Corruption Scandal Rocks Turkey

Turkey is a democracy in name only. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is ruling despot.

He’s led Ankara’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) since August 2001. He’s been prime minister since March 2003. Why Turks put up with him they’ll have to explain.

Last spring, anti-government protests rocked Ankara, Istanbul and other Turkish cities. Police violence followed. Brutality is longstanding policy. Corruption is deep-seated.

It’s rife in Turkey’s construction sector. Erdogan established a land sales office. Ostensibly it was to build affordable public housing.

Widespread privatizations followed. Billions of dollars worth of government assets were sold.

Sweetheart deals and bribes accompanied them. Well-connected companies got no-bid contracts. State banks provided generous financing.

Projects developed had nothing to do with public housing. Berat Albayrak heads Calik Holding. He’s well connected. He’s Erdogan’s son-in-law.

He may be linked to the corruption probe. He builds power plants in Turkmenistan. He’s involved in an AKP backed oil pipeline project. He has other government related business.

The current scandal stems from a year ago anonymous letter. It was sent to police. It alleged Ankara and local government authorities illegally facilitated construction projects. Huge profits were involved.

Surveillance, phone tapping, and other investigatory methods followed. They produced considerable evidence of corruption. Government ministers are involved. Million dollar bribes were paid.

State-run Halk Bank head was found with about $4.5 million in cash. It was at home. It was stashed in shoe boxes.

Millions more were seized from other suspects. Over a dozen are accused of bribery and money laundering, as well as gold and antiques smuggling.

On December 17, Turkey’s Financial Crimes and Battle Against Criminal Incomes department detained 47 people.

Sons of Ankara’s Economy, Interior and Environment and Urban Planning ministers are involved.

So is Fatih district municipality major Mustafa Demir and real estate tycoon Ali Agaoglu. Minister of European Union Affairs Minister Egemen Bagis is being investigated.

Whether scandal touches Erdogan remains to be seen. He claims attempts to do so will be “left empty handed.”

On Christmas day, he reshuffled his cabinet. Three ministers resigned. He sack 10 others. He replaced them. Events are fast-moving.

Erdogan Bayraktar was Minister of Environment and Urban Planning. He was a member of parliament. He felt forced to resign both posts.

He said Erdogan should do so. He claimed suspect construction projects under investigation were approved with Erdogan’s full knowledge.

“With your permission, I want to make very short statements in the form of a press statement,” he said.

“It is of course a right and an authority for Mr. Prime Minister to work with whichever minister he wants and to remove whichever minister he wants from office.”

“But I do not accept the pressure being put on me which says, ‘Resign because of an operation in which there are statements of bribery and corruption and release a declaration that will relieve me.’ “

“I do not (accept it) because a big part of the zoning plans that are in the investigation file and were confirmed were made with approval from Mr. Prime Minister.”

“For the sake of the well-being of this nation, I believe the prime minister should resign.”

He accused him of involvement in suspect property deals. He’s linked to profiteering business interests.

Scandal heads closer to directly connecting him. Perhaps it will as investigations continue. Turkish Professor Soli Ozel called Bayraktar’s call for Erdogan’s resignation “extraordinarily dramatic.”

He’s “someone who was very close to the prime minister. This is someone you’d expect to fall on his sword without question.”

Other analysts see things potentially spinning out of control. Whether Erdogan can prevent it remains to be seen.

He may end up victimized by his own transgressions. It depends on how much public anger grows. He weathered previous crises. It’s hard to know if this one is too great to contain.

Investigations targeted over 90 suspects. Over two dozen were arrested. Dozens of police chiefs were sacked. Erdogan is far from squeaky-clean.

On December 21, Ankara’s police department Anti-Smuggling and Organized Crime Unit head Hakan Yuksekdag was found dead in his car. Officially it was pronounced suicide.

Further investigation is being conducted. The incident occurred a day after 14 senior Ankara National Police Department officials were removed from their posts.

 

Erdogan blamed ongoing events on an international conspiracy. He vowed revenge on figures connected to Muhammed Fethullah Gulen.

He heads the movement bearing his name. He claims a million or more followers. They include judges and senior police officials.

He’s currently in self-imposed exile. He’s in Pennsylvania. He’s a writer, former imam, and Islamic opinion leader. He’s an important figure.

He’s involved with issues relating to Turkey’s future. He and Erdogan haven’t gotten along for years.

Former Minister of Internal Affairs Idris Naim Sahin said Erdogan’s actions fall short of law and justice. He’s trying to defuse public anger, he said. He’s shifting blame to do it.

Thousands of Istanbul, Ankara, and Ismir protesters demanded Erdogan’s resignation. They did so on Christmas. They did it in other cities. They protested last spring.

They’re justifiably outraged. Their longstanding anger hasn’t waned. Erdogan works against their well-being. Clashes with police erupted. Arrests followed.

Protesters chanted; “Three ministers aren’t enough. The whole government should resign. Corruption is everywhere. Resistance is everywhere.”

Opposition party members accused Erdogan of deepening despotic rule. Critics use the term “deep state.” It refers to a shadowy power structure. It lacks checks and balances.

Turkey’s Republican People’s Party (CHP) is Erdogan’s main rival. It’s Turkey’s oldest political party. It’s AKP’s Main Opposition in the Grand National Assembly. Kemal Kilicdaroglu heads it.

“Erdogan has a ‘deep state,’ ” he said. His AKP “has a ‘deep state.’ ” Efkan Ala is new Interior Minister.

He’s an Erdogan crony. He formerly was Diyarbakir Province governor. He’s part of what’s ongoing, said Kilicdaroglu.

He believes Ala’s appointment is part of an Erdogan power grab. He wants greater police control. Outgoing Interior Minister Muammer Guler fired hundreds of police officers. Senior commanders were sacked.

Erdogan’s new ministers were carefully chosen. He appointed officials “that will not show any opposition to him,” said Kilicdaroglu.

Turkey is more police state than democracy. Press freedom is compromised. Censorship is standard practice. Dissent is verboten. Challenging government authority is called terrorism.

No country imprisons more journalists than Turkey. Corruption is deep-seated. Neoliberal harshness writ large is policy. Popular interests are spurned.

Erdogan represents wealth, power and privilege. It’s hard imagining he’s not involved in corruption in some way. He’s gotten his son-in-law business tycoon sweetheart deals.

He prioritizes Turkey’s business model. It reflects capitalism’s dark side. It includes unrestrained profit-making, privatizations, cheap labor, deregulation, corporate-friendly tax cuts, marginalized worker rights, and speculative capital inflows.

Economic conditions are inherently unstable. Turkey suffers rolling recessions, crisis conditions, and fragile largely jobless recoveries. It’s increasingly dependent on imports of resources and capital goods.

Youth unemployment tops 22%. An entire generation is affected. Conditions are socially and economically unstable.

Privation fuels public anger. Eventually it may spiral out-of-control. It may be just a matter of time. Turkey has a long history of rebellion.

