Israeli Involvement In NSA Spying

It doesn’t surprise. On June 8, Haaretz headlined “What was the Israeli involvement in collecting US communications intel for NSA?” More on that below.

On April 3, 2012, James Bamford headlined “Shady Companies with Ties to Israel Wiretap for US for the NSA.”

He said NSA chief General Keith Alexander’s “having a busy year.” He’s “cutting ribbons at secret bases and bringing to life the agency’s greatly expanded eavesdropping network.”

“In January he dedicated the new $358 million CAPT Joseph J. Rochefort Building at NSA Hawaii, and in March he unveiled the 604,000-square-foot John Whitelaw Building at NSA Georgia.”

It’s for around “4,000 earphone-clad intercept operators, analysts and other specialists, many of them employed by private contractors.”

Spies “R” Us defines US policy. NSA’s “mammoth 1-million-square-foot, $2 billion Utah Data Center is far more sweeping.”

It’s located at Camp Williams. It’s a Utah National Guard training facility. Once fully operational, says Bamford, it’ll “become, in effect, the NSA Cloud.”

It’ll receive data from NSA satellites, overseas listening posts, and nationwide multipleNo telecom facility monitoring rooms. What’s planned is an unprecedented global spy network.

NSA operatives and hackers will harvest around 2.1 million gigabytes of data per hour. It’ll do so on the world’s most powerful computer.

It’s call Titan Supercomputer. It can handle over 20,000 trillion calculations per second or 20 petaflops. One petaflop = one quadrillion instructions per second.

Supercomputer power will be used to collect and analyze foreign and domestic communications from all possible sources.

Two Israeli companies are involved. High-tech firms Verint and Narus have longstanding US/Israeli intelligence connections. For many years, Verint was a majority-owned Comverse Technology subsidiary.

Both companies have about half their employees in Israel. In August 2012, Verint acquired Comverse. It now operates independently.

It makes security software. It calls itself “a global leader in Actionable Intelligence solutions.”

Narus calls itself a cybersecurity company. It’s an independent Boeing subsidiary. It provides real-time network traffic and analytics software. It does so with enterprise class spyware capabilities.

In 1997, it was founded in Israel. It created NarusInsight. It’s a supercomputer system. A previous article said AT&T uses it at their secret San Francisco facility. It lets NSA spy on its customers.

Verint’s software also is used to do it. Bamford called it “especially troubling that both companies have had extensive ties to Israel, as well as links to (its) intelligence service.”

A previous article discussed Israeli spying on America. The CIA calls Israel America’s main regional spy threat. An Israeli-based CIA operative once found food in his refrigerator rearranged.

Washington knows what’s going on. Publicly it’s ignored. Pre-9/11, the FBI uncovered a massive US-based Israeli spy ring. It remains active.

It betrays America. Numerous Israeli citizens are involved. They have close ties to foreign military, criminal and intelligence sources. They reportedly breach US laws with impunity.

Israel’s featured prominently in annual FBI reports. It actively seeks proprietary/secret US information. It’s mainly on military systems and advanced computer applications.

Proprietary commercial and industrial data are stolen. Israel recruits spies. Sophisticated methods are used. Computers are hacked for information.

Washington’s Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Israel “conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally.”

The Pentagon accused Israel of “actively engag(ing) in military and industrial espionage in the United States. An Israeli citizen working in the US who has access to proprietary information is likely to be a target of such espionage.”

FBI whistleblower John Cole said Justice Department officials ordered dozens of Israeli espionage cases dropped. At issue was political pressure.

Washington gives Israel billions of dollars in annual aid, state-of-the-art weapons and technology, and numerous other special privileges. In return, it steals US state and commercial secrets.

Despite longstanding close ties, Washington considers Israel both ally and counterintelligence threat. In terms of technical capability and human resources, it matches America’s best.

It has access to the highest US political, military and intelligence sources. Bamford said NSA-developed advanced analytical/data-mining software was lawlessly given Israel.

An Operations Directorate technical director did so secretly. Apparently Israeli companies got access. Technology they got advanced their own.

Narus once boasted about being “known for its ability to capture and collect data from the largest networks around the world.” Unexplained was that stolen software facilitates is capabilities.

Retired Israeli General Hanan Gefen ran its secret Unit 8200. It’s Israel’s NSA equivalent. He admitted Israeli ties to Comverse.

At the time, it owned Verint. It owns other Israeli high-tech companies. They specialize in eavesdropping and surveillance. They operate globally.

According to Gefen, the “correlation between serving in the intelligence Unit 8200 and starting successful high-tech companies is not coincidental.”

“Many of the technologies in use around the world and developed in Israel were originally military technologies and were developed and improved by Unit veterans.”

Kobi Alexander founded Verint. He formerly served as chairman. He’s a fugitive. FBI accusations include fraud, theft, lying, bribery, money laundering and related crimes.

Two of his top Comverse associates were indicted on similar charges. Both were imprisoned. They paid millions of dollars in fines and penalties.

NSA claims it takes malfeasance and other legitimate complaints seriously. Spying technology and expertise take precedence.

Bamford says take NSA assurances cautiously. “Who’s listening to the listeners,” he asks?

Haaretz asked if Verint and Narus “collected information from the US communications network” for NSA?

Neither company responded when asked. Former senior NSA official-turned whistleblower Thomas Drake exposed fraud, waste, abuse and other lawless agency practices.

They relate to warrantless data-mining practices. In April 2010, he was indicted under the Espionage Act. Charges included “willful retention of classified information, obstruction of justice, and making false statements.”

After a May 22, 2011 60 Minutes broadcast, all charges were dropped. In return, Drake pled guilty to a minor misdemeanor. He was sentenced to one year probation and community service. He lost his high-paying NSA job and pension.

On March 15, 2013, he spoke at the National Press Club. He focused on First Amendment rights. In part he said:

“The threats to the First Amendment by the government is bull’s eye-centered on a free unfettered press designed to suppress and repress speech and political expression in America, create fear through privilege and unilateral authority over what is fit or unfit for the First Amendment.”

“If speech becomes the instrument of crime when revealing government crime and wrongdoing, we are under arbitrary authoritarian rule and not the rule of law.”

“I can make an argument that government increasingly prefers to operate in the shadows and finds the First Amendment a constraint on its activities.”

“And yet, taking off the veil of government secrecy has more often than not turned truth-tellers and whistleblowers into turncoats and traitors, who are then often criminally burned and blacklisted and broken by the government on the stake of national security.”

“I knew too much truth and exposed government illegalities, fraud and abuse and was turned into a criminal for doing so.”

“I was charged under the Espionage Act, faced many years in prison and became an enemy of the state.”

“It was five years of living under the boot of the Surveillance State, and yet I was saved by the First Amendment and the court of public opinion and the free press, including the strength and growing resiliency of the alternative media.”

“Do we really want the government listening in on and tracking the lives of so many others? Have our constitutional freedoms become the latest victims of 9/11?”

“Will national security replace our individual rights? Will fear take priority over freedom? Will government censorship and propaganda triumph over personal choice and disclosure, use suppression repression?”

“If we starve liberty for the increasingly myopic sake of security, what will we have left to defend?”

If truth-telling is criminalized, freedom no longer exists.

Drake corroborated information AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein and others reported. Spies “R” Us reflects US policy.

Drake verified NSA’s use of Narus techology. Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) collects intelligence from major US Internet companies. They do it via Prism electronic surveillance.

Officially it’s called US-984XN. It’s used for sweeping domestic and foreign spying. It’s the main source for raw NSA intelligence. It’s top secret for good reason. Now it’s existence is publicly known.

Mossad’s longstanding ties to Verint, Narus, and other Israeli surveillance technology companies assures it access to information they collect.

It’s true wherever these companies operate. America has 16 active intelligence agencies. They operate the same way. Warrantless dragnet spying is lawless.

Freedom pays the greatest price. It’s disappearing in plain sight. It’s heading for the dustbin of history without legitimate resistance enough to stop it. Nothing less has a chance.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at.

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

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

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

The Sky Gods of Unintended Consequences

Of all the delusions we entertain in our lives, both individually and collectively, that we are the “masters of our own destiny” has got to be one of the grandest. It is emboldening to feel we are somehow ‘in control’, ‘in charge’ of the myriad forces and influences that surround and inhabit us but in reality we seem more like high-stakes gamblers than gods, playing a numbers game not fully aware of the odds that, as often as not, are resolutely stacked against us.

Long before ‘rationalism’ convinced us it was able to even up these odds thus moving into the dominant position it now occupies in the modern psyche, an old proverb, originating from not only a different era but also school of thought, suggested a more subtle and unpredictable relationship between mans actions and the consequences of those actions, in other words between causes and their inevitable, if not immediately obvious, effects. It was a clear warning to those who presume superiority and dominion over wild, unruly Nature and attempt to subjugate it to a mere predictable mechanism. “They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind”, goes the ancient saying which seeks to reintroduce the principle of the ‘unknown’, the ‘unaccounted for’ back into the minds of those who cling to their sophisticated certainties and complacencies. As Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defence in the Bush administration and no stranger to an elevated sense of certainty, famously and rather ironically put it: “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

The Hidden Conditionality

In 1961 mathematician and meteorologist Professor Edward Lorenz working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, made what appeared to be an accidental discovery whilst running some tests on his new, though by today’s standards rather primitive computer, the charmingly named Royal McBee LGP-30. This discovery has helped to change our perception of just how surprisingly sensitive the world, as a vast, organic System made up of many minor, interconnected systems, actually is upending the reductionist, ‘world as giant machine’ model which many, particularly in science, have subscribed to.

Far-reaching ideas often originate and ripple outwards from simple, seemingly insignificant insights; the concept of splitting the atom, for example, must be about as small and inconsequential a starting-point as one can imagine. Lorenz’s profound realisation began life rather similarly. In one of those early tests, in 1961, he re-entered data into his computer for a re-run of a weather simulation he had already completed, but this time using the numbers direct from the original printout. To his surprise, he found that the simulation ended with a totally different result. Using exactly the same input data, the final outcome should have been identical. He did this many times over and kept finding the same wild variations. The reason was that the Royal McBee had, in the first instance, entered numbers to an accuracy of six decimal points, whereas the subsequent printout was rounding them off to three decimal points. It was only a margin of error of less than 0.1 per cent, then seen as quite insignificant over a whole experiment, and yet it resulted in huge deviations from the original, exposing the underlying conditionality limiting the science of long-term prediction and a killer-blow to those who see in it an omnipotent future for man and computer.

Lorenz was not the first to have had an inkling of this somewhat hidden conditionality. Over 100 years earlier, the brilliant French mathematician Jules Henri Poincare, whose work also showed that systems are not as stable or predictable as they were previously assumed to be, was largely misunderstood and ignored. Post-Lorenz though that insight, perhaps finding a more receptive time in which to take root than the 1800s of Poincare, has taken on a whole new dimension, showing up the limitations of systemic modelling and analysis, something we have become, in our attempts to ‘manage risk’, increasingly dependent upon and especially with the advent of computers. This, for example, was clearly played out in 2007 at the very beginning of the global financial crisis, when predictive models employed to chart the behaviour of international trade and capital flows, under an atmosphere – not fully recognised at the time – of accentuated volatility proved to be misrepresentative leaving policy-makers, forecasters and speculators completely wrong-footed. Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, stated in late 2008, before a Congressional hearing in Washington, “I have discovered a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works”, in what can only be described as a moment of frank admission, for an ultra-rationalist. He added, “This modern risk-management paradigm held sway for decades…The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year [2007]“. He was referring partly to his shaken belief in a neo-liberal, ‘free-market’ economic model, and to the ability to predict and control its behaviour, which, on Mr Greenspan’s watch, has managed to dysfunctionalise the entire global economic system and caused untold suffering. Some, including many notable economists, say his policies, whilst the head of the Fed, were significantly responsible for the onset of the financial crisis as they encouraged the sub-prime housing bubble, and it’s inevitable collapse, by keeping interest rates too low for too long – “easy money”. And he failed to rein in the explosive growth of the largely unregulated business of derivatives, risky financial instruments that, as he admitted in the Washington hearing, were out of control and had created havoc throughout the financial world. In 1994, Greenspan successfully opposed the implementation of tougher regulations and restrictions on the derivatives market.

Hair Trigger

Of course the world still operates predictably and measurably in many ways, as our extraordinary modern science has shown but it has become increasingly clear that this is by no means the full story. Those now infamous “masters of the universe”, both in high finance and science, over-dependent on speculative theories and models, hell-bent on retaining their triple-A, god-like status, have tended to conveniently overlook this underlying fact. All systems, which inevitably experience conditions of stress and can therefore become highly sensitized as a result, are prone to unstable, unpredictable modes of behaviour; an instability which can be symptomatic of being driven too hard and to the very limits of natural functioning. It is a warning indicator that any particular system is reaching or has reached a ‘tipping-point’, beyond which it will move into a disturbed and increasingly dysfunctional phase of activity and eventually completely collapse, much like a wheel coming loose from it’s axle; at first wobbling uncontrollably and then coming off altogether. The climate of a particular region, for example, may be masking underlying instability latent in that system and so the potential for disruptive weather patterns is present but remains unnoticed. Similarly with the economy, where many learned and even Nobel-prize winning economists have been caught out, admitting that they did not see this “once in a lifetime” crisis coming. And in the case of the environment, no one truly knows what might unravel if we reach that ominous tipping-point of a polar ice cap and permafrost meltdown.

The sensitivity of systems to influencing factors which may be miniscule, as Lorenz discovered, and therefore virtually impossible to monitor, no matter how accurate the devices used, is often referred to by the well-known term ‘butterfly effect’. It points to the fact that when systems like the climate, environment or economy are in an inherently unstable condition it can lead to unforeseen events even with the smallest of initial disturbances. Like the turbulence generated by the beat of a butterfly’s wings or for that matter the splitting of an atom which, again when the fissile material, on an atomic level, is unstable enough, can set in motion a cataclysmic chain of events. Put another way, in a highly charged ‘atmosphere’, using the word in its broadest sense, it often only takes the smallest of switching devices, a hair-trigger, to move it rapidly into an either destructive or creative phase of activity. The tension inherent in that atmosphere or environment seeks to be diffused, discharged either dramatically as takes place in a lightning strike or gradually like the steady flow of household electricity, kept relatively safe and useable by a whole network of regulating mechanisms and in stark contrast to our neoliberalised and therefore deregulated financial system, which some believe is “ready to blow” – like a whirlwind. The trigger-point or activating ‘seed’ may be minute but in a system, in a sense, ‘fertile’ enough it can grow exponentially into say a hurricane, nuclear explosion, stock market implosion or even social revolution – not by any means a new phenomena but one we are seeing today in a globalised form which includes protest movements like the Arab Spring, the Spanish Indignados and the Occupy Movement.

The True Nature of Justice

There can be little doubt that the ‘global atmosphere’, so to speak, today is one that indeed can be characterised as highly charged, socially, politically, economically and environmentally not to mention the inner storm brewing up in our collective psyche. These are uncertain times with uncertain futures and distressing to a world that appears, to anyone who has eyes to see and not their head jammed firmly in the sand, to have completely lost it’s way. In the lead-up to its annual meeting, the World Economic Forum published its annual report in January 2013 – Global Risks – warning of potential dangers to the functioning of our most critical systems. Compiled by a panel of 1,000 experts, it urged policy-makers to address the key issues of severe income disparities, the indebted state of governments and rising greenhouse gas emissions. The report states: “Continued stress on the economic system is positioned to absorb the attention of leaders for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the Earth’s environmental system is simultaneously coming under increasing stress. Future simultaneous shocks to both systems could trigger the ‘perfect storm’ with potentially insurmountable consequences… On the economic front, global resilience is being tested by bold monetary and austere fiscal policies. On the environmental front, the Earth’s resilience is being tested by rising global temperatures and extreme weather events that are likely to become more frequent and severe. A sudden and massive collapse on one front is certain to doom the other’s chance of developing an effective, long-term solution.”

We have sown the wind and the whirlwind has surely followed. That is a fact whether generally accepted or not. Many of the operating systems of the planet, as stated above, are under tremendous pressure and are showing the telltale signs of distress and dysfunctionality. The most obvious of course being the degradation of our living environment, which includes pollution and climate change, and yet there are those who are still quite able to rationalise the whole problem away, conveniently understating the human factor and choosing instead to put the emphasis on ‘nature’s cycles’.

