Oil Price Blowback

Is Putin Creating A New World Order?

“If undercharging for energy products occurs deliberately, it also effects those who introduce these limitations. Problems will arise and grow, worsening the situation not only for Russia but also for our partners.” – Russian President Vladimir Putin

It’s hard to know which country is going to suffer the most from falling oil prices. Up to now, of course, Russia, Iran and Venezuela have taken the biggest hit, but that will probably change as time goes on. What the Obama administration should be worried about is the second-order effects that will eventually show up in terms of higher unemployment, market volatility, and wobbly bank balance sheets. That’s where the real damage is going to crop up because that’s where red ink and bad loans can metastasize into a full-blown financial crisis. Check out this blurb from Nick Cunningham at Oilprice.com and you’ll see what I mean:

“According to an assessment from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, an estimated 250,000 jobs across eight U.S. states could be lost in 2015 if oil prices don’t rise. More than 50 percent of those job losses would occur in Texas, which leads the nation in oil production.

There are some early signs that a slowdown in drilling could spread to the manufacturing sector in Texas… One executive at a metal manufacturing company said in the survey, “the drop in crude oil prices is going to make things ugly… quickly.” Another company that manufactures machinery told the Dallas Fed, “Low oil prices will drive reductions in U.S. drilling rigs, which will in turn reduce the market for our products.”

The sentiment was similar for a chemical manufacturer, who said “lower oil prices will adversely impact margins. Energy volatility will cause our customers to keep inventories tight.”

States like Texas, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Louisiana have seen their economies boom over the last few years as oil production surged. But the sector is now deflating, leaving gashes in employment rolls and state budgets.” (Low Prices Lead To Layoffs In The Oil Patch, Nick Cunningham, Oilprice.com)

Of course industries lay-off workers all the time and it doesn’t always lead to a financial crisis. But unemployment is just one part of the picture, lower personal consumption is another. Take a look:

“Falling oil prices are a bigger drag on economic growth than the incremental “savings” received by the consumer…..Another way to show this graphically is to look at the annual changes in Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) in aggregate as compared to the subsection of PCE spent on energy and related products. This is shown in the chart below.

Lower Energy Prices To Lower PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures):

See? So despite what you might have read in the MSM, lower gas prices do not translate into greater personal consumption or more robust growth. Quiet the contrary, they tend to intensify deflationary pressures and reduce activity which is a damper on growth.

Then there’s the knock-on effects that crashing prices and layoffs have on other industries like mining, manufacturing and chemical production. Here’s more from Oil Price:

“Oil and gas production makeup a hefty chunk of the “mining and manufacturing” component of the employment rolls. Since 2000, when the oil price boom gained traction, Texas has comprised more than 40% of all jobs in the country according to first quarter data from the Dallas Federal Reserve…

The majority of the jobs “created” since the financial crisis have been lower wage paying jobs in retail, healthcare and other service sectors of the economy. Conversely, the jobs created within the energy space are some of the highest wage paying opportunities available in engineering, technology, accounting, legal, etc. In fact, each job created in energy related areas has had a “ripple effect” of creating 2.8 jobs elsewhere in the economy from piping to coatings, trucking and transportation, restaurants and retail….

The obvious ramification of the plunge in oil prices is that eventually the loss of revenue will lead to cuts in production, declines in capital expenditure plans (which comprise almost 1/4th of all capex expenditures in the S&P 500), freezes and/or reductions in employment, and declines in revenue and profitability…

Simply put, lower oil and gasoline prices may have a bigger detraction on the economy than the “savings” provided to consumers.” (The Gasoline Price Myth, Lance Roberts, oilprice.com)

None of this sounds very reassuring, does it? And yet, all we hear from the media is how the economy is going to reach “escape velocity” on the back of cheap oil. Nonsense. This is just more “green shoots” baloney wrapped in public relations hype. The fact is, the economy needs the good-paying jobs more than it needs low-priced energy. But now that prices are tumbling, those jobs are going to disappear which is going to be a drag on growth. Now check out these headlines I picked up on Google News that help to show what’s going on off the radar:

“Texas is in danger of a recession”, CNN Money.
“Texas Could Be Headed for an Oil-Fueled Recession, JP Morgan Economist Says”, Wall Street Journal “Good Times From Texas to North Dakota May Turn Bad on Oil-Price Drop”, Bloomberg
“Low Oil Prices in the New Year Are Screwing Petrostates”, Vice News
“Top US Oil States Are Taking A Hit From Plunging Crude Prices”, Business Insider

Get the picture? If oil prices continue to fall, unemployment is going to spike, activity is going to slow, and the economy is going tank. And the damage won’t be limited to the US either. Get a load of this from the UK Telegraph:

“A third of Britain’s listed oil and gas companies are in danger of running out of working capital and even going bankrupt amid a slump in the value of crude, according to new research.

Financial risk management group Company Watch believes that 70pc of the UK’s publicly listed oil exploration and production companies are now unprofitable, racking up significant losses in the region of £1.8bn.

Such is the extent of the financial pressure now bearing down on highly leveraged drillers in the UK that Company Watch estimates that a third of the 126 quoted oil and gas companies on AIM and the London Stock Exchange are generating no revenues.

The findings are the latest warning to hit the oil and gas industry since a slump in the price of crude accelerated in November when the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) decided to keep its output levels unchanged. The decision has caused carnage in oil markets with a barrel of Brent crude falling 45pc since June to around $60 per barrel.” (Third of listed UK oil and gas drillers face bankruptcy, Telegraph)

“Carnage in oil markets,” you say?

Indeed. Many of the oil-drilling newcomers set up shop to take advantage of the low rates and easy money available in the bond market. Now that prices have crashed, investors are avoiding energy-related junk bonds like the plague which is making it impossible for the smaller companies to roll over their debt or attract fresh capital. When these companies start to default en masse, as they certainly will if prices don’t rebound, the blowback will be felt on bank balance sheets across the country creating the possibility of another financial meltdown. (Now we ARE talking about a financial crisis.)

The basic problem is that the banks have bundled a lot of their dodgy debt into financially-engineered products like Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs) and Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) that will inevitably fail when borrowers are no longer able to service the loans. The rot can be concealed for a while, but eventually, if prices don’t recover, a significant number of these companies are going to go under which will push the perennially-undercapitalized banking system to the brink once again. That’s why Washington’s plan to push down oil prices (to hurt the Russian economy) might have made sense on a short-term basis (to shock Putin into submission) but as a long-term strategy, it’s nuts. And what’s even crazier, is that Obama has decided to double-down on the same wacky plan even though Putin hasn’t given an inch. Check this out from Reuters on Monday:

“The Obama administration has opened a new front in the global battle for oil market share, effectively clearing the way for the shipment of as much as a million barrels per day of ultra-light U.S. crude to the rest of the world…

The Department of Commerce on Tuesday ended a year-long silence on a contentious, four-decade ban on oil exports, saying it had begun approving a backlog of requests to sell processed light oil abroad.

The action comes at a critical juncture for the global oil market. World prices have halved to less than $60 a barrel since the summer as top exporter Saudi Arabia, once a staunch defender of $100 oil, refused to cut production in the face of surging U.S. shale output and tempered global demand…

With global oil markets in flux, it is far from clear how much U.S. condensate will find a market overseas.”
(Analysis – U.S. opening of oil export tap widens battle for global market, Reuters)

Does that make sense to you, dear reader? Why would Obama suddenly opt to change the rules of the game when he knows it will increase supply and push prices down even further? Why would he do that? Certainly, he doesn’t want to inflict more pain on domestic producers, does he?

Let’s let Obama answer the question for himself. Here’s a clip from an NPR interview with the president just last week. About halfway through the interview, NPR’s Steve Inskeep asks Obama: “Are you just lucky that the price of oil went down and therefore their currency collapsed or …is it something that you did?

Barack Obama: If you’ll recall, their (Russia) economy was already contracting and capital was fleeing even before oil collapsed. And part of our rationale in this process was that the only thing keeping that economy afloat was the price of oil. And if, in fact, we were steady in applying sanction pressure, which we have been, that over time it would make the economy of Russia sufficiently vulnerable that if and when there were disruptions with respect to the price of oil — which, inevitably, there are going to be sometime, if not this year then next year or the year after — that they’d have enormous difficulty managing it.” (Transcript: President Obama’s Full NPR Interview)

Am I mistaken or did Obama just admit that he wanted “disruptions” in the “price of oil” because he figured Putin would have “enormous difficulty managing it”?

Isn’t that the same as saying that it was all part of Washington’s plan; that plunging prices were just the icing on the cake for their asymmetrical attack on the Russian economy? It sure sounds like it. And that would also explain why Obama decided to allow domestic producers to dump more oil on the market even though it’s going to send prices lower. Apparently, none of that matters as long as the policy hurts Russia.

So maybe the US-Saudi oil collusion theory isn’t so far fetched after all. Maybe Salon’s Patrick L. Smith was right when he said:

“Less than a week after the Minsk Protocol was signed, Kerry made a little-noted trip to Jeddah to see King Abdullah at his summer residence. When it was reported at all, this was put across as part of Kerry’s campaign to secure Arab support in the fight against the Islamic State.

Stop right there. That is not all there was to the visit, my trustworthy sources tell me. The other half of the visit had to do with Washington’s unabated desire to ruin the Russian economy. To do this, Kerry told the Saudis 1) to raise production and 2) to cut its crude price. Keep in mind these pertinent numbers: The Saudis produce a barrel of oil for less than $30 as break-even in the national budget; the Russians need $105.

Shortly after Kerry’s visit, the Saudis began increasing production, sure enough — by more than 100,000 barrels daily during the rest of September, more apparently to come…

Think about this. Winter is coming, there are serious production outages now in Iraq, Nigeria, Venezuela and Libya, other OPEC members are screaming for relief, and the Saudis make back-to-back moves certain to push falling prices still lower? You do the math, with Kerry’s unreported itinerary in mind, and to help you along I offer this from an extremely well-positioned source in the commodities markets: “There are very big hands pushing oil into global supply now,” this source wrote in an e-mail note the other day.” (“What Really Happened in Beijing: Putin, Obama, Xi And The Back Story The Media Won’t Tell You”, Patrick L. Smith, Salon)

Vladimir Putin: Public Enemy Number 1

Let’s cut to the chase: All these oil shenanigans are really aimed at just one man: Vladimir Putin. There are a number of reasons why Washington wants to get rid of Putin, the first of which is that the Russian president has become an obstacle to US plans to pivot to Asia. That’s the main issue. As long as Putin is calling the shots, there’s going to be growing resistance to NATO’s push eastward and Washington’s military expansion across Central Asia which could undermine US plans to encircle China and remain the world’s only superpower. Here’s an excerpt from Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard which helps to explain the importance Eurasia is in terms of Washington’s global ambitions:

“..how America ‘manages’ Eurasia is critical. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania (Australia) geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent. About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.” (p.31) (Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And It’s Geostrategic Imperatives, Key Quotes From Zbigniew Brzezinksi’s Seminal Book)

Get it? Prevailing in Asia is the administration’s top priority, which is why the US is rapidly moving its military assets into place. Check this out from the World Socialist Web Site:

“Under Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” the Pacific Command will account for more than 60 percent of all US military forces, up from 50 percent under the Bush administration. This includes new US basing arrangements in the Philippines, Singapore and Australia, as well as renewed close military ties to New Zealand, and ongoing US military exercises in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan….(as well as) large troop deployments in Japan and South Korea, including nuclear-armed units.” (The global scale of US militarism, Patrick Martin, World Socialist Web Site)

The “Big Shift” is already underway, which is why obstacles have to be removed and Putin’s got to go.

Second, Putin has made himself a general nuisance vis a vis US strategic objectives in Syria, Iran and Ukraine. In Syria, Putin has thrown his support behind Assad who the US wants to topple in order to redraw the map of the Middle East and build gas pipelines from Qatar to Turkey to access the lucrative EU market.

Third, Putin has strengthened a number of coalitions and alliances –the BRICS bank, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization–all of which pose a challenge to US dominance in the region as well as a viable alternative to neoliberal financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank. Going back to Brzezinski’s “chessboard” once again, we see that the US should not feel threatened by any one nation, but should be constantly on-the-lookout for “regional coalitions” which could derail its plans to rule the world. Here’s Brzezinski again:

“…the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.” (p.40)

“Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America’s status as a global power.” (p.55) (Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And It’s Geostrategic Imperatives, Key Quotes From Zbigniew Brzezinksi’s Seminal Book)

As a founding member and primary backer of these organizations, (and initiator of giant energy deals with China, India and Turkey) Putin has become Washington’s biggest headache and a logical target for regime change.

Finally, Putin is doing whatever he can to circumvent dollar-denominated business and financial transactions. The move away from the buck is a direct attack on the US’s greatest source of power, the ability to control the de facto international currency and to require that other nation’s stockpile dollars for their energy purchases which are then recycled into US financial assets, stocks bonds and US Treasuries. This petrodollar-recycling scam allows the US to run gigantic current account deficits without raising interest rates or reducing government spending. Putin’s anti-dollar policies could diminish the greenback’s role as reserve currency and put an end to a system that institutionalizes looting.

This is why Putin is Public Enemy Number 1. It’s because he’s blocking the US pivot to Asia, strengthening anti-Washington coalitions, sabotaging US foreign policy objectives in the Middle East, creating institutions that rival the IMF and World Bank, transacting massive energy deals with critical US allies, increasing membership in an integrated, single-market Eurasian Economic Union, and attacking the structural foundation upon which the entire US empire rests, the dollar.

Naturally, Washington’s powerbrokers are worried about these developments, just as they are worried about the new world order which is gradually taking shape under Putin’s guidance. But, so far, they haven’t been able to do anything about it. The administration’s regime change schemers and fantasists have shown time-and-again that they’re no match for Bad Vlad who has beaten them at every turn.

Bravo, Putin.

American Exceptionalism and American Torture

In 1964, the Brazilian military, in a US-designed coup, overthrew a liberal (not more to the left than that) government and proceeded to rule with an iron fist for the next 21 years. In 1979 the military regime passed an amnesty law blocking the prosecution of its members for torture and other crimes. The amnesty still holds.

That’s how they handle such matters in what used to be called The Third World. In the First World, however, they have no need for such legal niceties. In the United States, military torturers and their political godfathers are granted amnesty automatically, simply for being American, solely for belonging to the “Good Guys Club”.

So now, with the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, we have further depressing revelations about US foreign policy. But do Americans and the world need yet another reminder that the United States is a leading practitioner of torture? Yes. The message can not be broadcast too often because the indoctrination of the American people and Americophiles all around the world is so deeply embedded that it takes repeated shocks to the system to dislodge it. No one does brainwashing like the good ol’ Yankee inventors of advertising and public relations. And there is always a new generation just coming of age with stars (and stripes) in their eyes.

The public also has to be reminded yet again that – contrary to what most of the media and Mr. Obama would have us all believe – the president has never actually banned torture per se, despite saying recently that he had “unequivocally banned torture” after taking office.

Shortly after Obama’s first inauguration, both he and Leon Panetta, the new Director of the CIA, explicitly stated that “rendition” was not being ended. As the Los Angeles Times reported at the time: “Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.”

The English translation of “cooperate” is “torture”. Rendition is simply outsourcing torture. There was no other reason to take prisoners to Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, Somalia, Kosovo, or the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, amongst other torture centers employed by the United States. Kosovo and Diego Garcia – both of which house large and very secretive American military bases – if not some of the other locations, may well still be open for torture business, as is the Guantánamo Base in Cuba.

Moreover, the key Executive Order referred to, number 13491, issued January 22, 2009, “Ensuring Lawful Interrogations”, leaves a major loophole. It states repeatedly that humane treatment, including the absence of torture, is applicable only to prisoners detained in an “armed conflict”. Thus, torture by Americans outside an environment of “armed conflict” is not explicitly prohibited. But what about torture within an environment of “counter-terrorism”?

The Executive Order required the CIA to use only the interrogation methods outlined in a revised Army Field Manual. However, using the Army Field Manual as a guide to prisoner treatment and interrogation still allows solitary confinement, perceptual or sensory deprivation, sensory overload, sleep deprivation, the induction of fear and hopelessness, mind-altering drugs, environmental manipulation such as temperature and noise, and stress positions, amongst other charming examples of American Exceptionalism.

