand chosen pawns who sold Afghanistan’s immense copper resources at pennies on the dollar, the great preponderance of Iraq’s petroleum, and who knows what else, to China. We have left troops in both countries to provide security for Chinese industrial establishments. “China won the war,” as the Kabul press said, made possible by a trillion dollars in bonds sold to China. See Arguimbau, “That much petroleum is that much bullshit,” www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau150614.htm, and “The War – Did We Sacrifice A Million Lives And A $Trillion Cash Just To Hand Our Jobs To China?” (URL for Part 3 with links to Parts 1, 2, and 4),

So if “we” gave away our jobs, gave away our major corporations, gave away our trade secrets, gave away access to the natural resources assumed to be the spoils of war, donated our military men to protect Chinese industry in Afghanistan and Iraq, and charged our taxpayers over a trillion dollars for accomplishment of these tasks, then who will determine the use of our nukes? A fair question, isn’t it? A nuclear war between the United States and Russia would likely leave China and our emigrated industry, the corrupters of Congress,  untouched, at least physically, and would make it overnight the unquestioned dominant economic power in the world. So perhaps we cannot assume that our government is giving full consideration to the dangers to the US itself of nuclear war with Russia.

American politics of both parties at this time portray a nation bent on self-destruction. For instance, the Republican Party, which as a practical matter is the controlling party today, “is divided between the ‘hope America fails’ Republicans, who appear to actively want joblessness to rise to seek political gain, and the radical Republicans who adore Ayn Rand, like Paul and Ryan, who favor extremist economic policies that would make America fail .” Budowsky, ” July 4 Infamy: Republicans Try to Destroy America’s Economy,” And the Democrats, with as much or more support from Wall Street than the Republicans, elected a candidate for two terms whose political strategies (e.g. assertion of the existence of a Senate “super majority”) have assured Republican control, whose name alone uniquely qualifies him to be controversial and misunderstood, and whose very first day in office was spent openly and deliberately rejecting central campaign promises that he could as easily have kept, “What Fools We Are,”  . Has it not come to anyone’s mind that Wall Street may have intentionally engineered a politics of failure for the United States, and that the Republicans’ willingness to destroy the American economy is Wall Street’s as well ?

And how better quickly to engineer a lasting failure of America, than to steer it into a nuclear first strike after resettling the great corporations thousands of miles away, leaving them free to pick up the spoils in two or three newly-vacated subcontinents? Doesn’t that make this nuclear confrontation uniquely dangerous?

These are insane questions, and one who poses them must question his own sanity, but they are no more nor less insane than the question, to which we now casually assume the answer: “Aren’t Wall Street and the world’s political and corporate leaders steering us into ultimately catastrophic climate change?”

I don’t know what’s going on here, but I know the people had better regain control of the nuclear weapons, and fast.

Our Population Growth Totalitarian Future

As the world explodes in violence, war, riots, and uprisings, it is challenging to step back and examine the bigger picture. With airliners being shot down over the Ukraine, missiles flying between Israel and Gaza, ongoing civil war in Syria, Iraq falling apart as ISIS gains ground, dictatorship crackdown in Egypt, Turkey on the verge of revolution, Iran gaining control of Iraq, Saudi Arabia fomenting violence, Africa dissolving into chaos, South America imploding and sending their children across our purposely porous southern border, Mexico under the control of drug lords, China experiencing a slow motion real estate collapse, Japan experiencing their third decade of Keynesian failure, facing a demographic nightmare scenario while being slowly poisoned by radiation, and Chinese-Japanese relations moving towards World War II levels, it is easy to get lost in the day to day minutia of history in the making.

Why is this happening at this point in history? Why is the average American economically worse off today than they were at the height of the economic crisis in 2009? Why is the Cold War returning with a vengeance? Why is the Federal Reserve still employing emergency monetary policies when we are supposedly five years into a recovery and the stock market has attained record highs? Why do the ECB and European politicians continue to paper over the insolvency of their banks and governments? Why did the U.S. support the ouster of a dictator we supported for decades in Egypt and then support the elevation of a new dictator after we didn’t like the policies of the democratically elected president? Why did the U.S. eliminate the leader of Libya and allow the country to descend into anarchy and civil war? Why did the U.S. fund and provoke a revolutionary overthrow of a democratically elected leader in the Ukraine? Why did the U.S. fund and arm Al Qaeda associated rebels in Syria who are now fighting our supposed allies in Iraq? Why has the U.S. been occupying Afghanistan for the last thirteen years with the result being a Taliban that is stronger than ever? Why are the BRIC countries forming a monetary union to challenge USD domination? Why is the U.S. attempting to provoke Russia into a conflict with NATO?

Why is the U.S. government collecting every electronic communication made by every American? Why is the U.S. government spying on world leader allies? Why is the U.S. government providing military equipment to local police forces? Why is the U.S. military conducting training exercises within U.S. cities? Why is the U.S. government attempting to restrict Second Amendment rights? Why is the U.S. government attempting to control and lockdown the internet? Why has the U.S. government chosen to treat the Fourth Amendment as if it is obsolete? Why is the national debt still rising by $750 billion per year ($2 billion per day) if the economy is back to normal? Why have 12 million working age Americans left the workforce since the economic recovery began? How could the unemployment rate be back at 2008 levels when there are 14 million more working age Americans and the same number employed as in 2008? Why are there 13 million more people on food stamps today than there were at the start of the economic recovery in 2009? Why have home prices risen by 25% since 2012 when mortgage applications have been at fourteen year lows? Why are Wall Street profits and bonuses at record highs while the real median household income stagnates at 1998 levels?

Why do 98% of incumbent politicians get re-elected when congressional approval levels are lower than whale shit? Why are oil prices four times higher than they were in 2003 if the U.S. is supposedly on the verge of energy independence? Why do the corporate controlled mainstream media choose to entertain and regurgitate government propaganda rather than inform, investigate and seek the truth? Why do corporations and shadowy billionaires control the politicians, media, judges, and financial system in their ravenous quest for more riches? Why has the public allowed a privately owned bank to control our currency and inflate away 96% of its value in 100 years? Why have American parents allowed their children to be programmed and dumbed down by government run public schools? Why have Americans allowed themselves to be lured into debt in an effort to appear wealthy and successful? Why have Americans permitted their brains to atrophy through massive doses of social media, reality TV, iGadget addiction, and a cultural environment of techno-narcissism? Why have Americans lost their desire to read, think critically, question authority, act responsibly, defer gratification, and care about future generations? Why have Americans sacrificed their freedoms, liberties and rights for the false expectation of safety and security? Why will we pay dearly for our delusional, materialistic, debt financed idiocy? – Because we never learn the lessons of history.

There are so many questions and no truthful answers forthcoming from those who pass for leaders in this increasingly totalitarian world. Our willful ignorance, apathy, hubris and arrogance will have consequences. Just because it hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen. The cyclicality of history guarantees a further deepening of this Crisis. The world has evolved from totalitarian hegemony to republican liberty and regressed back to totalitarianism throughout the centuries. Anyone honestly assessing the current state of the world and our country would unequivocally conclude we have regressed back towards a totalitarian regime where a small cabal of powerful oligarchs believes they can control and manipulate the masses in their gluttonous desire for treasure. Aldous Huxley foretold all the indicators of a world descending into totalitarianism due to overpopulation, propaganda, brainwashing, consumerism, and dumbing down of a distracted populace in his 1958 reassessment of his 1931 novel Brave New World.

Is There a Limit?

“At the rate of increase prevailing between the birth of Christ and the death of Queen Elizabeth I, it took sixteen centuries for the population of the earth to double. At the present rate it will double in less than half a century. And this fantastically rapid doubling of our numbers will be taking place on a planet whose most desirable and pro­ductive areas are already densely populated, whose soils are being eroded by the frantic efforts of bad farmers to raise more food, and whose easily available mineral capital is being squandered with the reckless extravagance of a drunken sailor getting rid of his accumulated pay.” –Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited – 1958

Demographics are easy to extrapolate and arrive at an accurate prediction, as long as the existing conditions and trends remain relatively constant. Huxley was accurate in his doubling prediction. The world population was 2.9 billion in 1958. It only took 39 years to double again to 5.8 billion in 1997. It has grown by 24% in the last 17 years to the current level of 7.2 billion. According to United Nations projections, world population is projected to reach 9.6 billion in 2050. The fact that it would take approximately 70 years for the world’s population to double from the 1997 level reveals a slowing growth rate, as the death rate in many developed countries surpasses their birth rate. The population of the U.S. grew from 175 million in 1958 to 320 million today, an 83% increase in 56 years.

The rapid population growth over the last century from approximately 1.8 billion in 1914, despite two horrific world wars, is attributable to cheap, easy to access oil and advances in medical technology made possible by access to cheap oil. The projection of 9.6 billion in 2050 is based upon an assumption the world’s energy, food and water resources can sustain that many people, no world wars kill a few hundred million people, no incurable diseases spread across the globe and there is no catastrophic geologic, climate, or planetary events. I’ll take the under on the 9.6 billion.

Anyone viewing the increasingly violent world situation without bias can already see the strain that overpopulation has created. Today, six countries contain half the world’s population.

A cursory examination of population trends around the world provides a frightening glimpse into a totalitarian future marked by vicious resource wars, violent upheaval and starvation for millions. India, a country one third the size of the United States, has four times the population of the United States. A vast swath of the population lives in poverty and squalor. India contains the largest concentration (25%) of people living below the World Bank’s international poverty line of $1.25 per day. According to the U.N. India is expected to add 400 million people to its cities by 2050. Its capital city Delhi already ranks as the second largest in the world, with 25 million inhabitants. The city has more than doubled in size since 1990. The assumptions in these U.N. projections are flawed. Without rapidly expanding economic growth, capital formation and energy resources, the ability to employ, house, feed, clothe, transport, and sustain 400 million more people will be impossible. Disease, starvation, civil unrest, war and a totalitarian government would be the result. With its mortal enemy Pakistan, already the sixth most populated country in the world, jamming 182 million people into an area one quarter the size of India and one twelfth the size of the U.S. and growing faster than India, war over resources and space will be inevitable. And both countries have nuclear arms.

More than half the globe’s inhabitants now live in urban areas, with China, India and Nigeria forecast to see the most urban growth over the next 30 years. Twenty-four years ago, there were 10 megacities with populations pushing above the 10 million mark. Today, there are 28 megacities with areas of developing nations seeing faster growth: 16 in Asia, 4 in Latin America, 3 in Africa, 3 in Europe and 2 in North America. The world is expected to have 41 sprawling megacities over the next few decades with developing nations representing the majority of that growth. Today, Tokyo, with 38 million people, is the largest in the world, followed by New Delhi, Jakarta, Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, Manila, and Karachi – all exceeding 20 million people.

To highlight the rapid population growth of the developing world, the New York metropolitan area containing 18 million people was ranked as the third largest urban area in the world in 1990. Today it is ranked ninth and is expected to be ranked fourteenth by 2030. The U.S. had the fewest births since 1998 last year at 3.95 million. We also had the highest recorded deaths in history at 2.54 million.  The fertility rate for 20- to 24-year-olds is now 83.1 births per 1,000 women, a record low. That combination created a gap in births over deaths that is the lowest it has been in 35 years.

This is the plight of the developed world (U.S., Europe, Japan) and even China (due to one child policy). According to the U.N. report, the population of developed regions will remain largely unchanged at around 1.3 billion from now until 2050. In contrast, the 49 least developed countries are projected to double in size from around 900 million people in 2013 to 1.8 billion in 2050. The rapid growth of desperately poor third world countries like Nigeria, Afghanistan, Niger, Congo, Ethiopia, and Uganda will create tremendous strain on their economic, political, social, and infrastructural systems. Nigeria’s population is projected to surpass the U.S. by 2050. Japan, Europe and Russia are in demographic death spirals. China is neutral, and the U.S. is expected to grow by another 89 million people. I wonder how many of them the BLS will classify as not in the labor force.

What are the implications to mankind of the world adding another billion people in the next twelve years, primarily in the poorest countries of Asia, Africa and South America? What does the world think of the U.S., which constitutes 4.4% of the world’s population, but consumes 20% of the world’s oil production and 24% of the world’s food? Will there be consequences to having the 85 richest people on earth accumulating as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion, with 1.2 billion surviving on less than $1.25 per day? Can a planet with finite amount of easily accessible financially viable extractable resources support an ever increasing number of people? Is there a limit to growth? I believe these questions will be answered in the next fifteen years as the dire consequences play out in civil strife, resource wars, totalitarian regimes, and societal collapse.  cycles always sweep away the existing social order and replace it with something new. It could be better or far worse.