As the well over-used cliché puts it, we are now in uncharted territory – a realm of “unknown unknowns” – though perhaps not quite as uncharted as we imagine. For it is always that Nature, an ultimately benevolent, self-regulating Organism, sooner or later, responds to extremes with balancing corrective measures. When the excesses of our planet reach the toxic levels they so obviously have today, with say environmental destruction, carbon dioxide emissions, the wealth and income inequality that exists between the so-called haves and have-nots and many other socio-economic injustices, Nature at a certain point kicks in. Like a safety valve letting off steam it attempts to stem the destructive energetic imbalance before it becomes dangerously polarised, much like an electrical storm, mentioned earlier, seeks to neutralise the build-up of a super-charged differential. There seems in-built in Nature a correcting factor, an element of Universal Justice, which attempts to harmonise destructive inequities and one we appear to be quite unaware of, or at least act as if we are.

Legally Binding

In essence, and not to put too fine a point on it, we have somehow succeeded in creating a global ‘energy-bomb’, for want of a better way of putting it, with many factors having gone into its assemblage and ourselves as the unfortunate targets – the ultimate in suicide missions, albeit an unconscious one. The mounting tensions of the world have been, at best, misunderstood, at worst overlooked and ignored for generations by a long succession of influential policy-makers, both in global politics and economics. This has led to a dangerous and seemingly intractable, bomb-like concentration of problems affecting all aspects of life. It has created this super-charged atmosphere, a supercell of disharmony and dis-ease, which will take some skill and a considerable amount of patience to diffuse before some unforeseen trigger sets in motion a catastrophic chain of events, in the same way a single, well-placed bullet, killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28th June 1914, acted as the tiny spark that seeded what would later become the raging inferno of World War One.

The world cries out, knowingly or not, for a team of skillful operators with abilities in all fields, whose primary task it is to diffuse the currently explosive situation facing the planet. High level, high-calibre compromisers and negotiators, a role for which the United Nations was originally set up, respected by many and able to take the sting out of the gathering mother of all storms, we have all unintentionally reaped, before it does further untold and perhaps irreversible damage to an already beleaguered planet. At this time of extraordinary significance can we make the right choices in the sense that we accept what the present situation demands from us, as laid down by the Universal Laws of Nature, particularly the key Law of Cause and Effect, which in the end express the interconnectedness of all things? The universe itself is bound together by the interplay of these underpinning guiding principles, as science is continually re-discovering. Why is it humanity thinks it can reasonably exist in some fantasy realm beyond them? And, perhaps more importantly, when will we wake up to this dangerous delusion and renounce these outlaw ways which have brought us all to the very edge of extinction without even fully realising it? That is the question of our times. We appear not to have forever to answer it.

Porton Down’s Legacy of Death

Inquest to take place shortly concerning death of scientist…

In April of 2012, Dr. Richard Holmes took a stroll in the woods in Wiltshire, England. His body was found two days later.

Holmes is one of several Porton Down scientists who have died under questionable circumstances. The death in November 2001 of Vladimir Pasechnik was ruled to be a stroke, although co workers stated that Pasechnik was in good health. Vladimir Pasechnik was a Russian defector who first alerted the West to the extensive clandestine research into biological warfare taking place within the Soviet Union.

His death was, oddly, belatedly announced by Dr. Christopher Davis of Virginia. Davis was the member of British intelligence who de-briefed Dr. Pasechnik at the time of his defection. The announcement of Pasechnik’s death did not come in England until a month after he died. Interestingly, Pasechnik was also debriefed by a Dr. David Kelly, head of microbiology at Porton Down, which is England’s top secret chemical, biological and nuclear laboratory.

Dr. David Kelly, whose body was also found in the woods, had been invited to take the position of chief microbiologist at Porton Down in 1986. Later, he worked extensively with Dr. Wouter Basson of South Africa’s clandestine Project Coast. Basson was known to be working on a “black’s only” bioweapon. When South Africa’s apartheid government fell, Basson was subsequently charged with an assortment of crimes, including murder. He skated on all the charges and is now a successful cardiologist in Durbanville, South Africa.

Another scientist who collaborated with Kelly and Basson, Dr. Larry Ford of Irvine, California died in 2001 of a shotgun blast that was ruled a suicide. Police found guns, ammunition and explosives when they dug up his yard. Cholera, botulinum, salmonella and typhoid were also located in vials in his refrigerator. All told, 266 bottles and vials of lethal toxins were found in the Ford home.

The CIA declined to comment on Ford’s intelligence connections.

Dr. Kelly’s death in 2004—in the same woods that were to later claim the body of Dr. Richard Holmes—sent shock waves through the clandestine scientific community. Kelly reportedly died after slashing his wrists and consuming a cocktail of painkillers . His death was subsequently ruled a suicide.

However, according to the mainstream publication the Daily Mail, thirteen respected doctors declared that it was medically impossible for Dr. Kelly to have died in this manner. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1200004/Did-MI5-kill-Dr-David-Kelly-Another-crazy-conspiracy-theory-amid-claims-wrote-tell-book-vanished-death.html

Andrew Gilligan, a reporter for BBC, claimed that Kelly had recently given him and other reporters information that proved the government had exaggerated the Iraqi danger in its “dossier” in order to justify the war against Iraq. Kelly was also reported to be writing a “tell-all” book.

The Daily Mail also reported that “at 8am, half an hour before Dr. Kelly’s body was discovered under the tree, three officers in dark suits from MI5’s Technical Assessment Unit were at his house. The computers and the hard-disk containing the 40,000 words of the explosive book were carried away. They have never been seen since. “

In 2004, Kelly’s replacement as the chief scientist for chemical and biological defence at the Ministry of Defence’s laboratory at Porton Down, Dr. Paul Norman, died when the plane he was piloting crashed near Devon.

The Wiltshire coroner’s office stated this week that Dr. Holmes’ coroner’s inquest will take place shortly. Dr. Holmes had recently left his employment at Porton Down before his fateful walk in the woods. It is unclear why he resigned. Within a month after leaving Porton Down, he was dead.

Hugo Chávez

I once wrote about Chilean president Salvador Allende:

Washington knows no heresy in the Third World but genuine independence. In the case of Salvador Allende independence came clothed in an especially provocative costume – a Marxist constitutionally elected who continued to honor the constitution. This would not do. It shook the very foundation stones upon which the anti-communist tower is built: the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that “communists” can take power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorizing and brainwashing the population. There could be only one thing worse than a Marxist in power – an elected Marxist in power.

There was no one in the entire universe that those who own and run “United States, Inc.” wanted to see dead more than Hugo Chávez. He was worse than Allende. Worse than Fidel Castro. Worse than any world leader not in the American camp because he spoke out in the most forceful terms about US imperialism and its cruelty. Repeatedly. Constantly. Saying things that heads of state are not supposed to say. At the United Nations, on a shockingly personal level about George W. Bush. All over Latin America, as he organized the region into anti-US-Empire blocs.

Long-term readers of this report know that I’m not much of a knee-reflex conspiracy theorist. But when someone like Chávez dies at the young age of 58 I have to wonder about the circumstances. Unremitting cancer, intractable respiratory infections, massive heart attack, one after the other … It is well known that during the Cold War, the CIA worked diligently to develop substances that could kill without leaving a trace. I would like to see the Venezuelan government pursue every avenue of investigation in having an autopsy performed.

Back in December 2011, Chávez, already under treatment for cancer, wondered out loud: “Would it be so strange that they’ve invented the technology to spread cancer and we won’t know about it for 50 years?” The Venezuelan president was speaking one day after Argentina’s leftist president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, announced she had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. This was after three other prominent leftist Latin America leaders had been diagnosed with cancer: Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff; Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo; and the former Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

“Evo take care of yourself. Correa, be careful. We just don’t know,” Chávez said, referring to Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador, both leading leftists.

Chávez said he had received words of warning from Fidel Castro, himself the target of hundreds of failed and often bizarre CIA assassination plots. “Fidel always told me: ‘Chávez take care. These people have developed technology. You are very careless. Take care what you eat, what they give you to eat … a little needle and they inject you with I don’t know what.” 1

When Vice President Nicolas Maduro suggested possible American involvement in Chávez’s death, the US State Department called the allegation absurd. 2

Several progressive US organizations have filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA, asking for “any information regarding or plans to poison or otherwise assassinate the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, who has just died.”

I personally believe that Hugo Chávez was murdered by the United States. If his illness and death were NOT induced, the CIA – which has attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders, many successfully 3 – was not doing its job.

When Fidel Castro became ill several years ago, the American mainstream media was unrelenting in its conjecture about whether the Cuban socialist system could survive his death. The same speculation exists now in regard to Venezuela. The Yankee mind can’t believe that large masses of people can turn away from capitalism when shown a good alternative. It could only be the result of a dictator manipulating the public; all resting on one man whose death would mark finis to the process.

It’s the end of the world … again

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) recent convention in Washington produced the usual Doomsday talk concerning Iran’s imminent possession of nuclear weapons and with calls to bomb that country before they nuked Israel and/or the United States. So once again I have to remind everyone that these people – Israeli and American officials – are not really worried about an Iranian attack. Here are some of their many prior statements:

In 2007, in a closed discussion, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that in her opinion “Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel.” She “also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears.” 4

2009: “A senior Israeli official in Washington”, reported the Washington Post (March 5), asserted that “Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation.”

In 2010 the Sunday Times of London (January 10) reported that Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, war hero, pillar of the Israeli defense establishment, and former director-general of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, “believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons.”

January 2012: US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a television audience: “Are they [Iran] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No, but we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability.” 5

Later that month we could read in the New York Times (January 15) that “three leading Israeli security experts – the Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, a former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, and a former military chief of staff, Dan Halutz – all recently declared that a nuclear Iran would not pose an existential threat to Israel.”

Then, a few days afterward, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in an interview with Israeli Army Radio (January 18), had this exchange:

Question: Is it Israel’s judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?

Barak: People ask whether Iran is determined to break out from the control [inspection] regime right now … in an attempt to obtain nuclear weapons or an operable installation as quickly as possible. Apparently that is not the case.

In an April 20, 2012 CNN interview Barak repeated this sentiment: “It’s true that probably [Iranian leader] Khamenei has not given orders to start building a [nuclear] weapon.” 6

And on several other occasions, Barak has stated: “Iran does not constitute an existential threat against Israel.” 7

Lastly, we have the US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, in a January 2012 report to Congress: “We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.” … There are “certain things [the Iranians] have not done” that would be necessary to build a warhead.8

So why, then, do Israeli and American leaders, at most other times, maintain the Doomsday rhetoric? Partly for AIPAC to continue getting large donations. For Israel to get massive amounts of US aid. For Israeli leaders to win elections. To protect Israel’s treasured status as the Middle East’s sole nuclear power.

Listen to Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at America’s most prominent neo-con think tank, American Enterprise Institute:

The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, it’s Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they don’t do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, “See, we told you Iran is a responsible power. We told you Iran wasn’t getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately.” … And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem. 9

Osama bin Laden, Bradley Manning, & William Blum

Bradley Manning has the charge of “Aiding the enemy” hanging over his head. This could lead to a sentence of life in prison. As far as can be deduced, the government believes that the documents and videos that Manning gave to Wikileaks, which Wikileaks then widely distributed to international media, aided the enemy because it put US foreign policy in a very bad light.

Manning’s attorneys have asked the prosecution more than once for specific examples of how “the enemy” (whoever that may refer to in a world full of people bitterly angry at the United States because of any of many terrible acts carried out by the US government) has been “aided” by the Wikileaks disclosures. Just how has the enemy made use of the released material to harm the United States? The government has not provided any such examples, probably because what really bothers Washington officials is the embarrassment they have experienced before the world resulting from the documents and videos; which indeed are highly embarrassing even to genuine war criminals; filled with violations of international law, atrocities, multiple lies to everyone, revelations of gross hypocrisy, and much more.

So our splendid officials are considering putting Bradley Manning in prison forever simply because they’re embarrassed. Hard to find much fault with that.

But now the prosecutors have announced that a Navy Seal involved in the killing of Osama bin Laden is going to testify at the court martial that bin Laden possessed articles about the Wikileaks documents that Manning leaked. Well, there must be a hundred million other people in the world who have similar material on their computers. The question remains: What use did the enemy make of that?

The Iraqi government made use of the material, inducing them to refuse immunity to US troops for crimes committed in Iraq, such as the cold-blooded murders revealed by the Wilileaks videos; this in turn led the US to announce that it was ending its military engagement in Iraq. However, Manning was indicted in May 2010, well before the Iraqi decision to end the immunity.

In January, 2006 bin Laden, in an audio tape, declared: “If Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book ‘Rogue State’ [by William Blum], which states in its introduction … ” He then went on to quote the opening of a paragraph I wrote (which appears actually in the Foreword of the British edition only, that was later translated to Arabic), which in full reads:

“If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize – very publicly and very sincerely – to all the widows and the orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. I would then announce that America’s global interventions – including the awful bombings – have come to an end. And I would inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but – oddly enough – a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from the many American bombings and invasions. There would be more than enough money. Do you know what one year of the US military budget is equal to? One year. It’s equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.

“That’s what I’d do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I’d be assassinated.”

Thus, Osama bin Laden was clearly making use of what I wrote, and the whole world heard it. And I was thus clearly “aiding the enemy”. But I was not prosecuted.

The United States would like to prove a direct use and benefit by “the enemy” of the material released by Wikileaks; but so far it appears that only possession might be proven. In my case the use, and presumed propaganda benefit, were demonstrated. The fact that I wrote the material, as opposed to “stealing” it, is irrelevant to the issue of aiding the enemy. I knew, or should have known, that my criticisms of US foreign policy could be used by the foes of those policies. Indeed, that’s why I write what I do. To provide ammunition to anti-war and other activists.

The Department of Justice and socialism

For many years when I’ve been asked to explain just what I mean by “socialism” I’ve usually replied simply: “Putting people before profits”. There are a thousand-and-one details that would have to be considered in a transformation from a capitalist society to a socialist society, but rather than going into all that it’s much simpler to leave it with just that motto, which expresses theessence of my socialist society. In any event, in that glorious future world things will evolve in ways that could not be wholly predicted. The structure could take any one of many forms, but the essence must remain the same if it’s going to be called socialist.

Thus was I both surprised and amused in reading a news article about the current trial in New Orleans which is attempting to determine, amongst other things, the extent of blame of various companies, particularly BP, involved in the 2010 historic accident which took the lives of 11 workers and dumped an estimated 172 million gallons of crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The US Justice Department attorney declared in his opening statement: “The evidence will show that BP put profits before people, profits before safety and profits before the environment.” 10

Well, imagine that. The Justice Department certainly captured the essence of corporate behavior. The attorney chose such words because he knew that the sentiments expressed would appeal to the average American sitting on a jury. The members of the jury would understand that BP had blatantly ignored and violated certain cherished ideals like people, safety and the environment. Prosecuting the corporation would sound fair and just to them.

Yet, when someone like me expresses such sentiments – and I have used the exact same words on occasion – I run the risk of being written off as an “extremist”, a “radical”, and other bad-for-you labels; not long ago it was “commie”.

The irony runs even deeper. If a corporation flagrantly ignores putting profits before everything else, stockholders can sue the executives.

This just in! The real reason the Pope resigned!

He’s losing his mind.

In January, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta met with Pope Benedict XVI to receive his blessing. Afterward, Panetta said the pontiff told him, “Thank you for helping to keep the world safe.” 11

The precious art of assassinating legally

Obama hopeium addicts can soon be expected to call for support of the president’s increasing use of drones for assassination on the ground of their being good for the environment. My White House agent informs me that Obama is going to announce that all American drones will soon be composed 85% of recyclable material and will be solar-powered. And each drone missile will have the following painted on its side: “He was a bad guy. Just take our word for it!”