After Panetta was questioned by a Senate panel, the New York Times wrote that he had “left open the possibility that the agency could seek permission to use interrogation methods more aggressive than the limited menu that President Obama authorized under new rules … Mr. Panetta also said the agency would continue the Bush administration practice of ‘rendition’ … But he said the agency would refuse to deliver a suspect into the hands of a country known for torture or other actions ‘that violate our human values’.”

The last sentence is of course childishly absurd. The countries chosen to receive rendition prisoners were chosen precisely and solely because they were willing and able to torture them.

Four months after Obama and Panetta took office, the New York Times could report that renditions had reached new heights.

The present news reports indicate that Washington’s obsession with torture stems from 9/11, to prevent a repetition. The president speaks of “the fearful excesses of the post-9/11 era”. There’s something to that idea, but not a great deal. Torture in America is actually as old as the country. What government has been intimately involved with that horror more than the United States? Teaching it, supplying the manuals, supplying the equipment, creation of international torture centers, kidnaping people to these places, solitary confinement, forced feeding, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Chicago … Lord forgive us!

In 2011, Brazil instituted a National Truth Commission to officially investigate the crimes of the military government, which came to an end in 1985. But Mr. Obama has in fact rejected calls for a truth commission concerning CIA torture. On June 17 of this year, however, when Vice President Joseph Biden was in Brazil, he gave the Truth Commission 43 State Department cables and reports concerning the Brazilian military regime, including one entitled “Widespread Arrests and Psychophysical Interrogation of Suspected Subversives.”

Thus it is that once again the United States of America will not be subjected to any accountability for having broken US laws, international laws, and the fundamental laws of human decency. Obama can expect the same kindness from his successor as he has extended to George W.

“One of the strengths that makes America exceptional is our willingness to openly confront our past, face our imperfections, make changes and do better.” – Barack Obama, written statement issued moments after the Senate report was made public.

And if that pile of hypocrisy is not big enough or smelly enough, try adding to it Bidens’ remark re his visit to Brazil: “I hope that in taking steps to come to grips with our past we can find a way to focus on the immense promise of the future.”

If the torturers of the Bush and Obama administrations are not held accountable in the United States they must be pursued internationally under the principles of universal jurisdiction.

In 1984, an historic step was taken by the United Nations with the drafting of the “Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” (came into force in 1987, ratified by the United States in 1994). Article 2, section 2 of the Convention states: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

Such marvelously clear, unequivocal, and principled language, to set a single standard for a world that makes it increasingly difficult for one to feel proud of humanity. We cannot slide back. If today it’s deemed acceptable to torture the person who supposedly has the vital “ticking-bomb” information needed to save lives, tomorrow it will be acceptable to torture him to learn the identities of his alleged co-conspirators. Would we allow slavery to resume for just a short while to serve some “national emergency” or some other “higher purpose”?

If you open the window of torture, even just a crack, the cold air of the Dark Ages will fill the whole room.

Cuba … at long, long last … maybe …

Hopefully, it’s what it appears to be. Cuba will now be treated by the United States as a country worthy of at least as much respect as Washington offers to its highly oppressive, murdering, torturing allies in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Honduras, Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

It’s a tough decision to normalize relations with a country whose police force murders its own innocent civilians on almost a daily basis, and even more abroad, but Cuba needs to do it. Maybe the Cubans can civilize the Americans a bit.

Let’s hope that America’s terrible economic embargo against the island will go the way of the dinosaurs, and Cuba will be able to demonstrate more than ever what a rational, democratic, socialist society can create. But they must not open the economy for the Yankee blood-suckers to play with as they have all over the world.

And I’ll be able to go to Cuba not as a thief in the night covering my tracks and risking a huge fine.

But with the Republicans taking over Congress next month, all of this may be just a pipe dream.

Barack Obama could have done this six years ago when he took office; or five years ago when American Alan Gross was first arrested and imprisoned in Cuba. It would have been even easier back then, with Obama’s popularity at its height and Congress not as captured by the Know-Nothings as now.

So, Cuba outlasted all the punishment, all the lies, all the insults, all the deprivations, all the murderous sabotage, all the assassination attempts against Fidel, all the policies to isolate the country. But for many years now, it’s the United States that has been isolated in the Western Hemisphere.

Reason Number 13,336 why capitalism will be the death of us.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria – the “superbugs” – if left unchecked, could result in 10 million deaths a year by 2050. New drugs to fight the superbugs are desperately needed. But a panel advising President Obama warned in September that “there isn’t a sufficiently robust pipeline of new drugs to replace the ones rendered ineffective by antibiotic resistance.”

The problem, it appears, is that “Antibiotics generally provide low returns on investment, so they are not a highly attractive area for research and development.”

Aha! “Low returns on investment”! What could be simpler to understand? Is it not a concept worth killing and dying for? Just as millions of Americans died in the 20th century so corporations could optimize profits by not protecting the public from tobacco, lead, and asbestos.

Corporations are programmed to optimize profits without regard for the society in which they operate, in much the same way that cancer cells are programmed to proliferate without regard for the health of their host.

Happy New Year. Here’s what you have to look forward to in 2015.

• January 25: 467 people reported missing from a university in Mexico. US State Department blames Russia.
• February 1: Military junta overthrows President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Washington decries the loss of democracy.
• February 2: US recognizes the new Venezuelan military junta, offers it 50 jet fighters and tanks.
• February 3: Revolution breaks out in Venezuela endangering the military junta; 40,000 American marines land in Caracas to quell the uprising.
• February 16: White police officer in Chicago fatally shoots a 6-year old black boy holding a toy gun.
• March 6: Congress passes a new law which states that to become president of the United States a person must have the surname Bush or Clinton.
• April 30: The Department of Homeland Security announces plan to record the DNA at birth of every child born in the United States.
• May 19: The Supreme Court rules that police may search anyone if they have reasonable grounds for believing that the person has pockets.
• May 27: The Transportation Security Administration declares that all airline passengers must strip completely nude at check-in and remain thus until arriving at their destination.
• June 6: White police officer in Oklahoma City tasers a 7-month-old black child, claiming the child was holding a gun; the gun turns out to be a rattle.
• July 19: Two subway trains collide in Manhattan. The United States demands that Moscow explain why there was a Russian citizen in each of the trains.
• September 5: The Democratic Party changes its name to the Republican Lite Party, and announces the opening of a joint bank account with the Republican Party so that corporate lobbyists need make out only one check.
• September 12: White police officer in Alabama shoots black newborn, confusing the umbilical cord for a noose.
• November 16: President Obama announces that Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, North Korea, Sudan, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba all possess weapons of mass destruction; have close ties to the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and the Taliban; are aiding pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine; were involved in 9-11; played a role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the attack on Pearl Harbor; are an imminent threat to the United States and all that is decent and holy; and are all “really bad guys”, who even (choke, gasp) use torture!
• November 21: The United States invades Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, North Korea, Sudan, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba.
• December 10: Barack Obama is awarded his second Nobel Peace Prize
• December 11: To celebrate his new peace prize, Obama sends out drones to assassinate wrong-thinking individuals in Somalia, Afghanistan and Yemen.
• December 13: Members of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi parties, which hold several high positions in the US-supported government, goose-step through the center of Kiev in full German Storm Trooper uniforms, carrying giant swastika flags, shouting “Heil Hitler”, and singing the Horst Wessel song. Not a word of this appears in any American mainstream media.
• December 15: US Secretary of State warns Russia to stop meddling in Ukraine, accusing Moscow of wanting to re-create the Soviet Union.
• December 16: White police officer shoots a black 98-year-old man sitting in a wheel chair, claiming the man pointed a rifle at him. The rifle turns out to be a cane.
• December 28: The Washington Redskins football team finish their season in last place. The White House blames Vladimir Putin.

Notes

1. Associated Press, December 11, 2014
2. New York Times, December 11, 2014
3. Los Angeles Times, February 1, 2009
4. New York Times, February 6, 2009
5. New York Times, May 24, 2009
6. Washington Post, December 11, 2014
7. National Security Archive’s Brazil Documentation Project
8. Washington Post, December 10, 2014
9. See note 7
10. Washington Post, December 13, 2014

Ben Carson Shouldn’t Run For President

When Christians entangle themselves with the kingdoms of the world, they become worldly in the very worst way. — Pastor Gregory Boyd…

When someone becomes director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins at the age of 33, you need to admire such an achievement.

When, at 36, this same man leads a surgical team that separates Siamese twins who were joined at the head, youreally need to admire such as achievement.

And when you learn that this man was raised in poverty by a single mom in the Detroit ghetto, you should simply stand in absolute awe of their life story.

But when this person gets serious about running for president of the United States, you need to start asking serious questions.

This person of such incredible accomplishments is Dr. Ben Carson. And according to this story, he has taken a “” toward a run at the White House.

What questions should you ask?

Does Carson understand his job description, i.e. the Constitution?

Does Carson understand the Second Amendment? Read his remarks here about semi-automatic weapons.

Does Carson understand the Ninth and Tenth Amendments? To his credit, Carson supports medical marijuana. However, he is all reefer madness when it comes to recreational marijuana.

And this has nothing to do with whether or not you yourself hit the lettuce. A government that will fine or imprison you for a victimless act like smoking marijuana will intrude on your life without end. And if you would fine or imprison someone for hitting the lettuce, you thereby forfeit your right to complain when an overbearing government intrudes on your life. Drug prohibition has turned the “land of the free” into the nation with the world’s highest incarceration rate.

And then there is the question of whether Carson understands constitutional limits on foreign policy and the military. Does he understand that there is absolutely zero constitutional basis for America being a “superpower” with a global troop presence?

Read this 600-word column in which Carson calls Obama’s already overly aggressive foreign policy “rudderless”. Can anyone interpret this as anything other than a call for endless war and meddling whenever Washington wants wherever Washington wants?

This is from a man who had originally opposed America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. But now, he serves up a lot of pre-election year pabulum to pander to the neoconservative base.

Carson also appears to be much more pro-Second Amendment than before. While I agree with his more recent remarks, I am a concerned about the timing. Can we truly trust a man who changes his positions when he appears poised to run for president?

To be sure, Carson opposes Obamacare. However, he appears to support extensiveunconstitutional federal intrusion in the medical marketplace. And if you are implicitly trusting of what a Carson administration would do with these powers, just ask yourself what would happen with these powers in the hands of some Democratic president some day.

Unlike Carson, Ron Paul had an impeccable pro-Constitution and antiwar voting record throughout his 12 terms in Congress. And he did not change his message when he ran for president.

Back now to the subject of war.

Carson is well known for his Christian beliefs. I will take him at his word. And he appears to have lived a morally exemplary Christian life. Has he now succumbed to the temptations of fame and politics?

He has no problem with America’s status as a “superpower”. What is Christian about this? When the devil offered Jesus unlimited political power – Matthew 4:8-10 – Jesus declined the offer. Why is it then that so many Americans who claim to follow Jesus are so enamored with America’s military might?

He calls the recent sanctions that Obama imposed on Russia “toothless”. What would “toothy” sanctions look like in real life? And is there anything Christian about barriers to trade? In the Great Commission – Matthew 28:18-20 – Jesus tells His followers to bringthe Gospel to all nations, regardless of political circumstances. And when products cannot cross borders, bibles and missionaries can’t do so either.

And Carson craftily writes this essay without using the word “war” once. Again, what will Carson’s foreign policy look like other than global war? And who will be spilling their blood in all these conflicts? Will it be Carson or will it be kids from the South Bronx and the Oklahoma Panhandle whose names he will never know and whose funerals he most probably will not attend?

(Just in case anyone is interested, Carson himself never served a day in the military.)

And can Carson be taken seriously as “pro-life” when he advocates so much militarism?

War is just like Obamacare or any other government program. Those who promote it would rather have their fingernails extracted without anesthesia than talk about its real world implications.

And I know Carson sounds well-intended. Did you ever hear a politician who didn’t sound this way?

A government that will act without restraint abroad is just like a government that will interrupt your life for smoking marijuana. It will acknowledge no restraint anywhere.

There is an overwhelming temptation to believe that if we just put “good people” in power, they will wield this power benevolently. The difference between Ron Paul and Ben Carson is that Ron Paul understood the role of government and remained uncorrupted. Ron Paul would not compromise his principles for political gain. Carson, on the other hand, appears to be falling into way too much temptation way too soon. Indeed, it has been said that when you dance with the devil, you don’t change him, but he changes you.

Christianity is not about controlling the world from the top down, but influencing the world from the bottom up. Christians are to influence the world with the examples they set in their daily lives – Matthew 5:13-16, Galatians 5:22-23, I Peter 2:12 – rather than through accruing unlimited political power.

Just the other day, I read the following status update on Facebook: “I have heard many warnings about addictive substances and activities. If only there were more warnings and more wariness about the allure and the addictiveness of power. ‘If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all.’ Jesus (Mark 9:35)”

As Christians, we pray “Lead us not into temptation” – Matthew 6:13.

Ben Carson has done way too much good with his life to squander his legacy in one of the most corrupt offices on earth, that of the presidency. (It was unspeakably corrupt LONG before Obama.) He could do so much more to benefit so many more people if he would just stay away from politics.

“But if we don’t get someone like Carson, we will wind up with Hillary!”

As Lew Rockwell once so succinctly put it, the right hates the left more than it hates the state. We need to fear God’s Judgment far more than we fear Hillary. Empires are the ultimate expression of human arrogance and hubris. As history shows, they all come to an end, and often a very ugly end. And if you are a Christian, read Revelation 18 and tell me who you think it is about.

It will take enormous courage for Ben Carson to eschew the allure of the White House. However, he needs to step aside and do it now if he truly is the genuine article.

What Did The White House Know?

Did Obama Know that ISIS Planned to Invade Iraq?

“I think we have to understand first how we got here. We have been arming ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) in Syria.  ISIS, an al Qaeda offshoot, has been collaborating with the Syrian rebels whom the Obama administration has been arming in their efforts to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”  – Senator Rand Paul, Interview CNN 

Today’s head-scratcher: How could a two-mile long column of jihadi-filled white Toyota Land rovers barrel across the Syrian border into Iraq–sending plumes of dust up into the atmosphere –without US spy satellites detecting their whereabouts when those same satellites can read a damn license plate from outer space? And why has the media failed to inquire about this massive Intelligence failure?

Barack Obama is a big proponent of “inclusive democracy” which is why he wants Iraqi prime minister Nouri al Maliki to either include more Sunnis in the government or resign as PM. In an interview with CNN, Obama said, “We gave Iraq the chance to have an inclusive democracy, to work across sectarian lines to provide a better future for their children and unfortunately what we’ve seen is a breakdown of trust…There’s no doubt that there has been a suspicion for quite some time now amongst Sunnis that they have no access to using the political process to deal with their grievances, and that is in part the reason why a better-armed and larger number of Iraqi security forces melted away when an extremist group, Isis, started rolling through the western portions of Iraq.

“Part of the task now is to see whether Iraqi leaders are prepared to rise above sectarian motivations, come together, and compromise. If they can’t there’s not going to be a military solution to this problem … There’s no amount of American firepower that’s going to be able to hold the country together and I’ve made that very clear to Mr Maliki and all the other leadership inside of Iraq (that) they don’t have a lot of time.” (New York Times)

Anyone who thinks Obama  gives a rip about sectarian problems in Iraq needs his head examined. That’s the lamest excuse for a policy position since the Bush administration announced they were sending troops to Afghanistan to “liberate” women from having to wear headscarves.  If Obama was serious about “inclusive democracy” as he calls it, then he’d withhold the $1.3 billion from his new dictator buddy, Generalissimo al Sisi of Egypt who toppled the democratically-elected government in Cairo, installed himself as top-dog in conspicuously rigged elections, and is now planning to execute 200-plus Egyptians for being members of a party that was legal just a few months ago.   Do you think Obama is pestering al-Sisi to be “more inclusive”?  No way. He doesn’t care how many people are executed in Egypt, anymore than he cares whether al Maliki blocks Sunnis from a spot in the government. What matters to Obama and his deep-state puppetmasters is regime change, that is, getting rid of a nuisance who hasn’t followed Washington’s directives. That’s what this is all about. Obama and Co. want to give al Maliki the old heave-ho because he refused to let US troops stay in Iraq past the 2012 deadline and because he’s too close to Tehran. Two strikes and you’re out, at least that’s how Washington plays the game.