Impact of Over-Population

“The problem of rapidly increasing numbers in relation to natural resources, to social stability and to the well-being of individuals — this is now the central problem of mankind; and it will remain the central problem certainly for another century, and perhaps for several centuries thereafter. Unsolved, that problem will render insoluble all our other problems. Worse still, it will create conditions in which individual free­dom and the social decencies of the democratic way of life will become impossible, almost unthinkable. Not all dictatorships arise in the same way. There are many roads to Brave New World; but perhaps the straightest and the broadest of them is the road we are travel­ing today, the road that leads through gigantic num­bers and accelerating increases.” 

The turmoil roiling the world today is a function of Huxley’s supposition that over-population pushes societies towards centralization and ultimately totalitarianism. The relentless growth in the world’s population, not matched by growth in energy resources, water, food, and living space, results in increasing tension, anger, economic decline, government dependency, war and ultimately totalitarianism. Huxley believed politicians and governments would increasingly resort to propaganda and misinformation to mislead citizens as the problems worsened and freedoms were revoked. Could this recent statement by our commander and chief of propaganda have made Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebbels any prouder?

“The world is less violent than it has ever been. It is healthier than it has ever been. It is more tolerant than it has ever been. It is better fed then it’s ever been. It is more educated than it’s ever been.”

I’m sure the people living in Gaza, the Ukraine, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Thailand, Turkey, Africa and American urban ghettos would concur with Obama’s less violent than ever mantra. Disease (Cholera, Malaria, Hepatitis, Aids, Tuberculosis, Ebola, Plague, SARS) and malnutrition beset third world countries, while the U.S. obesity epidemic caused by consumption of corporate processed food peddled to the masses through diabolical marketing methods enriches the mega-corporate food companies, as well as the corporate sick care complex. Religious wars and culture wars rage across the world as intolerance for others beliefs reaches all-time highs. After three decades of government controlled public education they have succeeded in dumbing down the masses through social engineering, propaganda, and promoting equality over excellence. Obama should stop trying to think and stick to what he does best – golf and fundraising. After reading his drivel, I’m reminded of a far more pertinent quote from Huxley:

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

The chart below details the fact that 12% of the world’s population in countries producing 9% of the world’s oil are currently in a state of war. The violence, war, and civil unrest roiling the Ukraine, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan are a direct result of U.S. meddling, instigation, and provocation. The U.S. government funds dictators (Hussein, Mubarak, Assad, Gaddafi) until they no longer serve their interests, engineer the overthrow of democratically elected leaders in countries (Iran, Egypt, Ukraine) that don’t toe the line, and dole out billions in military aid and arms to countries around the world in an effort to make them do our dirty work and enrich the military industrial complex. The true motivation behind most of the violence, intrigue and war is the U.S. need to maintain the U.S. petro-dollar hegemony and to control the flow of oil and natural gas throughout the world. The ruling oligarchy’s power, influence, and wealth are dependent upon dictating currency valuations and flow of oil and gas from foreign fiefdoms.

In Huxley’s 1931 Brave New World fable the world’s population is maintained at an optimum level (just under 2 billion) calculated by those in control. This is done through technology and biological manipulation. Procreation through sexual intercourse is prohibited. Creation of the desired number of people in each class is scientifically determined and the classes are conditioned from birth to fulfill their roles in society. When Huxley reassessed his novel in 1958’s Brave New World Revisited he didn’t argue for an optimum level of population. He simply hypothesized a close correlation between too many people, multiplying too rapidly, and the formulation of authoritarian philosophies and rise of totalitarian sys­tems of government.

The introduction of penicillin, DDT, and clean water into even the poorest countries on the planet had the effect of rapidly decreasing death rates around the globe. Meanwhile, birth rates continued to increase due to religious, social and cultural taboos surrounding birth control and the illiteracy and ignorance of those in the poorest regions of the world. The ultimate result has been an explosion in population growth in the developing world, least able to sustain that growth. Huxley just uses common sense in concluding that as an ever growing population presses more heavily upon accessible resources, the economic position of the society undergoing this ordeal becomes ever more precarious.

It essentially comes down to the laws of economics. Most of the developing world is economic basket cases. They cannot produce food, consumer goods, housing, schools, infrastructure, teachers, managers, scientists or educated workers at the same rate as their population growth. Therefore, it is impossible to improve the wretched conditions of the vast majority, as they wallow in squalor. Unless a country can produce more than it consumes, it cannot generate the surplus capital needed to invest in machinery, agricultural production, manufacturing facilities, and education. The rapidly growing population sinks further into poverty and despair. Huxley grasps the nefarious implications for freedom and liberty as over-population wreaks havoc around the globe:

“Whenever the economic life of a nation becomes pre­carious, the central government is forced to assume additional responsibilities for the general welfare. It must work out elaborate plans for dealing with a criti­cal situation; it must impose ever greater restrictions upon the activities of its subjects; and if, as is very likely, worsening economic conditions result in polit­ical unrest, or open rebellion, the central government must intervene to preserve public order and its own authority. More and more power is thus concentrated in the hands of the executives and their bureaucratic managers.”– Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited – 1958

Despots, dictators, and power hungry presidents arise in an atmosphere of fear, scarce resources, hopelessness, and misery. As the power of the central government grows the freedoms, liberties and rights of the people are diminished and ultimately relinquished.

Source: The Millennium Report

The Ugly Face of the North American Union

For the last several years, the press on the disastrous North American Union has been off front-page news. Nonetheless, the plans to remove barriers and open up borders keeps chucking along. Those who belief this course is desirable or those who conclude that it is unpreventable because the climate of globalization is overpowering, are subversive collaborators of the NWO or gutless wimps that deserve to be run over by the hordes of barbarians that flood our country.Jerome R. Corsi writes in the essay, Kerry signals advance of ‘North American Union’ plan, “with the expected ratification by Congress of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, the Obama administration already considers the U.S., Mexico and Canada as part of a “post-NAFTA” world.” What a horrendous admission to make. As stated in the article,

Obama Presses “North American Union” With Mexico, Canada, and this plan for hemispheric integration has a very long record of treason. Some background leading to the current crisis.

“Following the establishment of NAFTA in 1994, under the Clinton administration, President George W. Bush attempted to deepen the U.S.-Canada-Mexico tri-national region with the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), but public opposition spearheaded by this publication, The John Birch Society, WorldNetDaily, Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, and other pro-independence, pro-Constitution groups, forced the Bush administration to shelve the plan — temporarily — and drop the tainted SPP moniker.

At the same time, the Bush administration was pushing the broadening agenda, under the banner of the Free Trade Area of the America’s (FTAA), an endeavor launched during the Clinton administration to expand NAFTA to include all the nations of North and South America. As with the SPP, an awakened electorate put sufficient heat on the U.S. Congress to torpedo the FTAA. The subversive integration/merger plans that The New American had been exposing for years were confirmed in 2011 with the release by WikiLeaks of U.S. State Department cables showing that U.S. officials had been colluding with their Canadian and Mexican counterparts to undermine our constitutional government through various “integration” schemes. (See here and here.)”

Therefore, it comes as no surprise when General Petraeus announces, “After America Comes North America.” He also boasted about how the three economies have been put “together” over the last 20 years as part of the “implementation” of the North American Free Trade Act. As The New American publication proves, resistance to a NAU is not only justified but also necessary if America is to survive as an independent nation.Back in 2006, Dr. Corsi refutes NeoCon proponent John Hawkins, who uses Saul D. Alinsky tactics, in Human Events account that NORTH AMERICAN UNION IS NO CONSPIRACY. The point is that the Obama administration is carrying forward the same strategy, ever protected by the lame stream media, to advance the disintegration of American sovereignty.

The video, , provides a vivid analysis just what is at stake. In addition, one example of the methods used by Obama is reveled in the 2012 column, New Obama Executive Order Pushes Us Closer To A North American Union And A One World Economic System.

“Most Americans have absolutely no idea how far plans to integrate the United States, Canada and Mexico have advanced.

Last year, Barack Obama signed an agreement to create a “North American security perimeter” and most Americans never even heard about it because the mainstream news networks almost entirely ignored it.

But this is exactly what the globalists want. They don’t want people to become alarmed by these moves toward North American integration. In fact, a document uncovered by Wikileaks shows that those involved in the effort to integrate North America believe that an “incremental” approach is best. Apparently they believe that small moves toward integration are less likely to alarm the general population.”

Well, the pretence looks to be over. The fear of alarming American nationalists no longer exists. However, the Homeland Security policy to open the southern border is backfiring as seen in the article, Border Patrol Agents Quitting as Obama’s Mass Invasion Mess at The Border Permeates the Rest of the Country.

“And now our Border Patrol agents are saying, screw it, and looking for new careers/jobs as known Mexican gang members are enjoying the Obama/Holder ‘catch and release’ policy.More than one person is concluding the Obama administration is responsible and has intentionally set this massive border mess into motion with his policies on immigration, hoping to force amnesty as his solution to the man-made disaster and humanitarian crisis (which is designed to ) of his making.”

Clearly the establishment’s efforts to create a fabricated immigration crisis in order to force a bogus “comprehensive” consolidation in this dreadful North American Union, is at the core of the mass migration. For the bleeding heart do-gooders, the death trains cry out for a more humane mode of transportation to import the Central America into the former Republic of the United States.

One such redemptive fix is to interject a dose of altruism. Replace the clingers on boxcars, reminiscent of Indian Dalit untouchables, with the sleek travel experience of the U.S. and Mexico could be connected by multi-billion-dollar high speed train within FOUR YEARS.

“A multi-billion-dollar high-speed train network linking America with Mexico moved a step closer as officials from both sides of the border thrashed out details.

The proposed 300 mile route would link San Antonio, Texas, to Monterrey, Mexico – slashing the current journey time from five hours by car to under two hours.”

Just look at the advantages of streamlining a direct route from Mexico, that bypasses any border checkpoints and deposits these “PC” undocumented immigrants directly to resettlement facilities. The return trip south can be used to transport Fast and Furious guns, useful in the drug trade, which is central to the economics of laundering monies in the North American Union hierarchy.A decade ago, the article, Do Foreigners Have a Right to Enter the United States?, covered the efforts of Asa Hutchinson, the then Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Border and Transportation Security.

“Starting this week foreign visitors will be digitally fingerprinted and photographed as part of a nationwide program to check their backgrounds and keep track of when they enter and leave the United States. On the surface this looks like a necessary and desirable procedure. This procedure is the first phase of the Department of Homeland Security’s automated entry-exit system called the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology, or US-VISIT.”

Guess that tracking system proved too much of a burden for the latest rush to process these “so called” undocumented migrants. Oh yes, let’s correct the terminology; this mass exodus wants to stay permanently in the only country that allows open borders for the premeditated and systemic destruction of their own nation.With the open admission that Former Border Patrol Agents: Illegal Immigration Crisis “Contrived”, does any federal officials listen, much less act to close the border? The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) released a statement:

“This is not a humanitarian crisis. It is a predictable, orchestrated and contrived assault on the compassionate side of Americans by her political leaders that knowingly puts minor Illegal Alien children at risk for purely political purposes. Certainly, we are not gullible enough to believe that thousands of unaccompanied minor Central American children came to America without the encouragement, aid and assistance of the United States Government. Anyone that has taken two six to seven year old children to an amusement park can only imagine the problems associated with bringing thousands of unaccompanied children that age up through Mexico and into the United States. I doubt even the Cartels would undertake that chore at any price. No, it has to be heartless corrupt politicians and their minions lusting for more money and power.”

There a few issues more absolute than the words of Ronald Reagan, “A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.” When Congressional Rep. Steve King says that “Ronald Reagan’s signature on the 1986 amnesty act” gave Barack Obama about 15 million additional Hispanic votes in 2012, he is prophesying even a worse future and inevitable prospects under a North American Union.

Reading a headline in the New York Times, Pentagon Plans to Shrink Army to Pre-World War II Level, one needs to ponder what it would take for a defensive deployment on the southern border. If  was sent to track down Pancho Villa, what prevents permanent military patrols to simply guard the border? Obviously, there is not any junior grade George S. Patton’s in the army that would have the courage to buck the commander of treason. This border war is the true existential threat that Americans do not have the stomach to fight.Those who propagate a North American Union are globalists and hate everything that the authentic America stands for. Look in a mirror, that ugly face could be you, if you fall for the propaganda of the NAU.

Regional War Swallowing The Middle East

When the Syrian war jumped its borders into Iraq, surrounding nations had a perfect chance to peacefully cooperate. They’ve thus far refused. The war in Syria now seems to be shifting to Iraq, and the big actors in the regional drama are recklessly pushing events toward more conflict that could transform a regional proxy war into a direct multi-nation battle.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) now controls giant swaths of two nations, which are surrounded by countries that either fear ISIS or previously supported it. Old alliances are being tested as Syria and Iran come to the defense of the Iraqi government against ISIS, while the opposing alliance of U.S., Israel and the Gulf State monarchies are finding their unofficial union strained under the pressure of swelling paradoxes.