1. The Guardian (London), December 29, 2011 ↩
2. Huffington Post, March 7, 2013 ↩
3. http://killinghope.org/bblum6/assass.htm ↩
4. Haaretz.com (Israel), October 25, 2007; print edition October 26 ↩
5. “Face the Nation”, CBS, January 8, 2012 ↩
6. Washington Post, August 1, 2012 ↩
7. Iran Media Fact Check, “Does Israel Consider Iran an ‘Existential Threat’?” ↩
8. The Guardian (London), January 31, 2012 ↩
9. Political Correction, “American Enterprise Institute Admits The Problem With Iran Is Not That It Would Use Nukes” ↩
10. Associated Press, February 26, 2013 ↩
11. Washington Post, January 17, 2013 ↩

US Officials Confess To Targeting Iran’s Civilian Population

Condemned By Every Syllable They Utter…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some examples:

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

Prohibition on Starvation as a Method of Warfare

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Right to life

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

The Rights of the Child

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

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

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

The Highly Intelligent Psychopath – Achieving Deviant Goals

Understanding how psychopaths manipulate their victims, and even work together to prey on others, is a subject, about which, the public needs to be informed. Additionally, Americans need to understand the gravest threat to our personal autonomy and freedom, are highly intelligent psychopaths. While less intelligent psychopaths also exact monetary costs, more intelligent ones destroy our institutions, using these for their own ends. These are the ones who work their way up the corporate ladder and into Congress, after all.

Psychopaths were estimated by neuroscientist Kent Kiehl to cost Americans 460 billion every year.

The series of stories you are about to read move from the personal to the corporate and political, following the acts of individual psychopaths.

This is a story using my own, real life, experiences, and those related to me by other victims. This series of articles will examine the strategies and so illustrate how psychopaths think.

These stories illustrate how psychopaths operate together and how and why others tolerate what is happening, in business and personally.

The first two psychopathic individuals discussed in this series are Craig Franklin and Morgan Barteaux Gell (AKA Pillsbury). In this article we focus on Franklin. I was once married to Franklin.

I gave birth to Morgan, whose biological father was, I recently learned, a psychopath, when I was 18. When Morgan, then Carolyn Anne Barteaux, was born I had already left him. There is strong evidence psychopathy, or tendencies to the condition, are inheritable.

This specific story chronicles sexual deviancy tolerated by a major defense contractor, now providing drone technology to our government. Most Americans are horrified by the off shore use of drones, and even more so, at the idea these will be used by law enforcement in America.

We ask ourselves, how could those who provide the technologies have failed to see the use of drones as a gross violation of human decency? The short answer is they knew, quite well. The longer answer is that profits trump all other considerations all too often. The corporate toleration for shocking behavior, herein illustrated, makes their production of drone technology entirely understandable.

Individuals whose standards for acceptable behavior change due to their association with psychopaths, are known as ‘situational’ psychopaths. The shift toward behavior which harms others in politics and business is now believed, by many, to be related to the number of highly psychopathic individuals  in these arenas.

This story begins with a document, already published to the Internet, written by my youngest daughter, Ayn Pillsbury which shows the strategy laid out by a psychopath intent on gaining sexual access to little girls who viewed him as a father.

Ayn’s Declaration, written for the court in Santa Barbara in 1999, outlines events which took place eleven years previously when she was around twelve, in the presence of her sister Dawn, her brothers, Arthur and Justin, and her step-brother, Scott. Morgan Barteaux (AKA Pillsbury),was not present, as was usual. She was, at the time, attempting to extract Eddy van Halen from his marriage.

The most relevant part of the Declaration is at the beginning, but reading it in its entirety adds further insights.

“The first episode of violence I recall was the year I was in eighth grade. That would have been in the autumn of 1988. Craig had taken us into the family room, just the kids. Mom wasn’t there. Craig wanted to talk to us about how incompetent Mom was. It was bad stuff about Mom. He was trying to win our loyalty. So then Mom came home and came into the room wanting to participate in the discussion. Craig was very angry and told her he was having a private discussion with the kids and that she wasn’t welcome.

Of course, being our mother, she believed the contrary. None of us objected to her being there. Then he became very loud and vituperative and became vocally and physically intimidating. He wrestled Mom to the ground and was on top of her holding her down and hitting her and so all of us kids were torn. We didn’t know what to do. We wanted to get him off of her, so I picked up a bar bell which was probably from 12 – 15 pounds and sort of tapped Craig with it on the back, not really wanting to hurt him but wanting him to realize that we didn’t approve of what he was doing. I don’t know how well it worked. Eventually he got off her.

There was some discussion for a while, Mom saying why she should be able to stay and Craig saying why she should leave. Then Craig again became very angry and punched Mom in the jaw, knocking her out cold. Of course she was standing so she fell over and I thought she might have struck her head on the hearth stones. So she hit the floor and we were all worried she was dead. She wasn’t responding. Craig left her there. We ran and got some water and someone felt her pulse. Then Scott and Edi (AKA Arthur) and Justin went to call the police. We stayed with Mom until she came around and the police came but Craig wasn’t arrested because Mom told them not to arrest him.

Mom did not hit Craig. Mom never hit Craig. Mom is the least violent person I know. Craig never scrupled to use physical intimidation to get what he wanted.”

I had asked Ayn to recall those times she remembered Craig battering me. In 1999 I did not understand really what Ayn’s declaration documented, if considered along with events taking place after 1999. Now, with more information from his multiple relationships, the answers are glaring.

Craig began to denigrate me to my children and others who knew us as soon as we were married. He constructed and spun stories to make me look incompetent, stupid, venal, and unworthy of the respect due to a mother. This was essential to his goal of gaining access to my daughters so he could live out his fantasies of violation and incest. Destroying the credibility of the victim is essential. This was present in each instance, my own and others.

For psychopaths the truth is irrelevant. The story which advances their goal is the story which is told.

Strategies such as these take forward planning, demonstrating one of the less understood aspects of intelligent psychopaths, the ability for strategic planning and patience, coupled with complete ruthlessness in the advancement of the goal.

Craig’s I. Q. is 180. Forward planning is as natural to him as breathing.

At the time, in 1988, I suffered a concussion and had no memories, for quite some time, of what had transpired. I did not, then remember Craig battering me or talking to the police. The children told me what had happened, but with no details. Now, officers responding to this kind of situation would have known not to listen to me. People with concussions are not capable of making informed decisions.

Additionally, I suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Craig should have been out of the home – not just because of what he did to me but because of what he was then just beginning to do to my children. I say, “my children,” because although he later went through a form of adopting them, naming them as his children in his will, this was, clearly, only a step in a process which was not about being a father, but rather living out his sexual fantasies. Eliminating my former husband, their father, from the equation, was part of his plan. Ron Foster, relinquishment of parental rights.

Ron relinquished his rights, June 21, 1989. Craig adopted the children June 26, 1989. The two events were clearly related. Craig would go into court and lie on this point ten years later, having conspired with his divorce attorney, Jacqueline Misho, to steal the records.

Denigrating one parent by another is known as Parental Alienation Syndrome. This technique is used to manipulate children and gain their trust. The same technique is used by sexual predators to alienate children from those who will protect them. Craig was not a parent in any terms we would accept because his goal was, in the first instance, sexually predatory.

Morgan also engaged in alienating my children from me, first for her own purposes, then to support Craig in his agenda. For the psychologically disordered, harm to others, is not a consideration.

While Legal Abuse Syndrome is now recognized as a form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, abuse suffered at the hands of a psychopath is not seen as causing similar, and worse, symptoms. I have survived only because I began to study the symptoms and understand psychopathy, despite the emotional anguish suffered, which included the realization I had never had a relationship with either Craig or Morgan. No one has a relationship with a psychopath in any normal, human, sense.

I began to understand this when I retrospectively put together a time line, remembering what he had told me, and what he had done. Then, I understand his real motives. This year I did the same for Morgan.

The marriage I had entered into was a fraud used to gain access to my children, milk me for money, and use me in a variety of other ways. Craig’s intention was to accomplish his goal and leave me penniless. Keep this in mind, as the theme will reoccur.

The psychologically disordered use familiar human institutions as avenues for carrying out their predatory behavior routinely. Marriage, parenthood, all familial relations, make us vulnerable when psychopaths are involved. We need to understand this, our courts need to be take this into account.

Those who benefit by enabling these behaviors for their own profit must be taught this is a form of fraud which will not be tolerated.

In public officials, for instance judges, either engaging in this behavior, or allowing it to take place by others, for profit, should be grounds for removal and incur liabilities. It can also be handled as a violation under color of law.

Craig’s Corporate Partner

In this instance Dan O’Dowd, who with his wife, Amy owns 97% of Green Hills Software, Inc. had little real experience with business when he partnered with Glenn Hightower, his boss, and founded GHS in 1982. Craig, who he hired as Senior Vice President for Advanced Products Development in 1986, prevented him from having to return to Hightower for more funding and diluting his holding by actually selling Green Hills products before he even knew Dan. Craig read the code and judged them simply on their merits, recommending their purchase to companies with which he was doing business.

Craig also provided the edge expertise which made Dan’s success possible from the late 1980s until he, Dan, was able to orchestrate a forced buy-out of Hightower in 1998 – 1999. This link, and the links which follow, tell the story through the court documents generated from the resulting law suit.

[b.] “Glenn Hightowervs. Daniel O’Dowd, Case No. BS 053127

[d.] “Glenn Hightowervs. Daniel O’Dowd, Case No. BS 053127,

[e.]AMERICAN ARBITRATION ASSOCIATION No. 72Y 180 0960 98,

The opinion expressed by the court in [d.] was that Hightower was likely to prevail if there is proof of unlawful action by O’Dowd. While there had, in fact, been a conspiracy to make it impossible for Hightower to exercise his option to buy O’Dowd out Hightower was unable to prove this at the time.

The deal struck between Craig and Dan was for Dan to recharacterize the stock and for Craig to run the ‘Green Hills Personnel Strike.’ Promises of lavish benefits were made by Craig to other key personnel. Morgan’s 2001 Deposition touches on the conspiracy in which Craig was paid to organize the strike by an exchange of favors. One of these was O’Dowd’s having a fraudulent stock option agreement written.

But it is very possible the manipulation went on in several directions. Dan and Craig saw a lot of each other and while Craig and I were still married Craig would come home shaking with rage because Dan passed on to him remarks, Dan said, were from Glenn, which were far less than complementary toward Craig.

Dan’ s own personal goal was to be richer than Bill Gates. To accomplish this he had to be rid of his partners. Stories of Dan’s belief he was smarter and better at computers than Gates traveled to me both from Craig and others at the company. I have considered the possibility Dan, too is psychopathic, but lacking more substantial evidence than his willingness to destroy me, my children, and suborn the court system, I have no opinion in the matter.

However, this interesting note should be considered. In 2003, according to Anne Fisher, who was eating dinner with Craig when he showed her an envelope and told her what was inside. The envelope enclosed a deposition from a law suit settled in 2001 given by Morgan Pillsbury. It was addressed to John Fund of the Wall Street Journal. It was Green Hills Software, stationary and postage was paid.

The deposition inside was uncertified, meaning Morgan had no chance to review and edit the document. Craig would have had to obtain it from the Green Hills attorney. Why would Dan Risk providing this to John Fund if there was no accrued benefit to himself?

Look at the graph below, from the GHS site, for how much Dan benefited, and when.

Craig joins GHS 1986  –  Government Contracts 2003

 

Although it should not have been mailed, or placed on Fund’s website, the deposition is, in fact, revealing. In the deposition Morgan states she has had a borderline personality disorder all of her life. But she had never been diagnosed as having one by a competent professional. She admits Craig came on to her sexually and recalls having conversations with him where he insisted on discussing his sexual attraction to her and to my other daughters.

Morgan relates Craig’s goal of finding a blond haired, blue-eyed twenty-something woman who will cater to his every whim, as well and Craig’s insistence Morgan, who he is also approaching sexually, find him other women as well.

John immediately put it up on his website, started for him by intimate friend, Gail Heriot. The two had been intimate for over a year at this time. Email documenting their meetings in various hotel rooms, dated 1/13/02 10:05 PM. John’s only comment on the deposition was Morgan’s admission she had a borderline personality disorder. But Craig’s other reported activities coincide exactly with the same pattern exhibited later with Anne Fisher. When the deposition was given, in 2001, Anne and Craig were still in the honeymoon phase of their relationship.

Craig would prove himself to be a serial abuser, with the same patterns recurring with multiple women.

At about the same time, 2003, Fund put up his website Dan was struck with a moment of patriotic fervor and started the Fallen Heroes Last Wish Foundation.   2010 2011 2012

From this time on government contracts became very much part of Dan’s business. This suggests to me John Fund, through his friends Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, arranged government contracts as another exchange of favors.

Craig was very serious about leaving me destitute. In a phone recording made in 1999, Craig discussed stock options with Morgan. It is clear as you read, no matter what, Craig and Green Hills do not intend me to get even the tiny amount of stock the court awarded to me in the decision rendered in “Divorce Judgment, August 16,1999.” It was planned in advance.

Craig had agreed to assist with Dan’s take over of Green Hills to benefit himself. One of these ‘benefits’ was to destroy me financially, part by having a new stock option agreement written by Ruth Fisher, an attorney in Los Angeles, in late 1997 or very early 1998. Craig told this to Morgan at the time and, when we were again talking, she relayed this to me.

By 2003 John had his reasons for helping Craig. By then Morgan had stabbed Craig in the back and the war between Morgan and Fund had involved Fund’s friends, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. Psychopaths routinely stab each other in the back.

Morgan had started talking to me again in 1999 because she needed me to provide support Craig had withdrawn and help her get Fund to the altar.

Until recently I did not realize what had actually transpired. I also had no idea I was being double-teamed by two psychopaths, Craig and Morgan.

I began to understand this when I retrospectively put together a time line, remembering what they had told me, done, and then understanding their real motives.

Craig’s Fixation on Incest

Each of us is impacted by what happens in our own lives and from the reflected memories of those who raise us. Craig’s first sexual arousal came when he was sixteen, while wrestling with his younger sister, Priscilla, then twelve. He did not molest her. But thereafter his focus would be young girls with whom he had a familial relationship, who were virgins, and who he was betraying. A life-time pattern was set.

Craig’s parents were rigid, highly domineering, and cold. Craig’s father, a double vice-president of the University of Southern California, was also an attorney. His reputation at USC was built on fundraising, and I was told, over and over again, he had raised over 100 million for the university.

Dr. Franklin’s communications with his children came in the form of a news bulletin, announcing in gloating language, how much he had raised by persuading elderly people, whom he and his wife paid assiduous attention to, to leave money to the university instead of their families. These potential donors were never invited to their home, instead, Dr. Franklin and his wife entertained them at the Los Angeles Country Club, membership paid for by the USC. Listening to them discuss these people, gloating over their success and the anticipated consternation of the donors children, was disgusting.

Craig and his siblings grew up seeing this as normal.

Anne Fisher, another woman abused by Franklin

Anne Fisher, whose relationship with Craig continued for many years, first contacted me in the beginning of 2003 by email. Our communications continued sporadically over the years.

Craig had told her a story about his childhood he had not shared with me. When Craig was around two he wandered into the hallway at night and his mother, dressed in a scanty negligee, saw him, became angry, and spanked him with a Bible. According to Craig, as reported by Anne, she then went into her bedroom and engaged in sexual intercourse with her husband. It is, naturally, impossible to know if this happened, but from Anne’s report it clearly had heavy significance for him.

Craig told me about his arousal with Priscilla, but I did not realize this was anything more than a single incident. Over the years we were together, however, I was occasionally uncomfortable at his insistence I have plastic surgery so I looked like his sister. I refused. Priscilla is blond, blue-eyed and her face is highly neotenous.

I took his peculiarities to be simple eccentricities of no real significance. I was obviously wrong on this point.

After Craig left me Ayn told me Craig had long been exposing himself to her when she walked past our room and I was not in the house. Further pieces of information seeped in through several sources, although I have never really been in contact with Craig again.

The same year I began talking to Anne a private detective I hired to get Craig’s address for service of papers found Incest Pornography and a receipt from the sex shop in his trash neatly contained in a gift bag. He had watched Craig deposit it there.

Anne Fisher did not initially tell me very much about her relations with Craig. It was a serious relationship in that Anne became financially dependent on Craig, who agreed to fund a business she was starting and buy ‘them’ a home. He even took her and her two children to look at houses and found one he agreed to buy. Declaration Time Line No. 1 Time Line No. 2

The relationship was highly traumatic for her, and the stories she told me directly, and through letters and other documents she sent, were chilling.