So Maliki has got to go, and all the hoopla over sectarian issues is just pabulum for the News Hour. It means nothing. The real goal is regime change. That, and the partitioning of Iraq. In fact, the de facto partitioning of Iraq has already taken place. The Sunnis have basically seized the part of the country where they plan to live. The Kurds have nailed down their own territory, and the Shia will get Baghdad and the rest, including Basra. So, the division of Iraq has already a done deal, just as long as al Maliki doesn’t  gum up the works by deploying his army to retake the parts of the country that are now occupied by ISIS. But the Obama team probably won’t allow that to happen, mainly because the bigshots in Washington like things the way they are now. They want an Iraq that is broken into smaller chunks and ruled by tribal leaders and warlords. That’s what this is all about, splitting up the country along the lines that were laid out in an Israeli plan authored by Oded Yinon 30 years ago.  That plan has already been implemented which means Iraq, as we traditionally think of it, no longer exists. It’s kaput. Obama and Co. made sure of that.  They weren’t satisfied with just killing a million Iraqis, polluting the environment, poisoning the water, destroying the schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, and leaving them to scrape by on meager rations, foul water and a tattered electrical grid. They had to come back and annihilate the state itself, erase the lines on the map,  and remove any trace of a nation that was once a prosperous Middle East hub. Now the country is gone, vanished overnight. Poof. Now you see it, now you don’t.

Of course, al Maliki could try to reverse the situation, but he’s got his own problems to deal with. It’s going to be hard enough for him just to hold onto power, let alone launch a sustained attack on a disparate band of cutthroats who are bent on wreaking havoc on oil wells, critical infrastructure, pipelines, reservoirs, etc as well as killing as many infidels as humanly possible. No matter how you cut it, al Maliki is going to have his hands full.  Obama has already made it plain, that he’s gunning for him and won’t rest until he’s gone. In fact, Secretary of State John Kerry is in the Middle East right now trying to drum up support for the “Dump Maliki” campaign. His first stopover was Cairo. Here’s a wrap-up form the Sunday Times:

“Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Cairo on Sunday morning on the first leg of a trip that is intended to hasten the formation of a cross-sectarian government in Iraq. In his swing through Middle East capitals, Mr. Kerry plans to send two messages on Iraq. One is that Arab states should use their influence with Iraqi politicians and prod them to quickly form an inclusive government. Another is that they should crack down on funding to the Sunni militants in the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The group is largely self-sustaining because of success in extortion and its plundering of banks in Mosul, Iraq. But some funding “has flowed into Iraq from its neighbors,” said a senior official on Mr. Kerry’s plane.” (Kerry Arrives in Cairo on Trip to Push for New Iraqi Government, New York Times)

How’s that for priorities? First we get rid of al Maliki, says Kerry, then we move on to less important matters, like that  horde of jihadi desperados who are descending on Baghdad like a swarm of locusts. Doesn’t that seem a little backasswards to you, dear reader?

And why isn’t Obama worried about a jihadi attack on Baghdad?   Think of it: If they did attack Baghdad and the capital fell into jihadi hands, then what? Well, then the Dems would take the blame, they’d get their butts whooped in the upcoming midterms, and Madame Hillary would have to take up needlepoint because her chances of winning the 2014 presidential balloting would drop to zero.  So, the fallout would be quite grave. Still, Obama’s not sweating it, in fact, he’s not the least bit worried. Why?

Could it be that he knows something that we don’t know?  Could it be that US Intel agents have already made contact with these yahoos and gotten a commitment that they won’t attack Baghdad if they are allowed to remain in the predominantly Sunni areas which they already occupy? Is that it? Did Obama offer the Baathists and Takfiris a quid pro quo which they graciously accepted?

It’s very likely, mainly because it achieves Obama’s strategic objective of establishing a de facto partition that will remain in effect unless al Maliki can whip up an army to retake lost ground which looks doubtful at this point.

But, here’s the glitch;  al Maliki is not a quitter, and he’s not going anywhere. In fact he’s digging in his heels. He’s not going to be blackmailed by the likes of Obama. He’s going to this fight tooth and nail. And he’s going to have help too, because young Shia males are flocking to the recruiting offices to join the army and the militias. And then there’s Russia; in a surprise announcement  Russian president Vladimir Putin offered to assist al Maliki in the fight against the terrorists, a move that is bound to enrage Washington. Here’s a clip from the Daily Star:

“Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday offered Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki Moscow’s total backing for the fight against jihadist fighters who have swept across the Middle East country.

“Putin confirmed Russia’s complete support for the efforts of the Iraqi government to speedily liberate the territory of the republic from terrorists,” the Kremlin said in a statement following a phone call between the two leaders…
Russia is one of the staunchest allies of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad and has helped prop up his regime during three years of fighting against a hotchpotch of rebel groups, including the ISIL.”  ( Putin offers Iraq’s Maliki ‘complete support’ against jihadists, Daily Star)

That makes a third front in which Russia and the US will be on opposite sides. It’s just like the good old days, right?  Putin seems to be resigned to the idea that Moscow and Washington are going to be at loggerheads in the future. He’s not only opposed to a “unitary world order”, he’s doing something about it, putting himself and his country’s future at risk in order to stop the empire’s relentless expansion and vicious wars of aggression.  Needless to say, proxy wars like this can lead to rapid escalation which is always a concern when both parties have nuclear weapons at their disposal.  Now check this out from the Oil Price website:

“Here’s why the threat goes beyond Iraq and Syria…Modern Syria is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan and Israel to the south and Lebanon to the west.

‘Greater Syria’ incorporates most of the territories of each.

This is what ‘Syria’ means in the mind of Middle Easterners, says Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, and author of the respected blog SyriaComment.com

‘If we can teach people that so many Arabs still think of Syria as Greater Syria, they will begin to understand the extent to which Sykes-Picot remains challenged in the region,’ said Landis.

Sykes-Picot, of course refers to the secret agreement drawn up by two British and French diplomats — Sir Mark Sykes and Francois George-Picot — at the end of Word War I dividing the spoils of the Ottoman Empires between Britain and France by drawing straight lines in the sand.

To this day, many Arabs refuse to accept that division and think of ‘Syria’ as ‘Greater Syria.’ Some go so far as to include the Arab countries of North Africa – which from the Nile to the Euphrates forms ‘the Fertile Crescent,’ the symbol of many Muslim countries from Tunisia to Turkey. And some even go as far as including the island of Cyprus, saying it represents the star next to the crescent.

Given that, anyone who thinks ISIS will stop with Iraq is delusional.”  (Insiders reveal real US aims in redrawing map of ME: Greater Syria, oil price)

Interesting, eh? So, if Mr. Landis is right, then the fracas in Iraq and Syria might just be the tip of the iceberg. It could be that Washington, Tel Aviv and Riyadh –who we think are the driving force behind this current wave of violence–have a much more ambitious plan in mind for the future. If this new method of effecting regime change succeeds,  then the sky’s the limit. Maybe they’ll try the same stunt in other countries too, like Turkey, Tunisia, Cyprus, and all the way to North Africa. Why not? If the game plan is to Balkanize Arab countries wholesale and transform them into powerless fiefdoms overseen by US proconsuls and local warlords, why not go on a regime change spree?

By the way, according to the Telegraph, Obama and friends knew what ISIS was up to, and knew that the terrorist group was going to launch attacks on cities in the Sunni territories, just as they have. Get a load of this:

“Five months ago, a Kurdish intelligence “asset” walked into a base and said he had information to hand over. The capture by jihadists the month before of two Sunni cities in western Iraq was just the beginning, he said.
There would soon be a major onslaught on Sunni territories.

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Isis), a renegade offshoot of al-Qaeda, was about to take its well-known cooperation with leftovers of the regime of Saddam Hussein,  and his former deputy Izzat al-Douri, to a new level.

His handlers knew their source of old, and he had always proved reliable, officials told The Telegraph. So they listened carefully as he said a formal alliance was about to be signed that would lead to the takeover of Mosul, the biggest city north of Baghdad, home to two million people. …

‘We had this information then, and we passed it on to your (British) government and the US government,’ Rooz Bahjat, a senior lieutenant to Lahur Talabani, head of Kurdish intelligence, said. ‘We used our official liaisons.’

‘We knew exactly what strategy they were going to use, we knew the military planners. It fell on deaf ears.’  (How US and Britain were warned of Isis advance in Iraq but ‘turned a deaf ear, Telegraph)

“Deaf ears”?

I’m not buying it. I think the intelligence went straight to the top, where Obama and his neocon colleagues came up with the plan that is unfolding as we speak. They figured, if they just look the other way and let these homicidal madhatters seize a few cities and raise a little Hell, they’d be able to kill two birds with one stone, that is,  get rid of al Mailiki and partition the country at the same time. But, it’s not going to work out like Obama expects, mainly because this is just about the dumbest plan ever conjured up. I would give it an 80 percent chance blowing up in Obama’s face in less than a month’s time. This turkey has failure written all over it.

As for the sectarian issue, well, Iraq was never a sectarian society until the war.  The problems arose due to a deliberate policy to pit one sect against the other in order to change the narrative of what was really going on the ground. And what was really going on was a very successful guerilla war was being waged by opponents of the US occupation who were launching in excess of 100 attacks per day on US soldiers. To change the storyline–which was causing all kinds of problems at home where support for the war was rapidly eroding–US counterinsurgency masterminds concocted a goofy plan to blow up the Golden Dome Mosque, blame it on the Sunnis, and then unleash the most savage, genocidal counterinsurgency operation of all-time. The western media were instructed to characterize developments in Iraq as part of a bloody civil war between Shia and Sunnis. But it was all a lie. The bloodletting was inevitable result of US policy which the Guardian effectively chronicled in a shocking, but indispensable hour-long video which can be seen here. James Steele: America’s mystery man in Iraq – video

The US made every effort to fuel sectarian animosities to divert attention from the attacks on US soldiers. And due to a savage and deceptive counterinsurgency plan that employed death squads, torture, assassinations, and massive ethnic cleansing,  they succeeded in confusing Iraqis as to who was really behind the daily atrocities, the human rights violations and the mountain of carnage.

You’d have to be a fool to blame al-Maliki for any of this. As brutal as he may be, he’s not responsible for the divisions in Iraqi society. That’s all Washington’s doing.  Just as Washington is entirely responsible for the current condition of the country and for the million or so people who were killed in the war.

The Las Vegas Shootings, Obama’s Dumping of Illegal Aliens, And Eric Cantor’s Primary Defeat

Three Pertinent Observations

*The Las Vegas Shootings

Predictably, the mainstream media is doing its best to try to depict the couple who killed three people (including two police officers) in Las Vegas as right-wing militia-types. No doubt, the Obama administration will try to conjure up more gun-control. The media is already attempting to link the killers to the brave citizens who defended the Bundy family a couple of months ago. But the truth is, the citizen-militia in Bunkerville would not even allow this couple to gain access to that event, as they were concerned about the couple’s disconcerting propensities. But, of course, the radical left-wing hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), won’t tell you that.

Watch for Eric Holder and the U.S. Justice Department to use the Las Vegas shootings as an excuse to harass and harangue conservative groups, Tea Party groups, Second Amendment groups, and Patriot groups. And, of course, the media will serve in its typical capacity as propagandists against all things conservative.

Furthermore, the administration’s war against freedom-minded people takes on a chilling dimension when one reads this report:

“The Justice Department is resurrecting a program designed to thwart domestic threats to the United States, and Attorney General Eric Holder says those threats include individuals the government deems anti-government or racially prejudiced.

“The Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee was created in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing but was scrapped soon after the 2001 terrorist attacks as intelligence and law enforcement officials shifted their focus to threats from outside the country. The committee will be comprised of figures from the FBI, the National Security Division of the Justice Department and the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee.”

See the report at:

However, the fact is, when one examines the political bents of recent mass killers, he or she will find that the majority of them have come from left-wing communities and ideologies. But the media totally ignores that part of the story. They also ignore the common thread of most of these killers being on psychotropic prescription drugs. And they also conveniently overlook the fact that the vast majority of these kinds of killings took place in “gun-free” zones.

On a personal note, I have serious questions about the way in which so many of these mass shootings take place including: witnesses reporting multiple assailants, even when eventually only one shooter is said to have done it; the vast majority of these assailants ultimately killing themselves; the way the media is unwilling to investigate contradicting evidence and testimony; and the way law enforcement seems more inclined to cover up evidence than actually trace it all the way to its source.

*Obama’s Dumping of Illegal Aliens in Arizona and Texas

It is now abundantly clear that the Obama administration has chosen to completely ignore federal immigration laws. His administration is mostly refusing to deport illegals–even criminal ones. It is also encouraging the release of thousands of criminal illegals (even violent ones) from America’s prisons and jails.

See this report:

And, now we learn that the administration is manipulating the “dumping” of thousands of illegals, many of whom are children, in the traditional Republican stronghold states of Arizona and Texas. Through Obama’s public statements and comments, the administration has willfully encouraged multiplied thousands of illegals to cross into America’s border states, especially the two states mentioned above.

But why isn’t the Republican Party challenging President Obama on this egregious and blatant illegal activity? The GOP is already poised to pick up many seats in both the U.S. House and Senate this fall due to the anger and resentment of the country against Obama’s dubious and nefarious policies. One would think that Republican leaders on The Hill would pounce on Obama’s immigration debacle. Instead, Republican leaders are assisting the administration’s pro-illegal alien policy by pushing amnesty for illegals–which only serves to facilitate more illegals pouring over the southern border.

Investors.com reports, “Republicans should take the president to task for unlawfully enticing thousands of ‘unaccompanied illegal children’ from Latin America to cross the border. Instead, a GOP leader asks for an amnesty deal.

“What is at the top of the Republican wish list? A vibrant economy? An America strong and respected in the world? Capturing the Senate? A Republican elected to the White House in 2016?

“Nah. The GOP wants amnesty for illegal aliens.”

The report goes on to say, “Democrats use immigration to smear Republicans as racists. Expanding immigration will give Democrats millions of new votes in the coming decades, destroying forever the political forces that oppose big government.

“The more than 90,000 children who crossed the Mexican border into the U.S. and were apprehended this year, and the more than 140,000 expected next year, could and should turn the immigration issue into a GOP weapon against Democrats.

“Instead of sending them back home to their parents, Attorney General Eric Holder made it a priority to hire taxpayer-funded lawyers for them. Why don’t we hear Cantor, Ryan and other GOP leaders shout that Democrats are exploiting children to further their political agenda?”

See the report here:

Why, indeed?

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is a major proponent of amnesty for illegals. (Thankfully, Republican voters in Virginia have just thrown Cantor out of Congress and nominated a Tea Party conservative to replace him. More about that in a minute.) So is Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner. So are republicans John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, etc.

If the Republican Party helps Obama pass amnesty for illegals into law, as Boehner and Company say they will do this summer, Arizona and Texas will be inundated with millions of illegals–even more than they already are. Do Republican leaders really believe that illegal aliens are going to vote Republican? If they truly believe this, they are absolutely and positively deluded. So, is Boehner and Company willing to feed Arizona and Texas to the proverbial wolves? Do they think they can win a presidential election without carrying the State of Texas? Again, if they do, they are deluded.

Or, is Boehner and Company really more concerned about appeasing big-money interests at the Chamber of Commerce? Do they even care one whit about GOP victories? As long as they believe themselves to be the personal recipients of the graces of Big Money, why should they care which political party wins an election? At the national level, the differences between the two major parties are negligible, anyway.

*Eric Cantor’s Primary Defeat in Virginia

Here is how The New York Times covered the story:

“In one of the most stunning primary election upsets in congressional history, the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia, was soundly defeated on Tuesday by a Tea Party-backed economics professor who had hammered him for being insufficiently conservative.

“The result delivered a major jolt to the Republican Party–Mr. Cantor had widely been considered the top candidate to succeed Speaker John A. Boehner–and it has potential to change both the debate in Washington on immigration and, possibly, the midterm elections.

“With just over $200,000, David Brat–a professor at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va.–toppled Mr. Cantor, repeatedly criticizing him for being soft on immigration and contending that he supported what critics call amnesty for immigrants in the country illegally.