For example, the U.S. is supposedly fighting a war on terrorism, but has been in an unofficial military alliance with ISIS and other al-Qaeda groups in Syria, since all of them were actively waging war on the Syrian government.

When ISIS invaded Iraq the governments of Syria and Iran immediately offered assistance, while Obama stalled. Then, strangely, Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry “warned” Syria against air attacks targeting ISIS in Iraq, a move that was welcomed by the Iraqi government. Kerry’s warning was also meant for Iran, which is finding itself sucked deeper into the two-nation war that now threatens Iran’s border.

As Iraq, Syria and Iran are busy fighting ISIS, what are the U.S. and Israel doing? They are continuing their war against Syria, the war that gave ISIS a new lease on life.

Iraq begged Obama to deliver promised fighter jets to fight ISIS, Obama chose instead to give extra aid to the U.S. backed Syrian rebels, to the tune of $500 million. The Syrian rebels have been completely dominated by Islamic extremists for at least two years.

Israel, for its part, also ignored ISIS and instead bombed nine Syrian military targets. Israel has bombed Syria several times in the last year, rather than bombing ISIS or the other al-Qaeda groups attacking Syria. In reality, an emerging regional war already exists, but is being minimized or ignored by the media.

Because the U.S. would rather fund Islamic extremists in Syria, the Iraqi government requested and received fighter jets from Russia, which will inevitably create more strain between the Iraqi and U.S. governments, since giving and receiving military aid is a crucial way that countries cement alliances and exert influence.

When nations that receive military aid are disobedient, the big war toys are held back as a way to exert leverage. The Iraqi President, Nouri al-Maliki, let his political naivety blind him to this reality,and recently admitted that Iraq was “delusional” to rely completely on U.S. military aid, since Obama is using the ISIS threat and the withholding of aid to pressure Iraqi politicians to ditch al-Maliki, essentially a “legal” form of regime change that will act more in accord with U.S. interests against Iran and Syria. Obama has wanted to replace al-Maliki ever since the Iraqi president refused to join Obama’s war against Syria.

As the Syria-Iraq war expands, the greater the gravitational pull it will exert on surrounding nations, who can’t resist the big profits associated with mass killing. Others will participate indirectly to protect their borders, until they too are drawn in by the centripetal forces of war.

After participating in the Syrian war through proxies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the Obama administration finds itself neck deep in the Syrian-Iraqi blood bath, finding it difficult not to join the other sharks in the feeding frenzy.

Obama’s “hands off” approach to Iraq is temporary and strategic, and is in reality “hands on” behind the scenes.  As the war spreads across borders Obama will find it less possible to abstain, since Iran, Syria and Russia will gain wider regional influence at his expense, which is happening by the minute.

The Syria-Iraq war is testing the resilience of decades-long alliances, even the future of the modern nation state, which lies at the foundation of post-WWII international law. This legal sanctity of the nation-state was emphasized by the Nuremberg trials after WWII, which established that the Nazis biggest war crime was not genocide or the holocaust, but the military invasion of sovereign nations, which created the conditions for regional and world war. The only legal war under international law is a defensive one.

But now regional wars are becoming commonplace, and borders are ignored as big powers pay and arm proxy militias to attack governments. More importantly, the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya have essentially eviscerated global international law, since the UN has been powerless in protecting sovereign nations against the aggression of the world’s only superpower. The U.S. invasions have created a climate where the nation-state has lost its revered status, increasing the likelihood of more war, since the old rules no longer apply.

Obama’s recent actions prove he has no intention of leaving the Middle East. As the Syrian war was spilling into Iraq, Obama requested $5 billion more for Middle East war, as if the gargantuan military budget wasn’t already enough. According to The New York Times:

“The White House is asking for $4 billion to go to the Pentagon and $1 billion to the State Department for other counterterrorism operations, including training and equipping partner countries (Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc.). Some of the money, administration officials said, would cover increased costs of Special Operations Forces that have deployed around the world, while $1.5 billion would go toward counterterrorism efforts in the neighborhood around Syria: Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq.”

This $5 billion represents yet more blood money that will inevitably exacerbate the Middle East inferno. Years of ongoing U.S. military intervention — direct or indirect — has led to the unnecessary death or suffering of millions of people across the Middle East and to the large-scale destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and now Iraq again.

It is possible, as some are predicting, that Obama will complete a major diplomatic deal that includes Iran and the Kurdish section of Iraq. This, if successful, may create a temporary reprieve from the violence, while creating new ethnic-religious tensions that will inevitably explode again.  Any temporary deal will not eliminate the deeper causes of the war, which lie in the waning influence of the U.S. and its allies, and the rising influence of China and Russia.

All these developments emphasize the need to revive the antiwar movement here in the U.S. Those who oppose U.S. government military adventures around the world should unite and demand that no troops be sent to Iraq, that the U.S. advisors in Iraq should be brought home, and that money should be spent on jobs, education and strengthening the safety net here at home, not on war.

Who Is Intolerant Because Ashamed: Creationists or Evolutionary Theologians

It’s no longer easy to be a faithful Christian in America, says Dr. Robert P. George, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.  Our culture increasingly condemns Christian beliefs as bigoted and hateful: 
 
“They despise us if we refuse to call good evil and evil good.” (American Christians Should Prepare to Be Despised, Official Tells National Prayer Breakfast, Rob Kerby, ChristianHeadlines.com, May 15, 2014) 
 
The Princeton University professor and author told Washington, D.C.’s 10th annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast that American culture no longer favors faithful Christians. For example, he asked attendees to consider, 
 
“….the derision that comes from being pro-life and pro-traditional marriage (they) threaten us with consequences if we refuse to call what is good, evil, and what is evil, good. They demand us to conform our thinking to their orthodoxy, or else say nothing at all…”  
 
Dr. George told the prayer breakfast: 
 
“The intimidation to remain silent is insidious and growing…what American Christians are facing is the 21st century version of the question, ‘Am I ashamed of the Gospel?”   
 
If anything, some evolutionary theologians and their gullible Christian flocks, both evolutionary theist and progressive creationist, are at least as hostile if not more so toward faithful defenders of the miracle of Special Creation than are their evolutionary atheist and occult pantheist counterparts: Luciferians, god-men, goddesses, shaman, Satanists, witches, necromancers, and astrologers. 
 
The usual diatribe thrown against altogether despised creationists goes something like this:  
 
Since Darwin introduced the theory of evolution some Christians have been uncomfortable with the idea that all species (i.e., reptiles, birds, bugs, dogs, apes, humans) share a common ancestry moving from primordial matter to creeping things, crawling things, swimming things, knuckle-dragging things to man under the direction of the God of evolution.   Thus the Earth was not created instantaneously as St. Augustine held or created in six days as most early Church Fathers affirmed. Nor was Adam created by the One God in three Persons as a living soul embodied in flesh, fully person, fully man right from the beginning.   Adam and Eve, if they even existed were emergent products of evolution, their closest relative soulless hominids.  Thus the events described in Genesis are not meant to convey the miraculous creation ex nihilo but the scientific ‘reality’ that the universe has an impotent creator that made and ignited a Cosmic Egg (Big Bang) which generated matter and energy. Then after billions of years of God-directed evolution eventuating in the suffering and death of millions of life-forms (God’s fault, btw) man inexplicably fell from grace even though God is the guilty party, the real cause of death and suffering.  
 
According to this counter-intuitive Gnostic-laced tale of nonsense, evolutionary science, not God’s Revelation, is a reality in nature explainable by reason and empirical observation and faithful Christians who deny this are in denial of reality.  Faithful Christians who actually affirm the Revelation of God and Special Creation are guilty of defending the backwards, anti-scientific, anti-evolution ‘fundamentalist’ interpretation of the book of Genesis thus are not only a cause of embarrassment to fashionably-correct, scientifically enlightened Christians, but are also guilty of harming Christianity. (Creationism Harms Christianity, ) 
 
However, it isn’t faithful Christians who are ‘embarrassments’ but rather intellectually arrogant evolution-obsessed theologians.  These wolves in sheep clothing mesmerize and persuade susceptible Christian sheep to uncritically accept dangerous esoteric ideas like evolution.
 
 With respect to Darwin’s theory, Darwin is not its’ inventor. He received the idea from his nature-worshipping pagan grandfather Erasmus Darwin, an important name in European Masonic anti-Christian Church organizations engaged in destructive revolutionary activism. Erasmus mentored his grandson Charles: 
 
“Dr. Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) was the first man in England to suggest those ideas which were later to be embodied in the Darwinian theory by his grandson, Charles Darwin (1809-1882) who wrote in 1859 Origin of Species.” (Scarlet and the Beast, Vol. II, John Daniel, p. 34) 
 
According to anthropologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, longtime director of the American Museum of Natural History, ancient pagans are the inventers of modern evolutionism. In the introduction to his history of evolutionism Osborn wrote:
 
 “When I began the search for anticipations of the evolutionary theory….I was led back to the Greek natural philosophers and I was astonished to find how many of the pronounced and basic features of the Darwinian theory were anticipated even as far back as the seventh century B.C.” (Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin, p. xi) 
 
By its’ nature evolutionism belongs to the category of naturalism (all that exists is nature or cosmos), making it antithetical, or in fierce opposition to the infinite Triune God, the supernatural dimension and special creation.  The personal Triune God is outside of His creation—the natural dimension of space, time, matter and energy—thus He is not subject to the laws of science: 
 
“….science has no satisfactory answer to the question of the origin of life on the earth. Perhaps the appearance of life on the earth is a miracle. Scientists are reluctant to accept that view, but their choices are limited: either life was created on the earth by the will of a being outside the grasp of scientific understanding, or it evolved on our planet spontaneously, through chemical reactions occurring in nonliving matter lying on the surface of the planet. The first theory places the question of the origin of life beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. It is a statement of faith in the power of a Supreme Being not subject to the laws of science. The second theory is also an act of faith. The act of faith consists in assuming that the scientific view of the origin of life is correct, without having concrete evidence to support that belief.” (Until the Sun Dies, Robert Jastrow, Ph.D. Theoretical Physics, pp. 62-63, 1977) 
 
Only by conceptually murdering the supernatural Triune God and replacing Him with a ‘god’ within the natural dimension (naturalism), thus subject to scientific inquiry, can intellectually arrogant theologians presume to speak for god, claiming that he made and exploded a Cosmic Egg and directs evolutionary transformism together with the rest of their twisted theology dressed in Christian clothing.
 
 As an idea evolution is like an onion consisting of multitudinous layers of esoteric meaning.  Darwin’s theory occupies two or three layers. The many other layers already existed prior to Erasmus going back to the Renaissance and before that to ancient Chaldea and India thence to ancient Greece and Rome where evolution is always and everywhere connected to reincarnation and spiritual evolution (transformism).    
 
On ancient pagan conceptions of reincarnation and spiritual evolution early Church Father Gregory of Nyssa said: 
 
“[I]f one should search carefully, he will find that their doctrine is of necessity brought down to this. They tell us that one of their sages said that he, being one and the same person, was born a man, and afterward assumed the form of a woman, and flew about with the birds, and grew as a bush, and obtained the life of an aquatic creature—and he who said these things of himself did not, so far as I can judge, go far from the truth, for such doctrines as this—of saying that one should pass through many changes—are really fitting for the chatter of frogs or jackdaws or the stupidity of fishes or the insensibility of trees” (The Making of Man 28:3; A.D. 379).  
 
Evolution appeared in Christendom during the Renaissance when certain Christian theologians, mystics and scholars such as Emanuel Swedenborg had discovered Chaldean astrology, Hermetic magic, occult Jewish Kabbalah, Eastern mystical traditions and the ancient ways of ‘going within’ (contacting spirits).  All of this was accompanied by conceptions of reincarnation and spiritual evolution.  They studied these ancient occult traditions which they translated resulting in Hermetic Kabbalah. Then like Pico della Mirandola, they argued that occult hermetic science – the divine technology or Magic Way of reaching divine status and powers through ritual procedures and spiritual evolution is the best proof of the divinity of Christ.  (God and the Knowledge of Reality, Thomas Molnar, pp. 78-79) 
 
Father Richard John Neuhaus pulls all of these occult traditions together in his analysis of modern evolutionary scientism as a revitalization of ancient spiritual traditions closely connected to elemental spirits. In his book, “American Babylon,” Neuhaus argues that astrological elemental spirits (powers and principalities) have been recast as, 
 
“…evolutionary dynamics, life forces, or laws of nature.” Though described as laws rather than spirits, these elemental “forces”…. work their inexorable ways in cold indifference to reason, to will, to love, and to hope. In short, it is suggested that the elemental spirits are in charge and that human freedom is a delusion.” (p. 226)
 
 Despite that modern evolutionary theologians validate their esoteric projects as empirical or observational science in reality observational science is their enemy.   For instance, evolutionary theology alleges that hominids are supposed to be our ancestors, the so-called transitional life-forms linking modern humans to the common ancestor of all life.    
 