Erdogan is increasingly hated. He weathered last spring’s anti-government protests. It remains to be seen what’s next.

Nicolas Spiro heads Spiro Sovereign Strategy. “The dismissal of half an entire cabinet is worrying enough,” he said. “The corruption probe is escalating by the day.”

It’s “causing a further deterioration in market sentiment towards Turkey.” Erdogan’s new cabinet includes four deputy prime ministers.

Ayse Islam is the only woman appointed. She’s Family and Social Policy Minister. Others include:

Deputy prime minister: Bulent Arinc

 

Deputy prime minister: Ali Babacan

 

Deputy prime minister: Besir Atalay

 

Deputy prime minister: Emrullah Isler

 

Justice: Bekir Bozdag

 

Defense: Ismet Yilmaz

 

Interior: Efkan Ala

 

Foreign Affairs: Ahmet Davutoglu

 

European Union: Mevlut Cavusoglu

 

Finance: Mehmet Simsek

 

Economy: Nihat Zeybekci

 

Energy and Natural Resources: Taner Yildiz

 

National Education: Nabi Avci

 

Labour and Social Security: Faruk Celik

 

Environment and Urban Development: Idris Gulluce

 

Health: Mehmet Muezzinoglu

 

Transport: Lutfi Elvan

 

Food, Agriculture and Husbandry: Mehmet Mehdi Eker

 

Science, Industry and Technology: Fikri Isik

 

Culture and Tourism: Omer Celik

 

Forestry and Water Affairs: Veysel Eroglu

 

Customs and Trade: Hayati Yazici

 

Development: Cevdet Yilmaz

 

Youth and Sports: Akif Cagatay Kilic

Scandal erupted months ahead of next March’s local elections. Parliamentary elections involving Erdogan are scheduled in 2015.

If held today, voters might oust him. It’s way too early to know how they’ll react in 2015. Istanbul-based Global Source Partners analyst Atilla Yesilada said ongoing events suggest Erdogan is losing control.

“Forced to act, (he) tried to get rid of his burdens,” he said. “But this is a political crisis, and it is hard to tell how it will unfold. These investigations may expand in coming months.”

Doing so perhaps may link Erdogan to deep-seated corruption. If so, he may be forced to resign. The fullness of time will tell.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at .

His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Washington Has Discredited America

Years ago when I described the George W. Bush regime as a police state, right-wing eyebrows were raised. When I described the Obama regime as an even worse police state, liberals rolled their eyes. Alas! Now I am no longer controversial. Everybody says it.

According to the UK newspaper, The Guardian, the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, had an angry exchange with Obama in which Merkel compared Obama’s National Security Agency (NSA) with the East German Communist Stasi, which spied on everyone through networks of informers.http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/17/merkel-compares-nsa-stasi-obama

Merkel grew up in Communist East Germany where she was spied upon by the Stasi, and now that she has risen to the highest political office in Europe’s most powerful state, she is spied upon by “freedom and democracy” America.

A former top NSA official, William Binney, declared that “We (the US) are now in a police state.” The mass spying conducted by the Obama regime, Binney says “is a totalitarian process.”http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/12/former-top-nsa-official-now-police-state.html

Perhaps my best vindication, after all the hate mail from “super patriots,” who wear their ignorance on their sleeves, and Obama-worshipping liberals, whose gullibility is sickening, came from federal judge Richard Leon, who declared the Obama-sanctioned NSA spying to be “almost Orwellian.” As the American Civil Liberties Union realized, federal judge Leon’s decision vindicated Edward Snowden by ruling that the NSA spying is likely outside what the Constitution permits, “labeling it ‘Orwellian’–adding that James Madison would be ‘aghast.’”

If only more Americans were aghast. I sometimes wonder whether Americans like being spied upon, because it makes them feel important. “Look at me! I’m so important that the government spends enough money to wipe out US poverty spying on me and my Facebook, et. al., friends. I bet they are spending one billion dollars just to know who I connected with today. I hope it didn’t get lost in all the spam.”

Being spied upon is the latest craze of people devoid of any future but desperate for attention.

Jason Ditz at the FBI spied-upon Antiwar.com says that Judge Leon’s ruling is a setback for Obama, who was going to restore justice and liberty but instead created the American Stasi Spy State. Congress, of course, loves the spy state, because all the capitalist firms that make mega-millions or mega-billions from it generously finance congressional and senatorial campaigns for those who support the Stasi state.

The romance that libertarians and “free market economists” have with capitalism, which buys compliance with its greed and cooperates with the Stasi state, is foolish.

Let’s move on. It was only a few weeks ago that Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry were on the verge of attacking Syria on the basis of faked evidence that Syria had crossed the “red line” and used weapons of mass destruction against the American organized, armed, and financed “rebels,” almost all of whom come from outside Syria.

Only the bought-and-paid-for-by-Washington French president made a show of believing a word or Washington’s lies against the Assad government in Syria. The British Parliament, long a puppet of Washington, gave Obama the bird and voted down participating in another American war crime. That left UK prime minister, David Cameron, hanging. Where do the British get prime ministers like Cameron and Blair?

Washington’s plan for Syria, having lost the cover of its British puppet, received a fatal blow from Russian President Putin, who arranged for Syria’s chemical weapons to be delivered to foreign hands for destruction, thus putting an end to the controversy.

In the meantime it became apparent that the “Syrian rebellion” organized by Washington has been taken over by al-Qaeda, an organization allegedly responsible for 9/11. Even Washington was able to figure out that it didn’t make sense to put al-Qaeda in charge of Syria. Now the headlines are: “West tells Syria rebels: Assad must stay.”

Meanwhile, Washington’s arrogance has managed to make an enemy of India. The TSA, a component of Homeland Security, subjected a female diplomat from India to multiple strip searches, cavity searches and ignored her protestations of consular immunity.http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/12/18/devyani-khobragade-reveals-how-she-broke-down-after-stripping-and-cavity-searches-as-row-between-u-s-and-india-deepens/

There was no justification whatever for this abuse of an Indian diplomat. To indicate its displeasure, the Indian government has removed barriers that prevent truck bombs from being driven into the US embassy.

Washington has managed to recreate the arms race. More profits for the military/security complex, and less security for the world. Provoked by Washington’s military aggressiveness, Russia has announces a $700 billion upgrade of its nuclear ballistic missiles. China’s leaders have also made it clear that China is not intimidated by Washington’s intrusion into China’s sphere of influence. China is developing weapon systems that make obsolete Washington’s large investment in surface fleets.

Recently, Pat Buchanan, Mr. Conservative himself, made a case that Russia’s Putin better represents traditional American values than does the President of the United States.http://www.unz.com/pbuchanan/is-putin-one-of-us/

Buchanan has a point. It is Washington, not Moscow or Beijing, that threatens to bomb countries into the stone age, that forces down airplanes of heads of state and subjects them to searches, and that refuses to honor grants of political asylum.