Her relations with Craig put her, and her two children, at real risk, disrupted her real relationships and left her, and her children, homeless.

This is reproduced from Time Line 2 , which Anne sent me in 2008. The events chronicled date from around 2005, taking place after Craig had enticed her into dependence on him and then raped and destroyed her ability to make a living. Craig reentered her life when she was mending matters.

Anne Fisher – “HE ASSURED ME THAT HE WOULD NEVER EVER DO THAT AGAIN… and that we would work together at this business, he with his business experience and my technical trade knowledge. I began to build the business.

At first it was great, until I was at the point of contracts and office space and equipment purchases. He became evil… during this time… That is the best way to describe it. He had me in his control again and he used me as anything but a business partner.

He held over my head that he would take the business, destroy the business… He used me as his own private escort service, making me meet with prostitutes, writing letters to his prostitutes and promoting him as a decent man so that possibly? He could get whatever he wanted. I found notes from other girls that he was investing in their company at the same time and sleeping with them and lies… to me… He gave one girl 30k, and he told me he could only give me 5500/month and had no money for the operating start up cash he had promised…. So, I had to pay my bills, around 3k and then take about 2k a month to push the company forward each and every month and in this time I was used like a butt wipe and was privy to the other arrangements that made me realize that I was being taken advantage of, however, I couldn’t step back or lose it all and I couldn’t really step up because? I felt I owed craig his share and would lose it all. In 2007 he paid my daughter 3k/month to help out and the halfway through the year, cut me off, and kept her on (to punish me or cause grief)… and my entire family saw me, my children, saw me homeless… after craig had promised me all this. I tried to commit suicide twice or more. Entered therapy I cannot afford and have terrible shame, guilt and embarrassment due to this being a small town and having craig not “not” have the money, but choosing not to continue me or help me until I can get a job. It’s like he enjoys seeing me lose it all and then he’ll be back… to offer me money since I am completely at a loss to keep things and not lose anymore, my self esteem is in the bucket and I have no friends because how can you tell anyone what you are going through like this?

Craig has basically destroyed my reputation and my ability to be seen my those in my town as anyone other than a “hustler or a gold digger or a stupid ho”. This is far from who I am and from who I came here to be…”

Over the years Anne and I talked on the phone and got to know each other, to some extent, though we never met in person. On the phone she also provided information. All of this information was provided for my use and at my discretion because she was frustrated with her inability to either extract herself from Craig’s circle or successfully find justice.

In a declaration Anne sent to me she states Craig raped her four times. Verbally, she had told me about two occasions involving herself and another audio tape she has of Craig admitting his rape of Ivory May Kabler.

Anne told me she attempted,twice, to report Craig to the police, who refused to listen. Craig was, after all, protected as the Senior Vice President of a seemingly respectable company, Green Hills Software, Inc. Those with wealth are protected by both law enforcement and our courts.

It was Anne who also told me Craig had been meeting women online and using frequent flyer miles, available through his travel for Green Hills Software, to bring them to Santa Barbara for the weekend where he would rape them and put them, traumatized, back on the return flight. This was pure aggression and a violation of the Mann Act. These women were not in his ‘target zone,’ for young girls, just lonely women who believed they had found someone who really cared about them.

Emotionally destroying, raping, and humiliating women was, clearly, a goal for Craig, an element of his continuously repeating pattern of abuse.

At one point Anne gave me a tour of one of the ‘Sugar Daddy’ sites she handled for Craig. It was horrifying to realize how she had been used as she took me through the site and showed me letters she had read for Craig from other women.

The betrayal theme, which is present in Craig’s core fantasy, was very much being fed, if what Anne told me was true. I have no reason to believe it was not, as I later heard from Morgan he had brought one of these women down to meet her while she was moving from her original apartment to a cheaper one down the street. These themes are also present in Morgan’s 2001 Deposition.

Craig continually returned to Anne through the time they knew each other, according to her time lines and declaration and from what she told me. This is a typical form of extended control used by psychopaths to destroy the self-confidence and integrity of the victim. Anne has survived, and started her own business, which was no easy thing. But she is very much the exception in these cases. Talking to her persuaded me of Craig’s ruthlessness and lack of conscience. Anne was treated like a utility to be picked up, enjoyed, and then again destroyed while Craig enjoyed every step of the process.

Craig lived out the same scenario with multiple women, whose names I have. Details will be provided in the book, now being prepared.

But Craig, while enjoying these interludes, also keeps his eye on the future with long on planning. A clear learning curve appears as he grows more and more ruthless in his pursuit of his goal.

During the years past he was also pursuing other lines of action. The long term planning for the goal of incest included seeking a woman young enough to have children, preferably girls. In parallel, Craig also attempted to get unsupervised visitation with his eight-year old granddaughter, the daughter of his oldest son, Jonathan Scott Franklin, when Scott was charged with paying a hit man to murder his estranged wife and her new boy friend. Craig entirely ignored the existence of his grandson, two years older.

Scott’s wife, Kathy, alarmed at this, resisted Craig having any such visitation and this was denied by the court, who put her and the two children in a victim protection program.

Craig and Scott had conspired to leave Kathy destitute, which doubtless suited Craig’s own ultimate goal, even if Scott had not tried to have Kathy murdered. Craig’s comment to Anne on being told was, “How could he (Scott) be so stupid? They always suspect the husband!” No shred of concern for Kathy was expressed.

When my youngest daughter, Ayn, had a little girl Craig refocused his attentions there and made plans to ‘become a part of his grand-daughter’s life.’

Craig is a danger to little girls, who he immediately begins to manipulate. This is true for his own relations and for others. His points of entry into relationships include music and the film industry.

Songs, especially ballads and country western music plays a part in Craig’s plans. Craig planned a children’s album and wrote a song for his grand-daughter, the lyrics for which appear here, and were produced for the album, “Celeste Sings for Kids,” The album was publicized professionally, and Craig thanked those who helped publicize it. Here is one of his thank yous which appears on a list of endorsers. The site is To Market Kid.

“Craig Franklin, President – Romantic Realist Records, LLC

“Words can’t begin to describe the difference Regina has made with my children’s music project and its visibility in the marketplace. Regina took my project from 0-100 in two months! She has made all the difference! Anyone who has the good fortune to work with Regina Kelland should jump at the chance!” “

It is not possible to know when you are dealing with the disordered, necessarily, especially when you never have the opportunity to know them more than professionally.

Note that the song, “Justin’s Lullaby” was not written by Janet Smith and Craig Franklin. It was written by Craig, tuned up by me in 1983. Justin is my son with Franklin. Psychopaths continually reinvent history to suit their purposes. On this site Craig features a song, he wrote on the occasion of our formal wedding. I am, naturally, not mentioned.

Craig also positioned himself as being adversarial to sex offenders by funding a movie titled, “Barracuda,” a B sort of movie produced by Mercury Rising Films. Both of these ventures were well thought out to put him in place to form relationships allowing for access to young girls by simply spending money and continuing to play around with his guitar.

After Green Hills removed Craig from their management team last summer Craig moved on to another project, “Craig Franklin’s Tea Party,” a movie. The webmaster is an associate from Mercury Rising Films, which would produce the film.

Over the last several years I have been outing both Craig Franklin and Green Hills Software. My most recent website, Craig Franklin and Green Hills Software, went up within 45 minutes of reading this email, which I published on the site.

Craig is a sexually deviant psychopath whose focus is seduction, sexual violence, betrayal, and leaving the victim homeless. One of these scenarios plays out as raping little girls, preferably daughters, or grand-daughters now, when they are around twelve years old. Here, he also begins with seduction, moves to building trust and thereafter devolves into a series of betrayals, sexual and financial, intended to leave both the mother and daughter completely traumatized and financially destitute.

It is impossible to know how many women and girls he has traumatized or what he has cost these individuals in peace of mind, financially, and so many other ways. But, in retrospect, it is very easy to see what he will continue to do.

Green Hills Software, Inc., enabled this behavior, conspiring with Craig to destroy both myself and my children. They, Dan and others in the company, did this to secure Craig’s cooperation when it was needed. They removed him from their ‘team’ when the risk of exposure finally became to high. They profited enormously over the years and now are repositioning themselves with absolutely no show of conscience.

Craig’s website, Romantic Realist, is now down, as is the . But his Ivory May site is still up.

Anne expressed a wish to ensure Craig’s sexually predatory behavior would be brought to an end. These articles, and the book, are being written, in part, to accomplish this goal.

Next: Morgan and Craig, a relationship.

Dan O’Dowd, Green Hills Software, Inc., Green Hills Software, LLC, and Integrity, missing from the equation.

Why Is Obama Silent Over The New Congo War?

The last Congo war that ended in 2003 killed 5.4 million people, the worst humanitarian disaster since World War II. The killing was directly enabled by international silence over the issue; the war was ignored and the causes obscured because governments were backing groups involved in the fighting.  Now a new Congo war has begun and the silence is, again, deafening.

President Obama seems not to have noticed a new war has broken out in the war-scarred Congo; he  appears blind to the refugee crisis and the war crimes committed by the invading M23 militia against the democratically elected government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

But appearances can be deceiving. The U.S. government has their bloody hands all over this conflict, just as they did during the last Congo war when Bill Clinton was President. President Obama’s inaction is a conscious act of encouragement for the invaders, just as Clinton’s was. Instead of Obama denouncing the invasion and the approaching overthrow of a democratically elected government, silence becomes a very powerful action of intentional complicity on the side of the invaders.

Why would Obama do this? The invaders are armed and financed by Rwanda, a “strong ally” and puppet of the United States. The United Nations released a report conclusively proving that the Rwandan government is backing the rebels, but the U.S. government and U.S. media cartoonishly pretend that the issue is debatable.

The last Congo War that killed 5.4 million people was also the result of the U.S.-backed invading armies of Rwanda and Uganda, as explained in the excellently researched book “Africa’s World War,” by French journalist Gerard Prunier.

In fact, many of the same Rwandan war criminals involved in the last Congo War, such as Bosco Ntaganda, are in charge of the M23 militia and wanted for war crimes by the U.N. international criminal court. The current Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, is a “good friend” of the U.S. government and one of the most notorious war criminals on the planet, due to his leading roles in the Rwandan genocide and consequent Congo War.

A group of Congolese and Rwandan activists have been demanding that Kagame be tried for his key role in the Rwandan genocide.

As Prunier’s book explains, the Rwandan genocide was sparked by Kagame’s invasion of Rwanda — from U.S. ally Uganda. After Kagame took power in post-genocide Rwanda, he then informed the U.S. — during a trip to Washington D.C. — that he would be invading the Congo. Prunier quotes Kagame in Africa’s World War:

“I delivered a veiled warning [to the U.S.]: the failure of the international community to take action [against the Congo] would mean that Rwanda would take action… But their [the Clinton Administration’s] response was really no response at all”  (pg 68).

In international diplomacy speak, such a lack of response — to a threat of military invasion — acts as a glaring diplomatic green light.

The same blinding green light is now being offered by Obama to the exact same war criminals as they again invade the Congo.

But why again? The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s current President, Joseph Kabila, helped lead the military invasion during the last Congo war. As a good stooge, he delivered Congo’s immense mining and oil wealth to multi-national corporations. But then his puppet strings started to fray.

Kabila later distanced himself from U.S. puppets Rwanda and Uganda, not to mention the U.S. dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. The IMF, for example, warned Kabila against a strategic infrastructural and development aid package with China, but Kabila shrugged them off. The Economist explains:

“…[The Congo] appears to have gained the upper hand in a row with foreign donors over a mining and infrastructure package worth $9 billion that was agreed a year ago with China. The IMF objected to it, on the ground that it would saddle Congo with a massive new debt, so [the IMF] is delaying forgiveness of most of the $10 billion-plus that Congo already owes.”

This act instantly transformed Kabila from an unreliable friend to an enemy. The U.S. and China have been madly scrambling for Africa’s immense wealth of raw materials, and Kabila’s new alliance with China was too much for the U.S. to bear.

Kabila further inflamed his former allies by demanding that the international corporations exploiting the Congo’s precious metals have their super-profit contracts re-negotiated, so that the country might actually receive some benefit from its riches.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is home to 80 percent of the world’s cobalt, an extremely precious mineral needed to construct many modern technologies, including weaponry, cell phones, and computers. The DRC is possibly the most mineral/resource rich country in the world — overflowing with everything from diamonds to oil — though its people are among the world’s poorest, due to generations of corporate plunder of its wealth.

Now, a new war is underway and the U.N. is literally sitting on their hands. There are 17,500 U.N. peacekeepers in the DRC, not to mention U.S. Special Forces. The invading M23 militia has 3,000 fighters. What was the U.N.’s response to the invasion? The New York Times reports:

“United Nations officials have said that they did not have the numbers to beat back the rebels and that they were worried about collateral damage, but many Congolese have rendered their own verdict. On Wednesday, rioters in Bunia, north of Goma, ransacked the houses of United Nations’ personnel.”

If Obama and/or the U.N. made one public statement about militarily defending the elected Congolese government against invasion, the M23 militia would have never acted.

Human Rights Watch and other groups have correctly labeled the M23’s commanders as responsible for “ethnic massacres, recruitment of children, mass rape, killings, abductions and torture.”

But at the U.N. the Obama administration has been actively protecting this group. The New York Times continues:

“Some human rights groups say that Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations and a leading contender to be President Obama’s next secretary of state, has been far too soft on Rwanda, which is a close American ally and whose president, Paul Kagame, has known Ms. Rice for years. The activists have accused her of watering down language in a Security Council resolution that would have mentioned Rwanda’s links to the [M23] rebels and say she also tried to block the publication of part of a [U.N.] report that detailed Rwanda’s covert support for the M23.”

It’s likely that the Obama administration will jump into action as soon as his M23 allies complete their military objective of regime change, and re-open the Congo’s mineral wealth to U.S. corporations to profit from. There are currently talks occurring in U.S.-puppet Uganda between the M23 and the Congo government. It is unlikely that these talks will produce much of a result unless Kabila stands down and allows the M23 and its Rwandan backers to take over the country. The M23 knows it’s in an excellent bargaining position, given the silence of the U.N. and the United States government.

If the war drags on, expect more international silence. Expect more massacres and ethnic cleansing too, and expect the still-recovering people of the Congo to be re-tossed into massive refugee camps where they can again expect militia-sponsored killings, rape, starvation, and the various barbarisms that have accompanied this especially brutal war, a brutality that grows most viciously in environments of silence.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/08/17/opposition-groups-want-rwandan-president-paul-kagame-investigated-for-war-crimes/

http://www.economist.com/node/13496903?zid=309ah=80dcf288b8561b012f603b9fd9577f0e

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/22/world/africa/congo-rebels-in-goma-vow-to-take-kinshasha.html

The Direction of Equities In The Obama Economy

Corporate America has the largest cash reserves in recent memory. The product of the first Obama administration, the boards and management of the biggest companies, foregone mergers and acquisitions and cleaned up their balance sheets. Fear was the operative sentiment after the 2008 financial meltdown. Business confidence was marginal at best. Lacking consumer confidence was a natural result of a high unemployment and an insecure job environment. The modest improvements in the economy were a direct outcome of increases in government spending, especially an expansion in public employee endeavors.

For the beleaguered middle class, the Bush blame of an inherited awful economy was little relief. That shabby self-justification excuse is officially over with the prospects of a second presidential term.

The Wall Street Journal predicts in What an Obama Win May Mean for Stocks that watching monetary prescriptions of the Fed is crucial.

“Anyone who has been following the markets over the last few years knows how important Fed policy has been to the direction of everything from stocks to bonds, oil, gold and other assets. From record-low interest-rate policies to multiple rounds of quantitative easing, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has been about as dovish as it comes enacting policies to jumpstart the economy.”

Equities have benefited amply over the first Barak Obama term. The WSJ continues, “No matter your beliefs, the Dow is up more than 50% since Obama took office during the depths of the financial crisis.” The zero interest rate setting and the sparingly granting of business loans caused stocks to advance from a distressed level.

Now with Obama’s re-election, his ownership of economic circumstances will be hard to escape. The slide in stocks that started as soon as the ballot counting was over, forecasts the lack of confidence that the fiscal cliff will be resolved sufficiently to foster conditions to grow the economy.