However, the hominid claim has fallen flat on its’ face, said Carl Wieland. In “Making Sense of Apeman Claims,” Wieland reports that a consistent pattern has emerged in direct opposition to the evolutionary story.  Over the decades, each new fossil find has been falling quite naturally into one of only three major groups.    And two of these, Neanderthal and Homo erectus turn out to be strikingly similar, in fact, Neanderthals are “clearly human descendants of Adam.” (Creation, Vol. 36, No. 3, 2014, p. 38)
 
 Although the third category generates the most excitement among evolution-worshippers it turns out to be an extinct non-human primate group, anatomically not between apes and humans.    
 
Sequencing of Neanderthal DNA clearly shows interbreeding with modern populations, particularly those from Eastern Europe, meaning that Neanderthals are not a separate species, despite evolutionary claims that they split off from the human lineage 500,000 years ago.  This evidence is a major blow to evolutionary theist and “progressive” or “old-earth creationist notions.” (p. 38). 
 
It is because evolutionary ‘old-earth’ theologians reject what God said in favor of what man said, their starting point is fallible secular dating, hence they, 
 
“….must regard Neanderthals as pre-Adamic soulless nonhumans despite all the archaeological evidences of their humanity.   But DNA now makes this completely dead in the water, having children together means they must be the same created kind.”  (pp. 38-39) 
 
Among the scientifically affirmed finds showing that Neanderthals were human are: 
 
1. Stone tools and specialized bone tools for leatherworking. 
 
2. The controlled use of fire, including heating birch bark peelings to make special pitch to haft wooden shafts onto stone tools. 
 
3.  Perfectly balanced, finely crafted wooden hunting javelins. 
 
4. Jewelry 
 
5. Evidence of body decorations and cosmetics. 
 
6. Burying their dead with ornaments. 
 
7. Cooking utensils and the use of herbs in food. 
 
8. Symbolic thinking 
 
9. High-tech ‘superglue’ 
 
10. A complex structure built 1 mile underground where no daylight penetrates suggests the technology and know-how to transport sustained fire as a source of light that far down. 
 
11. Evidence of dwellings made of timber draped with animal skins 
 
12.  Recent detailed analysis of hyoid bone (associated with the voice box) indicates they could speak, as does recent genetic evidence.  (ibid, Wieland) 
 
“For he spoke and they were made: he commanded and they were created.” Psalm 33:9  
 
Either the infinite personal One God in three Persons spoke or He did not. If He did, then Jesus is God in the flesh, the Creator and Living Word (John 1: 1-5) the Light that came into the world (John 3: 1-9) who perfectly fulfills all prophecy from the antediluvian world to the post-flood world: 
 
“And he said: I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Moses hid his face: for he durst not look at God.”     Exodus 3:6 
 
If the One God in three Persons spoke then what He revealed to Moses with respect to the miracle of creation is thesis (True Truth), making evolution antithesis (the lie).  The faith of the Christian Church and of the average Christian has had, and still has, its foundation as much in the literal and historic elements of Genesis, the book of beginnings revealed ‘mouth to mouth’ by the Angel to Moses, as in that of the person and deity of Jesus Christ.  
 
The Return of an Ancient Heresy  
 
The primary tactic employed by defiant, intellectually proud theologians eager to accommodate Scripture and the Church to modern science and pagan evolutionary thinking is predictable. It is the argument that evolution is entirely compatible with the Bible when Genesis, especially the first three chapters, is viewed in its entirety in a non-literal, non-historical context. This is not a heresy unique to modern times. The early Church Fathers dealt with this heresy as well, counting it among the heretical tendencies of apostate Jewish Cabbalists, Origenists and Gnostic pagans such as Simon Magus. 
 
Fourth-century Fathers such as John Chrysostom, Basil the Great and Ephraim the Syrian, all of whom wrote commentaries on Genesis, specifically warned against treating Genesis as an unhistorical myth or allegory. John Chrysostom strongly warned against paying heed to these heretics, 
 
“…let us stop up our hearing against them, and let us believe the Divine Scripture, and following what is written in it, let us strive to preserve in our souls sound dogmas.” (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 31)
 
 As St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote, higher theological, spiritual meaning is founded upon humble, simple faith in the literal and historic elements of Genesis as Revealed by God and one cannot apprehend rightly the Scriptures without believing in the historical reality of the events and people they describe. (ibid, Seraphim Rose, p. 40) 
 
In agreement, Vishal Mangalwadi (1949- ), founder-president of BOMI/Revelation Movement observes that the Revelation of God is the only available foundation for truth, freedom and faith in God’s gift of reason.  But Western theologians and intellectuals have closed their minds to Revelation, hence Truth, reason and Special Creation.  Because “intelligent” Americans no longer believe in “True Truth” (Francis Schaeffer) they invent stories and use empty god words as substitutes for the infinite, personal Triune God.  Thus Gospel Truth is now ‘Gospel Story’ and history a series of unfolding stories such as the physical science story (Big Bang) which may or may not include the use of a god-word; the biological science story (evolutionary transformism), the climate science story (global warming or change), and the social science story (gay marriage): 
 
“Doing science” increasingly means peddling politically correct dogma – that is, stories that have evolved into myths. No one really knows if there was only one Big Bang or other bigger bangs as well; whether we live in a universe or multi-verse; whether life evolved on this planet or came from outer space . . . but if you want a tenured position in a university, and if you want your research projects funded, you have to toe politically correct storyline – champion dogma.”  (How Did the West’s ‘Rational Animal’ Become Incapable of Using Reason? Mangalwadi) 
 
The abandonment of God’s Revelation in favor of story-telling   
 
Christendom and Protestant America did not emerge from the darkness of story-telling and god-words but arose to illustrious heights on the awe-inspiring wings of the Revelation of God, hence the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo, the uniquely Christian definition of man as a person because created in the spiritual image of the infinite One God in three Persons, God’s unchanging Moral Law and the Biblical view of man’s sinful condition. Their subsequent fall was traced by Richard Weaver in his book, “Ideas Have Consequences” (1945). 
 
Weaver writes that 14th century Western man had made an “evil decision” to abandon his belief in the transcendent Triune God, His Revelation and unchanging universals, thus the position that “there is a source of truth higher than and independent of man…” The consequence of this ‘evil decision’ is a still unfolding catastrophe reaching fullness in our own time: 
 
“The denial of everything transcending experience means inevitably…the denial of truth. With the denial of objective truth there is no escape from the relativism of ‘man is the measure of all things.” (The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, George H. Nash, pp. 32-33) 
 
The substance of ‘man is the measure of all things’ is idolatry.  The beginning of idolatry is pride (narcissism), which together with selfishness demonstrates preference for one’s self instead of the Triune God, His Revelation (hence ‘True Truth’) and neighbor (and unwanted, inconvenient human life, i.e., babies).  Just as no violation of the Law can occur without one first being an idolater, envy/covetousness and murder are its’ final results, for where ‘self’ is primary then ‘self’ deserves everything it can get, no matter the cost to other people.   
 
The fall of the West and America is due to the idolatry of darkened souls turned by choice toward evil.  From the antediluvians to our own age, the truth as to this evil said Athanasius, 
 
“….is that it originates, and resides, in the perverted choice of the darkened soul” which, “materialized by forgetting God” and engrossed in lower things, “makes them into gods,” and thereby “descends into a hopeless depth of delusion and superstition,” whereby “they ceased to think that anything existed beyond what is seen, or that anything was good save things temporal and bodily; so turning away and forgetting that she was in the image of the good God, she no longer… sees God the Word after whose likeness she is made; but having departed from herself, imagines and feigns what is not (and then) advancing further in evil, they came to celebrate as gods the elements and the principles of which bodies are composed….“(Against the Heathen, New Advent) 
 
Having descended into delusion and superstition darkened souls imagined that “all that exists” is the natural dimension, meaning the universe of matter, animated powers, forces, and deterministic laws, all of which they celebrated and attributed miraculous powers to just as modern evolution worshippers do, whether secular or theological: 
 
“There is an energy in the world, a spark, an electricity that everything is plugged into. The Greeks called it zoe, the mystics call it ‘Spirit,’ and Obi-Wan called it ‘the Force’…..This energy, spark, and electricity that pulses through all of creation sustains it, fuels it, and keeps it growing. Growing, evolving, reproducing…” (Love Wins, Rob Bell, pgs. 144-145) 
 
Evolutionary scientism is not observational science in search of how things really work in this world but rather a disastrous occult science tradition whose taproot stretches back to Babylon and before that the pre-flood world.   The ‘Christian’ teachers and defenders of this demonic heresy are guilty of leading unwitting sheep astray, possibly to their doom, and of besmirching and defaming faithful defenders of special creation as backwards, anti-science, anti-evolution destroyers of the faith.   However, in reality creationists are the defenders of thesis (True Truth) against the damnable incursion of antithesis (occultism) into the good news, the Gospel of Christ. 
 
 In this light, what are vicious attacks against Special Creation as well as those against the sanctity of human life, and traditional one man one woman marriage but evil wills offended by and resentful of Higher Authority, True Truth, ‘other’ (unwanted, inconvenient human life) and moral restrictions and limitations? 
 
“For whoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels.”    Luke 9:26 
 
Who are the intolerant ones, the highly offended because ashamed of our Lord and his words?  Who are the selfish, intellectually arrogant story-tellers whose embarrassing doctrine of change (evolution) is “really fitting for the chatter of frogs or jackdaws or the stupidity of fishes or the insensibility of trees”‘?   
 
Hint:  Not Creationists or any of the faithful. 

Absolution In A Sophomoric Society

In a post-modernism age the most assertive and self-proclaimed worshipers in the supremacy of science, have no room for a belief in God. These arrogant elites treat anyone, who profess that a true understanding of science does not contradict the presence of the almighty, with condescending distain for refusing to accept that God is dead. The transhumanist insistence that they will emerge as supreme beings is the pivotal sacrilege that underpins the social culture and political chaos that leads to the ultimate destruction of the species. Extinction of the human race and the invention of an artificial deity, denies that the act of creation inherently is the prowess of the All Powerful.

Sophomoric intelligence based upon pretentious and conceited self-regard is actually immature and ill-informed sense of worth and understanding. The reason for the absurdity, which is the hallmark of societal dysfunction, stems from the malevolent masterminds NWO globalist plan and carried out by their technocrat minions.

The Most Secret Science by Archibald E Roberts examines the MATTOID SYNDROME in chapter twelve. “Irrational political decisions at policy-making levels force upon perceptive Americans the conclusion that an invisible government of men “unbridled by logic or understanding” has acquired ultimate power and influence in the United States. Furthermore, the image-building manipulations of these Mattoids favor the development of similar attitudes in others and give thousands—perhaps millions—of normally well-balanced persons the courage to overtly engage in absurd or infamous acts.”

Colonel Archibald E. Roberts championed his views several decades ago. Yet, his analysis has not lost any of the impact or importance as the 21th century unfolds. Essentially, the situation is a geometric progression as the delusion worsens.

Scientists once relied upon empirical evidence and followed the four steps of the scientific method.

• Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
• Formulation of a hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
• Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
• Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

The current credibility of the academic community is suspect as government funding and peer pressure for career advancement demands conformity to promote specific political agendas. No area of science is more tainted than the study of global climate. In the New Report, IPCC Falsifying Climate Science, New Fraud Reports Exposed, CO2 illustrates the politicization of science and the betrayal of their own methodology standards.

Inexhaustible debate on the global warming hypothesis has developed bitter contention because conclusions much be tailored to advance the globalist hysteria that is seen as necessary to maintain the New World Disorder Psychology. Wacko environmentalists share an extreme similarity with their scientist gurus who mock divine intervention and profess that man has all the knowledge necessary to become masters of the universe.

“Secular Humanism, has become, the leading export of the ‘West’ to the rest of the world. The movers and shakers of public policy accept its values, cosmology, as Sigmund Freud views that reason rules, and that a rejection of God is acceptable. Religion is seen as a threat, and that life can be lived without delusions, especially the illusion of a religious belief. His theory of human nature and the culture of morality is founded upon the substitute of the super-ego, for the role of religion. As the source of morality and conscience, man is able to apply his reason to follow ethical behavior.”