“Republicans were so sure that Mr. Cantor would win that most party leaders had been watching for how broad his victory would be. His defeat will reverberate in the capital and could have major implications for any chance of an immigration overhaul.”

See the report at:

Cantor’s defeat offers a glimmer of hope for America’s future. It is my studied observation that these neocon Republicans are far more dangerous to our liberties than are Democrats. When forced to choose between a Democrat and a neocon Republican, the “lesser of two evils” vote is for the Democrat. We have such an example here in my home State of Montana.

In the GOP primary for U.S. House of Representatives, a neocon Republican named Ryan Zinke won with just 33% of the vote. That means that some 67% of Montana’s Republican voters chose someone else over Zinke–all of whom were decidedly more conservative than Zinke. Unfortunately, Montana does not have a run-off system; otherwise, there is absolutely no question that Zinke would have been trounced in any subsequent run-off.

If Zinke wins in November, his track record in the Montana State Senate demonstrates that he will be the quintessential neocon Republican in Washington, D.C. Any influence he would have in Congress would only serve to take the House leftward. I absolutely refuse to vote for a neocon like Ryan Zinke. A Zinke victory would only serve to counter-balance the defeat of Eric Cantor in Virginia.

And, as The New York Times report observed, Cantor’s loss was primarily due to his liberal policies–especially his support for amnesty for illegals. Hopefully, Cantor’s historic defeat will shock the GOP leadership into a little bit of political reality.

Now, if we could only clean the GOP house of the likes of Boehner, McCain, Graham, Ryan, etc., and stop nominating neocons like Zinke. And God help us if Republicans nominate someone like Jeb Bush or Chris Christie in 2016.

A Second American Revolution Is Now Inevitable

“Stand your ground.  Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.” – Militia Captain John Parker at the Battle Of Lexington

Just a couple days ago, two armed assailants, a married couple purported by the mainstream media to be “white supremacists” and “conspiracy theorists,” ambushed two police officers at a CiCi’s Pizza in Las Vegas, killing the officers after screaming, “This is a revolution!” The suspects then reportedly covered one officer’s body with a Gadsden Don’t Tread On Me flag and then fled to a Walmart, where they killed another man with a CCW who attempted to reason with them, then committed suicide. Yes, it reads like a Southern Poverty Law Center fantasy story; and in many ways, it is.

As we all predicted the MSM has followed the pattern they have always followed, which is to equate the actions of one or two psychotics with the beliefs and principles of the liberty movement in general.

I remember when Jared Loughner fired into a crowd of people near Tucson, Ariz., killing numerous Federal and State employees; the immediate response by the media was to attempt to tie him to the liberty movement. In the end, he turned out to be a raving leftist. I remember the Boston Marathon bombing and the automatic reflex by the media to accuse “right-wing extremists” of the crime. So far, we have seen NO hard evidence to implicate anyone specific in that atrocity, including the Tsarnaev brothers. Of all the violent crimes dumped in the lap of the liberty movement over the years, how many have actually been committed or endorsed by the liberty movement? I can’t think of any.

This has not prevented the establishment media from doing everything in their power to associate criminal action with political ideals.  Efforts to sully the success of the Bundy Ranch stand-off were swift, with Jared and Amanda Miller’s visit to Bunkerville splashed across the headlines.  Luckily, the sound judgement of organizations like Oath Keepers led founder Stewart Rhodes to personally ask the two future shooters to leave the property.  I can only imagine the weight of the slander if they had been allowed to stay.

When an activist movement holds the moral high ground against a repressive establishment power structure, the establishment’s primary recourse is to target the character of its principles. The secondary recourse is direct confrontation. If a dissenting organization is not mindlessly vicious in its methods, then simply make it APPEAR vicious. If it is not hateful in its rhetoric, then artificially tie it to people who are. And if a government really needs to kick-start a crackdown, it can engineer its own man-made calamities and blame the groups that most threaten its authority.

This was achieved to great effect in Europe from the 1950s until the 1990s by the CIA working in tandem with multiple European governments under a covert project called Operation Gladio.

 

Gladio was essentially a secret army of operatives and stooges, handlers and puppets, used to create false-flag terrorist shootings and bombings across Europe that were blamed on “left-wing extremists.” In reality, NATO alphabet agencies were behind the entire facade. The goal was to terrorize the citizenry through a nonstop campaign of indiscriminate death, blamed on a convenient scapegoat, so that individuals would hand over more freedom and more power to the central governments. The point is, whether real or staged, I believe such events are going to escalate within the U.S. today on an incredible scale and that, regardless of evidence, they will be blamed on “right-wing extremists.” In case you were wondering, that label will be foisted on most if not all of us.

That said, I think an important truth needs to be stated here: Whether the beliefs of the attackers in Las Vegas were actually liberty movement-oriented or not is ultimately irrelevant. To shoot random police and civilians and then commit suicide is an act of pure insanity, a product of mental instability that has nothing to do with political philosophy, and mental instability trumps belief and association anytime.  Mentally unstable people exist within ALL belief systems and political groups.

At bottom, I do not care what their beliefs were. Their actions do not represent the values I hold dear, nor do I think they represent the values most of us hold dear. The shooting is a tragedy, but in the grand scheme of things, it means nothing, and I have little doubt it will be forgotten within weeks.

I relate the story because I do, in fact, agree with one thing: that a “revolution,” a second American Revolution, is inevitable. But I think I speak for the vast majority of the movement when I say that this revolution will not begin with the deaths of innocents or random government employees on our hands, and it certainly won’t begin at the doorstep of a CiCi’s Pizza.

The Bundy ranch incident, which occurred only a short drive from Las Vegas, has been a revelation for many people. Mistakes were made, provocateurs reared their ugly heads, and lessons were learned. But overall, America has been fundamentally changed, even if the average person does not realize it yet. The information war came within a razor’s edge of evolving into a shooting war, with the establishment in retreat, licking its wounds while planning how it can gain back its composure and carefully crafted image of “invincibility”.

What frightens the establishment most, I think, is that the American people have become active participants in their own national environment once again. At Bundy ranch, they stopped asking for mercy, they stopped begging the system to police itself, they stopped waiting for the rigged elections, and they stopped relying on useless legal avenues to effect change. Rather, they took matters into their own hands and changed the situation on the ground on their own. For oligarchy, this development is unacceptable, because one success could lead to many.

Already, we are beginning to hear whispers of possible Federal retribution against those who participated in the confrontation.

This has been cemented within the efforts of a new task force against “domestic terrorism” organized by none other than Eric “Fast and Furious” Holder.

After the recent exposure of Barack Obama’s Department of Defense Directive 3025.18, we now know that since at least 2010, the White House has been setting the stage for the use of military force against “domestic threats.” That is to say, for at least the past four years our government has been quietly maneuvering toward martial law. It’s been happening for much longer if you count George W. Bush’s Presidential Decision Directive 51, which has yet to befully declassified.

The exposure of Directive 3025.18 also came with information that the Obama Administration considered using it as a way to activate military forces and drones against the Bundy ranch. The burning question is, of course, why didn’t it? The Federal government is not known for its diplomacy in the face of a defiant citizenry. Waco and Ruby Ridge made that clear. I believe that it was not necessarily the people on the ground at Bunkerville, Nev., that they were most worried about. The terrain is admittedly a terrible place to mount a defense against a mechanized horde of jackboots.

No, what the White House feared was a larger response to such an attack. It feared the millions of patriots who would swarm down from all sides if it committed to a Ruby Ridge-style siege. It feared the reality that this time, Americans were not going to sit back and watch another family be slaughtered on national television.  It feared the fact that it didn’t have the moral high ground in the public eye and that a kinetic failure on its part would be met with cheers, rather than tears, from much of the populace.

So where does this leave us? With the Bundy success besmirching the Feds, the next strategic program will likely include an unprecedented effort to demonize the liberty movement perhaps to the point of a Gladio-type false-flag campaign, leading to the eventual detention of activists as domestic security threats. It’s not going to end with shootings in pizzerias and slobbering hit pieces from the SPLC.  Expect a landslide of violent acts.  Expect another engineered large-scale calamity like the Oklahoma City Bombing.  Expect dozens of Timothy McVeighs to be trotted out in the media. Expect the Liberty Movement’s name to be buried in an avalanche of bullshit. Mark my words; it’s going to get much worse from here on.

And this is where I will add my warning.

Before the Bundy ranch became a possible battleground, I stated in my article “Real Americans Are Ready To Snap” that the liberty movement was going to draw a line in the sand over Bureau of Land Management abuses in Bunkerville, and I was right.

It seems to me that time is growing short. As tyrants become more bold, so too must the citizenry; otherwise, we shrivel up and die.  We cannot allow the movement’s momentum to be shattered and driven underground as the militia movement was after Oklahoma City.  We know what is coming, and we must drive forward.  We know we will be labeled as terrorists and villains, and ultimately, we must realize that such eventualities do not matter.  The Liberty Movement is not going away.  In fact, future clashes with our criminal government are only going to become more frequent.

The next family threatened, the next activist individual or group arrested or black-bagged without legitimate cause, the next major false flag, the next use of military forces as civil law enforcement, the next unConstitutional misstep, and I have no doubt whatsoever in my mind that a revolt will erupt. It’s not about making grand predictions; it’s about examining the logical odds, and the odds are high. The knowledge that the establishment is considering using the full force of its military apparatus against the people has not dissuaded anyone. Bundy ranch was a very near miss. I do not expect a peaceful resolution the next time around. I also do not expect the government as it exists now to stop clamoring for more control or less corruption. If recent events have proven anything, they have proven that a second American Revolution is inevitable; and all we can do is ready ourselves.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

Globalism In Tulsa Oklahoma: A Corrupt Sanctuary

How corrupt has America become? It has become as corrupt as globalism itself, a byproduct in international greed, where the gutting of good paying jobs has relegated the United States to being nothing more than a third rate country with a first rate war machine. An essential aspect to what we regard as the American economy today is its reliance on fraud and corruption, from the banking sector to corporations exporting and outsourcing good jobs with the help of a political class that is not only fraudulent but treasonous to the extreme, they are driving America towards an abyss that it will not come back from.

Waging international war for resources under false pretenses is a globalists wet dream, and under the cloak of the nefarious “war on terror,” multinational defense and security firms have made trillions of dollars over the last decade. They destroy so they can rebuild, and all the human collateral damage is just an unsightly part of doing business.

Another perverse aspect to globalism is massive illegal immigration under the disreputable banner of multiculturalism, for some shady businesses in America the profit margins can increase exponentially by hiring illegal workers over Americans.

Corporations hire illegal workers to keep wages low, and benefits to an absolute minimum. Americans are shunned for unquestioning cheep labor, and governments allow and foster this fraud to the detriment of many Americans. Some Americans, if you can still call them Americans, profit greatly in this perverse atmosphere of fraud.  The Federal government consistently places the interests of illegal aliens and businesses who hire them over and above American workers and the ‘rule of law’.

A case in point is Oklahoma, specifically Tulsa, Oklahoma, which has become a hotbed of greed and corruption. Tulsa is what some call a sanctuary city, where tens of thousands of illegal workers are in jobs that Americans are obviously not occupying. This ugly fact is good for some corporations and businesses, expanding their profits by paying undocumented workers low wages with no real benefits. What does it cost the American tax payers when these illegal workers have babies and use the medical industry with false identities, who foots the medical bills?  It defiantly is not businesses or the governments.

Another case in point is a company called Name Brand Clothing; based in Tulsa, it has stores in six states, the company sells salvage clothing at 75 percent off retail and it prefers to hire illegal workers instead of Americans. It is the proverbial ‘poster child’ for corporate greed and corruption in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Why does it hire illegal workers? Well, first of all, it is about greed, making some people rich at the expense of everyone else. The managers at Name Brand Clothing generate outrageous bonuses by essentially suppressing wages on all hourly paid employees year after year. They choose illegal workers because illegal’s do not complain about being stuck on minimum wage for years on end with no real medical benefits and no paid holidays.

The owners and managers of Name Brand Clothing knowingly and willingly submit false identifications and Social Security Numbers to the IRS and to the Oklahoma Tax Commission, which is of course contrary to both federal and state laws. They have been doing this for over a decade, and they can commit these criminal acts because Federal and State governments are currently as corrupt and dishonest as companies like Name Brand Clothing.

Veracity Voice interviewed a long time worker at Name Brands Clothing for an inside examination into the workings of corporate greed and corruption that currently plagues corporate America.

We are protecting the person’s identity because the person is still currently employed by the company. We will refer to that person as the ‘Employee’.

Veracity Voice: How long have you been working for Name Brands?

Employee: I rather not say exactly since I still work for them, lets just say that I have been employed at Name Brands for about 10 years, give or take a couple of years.

Veracity Voice: What do you do there?

Employee: Again, I rather not say exactly, lets just say I worked in the head office, and have seen the corruption first hand.

Veracity Voice: Why have you decided to speak out at this time, and not before?

Employee: Actually I did in a way speak about this before; I wrote a letter to the Sheriff’s department, and the FBI about 4 years ago. I also wrote letters too FOX 23 and Channel Six News, concerning the outlandish fraud and corruption happening at Name Brands, and absolutely nothing came of it. It seems that it is not PC to talk about this issue in Tulsa; the mainstream media won’t touch it. That is why I am talking with Veracity Voice; the only outlet whistleblowers have today in America is in the alternative media.

Veracity Voice: Are you saying that the mainstream media is covering it up?

Employee: In a way they are by not reporting all the law breaking going around Tulsa as far as hiring illegal workers by businesses, they certainly seem to be part of the club, and will not rock the boat.

Veracity Voice: What Club?

Employee: Corrupt businesses, Local, State and Federal governments that allow the criminal behavior, the police departments that will not enforce the law and mainstream media that will not report any of it. It is one big corrupt club.

Veracity Voice: What kind of fraud and corruption have you seen at Name Brands?

Employee: Well, you can compare the greed and corruption at Name Brands along the lines of what’s happening in Wall Street and the financial system, some people are profiting greatly through outright fraud and thievery at the expense of everyone else, and government is engaged in helping the criminality.

At Name Brands, the fraud is done by submitting false ID’s and Social Security Numbers (SSN) to the IRS. I’ve seen with my own eyes management turn away American workers seeking work then turn around and hire illegals. The main reason they do this, Is because the illegals are content to work for minimum wage with no real benefits. Essentially, they keep everyone’s wages stagnant except for management.

Veracity Voice: What do you mean except for management?

Employee: The lower the costs for running the business, the higher the bonuses for management, its classic corporate greed. Management at Name Brands make large sums of money in the form of bonuses while all other workers do not receive real medical benefits or paid holidays except for two, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and those two paid holidays are highly conditional.

Veracity Voice: Highly conditional?

Employee: Yes, two weeks prior to Thanksgiving and Christmas if an employee is late for work for any reason Name Brands will not pay you for the holiday.

Veracity Voice: You’re kidding right?

Employee: No, unfortunately I’m not kidding. At Name Brands it’s a culture of nepotism and greed, like the saying goes “there is no honor among thieves” there is no honesty, no real integrity, just godless corruption. There is one woman, who has worked for the company for 17 years, and she has only received one 5 cent raise not counting minimum wage increases. It’s outright disgusting how they treat workers.

Veracity Voice: Why does she stay?

Employee: Well, some people have problems, and finding other employment can be difficult.

Veracity Voice: What kind of problems?

Employee: All sorts of problems like emotional and mental problems, in some cases drug problems, other cases workers being ex-convicts, finding employment can be difficult. Like some parasite, companies like Name Brands like to take advantage of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in society, that’s why they like illegals; they can thieve from them without any complaint, protected by corrupt governments. Most self-respecting Americans will not work for a company that treats hourly workers like trash.

Veracity Voice: Let’s get back to the fraud, how many illegals are they employing?

Employee: At TPC which is Name Brands production center in North Tulsa, they usually have around 80 illegals working there, and at their store in South Tulsa there are about 10.

Veracity Voice: That many?

Employee: Yes, it’s absolutely incredulous and in your face. It is both frustrating and depressing at the same time to see this traitorous conduct on a daily basis. It is time for Americans to take a stand against these globalists that are profiting through corruption.

Veracity Voice: Who are the people that run Name Brands Clothing in Tulsa?