Add in the rapid breakdown in international stability and the prospects that the European Union will implode, does not bode well for the engines of wealth creation. Equities gain in value when the products or services of their underlying companies prosper. Without the reasonable expectation that actual economic prosperity is on the rise the basic conditions for an advance in stock pricing is simply wishful thinking.

Yet, under a fundamental standard, the lack of favorable circumstances does not mean that stocks will simple lose value. Volatility in pricing, often with no distinct connection to price performance, is the norm. The perfect storm for speculative betting seems the more probable course for the markets in the coming years.

The backstop of the Federal Reserve that comes to the rescue of too big to fail conglomerates, is the operative criterion used to keep the financial bubble inflating. As the currency is debased and loses purchasing value, the price of stocks must rise just to stay even.

In addition, the negative aspects of tax increases especially on capital gains and dividends are unmistakable. Investing Daily’s Roger S. Conrad recently reported inStick With Dividend Stocks.

“Since Election Day last week, the S&P 500 has lost 4.5 percent of its value. And the Dow Jones Utility Index is off more than 5 percent.

But let’s suppose there really is a fiscal cliff and that the worst case forecasts of a 4 point drop in gross domestic product (GDP) prove on target. Such a shock could also trigger a tightening of credit conditions in the US, making it more difficult to borrow.

In such an environment, two things would really count for companies. One is reliable revenue, a business that will continue to produce cash flow come what may. The other is a lack of near-term debt maturities, so management can step back from a temporarily frozen credit market and wait for bond buyers to come back.”

The point is that stocks may not go up in real value while their relative pricing may mirror the overall lack of confidence in the economy in a persistent down market. However, a company with sound financial reserves and low or no debt will have a chance to survive in a depression.

As credit becomes non-existent, cash will be king in the short term. Notwithstanding this message from previous panics, the complexity of debasing the currency adds a new dimension to familiar lessons. Hyperinflation of price stability results in a slowdown of the real economy. Adding further government spending with monetized debt from the central bank cannot infuse productive commerce into an economy where consumer cash is fickle or nonexistent.

Stocks can only be a sensible investment when domestic mercantilism is oriented towards fostering prosperity of the national economy. Foreign trade will plunge as the worldwide financial upheaval exports its turmoil around the globe.

Solid companies that actually produce necessary items or endeavors have the best chance to retain some semblance of treasure. Nevertheless, the definitive risk for owning equities lies in the danger that the federal government will recall the counterfeit Federal Reserve Dollar, in a desperate attempt to forestall debt repudiation.

Only algorithmic trading with super computers will squeeze out fractions of price movement and generate returns on capital, because the equity exchanges are now structured to penalize or purge the individual investor from having any chance of profiting.

Market risk is nothing compared to the political hazard of collectivist policies slated for imposition in a second Obama term. In order to generate tangible wealth, the private sector must navigate around all the pitfalls that excessive taxation and destructive regulations impose on voluntary commercial transactions. Equities cannot reward stockholders under a command and controlled – centralized and imposed government. The expectations of an uncurbed Obama dogmatic executive order administration guarantees that stocks will suffer under all the restrictions of any socialistic economy.

When the conditions are unknown, uncertainty runs havoc with equity markets. Conversely, when the socialism of Obamaism is widely verbalized for all to digest, the gamble of stock ownership equates to your level of confidence in the future of the country and the economy. Good luck.

Living In Illusion: A Modern Epidemic

“Our media is pumping out lies and propaganda because it is part of the one percent; it is owned by conspirators and populated with talented individuals who have sold their souls to the same devil that is loose in our government. Like a nation of Zombies our elected officials support the lies, live the lies, and betray their trust to the liars. It is a charade of great magnitude so big that a few decades ago everyone would have thought such mendacity would be impossible.” From my essay “The End of Democracy”

“His watchmen are blind, all of them know nothing. All of them are dumb dogs unable to bark, dreamers lying down, who love to slumber; and the dogs are greedy, they are not satisfied. And they are shepherds who have no understanding; they have all turned to their own way, each one to his unjust gain, to the last one. ‘Come,’ they say, ‘let us get wine, and let us drink heavily of strong drink; and tomorrow will be like today, only more so.’” Isaiah 56: 10-12

Some years ago, as the sun shone on an office building window, someone noticed that the reflection looked like the Virgin Mary. Believers in apparitions soon gathered in great numbers to see the “miracle”. Some saw her weeping. The story gained media attention and hundreds were convinced it was a genuine miracle.

While not debunking the origin of this particular apparition it is plain that God’s human creations are vulnerable to believing all sorts of things that have no basis in fact; especially when the false beliefs fulfill a subliminal desire.

There are millions of United States citizens whose cherished beliefs are unshakeable but patently false:

We believe Arabs are our enemies though they lack the resources to threaten us and, before recent provocations, have never done so. We support the Middle East War because we entertain the illusion that they hate us for our freedom and intend to attack us.

We hate Arab immigrants and fear Sharia law while it is neocon hegemony in our own government that has encoded the cultural deteriorating principles of multi-culturalism allowing Muslims legal entrance into our nation.

We believe illegitimate, neo-Israel is our friend and Jews are a persecuted people deserving our sympathy when, in reality, neo-Israel, founded against the will of Arabs who had owned and occupied the land for centuries, has gained control of the power centers of our nation and is using us for its own evil purposes. Jews, the world’s most powerful race, hate us and our Christian religion with a Devilish passion.

We believe a group of Arabs planned and executed the 9/11 travesty because they hate us for our freedom when there is irrefutable evidence that the murder of thousands of U. S. citizens on that ignoble day was a false flag operation, that may have been conducted by our Israeli comrades to bring on the Middle East War.

Hundreds of thousands of government employees along with a lesser number of media mavens live, breath, sleep and act as if the shaky government story on 9/11 is factual; purposely refusing to report or even consider mountains of data that refute it.

Millions of Evangelical Christians believe the heretical theology of Dispensationalism which supports contemporary Pharisees who hate and seek to destroy the Christianity Evangelicals claim to cherish.

Both candidates for President of the United States vow to support the afore-mentioned Zionist cabal to the detriment of our nation; sacrificing the lives our young men, ruining our reputation, deteriorating our morals, and bankrupting the government. One of these illusion filled individuals will become the stooge that governs United States of America.

While encouraging us to conserve energy to prevent depleting our resources, the ruling elite has exported our manufacturing to China cluttering our highways with trucks and requiring the shipment of millions of tons of product half way around the world in the most inefficient, energy consuming system imaginable.

Christians, even the few that actually claim The One True God is sovereign, deify the government by forgetting God and seeking salvation from a government idol.

Weather gurus, harnessed to our underhanded media, keep us posted on outside conditions but fail to address Chemtrails which are plainly visible but universally ignored.

While our elected representatives claim they are satisfied that President Obama was born in the United States the president continues to create suspicion by hiding his Passport and Educational records.

Christians claim to “believe in God” but act as if He is their servant rather than they His.

Wives often live as if everything is normal while their husbands philander. Christian pastors who are homosexual or see prostitutes often have wives who act as if all is well. Internet pornography is a captivating vice that festers in families that ignore its dangers. Gambling bankrupts other deluded homes.

Illusion is a common condition. We are born with the ability to fanaticize. It produces great novels, plays, music, and operas. When it is recognized, properly labeled and properly used, it can be an entertaining diversion offering relief from the tedium of everyday life. But when it invades the decisions of authority centers it is a shifting, toxic foundation that creates chaos by destroying the ability to reach sound conclusions.

Some illusion is a result of planned deception and manipulation; some is a result of intentional evasion; some is useful human diversion; some is a result of coercion; and, some enhances artistic endeavors.

Toxic illusion is deeply entrenched in our nation. We have ignored it too long. Much of what we believe is fictitious.

Seeing 435 congresspersons, 100 senators, and 8 justices with little American flags prominently pinned on their garb acting as if the government agenda is unquestionable when their computers are exploding with contrary data is a curious phenomenon. It is unanimously assumed that 9/11 was a malicious al-Qaeda attack on our nation resulting in the destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the deaths of three thousand people. The validity of this scenario is never seriously questioned even though it has been refuted by hundreds of reputable engineers and thousands of citizens. Illusion encompasses our entire government.

Government, a human administration of power, if it is not properly critiqued tends toward imperialism. The Christian Church is responsible for the continuity of freedom by regularly comparing government actions with the Word of God. Unfortunately, the Christian Church is as deep into fantasy as the government they are supposed to critique. Contemporary Christians have never learned to swim; instead they wade about in neophytic shallow water unable to swim into the sea of Godly service and reach the distant shore and the commendation “Well Done Good and Faithful Servant”!

God wants us to evangelize, He wants to fill us with His Spirit and He wants us to praise Him, however, before all of this He wants us to obey and serve Him. We cannot serve Him until we obey Him. Learning to swim is learning to obey, it allows a Christian to leave the shallow water and enter the deeper water of service. Obedience is a prerequisite to service. Obedience to human law without regard for God’s Law leaves us in shallow water. Mass Christian conversions are of little use when the converts are not obedient.

Christians who claim that God “speaks” to them are always subject to indwelling sin. Personal guidance is real but it is always questionable and not the same as obedience. Obedience involves the Law God gave to Moses which is recorded in our Bible and which is the same today as it was when it was given to Moses. It is a solid platform not subject to the darkness of the fallen human spirit. Obedience to God’s Law is the deep water of the Gospel. Those who depend on personal guidance will always remain in the shallows and the Christian religion will remain with them.

Christians define it as sin but regardless of its name we all have a tendency to choose a lie and allow it to distort our actions. Too many citizens cling to the belief that their elected officials would deceive them or act against the interests of the nation. When this subliminal tendency is exploited by the cunning owners of our press and media the result is disastrous; a majority of our citizens are deceived into acting against and fighting the Will of God and their own better interests! It is not what they know that causes the problem but what they don’t know, are not told, and sometimes do not want to know.

R. J. Rushdoony wrote several volumes of daily devotional readings entitled “A Word in Season”. These reading are unique because they apply God’s Word to our actions and the actions of society. He compares our generation to the ancient Israeli generation that Moses led from Egypt. God would not allow this generation of former Egyptian residents to enter the Promised Land because they were unfit for freedom. They were more concerned about access to cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic than the freedom of the Promised Land. He ends the short reading with this question: “Will we too perish in a desert of our own making because we reject the responsibilities of faith and freedom?”

Unfortunately we have been and are doing so!

America R.I.P.

During the second half of the 20th century the United States was an opportunity society. The ladders of upward mobility were plentiful, and the middle class expanded. Incomes rose, and ordinary people were able to achieve old-age security.

In the 21st century the opportunity society has disappeared. Middle class jobs are scarce. Indeed, jobs of any kind are scarce. To stay even with population growth from 2002 through 2011, the economy needed about 14 million new jobs. However, at the end of 2011 there were only 1 million more jobs than in 2002. http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cesbtab1.htm 

Only 426,000 of these jobs are in the private sector. The bulk of the net new jobs consist of waitresses and bartenders and health care and social assistance. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, over the 9 years, employment for waitresses and bartenders increased by 1,188,000. Employment in health care and social assistance increased 3,087,000. These two categories accounted for 1,000% of the net private sector job growth.

As for manufacturing jobs, they not only did not grow with the population but declined absolutely. During these nine years, 3.5 million middle class manufacturing jobs were lost.

Over the entire nine years, only 48,000 new jobs were created for architects and engineers.

In the 21st century the US economy has been able to create only a few new jobs and these are in lowly paid domestic services that cannot be offshored, such as waitresses and bartenders.

The lack of jobs, especially high value-added, high productivity jobs, is the reason real median household income has declined and the distribution of income has worsened. Without rising real household income, there cannot be a consumer economy.

In the early years of the 21st century, the Federal Reserve substituted a rise in consumer debt to drive the economy in place of the missing rise in consumer incomes. Low interest rates drove up housing prices, and people refinanced their mortgages and spent the equity. The Federal Reserve kept the economy alive by loading up consumers with debt that housing prices and consumer incomes would soon be unable to support.

When debt and real estate prices reached unsustainable levels, the bubble popped, and the ongoing financial crisis was upon us.

The cause of all of the problems is the offshoring of Americans’ jobs. When jobs are moved offshore, consumers’ careers and incomes, and the GDP and payroll and income tax base associated with those jobs, go with them. When the goods and services produced for American markets by offshored labor are brought into the US to be sold, the trade deficit rises, and downward pressure is put on the dollar, pushing up domestic inflation. (On October 12, statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reported that “third-quarter wholesale inflation jumped to an annualized 6.2%.”)

Jobs offshoring is driven by Wall Street, “shareholder advocates,” the threat of takeovers, and by large retailers, such as Walmart. By cutting labor costs, profits go up.It is that simple. However, as a result of sending American jobs to cheap labor countries, US consumer incomes go down. The end result is to destroy the domestic consumer market. What would have been US consumer income growth becomes instead profit growth for US corporations.

Keynesian economists use in their textbooks the example of how the aggregate effect of individual saving could be the opposite of the effect intended by the individuals. Whereas each saver seeks to improve his position by building wealth, in the aggregate saving could exceed investment, resulting in a decline in aggregate demand and a fall in income for all. Offshoring has the same logic. Each corporation can expect to gain more profits from moving US jobs offshore, but the aggregate effect is a fall in American consumer incomes and a reduction in the American consumer market.

I have told this story many times. But policymakers, the media, and economists seem unable to connect the dots.

Jobs offshoring has substantial implications for Social Security and Medicare. The US has the least adequate social safety net of any developed country. The two major components of the US social safety net are Social Security and Medicare for the elderly. Social Security and Medicare are financed by a payroll tax. The combined tax is 15.3% of payrolls. For the past quarter of a century the Social Security portion of the payroll tax has built up a surplus of over $2 trillion. Recently, the Medicare portion began running in the red.

Right-wing Republicans, free market ideologues, and the left-wing have all indoctrinated themselves with incorrect beliefs about Social Security and Medicare. The right-wing claims that a safety net financed with 15.3% of payrolls is a “Ponzi scheme” and an “unfunded liability.” If that is the case, then so are veterans benefits, military pensions, and federal pensions, all of which are financed by the income tax, the basis for the payroll tax.

The left-wing claims that the rich do not pay high enough payroll taxes, because the income subject to Social Security payroll tax is capped at about $110,000. But the benefits are also capped. Social Security is not supposed to be an income redistribution scheme from rich to poor, and it is not supposed to be a pension system for the rich. The pension paid is supposed to correlate with the pre-retirement income level of the retiree. Those who had higher wages or salaries and consequently paid more in payroll taxes receive a larger Social Security check than those who had lower wages and salaries and paid less payroll taxes, although there is favoritism toward the lower income earners who receive proportionally more in respect to their payroll taxes than higher income earners.

There is no cap on income subject to the Medicare portion of the payroll tax. Moreover, Medicare charges a Medicare Part B premium that is deducted from the Social Security monthly check. In addition, there is a further Part B premium based on retirement age income. For example, someone working beyond retirement age and making $250,000 per year pays about $3,800 in Medicare Part B premium in addition to the Medicare portion of the payroll tax of about $7,500. The annual premium he pays for his “free” Medicare for which he has paid all his working life with a payroll tax is about $11,300.

Moreover, Medicare by itself is insufficient coverage. To actually have medical coverage, those covered by Medicare have to purchase a supplementary private policy to cover the large gaps in Medicare. Depending on the range of coverage, a supplementary policy costs approximately $100 to $300 per month.

As the person making $250,000 per year is likely to go for the most coverage, he will be paying about $14,900 (excluding deductions and co-payments) per year for his “free” Medicare. This is despite having paid the Medicare payroll tax each year of his working life. A person who made $250,000 in taxable income per year for 30 years would have paid $217,500 into Medicare at the current Medicare payroll tax rate.

The right-wing’s notion that Social Security and Medicare are handouts, part of the welfare state’s bread and circuses, and the left-wing’s idea that the rich get a free ride are equally untrue.