In the end, all the HAARP manipulations and chemtrail spraying cannot and will not achieve domination over the planet. Relying on NASA to discover nirvana or trusting Japanese scientists to resolve a Fukushima nuclear winter is no better than following celebrity global warming advocates into the vast void of their own mental space.

However, the stakes become critical, when purported distinguished scientific institutes, fall into the trap of anti-intellectual conduct. The Prestigious Helmholtz Research Center Gutter-Dives…Promotes Sophomoric Attacks On Skeptics, Labelling Them “Deniers”

“It’s worrisome enough that the German government itself recently issued a brochure singling out, naming, and defaming German and American climate science skeptics. Today we have one of Germany’s most prestigious science associations actively backing adolescent-level attacks on skeptics who have decided not to take part in the collective climate hysteria.”

Seeking remission for fabricated crisis, like the newly renamed climate disruption, plays to the mental illness of fools who demand that saving the planet requires that they bury any semblance of religious belief and repentance. According to such enlighten cretins; absolution is not necessary, since acknowledging a creator would make their Frankenstein genetic engineering and eugenics experiments unholy.

Proponents of deceptive discourse would have you believe that sophomoric reasoning is rationalizing about what one understands poorly. It is often apologetics (starting with a conclusion) and masquerades as “critical thinking“. Sound good on the surface, but when you probe closely the real bias of the position becomes obvious.

“Science begins with hypotheses; apologetics begins with conclusions. Science performs experiments which can disconfirm hypotheses; apologetics employs rhetoric (conclusions can never be disconfirmed). Science discovers how the world works; Christian apologetics assures that the world conforms to the Bible (or to church doctrine). Apologetics is not a productive approach to discovering how the world works; science is not a productive method for making the world conform to the Bible.”

The last point divulges the basic disconnect. Belief in the Bible is an existential decision. Inquiry in the way the world operates is not reducible to merely running technological experimentation. Dismissing the significance and value of accepting faith in a revealed Creator is the usual determination to the scientific trained mind. Yet the objection to investigate the validity for acceptance of a divine plan for the salvation of souls permeates the man-centered culture of Modern Prometheus inquiry.

The function of science is to question, but the methods of science are not synonymous with scholarship. The burden of proof that an agnostic or atheistic conviction is a requirement for conducting good science is a research project that most universities will avoid. Nevertheless, membership of good standing into the scientific community undoubtedly rests upon this canon of doctrine.

It seems to be puerile to demand blindness to the universal evident, that the cosmos provides. Benjamin Cain critique of Stephen Hawking’s Scientific Atheism philosophy concludes it is absurdly anti-philosophical, so he is forced to pretend that his atheism is purely scientific.

“Here is Hawking’s stripped-down argument for God’s nonexistence: the universe was created in the Big Bang, which means that in its earliest stage the universe was infinitesimal and so the laws of quantum mechanics apply to its origin, and we know from those laws that quantum events can happen spontaneously without any cause; moreover, the Big Bang’s gravitational singularity was in effect a black hole and we know that in modern-day black holes time stops inside of them, which means there was no time before the Big Bang and thus no time for anyone to create the universe.”

Mr. Cain continues, “atheists presuppose a religion in their effort to unite naturalism with their typical liberal values: this religion is secular humanism, Scientism, positivism, or pragmatism. But when a religion is only presupposed rather than openly acknowledged, the religion is bound to be clumsy and lackluster, and that’s the case with Hawking’s atheistic argument.”

Taking the “Political Incorrect” cult of religion to the extreme, the example of Lawrence Torcello – assistant professor of philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology, NY, writes in an essay at The Conversation that climate scientists who fail to communicate the correct message about “global warming” should face trial for “criminal negligence”. How advance civilization has become under the scientific inquisition.Absolution by compurgation testimony of your peers may become necessary for acquittal. Under the new standard of scientific rule, even the “PC” philosopher must adopt the dogma of the Galileo court. How radical the tables have turned now that we know that the earth is round and rotates around the sophomoric society.

One of the latest targets for political persecution happens to be Dinesh D’Souza. During a recent debate on the subject he argued that the two — science and religion — are fundamentally separate.

“The questions to which God is the answer are not scientific questions,” D’Souza said. Humans around the world want to know why the universe exists, the purpose of our existence and what will come afterward. Science doesn’t “have a clue” as to the answers to these questions, D’Souza said.

Looking to science for a discovery of salvation is irrational. Achieving Raymond Kurzweil’s singularity promise of immorality within the artificial intelligence of a new life form species sounds allot like Satan’s sin of pride.While religion has never rendered a redemptive society, faith in God provides the only hope in living in a world of the boundless inhumanity of man to his brother. When scientists dismiss the need for forgiveness, their culture of forging enhanced tiers of technology, usually translates into greater levels of human bondage. The real climate disruption comes out of the laboratories of weird science. Adversely altering the natural order of the universe is as simpleminded as you can get.

Madness, I Tell You: Saber Rattling At West Point

President Barack Obama delivered his most belligerent and menacing speech to date at the US Military Academy at West Point. Aside from the lofty rhetoric we’ve come to expect in every Obama presentation, the president’s commencement address was a defiant restating of the Bush Doctrine of unilateral intervention, executive authority and endless warfare. The speech contained no new initiatives or surprises, but emphasized Obama’s unwavering support for the policies which have plunged large parts of the Middle East, Africa, and Eurasia into civil conflict, economic collapse and war. Obama defended US aggression on the grounds of “American exceptionalism”, the dubious idea that Americans are special and cannot be held to the same standards as others. The theory implies that Washington’s relentless war-mongering and killing of civilians cannot be prosecuted under international law because the US is a law unto itself.

“I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,” said Obama. “But what makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it is our willingness to affirm them through our actions.”

Obama’s statement is deliberately misleading. As the president knows, the Bush administration notified U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that the US would withdraw from the International Criminal Court Treaty in May 2002 just prior to the invasion of Iraq claiming that the ICC treaty put U.S. service members and officials at risk of prosecution by a court that is “unaccountable to the American people.” In retrospect, we can see that Bush and his lieutenants wanted to remove themselves from any accountability for the atrocities and crimes against humanity they planned to perpetrate in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Thus, exceptionalism does not affirm Washington’s willingness to comply with “international norms and the rule of law” as Obama says, but to absolve US leaders from any responsibility for their habitual war-making. As policy analyst Noam Chomsky has said many times, “If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.”

Here’s Obama again: “Let me repeat a principle I put forward at the outset of my presidency: The United States will use military force, unilaterally if necessary, when our core interests demand it… International opinion matters, but America should never ask permission to protect our people, our homeland or our way of life.”

In other words, the United States will do whatever the hell it wants to and if you don’t like it: “Too bad”. This is the Bush Doctrine verbatim. The West Point oration proves that the new administration has simply modified the Bush credo to suit Obama’s pretentious speaking style. Strip out the visionary formulations, the grandiose bloviating, and the sweeping hand gestures and the ideas are virtually identical; unilateralism, preemption, and exceptionalism, the toxic combo that has spurred 13 years of war, occupation, regime change, black sites, extra-judicial assassinations, drone attacks, and hyperbolic state terror most of which has been directed at civilian populations whose only fault is that they occupy regions where vast petroleum reserves have been discovered or which have some fleeting strategic importance to Washington’s war planners. Here’s an excerpt from an article in the World Socialist Web Site titled “Obama’s West Point speech: A prescription for unending war” by Bill Van Auken:

“Obama is not elaborating here a policy of defensive war to be waged only in response to an attack or the threat of an imminent attack. He is spelling out that the US reserves the right to intervene militarily wherever it believes its “core interests”—i.e., the access of its corporations and banks to markets, raw materials, cheap labor and profits—are involved.

When he speaks of “our livelihoods” and “our way of life,” he is referring not to the ever-declining living standards of the American worker, but to the eight-figure compensation packages of American CEOs, whose fortunes are founded on the exploitation of the working populations and resources of the entire planet…

Everything put forward by Obama is a repudiation of international law and an endorsement of the policy of aggressive war practiced by the Nazis three-quarters of a century ago.” (Obama’s West Point speech: A prescription for unending war, Bill Van Auken, WSWS)

Here’s Obama again defending his malignant foreign policy in terms of “leadership”:

“America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will. The military that you have joined is, and always will be, the backbone of that leadership.”

Obama finds it easy to praise the people who fight his wars, even while he stealthily carries out a plan to privatize the Veterans Administration. Check out this blurb from an article titled “VA secretary resigns amid push to privatize US veterans’ health care”:

“Obama and members of Congress have responded to the VHA scandal with a breathtaking level of cynicism and hypocrisy, even by Washington standards … according to many lawmakers, the answer to this crisis is not the appropriation of funds to hire new doctors and other medical professionals, but the dismantling of the government program in order to provide a profit windfall to private insurers and health industry firms. The result of this policy will be less care at greater cost to veterans…

Under the “Veterans Choice Plan” being promoted by Rep. Andy Harris (Republican of Maryland), veterans could either choose to continue receiving care through the VHA or go to a private provider of their choosing. In what amounts to a voucher system, the federal government would cover the cost of insurance premiums and some out-of-pocket costs, depending on a veteran’s priority ranking…

The moves to privatize veterans’ health care underscore the hypocrisy of the bipartisan glorification of soldiers and veterans. It also sets a precedent for privatizing Medicare and Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for the poor.” (VA secretary resigns amid push to privatize US veterans’ health care, WSWS)

Is there any doubt that Obama forced General Eric Shinseki to step down so he could start to dismantle the VA? And if Obama cares so much about veterans, then why hasn’t he spoken out before about other veteran-related issues like the epidemic of suicides, rapes, traumatic brain injury or PTSD? Obama’s phony outrage is just a headline-grabbing gimmick to conceal what’s really going on, which is the VA is being handed over to America’s insatiable health care tycoons on a silver platter.

Obama again: “For the foreseeable future, the most direct threat to America, at home and abroad, remains terrorism, but a strategy that involves invading every country that harbors terrorist networks is naïve and unsustainable. I believe we must shift our counterterrorism strategy, drawing on the successes and shortcomings of our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, to more effectively partner with countries where terrorist networks seek a foothold.”

Obama’s comment absurdly implies that the US has learned from its past mistakes and has fine-tuned the art of counterterrorism so it doesn’t involve the squandering of valuable resources. What a joke. It’s like listening to a Mafia hit-man boast that he ‘s learned how to save money on ammo by strangling his victims with his bare hands. This is also a good example of how the Dems think they’re more effective (and discreet) in executing the elitist/corporate agenda than their rivals in the GOP. As if that was the purpose of the party!

Obama also made a few perfunctory remarks about closing Guantanamo, ending indefinite detention and taking steps to address climate change. But clearly these had nothing to do with the main thrust of the speech which was to announce his intention to expand the wars abroad. Citing hotspots in Syria, Ukraine and the South China Sea, Obama promised to “lead” with the military, asserting, by implication, dominion over these regions where the US claims to have “national interests”. Obama is as committed as his predecessor, Bush, to rule by force of arms even though his current adversaries (Russia and China) are not ragtag militias in sandals, but nuclear-armed nation-states who could level the better part of the planet with a flip of the switch. Even so, Obama is determined to pursue the same provocative strategy whatever the risks increasing the probability of a miscalculation that ends in a mushroom cloud.

It’s madness.

Agenda 21: The Plan For A Global Fascist Dictatorship

One of the most popular films of 2012 was  which portrayed a post-apocalyptic nation called Panem in which a super-rich, super-pampered, super-callous ‘elite’ lived in high-tech luxury while the rest of the population daily battled to survive in abject poverty locked away behind prison fences in intensively-populated ‘people zones’. Panem comes from the Latin phrase ‘panem et circenses’ or ‘bread and circuses’ — a term derived from Rome and meaning to give the people diversions and distractions to hide what is being done to them. Exactly what is happening today.

The Totalitarian Tiptoes to just such a world are happening all around us, although most people can’t see this because they don’t connect the dots. People tend to live in their own ‘little world’ and focus on only a few subjects and interests. This gives them a distorted view of what is happening because they are so busy concentrating on the strands that they cannot see the tapestry. The world of The Hunger Games is already well on the way to fruition unless humanity has a fundamental reassessment of reality.

The foundations, structure and ‘must haves’ of a Hunger Games society are detailed in a plan being imposed through the United Nations called Agenda 21 which encompasses two related themes of ‘sustainable development’ and ‘biodiversity’. Sustainable development — as in don’t use more than can be replaced — sounds sensible enough at first until you realize what this and biodiversity really mean in the context of the conspiracy.