Certainly, Washington’s claim to be “exceptional” and “indispensable” and, therefore, above law and morality contrasts unfavorably with Putin’s statement that “we do not infringe on anyone’s interests or try to teach anyone how to live.”

Washington’s arrogance has brought America disrepute. What damage will Washington next inflict on us?

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

Source: Paul Craig Roberts

Big Government Is Now The GOP Platform

Collectivism is alive and well within the party apparatus of the Republican jellyfish tax cutters. This loathsome game of surrender is the hallmark of phony conservatives. The article, Why the GOP are cowards, needs to be read again, since its application has proven once again that big government is in actuality, the default position of the party of double talk.

“Republicanism is not equivalent with the GOP political party. Genuine conservatism has had fleeting representation within that party. Examine the history and the principles of each. A real conservative stands for the principles of individual civil liberty and personal responsibility, limited government, states rights, separation of powers – federalism, minimal taxes, honest money, bonafide free enterprise, defense of borders, an American First foreign policy, lawful statues and traditional values. A true conservative believes in the righteousness of the 1776 Revolution. Republicans that are authentic conservatives have a serious dilemma, how do you justify the record of the GOP?”

Review the House of Representative totals, as Roll Call provides in the Breaking Down the Budget Vote, with a link how each member voted. Mark the weasels and prepare for the primary season.

When the august Cato Institute challenges the credibility of the GOP in How Serious Are Republicans?, the rank and file conservatives better face up to the fact that voting Republican is akin to blacks casting their ballot for Democrats. Both parties take for granted their core constituencies, while selling them out for the authoritarian supra government that never improves the lives of regular citizens.

“More of it is just political cowardice, out of fear of cutting something that might offend some voter, somewhere. Notice how quickly the FAA’s sequester issues were resolved once potential voters (and campaign donors) squawked. The furloughs of air-traffic controllers were unnecessary, resulting from union contract issues and the deliberate decision of the Obama administration to make the sequester as painful as possible, and should have been fixed. But it’s clear that Republicans moved so fast in part because it was largely upper-middle-class voters who were affected.

Similar meekness is pushing other Republicans to suggest that the party should move away from “austerity” to support a “growth agenda.” House majority leader Eric Cantor, for example, has expressed a desire to “focus on what lies beyond these fiscal debates.” And, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal exhorts Republicans, “We seem to have an obsession with government bookkeeping … We as Republicans have to accept that government number-crunching – even conservative number-crunching – is not the answer to our nation’s problems.”

It is easy to cut spending that you don’t like. But if Republicans are serious about cutting spending, lowering our debt, and reducing the size of government, they are going to have to cut spending that they like. They are going to have to make cuts that affect their districts and their constituents. They are going to have to accept cuts in defense. And, they are going to have to structurally reform entitlements, even at the risk of angering seniors.”

This budget deal breaks the Sequestration agreement, PERIOD. Leaving aside country club pleasantries, the Tea Party Patriots mailing of Dec. 12, 2013 hits the mark dead center.

This new “bipartisan budget deal” cobbled together by Paul Ryan and Patty Murray behind closed doors smells like the rotten garbage we have become accustomed to see coming out of DC.

When DC reaches a bipartisan compromise on spending, taxpayers always lose. Compromise means, “Democrats get the spending they want AND Republicans get the spending they want.”

Heritage Foundation points out three simple facts about this deal:

1. It busts through the so-called “spending caps” set in place by the sequester.
2. It taxes and spends more.
3. It spends now with supposed savings coming later.

Wait before panic sets in, the media wants you to believe that Republican Senators are coming to the rescue. A silver bullet (supplied by DHS) and voted for by GOP “career politicians”, killed the lone ranger a long time ago.

Even in the UK, the Mail identifies the essential disconnect in the GOP, It’s war! Senate gears up for epic battle as ZERO Republicans line up to support budget agreement (and Democrats need to find at least five); “The GOP’s Senate leaders plan to launch a procedural effort to kill the plan over a laundry list of objections – including a claim that it short-changes military veterans and other government retirees.”

Sure looks like Big Government by any standard is the admitted GOP platform.

The Tea Party Patriot notice continues.

Here are our predictions about what is going to happen next.

• The House will pass this budget deal.
•  In the Senate, Republicans like Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, and John Cornyn will all vote no because they have primary challengers, knowing that it will pass anyway because the Democrats and other squishy Republicans will vote for it.
• They will use this deal to grease the wheels for amnesty, making amnesty that much easier to pass.
• The increase in taxes and fees will remain while the spending restraint will never happen because they will simply do what they are doing now, which is change the law to eliminate the spending cuts.
• With this deal they are pushing the next round of budget talks out to 2015 so that they can focus on what’s important to them – reelection. Instead of tackling budget issues again in 2014, this deal allows them to avoid those talks during an election year.
• They will use the extra time this gives them to co-opt new members that are elected in 2014.
• Finally, the next budget, whenever that happens, won’t even keep these new higher levels of spending. We predict spending will increase again.

Remember the war against fiscal conservatives and small government libertarians, waged by establishment Republicans. The Republican Convention and the Ron Paul Revolution is a clear example of the ultimate policy objectives of GOP party collectivists.

“The Grand Old Party produced a scripted appeal to the faithful. The 2012 Republican Party convention in Tampa, designed to sell a filtered image of a country club version of conservatism, begs the historic substance of a traditional embodiment of true timeless values. Hitting a range of obligatory themes is not equivalent to standing for the principles of a constitutional republic. Appealing to the estranged elements of the GOP needs more than words to restore faith and hope. Reasoned policy stands require a refutation of the failure of the Neoconservative agenda. So do not be duped by the language in the platform.”

 

Will you lobby Congressional Representatives in 2014? Yes No Maybe   Lobby

Would you support and vote for a third party candidate? Yes No Maybe   Third Party

 

Take the polls, Lobby, Third Party, GOP RINO and Ideology. Provide feedback register your degree of involvement.

 

Would you vote for a GOP RINO candidate? Yes No Maybe   GOP RINO

What ideology do you want in a candidate? Conservative Liberal Libertarian Moderate Progressive   Ideology

 
The Irrelevance of the Republican Party essay argues that the same old false choice is nothing but a hoax. “The only rational option is to create a true grass roots party that encompasses the disaffected middle class. NeoCons are traitors. Establishment proponents loyal to the two party farce, do not allow genuine conservative doctrines into public policy.”

With that said, the revulsion of the Obama presidency is demonstrated with every administrative action. The Big Government era is back in force under the self-absorbed Pied Piper of statist executive rule. With each note from the flute of this imposter, the government plagues spread wider and causes the death of representative democracy. Yet, the Republican doctrine accepts the “compromise” and act as a befuddled facilitator.