(Note: $250,000 is the politicians’ dividing line between the rich and the rest of us. For a person making $50,000 a year, an income five times larger can seem rich. However, a $250,000 annual income leaves a family or person far distant from the lifestyle of the rich. Upper middle class incomes are generally associated with high-tax, high-cost urban areas in states with high income taxes. After federal income and payroll taxes, state income and sales taxes, and property taxes, what appears to many as a large income disappears. In New York City, the federal income tax will take about 25% of the $250,000, New York state will take about 9%, and New York City will take about 3.65%. The combined city and state sales tax is 8.875%. The property tax is high. The conclusion is that in New York City a $250,000 income is reduced to $125,000 or thereabouts. Those who claim “the rich don’t pay taxes” are not talking about $250,000 incomes.)

Social Security and Medicare have served the country well. They protect the individual from his own mistakes, from crooked and incompetent money managers, and from financial crises, and they protect society from the moral dilemma of confronting large numbers of fellow citizens who through fault or no fault of their own cannot provide for their livelihood and medical care. After the financial scandals and crisis of the past five years, it is a stretch to believe that any but the astute can manage their personal wealth, whether small or large, in today’s situation of unregulated financial markets, zero interest rates, currency uncertainty, and highly complex investment instruments with computers programmed with mathematical models dominating equity trades.

The argument that conceptually a person could do better by investing his payroll taxes in the stock market is a poor basis for old age security policy. The person can do better as long as he or she doesn’t fall into the hands of a Bernie Madoff or a Goldman Sachs, doesn’t receive zero interest on his bonds because the Federal Reserve has to bail out the “too big to fail banks,” doesn’t experience a decline in currency value due to monetization of enormous federal deficits, and doesn’t experience a bear market as he approaches retirement.

The right-wing ideologues who try to scare old age security out of existence go on and on about rising medical costs, about an aging population living longer, declining birthrates and a worsening ratio of workers to retirees, about people learning to rely on handouts rather than their own means, and about Washington’s rising unfunded liabilities.

Scare projections are designed to scare, and most are untenable. For example, longevity was a product of rising incomes, good diet, and antibiotics. Today only the upper crust have rising incomes. Antibiotics are wearing out from abuse and rising immunity of bacteria. Diet is compromised in ways still poorly understood as a result of GMOs, pesticides, herbicides, pumping chicken, pork, and beef full of antibiotics and hormones and feeding the animals GMO grains and also possibly infected animal byproducts, and pumping our water full of fluoride. A variety of destructive activities and behaviors are causing ecological damage. Longevity might have been a short-term benefit of irreproducible conditions considering the mounting ecological damage and the rise of superbugs, stress, and tainted food and water production.

The projection of an aging population might also be wrong. Clearly, the post-World War II baby boomers are aging, but do the projections take into account the legislated 1965 immigration increases plus the illegal influx from Mexico and points south of young people with high birth rates? How can it be that a country with allegedly 30 million illegal immigrants, whose children born in the US are citizens, has a declining birth rate? How do we know that the illegal population will not continue to increase?

There are so many Spanish speaking people in the US today that if a person calls any of his utility companies, whether telephone, Internet, water, electricity, TV, or any of his credit card companies, or his bank, he has to select English or Spanish. Obviously, as
anti-immigration sites make clear, the US population is changing in its national origin, and there appears to be no sign of an aging Hispanic population. How many old Spanish speaking people do you see in the US compared to the young?

When confronted with this apparent fact, the response is: “why will the Hispanics pay for the aging white population?” The answer is: because they are in the same payroll tax system and the taxes will be withheld from their wages and salaries just as they are from everyone else’s.

It is possible that if Hispanics in the US have suffered years of hostility, accusations, and hatred from “the ice people,” once Hispanics are sufficiently numerous to control the legislature, assuming one still exists, or to take over the executive branch, the only seat of power, they may in retribution cut off the aging whites. But if so, the whites will have brought it on themselves.

Whatever the scare projections that are mustered to undermine the public provision of old age security, the real financial danger is never mentioned. The only significant financial danger to Social Security and Medicare is the offshoring of American jobs and GDP. A country without a job base is without a payroll tax base. If the only jobs that the 21st century “world’s only superpower” economy can create are for waitresses, bartenders, and health care and social assistance (hospital orderlies and practical nurses), payroll tax revenues will be less than if the US still had 20 million workers and rising in well-paid manufacturing jobs instead of 11 million.

Regardless of Medicare’s financing, the death knell for the elderly was the legality of abortion. If the yet to be born are an insufferable burden, imagine the cost of the elderly. As far as the state is concerned, once you stop producing income and payroll tax revenues for the state, it is time for you to die. Washington would rather enact euthanasia than to pay back the $2+ trillion in the Social Security trust fund that Washington spent, leaving only non-marketable IOUs in the account.

Readers might think that Americans would never stand for death by injection for the elderly once the qualified age is reached. But why would they not? They have accepted millions of aborted babies, and Americans, including the elderly, have stood for Washington’s murder, maiming and displacement of millions of Muslim men, women, and children in 7 countries over the past 11 years and are yet to show any signs of remorse for their complicity in mass murder. Next month tens of millions of Americans will vote for Mitt Romney who believes Obama isn’t killing Muslims fast enough.

The new “Obamneycare” health legislation does have “death panels.” They are not called that, and they do not make formal decisions to terminate lives. But it comes to almost the same thing. Various panels, committees, or bureaucratic departments are empowered to make decisions about “effective care.” It has long been known that most health care costs are associated with the last year of life. Cost and age will be elements in determining standards of care. The greater the weight assigned to cost, the more care will be withheld. In effect, the “effective care” panel is a “death panel.”

Prior to the advent of the new “health care” system, Medicare and or hospitals are already shifting costs to Medicare patients. To avoid penalties and fraud allegations for “medically unnecessary hospitalizations,” rather than formally admit Medicare patients as inpatients, hospital administrators classify them as outpatients “under observation.”
According to a Brown University analysis of Medicare records in 2007, 2008, and 2009, the ratio of Medicare observation patients to those admitted as inpatients rose by 34 percent.

Being classified an outpatient under observation eliminates medicare coverages, especially for post-operative or post-accident rehabilitation care, leaving Medicare patients with bills in the tens of thousands of dollars (AARP Bulletin, October 2012).

Other costs are being shifted to doctors and to hospitals. Medicare pays fixed prices for each covered procedure or test, and these prices can be as low as half of the billed prices. During a period when costs incurred by providers of health care have been rising, Medicare has been cutting the amounts it pays providers.

As the payroll tax is commingled with general tax revenues, Social Security and Medicare payroll tax collections can be diverted to other purposes and, thus, are always subject to competing budgetary demands, such as the previous 11 years of gratuitous wars and the bailouts of “banks too big to fail,” or to deficit reduction demands as the government consistently overspends all revenue sources.

A national health service is the only way to control health costs and provide the population with health care coverage. A national health system takes the many levels of profits out of the system and also reams of compliance and liability costs. A national health system can coexist with a private system for those who can afford it or whose employers are sufficiently profitable to provide it.

As Jarad Diamond reveals in his book, , societies fail, if not because of their moral bankruptcy, then because their rulers are only capable of short-term thinking. The future is beyond their interest. The US offshored its economy, because it worked short-term for corporate executives (rewarded with multi-million dollar performance bonuses), Wall Street (rewarded with profits), shareholders (rewarded with capital gains), and politicians (rewarded with corporate and Wall Street campaign contributions).

Incompetent free market economists confused jobs offshoring with free trade. They said the country would and was benefiting by giving its manufacturing, industrial, and tradable professional service jobs to China and India, that the US was ridding itself of “dirty fingernail jobs” and would soon be flush with highly paid high-tech jobs and highly paid financial service jobs.

None of these promises or predictions were true. Nowhere in the government’s jobs statistics are there any of these promised replacement jobs. The economists who provided cover for the destruction of the US economy were rewarded by the corporations with speaking fees, grants for their university departments, and newspaper columns paid for by corporate advertisers. Those few who told the truth were expelled from the corporate media that Bill and Hilary Clinton allowed to be monopolized (for campaign contributions, of course).

The future of old age security in the United States has been lost, because the job base has been given away to foreigners in order to maximize incomes in the short-run for the few decision-makers.

The misrepresentation of jobs offshoring as free trade has destroyed the prospects of cities, counties, and states along with those of unions and millions of Americans who once had a secure future. It has destroyed the prospects of class after class of university graduates burdened with student loans who expected to step into the jobs that have been offshored or filled by H-1B visa holders from abroad.

The American work force has been forsaken by the corporations and by Washington, and this means that Social Security and Medicare have also been forsaken.

As I predicted in the early years of this new century, “the United States will be a third world country in 20 years.” We might get there even sooner as Washington exhausts what little is left of American wealth in gratuitous wars in service to Israel and the US Military/Security Complex, in unaffordable military buildups in futile hopes of establishing hegemony over China and Russia, and in negative interest rates from the Federal Reserve’s effort to drive up the book value of debt instruments on the balance sheets of financial institutions.

In 1817 Percy Bysshe Shelly forecast America’s future:

“I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stampt on these lifeless things,
The hand that mockt them and the heart that fed:
On the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Writing in the October 15 online CounterPunch, John V. Walsh, relying on charts prepared by economics professor Mark J. Perry at the University of Michigan and blogger John Hunter, concludes that it is a myth that US manufacturing is in decline.

Walsh says that the loss of US manufacturing jobs is due to automation, not to offshoring. Think about this for a moment. Perry’s graph on which Walsh relies shows the sharp drop in US manufacturing employment to be a 21st century experience. However, automation has been around for a long time. The notion that its effect on employment only showed up recently needs an explanation that is not provided. The steep drop in US manufacturing employment that began in 2000 does correspond with the date at which jobs offshoring began to bite hard.

Why does automation not also affect Chinese manufacturing, especially as most of the Chinese manufacturing technology came from the US as US corporations offshored their production for the US market? If Chinese manufacturing is not up to date with automation, like the US is assumed to be, how do the Chinese, even with cheap labor, undersell US automated factories? How did Chinese manufacturing employment increase in a mere four years by an amount equal to the total manufacturing employment in the US?

The US Bureau of Economic Analysis shows only 11.2 million full time US manufacturing jobs in 2010. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows 11.7 million US manufacturing jobs in 2011, down from 15.3 million in 2002.

In contrast, China, an industrial and manufacturing backwater for most of my life, had 112 million manufacturing jobs in 2006. In a mere four years (2002-2006), the increase in China’s manufacturing employment was as large as today’s total employment in US manufacturing. As long ago as 2006, China’s manufacturing employment was about 10 times the current US manufacturing employment. The Chinese population is about 4 times larger than the US population, but China’s manufacturing population is proportionately greater–10 times larger. Indeed, Chinese manufacturing employees almost equal the total number of employees in all occupations in the US (Manufacturing and Technology News, December 15, 2009).

Obviously, something is wrong with Walsh’s article or the graphs on which he relied.

America’s manufacturing prowess cannot be found in the statistical data. The US is primarily an exporter of Agricultural commodities. The US imports almost twice the amount of manufactured goods as it exports. Indeed, according to the US Census Bureau Statistical Abstract of the US http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1308.pdf US imports of manufactured goods are 5.5 times larger than US imports of crude oil and 4 times larger than all imports of mineral fuel. Yet, we hear about energy dependency, not manufacturing dependency.

As of 2010 the “superpower” US economy still had a trade surplus in airplanes and airplane parts and a small $6 billion surplus in scientific instruments, but that is about all.

In ADP equipment and office machinery, the US exported $22.2 billion in 2010 (latest information at time of writing), down from $44.6 billion in 2000. US imports in 2010 of ADP equipment and office machinery were $113.5 billion, or 5.1 times exports.

The US cannot even make its own clothes and shoes. In 2010 footwear imports are 28.7 times exports. Clothing imports are 24.6 times exports.

Electrical machinery exports were $77 billion; imports were $120 billion.

Exports of power generating machinery were $33 billion; imports were $42 billion.

Exports of television, VCRs were $21.5 billion; imports were $137 billion.

US exports of vehicles was $88 billion; imports were $179 billion.

US news reports of thousands upon thousands of discharged US workers never cite their replacement by automation. The news story is always that the plant is being closed and the jobs moved abroad. Any review of America’s former manufacturing centers verifies this. Boarded up plants and cities and towns in decline are the remains of America’s formerly world dominant manufacturing economy.

The loss of the US post-war trade surplus in manufacturing has left the US with a huge trade deficit. The charts on which Walsh relied left him unaware of the fact that China has a large trade surplus with the US, and the US has a large trade deficit not only with China but with the world.

The fact that the US has to import not only manufactured goods, but also high-technology products from China, an inconceivable outcome during the second half of the 20th century, is powerful testimony to the decline of the US as a manufacturing powerhouse.

It took some doing to obscure the facts and to present the US as a rival to China in manufacturing prowess. How did it happen?

The fault might lie in the way statistical information is collected and presented. Apple, for example, is a US corporation. It reports its worldwide earnings to the IRS. Its manufacturing is counted as US manufacturing as it is a US corporation. However, Apple doesn’t produce a single computer in the US. They are produced in China. The employment that Apple reports is in China. The Chinese are employed by an American company, but they are not Americans. The Chinese incomes that Apple provides do not support the American consumer market or provide the tax base for cities and states. The Chinese incomes do not provide ladders of upward mobility or careers for Americans.

The wages Apple pays are in China. The consumer incomes and GDP that it generates are in China. When Apple’s computers come back to America to be sold they come in as imports. But Apple’s manufacturing and employment are reported as the output and employment of an American company.

When statistics and the methods by which they are compiled were put into effect, countries did not offshore their production for their domestic markets. Foreign investments were made for selling abroad, not for selling in the home market. With the advent of offshoring, counting the employment and output of US firms that are producing abroad for their domestic market as an indication of the strength of US manufacturing is very misleading. Apple, for example, has done more to boost China’s GDP than to boost America’s GDP. This is true of every US corporation that offshores its production for US consumers.

In recent years the percentage of the work forces of large US corporations that is foreign sourced has risen rapidly. Some of the overseas hiring reflects traditional foreign investment in which a company builds abroad in order to sell abroad, but much of the hiring reflects offshored production for US markets.

The US has been able to survive the large trade deficits produced by jobs offshoring, because the US dollar is the world reserve currency. Being the world reserve currency, the US does not have to earn foreign currencies with exports in order to pay for its imports. However, as these trade deficits persist and the buildup of foreign holdings of dollar paper assets rises, there is a diminishing willingness of foreigners to trade real goods and services for financial assets denominated in a fiat currency whose value is diminishing with the ever-growing supply.

Thus, the basic notion of globalism–that a country’s corporations can produce goods and services in any country for home markets–is false.

Walsh is correct that China is not to blame for the decline in US manufacturing. Offshoring is to blame, and, thus, the blame lies with US corporations, policymakers, and the economists and financial media who shill for “globalism.” The decision was made to sacrifice the US economy to the short-term profits of the few. A country so poorly led can do nothing but decline.

Source: Paul Craig Roberts

Americans Putting Noose Around Own Necks

Former Presidential candidate and Reform Party founder Ross Perot broke his self-imposed public retirement to make a bold warning: America could be taken over.

Perot was the last man to make a serious independent run for President. That was back in 1992. He withdrew from the race after he and his family had received serious threats against their lives. By the time he had gathered himself enough to reenter the race, all of his momentum was lost and Republican hacks like Rush Limbaugh had a heyday making sport of him. But the things Perot tried to warn us about back then have all come to pass. The economic malaise that currently envelopes this country could have been averted had Presidents and Congresses from both major parties over the past two decades had the sagacity and courage to heed Ross Perot and Ron Paul’s warnings. In fact, looking back, Bill Clinton looks like a fiscal saint compared to fiscal sinners G.W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Yahoo! News covers the story: “Former presidential contender and billionaire Ross Perot is worried that America is a sitting duck for an unnamed foreign invader. In an interview for his new autobiography, Perot said the nation’s weak economy has left us open for a hostile takeover–and neither presidential candidate is the man to save the country.

“Citing an impending fiscal cliff, Perot warned of disaster. ‘If we are that weak, just think of who wants to come here first and take us over,’ the former CEO of info-tech company Perot Systems told USA Today on Monday.

“‘The last thing I ever want to see is our country taken over because we’re so financially weak, we can’t do anything,’ Perot says.

“When asked for his take on the presidential race, Perot added, ‘Nobody that’s running really talks about it, about what we have to do and why we have to do it. They would prefer not to have it discussed.'”