Employee: As far as I know, Rusty Gaddy is the CEO, Jim Stevenson and Jim Breese are VP’s. At TPC there is Reid Lewellin and Jason Garman, both managers, and Brent Daily is the manager at the Tulsa Store, they all commit fraud on a daily bases. They do not care for America or Americans, all they care about is increasing their bonuses at the expense of everyone else, and what really bothers me is that the governments, both at the local and federal level engage in the same fraud, they do absolutely nothing about it. The Federal government knows very well that Name Brands has for well over a decade submitted thousands of false ID’s and SSN’s. This is criminal behavior at both the local and Federal level when the government chooses not to enforce its own laws.

Veracity Voice: What do you think should be done with these people?

Employee: These people are more than thieving fraudsters, they are traitors to the country and its people, so I say arrest Rusty Gaddy, arrest Jim Breese, arrest Jason Garman and Reid Lewellin, and arrest all of the crooks that run the criminal enterprise called Name Brands Clothing. These people are also very cowardly, if they find out that any employee is against their corruption they will slander him or her with false accusations, they will make up stuff to make that employee look bad. The two most egregious slanderers at Name Brands are Jason Garman and Jim Breese, they will slander and harass you to the point of desperation, and people will quit their jobs because of the continual harassment.

Veracity Voice: Job harassment is a crime.

Employee: Yes, and they get away with that too.

Veracity Voice: Talk a little bit about the one man that has used more than one ID to work at Name Brands.

Employee: Ya, he has three different aliases. I do not know which one is his real name, all I know is that Name Brands went out and got him a new fake ID, when they found out that the old ID the man was using belonged to a another man.

Veracity Voice: Where did they get the fake ID?

Employee: I do not know for sure, I heard that they went to some website run by the Federal government, and it provided Name Brands with a fake ID.

Veracity Voice: What do you think should be done with companies that choose to break the law as a regular part of doing business?

Employee: Again, arrest and prosecute the criminals, if law enforcement will not do their jobs, then Americans need to start fighting back by boycotting corporations like Name Brands that fragrantly and openly break the law. I mean these people act like it’s the turn of the 20^th century or something; these anti-American globalists – at the end of the day that’s what these people really are – Name Brands conducts business like multinationals that run sweatshops all over the third world. They help create the culture of illegal behavior, by giving employment to illegals, which allows the illegals to stay in the city, drive vehicles without drivers licenses and insurance, use emergency Heath Services at taxpayer cost, they currently function ‘above the law’ and all accountability. Real Americans need to stand up against these criminals before they completely destroy this country.

Veracity Voice: Many in the business sector and in the political establishment will argue that the illegals fill jobs that Americans will not do, this reasoning is also pushed by the mainstream media, what do you say to this reasoning?

Employee: I think it is a false argument, I’ve seen with my own eyes Name Brands turn away Americans willing to work, in some cases desperate for a job, they are turned away in favor of hiring illegals. So, that kind of reasoning is nothing more than an illusion.

Veracity Voice: Some will charge you with racism for holding these views, how do you respond to this kind of slander?

Employee: It has been my experience that those that accuse people of being racist are in fact racists themselves. They falsely accuse others of being racist so they could push their nefarious agenda by smearing the reputations of those that are opposed to their mendacity and corruption. The charge of racism holds no water in the case of illegal immigration.

Veracity Voice: Why don’t you look for another job?

Employee: I am its not easy finding work these days. And if I quit, I probably will not be able to collect unemployment benefits if I can’t find a job.

Veracity Voice: Why?

Employee: Because Name Brands will fight against your right to obtain unemployment insurance, its company policy. They will send their managers to testify against your eligibility for unemployment benefits, and they will without any hesitation, lie and malign anyone applying for the benefits.

Veracity Voice: They have done this before, entered false information against former employees to the Unemployment Bureau?

Employee: Yes, many times, and they get away with that too, companies like Name Brands function ‘above the law,’ and it must stop now.

Veracity Voice: Thank you for your time.

Employee: You’re welcome.

The massive unrestrained flux in illegal immigration has changed the demographics of Tulsa, forcing many businesses to provide bilingual services, including city and state government services at great cost to the taxpayer. It is the ongoing balkanization of the city where east Tulsa is now known as little Mexico, a criminal and negative phenomenon that is currently occurring in many cities across the nation.

Federal Government Seldom Able To Police Itself

America’s founders, largely distrustful of centralized power, created several checks and balances into the U.S. Constitution to help insure that one person, or one group of people, would not be able to unilaterally exert his or their will over the American citizenry. First, the federal government itself was divided into three separate and distinct branches–each holding the capability (and responsibility) to check the power of the other. Second, the Bill of Rights was made part of the Constitution for the protection of individual liberties. Third, the “free and independent states” of the nation retained their sovereignty and independence after the central government was created (by the states), with the Tenth Amendment specifically recognizing their authority and jurisdiction over matters not directly delegated to the federal government.

It was also assumed that the freedom of the press and the freedom of religion would help the citizenry be sufficiently informed and inspired to keep the would-be despots at bay. And, of course, “We the People” are recognized as being the ultimate guardians of liberty by the recognition that “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” (Declaration) The “consent of the governed” was given teeth by the constitutional recognition of the people’s right to wield the power of the voting booth, the jury box, and, as a last resort, the cartridge box.

What has become increasingly obvious to a large segment of the American populace is the complete unwillingness of the national media to hold the federal government accountable. Neither do America’s pulpits provide the moral leadership necessary to maintain good government. The freedom of the press and religion accomplish precious little today in the safeguarding of liberty. And it is also absolutely clear that the three branches of government in Washington, D.C., adamantly refuse to use the constitutional obligations placed upon them to hold the federal government in check.

The latter was made crystal clear by a recent decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. Here is the report:

“A decision by the U.S. Supreme Court means the federal government now has an open door to ‘detain as a threat to national security anyone viewed as a troublemaker,’ according to critics.

“The high court this week refused to review an appeals court decision that said the president and U.S. military can arrest and indefinitely detain individuals.

“The firm of William J. Olson, P.C., which filed a friend-of-the court brief asking the court to step in, noted that not a single justice dissented from the denial of the request for review.
‘The court ducked, having no appetite to confront both political parties in order to protect the citizens from military detention,’ the legal team said in a statement to WND. ‘The government has won, creating a tragic moment for the people–and what will someday be viewed as an embarrassment for the court.'”

The report continues: “The controversial provision authorizes the military, under presidential authority, to arrest, kidnap, detain without trial and hold indefinitely American citizens thought to ‘represent an enduring security threat to the United States.’

“Journalist Chris Hedges was among the plaintiffs charging the law could be used to target journalists who report on terror-related issues.

“A friend-of-the-court brief submitted in the case stated: ‘The central question now before this court is whether the federal judiciary will stand idly by while Congress and the president establish the legal framework for the establishment of a police state and the subjugation of the American citizenry through the threat of indefinite military arrest and detention, without the right to counsel, the right to confront one’s accusers, or the right to trial.’

“The brief was submitted to the Supreme Court by attorneys with the U.S.
Justice Foundation of Ramona, California; Friedman Harfenist Kraut & Perlstein of Lake Success, New York; and William J. Olson, P.C. of Vienna, Virginia.”

Amici Curiae of the brief included U.S. Congressman Steve Stockman, Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall, Virginia Senator Dick Black, Gun Owners of America, Downsize DC Foundation, Western Journalism Center, The Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, Tenth Amendment Center, Policy Analysis Center, Constitution Party National Committee, Professor Jerome Aumente, and yours truly, among others.

See the brief here:

The WND report goes on to say: “The 2012 NDAA was fast-tracked through the U.S. Senate, with no time for discussion or amendments, while most Americans were distracted by the scandal surrounding A&E’s troubles with ‘Duck Dynasty’ star Phil Robertson.

“Eighty-five of 100 senators voted in favor of the new version of the NDAA, which had already been quietly passed by the House of Representatives. [Disgustingly, Montana’s only U.S. House member, Republican Steve Daines, who purports himself to be a staunch conservative, voted for the indefinite detention provision of the NDAA, as did Montana’s two Democrat Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester. How did your congressman and senators vote? In my opinion, this is a monumentally-important vote, and a vote granting this unconstitutional power to the military and federal police agencies is inexcusable and demonstrates how both Democrats and Republicans will unite together to dismantle the constitutional protections of the American people in the name of “national security.”]

“Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and others filed a lawsuit in 2012 against the Obama administration to challenge the legality of an earlier version of the NDAA.

“It is Section 1021 of the 2012 NDAA, and its successors, that drew a lawsuit by Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Jennifer Bolen, Noam Chomsky, Alex O’Brien, Kai Warg All, Brigitta Jonsottir and the group U.S. Day of Rage. Many of the plaintiffs are authors or reporters who stated that the threat of indefinite detention by the U.S. military already had altered their activities.

“‘It’s clearly unconstitutional,’ Hedges said of the bill. ‘It is a huge and egregious assault against our democracy. It overturns over 200 years of law, which has kept the military out of domestic policing.’

“Hedges is a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times and was part of a team of reporters awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism.”

See the complete WND report here:

Remember that it was Republican President George W. Bush and a Republican U.S. House and Senate that shackled the American people with the USA Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security–along with the rest of the gargantuan police state apparatus under which the people of the United States are now being forced to live. And it is Democrat President Barack Obama and a Democrat U.S. Senate–along with a Republican U.S. House–that continues to expand the reach of this police state. One thing that both Republicans and Democrats and conservatives and liberals agree on is the construction and implementation of a police state. Under the rubric of “national security” or “law and order,” the Bill of Rights is being systematically and deliberately expunged by both sides of the political aisle.

And now we know the judicial branch of government in Washington, D.C., also refuses to hold the executive and legislative branches of government in check–as if we needed more evidence. Both Republican-appointed and Democrat-appointed justices refused to say a word condemning this draconian abuse of power within the NDAA. By so doing, the Supreme Court showed itself unwilling to stand in between the liberties of the American people and an ever-burgeoning police state.

In fact, when it comes to holding the government in DC in check, when does the Supreme Court ever intervene? Hardly ever! If it is a dispute between the states and the federal government or between individuals and the federal government, SCOTUS almost always rules in favor of DC.

Once-in-awhile, one or the other branch of government (including the judicial branch) in DC will be willing to protect constitutional liberties from another branch of government in DC, but such instances are the exception, not the rule.

And since the liberties of the American people have few friends in the national media or in the country’s pulpits, the protection of our freedoms has quickly come down to the states, the local media (yes, some local media is still friendly to freedom), county sheriffs, and the people ourselves.

Currently, there is a huge momentum building among State legislatures to begin pushing back against the overreach of Washington, D.C. For example, the State of Texas is squaring off against the BLM over tens of thousands of acres along the Red River border of Texas and Oklahoma, and the State of Utah has already passed legislation claiming more than 30 million acres currently controlled by the federal government. Here is an excerpt from a Breitbart.com report:

“Utah Governor Gary Herbert (R), earlier this year, signed the Transfer of Public Lands Act. This new state law calls upon the federal government to turn over control of more than 30 million acres to the State.”

See the complete report at:

Plus, more and more county sheriffs are beginning to stand against federal encroachments. Read this report:

And, of course, just recently it was “We the People” standing against a brutish, totalitarian-style federal assault against the Bundy family in Bunkerville, Nevada. And among the brave souls at Bunkerville were State and local officials and even county sheriffs. And I was there, too. Here is the video of my message to, and prayer service for, the Oath Keepers and militia on the ground there in Bunkerville:

As the three branches of government in Washington, D.C., become less and less accountable to the checks and balances assigned them by the Constitution, it is going to require that the states, county sheriffs, and people ourselves become more and more engaged in pushing back against federal overreach and abuse of power.

Sociopath Officials And Establishment Idiots

Watchdogs And Watchmen

The freedom of the press and the freedom of religion are two of the most important elements of a free society. These were so important to America’s Founding Fathers that they were protected in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. A free and independent press serves as watchdogs for liberty, while a free and independent church serves as watchmen for liberty. Sadly, both watchdog and watchman are, for the most part, missing in today’s America.

Just about everyone knows that the vast majority of the national press corps has a strong liberal bias. That’s a given. But, it’s actually worse than that. Instead of being watchdogs on the government, the mainstream media has become little more than lap dogs for the government. Instead of reporting the truth, most of the media is actually more concerned with covering up the truth. With precious few exceptions, investigative reporting is dead in the national news media.

Oh, sure. Republican administrations are depicted more negatively by the mainstream media than are Democrat administrations. No doubt about that. Can anyone recall the media hoopla over Vice President Dan Quayle’s misspelling of the word “potato”? The liberal media talked about that almost nonstop for months. But did you hear much of anything when President Barack Obama recently misspelled the word “respect”? I mean from media sources outside of FOX News? Nope. Nary a word.

But when it comes to investigating the truth behind what government spokesmen tell us, it doesn’t matter to a tinker’s dam whether it is a Republican or Democrat administration: about the only thing national newscasters know to do is to report whatever the official story of the government is. Once in a blue moon, a mainstream newspaper, such as the New York Times, will dare to print a report that questions an official government story, but not very often. And when such a report is printed, it digs only so deep. For the last several years, about the only major newspaper that has had the guts to actually do some real investigative reporting is the London Guardian. Even the Washington Times prints mostly milquetoast exposés.

CBS reporter, Sharly Attkisson, recently left the network due to its liberal bias and aversion to investigative reporting. Politico said this about Attkisson’s leaving: “Attkisson, who has been with CBS News for two decades, had grown frustrated with what she saw as the network’s liberal bias, an outsize influence by the network’s corporate partners and a lack of dedication to investigative reporting, several sources said. She increasingly felt that her work was no longer supported and that it was a struggle to get her reporting on air.”

See the Politico report here:

In an interview with the CBS affiliate in Philadelphia, Chris Stigall reported, “Responding to comments regarding a Phoenix television reporter yesterday who initially claimed that the White House pre-screens questions from reporters, Attkisson said, ‘I wouldn’t [be] surprised if sometimes there is that level of cooperation with some questions. If I need something answered from the White House and they won’t tell me, I’ll call our White House Correspondent. They’re friendlier with the White House Correspondents in general. So the White House Correspondent may ask Jay Carney or one of his folks about an issue and they will be told “ask that at the briefing and we’ll answer it.” They want to answer it in front of everybody. They do know it’s coming and they’ll call on you. There’s that kind of coordination sometimes. I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s sometimes more coordination. I don’t think it’s everybody on every briefing, every day. I’m pretty sure it’s not. But I think people would be surprised at the level of cooperation reporters have in general with politicians.’”

See Stigall’s report here:

Attkisson was putting it very mildly. There is more than just coordination going on between the federal government and the national news media; it’s more like coziness and calculated manipulation.

Since when has the major media dared to investigate and report the truth regarding any of the major events that have transpired in this country? The last time there was even a semblance of genuine investigative reporting seen in the national press corps was during the Watergate scandal when Richard Nixon was President–and that was politically-motivated from start to finish.

The mainstream media didn’t bother to seriously investigate Ruby Ridge or Waco or the Oklahoma City bombing or TWA Flight 800 or the Sandy Hook shootings or (and especially) the attacks which occurred on 9/11/01. These events took place with both Republicans and Democrats at the helm: it didn’t matter. Government spokesmen gave the media the official story, and the media repeatedly regurgitated the official story until anyone who dared to question the official story was turned into a conspiracy nut. That’s not reporting the news, folks. That is manipulating the news to disseminate propaganda. Joseph Goebbels had nothing on the major media in America today.

Again, the modern American media are not watchdogs over government; they are lap dogs for government. Reporters who try to truly dig and investigate are seldom rewarded–just the opposite. Their stories are buried–if published at all. They are disinvited from interviewing notable dignitaries. They are passed over for promotions–or even dismissed. It doesn’t take people in the news business long to get the message that if they want to go anywhere, they must toe the line and become good little puppets. The First Amendment freedom of the press has been negated by the press itself.

Likewise, the First Amendment freedom of religion has also been negated. A free and independent clergy is essential to the maintenance of liberty. But, for the most part, America has not had a free and independent clergy in decades.

The IRS 501c3 designation for churches, along with State incorporation, has turned America’s watchmen into little more than glorified CEOs. The average pulpit is just as politically correct as the national news media. Plus, the average church is as much about the bottom line as news shows.