Carrying the fight to the enemy is not part of the GOP script. The emergence of the Tea Party movement is in direct correlation to the fiscal irresponsibility out of the beltway brigade in the army of the district of criminals. Spineless Republicans are closet Federalists or worse, latent potentates. The corporatists that direct both parties ravel in the enjoyment of phony party squabbles. With every new charade, the course of policy continues to advance the fascist state.

Once upon a time Congressional Resistance against Presidential Despotism was normal. “The primacy of the legislature over the executive branch was always the intent of our founding fathers. Unfortunately, the exact reverse has taken hold in the den of inequity that holds court in Washington, DC.”

The John Boehner speakership is synonymous with capitulation. In many ways, the combat against federal tyrants intensifies and gathers more recruits, when the face of the enemy is a pure progressive police state. Cooperative captivity is no more tolerable then peaceful coexistence.

Citizens unwilling to take the battle to the government with forceful lobbying of their viewpoints deserve enslavement. Third party activism is imperative so that the electorate can compare a liberty directed, small government manifesto to the bipartisan state-controlled platform pushed by both major parties.

How many times do you need to be kicked in the face before you stop turning the other cheek? Obama and Boehner share the same bathhouse. Both keep sticking it in the derrière of the taxpayer. That Republican “Big Tent” now covers the socialists that pretend to be representing the people, while empowering the big government nightmare.

Washington Drives The World Toward War

Washington has had the US at war for 12 years: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, and almost Syria, which could still happen, with Iran waiting in the wings. These wars have been expensive in terms of money, prestige, and deaths and injuries of both US soldiers and the attacked civilian populations. None of these wars appears to have any compelling reason or justifiable explanation. The wars have been important to the profits of the military/security complex. The wars have provided cover for the construction of a Stasi police state in America, and the wars have served Israel’s interest by removing obstacles to Israel’s annexation of the entire West Bank and southern Lebanon.

As costly and destructive as these wars have been, they are far below the level of a world war, much less a world war against nuclear armed opponents.

The fatal war for humanity is the war with Russia and China toward which Washington is driving the US and Washington’s NATO and Asian puppet states. There are a number of factors contributing to Washington’s drive toward the final war, but the overarching one is the doctrine of American exceptionalism.

According to this self-righteous doctrine, America is the indispensable country. What this means is that the US has been chosen by history to establish the hegemony of secular “democratic capitalism” over the world. The primacy of this goal places the US government above traditional morality and above all law, both its own and international.

Thus, no one in the US government has been held accountable for unprovoked aggression against other countries and for attacking civilian populations, unambiguous war crimes under international law and the Nuremberg standard. Neither has anyone in the US government been held accountable for torture, a prohibited crime under US law and the Geneva Conventions. Neither has anyone been held accountable for numerous violations of constitutional rights–spying without warrants, warrantless searches, violations of habeas corpus, murder of citizens without due process, denial of legal representation, conviction on secret evidence. The list is long.

A person might wonder what is exceptional and indispensable about a government that is a reincarnation of Nazi Germany in every respect. People propagandized into the belief that they are the world’s special people inevitably lose their humanity. Thus, as the US military video released by Bradley Manning reveals, US troops get their jollies by mowing down innocent people as they walk along a city street.

With the exception of the ACLU, constitutional rights groups and independent Internet voices, the American people including the Christian churches have accepted their government’s criminality and immorality with scant protest.

The absence of moral denunciation emboldens Washington which is now pushing hard against Russia and China, the current governments of which stand in the way of Washington’s world hegemony.

Washington has been working against Russia for 22 years ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In violation of the Reagan-Gorbachev agreement, Washington expanded NATO into Eastern Europe and the Baltic states and established military bases on Russia’s borders. Washington is also seeking to extend NATO into former constituent parts of Russia itself such as Georgia and Ukraine.

The only reason for Washington to establish military and missile bases on Russia’s frontiers is to negate Russia’s ability to resist Washington’s hegemony. Russia has made no threatening gestures toward its neighbors, and with the sole exception of Russia’s response to Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia, has been extremely passive in the face of US provocations.

This is now changing. Faced with the George W. Bush regime’s alternation of US war doctrine, which elevated nuclear weapons from a defensive, retaliatory use to pre-emptive first strike, together with the construction on Russia’s borders of US anti-ballistic missile bases and Washington’s weaponization of new technologies, has made it clear to the Russian government that Washington is setting up Russia for a decapitating first strike.

In his presidential address to the Russian National Assembly (both chambers of parliament) on December 12, Vladimir Putin addressed the offensive military threat that Washington poses to Russia. Putin said that Washington calls its anti-ballistic missile system defensive, but “in fact it is a signifiant part of the strategic offensive potential” and designed to tip the balance of power in Washington’s favor. Having acknowledged the threat, Putin replied to the threat: “Let no one have illusions that he can achieve military superiority over Russia. We will never allow it.”

Faced with the Obama regime’s murder of the nuclear weapons reduction treaty, Putin said: “We realize all this and know what we need to do.”

If anyone remains to write a history, the Obama regime will be known as the regime that resurrected the cold war, which President Reagan worked so hard to end, and drove it into a hot war.

Not content to make Russia an enemy, the Obama regime has also made an enemy of China. The Obama regime declared the South China Sea to be an area of “US national security interest.” This is akin to China declaring the Gulf of Mexico to be an area of Chinese national security interest.

To make clear that the claim to the South China Sea was not rhetorical, the Obama regime announced its “Pivot to Asia,” which calls for the redeployment of 60% of the US fleet to China’s zone of influence. Washington is busy at work securing naval and air bases from the Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, Australia, and Thailand. Washington has increased the provocation by aligning itself with China’s neighbors who are disputing China’s claims to various islands and an expanded air space.

China has not been intimidated. China has called for “de-americanizing the world.” Last month the Chinese government announced that it now possesses sufficient nuclear weapons and delivery systems to wipe the US off of the face of the earth. A couple of days ago, China aggressively harassed a US missile cruiser in the South China Sea.

The militarily aggressive stance that Washington has taken toward Russia and China is indicative of the extreme self-assuredness that usually ends in war. Washington is told that US technological prowess can prevent or intercept the launch of Russian and Chinese missiles, thus elevating a US pre-emptive attack to slam-dunk status. Yet the potential danger from Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is said to be so great that a pre-emptive war is necessary right now, and a massive Department of Homeland Security is justified on the grounds that the US remains vulnerable to a few stateless Muslims who might acquire a nuclear weapon. It is an anomalous situation that the Russian and Chinese retaliatory response to US attack is considered to be inconsequential, but not nuclear threats from Iran and stateless Muslims.

Not content with sending war signals to Russia and China, Washington has apparently also decided to torpedo the Iranian settlement by announcing new sanctions against companies doing business with Iran. The Iranians understood Washington’s monkey wrench as Washington probably intended, as a lack of Washington’s commitment to the agreement, left Geneva and returned to Iran. It remains to be seen whether the agreement can be resurrected or whether the Israel Lobby has succeeded in derailing the agreement that promised to end the threat of war with Iran.