See the report here.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the American people do not truly understand the danger they are in. The national news media is mostly about NOT reporting what’s going on. The conspiracy of silence by the three major network news shows and the cable news shows is so overwhelmingly successful, the average American citizen truly doesn’t realize how dangerously close our country is to utter destruction–either by an economic collapse or by a nuclear war, or both. And all the two major parties can do is cast all the blame on each other, while the truth of the matter is BOTH major parties in Washington, D.C., are equally culpable for the jeopardous condition in which America now finds herself.

And Ross Perot is right: neither Obama nor Romney have the guts to even discuss (much less work to fix) the real causes of America’s fiscal woes.

Perot is also correct in his observation that America could be “taken over” by a foreign power. While the Bush and Obama administrations were beating the war drums for aggression against Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, and God only knows who else in the Middle East, they have turned a blind eye and deaf ear to the clear and present danger posed by China and Russia. The fact that China and Russia are salivating over nuclear war with the United States seems totally lost to the State Department, CIA, NSA, DHS, the mainstream media, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and 95% of the American people.

Allow me to say at this point that if you live within a couple hundred miles to the east of a major nuclear target area, I would be making plans to relocate NOW. But you do what you want. That’s just what I would do. And in case you do not know where the major nuclear target sites are located in the United States, I highly encourage you to order Joel Skousen’ masterpiece: Strategic Relocation. Learn about it here.

Joel believes that China and Russia will not launch their nuclear attack against us for another ten years or so, but when it happens, it will be the catalyst for both a financial collapse and the rise of a totalitarian government. This leads to my question. Are we going to be taken over (as Mr. Perot is worried about), or are we already being taken over? Is our threat Beijing and Moscow or Washington, D.C.?

Without a doubt, the threat posed by Russia and China is very, very real (unlike the pseudo-threat posed by Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, etc.). In fact, Russian and China have been preparing their countries’ civil defense and fallout shelters for years. The only such shelters that are being constructed in the United States, however, are those the federal government is building for the power-elite. And that is being done virtually invisibly.

But even short of a nuclear attack from Russia and China, is not the America that we knew, the America that was governed by a constitution, the America that believed in the principles of federalism and limited government, the America that regarded the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights as sacrosanct, the America that believed in paying its bills, the America that had an intrinsic fear of God within it, ALREADY being taken over?

Virtually every principle upon which America was founded and that guided this nation for over 200 years is being thoroughly expunged. Every one of them! My fear is that by the time a foreign power decides to push the button, the America that will be destroyed will only be a museum of what this country once was. The real America is being destroyed NOW–not by a foreign power, but from within!

As an example, try to wrap your brain around this report: “Close to half of Americans say they are in favour of police departments deploying surveillance drones domestically.

“According to a survey conducted by The Associated Press and The National Constitution Center, 44 percent support the idea of police using unmanned aerial vehicles to track suspects and carry out investigations.

“Only 36 percent said that they ‘strongly oppose’ or ‘somewhat oppose’ police use of drones, according to the survey.

“The poll also found that only one third of Americans say they are significantly concerned about their privacy being eroded by the adoption of drones by police forces throughout the country.

“Thirty-five percent of respondents said they were ‘extremely concerned’ or ‘very concerned’ when asked if they believed that police departments’ use of drones for surveillance would impact their privacy.

“Almost exactly the same number, 36 percent, noted that they were ‘not too concerned’ or ‘not concerned at all’, while twenty-four percent were neutral on the issue, saying they were only ‘somewhat concerned’ about a potential loss of privacy.

“David Eisner, president and CEO of the constitution center in Philadelphia, told the AP that he was somewhat baffled by the response to the poll:

“‘I had assumed that the idea that American police would be using the same technology that our military is using in Afghanistan would garner an almost hysterical response,’ Eisner said. Support for drone use ‘shows that people are feeling less physically secure than they’d like to because they are willing to accept fairly extreme police action to improve that security.'”

See the report here.

So, how could half of the American people be utterly unconcerned or even enthusiastic about this country being turned into a giant surveillance society? Are they so ignorant of history as to not realize that the most glaring observation of every totalitarian regime in modern–or even not so modern–memory was always the implementation of a massive surveillance network within the country? It seems that there is virtually no intrusion into our personal lives and liberties so egregious that the American people will not support it, if it is presented as a way of making them more “secure.”

Today, the vast majority of the American people don’t think twice about the government tracking them and listening to them through their cell phones, spying on their financial transactions, recording their phone conversations, reading their emails, scanning the data on their computers, setting up ubiquitous checkpoints on highways, and now sending drones over their homes and neighborhoods–drones that are currently being used to kill mostly innocent men, women, and children in the Middle East. Yes, you read it right: mostly innocent men, women, and children.

QE3 Blowing Up The Debt Bubble

It begins . . . the latest downgrade of credit worthiness for the former titan reserve currency. As reality strikes, financial confidence goes negative. Forget the pump and dump equity markets, just how long will it be before the bondholders demand higher interest rates to cover their risk? Ben Shalom Bernanke answers this concern with intentions to keep rates near zero. Pure escapism out of the strange world of banksters’ hubris – faces the rating agencies. US Credit Rating Cut by Egan-Jones … Again

“Ratings firm Egan-Jones cut its credit rating on the U.S. government to “AA-” from “AA,” citing its opinion that quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve would hurt the U.S. economy and the country’s credit quality.

The Fed on Thursday said it would pump $40 billion into the U.S. economy each month until it saw a sustained upturn in the weak jobs market.”

Step back and view the big historic picture. The lesson from the Roman Empire repeats with a vengeance, in the era of digital bookkeeping. Yet the “bread and circus”, food stamps and sports arena society shares the same fate. Appropriately, the Cato Institute describes the pattern to destruction, in How Excessive Government Killed Ancient Rome.

“The revenues of the state remained inadequate to maintain the national defense. This led to further tax increases, such as the increase in the sales tax from 1 percent to 4.5 percent in 444 A.D. ( 1970: 75). However, state revenues continued to shrink, as taxpayers invested increasing amounts of time, effort and money in tax evasion schemes. Thus even as tax rates rose, tax revenues fell, hastening the decline of the Roman state (Bernardi 1970: 81-3). In short, taxpayers evaded taxation by withdrawing from society altogether. Large, powerful landowners, able to avoid taxation through legal or illegal means, began to organize small communities around them. Small landowners, crushed into bankruptcy by the heavy burden of taxation, threw themselves at the mercy of the large landowners, signing on as tenants or even as slaves.”

The open-ended wizardry of originating imaginary money at the taxpayers’ expense is an alchemy that the central bankers aspire with all the zeal of a bandit that wants to steal from the unborn. Bernanke is desperate to prop up the financial derivative madness. Back in antiquity constrains of pilfering the treasury were not as refined as computer strokes on a spreadsheet. The impact of Coin mintage collapsed the Roman Empire, looks mild to the forecast of pain to come to the abortive American Empire. While the pattern between both imperia uses contemporary techniques of their era, the outcome ensures the same destruction to their respective economies.

“Overtime the metal content of silver coins decreased until it was only around 4% of the ‘silver’ coin. So while for hundreds of years inflation was non-existent around 30 yrs after the silver content was reduced inflation rose at an average of 9% a yr.”This unceasing and continuous explosion of the money supply and the monetization of the currency not only crosses the Rubicon, it ends in the assassination of the Republic. The rule of central bank Caesars begs for the collapse of the imperium. Bernanke’s delusion that Keynesian spending will produce a “sustained upturn in the weak jobs market” is pure lunacy.

The target and beneficiary of this money flow only enriches the insiders, who strive to establish a technocratic feudal dynasty. The merchant economy is under intense pressure and faces demise from the opulent excess. The routine ransacking of the economy by the elites, in union with the oversight of their minion bureaucrats, torture their compatriot brethren.

The intent of the Negotium series “provides a sensible and informative guide on the complexities of business, economics, finance and global commerce”. Any discussion of the numerous topics always presupposes a reasonably stable currency. Currency debasement is historically destructive, points out the similarities that destroyed Rome and the modern day events that are emasculating the citizens of this republic into wards of the state or slaves to the national debt.

“At the end of the day currency debasement is simply another tax, albeit a tax which most people do not understand, and do not even know is being levied upon them. While the Roman empire debased the currency by simply lowering the percentage of gold or silver in the currency, the American empire does so either by printing new money without any accompanying increase in production or by engaging in fractional reserve banking, via which banks lend out money that they do not have, being “insured” by the federal government.

Interestingly enough, the two governments seemed to use these practices for similar reasons. Caracalla needed to increase war spending, and thus debased the currency to do so. The United States has done exactly the same thing throughout its history and especially the last 100 years, and today is attempting to fund an empire that consists of soldiers in over 140 countries worldwide and dozens of nations that are essentially economic dependents.”

Just how long the debt bubble can be expanded until it bursts, is proportionate to the servitude that the public is willing to endure. The day of financial reckoning approaches, while the percentage of taxation tribute increases. The average resident once had enough disposable earnings to live a decent life. Now sufficient after tax income revenue, begs poverty level existence.

QE3 would be better characterized as the final solution to crash and destroy the American economy. The barbarians entered the provinces to rape and pillage Rome. Today the “masters of the universe” Goths are plundering the remaining wealth of the nation with their arbitrage supercomputers. Ruining the value of the currency seems like a small price to pay, when you control or possess the bulk of the real assets.

The Attila the Hun tactics used by Bernanke’s Federal Reserve Board of Governors is the equivalent and true “SCOURGE OF GOD”. The debt bubble is the instrument of the greatest wealth transfer in all of history. Soon the old saying; brother, can you spare a dime, will be on the lips of most; but you had better check the silver content.

America The Next Lost Atlantis: Geographically, Economically, Politically & Morally

Geographically:  Now that the world’s ocean levels have started rising much faster than predicted, America’s coastal cities may become submerged far sooner than we thought.  And, sooner rather than later, Manhattan stands a very good chance of becoming the next lost Atlantis.

Here’s a cute little video from NASA that describes what’s been happening to our planet’s climate over the last 131 years.  Check it out:  http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/131-years-of-global-warming-in-26-seconds/  In this video animation, blue represents minus-two degrees Celsius and red represents plus-two degrees Celsius.  That’s only a four-degree variation — but what a variation it is!  At the blue point, ice all over the planet used to be still intact.  At the red point, however, it has melted.  At this rate, San Francisco will soon join Manhattan in its race to become the first lost Atlantis.

But enough said about that. I just hope that you don’t own a condo down in SoHo or beach-front property in Honolulu.  You do?  You’re screwed.

And then there’s Burning Man.  This year Black Rock City was completely engulfed in air-born dust particles and white-out sand storms almost 24/7.   If this drought doesn’t let up, perhaps they ought to change its name to Dust Bowl City.

And also, for the first time in memory, we have gotten a hecka lot of Canada geese hanging around Berkeley this summer instead of just passing by in the spring and the fall.  Guess they don’t have to fly so far south to get warm any more.  No winter vacation in Cancun for them!   And we humans don’t need to fly south to Puerto Vallarta during the winter months any more either.  Last year was the warmest winter in NorCal that I can remember (but I still love Puerto Vallarta).

Morally:  The Republican party (and the huge corporations that now own it) are completely using and abusing their only staunch allies — the older white American males and blind-faith Christians who support them — in order to enact laws and make policies that not only undermine these staunch allies’ beliefs but also their very existence.

Jobs, Social Security, homes, families, medical care, infrastructure, water supplies, energy sources, the very teachings of Christ Himself, you name it — all have been put in grave danger by the very corporate interests that naive older white Americans and gullible Christians have blindly trusted and supported all these years.  It’s just sad to watch these trusting staunch allies of the GOP constantly getting knifed in the back.

Then there are the famous Fetus Wars.  Jesus is being called upon to testify against Planned Parenthood — and yet Jesus isn’t even allowed on the premises when multiple brutal vicious and bloody wars have been declared against millions of innocent children all around the world.  You wanna call yourself a Christian?  Then you gotta act Christ-like!  Duh.

And Repubs are now actually saying that Ted Kennedy originated the War on Women.  Chappaquiddick was a tragic accident.  That’s not the same thing.  But a true war on women appears to be the GOP’s latest favorite game plan — as Repubs happily head down the same path that other “Christians” took back in the European Middle Ages when an estimated nine million women who dared to speak up for themselves, tried to get an education or attempted to practice medicine were burned alive at the stake.

Economically:  Since outsourcing and deregulation has hit America like a category-5 hurricane, our economy has become a disaster area — literally.  So many jobs have fled overseas and so much wealth has fled to the Caymans that many parts of the USA look almost like New Orleans after Katrina.

All the things that we used to make here?  We don’t even know how to make them any more.  And all that knowledge of how to make them has been lost too.

Sometimes I wish that the UN or NATO or whoever — perhaps the war-criminal-trial folks over at the Hague — would sanction America like they are now sanctioning Iran.  Then we would be FORCED to become economically independent again.

Republicans have deliberately created a vast pool of unemployed Americans so that they won’t have to pay us high wages.  Hence the GOP’s refusal to endorse a job program.  Why would they want to do that!

In their haste to make more and more money, large corporations are polluting our water and air and elevating our risk of cancer of course.  But they are also killing off billions of bees.  Good luck with getting our crops in when there is no pollination.  And bye-bye flowers too.  We don’t even have to wait until water drowns out the new American Atlantis to miss our fruit trees and flowers.  Monsanto has already taken care of that.

Politically:  Anyone can buy a seat in Congress these days — or even buy the White House itself or the Supreme Court (especially the Supreme Court).  Who would have ever thought that it would be that way here in the former Land of the Free.  Not since Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall have our public offices been so “For Sale”.  Shame on us for letting this happen.

And remember back in 1999 when we all thought that YK2 was going to be an international disaster?  Well all the computers didn’t crash, but YK2 turned out to be an incredible disaster anyway — when George W. Bush stole the 2000 election and almost NOBODY in America objected or even noticed.  Then Bush allowed 9-11 to happen, followed by the disastrous Afghanistan invasion, the incredibly expensive Iraq invasion and the 2008 economic crash.

Yes, YK2 really was a disaster.

More political immorality:  Who has been a very important ally of corporate-owned Washington in places like Afghanistan, Syria and Libya?  Wait for it.  “Al Qaeda!”  Arming and encouraging the people behind 9-11?  Isn’t that about as politically immoral as you can get?  But Americans seem to accept this hypocrisy without batting an eye.  Go figure.

And what can our bought-and-paid-for politicians possibly be thinking when they systematically alienate huge countries like Russia and China while kissing the booties of their corporate neo-con counterparts in teeny-tiny Israel.  Israel?  The size of New Jersey?  Israel’s neo-con corporatists are gonna save us from the wrath of Russia, China, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and all the other places and countries that our corporate-owned government has thoroughly screwed over the years?  Huh?

And then there’s that cruel joke that used to be America’s legendary and heroic Supreme Court.  No justice at all to be had there these days — if you are merely working class.  Those guys in black robes take their reverse-Robin-Hood roles very seriously.

“Take from the worker bees and give to the drones” should be carved in marble over our corporate-owned government buildings in Washington — just before America, the next lost Atlantis, slowly sinks into the sea.

But you had better get to carving it soon — because there is something in the air in America these days, a sense that nasty undercurrents are moving stealthily toward us from somewhere very deep, somewhere that the average voter isn’t in touch with — except in our guts.

And our guts seem to be telling us that America is now sinking fast.  And that “We the People” have absolutely no life jackets — but that the billionaires who now own our government are already provisioning their yachtshttp://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/45275.

To paraphrase Plato, “…once upon a time your State stayed the course of a mighty host, which, starting from a distant point in the Atlantic ocean, was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe, and Asia to boot” — and then their city of Atlantis got all drowned out.

And to paraphrase Ray Bradbury, “Something wicked is definitely coming our way”.

Destroying Internet Freedom By Taxation

Government taxation is as old as the first brute using force to steal from those intimated by threats. So why should it be any different for the internet? In today’s political environment of choosing winners and losers, the rush to tax online sales is gathering steam. Everyone feels the presence of the Amazon behemoth. Retail outlets like Best Buys are rethinking their business model in order to compete. States are eager to tap the flow of transactions with a sales tax that would cost consumers dearly. The issue of “so called” fairness is the argument that bureaucrats love to hang their hat on. So who makes the valid case for exemption or inclusion?