Did you know that there used to be a time when the major television networks expected that their news shows would not operate in the black financially? It’s true. Back then, it was more important that news shows reported and investigated the news than turn a profit. Therefore, corporate donations and government chagrin had little impact upon newscasters and reporters. Those days are long gone.

By the same token, did you know that there used to be a time in this country when most of our pastors and ministers (regardless of denomination) were more concerned about being Biblically correct than being politically correct? For example, so prominent was the role that Presbyterian pastors played in the American Revolution that as news of the rebellion spread throughout England, Horace Walpole told his fellow members of the British Parliament, “There is no use crying about it. Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson, and that is the end of it.” Of course, Presbyterians were not the only clergymen in Colonial America to champion the cause of liberty and independence from behind their pulpits.

In truth, if it wasn’t for clergymen such as John Leland (along with political statesmen such as Patrick Henry, of course), it is doubtful that there would even be a First Amendment–or the rest of the Bill of Rights, for that matter.

But, back then, pastors were not motivated by the desire to build big buildings or impress political potentates or climb ecclesiastical elevators. They were motivated by courage and commitment. And you could tell it every time you went to church. They didn’t mince words; and their sermons seldom concluded in less than an hour. They were watchmen.

Sadly, in the same manner in which the national news media have abandoned their responsibility as America’s watchdogs, so, too, the vast majority of pastors have abandoned their responsibility as America’s watchmen. The First Amendment protection of the freedom of the press and religion is not enough to protect the freedom of the press and religion from themselves.

To be sure, many of our pastors and ministers today are sincere, compassionate, and honorable men. But they have never been taught the Biblical principles of liberty; they have never been taught how to apply the liberty principles of Scripture to our everyday lives–including our political lives; they have never been taught the true meaning of Biblical submission in general and Romans 13 in particular. However, more and more of these men are coming awake to these things. Of course, others stubbornly refuse to even consider the truth of these matters.

But, listen up, folks! Truth will always find a way to reveal itself: the dear Lord will make sure of that. As the mainstream media became toadies of Big Government, along came independent radio talk shows, newspapers, and the Internet. And in all likelihood, more people are getting their news and information from online sources today than from network or cable news shows. As a result, more and more people are awakening to the truth every day.

And, by the same token, as many establishment churches and pastors have become toadies of the IRS and political correctness, new, independent, unorganized, non-501c3 churches and fellowships are sprouting up all over America. Some of these groups are led by ministers whom God has led out of the establishment church. Others are led by laymen who have likewise left the establishment church. I hear from these people every day. And, by the grace of God, I hope to be more personally involved in helping Christian people around the country form liberty-oriented churches. More on that soon.

The First Amendment was designed to protect America’s watchdogs and watchmen. And it is a truism that there can never be a revival of liberty in this land without a resurrection of our watchdogs and watchmen. The good news is that resurrection is already taking place.

Addressing Concerns Over “Son of God” Film

Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. ~ Eph 5:11

Not surprisingly the movie “Son of God” has created quite a stir in the Christian community.  Before I gave the theater my money I read several reviews, blog posts, Facebook comments and viewed TV interviews of husband and wife team Mark Burnett and Roma Downey promoting their film.  Roma is a familiar face to many and is best-known for her role on the successful TV show “Touched by An Angel.”  Mark Burnett is the executive producer of a string of hit TV shows such as “Survivor,” “The Voice, “Celebrity Apprentice,” “Shark Tank,” and he has won several Emmys.

When I first heard that another full-length feature film about the life of Christ was coming to the silver screen, I was skeptical for several reasons.  First, Mark and Roma are  and I was concerned that the movie would be produced from this perspective; a perspective that in many cases I disagree with.

Second, I learned that Roma earned a degree in “spiritual psychology” from the University of Santa Monica, a private graduate school founded by New Age spiritual and self-help quack John-Roger.   P.J. Miller is not being flippant when he asks:

What do you call someone who is a student of new age psychology and spiritualism? Do you call them new agers? Do you call them seekers? Would you dare call them Christian? Well, if you’re Roma Downey, then yes, you would call yourself all the above. ()

Third, a  shows Jesus asking Peter to follow Him. Peter looks skeptical and asks Jesus what they’re going to do.  Jesus grins and replies “Change the world.”  Well, no.  Jesus never said those words to Peter!  Here’s what Jesus actually said:

While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. (Mat 4:18-20)

Jesus commanded  — Peter and Andrew dropped what they were doing to follow Him.  (More on this in a moment.)  Another clip shows a woman sitting in a boat on the Sea of Galilee with Jesus and the apostles during the storm where Jesus walks on water.  But according to Scripture there was no woman in the boat:

Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds.  () 

In the movie Mary was the woman in the boat.  But why would they have a woman in the boat when Matthew informs us that the  got into the boat.  Mary wasn’t one of the twelve disciples/apostles – no woman was!

Finally, S. Michael Houdmann revealed in his review of the movie that, “the reason for Jesus’ death and the meaning of His resurrection are completely missing. The fact that Jesus’ death is the atoning sacrifice for sin is not mentioned at all ().”

As I said, “Son of God” has elicited a great deal of controversy as did Mark and Roma’s “” miniseries produced by LightWorkers Media, a company owned by them. This “” program aired on the History Channel last year. “We knew when we were shooting,” said Downey, “that the Jesus portion of our ‘Bible’ series was special and we shot much more footage and we’ve re-edited many more scenes into a stand-alone feature film called ‘Son of God.'”   I don’t have the space to tackle the “The Bible” brouhaha.  I will say, though, that several highly controversial pastors sat on the . They include , , ,  and.  (For more on “The Bible” go to Resources below)

The Son of God?

“Son of God” opened on February 28, so by now a lot of folks have had the opportunity to view it in theatres and many more will have it streaming into their living rooms in a few months.  Naturally, reviews were quickly written, some good, some not so good.  (You’ll find links to the reviews at the end of this piece.) Suffice to say that in a short amount of time a lot has been said about the film.

Many of you won’t be surprised to learn that Mark and Roma asked Saddleback Church founder Rick Warren to help spread their version of the “good news.”   He happily agreed.  “I’ve seen most of the films produced about Jesus in the past 50 years,” said the pastor, “and ‘Son of God’ is the best.  We’re excited Jesus is back on the big screen, and we’re going to fill the theaters. I want every other faith leader in America to do the same.”

So – why would the man who is affectionately called “America’s Pastor” agree to promote a film that its critics describe as outright unbiblical?

Not only did Warren endorse the film, according to the Baptist Standard staff report :

Pastor and author Rick Warren partnered with LifeWay Christian Resources to release a Bible study related to the Son of God movie from 20th Century Fox, which hits theaters Feb. 28.

The small-group curriculum resource by Warren, , is a companion piece to the movie produced by husband-and-wife team Mark Burnett and Roma Downey.

The six-session study features video clips from the movie and videos from Warren explaining Jesus’ teachings and their impact on people’s lives. Topics include baptism, temptation, suffering, death, resurrection and ministry. ()

As a Southern Baptist preacher, Rick Warren knows perfectly well that the Roman Catholic Church holds to the view that it is the one true Church.  Thus, any church outside the RCC is anathematized (excommunicated, cursed or damned). The Protestant Reformers held the view that the RCC’s gospel is not a gospel that saves; therefore the RCC is apostate.  Anyone who rejects the true gospel – we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone – is an unbeliever.  Period.  Warren also knows what the Bible teaches regarding believers going into :

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness. ()

Here’s the thing.  Not everyone who professes the name of Christ has a true saving faith.  What about Mark Burnett and Roma Downey?  Do they have a true saving faith?  Let’s examine the fruit.

Endorsements

Popular pastor and author Mark Driscoll’s church bought out 3,500 seats.  In 2013 he and his wife shared a stage with Mark and Roma at Resurgence 13.  Driscoll later remarked:

We watched the world premier trailer for  at the conference, and the footage choked me up as I thought of the millions of people who will hear about Jesus through this project. I am so encouraged by God’s work through this couple. ()

God’s work?

The connection between the Passover sacrifice (Exodus 12) and Jesus as the Lamb of God () is not made. The fact that Jesus’ resurrection proves His victory over death and sin and guarantees a resurrected eternal life for all who believe in Him (1 Corinthians 15) is nowhere to be found.  — S. Michael Houdmann

Another endorser of the film was “Social Justice Christian” Rev. Jim Wallis.  In my column  I wrote:

This man wears many hats.  He is the founder of Sojourner’s Magazine, speaker, author and activist.  He’s also President Obama’s “spiritual advisor.”  This alone speaks volumes.  Rev. Wallis insists that he’s an evangelical Christian even though he has abandoned the biblical gospel for the “social gospel.”  He believes he’s on a mission from God to assist the poor and oppressed to bring forth the Kingdom of God on earth. 

When this purveyor of the false social justice gospel was asked for advice by the couple, he gladly gave it to them:

What won me over to the whole series was the clip about Jesus meeting Peter, the fisherman. In a Washington, D.C., premiere of “The Bible” series a few weeks ago, I had wonderful conversations with Mark and Roma. Mark asked me if they were right to have Jesus say that he wanted to change the world. Those words are not literally in the scriptures, but it seemed to him and Roma that’s exactly what Jesus was talking about. Absolutely correct, I told them both. And we went through the first few chapters of Mathew which demonstrate that truth. I love the clarity and courage of the statement from Jesus in “The Bible.”

Sunny Shell disagrees:

Christ came into the world to save sinners from the righteous wrath of God, which is the just penalty for our sins. He never said He came to change the world. He said He came to transform people by giving them new hearts and new minds through repentance and faith in Christ alone. ()

The Examiner listed the names of churches and organizations that distributed tickets for a so-called “Theater Take-Over”:

Joel Osteen, pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Tex., who is distributing 8,000 tickets donated by an anonymous donor; Jerry Falwell, Jr., of Liberty University which has more than 12,000 students; Craig Groeschel of LifeChurch which has 18 campuses in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma; Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles with over four million members and Miles McPherson of the Rock Church with weekly attendance of more than 10,000 in San Diego, Calif. (Emphasis in original – )

In an article that appeared on Fox News, Mark and Roma wrote:

In all our combined years in the entertainment industry, we’ve never seen anything like this kind of grass-roots support for a project. It is truly miraculous.

So, too, is the unprecedented depth and breadth of those who have endorsed the film. Pastors like Rick, as well as scholars and faith organizations, have graciously supported our effort to share this story of our Savior – though they belong to different denominations, adhere to varying theological doctrine, worship God in their own unique ways. 

Bishop T.D. Jakes of The Potter’s House in Dallas said “the audience will be enthralled, encouraged and inspired.” 

S. Michael Houdmann was not enthralled by the movie.  In his review he writes:

The Son of God presents a Jewish Messiah who is crucified, dies, comes back to life, and commissions His followers to spread the word. But why did He have to die? What is the meaning of the resurrection? What is the message the apostles were supposed to proclaim, and why was it worth dying for? 

More from the Fox News article…

Joel Osteen of Lakewood Church in Houston called it “an epic work that touches the heart.”

The Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles Jose Gomez says it’s “a very important movie because it gives us the opportunity to realize God’s presence in our own lives.”()

Certainly there are by now “Church leaders” that are sincerely shocked to find out that they endorsed a movie produced by New Age Catholics.  Here’s more proof from a 2010 article  that shows she’s an advocate of New Age/New Thought spirituality:

Says Roma, who lives in Malibu, ‘My kids go to school about a 40-minute drive away. I’m open to the group’s opinion about what we listen to on the way there. On the way back, I get my own selections — books on tape by Eckhart Tolle, Tony Robbins…My husband says I’m so self-realized I’m practically levitating.’

For those who are unfamiliar with Eckhart Tolle, he’s a New Ager.  A few years ago Tolle paired up with  to do 10 online classes on XM Satellite radio on his blockbuster book “A New Earth: Are You Ready to Be Awakened.”  Oprah and Tolle took participants through his book chapter by chapter.  Regrettably, a large number of professing Christians took the class!

 guru and “coach for success” Anthony Robbins once said: “My definition of success is to live your life in a way that causes you to feel tons of pleasure and very little pain.”  Evidently no pain is experienced after completing a barefoot firewalk, a self-empower technique Robbins’ teaches to get an otherwise sane person to walk on a bed of burning hot coals during his “Unleash The Power Within” seminar.  On this  you’ll hear the sound of drums beating and the crowd chanting “YES! YES! YES!” as Robbinswhips them into a frenzy in preparation for the firewalk.

More…

Roma appeared on “psychic medium”  TV show and allegedly spoke to her deceased mother.  What does the Bible have to say about consulting a medium?

And he burned his son as an offering and used fortune-telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. ()

Well, it’s apparent that Roma, who says she loves the Bible, is unaware—or doesn’t care–that God says consulting a medium is evil.

Later she collaborated with Edwards by providing a CD to accompany a book he wrote:

Roma prays the entire rosary on the beautiful CD that comes along with this book. It’s quite lovely and gives you the special opportunity and a unique spiritual closeness to Roma to be able to pray right along with her as if she was right there at your side.” ()

So now you know a bit about two New Age gurus Roma Downey looks forward to listening to each day and an occultist she collaborated with.  The worldview of these men is as far from Christianity as the Earth is from Pluto.

P.J. Miller sat listening to Jim Bakker introduce Mark and Roma on Bakker’s TV show and recalled “their previous work on the History Channel’s The Bible and how they managed to literally re-write the Bible itself, and presented another gospel message altogether. I was captured by their … aggressive but subtle attempt to portray themselves as ‘believers’.  The sappy spiritual love fest that permeated on set showed me that something was indeed changing within Christianity, and that something was another Jesus being introduced to the masses.”

Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. ()

After several weeks of due diligence I’ve decided that “Son of God” is not a film I wish to see.  In addition to the concerns I have included in this article, my research has turned up many more — way too many to incorporate here.  Most troubling is the astonishing lack of discernment shown by some of our so-called Christian leaders.  The Son of God I serve is best described in the Bible which is the inerrant, infallible, inspired Word of God.  Inspired means that God moved through the writers to convey to those who read it the words He wanted us to hear.  So to change the words that Christ spoke is prideful and wicked.

It’s unfortunate that those who are unfamiliar with the biblical Jesus and see this film will not come away with a clear understanding of His mission here on Earth.

He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. ()

Resources:

“Son of God” Reviews

 by Sunny Shell

 by S. Michael Houdmann

 by Ben Kayser

“The Bible” Review

 by Sunny Shell

 by Stand Up For The Truth

Endorsements

 by Stand Up For The Truth

New Age/New Thought Movement

 by Marsha West

 by Marsha West

Rick Warren

 by Stand Up For The Truth

 by Marsha West

 by Ken Silva

Miscellaneous

 by Michael Horton

Rome anathematized itself at the Council of Trent

 by Marsha West

 – 

Obama’s Corporate Plantations

Deregulation, Privatization, and Cheap Labor…

The man who promised to restore hope and bring change to America, has announced a plan to open five corporate plantations in the United States. On Thursday, President Barack Obama, whose policies have resulted in the greatest number of public sector job losses in US History (Public sector jobs have declined by 718,000 jobs since Obama took office.) announced the opening of five “Promise Zones” located in San Antonio, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, southeastern Kentucky, and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. According to an article in USA Today:

“Under the proposed Promise Zones, the federal government plans to partner with local governments and businesses to provide tax incentives and grants to help combat poverty.” (“Obama to name 5 ‘Promise Zones’ for assistance“, USA Today)

Combatting poverty’ has nothing to do with it. Obama plans to shower the nation’s biggest corporations–which recorded record profits in the last year and are presently sitting on more than $1.3 trillion in cash–with more lavish subsidies and tax breaks while providing an endless source of cheap slave labor to boost future earnings. The president believes that the wealth generated in these profit zones, er, promise zones will trickle down to the area’s residents, even though–as the Christian Science Monitor notes–”it can be hard to tell whether a program’s benefits reach the poorest people, rather than flowing largely into the hands of the business owners who get the tax credits.”