American citizens seem to have little, if any, influence on their government or even awareness of its intentions. Moreover, there is no organized opposition behind which Americans could rally to stop Washington’s drive toward world war. Hope, if there is any, would seem to lie with Washington’s European and Asian puppets. What interests do these governments have in putting the existence of their countries at risk for no other purpose than to help Washington acquire hegemony over the world? Cannot they realize that Washington’s game is a death-dealing one for them?

Germany alone could save the world from war while simultaneously serving its own interests. All Germany has to do is to exit the EU and NATO. The alliance would collapse, and its fall would terminate Washington’s hegemonic ambition.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

Source: Paul Craig Roberts

The End of Private Property in the Era of the American Police State

“No power on earth has a right to take our property from us without our consent.”—John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States

“How ‘secure’ do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and … forcibly enter?”—Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the lone dissenter in Kentucky v. King

If the government can tell you what you can and cannot do within the privacy of your home, whether it relates to what you eat, what you smoke or whom you love, you no longer have any rights whatsoever within your home.

If government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your property. If school officials can punish your children for what they do or say while at home or in your care, your children are not your own—they are the property of the state.

If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Likewise, if police can forcefully draw your blood, strip search you, and probe you intimately, your body is no longer your own, either.

This is what a world without the Fourth Amendment looks like, where the lines between private and public property have been so blurred that private property is reduced to little more than something the government can use to control, manipulate and harass you to suit its own purposes, and you the homeowner and citizen have been reduced to little more than a tenant or serf in bondage to an inflexible landlord.

Examples of this disregard for the sanctity of private property—whether in the form of one’s home, one’s possessions, or one’s person—abound. Here are just a few.

In San Rafael, California, it is now illegal to smoke a cigarette or other tobacco product inside “apartments, condos, duplexes, and multi-family houses.” Although lawmakers hope the ordinance will be “self-enforcing,” they’re encouraging landlords to threaten tenants with eviction should they run afoul of the law.

In Ohio, it’s illegal to alter one’s car with a hidden compartment if the “intent” is to conceal illegal drugs. Although Norman Gurley had no drugs on his person, nor in his car, nor could it be proven that he intended to conceal drugs, he was still arrested for the “crime” of having a hidden compartment in the trunk of his car.

In Florida and elsewhere throughout the country, home vegetable gardens are being targeted as illegal. For 17 years, Hermine Ricketts and Tom Carroll have tended the vegetable garden in their front yard, relying on it for 80 percent of their food intake, only to be told by city officials that they must get rid of it or face $50 a day in fines. The reason? The vegetable garden is “inconsistent with the city’s aesthetic character.”

In Iowa, a war veteran attempting to wean his family off expensive corporate farm products, GMOs and pesticides has been charged with violating a city ordinance and now faces up to 30 days in jail and a $600 fine for daring to raise chickens in his backyard for his personal use, despite statements of support from his neighbors.

In Virginia, school officials suspended two boys for the remainder of the school year and charged them with possession of a firearm after they were reported to the police for playing with toy airsoft guns in their front yard, while waiting for the morning school bus. At no time did the boys attempt to take the toy guns on the bus or to school.

The most obvious disrespect for property rights comes in the form of the tens of thousands of SWAT team raids that occur across the country on a yearly basis. Usually undertaken under the pretense of serving a drug warrant, these raids involve police arriving at a private residence in SWAT gear, armed to the hilt, kicking down doors, apprehending all persons inside the home, then determining if a crime has been committed. That was Judy Sanchez’s experience when FBI agents investigating gang activity used a chainsaw to cut through her door, then forced Sanchez and her child to the ground. It was only after invading Sanchez’s home and terrorizing her family that agents realized they had targeted the wrong address.

Unfortunately, we in America get so focused on the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of a warrant before government agents can invade our property (a requirement that means little in an age of kangaroo courts and rubberstamped warrant requests) that we fail to properly appreciate the first part of the statement declaring that we have a right to be secure in our “persons, houses, papers, and effects.” What this means is that the Fourth Amendment’s protections were intended to not only follow us wherever we go but also apply to all that is ours—whether you’re talking about our physical bodies, our biometric data, our possessions, our families, or our way of life. However, in an 8-1 ruling in Kentucky v. King (2011), the U.S. Supreme Court sanctioned SWAT teams smashing down doors of homes or apartments without a warrant if they happen to “suspect” you might be doing something illegal in your home.

At a time when the government routinely cites national security as the justification for its endless violations of the Constitution, the idea that a citizen can actually be “secure” or protected against such government overreach seems increasingly implausible, while suggesting that a person take steps to secure his person and property against the government could have one accused of fomenting anti-government sentiment.

Nevertheless, the reality of our age is this: if the government chooses to crash through our doors, listen to our phone calls, read our emails and text messages, fine us for growing vegetables in our front yard, jail us for raising chickens in our backyard, forcibly take our blood and saliva, and probe our vaginas and rectums, there’s little we can do to stop them. At least, not at that particular moment. When you’re face to face with a government agent who is not only armed to the hilt and inclined to shoot first and ask questions later but also woefully ignorant of the fact that he works for you, if you value your life, you don’t talk back.

This sad reality came about as a result of our being asleep at the wheel. We failed to ask questions and hold our representatives accountable to abiding by the Constitution, while the government amassed an amazing amount of power over us, and backed up that power-grab with a terrifying amount of military might and weaponry, and got the courts to sanction their actions every step of the way.

However, once the dust settles and you’ve had a chance to catch your breath, I hope you’ll remember that the Constitution begins with those three beautiful words, “We the people.” In other words, there is no government without us—our sheer numbers, our muscle, our economy, our physical presence in this land. There can also be no police state—no tyranny—no routine violations of our rights without our complicity and collusion—without our turning a blind eye, shrugging our shoulders, allowing ourselves to be distracted and our civic awareness diluted.

So where do we begin? How do we go about wresting back control over our freedoms and our lives in the face of such seemingly insurmountable odds?

There’s an old adage, albeit not a very palatable one, that says “when eating an elephant take one bite at a time.” The point is this: when facing a monumental task, take it one step at a time. In other words, we’re going to have to wage these battles house by house, car by car, and body by body. Most importantly, as I point out in my book , we’re going to have to stop the partisan bickering—you can leave that to the yokels in Congress—and recognize that the suffering brought about by a police state will be the great equalizer, applying to all Americans, regardless of their political leanings (the fact that we are all now being targeted for government surveillance is but a foretaste of things to come).

As John Adams rightly noted, “The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people. This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.”

It’s time for a second American Revolution. Not a revolution designed to kill people or tear down and physically destroy society, but a revolution of the minds and souls of human beings—a revolution promulgated to restore the freedoms for which our founders sacrificed their fortunes and their lives.