Agenda 21 was established at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janerio, Brazil, in 1992, hosted by Maurice Strong, a Canadian oil and business billionaire and long-time front man for the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. Strong has been a leader of their exploit-the-environment-to-scam-the-people programme which is now in full flow. Strong is a member of the Club of Rome, the environmental Hidden Hand in the Round Table network that includes the Bilderberg Group, Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations.

Strong said in support of Agenda 21:

‘Isn’t the only hope for this planet that the industrialised civilization collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?’

This is a man who became mega-rich through the oil industry. He now lives in billionaire luxury in China where carbon-emitting industry is booming and he is a director of the Chicago Climate Exchange (largest shareholder, Goldman Sachs), which is ‘the world’s first and North America’s only legally-binding greenhouse-gas emission registry reduction-system for emission sources and offset projects in North America and Brazil’.

The Exchange was established with funding from the Joyce Foundation where Barack Obama was once a director. Strong and Al Gore make money through the Carbon Exchange and other means from the lies they promote about climate change and the solutions they propose. Kate Johnston wrote on the Globalresearch.cawebsite:

‘The same men that sold us the myth of man-made global warming are the same men that sold us the “solution” of a Carbon Tax and Emissions Trading Scheme and now they’re profiting off their lucrative investments which are based on lies.’ (See ).

Strong fled to China in 2006 after being accused of corruption with respect to the UN oil for food program.

Climate change propaganda is a No-Problem-Reaction-Solution technique to justify Agenda 21 and its stable-mate the Biodiversity Treaty. This is an internationally-binding document involving nearly 200 countries. The United States signed the treaty, but it was not ratified by the Senate after people like ecologist and ecosystem scientist Dr. Michael Coffman exposed its true consequences and implications. He said that he realized during the 1980s and 1990s that the plan was to use the excuse of protecting the environment to confiscate half the land of the United States.

Similar plans exist for every other country. America may not have ratified the treaty, but it is being implemented by the day. Agenda 21 demands the central global control of all land; all private property; all water sources and distribution; all other resources which includes people in its definition; all energy supplies and distribution and all food production and distribution.

Agenda 21 is called ‘the agenda for the 21st century’ and that refers to global fascism / communism. This is a summary of what Agenda 21 / Sustainable Development / Biodiversity is seeking to impose:

• An end to national sovereignty
• State planning and management of all land resources, ecosystems, deserts, forests, mountains, oceans and fresh water; agriculture; rural development; biotechnology; and ensuring ‘equity’ (equal slavery)
• The State to ‘define the role’ of business and financial resources
• Abolition of private property (it’s not ‘sustainable’)
• ‘Restructuring’ the family unit
• Children raised by the State
• People told what their job will be
• Major restrictions on movement
• Creation of ‘human settlement zones’
• Mass resettlement as people are forced to vacate land where they currently live
• Dumbing down education (achieved)
• Mass global depopulation in pursuit of all the above

This horrific plan is being coordinated through the United Nations, the stalking horse for world dictatorship, via a non-governmental network once called the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives ICLEI), and now known as Local Governments for Sustainability although still using the shortened name ICLEI. The United Nations is now opening ‘embassies’ around the world called ‘UN Houses’ under the guise of raising awareness of UN activities, but not the activities that people really need to know about. They have opened one in Hunter Square, Edinburgh, Scotland, for example.

Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) and other organisations are integrating the plan into every village, town, city and region and it is already becoming widespread across the world. The organisational infrastructure of Agenda 21 is already fantastic and involves government agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), think-tanks, trusts, foundations, ‘training’ (mind control) operations and ‘initiatives’ which have been building the infrastructure for what they call ‘the post-industrial, post-democratic’ society while the public go about their daily business oblivious of the prison being built all around them by the hour.

Harvey Ruvin, a vice-chairman of ICLEI, was asked how Agenda 21 would affect liberties with regard to the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, private property and freedom of speech. He replied:

‘Individual rights must take a back-seat to the collective.’

The arrogance of these people is breathtaking. The extraordinary network supporting ICLEI and Agenda 21 includes the Rockefeller-sponsored America 2050; United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG); Metropolis; World Economic Forum; United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction; World Bank; Clinton Climate Initiative; Climate Group (Tony Blair); World Conservation Union (IUCN); Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership; Global Footprint Network; Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership; Global Footprint Network; International Centre for Sustainable Cities; Earthquakes and Megacities Initiative and the Stakeholder Forum. These and so many others are working to the same end — Agenda 21 and total human enslavement worldwide, although most of those involved will have no idea that they are building a global prison for themselves and their families.

Another of these front organisations is the World Business Council for Sustainable Development which includes the hideously anti-people Monsanto. Destroying food-growing land, contaminating the countryside with toxins and replacing proper food with deadly and soil-destroying genetically-modified organisms is Monsanto’s contribution to ‘sustainability’. Agenda 21 is operating in more than 600 towns, cities and counties in the United States and expanding by the day.

A member of the Agenda 21 committees in Santa Cruz, California, in the mid-1990s said that the proposals he heard were so crazy that he laughed at them because they could never happen. These included that ‘Mother Earth’s surface was not to be scratched’; humans should be concentrated in settlement zones; education should focus on the environment as a central organising principle and all aspects of life covered by Agenda 21, but all of these crazy plans are now being introduced. It’s all happy, feely, smiling faces and how we care, when the truth is that Agenda 21 is a vicious, brutal, heartless strategy to impose a global Orwellian state.

Agenda 21 manipulators either create or hijack some local organisation or other, many of them in locations with large populations, and they have their (controlled) leadership to agree the Agenda 21 blueprint for their community together with any uninformed, unwitting idiots who can be sold a human nightmare as saving the planet. This allows them to claim that decisions were made after ‘public participation’ when that would have been the last thing they wanted, and 99 percent of the ‘community’ has never heard of Agenda 21 let alone had their say on it. They want no democracy which is why these people talk privately, sometimes even publicly, about the post-democratic, post-industrial society.

They want to control every man, woman and child on the planet — everyone and everywhere and every resource, water source and piece of land. To do this they need a global structure of fascist control that goes right down into every local community with the jackboots at local level enforcing the will of the global centre. This is why there is so much emphasis on local authorities and town and city authorities in Agenda 21.

There is a ‘training organisation’ called Common Purpose (common purpose, common consensus, everyone the same) which has been paid very large amounts of money by governments and local authorities, police forces and other institutions of state to ‘train the leaders’ of the post-democratic, post-industrial society. Common Purpose was heavily represented in the Leveson ‘inquiry’ leading to new media laws in Britain. It is not a training programme; it is a programming programme and turns out unquestioning zombie administrators who serve the god of Agenda 21 and the associated European Union. The theme of ‘common’ also applies to the ever greater standardisation of laws and regulations and constant reference to ‘international law’. This is the unfolding global dictatorship of Agenda 21. What do you need to be a global dictator? Laws that everyone on the planet must obey — international law and the standardisation of global regulation.

You can see  connection when you look at the official Biodiversity wish-for map of the United States in Figure 1. The red areas are designated for no human use and most of the rest of America is confiscated for little and highly-regulated use. The mass of the population would be concentrated in high-rise, densely-packed ‘human settlement zones’ and denied access to something like 80 percent of present day America. It is without question the world of The Hunger Games with a globally-enforced top-down hierarchy that has a world government using its world army and police force to impose its will at regional and local levels (sectors). The Rockefeller-funded America 2050 has produced a map of the new United States divided into eleven ‘megaregions’ and includes parts of Canada (Figure 2). Seattle, Portland and Vancouver, British Columbia, become the megaregion known as ‘Cascadia’ and this regional system comes under the collective name of ‘megalopolis’ which is Greek for large city or great city. America, Canada and Mexico are due to merge to form the North American Union in line with the European Union blueprint.

The European Union is planned to be broken up into regions and the same structure is in development all over the world. The map of the new Europe has regions from different countries linked up with regions in other countries to end any vestige of national sovereignty or even national existence (Figure 3). This is a global plan with its fierce central control hidden behind its lower elements such as the European Union and local government. What is planned would clearly require a fantastic reduction of the global population and this is indeed what Agenda 21 / Sustainable Development / Biodiversity demand.

The e-book Agenda 21: Your Life In Their Hands can be downloaded here.

reference:

Icke, David. . Ryde: David Icke Books, 2013.

 is an independent researcher in the fields of esoteric science and metaphysics, and a self-initiate of the Western Esoteric Tradition. His interest in these subjects began in 1988. Julian was born in England, received his education as an electronic and computer engineer from the University of Bolton, served in a Vaishnava monastery during 2010, and has travelled to over 21 countries. Julian is also a member of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign.

Source:   |  Waking Times | War Is Crime

Genetically Modified Organisms: Killing The Natural World

“The introduction of genetically modified foods (GMO) tampers with the essence of life in an experiment with an unknown outcome and no real way to undue the damage. The FDA purposely does not require labeling of GMO food, since no one who understands the issue would ever purchase it. This makes it all the more difficult to locate healthful food.”  Byron J. Richards, The Leptin Diet: How Fit Is Your Fat?

This series exposes the outright fraud against peoples’ lives and the contempt for American citizens (and citizens of the world who eat our grains) with the injection of Genetically Modified Organism foods by the highest representatives in our U.S. Congress.

Call it a “financial cartel” that allows GMOs to be fed to our citizenry, but worse, for the love of money, those power elites accelerate the destruction of our Natural World.

We humans grow too clever and too arrogant to understand the long-term penalties we heap on Mother Nature until she finds no other answers but to claw back at us, i.e., cancers, disease and more aberrant environmental disasters to come.

Every crop in America, Canada, Australia and much of the third world where GMO advocates like ADM and Monsanto can force their “Frankensteinization” on farmers—they push it.

Even with all the evidence piling up, those same elites hammer any opposition into the ground.  They “bribe” the FDA officials to not label any GMO foods so you don’t know what you’re eating.

We destroy our own bodies by our actions, but we also obliterate the Natural World and its inhabitants.

Today around the world, trillions of bees suffer “colony collapse” via GMO crops.  Nature cannot figure out how to deal with plants that suffer genetic modification or DNA change-ups.

GMO foods represent a pitcher throwing an orange to the catcher in a Major League Baseball game.  Within several pitches, the orange wouldn’t hold its form from the violent treatment.  If the batter connected with the orange, it would splatter all over the field.  Result: the game couldn’t continue.  The players could not play and the spectators would go home.

But in GMO production, the consequences cannot be seen as quickly, however those “errors” against Mother Nature will surface well into the future.

Ethan Huff, science writer for Natural News said,  “A pair of studies recently published in the journal Science raises dire warnings about the continued decline of crop-pollinating insects all over the world, and what this means for the future of the world’s food supply. Both studies highlight the fact that wild pollinators like bumblebees, butterflies, and beetles are basically disappearing, and that industrial agriculture, which includes genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), are a major factor causing this insect genocide.

“At least half a dozen other studies published in the last couple of years have arrived at similarly disturbing findings. They do, however, shed further light on how the situation has progressed throughout the decades, pointing to corporate monoculture practices, shrinking forests and wild lands, and general changes in physical landscapes as some of the primary culprits in promoting this ruinous trend.”

We not only change the DNA of our fellow planetary travelers, but we destroy their habitat.  We seem to think no consequences will befall us.

“The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”
― 

Last week, I interviewed with Ross Kaminsky at  in Denver, Colorado. Mind you, this young man, about 30, sounded brilliant and highly articulate.  I liked him.   I spoke about America adding 100 million immigrants and a total of 138 million people by 2050—a scant 36 years from now.  I brought facts and compelling information to the show.  I attempted to show him and the public the ramifications of adding 138 million people—and that, we could not sustain such numbers and our environment.

He sat across from me saying, “We don’t have a population problem. We have plenty of water and oil.  The oceans can absorb all our carbon footprint.”

I said, “You’re speaking with assumptions as if they were facts.  You make statements based on belief where I make them based on facts from my research.”

He dumbfounded me with his arrogance that we can keep adding endless people with no consequences. He wanted everyone to live a free life.  I countered with the fact that as our population numbers rise, our freedoms decline along with balance in our Natural World.  That fact cannot be disputed.

I explained how our oceans suffer acidification and that reefs die with carbon footprint and how marine life cannot endure the onslaught.

He wouldn’t hear of it.  Mind you, this young man, traveled on six continents like I have traveled.  He lives in denial and defends it. Along with him, the majority of the American public feels the same.

We see the same denial with our leaders who advocate for GMOs in plants and fish—in the face of facts.