Here’s more from USA Today:

“Obama said his administration plans “to partner with 20 of the hardest-hit towns in America to get these communities back on their feet. We’ll work with local leaders to target resources at public safety, and education, and housing.” (USA Today)

Translation: The Obama administration is committed to assisting the corporate oligarchy whenever possible even if it means further eviscerating the rapidly-diminishing US middle class and reducing millions of hard-working Americans to grinding third world poverty. Deregulation will allow corporations to privatize policing, education and any other lucrative public resource or service. According to the New York Times: “White House officials said the Promise Zones initiative would not provide new money, rather it would be aimed at providing the local governments and agencies “aid in cutting through red tape to get access to existing resources.”

No new money??

How do you like that? So, the man that helped push through the multi-trillion dollar Wall Street bailouts is not going to give one red cent to the nation’s poorest and most needy people. Instead, he is going to do whatever he can to eliminate the rules that keep voracious corporations from feeding at the public trough.

Conservative Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — “praised the proposed Promise Zone for Eastern Kentucky saying:

“I wrote a letter last year supporting this designation because this region has suffered enormous economic hardship over the last several years,” McConnell said in a statement.”

Mitch McConnell likes Obama’s plan. That says it all, doesn’t it?

Plantations were a familiar feature of the antebellum South, but were abandoned following the Civil War. Now a new generation of corporate kleptocrats want to revive the tradition. They think that weakening consumer demand and persistent stagnation can only be overcome by skirting vital labor protections and shifting more of the cost of production onto workers. Obama’s promise zones provide a way for big business to slip the chains of “onerous” regulations and restore, what many CEO’s believe to be, the Natural Order, that is, a Darwinian, dog-eat-dog world where only the strongest and most cunning survive. This is a world in which Obama has done quite well, although he’s had to distance himself from his political base and throw friends under the bus (Jeremiah Wright) in his relentless climb to the top. Even so, selling out has never been an issue for Obama.

Special economic zones are not a new idea, in fact, they’ve been tried in the UK, Australia and other places where the global bank cartel exerts its grip. In Tokyo, last month, right-wing PM, Shinzo Abe announced the launching of his own “Special Economic Zones”. Here’s a short summary of Abe’s plan from an article in the Japan Times:

“Special zones aimed at spurring corporate investment through deregulation and tax incentives are to be created in Tokyo as well as Osaka and central Aichi Prefecture….Other deregulation steps to debut in such zones will let private firms operate public schools, let experts without teaching licenses teach classes, expand the scope of treatment that can be administered by non-Japanese doctors and nurses, facilitate the use of foreign drugs and increase the number of hospital beds.” (Japan Times)

Sound familiar? Deregulation, privatization, and cheap labor; the toxic coctail that has vaporized the US middle class and wiped out a good portion of the developing world.

Obama calls these promise zones. We think corporate plantations is a more fitting moniker.

Reflections on 2013: A Year of Growing Tension

How do you sum up 2013 as a year for the United States and her citizens? What criteria do you use? Good, bad and ugly? As Clint Eastwood said, “A man’s got to know his limitations. Well, do ya’ punk?” The same could be said for our country. Do we understand our limitations?

On the immigration front, 20 million illegal aliens “itched” to get themselves legalized so they could continue their “Aztlan Reconquista” of the four southwestern states. Spanish co-equals English in America because Congress runs from any sense of responsibility to our immigration laws and the English language that built America. As their numbers grow, illegal migrants march toward their goal with the help of President Barack Obama, himself a non-citizen, the ACLU, and 535 Congressional critters that refuse to enforce our Constitutional laws.

After 11 years replete with $1 trillion wasted, our military men and women remain in the Islamic insane asylum of Afghanistan doing nothing but pouring money and lives down the rat-hole. The military industrial complex works its wonders with Obama and Congress to start a war with Iran. The bankers and moneychangers lick their chops at the thought of endless and meaningless wars overseas. As General Smedley Butler said in his memoirs, “War is a racket for bankers and politicians.”

Psychologists expect anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 young men will commit suicide from their senseless service in the Islamic nuthouse of the Middle East. Endless forms of PTSD cause broken marriages, fatherless families, alcoholic & drug addicted soldiers and nonstop misfortune for our military veterans.

For a 5th straight year, Barack Obama proves himself an inept, incompetent and totally lackluster president of the United States. Food stamp recipients charged from 36 million at the beginning of his first term to 48.1 million subsisting on food stamps today. He drove the federal deficit from $12 trillion in 2008 to its current $18 trillion in 2013. More blacks suffer unemployment, poverty, incarceration and welfare than under any other president.

While 14 million Americans remained unemployed and 7 million under employed, Obama and Congress imported over 2.0 million legal and illegal immigrants into America in 2013. Obama and Congress failed to create jobs for the 48.1 million Americans living on food stamps, but they increased section 8 housing, “free” school lunches, medical care and ESL courses for illegal foreign children.

Because the U.S. continues as the third largest and fastest growing country because of immigration, we also accelerate global carbon footprint with millions of added car exhausts, chimneys and factories that acidifies our oceans and causes such horrific weather changes that create Hurricane Sandy, Katrina and Typhoon Haiyan. With the expected 100 million additional immigrants in the next 36 years, we can expect Mother Nature to respond commensurately.

On the sociological front, we saw Hispanic George Zimmerman kill one young thug named Trayvon Martin that created national headlines while 1,400 black Americans killed another 1,400 black Americans—but no one at the national level, the Black Caucus or Al Sharpton made a mention of blacks slaughtering blacks. Meanwhile, the mainstream media made not one mention of “Black Flash Mobs” or “Black Knockout Games” where American blacks run around killing whites for the fun of it. Three blacks in Oklahoma killed a white Australian college baseball player, “For the fun of it.”

If you look at the dropout/flunkout rates in our educational systems such as a 76 percent high school dropout rate in Detroit, Michigan to 60 percent flunkout rate in Mexican-dominated Los Angeles, we continue on our downward spiral of a “functionally illiterate” civilization where dumb people outnumber educated people, but enjoy endless welfare, food, cell phones, medical care and housing on the backs of those of us who study, work and contribute.

On the federal level, we see a culture of corruption in the Obama White House and Congress that gave us incompetence, malfeasance and covered up the Benghazi murders, Fast and Furious gun running, NSA spying, 22 Islamic jihad compounds now operating in America and imported tens of thousands of Muslims via legal immigration that will end up undermining our country’s culture, language and laws.

Sharia Law charges into our country as fast as their numbers grow. Obama features eight Islamic staff working full time in the White House. In the next three years, we will see countless tens of thousands of Muslims imported into America to bring “hope and change” for Islam in America. At some point, Muslims will bomb our electrical grid with multiple-coordinated teams, which will make 9/11 look like a garden party. Few of us realize our vulnerability, and remember, when jihad warriors succeed, they enjoy 72 virgins in Islamic heaven.

On the health-care front, Obamacare stumbled, faltered and fell on every level. Ironically, Americans show they don’t care about their health, as over half of our population grows intolerably obese. Fifty millions Americans smoke, 10 million alcoholics abound while diabetes became a national epidemic. Cancer continues as the number one killer, but few connect it to our contaminated air, water and soil via endless chemicals injected into our biosphere.

On the trade front, China owns us. They buy U.S. companies, land and entire office districts here in the USA. By the time they get done, they will dictate what we do, who we are and how we operate.

As we transform and deform into a polyglot, chaotic, multi-lingual and multicultural society, we continue to watch the Middle Class degrade into non-existence. We watch the American flag become the Mexican flag, the Middle Eastern flag and hundreds of other flags from immigrants that could care less about America.

On the international front, no one suspects or reports on the growing radioactive plume originating from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown. That radio-active water circulates into all the oceans—contaminating every living creature below the waters around the world—and contaminating all the fish and marine life we use for food. That event will prove the greatest ecological debacle for humanity for all of history. Cancers, destroyed eco-systems, degraded oceans and much worse await humanity.

What’s amazing about 2013? Men wasted 29 hours weekly watching the idiot box as to football, baseball, hockey and basketball. For the Americans with jobs, we partied, played and ordered pizza. We drove around without the faintest clue as to what Congress and Obama continue accomplishing: utterly and completely ignoring our sacred Constitution and Bill of Rights.

As we dance into 2014, I can only appreciate that our country faces financial collapse, sociological degradation, environmental deterioration, accelerated immigration numbers to 2.0 million annually, millions of jobless whites, blacks and Hispanics, energy exhaustion, environmental breakdown and resource depletion.

Will 2014 get better? This should foreshadow the answer as Mark Twain said, “Suppose you were an idiot; and suppose you were a member of Congress; ah, but I repeat myself.”

Another Facebook writer said, “Obama is what you get when you allow idiots, illegals and welfare recipients to vote.”

Watch Out Alternative Media: LAX Shooter Paul Ciancia Branded A Conspiracy Theorist

The demonization of free thinking individuals is about to begin. By branding Paul Ciancia a conspiracy theorist, all of us will come under scrutiny.

Anyone who does not believe wholeheartedly in the crap the government tries to feed them on a daily basis will become a danger to society.

It stands to reason that after a major public incidence of violence such as mass shootings or bombings, people want answers. It’s right and proper that these cases are investigated and as many answers as possible are provided to the citizens of this country.

Having said that, an alarming pattern is emerging.

Some events are highlighted and get massive coverage on television, on the Internet and in the newspapers, but most incidents do not.

Those that can’t be ‘spun’ by the government are given a couple of lines in the papers or a minute of airtime, and that’s it. Done. Gone. Forgotten.

The events that can be used by the government, get acres of print space and constant news coverage. In addition they always have a reason behind them that benefits the government in some way.

Let me show you what I mean. In 2012 88 people were killed in mass shootings in the United States. Sixteen mass shootings with 88 deaths.(source) Here’s the list:

February 22, 2012: Five people were killed in at a Korean health spa in Norcross, Georgia, when a man opened fire inside the facility in an act suspected to be related to domestic violence.

February 26, 2012: Multiple gunmen began firing into a nightclub in Jackson, Tennessee, killing one person and injuring 20 others.

February 27, 2012: Three students at Chardon High School in rural Ohio were killed when a classmate opened fire.

March 8, 2012: Two people were killed and seven wounded at a psychiatric hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when a gunman entered the hospital with two semiautomatic handguns and began firing.

March 31, 2012: A gunman opened fire on a crowd of mourners at a North Miami, Florida funeral home, killing two people and injuring 12 others.

April 2, 2012: A 43-year-old former student at Oikos University in Oakland, California walked into his former school and killed seven people, “execution-style.” Three people were wounded.

April 6, 2012: Two men went on a deadly shooting spree in Tulsa, Oklahoma shooting black men at random in an apparently racially motivated attack. Three men died, and two were wounded.

May 29, 2012: A man in Seattle, Washington opened fire in a coffee shop killing five people and then himself.

July 9, 2012: At a soccer tournament in Wilmington, Delaware, three people were killed, including a 16-year-old player and the event organizer when multiple gunmen began firing shots, apparently targeting the organizer.

July 20, 2012: James Holmes enters a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises and opens fire with a semi-automatic weapon; twelve people are killed, and fifty-eight are wounded.

August 5, 2012: A white supremacist and Army veteran shot six people to death inside a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin before killing himself.

August 14, 2012: Three people were killed at Texas A&M University when a 35-year-old man went on a shooting rampage; one of the dead was a police officer.

September 27, 2012: A 36-year-old man who had just been laid off from Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis, Minnesota entered his former workplace and shot five people to deathand wounded three others before killing himself.

October 21, 2012: 45-year-old Radcliffe Frankin Haughton shot three women to death, including his wife, Zina Haughton, and injured four others at a spa in Brookfield, Wisconsin before killing himself.

December 11, 2012: A 22-year-old began shooting at random at a mall near Portland, Oregonkilling two people and then himself.

December 14, 2012: One man, and possibly more, murders a reported twenty-six people at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, including twenty children, before killing himself.

2013 is looking very similar, those cases that got/get airtime are the  case back in February, the Boston Bombings in April, the Navy Yard shooting in September, and of course the incident at LAX. There are other cases that in total killed over 30 people (source) but they didn’t have the required ‘spin’ factor so they have not stayed in the news.

All the cases that have made it big, news wise, have had a message from the government to us. These cases were chosen by the government to highlight the need for more gun control, more surveillance and tighter security. I believe that the ‘evidence’ for these events was tailored. Tailored to suit the government’s needs at the time. To give the public a reason for the measures that will be imposed to ‘solve’ the problem. It was spun and nipped and tucked and most likely bears no resemblance to the original reasons behind the act.

With the LAX shooting they have gone a step further. In addition to once again raising the issue of privately owned assault rifles, they have put terms like ‘New World Order’ and ‘fiat currency’ into the wider public domain.

They are pre-conditioning the wider public in subjects usually confined to alternative media.The average Joe on the street is not familiar with these terms. But now the government itself has introduced them. They have publicly acknowledged them and linked them to the term ‘conspiracy theorist’.

From Sky News US:

A note allegedly found in the suspect’s bag said that he wanted to kill at least one transport officer with his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and didn’t care which one.

“Black, white, yellow, brown, I don’t discriminate,” the note read, according to a paraphrase by a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.

The suspect’s screed also mentioned “fiat currency” and “NWO,” possible references to the New World Order, a conspiracy theory that foresees a one-world government. (emphasis added)

I will bet my last dollar that in the very near future alternative media will be mentioned. Alternative media sites will be accused of spreading these messages.

We, the alternative media, both writers and readers are next on the list to be demonized. We are the next ‘issue’ that the government needs to find a solution to. Like gun control et al, we have become a target.

The government knows that the alternative media is growing. That more and more people are looking for answers that the mainstream does not provide. This cannot be allowed. It is dangerous to a government that sees itself as omnipotent.

The ‘revelations’ that will come out over the next few days will most likely say that Paul Ciancia frequented alternative media websites and that these sites had a bearing on his actions.

Gone are the days when a man with a gun is just insane, vindictive or just plain bad and decides to shoot people. Now there always has to be a reason, and that reason always has to be one that will allow the government to ride in and rescue us.

It will always be a reason that gives them justification for exercising more control over our lives and this time the reason could well be us, the alternative media.

Source: The Daily Sheeple

Mind Control And The New World Order

On 28 November 1953, at 2 am, a man crashed through a closed window and fell to his death from the 10th floor of the Statler Hotel in New York City. He was identified as Frank Olson, a bacteriologist with the US Army Research Center at Fort Detrick, Maryland. He had fallen from a room he shared with another scientist, Robert Lashbrook. It was ruled a suicide.

Twenty-two years later, in 1975, William Colby, then CIA director, declassified documents that changed the complexion of the case. It was revealed that Olson had actually been an undercover CIA operative at Fort Detrick, and that one week prior to his death, he had been drinking Cointreau at a high-level meeting with scientists at Deep Creek Lodge in rural Maryland. The Cointreau was laced with a large dose of LSD administered by his CIA boss, Sidney Gottlieb. He was then sent to New York with Lashbrook, also with the CIA, to see a psychiatrist because the LSD had induced a psychosis.

It was also revealed that Olson had been part of the top secret CIA program that was known as Project MK-ULTRA, exploring the use of chemicals and drugs for purposes of mind control, and bacteriological agents for covert assassination. Olson had been working on ways to deliver anthrax in aerosol form, for use as a weapon. New evidence that came to light, through the persistent efforts of Olson’s son Eric, made the suicide ruling highly suspect.

It turned out that Olson had been labelled a security risk by British intelligence after getting upset witnessing human experimentation on a trip to Frankfurt, Germany the previous summer. Eric Olson now believes that his father was drugged and then murdered to make sure that he didn’t reveal the secrets of the . Following the 1975 revelations, the government must have felt more than a little guilt about the affair because Olson’s family was given a 17 minute audience with US President Ford, who apologised to them, and they were awarded damages in the amount of $750,000.

Controlling Human Behaviour

The MK-ULTRA program was instituted on 13 April 1953 by CIA Director Allen Dulles, ostensibly to counter the brainwashing techniques of American prisoners being held by the North Koreans during the Korean War, and to duplicate those techniques on enemy prisoners, i.e. the creation of “Manchurian Candidates.” This was the claim used to obtain funding for the project. However, the Prisoner of War brainwashing program was just the tip of the iceberg, and the CIA-sponsored experiments ventured far and wide into areas of Mind Control under the aegis of MK-ULTRA that had little or nothing to do with methods of interrogation.