Source: John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute

JFK Murder: Fifty Years Later And The Cover Up Continues

The day that John Kennedy was murdered, was the day that Americans lost their country. Since that fateful day in November of 1963, our slide into tyranny has accelerated.

Nearly every form of tyranny which has overrun our country has its roots in the post-JFK assassination event. JFK was seemingly the last watchman on the wall against the encroaching tyranny of the newly created national surveillance security police state grid.

There have only been two prominent politicians who have stood up to the tyranny of the New World Order since the death of JFK. These two men would be Reagan (until he was shot by Hinckley) and Ron Paul.

The Missed Opportunity Connected to the 50th Anniversary

Last summer, I predicted that the upcoming 50th anniversary of JFK’s murder would awaken a whole new generation as to the tyranny that the country has fallen under and who is responsible for that tyranny. I wrongly believed that the co-conspirators, the interlocking pieces of the JFK assassination cabal, namely, David Rockefeller, the Federal Reserve, the oil companies, the military industrial complex and the CIA and their mafia assets, would be exposed with all the attention that the 50th anniversary would provide.

I wrongly believed that these groups  with their current and undue influence on America would also be readily identified for what they did to JFK and to the country on November 22, 1963. I further believed that today’s younger generation would easily build the bridge linking the corruption and undue influence of these 1963 groups to today’s political landscape and this would be an easy association. Unfortunately, my predictions were in error because we in the alternative media dropped the ball.

The 2013 Establishment Propaganda Machine Is Rolled Out

The day that JFK was murdered was the day that Rockefeller won the world’s biggest lottery.

With the marking of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, there have been over 2,000 books written on the subject and countless radio and television shows devoted to the topic. This fall, the globalist news corporations have produced a rash of new JFK “investigations” which all purport to show different ways to prove that Oswald, and Oswald alone, killed John Kennedy. The new productions (e.g. National Geographic) are so bad and so faulty, that they are laughable.

Media Propagandists Ignore the Government’s Final Conclusion of a Conspiracy

The modern day propagandists are winning the day with regard to the control of the narrative surrounding the assassination. During the height of America’s skepticism regarding the 1964 Warren Report which stated that Lee Oswald killed John Kennedy and that he acted alone, most Americans rejected the “official explanation. What the modern day public, as well as the establishment propagandists, seem to have forgotten is that in 1977, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that Oswald had help and JFK was killed as a result of a conspiracy. This was the final word on the subject from our government on the assassination. However, the history revisionists do not want a hint of a conspiracy because this could give birth to a modern day JFK assassination renaissance in a search for the co-conspirators who killed JFK. Once that search would begin, the descendants of the perpetrators organizations would not be able to escape public scrutiny. We in the alternative and truthful media missed a golden opportunity to wake up the country on this 50th Anniversary of JFK’s death. This fall, if we had devoted a significant amount of time and effort to covering the assassination, and we had been relentless in our efforts, the under 40 crowd would understand who their present enemies are and they would have been awakened to the present day tyranny. We allowed our voices to be drowned out by the mainstream fictional media with their new JFK cover up pieces. Sadly, we lost a golden opportunity to wake up millions of young Americans.

At the height of JFK conspiracy fervor in the 1970′s-1990′s, according to the Gallup Poll, as many as 80% of Americans believed that there was a conspiracy to kill JFK. Today, that number has slipped to 61% thanks in large part to the new propaganda productions which are influencing our younger Americans.

In the 1990′s, Oliver Stone produced JFK and Bill Kurtis and Nigel Turner produced separate investigations into the assassination (i.e. The Men Who Killed Kennedy). In the 1990′s, the country was spellbound by the new revelations which were also bolstered by JFK admirer, Bill Clinton, as he forced the release of millions of classified JFK documents. However, the evil empire struck back around the year, 2000, and today, you see almost nothing on TV which does not show that Oswald was acting alone.

Follow the Money

What is conspicuously missing in most, if not all of the accounts related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, is the fact that normal homicidal investigative strategies have not been employed by people in the government who would have the power to do so. One of the hallmark phrases in murder investigations is to “follow the money”.

Every year at this time, I become reflective as I wonder what America, and the rest of the world might have looked like if JFK had survived, been re-elected and served a second term as President. This year I decided to follow the money and put my thoughts on paper. So, let’s briefly follow the money.

Vietnam

Everybody knows that the Pentagon was frothing at the mouth to get into an armed conflict in Vietnam and/or Laos. In 1961, JFK resisted the military pressure to place troops in Laos, as he clearly instructed diplomat, Averell Harriman, to get the Laos issue settled because JFK was determined to not put combat units on the ground in Southeast Asia.

It is true that JFK was manipulated by his military advisers to place troops on the ground in Vietnam but solely in the role as “combat advisers”. JFK’s anti-Vietnam war stance frequently gets overlooked because of this. However, in October 1963, a mere month before his death, JFK signed National Security Action Memorandum 263 which called for the withdrawal of 1,000 troops from Vietnam by the end of 1963 and a total withdrawal of all of the combat advisers by the end of 1965. This was one nail in the coffin of JFK.

JFK gave many speeches in which he clearly stated he was opposed to widening U.S. military involvement in the war. South Vietnamese leader, Diem and his brother Nhu were opposed to U.S. attempts to control his regime and Diem and his brother were adamantly opposed U.S. full-scale U.S. military involvement beyond the 16,000 combat advisers stationed in the country. On November 1, 1963, Diem and Nhu were murdered by the CIA against JFK’s wishes. Three weeks later, to the day, John F. Kennedy was murdered. Within nine months following the assassination, the LBJ administration launched the now discredited false flag event, the Gulf of Tonkin attack, and 100,000 combat troops were subsequently sent to Vietnam. Many researchers have proven the involvement of the same CIA and its Mafia connections which dates back to 1942 when the CIA was known as the OSS.

Knowing that the CIA and Mafia were involved in JFK’s murder, does not tell you who ordered the assassination. Any guesses on who profited the most from the Vietnam War? In radio parlance, you will have to stay tuned, the answer will be revealed at the end.

There were huge financial incentives for the American defense industry to participate in the murder of JFK. Yes, that would be the military industrial complex which Ike warned us about in his 1960 farewell address. In 1963, Chrysler corporation and its subsidiaries received the lion’s share of defense contracts for the war, most of which were resold to smaller corporations. Corporations such as Bell Helicopter enjoyed unparalleled growth during the height of the war. There are some interesting and notable parties which controlled the Chrysler defense industry interests in 1963.

Very powerful parties would have stood to have lost a lot of money had the war not materialized into a full-scale air and ground war. Who am I speaking about? All will be revealed when I connect the dots at the end. Oh by the way, the forerunner to the bid rigging and recipient of no bid contracts in Iraq, KBR, was also found guilty of the same thing in Vietnam when they were given the responsibility for building South Vietnam’s military infrastructure. The more things change, the more they do stay the same.