Senator Jim DeMint made quite a stir in his article, No Internet Taxation Without Representation.

“The Marketplace Fairness Act recently introduced in the Senate would require online retailers to collect and pay sales taxes to states where they have no physical presence or democratic recourse. Overstock.com, eBay and the like could have to pay sales taxes to any state from which an Internet user placed an order, even if the company’s headquarters, warehouses and sales staff are located entirely in other states.Such online sales tax proposals are taxation without representation. The proposed federal law tells businesses that there is no escape from the clutches of tax-hungry politicians. That concept is antithetical to our federalist system, which promotes competition among our states for the best economic policies.”

The push back from the bricks and mortar lobby comes from Michael P. Kercheval’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Internet Taxation Will Help States and Local Retailers.

“Sen. Jim DeMint’s “No Internet Taxation Without Representation” (op-ed, Aug.1) is surprising and disappointing in that it is replete with outdated and inaccurate information. What Sen. DeMint fails to mention is that in states with a sales tax—five don’t have one—tax is already owed by consumers when a purchase is made online. This isn’t a new tax. It’s erroneous to state that the Marketplace Fairness Act would create “taxation without representation,” as retailers don’t pay sales tax, they collect it. The in-state customer who makes the purchase and pays the appropriate sales tax has an opportunity every election to render judgment on his state’s fiscal direction. Furthermore, because of technology advancements, it is patently disingenuous to suggest that collecting sales tax is a crushing burden for online merchants.”

In a perfect society, a consumption tax would have merit, if the byzantine bureaucratic tax codes were used for a proper bond fire. In an age of deficit spending and revenue shortfalls, this prospect is zero. So why give special treatment to the Internet, when hungry government tax collectors want to apply their trade to cyber space? Maybe the better question is why are we so willing to comply with state sale tax regulations, that only increase the retail price?

What other forms of internet taxation should the consumer expect in the future? Laura Reynolds explains the history of the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which seems to be destined for oblivion.

“The Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA) of 1998 is an act of Congress regulating what kind of taxes may and may not be placed on Internet use in the United States. It was extended as the Internet Tax Nondiscrimination Act of 2004 and was extended as The Internet Tax Freedom Act Amendment Act of 2007. President Bush signed the current law, extending provisions to 2014. The act forbids taxation of Internet service based on amount (bit tax), type (bandwidth) or use (email) in order to make the medium affordable and accessible for commercial and personal use.”

No “Bit or Bandwidth Tax” and certainly no “Email Revenue Enhancement” sounds like a sound policy. However, the wheel of creative extortion never sleeps. The respected publication, The Hill reports in the FCC eyes tax on Internet service.

“The Federal Communications Commission is eyeing a proposal to tax broadband Internet service.
The move would funnel money to the Connect America Fund, a subsidy the agency created last year to expand Internet access.The FCC issued a request for comments on the proposal in April. Dozens of companies and trade associations have weighed in, but the issue has largely flown under the public’s radar.”

Our colleague Kurt Nimmo warns about the significance of this new tax.

“The scheme is nothing new. “Consumers already pay a fee on their landline and cellular phone bills to support the FCC’s Universal Service Fund.” The “Service Fund” was devised as yet another grand socialist enterprise “to ensure that everyone in the country has access to telephone service, even if they live in remote areas.”

Who can be against extending the total Google/Facebook surveillance society at taxpayers’ expense! Wiring the planet with a wireless net of shadowing observation goes well beyond compliance of tracing sales, from your favored online merchant. The only valid duty that ought to be levied should target the snoops that are recording your life in real time.

If there was ever a tool to liberate the minds and spirit of mankind, the internet revivals the printing press. The freedom to connect worldwide is awesome. However, the power of governments and corporatists to strip away your privacy and personality is frightening. Access to the web is desirable for those who choose to make the connection. Even so, they must bear the risk and responsibility of linking into the supercomputers of the snoops and spooks.

Yet, the practical intrusion of internet taxation on any level hits, not only the pocketbooks of consumers, but finances the operations of the total observation state. Debate if you wish the equity of sale tax exemptions if you are so inclined, but accept as existential, the danger of accepting the mark of the beast for buying or selling.

Only an all-inclusive net of cyberspace registration would have the ability to tax everyone without exception. At that point, it will not matter if Amazon has cheaper prices than Best Buy.

Is Going Off The Grid Practical?

The technological miracle that transformed the 20th century into an engine of wealth creation was based upon cheap energy. The role of the electric grid cannot be understated when it comes to enhancing the quality of life for the greatest number of people. The advance of civilization often seems to go in reverse gear. However, the innovation of labor saving devices and productive machinery usually rely upon running on the stream from electric generation.

Even with this laudable accomplishment, the electric grid has fundamental flaws and distribution shortcomings. The challenge for the 21th century requires a re-invention of thinking as much as a technological replacement of the alternative current system of connection to the electric grid.

Peter Fairley reveals an important trend in .

“Anything that uses transistors relies on direct current, the flow of electricity in one direction. That explains why PCs, iPhones, and flat-screen TVs all have converter boxes to turn the alternating current in wall sockets (which reverses direction 120 times a second) into direct current.

Such digital consumer devices account for up to a fifth of total power consumption today, according to Greg Reed, director of the Power & Energy Initiative at the University of Pittsburgh. Reed says the steep growth curve of DC power is due not only to computers but also to the spread of devices such as LEDs and solar panels.

“Within the next 20 years we could definitely see as much as 50 percent of our total loads be made up of DC consumption,” he says. “It’s accelerating even more than we’d expected.”

DC power is a far more practical method of generation if a consumer is determined to severe the cord with your local electric utility. The obvious drawback is that in the United States major appliances are all designed to run on AC. If one is resolute to become independent in electric creation, the practical sources of generating a usable current requires a substantial redesign of a wiring system and a substantial investment of capital for the privilege of telling the electric company to take their bill and stuff it.

Is this emotional determination realistic when most people reside in metropolitan regions? Now if you are an avid “Prepper” and have secured the ideal isolated and rural location to build your dream castle retreat, by all means, do your own thing.The reality is that reliability of consistent power is one of the main advantages of connecting to the grid. Sure power- outages increase as the lack of proper maintenance to the transmission grid deteriorates. But the alternative of a fickle wind turbine in a still sky means you better be lighting with candles. With all the shortcomings and the short life of battery storage systems, the joy of being free of the utility company may well mean converting to a 19th century hand well pump for your water and a wood stove for your heat.

Now many hi-tech inventions allow the self-reliant to enjoy the natural pleasures of a back to nature lifestyle. Thermoelectric generators (TEG) might even work if you can master the technology of generating small amounts of electric current from the energy of your wood or coal furnace. Or, if you did your due diligence in selecting that prime survivalist fortress, with a dependable water flow from a year round stream, you can consider a micro-hydro power systems. If you strike out with your current incompatible location, surely you can sling a few solar panels on your roof to boil your morning cup of coffee.The point is that the actual alternatives to generating a practical level of power independent from a grid connection, can be achieved by few property owners.

Now before you give up and order your PG&E smart meter, the definite scandal has little to do with guaranteeing a cost effective electric utility system. Note the main concern has to do with your health and privacy. “Civil liberties advocates are watching this case and asking if we can’t trust the utility industry not to read our e-mails and spy on us, how can we trust them not to share details of our private lives that they acquire from the smart meter?”As the emphasis of the alternative energy debate shifts solely from methods to dominance, one must admit that the electric grid is presently being used to control your household existence. The idea of allowing individual homeowners to live their lives free from Public Service Commission control is only an academic issue. With modern living, in the “Green” politically correct era, the only thing that can be counted on is a move towards a despotic government mandate that forces compliance to the “Cap and Trade” culture.

Going off the grid is far more a political matter than a primitive attempt to supercharge your energy independence by perfecting the recluse way of life. We are all in the same electromagnetic pulse (EMP) matrix that threatens to severe the electric life raft. Reverting to aHobbesian State of Nature in an age of comprehensive surveillance that runs on electric current will not cure the autocratic lightening strike.How can real and viable electric alternatives be developed and brought to market when the entire bureaucratic system rests upon enforcing arbitrary regulations for favored crony relationships? Proponents of “Sustainable Energy” worship a bogus deity. Their doctrine requires the elimination of coal altogether. With the rapid increase of natural gas turbines for electric generation, these zealots demand that every fossil fuel must be abandoned.

Such attitudes directly have a negative impact on the grid. The case of industrial wind makes the point. A dramatic expansion of the current grid would be required to provide an interconnect from scattered wind factory locations. Just ask Boone Pickenswhy he deserted his flirtation with this outdated, unreliable and inefficient wind generation in favor of natural gas.Home fuel cell technology to power your home offers independence from the grid, but any system that requires a cogeneration source of fuel (like propane or natural gas) has obvious economic drawbacks. The promise of producing electricity from magnet generation has a striking appeal. However, where is the practical model that can be tested and marketed at your local Home Depot?

Sorry, the facts all support a conclusion that for a complex society with an aging infrastructure and an authoritarian political culture, the will to invest in a different electrical distribution system does not exist. It is not even a question of developing a better method for connection; it is all about stretching the useful life of old technology. Where is Nikola Tesla when you really need him? Well, the modern day J P Morgan’s that control the utility grid have a decisive foreign ownership composition. When the likes of Iberdrola and National Grid are encouraged to buy up our domestic electrical utilities, the prospects for the future mirror the problems of Europe.So if you are not a Prepper and you reside in your urban Florida condominium, be prepared to survive without air conditioning, if you want to cancel your utility account. The regulatory agencies are rubber stamps for the “Corporatists” utilities and citizen groups have an uphill struggle in preventing a wholesale stranglehold on your energy availability.

Organizing community electric cooperatives with citizen utility boards may be the only way to combat the Agenda 21 goal of controlling and rationing energy availability. The grid could be a miracle support line if it was under the stewardship of community interests. Decentralization of the grid, while maintaining access to sources of reliable and cost effective electric generation, should be the goal. Preventing brownouts is a technological issue, not an Enron manufactured by design occurrence.

The prospect of skyrocketing utility bills is a foregone reality if further consolidation is allowed. Without market competition not only in the sale of electricity, but in the delivery system of distribution, the costs of surviving your electric bill may be far more difficult.

Conservation is a logical objective. Notwithstanding such a noble aspiration, the financial requirements for return on equity demand that a reduction in usage demands an increase in electric rates. Only a true and practical energy generation invention that could break the ties of the electric meter, would offer any prospects of getting totally off the grid.

For the foreseeable future, major energy appliances will be manufactured for AC current. Anyone who has experience with portable generators for backup home generation know all too well that the price of gas or propane are excessive and prohibitive as a permanent alternative.

The only way to get the grid to work for you is to place maximum pressure on the political system to promote innovation for individual independence of the end user. DC current is the energy of choice for the greatest autonomy. However, the Washington DC connection is the greatest hurdle to overcome. The physics of Tesla’s wireless transmission of electrical energy is child’s play, when compared to the enigma of government regulation.

The War On Iran Is Already Underway

Economic sanctions, psychological warfare, media propaganda, threats and assassinations; what other sort of evidence one may need to believe that the United States, Israel and their European allies have already started their much liked war against Iran and that this unjustifiable war is taking its toll on the innocent, ordinary Iranian citizens?

They say that they have a problem with Iran’s nuclear program; that Iran’s nuclear activities aren’t transparent; that they fear Iran may one day develop nuclear weapons; that Iran may some day drop atomic bombs on Israel and that Iran poses a threat to global peace and security.

But this is not really the case. Perhaps the American journalist and radio host, Mark Glenn, has described the truth in the most comprehensible and sound way: “if Iran had no nuclear program, these countries would make the claim that Iran is financing international terrorism through the export and sale of Pistachio nuts. What is at issue here is that Iran refuses to be a slave to the 2-headed beast of Israeli, western financial and political interests.”

Washington’s animosity toward Tehran is nothing new or unprecedented, nor is it related to Iran’s nuclear program. Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 dethroned the U.S.-backed monarch Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the U.S. politicians began to carry a chip on their shoulder and started disposing of Iran with hostility and enmity.

With the victory of Iran’s popular revolution led by the leader Imam Khomeini who strongly opposed American imperialism and militarism, the sanctions against Iran began to take effect. Under President Carter, the U.S. imposed a set of sanctions on Iran’s oil sector and then blocked USD 12 billion of Iranian government’s assets in Washington. After the deadly 1983 Beirut barracks bombing in which 241 American marines were killed, the U.S. government renewed its sanctions, this time with the order of Ronald Reagan. The Reagan administration declared Iran a sponsor of international terrorism and called on the World Bank to stop giving loans to Iran. The deadly attack on the U.S. peacekeeping forces in Beirut for which the White House blamed Iran turned out to be an Israeli false flag operation, as revealed by the former Mossad executive Victor Ostrovsky in a famous 1990 book titled ” By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer.”

The Clinton administration toughened the sanctions and in 1996, the Israel-dominated Congress unanimously passed the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) which penalized the foreign companies and firms which invested in Iran’s oil sector. On September 30, 2006 the act was renamed to Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) as it was no longer applied to Libya. The George W. Bush administration was similarly antagonistic toward Iran and his administration adopted several rounds of sanctions against Iran’s oil, gas, insurance, agriculture and aviation industries. He also signed into law the Iran Freedom and Support Act on September 30, 2006 which allocated USD 10 million to anti-Iranian terrorist groups.

Barack Obama who came to power with the flaunting and pompous promise of change was no better than his predecessors. Instead of taking up détente and reconciliation with Iran so as to find a sustainable solution to end the nuclear standoff, he assumed an aggressive position, intensified the sanctions, banned transactions with the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) and even created hurdles for Iran to receive the payments for its oil exports.

Existing sanctions on Iran’s oil industry had been expanded “by making sanctionable the purchase or acquisition of Iranian petrochemical products”, Obama said in a statement.

Measures would be taken against firms that have dealings with the National Iranian Oil Company and the Naftiran Inter-trade Company or that help Iran buy U.S. dollars or precious metals, he added.
But the sanctions are not the only means the U.S., Israel and the EU have resorted to in order to bring Iran to its knees and undermine its position as a regional superpower.

The Obama administration has vehemently pursued a policy of running covert ops in Iran through training, funding and assisting terrorists of anti-Iranian cults such as MKO and Jundallah with the objective of spreading fear and terror in the country, sabotaging its security and also impeding its nuclear program.

Since 2010, five scientists associated with Iran’s nuclear program were assassinated, and the footsteps of CIA, Mossad and MKO can be traced in all the four killings.

On August 5, Iran’s television aired confessions of several people involved in the killing of the country’s nuclear scientists. The people who were introduced in a documentary titled “Terror Club” confessed that they received several weeks of military training as well as financial assistance from Israel to carry out their terrorist operations in Iran.

On May 15, 2012, Majid Jamali Fashi, a Mossad spy and terrorist who pleaded guilty and confessed to the killing of Dr. Masoud Alimohammadi, Iran’s quantum field theorist and elementary-particle physicist was executed after describing in details all the stages of his involvement with Mossad, traveling to Israel through a neighboring country and carrying out his malicious operation. According to the Israeli paper Haaretz, Western intelligence confirmed that the detailed confession of Majid Jamali Fashi was genuine.

Damaging Iran’s nuclear program through spreading sophisticated computer worms and malwares such as Stuxnet was another plot by the United States and Israel aimed at deliver a blow to Iran. In the late September, it was reported that Ralph Langer, a renowned expert on industrial systems security had admitted that the Stuxnet worm was coded to sabotage computers operating on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear facilities.

All of these acts of aggression and belligerence are taking place while an intensive media operation against Iran is on track and the mainstream media, affiliated with AIPAC and other hawkish, pro-Israeli think tanks in the United States are mischievously portraying a biased, black and disappointing image of Iran to their people with the aim of laying the groundwork for a possible military invasion of Iran.

The war against Iran, however, seems to be already on the go. A soaring media operation, frequent war threats uttered by insane hawks in Tel Aviv and Washington, assassinations and acts of sabotage all testify that Iran is the target of an all-out war which just has not had a military representation. What can be said for sure is that Iran will not throw the towel in the face of the hostilities and has done a great job withstanding the lethal pressures. This is what makes Iran a promising model for the nations which want to learn how to stand on their own feet.

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