The Colby revelations were part of a sweeping investigation of the CIA in January 1975 by the “Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States,” chaired by Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller. The subsequent June 1975 Report to the President said: “The drug program was part of a much larger CIA program to study possible means for controlling human behaviour. Other studies explored the effects of radiation, electric-shock, psychology, psychiatry, sociology and harassment substances.”

Even though the program got off to a rocky start with the Olson affair, it recovered quickly and became an umbrella project with 149 sub-projects. The overall guiding principal was succinctly stated in an internal CIA memo dated January 1952: “Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self-preservation?” 

The drug program came under the aegis of the Chemical Division of the Technical Services Staff headed up by Sidney Gottlieb from 1951 to 1956. Gottlieb was a highly intelligent eccentric who drank goat’s milk, enjoyed folk-dancing, and raised Christmas trees on his farm outside Washington.

The Agency funded LSD research programs at major medical centres and universities including Boston Psychopathic, Mt. Sinai Hospital at Columbia University, University of Illinois Medical School, University of Oklahoma and others. The funding was carried out secretly through the Josiah Macy Foundation, and the Geschickter Fund for Medical Research in Washington, D.C. The CIA claimed the secrecy was necessary to keep it from the Russians, but we have already seen that it was part of much larger project to learn how to control human behaviour in general, so this is not credible.

Gottlieb told Dr. Harold Abramson at Mt. Sinai (who just happened to be the psychiatrist that Olson was supposed to see!) that he wanted “operationally pertinent materials [about]: a. Disturbance of Memory; b. Discrediting by Aberrant Behaviour; c. Alteration of Sex Patterns; d. Eliciting of Information; e. Suggestibility; f. Creation of Dependence.” That sounds like pretty deep stuff for the spy game. They were really afraid of public reaction and congressional condemnation, especially since the CIA charter did not allow domestic operations, and certainly prohibited experimentation on US citizens.

The callousness of the research is best exemplified by the CIA-funded work of Dr. Harris Isbell, the Director of the Addiction Research Center in Lexington, Kentucky. The drug addict hospital inmates, who were mostly black, were encouraged to volunteer for LSD research in return for hard drugs of their choice or time off their sentences. In most cases, they were given pure morphine or heroin. At one point Isbell kept seven men on LSD for 77 straight days. Many others were on it for up to 42 days.

Concerning extended LSD usage, John Marks in his landmark book  says about writer Hunter S. Thompson (recently deceased) that he “frightened his readers with accounts of drug (LSD) binges lasting a few days, during which Thompson felt his brain boiling away in the sun, his nerves wrapping around enormous barbed wire forts, and his remaining faculties reduced to their reptilian antecedents.” The recent movie , starring Johnny Depp, based on the autobiographical book by Hunter S. Thompson, presents an imaginative re-enactment of his LSD adventures.

The CIA Turns On the Counter-Culture

Not satisfied with university research, Gottlieb recruited New York narcotics agent George White to distribute LSD surreptitiously to the “borderline underworld.” Operating through safe houses in Greenwich Village, Haight-Ashbury and Marin County, White gave doses to prostitutes, pimps, drug addicts and other “marginal people” and then observed the results and reported to Gottlieb.

John Marks says they were people “who would be powerless to seek any sort of revenge if they ever found out what the CIA had done to them. In addition to their being unlikely whistle-blowers, such people lived in a world where an unwitting dose of some drug… was an occupational hazard anyway.”

Eventually, White started using it randomly all over New York and San Francisco. Regarding the results, Marks says, “The MKULTRA scientists reaped little but disaster, mischief, and disappointment from their efforts to use LSD as a miracle weapon against the minds of their opponents.” Yet, they continued this program for 10 years until 1963.

Ironically, since the CIA had pretty much cornered the market on LSD internationally, buying up all the product of Sandoz and Eli Lilly, the spread of the drug to the counter-culture was through the Agency., Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsburg and Tom Wolfe were first “turned on” thanks to the CIA, and that’s how the “flower children” became psychedelic.

But, the LSD experiments may have been more successful than Marks realised. They were carefully noting the precise effects on brain chemistry, and in the six areas that Gottlieb was concerned with: memory disturbance, aberrant behaviour, altered sexual patterns, eliciting information, suggestibility and creation of dependence. This became evident when they started using LSD as an adjunct in hypnotic and electronic experiments.

Re-Patterning the Brain

Perhaps the most notorious and nefarious MK-ULTRA sub-project was carried out at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, Canada under the directorship of Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron, an American from Albany, New York. Cameron had trained at the Royal Mental Hospital in Glasgow, Scotland, under eugenicist Sir David Henderson, and founded the Canadian branch of the World Federation for Mental Health. At various times, he was elected president of the Canadian, American, and World psychiatric associations. In other words, Cameron was no renegade but had the full faith and endorsement of the world psychiatric establishment.

The CIA wanted Cameron to “depattern” the contents of the brain to make it receptive to new patterning.  in a Washington Post article on 28 July 1985 said:

“The…. heart of the laboratory was the Grid Room…. The subject was strapped into a chair involuntarily, by force, his head bristling with electrodes and transducers. Any resistance was met with a paralysing dose of curare. The subject’s brainwaves were beamed to a nearby reception room crammed with voice analysers, a wire recorder and radio receivers cobbled together… The systematic annihilation or ‘depatterning’ of a subject’s mind and memory was accomplished with overdoses of LSD, barbiturate sleep for 65 days at a stretch and ECT shocks at 75 times the recommended dosage. Psychic driving, the repetition of a recorded message for 16 hours a day, programmed the empty mind. Fragile patients referred to Allan Memorial for help were thus turned into carbuncular jellyfish.”

 in his essay, ‘British Psychiatry: From Eugenics to Assassination’, says:

“Patients lost all or part of their memories, and some lost the ability to control their bodily functions and to speak. At least one patient was reduced almost to a vegetable; then Cameron had the cognitive centres of her brain surgically cut apart, while keeping her alive. Some subjects were deposited permanently in institutions for the hopelessly insane.”

The CIA funded these horrors through a front called “The Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology.” Other supporters of the Allan Institute were the Rockefeller Foundation, the Geschickter Foundation, and the Canadian government.

About Cameron’s work, Wikipedia says: “Naomi Klein states, in her book , that Cameron’s research and his contribution to the MKUltra project was actually not about mind control and brainwashing, but ‘to design a scientifically based system for extracting information from “resistant sources.” In other words, torture’. And citing a book from  it further says that ‘Stripped of its bizarre excesses, Cameron’s experiments, building upon Donald O. Hebb’s earlier breakthrough, laid the scientific foundation for the CIA’s two-stage psychological torture method’.” This method was codified in the infamous “KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual” published by the CIA in July 1963, and in the Human Resources Exploitation Training Manual – 1983 that was used in CIA training courses in Latin American countries up until 1987. These manuals describe methods of psychological torture, far more potent than physical torture, to elicit information from “resistant sources.”

An Orwellian Nightmare

As one would expect, the technologies now available to the mind-controllers have zoomed off the chart to the point where George Orwell’s world of omni-surveillance now seems almost quaint. Of course, it is true that 1984 was 28 years ago. But even as far back as 1970, US congressman James Scheur was able to say:

“As a result of spinoffs from medical, military aerospace and industrial research, we are now in the process of developing devices and products capable of controlling violent mobs without injury. We can tranquillise, impede, immobilise, harass, shock, upset, stupefy, nauseate, chill, temporarily blind, deafen or just plain scare the wits out of anyone the police have a proper need to control and restrain.”

A brief survey of some of the scariest products known to be in the arsenal of the secretive alphabet agencies arrayed against John Q. Public are such devices as the Neurophone, patented by Dr. Patrick Flanagan in 1968. It converts sound to electrical impulses which can be delivered from satellites. When aimed at individuals, the impulses travel directly to the brain where the sounds are re-assembled and appear to be voices inside the head, which can be perceived as coming from God, or telepathic aliens, or whatever. Or the sounds can come out of a turned-off TV or radio. Through software, the device can mimic anyone’s voice and translate into any language.

It is believed that the CIA, DIA, NSA et al use the Neurophone to deliver threats and propaganda to selected targets, or just to torment someone they don’t like. One can imagine the possibilities. Could this explain some of the killings by “psychopaths” who say they were instructed by God, such as Mark David Chapman, David Berkowitz, or Sirhan Sirhan? If they had been previously evaluated through sophisticated personality assessments and groomed by LSD or hypnosis, such voices could easily tip the balance and convince them to kill.

We’ve all heard about the “Thought Police” and laughed because it seemed so implausible. Well, the joke is on us. Brain scanning technology is now well-advanced. In 1974, Lawrence Pinneo, a neurophysiologist and electronic engineer with the Stanford Research Institute succeeded in correlating brain wave patterns from EEGs with specific words. In 1994, the brain wave patterns of 40 subjects were officially correlated with both spoken words and silent thought at the University of Missouri. It is believed that US intelligence agencies now have a brain wave vocabulary of over 60,000 words in most common languages.

Brain waves constitute a magnetic field around the head (the aura), each person having a unique, identifiable electromagnetic signature which becomes visible through Kirlian photography, and these fields can be monitored by satellites. The translated results are then fed back to ground-side super computers at speeds of up to 20 gigabytes/second. Neurophone messages can then be beamed to selected individuals based on their thoughts. It is believed that about one million people around the globe are now monitored on a regular basis. As these numbers increase, as they certainly will, to include most educated and important people in the world, the New World Order will definitely have arrived.

As Australian writer Paul Baird has observed, “no-one will ever be able to even think about expressing an opinion contrary to those forced on us by the New World Order. There will literally be no intellectual property that cannot be stolen, no writing that cannot be censored, no thought that cannot be suppressed (by the most oppressive/invasive means).” Baird also claims that ex-military/intelligence whistle-blowers have reported that experiments in controlling voters with these techniques have been tried in several foreign countries. So much for democracy.

Other technologies, such as microwave bombardment to confuse and disorient field personnel, microchip implantation, silently delivered acoustical subliminal messages, widespread population control through psychiatric drugs, and extreme close-up satellite-based viewing able to read documents indoors, are all well-developed and in use by military and intelligence agencies. This doesn’t even address the monitoring of overt spoken and written material. Under Project ECHELON, the NSA monitors every call, fax, e-mail and computer data message in and out of the US, Canada and several other countries. Their computers then search for key words and phrases. Anything or anyone of interest draws the attention of agency operatives, who can then commence surveillance operations by the NSA or other intelligence agencies.

Novel Capabilities

We conclude with a chilling vision of the future from the US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. It is from .

“Prior to the mid-21st century, there will be a virtual explosion of knowledge in the field of neuroscience. We will have achieved a clear understanding of how the human brain works, how it really controls the various functions of the body, and how it can be manipulated (both positively and negatively). One can envision the development of electromagnetic energy sources, the output of which can be pulsed, shaped, and focused, that can couple with the human body in a fashion that will allow one to prevent voluntary muscular movements, control emotions (and thus actions), produce sleep, transmit suggestions, interfere with both short-term and long-term memory, produce an experience set, and delete an experience set. This will open the door for the development of some novel capabilities that can be used in armed conflict, in terrorist/hostage situations, and in training…”

And based on the past clandestine abuses of MK-ULTRA reviewed above, one can predict with relative certainty that these capabilities will be used on civilians, with or without their knowledge or acquiescence, in the service of the New World Order.

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About the Author

LEN KASTEN has been involved in metaphysical and UFO/ET studies, research and writing for over thirty years. A graduate of Cornell University, he is a former member of NICAP and MUFON. He has written over fifty published articles for Atlantis Rising magazine. His book,The Secret History of Extraterrestrials, published by Inner Traditions, went to number sixteen on the publisher’s Top Fifty list, in four months.

The above article appeared in New Dawn Special Issue Vol 6 No 3.

© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.

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We Killed Him For “The Fun of It”

This past Tuesday night, I sat in my chair watching NBC’s Lester Holt report on two black kids, 15 and 16, along with a bi-racial kid shoot and kill a 22 year old Australian college kid on a training run past their house in Duncan, Oklahoma.

When asked why they did it. They responded, “For the fun of it.”

The news reported, “Twenty-two-year-old Chris Lane of Melbourne, Australia, was killed for no reason while out running in the town of Duncan, Oklahoma. Police arrested Chancey Luna, 16, James Edwards, 15 and Michael Jones, 17, on first degree murder charges.”

Duncan Police Chief Dan Ford said the boys gave the simplest of motives, “Overcoming a boring end to their summer vacation.”

The 16 year-old Luna said they were bored and killed Lane for “the fun of it.”

They shot him in the back after he ran past their house. I sat in my chair dumb-struck at the utter horror, stupidity and sickening savagery of the entire report. Lester Holt remained emotionless while speaking his words to millions of Americans. It turned my guts. It made me sick to my stomach. The killing left a gaping “why” in my brain.

Will millions of African-Americans protest in the streets because two black boys and a bi-racial boy killed an Australian white kid running past their house “for the fun of it”? Will they call for justice like they did in the Trayvon Martin case? Will white Americans protest the killings by taking to the streets and demanding justice?

Sadly, blacks and whites won’t even whimper a sound at the killing of the white Australian college man named Chris Lane. But I want to delve into this type of insanity a little deeper.

I think our society suffers from a deep down sickness for too many of its citizens. Every 15 seconds, some American man, whether husband or father, beats the hell out of a woman.

“Violence against women is pervasive throughout the United States. One in four women will experience domestic violence at some point in their lives. On average, three women are killed every day at the hands of a current or former intimate partner.”~ National Network to End Domestic Violence.

Estimates range from 960,000 incidents of violence against a current or former spouse or girlfriend to three million women who are physically abused by their husband or boyfriend annually. 

Those factoids sicken me. What causes such incredible violence to the weaker sex? Why don’t we address it? The causes? The solutions?

Surely we could encourage community, jobs, education and fellowship to vanquish such violence within our country. Instead, we fund 10 year wars that kill even more people by guns, bombs and poisons.

Black on Black killings in America: 7,000 murders annually

According to a study conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011 there were 279,384 black murder victims, which means that 262,621 were murdered by other blacks, resulting in the 94 percent figure. While blacks make-up only 13 percent of the nation’s population, they account for more than 50 percent of homicide victims.

So what’s the source of the problem? As Publius notes, “The problem is not among the black population as a whole; rather, it is due to a “small sub-culture that glorifies violence and lives and dies by the gun.” It is the gang culture, characterized by widespread criminality, tribalistic warfare, through-the-roof unemployment, extremely high rates of out-of-wedlock births (72.1 percent among blacks in 2010), widespread welfare dependency, and nihilistic art typified by “gangster rap.”

Black on White killings in America

• In 2011, of the 12,664 murder victims in America, 50% were Black and 46% were white.
• In 2011, 52% of the offenders in these murders were Black and 45% were white.
• One other stat: 90% of perpetrators were men.

White on Black killings in America

Intra-racial violence holds for whites. Eight-three percent of white murders in 2011 were within-race killings. This data tells us that murder, for the most part, in America does not come from racial hatred. Most killers kill within their race.

Suicide Among the Young in America

• Among persons aged 15 to 24, suicide ranks as the third leading cause of death in America. About 18 teens kill themselves daily or one Columbine High School rampage 24/7.
• In 2000, over three million youth seriously considered suicide in the USA and over one million attempted suicides. That equates to over 2,700 attempts daily or two attempts every 60 seconds.

As a nation, as a civilization, as a culture and as a multicultural society—we desperately need leadership that focuses on funding for thorough and successful education for whites, blacks, browns and all other children. We need to create jobs for our teens to give them worth, financial energy and moral direction. We need to stop the 71 percent of out-of-wedlock birth rates for African-Americans and white Americans if we hope to bring any kind of reasonable male-female balance to the rearing of our children

As it stands, those children face being brought up as savages rather than human beings. Right now, two black kids and a bi-racial kid face the rest of their lives behind bars. Right now, an entire community in Australia faces life without their outstanding son who trusted America enough to come and play baseball.

As a culture, and a country, America needs to stop wasting money, military and brute power in hundreds of countries around the world. We need to elect representatives who focus on making our country a place where teens grow up with ethics, morals, direction, homes, jobs and purpose—to live a fruitful and positive life. As it stands today with those three kids and hundreds of thousands like them, the violence toward women, the suicides and the crime rates—we fail miserably.

I think I am going to have a sickening gut ache for a very long time.

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