Making Enemies with the CIA: The Bay of Pigs

It was very well known that JFK refused to support and sanction the CIA backed Cuban refugee invasion of Cuba by refusing to allow air cover. The invasion failed and the careers of CIA Director, Dulles, and CIA Assistant Director, Cabal, were over. The proverbial line in the sand had been drawn and the CIA and JFK became mortal enemies with JFK threatening to break up the agency into a “thousand pieces”. Add to this fact, is the fact that it is well-known that the darker parts of the CIA act as mercenaries for certain groups who are not on the government payroll. Today, we would call these shadowy forces, the New World Order.

It is clear that with the advent of the Bay of Pigs, the brain trust for the assassination had been born and they would double down as this agency would perpetrate the cover-up, such as losing the President’s brain during the autopsy to hide the fact that JFK’s fatal head shot came from an exploding bullet, which means that Oswald’s defective Italian rifle could not have been used in the commission of the crime. Maybe this is also why LBJ had the Presidential limousine “cleaned up” immediately following the crime and the vehicle was never subsequently examined as any other crime scene would have been. LBJ should have gone to prison for obstruction of justice, but I digress. Jim Marrs and other researchers have clearly implicated the CIA as the masterminds of the assassination. I agree with Marrs, however, the CIA were not the original planners, they merely were tasked with carrying out the assassination. Regardless, the rich and famous wanted Cuba back and JFK had destroyed their plans for continued domination of the Island state.

Ten days following the Bay of Pigs, JFK gave his famous “secret society” speech. He is the first, and the only President to ever identify the globalists as the enemy of America and humanity as a whole.

If you have never listened to the speech, you should take the time to listen now, for if you do, the events of today will make a great deal more sense.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

Havana had become a play place for the rich and famous prior to the Castro led revolution. Upon seizing power, Castro promptly nationalized all gaming resorts and the Mafia lost their insanely high profits and the rich and famous lost their financial cut, as well as their 1960 version of Bohemian Grove. In the eyes of the rich and powerful, JFK had one more opportunity to get control over Cuba with the opportunity presented by the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In 1962, in response to America’s placing offensive nuclear weapons in Turkey, close to the Soviet border, the Russians did the same in Cuba. This event brought the U.S. and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war. All of JFK’s military advisers wanted to invade Cuba with ground troops. JFK opted for the ever-contracting naval blockade. Although history has proven that our invading troops would have been nuked, and that JFK pursued the correct course of action, the powerful military was now lining up against JFK. And, again, the rich and famous were thwarted in their desire to reassert control over Cuba and the defense contractors smelled the end of the gravy train.

Then in June of 1963, JFK gave an incredible speech at American University in which he called for the total destruction of nuclear weapons. This would have resulted in the end of the financially lucrative Cold War and the “Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war”, and a movement toward “general and complete disarmament” would have begun. A few months later JFK signed a Limited Test Ban Treaty with Nikita Khrushchev. What would happen to the profits of Raytheon and Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin) if there was no cold war? The executives at the defense plants could relax because when JFK was killed, LBJ ordered the single largest increase in U.S. history and before the ink was even dry on JFK’s death certificate.

America Cannot Have Peace, It Is Bad For Business

Please take the time and listen to JFK’s, American University Speech, June 10, 1963, and if you understand what it means to be an American, it will bring tears to your eyes and I believe that this speech also brought a bullet to JFK’s brain, because he was poking a stick into the eyes of the military industrial complex.

The Federal Reserve

On June 4, 1963, President Kennedy issued Executive Order 11110 and this accompanied the Kennedy act which was the beginning of an attempt to strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money, at interest, to the government. JFK was on his way of stripping the then 50 year history of fleecing the American people. In effect, JFK, by issuing 4.3 billion dollars of U.S. notes based upon silver held in reserve, JFK was going to be able to wipe away the beginnings of national debt which, today, has mortally wounded the American economy. Please take note of the fact that this event was only a little over 5 months before the assassination. When JFK was murdered, LBJ failed to continue with the program.

Who stood to lose the most money if the Federal Reserve had lost its stranglehold on the American economy? You would be right if you answered Chase-Manhattan Bank with its 6,389,445 shares of Federal Reserve Board Stock valued at 32.3% of the total value of stock at the Fed. Also, Citibank had a lot to lose by this move as well as they were invested in the Federal Reserve shares to the tune of  4,051,851, or 20.5% of the total value. I think you might be getting an idea who owned and/or controlled the majority interests in these two banks in 1963, but there is more before we answer the question on who profited the most from the murder of a sitting President in 1963.

The Oil Depletion Allowance

By the end of 1962, the robber barons which ran the oil industry estimated, that their earnings on foreign investment capital would fall to 15 percent, compared with 30 percent in 1955 if the oil depletion allowance was diminished in accordance with JFK’s proposal.

JFK’s attack upon the oil depletion allowance, which permitted oil producers to deduct up to 27.5% of their income as tax exempt provided the robber barons of oil a lower tax rate and a competitive business advantage, not shared by any other business interests. JFK targeted the oil depletion allowance and it was estimated the government might retain more than $300 million in tax revenue each year if the depletion allowance was reduced. Although the oil depletion allowance remained intact, due to the congressmen who were recipients of oil company campaign contributions, JFK made some very powerful enemies in the oil industry.

It was the oil depletion allowance which made drilling for oil a no risk venture. An oil speculator could drill five wells and if four were dry wells and only the fifth struck oil, the speculator would still make money because of tax breaks resulting from the depletion allowance deducted from owed taxes. President Kennedy pointed out the obvious when he stated “… no one industry should be permitted to obtain an undue tax advantage over all others.”

JFK had made an enemy out of the oil industry and its biggest tycoon, David Rockefeller with the proposal to reduce the oil depletion allowance. Do you know the two banks which controlled 53% of the Federal Reserve in 1963? Rockefeller owned the controlling interest in both banks. How about Chrysler, KBR, Bell Helicopter and the Vietnam War? You are way ahead if you said, David Rockefeller. And what about the nuclear arms race, to which the cessation of the cold war, would have meant the loss of profits to the defense industry? And who controls the defense industry? David Rockefeller. We had to have a cold war, then, for the same reasons we need a war on terror today. It is good for business and with the subsequent growth of government power which comes with war, the erosion of Constitutional liberties increases. All roads for the motivations of the JFK assassination leads to David Rockefeller as being the first mover in the plot.

Do I have the smoking gun that I can place in Rockefeller’s hand? The short answer is no. However, it is safe to say that the day that John Kennedy died, there were no tears shed at the Rockefeller estate.

If JFK’s murder had been anything but the killing of the President, any police detective worth his salt, would have followed the money trail and arrests would have been made based on the known facts. It is unacceptable that as we race toward the 50th Anniversary of the event, this next week, that not one person has been brought to justice in a court of law for the assassination of John Kennedy. Instead, a patsy, Lee Oswald,who never fired a gun on November 22, 1963, was framed and used as the patsy. And before Oswald could talk, he was murdered two days later under very mysterious circumstances. Over the next several days, I am going to publish mini-excerpts on facts about the JFK assassination which are not being covered by the MSM. My first entry will focus on how we know that Oswald did not kill JFK.