“In one of the studies, researchers from Montana State University (MSU) compared insect data collected in the late 1800s to similar data collected in the same test location in the 1970s,” said Huff. “They then compiled current data from the same area to compare to both of these other two data sets, upon which they discovered that the number of unique wild bee species had dropped by nearly half.

“What is perhaps more disturbing, however, is the fact that researchers observed modern bees to be generally interacting less with plants than they used to in previous generations. According to the data, the overall number of interactions between bees and plants has also dropped by roughly half, indicating a serious problem as far as the general  is concerned, as about 75 percent of global food crops rely on pollination by animals.”

Managed honeybees do not pollinate crops as well as wild honeybees

The second study troubles me further:  having found that pollinating insects in general, which include a wide range of insects and other animals, continue vanishing from their normal habitats and foraging areas.

“Based on field trials conducted in 20 different countries, wild insects are clearly on the decline everywhere, and managed honeybee colonies established to replace them in many areas are failing to pick up where the wild honeybees left off,” said Huff.

“In landscapes with lower diversity and lower abundance of wild insects, the crops had less fruits,” explains Lucas Garibaldi, author of the second study. “Wild insects pollinated way more efficiently: Flowers produced twice as many fruits after being visited by wild insects and were more consistent in their production than when visited by honeybees.”

“Some “leaders” blame climate destabilization and other outside factors for this mysterious decline in crop ,” said Huff. “But the major elephant in the room, and the one that the mainstream media is desperately trying to avoid, is GMOs and the chemical-based technologies used to grow them. As we have covered time and time again, neonicotinoids and other pesticide and herbicide products are responsible for weakening and killing off bees and other crop pollinators, particularly in North America where  are most widely cultivated.”

“The proof is obvious that one of the major reasons of the bees’ decline is by the ingestion of GMO proteins,” explains a report by Brit Amos from Global Research about the decline of bee colonies. “The truth is that organic farming is relatively untouched as the bee crisis is concerned. Organic farming maintains the diversity of the eco-system and preserves the quality of the foods produced.”

The more I research into what we and our children face with our “disfiguring” the Natural World with our poisons and GMO assault, the more sickened I am in my mind and heart.  Since I lack any power or influence, someone like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet needs to fund campaigns to stop GMO production.  After all, it’s their kids, too, who must live in this world.

All of this GMO nightmare stems from too many people needing food for survival with too many elites willing to sacrifice the Natural World in order to make endless billions of dollars to live in big homes, drive expensive cars and fly Lear Jets.
You can learn more: 

Go to  to get involved and learn how to avoid GMOs. Look for Non-GMO Shopping Guide.

Start buying non-GMO today.

Help stop the genetic engineering of our food supply.

You may become involved:

By mail: Institute For Responsible Technology, P.O. Box 469, Fairfield, IA 52556 Online:  by phone:

Read the book—Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risk of Genetically Engineered Foods by Jeffrey M. Smith.

Indoctrinating A New Generation

Is there anyone out there who still believes that Barack Obama, when he’s speaking about American foreign policy, is capable of being anything like an honest man? In a March 26 talk in Belgium to “European youth”, the president fed his audience one falsehood, half-truth, blatant omission, or hypocrisy after another. If George W. Bush had made some of these statements, Obama supporters would not hesitate to shake their head, roll their eyes, or smirk. Here’s a sample:

– “In defending its actions, Russian leaders have further claimed Kosovo as a precedent – an example they say of the West interfering in the affairs of a smaller country, just as they’re doing now. But NATO only intervened after the people of Kosovo were systematically brutalized and killed for years.”

Most people who follow such things are convinced that the 1999 US/NATO bombing of the Serbian province of Kosovo took place only after the Serbian-forced deportation of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo was well underway; which is to say that the bombing was launched to stop this “ethnic cleansing”. In actuality, the systematic deportations of large numbers of people did not begin until a few days after the bombing began, and was clearly a reaction to it, born of Serbia’s extreme anger and powerlessness over the bombing. This is easily verified by looking at a daily newspaper for the few days before the bombing began the night of March 23/24, 1999, and the few days following. Or simply look at the New York Times of March 26, page 1, which reads:

… with the NATO bombing already begun, a deepening sense of fear took hold in Pristina [the main city of Kosovo] that the Serbs would now vent their rage against ethnic Albanian civilians in retaliation. [emphasis added]

On March 27, we find the first reference to a “forced march” or anything of that nature.

But the propaganda version is already set in marble.

– “And Kosovo only left Serbia after a referendum was organized, not outside the boundaries of international law, but in careful cooperation with the United Nations and with Kosovo’s neighbors. None of that even came close to happening in Crimea.”

None of that even came close to happening in Kosovo either. The story is false. The referendum the president speaks of never happened. Did the mainstream media pick up on this or on the previous example? If any reader comes across such I’d appreciate being informed.

Crimea, by the way, did have a referendum. A real one.

– “Workers and engineers gave life to the Marshall Plan … As the Iron Curtain fell here in Europe, the iron fist of apartheid was unclenched, and Nelson Mandela emerged upright, proud, from prison to lead a multiracial democracy. Latin American nations rejected dictatorship and built new democracies … “

The president might have mentioned that the main beneficiary of the Marshall Plan was US corporations  , that the United States played an indispensable role in Mandela being caught and imprisoned, and that virtually all the Latin American dictatorships owed their very existence to Washington. Instead, the European youth were fed the same party line that their parents were fed, as were all Americans.

– “Yes, we believe in democracy – with elections that are free and fair.”

In this talk, the main purpose of which was to lambaste the Russians for their actions concerning Ukraine, there was no mention that the government overthrown in that country with the clear support of the United States had been democratically elected.

– “Moreover, Russia has pointed to America’s decision to go into Iraq as an example of Western hypocrisy. … But even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system. We did not claim or annex Iraq’s territory. We did not grab its resources for our own gain. Instead, we ended our war and left Iraq to its people and a fully sovereign Iraqi state that could make decisions about its own future.”

The US did not get UN Security Council approval for its invasion, the only approval that could legitimize the action. It occupied Iraq from one end of the country to the other for 8 years, forcing the government to privatize the oil industry and accept multinational – largely U.S.-based, oil companies’ – ownership. This endeavor was less than successful because of the violence unleashed by the invasion. The US military finally was forced to leave because the Iraqi government refused to give immunity to American soldiers for their many crimes.

Here is a brief summary of what Barack Obama is attempting to present as America’s moral superiority to the Russians:

The modern, educated, advanced nation of Iraq was reduced to a quasi failed state … the Americans, beginning in 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one dubious excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, tortured without inhibition, killed wantonly … the people of that unhappy land lost everything – their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives … More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile … The air, soil, water, blood, and genes drenched with depleted uranium … the most awful birth defects … unexploded cluster bombs lying in wait for children to pick them up … a river of blood running alongside the Euphrates and Tigris … through a country that may never be put back together again. … “It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003,” reported the Washington Post. (May 5, 2007)

How can all these mistakes, such arrogance, hypocrisy and absurdity find their way into a single international speech by the president of the United States? Is the White House budget not sufficient to hire a decent fact checker? Someone with an intellect and a social conscience? Or does the desire to score propaganda points trump everything else? Is this another symptom of the Banana-Republicization of America?

Long live the Cold War

In 1933 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Union after some 15 years of severed relations following the Bolshevik Revolution. On a day in December of that year, a train was passing through Poland carrying the first American diplomats dispatched to Moscow. Amongst their number was a 29 year-old Foreign Service Officer, later to become famous as a diplomat and scholar, George Kennan. Though he was already deemed a government expert on Russia, the train provided Kennan’s first actual exposure to the Soviet Union. As he listened to his group’s escort, Russian Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, reminisce about growing up in a village the train was passing close by, and his dreams of becoming a librarian, the Princeton-educated Kennan was astonished: “We suddenly realized, or at least I did, that these people we were dealing with were human beings like ourselves, that they had been born somewhere, that they had their childhood ambitions as we had. It seemed for a brief moment we could break through and embrace these people.”

It hasn’t happened yet.

One would think that the absence in Russia of communism, of socialism, of the basic threat or challenge to the capitalist system, would be sufficient to write finis to the 70-year Cold War mentality. But the United States is virtually as hostile to 21st-century Russia as it was to 20th-century Soviet Union, surrounding Moscow with military bases, missile sites, and NATO members. Why should that be? Ideology is no longer a factor. But power remains one, specifically America’s perpetual lust for world hegemony. Russia is the only nation that (a) is a military powerhouse, and (b) doesn’t believe that the United States has a god-given-American-exceptionalism right to rule the world, and says so. By these criteria, China might qualify as a poor second. But there are no others.

Washington pretends that it doesn’t understand why Moscow should be upset by Western military encroachment, but it has no such problem when roles are reversed. Secretary of State John Kerry recently stated that Russian troops poised near eastern Ukraine are “creating a climate of fear and intimidation in Ukraine” and raising questions about Russia’s next moves and its commitment to diplomacy.

NATO – ever in need of finding a raison d’être – has now issued a declaration of [cold] war, which reads in part:

“NATO foreign ministers on Tuesday [April 1, 2014] reaffirmed their commitment to enhance the Alliance’s collective defence, agreed to further support Ukraine and to suspend NATO’s practical cooperation with Russia. ‘NATO’s greatest responsibility is to protect and defend our territory and our people. And make no mistake, this is what we will do,’ NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. … Ministers directed Allied military authorities to develop additional measures to strengthen collective defence and deterrence against any threat of aggression against the Alliance, Mr. Fogh Rasmussen said. ‘We will make sure we have updated military plans, enhanced exercises and appropriate deployments,’ he said. NATO has already reinforced its presence on the eastern border of the Alliance, including surveillance patrols over Poland and Romania and increased numbers of fighter aircraft allocated to the NATO air policing mission in the Baltic States. … NATO Foreign Ministers also agreed to suspend all of NATO’s practical cooperation with Russia.”

Does anyone recall what NATO said in 2003 when the United States bombed and invaded Iraq with “shock and awe”, compared to the Russians now not firing a single known shot at anyone? And neither Russia nor Ukraine is even a member of NATO. Does NATO have a word to say about the right-wing coup in Ukraine, openly supported by the United States, overthrowing the elected government? Did the hypocrisy get any worse during the Cold War? Imagine that NATO had not been created in 1949. Imagine that it has never existed. What reason could one give today for its creation? Other than to provide a multi-national cover for Washington’s interventions.

One of the main differences between now and the Cold War period is that Americans at home are (not yet) persecuted or prosecuted for supporting Russia or things Russian.

But don’t worry, folks, there won’t be a big US-Russian war. For the same reason there wasn’t one during the Cold War. The United States doesn’t pick on any country which can defend itself.

Cuba … Again … Still … Forever

Is there actually a limit? Will the United States ever stop trying to overthrow the Cuban government? Entire books have been written documenting the unrelenting ways Washington has tried to get rid of tiny Cuba’s horrid socialism – from military invasion to repeated assassination attempts to an embargo that President Clinton’s National Security Advisor called “the most pervasive sanctions ever imposed on a nation in the history of mankind”.  But nothing has ever come even close to succeeding. The horrid socialism keeps on inspiring people all over the world. It’s the darnedest thing. Can providing people free or remarkably affordable health care, education, housing, food and culture be all that important?

And now it’s “Cuban Twitter” – an elaborately complex system set up by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to disguise its American origins and financing, aiming to bring about a “Cuban Spring” uprising. USAID sought to first “build a Cuban audience, mostly young people; then the plan was to push them toward dissent”, hoping the messaging network “would reach critical mass so that dissidents could organize ‘smart mobs’ – mass gatherings called at a moment’s notice – that might trigger political demonstrations or ‘renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society’.”  It’s too bad it’s now been exposed, because we all know how wonderful the Egyptian, Syrian, Libyan, and other “Arab Springs” have turned out.

Here’s USAID speaking after their scheme was revealed on April 3: “Cubans were able to talk among themselves, and we are proud of that.”  We are thus asked to believe that normally the poor downtrodden Cubans have no good or safe way to communicate with each other. Is the US National Security Agency working for the Cuban government now?

The Associated Press, which broke the story, asks us further to believe that the “truth” about most things important in the world is being kept from the Cuban people by the Castro regime, and that the “Cuban Twitter” would have opened people’s eyes. But what information might a Cuban citizen discover online that the government would not want him to know about? I can’t imagine. Cubans are in constant touch with relatives in the US, by mail and in person. They get US television programs from Miami and other southern cities; both CNN and Telesur (Venezuela, covering Latin America) are seen regularly on Cuban television”; international conferences on all manner of political, economic and social issues are held regularly in Cuba. I’ve spoken at more than one myself. What – it must be asked – does USAID, as well as the American media, think are the great dark secrets being kept from the Cuban people by the nasty commie government?

Those who push this line sometimes point to the serious difficulty of using the Internet in Cuba. The problem is that it’s extremely slow, making certain desired usages often impractical. From an American friend living in Havana: “It’s not a question of getting or not getting internet. I get internet here. The problem is downloading something or connecting to a link takes too long on the very slow connection that exists here, so usually I/we get ‘timed out’.” But the USAID’s “Cuban Twitter”, after all, could not have functioned at all without the Internet.

Places like universities, upscale hotels, and Internet cafés get better connections, at least some of the time; however, it’s rather expensive to use at the hotels and cafés.

In any event, this isn’t a government plot to hide dangerous information. It’s a matter of technical availability and prohibitive cost, both things at least partly in the hands of the United States and American corporations. Microsoft, for example, at one point, if not at present, barred Cuba from using its Messenger instant messaging service.

Cuba and Venezuela have jointly built a fiber optic underwater cable connection that they hope will make them less reliant on the gringos; the outcome of this has not yet been reported in much detail.

The grandly named Agency for International Development does not have an honorable history; this can perhaps be captured by a couple of examples: In 1981, the agency’s director, John Gilligan, stated: “At one time, many AID field offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people. The idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind.”

On June 21, 2012, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) issued a resolution calling for the immediate expulsion of USAID from their nine member countries, “due to the fact that we consider their presence and actions to constitute an interference which threatens the sovereignty and stability of our nations.”

USAID, the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy (and the latter’s subsidiaries), together or singly, continue to be present at regime changes, or attempts at same, favorable to Washington, from “color revolutions” to “spring” uprisings, producing a large measure of chaos and suffering for our tired old world.

 

Notes

1. William Blum, America’s Deadliest Export – Democracy: The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else, p.22-5
2. Walter Isaacson & Evan Thomas, The Wise Men (1986), p.158
3. Washington Post, March 31, 2014
4. “NATO takes measures to reinforce collective defence, agrees on support for Ukraine”, NATO website, April 1, 2014
5. Sandy Berger, White House press briefing, November 14, 1997, US Newswire transcript
6. Associated Press, April 3 & 4, 2014
7. Washington Post, April 4, 2014
8. Associated Press, June 2, 2009
9. George Cotter, “Spies, strings and missionaries”, The Christian Century (Chicago), March 25, 1981, p.321

Ukraine: The Corporate Annexation

As the US and EU apply sanctions on Russia over its annexation’ of Crimea, JP Sottile reveals the corporate annexation of Ukraine. For Cargill, Chevron, Monsanto, there’s a gold mine of profits to be made from agri-business and energy exploitation.

On 12th January 2014, a reported 50,000 “pro-Western” Ukrainiansdescended upon Kiev’s Independence Square to protest against the government of President Viktor Yanukovych.

Stoked in part by an attack on opposition leader Yuriy Lutsenko, the protest marked the beginning of the end of Yanukovych’s four year-long government.

That same day, the Financial Timesreported a major deal for US agribusiness titan Cargill.

Business confidence never faltered

Despite the turmoil within Ukrainian politics after Yanukovych rejected a major trade deal with the European Union just seven weeks earlier, Cargill was confident enough about the future to fork over $200 million to buy a stake in Ukraine’s UkrLandFarming.

According to the Financial Times, UkrLandFarming is the world’s eighth-largest land cultivator and second biggest egg producer. And those aren’t the only eggs in Cargill’s increasingly ample basket.

On 13th December 2013, Cargill announced the purchase of a stake in a Black Sea grain terminal at Novorossiysk on Russia’s Black Sea coast.

The port — to the east of Russia’s strategically and historically important Crimean naval base — gives them a major entry-point to Russian markets and adds them to the list of Big Ag companies investing in ports around the Black Sea, both in Russia and Ukraine.

Cargill has been in Ukraine for over two decades, investing in grain elevators and acquiring a major  in 2011. And, based on its investment in UkrLandFarming, Cargill was decidedly confident amidst the post-EU deal chaos.

It’s a stark juxtaposition to the alarm bells ringing out from the US media, bellicose politicians on Capitol Hill and perplexed policymakers in the White House.

Instability?… What Instablility?

It’s even starker when compared to the anxiety expressed by Morgan Williams, President and CEO of the US-Ukraine Business Council — which, according to its website, has been“promoting US-Ukraine business relations since 1995.”

Williams was interviewed by the International Business Times on March 13 and, despite Cargill’s demonstrated willingness to spend, he said, “The instability has forced businesses to just go about their daily business and not make future plans for investment, expansion and hiring more employees.”

In fact, Williams, who does double-duty as Director of Government Affairs at the private equity firm SigmaBleyzer, claimed, “Business plans have been at a standstill.”

Apparently, he wasn’t aware of Cargill’s investment, which is odd given the fact that he could’ve simply called Van A. Yeutter, Vice President for Corporate Affairs at Cargill, and asked him about his company’s quite active business plan.

There is little doubt Williams has the phone number because Mr. Yuetter serves on the Executive Committee of the selfsame US-Ukraine Business Council. It’s quite a cozy investment club, too.

According to his SigmaBleyzer profile, Williams “started his work regarding Ukraine in 1992″ and has since advised American agribusinesses “investing in the former Soviet Union.” As an experienced fixer for Big Ag, he must be fairly friendly with the folks on the Executive Committee.

Big Ag Luminaries — Monsanto, Eli Lilly, Dupont, John Deere…

And what a committee it is — it’s a veritable who’s who of Big Ag. Among the luminaries working tirelessly and no doubt selflessly for a better, freer Ukraine are:

• Melissa Agustin, Director, International Government Affairs & Trade for Monsanto;
• Brigitte Dias Ferreira, Counsel, International Affairs for John Deere;
• Steven Nadherny, Director, Institutional Relations for agriculture equipment-makerCNH Industrial;
• Jeff Rowe, Regional Director for DuPont Pioneer;
• John F. Steele, Director, International Affairs for Eli Lilly & Company.

And, of course, Cargill’s Van A. Yeutter. But Cargill isn’t alone in their warm feelings toward Ukraine. As Reuters reported in May 2013, Monsanto — the largest seed company in the world — plans to build a $140 million “non-GM (genetically modified) corn seed plant in Ukraine.”

And right after the decision on the EU trade deal, Jesus Madrazo, Monsanto’s Vice President for Corporate Engagement, reaffirmed his company’s “commitment to Ukraine”and “the importance of creating a favorable environment that encourages innovation and fosters the continued development of agriculture.”

Monsanto’s strategy includes a little “hearts and minds” public relations, too. On the heels of Mr. Madrazo’s reaffirmation, Monsanto announced “a social development program titled ‘Grain Basket of the Future’ to help rural villagers in the country improve their quality of life.”

The initiative will dole out grants of up to $25,000 to develop programs providing“educational opportunities, community empowerment, or small business development.”

Immense Economic Importance

The well-crafted moniker ‘Grain Basket of the Future’ is telling because, once upon a time, Ukraine was known as ‘the breadbasket’ of the Soviet Union. The CIA ranks Soviet-era Ukraine second only to Mother Russia as the “most economically important component of the former Soviet Union.”

In many ways, the farmland of Ukraine was the backbone of the USSR. Its fertile black soil generated over a quarter of the USSR’s agriculture. It exported substantial quantities of food to other republics and its farms generated four times the output of the next-ranking republic.

Although Ukraine’s agricultural output plummeted in the first decade after the break-up of the Soviet Union, the farming sector has been growing spectacularly in recent years.

While Europe struggled to shake-off the Great Recession, Ukraine’s agriculture sector grew 13.7% in 2013.

Ukraine’s agriculture economy is hot. Russia’s is not. Hampered by the effects of climate change and 25 million hectares of uncultivated agricultural land, Russia lags behind its former breadbasket.

According to the Centre for Eastern Studies, Ukraine’s agricultural exports rose from $4.3 billion in 2005 to $17.9 billion in 2012 and, harkening the heyday of the USSR, farming currently accounts for 25% of its total exports. Ukraine is also the world’s third-largest exporter of wheat and of corn. And corn is not just food. It is also ethanol.

Feeding Europe

But people gotta eat — particularly in Europe. As Frank Holmes of US Global Investorsassessed in 2011, Ukraine is poised to become Europe’s butcher. Meat is difficult to ship, but Ukraine is perfectly located to satiate Europe’s hunger.

Just two days after Cargill bought into UkrLandFarming, Global Meat News reported a huge forecasted spike in “all kinds” of Ukrainian meat exports, with an increase of 8.1% overall and staggering 71.4% spike in pork exports.

No wonder Eli Lilly is represented on the US-Ukraine Business Council’s Executive Committee. Its Elanco Animal Health unit is a major manufacturer of feed supplements.

And it is also notable that Monsanto’s planned seed plant is non-GMO, perhaps anticipating an emerging GMO-unfriendly European market and Europe’s growing appetite for organic foods. When it comes to Big Ag’s profitable future in Europe, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

A Long String of Russian Losses

For Russia and its hampered farming economy, it’s another in a long string of losses to US encroachment — from NATO expansion into Eastern Europe to US military presence to its south and onto a major shale gas development deal recently signed by Chevron in Ukraine.

So, why was Big Ag so bullish on Ukraine, even in the face of so much uncertainty and the predictable reaction by Russia?

The answer is that the seeds of Ukraine’s turn from Russia have been sown for the last two decades by the persistent Cold War alliance between corporations and foreign policy. It’s a version of the ‘Deep State‘ that is usually associated with the oil and defense industries, but also exists in America’s other heavily subsidized industry — agriculture.

Morgan Williams is at the nexus of Big Ag’s alliance with US foreign policy. To wit,SigmaBleyzer touts Mr. Williams’ work with “various agencies of the US government, members of Congress, congressional committees, the Embassy of Ukraine to the US, international financial institutions, think tanks and other organizations on US-Ukraine business, trade, investment and economic development issues.”

Freedom — For US Business

As President of the US-Ukraine Business Council, Williams has access to Council cohort — David Kramer, President of Freedom House. Officially a non-governmental organization, it has been linked with overt and covert ‘democracy’ efforts in places where the door isn’t open to American interests — aka US corporations.

Freedom House, the National Endowment for Democracy and National Democratic Institute helped fund and support the Ukrainian ‘Orange Revolution’ in 2004. Freedom House is funded directly by the US Government, the National Endowment for Democracy and the US Department of State.

David Kramer is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and, according to his Freedom House bio page, formerly a Senior Fellow at the Project for the New American Century.

Nuland’s $5 Billion For Ukrainian ‘Democracy’

That puts Kramer and, by one degree of separation, Big Ag fixer Morgan Williams in the company of PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan who, as coincidence would have it, is married to Victoria “F*ck the EU” Nuland, the current Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.

Interestingly enough, Ms. Nuland spoke to the US-Ukrainian Foundation last 13th December, extolling the virtues of the Euromaidan movement as the embodiment of “the principles and values that are the cornerstones for all free democracies.”

Nuland also told the group that the United States had invested more than $5 billion in support of Ukraine’s “European aspirations” — meaning pulling Ukraine away from Russia. She made her remarks on a dais featuring a backdrop emblazoned with .

Also, her colleague and phone call buddy US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt helped Chevron cook up their 50-year shale gas deal right in Russia’s kitchen.

Coca-Cola, Exxon-Mobil, Raytheon

Although Chevron sponsored that event, it is not listed as a supporter of the Foundation. But the Foundation does list the Coca-Cola Company, ExxonMobil and Raytheon as major sponsors. And, to close the circle of influence, the US-Ukraine Business Council is also listed as a supporter.

Which brings the story back to Big Ag’s fixer — Morgan Williams.

Although he was glum about the current state of investment in Ukraine, he’s gotta wear shades when he looks into the future. He told the International Business Times:

“The potential here for agriculture / agribusiness is amazing … Production here could double. The world needs the food Ukraine could produce in the future. Ukraine’s agriculture could be a real gold mine.”

Of course, his priority is to ensure that the bread of well-connected businesses gets lavishly buttered in Russia’s former breadbasket. And there is no better connected group of Ukraine-interested corporations than American agribusiness.

Given the extent of US official involvement in Ukrainian politics — including the interesting fact that Ambassador Pyatt pledged US assistance to the new government in investigating and rooting-out corruption — Cargill’s seemingly risky investment strategy probably wasn’t that risky, after all.

J P Sottile is a freelance journalist, radio co-host, documentary filmmaker and former broadcast news producer in Washington, D.C. His weekly show, Inside the Headlines w/ The Newsvandal, co-hosted by James Moore, airs every Friday on KRUU-FM in Fairfield, Iowa. He blogs at Newsvandal.com.

Source: JP Sottile | Ecologist

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