Reflections on What Could Have Been

If JFK would have lived, we would have not lost 58,000 lives in Vietnam. Millions of Vietnamese would have been spared. We would have an economy that is backed by silver and we would virtually have no debt because the corrupt Federal Reserve would have faded into oblivion as it did during the Andrew Jackson Administration. America would have schools that would the envy of the world, not the butt of jokes, because we would not spending money to kill people, but rather to educate, improve health care and we could have even afforded to pay off all privately held mortgages if we had only remembered the words of JFK when he reminded the faculty and staff at American University on June 10, 1963, that “We all breathe the same air…”

We would live in a far better place had we lived out JFK’s expressed ideals. I write this piece, not just to remind America of what we lost and how America suffered with Jack Kennedy’s death, I write this piece for those who know little of nothing of what happened on November 22, 1963, mostly young people, in order that they can know that the tyranny being imposed upon us, need not exist. There is a better way and for a moment when I listen to his speeches, I can imagine a better world.

Source: Dave Hodges | The Common Sense Show

What Is The Real Agenda Of The American Police State?

In my last column I emphasized that it was important for American citizens to demand to know what the real agendas are behind the wars of choice by the Bush and Obama regimes. These are major long term wars each lasting two to three times as long as World War II.

Forbes reports that one million US soldiers have been injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

RT reports that the cost of keeping each US soldier in Afghanistan has risen from $1.3 million per soldier to $2.1 million per soldier.

Matthew J. Nasuti reports in the Kabul Press that it cost US taxpayers $50 million to kill one Taliban soldier. That means it cost $1 billion to kill 20 Taliban fighters.  This is a war that can be won only at the cost of the total bankruptcy of the United States.

Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes have estimated that the current out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars is at least $6 trillion.

In other words, it is the cost of these two wars that explain the explosion of the US public debt and the economic and political problems associated with this large debt.

What has America gained in return for $6 trillion and one million injured soldiers, many very severely?

In Iraq there is now an Islamist Shia regime allied with Iran in place of a secular Sunni regime that was an enemy of Iran, one as dictatorial as the other, presiding over war ruins, ongoing violence as high as during the attempted US occupation, and extraordinary birth defects from the toxic substances associated with the US invasion and occupation.

In Afghanistan there is an undefeated and apparently undefeatable Taliban and a revived drug trade that is flooding the Western world with drugs.

The icing on these Bush and Obama “successes” are demands from around the world that Americans and former British PM Tony Blair be held accountable for their war crimes. Certainly, Washington’s reputation has plummeted as a result of these two wars. No governments anywhere are any longer sufficiently gullible as to believe anything that Washington says.

These are huge costs for wars for which we have no explanation.

The Bush/Obama regimes have come up with various cover stories: a “war on terror,”
“we have to kill them over there before they come over here,” “weapons of mass destruction,” revenge for 9/11, Osama bin Laden (who died of his illnesses in December 2001 as was widely reported at the time).

None of these explanations are viable. Neither the Taliban nor Saddam Hussein were engaged in terrorism in the US. As the weapons inspectors informed the Bush regime, there were no WMD in Iraq. Invading Muslim countries and slaughtering civilians is more likely to create terrorists than to suppress them. According to the official story, the 9/11 hijackers and Osama bin Laden were Saudi Arabians, not Afghans or Iraqis. Yet it wasn’t Saudi Arabia that was invaded.

Democracy and accountable government simply does not exist when the executive branch can take a country to wars in behalf of secret agendas operating behind cover stories that are transparent lies.

It is just as important to ask these same questions about the agenda of the US police state. Why have Bush and Obama removed the protection of law as a shield of the people and turned law into a weapon in the hands of the executive branch? How are Americans made safer by the overthrow of their civil liberties? Indefinite detention and execution without due process of law are the hallmarks of the tyrannical state. They are terrorism, not a protection against terrorism. Why is every communication of every American and apparently the communications of most other people in the world, including Washington’s most trusted European allies, subject to being intercepted and stored in a gigantic police state database? How does this protect Americans from terrorists?

Why is it necessary for Washington to attack the freedom of the press and speech, to run roughshod over the legislation that protects whistleblowers such as Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, to criminalize dissent and protests, and to threaten journalists such as Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald, and Fox News reporter James Rosen?

How does keeping citizens ignorant of their government’s crimes make citizens safe from terrorists?

These persecutions of truth-tellers have nothing whatsoever to do with “national security” and “keeping Americans safe from terrorists.” The only purpose of these persecutions is to protect the executive branch from having its crimes revealed. Some of Washington’s crimes are so horrendous that the International Criminal Court would issue a death sentence if those guilty could be brought to trial. A government that will destroy the constitutional protections of free speech and a free press in order to prevent its criminal actions from being disclosed is a tyrannical government.

One hesitates to ask these questions and to make even the most obvious remarks out of fear not only of being put on a watch list and framed on some charge or the other, but also out of fear that such questions might provoke a false flag attack that could be used to justify the police state that has been put in place.

Perhaps that was what the Boston Marathon Bombing was. Evidence of the two brothers’ guilt has taken backseat to the government’s claims. There is nothing new about government frame-ups of patsies. What is new and unprecedented is the lockdown of Boston and its suburbs, the appearance of 10,000 heavily armed troops and tanks to patrol the streets and search without warrants the homes of citizens, all in the name of protecting the public from one wounded 19 year old kid.

Not only has nothing like this ever before happened in the US, but also it could not have been organized on the spur of the moment. It had to have been already in place waiting for the event. This was a trial run for what is to come.

Unaware Americans, especially gullible “law and order conservatives,” have no idea about the militarization of even their local police. I have watched local police forces train at gun clubs. The police are taught to shoot first not once but many times, to protect their lives first at all costs, and not to risk their lives by asking questions. This is why the 13-year old kid with the toy rifle was shot to pieces. Questioning would have revealed that it was a toy gun, but questioning the “suspect” might have endangered the precious police who are trained to take no risks whatsoever.

The police operate according to Obama’s presidential kill power: murder first then create a case against the victim.

In other words, dear American citizen, you life is worth nothing, but the police whom you pay, are not only unaccountable but also their lives are invaluable. If you get killed in their line of duty, it is no big deal. But don’t you injure a police goon thug in an act of self-defense. I mean, who do you think you are, some kind of mythical free American with rights?

Further reading:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/clemency-for-torturers-but-not-for-edward-snowden/281142/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/innocent-man-given-anal-cavity-search-colonoscopy-after-rolling-through-a-stop-sign/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/police-tased-arrested-father-as-he-tried-to-save-his-3-year-old-son-from-house-fire/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/tube-fed-3-year-old-treated-like-terrorist-by-tsa-family-misses-flight/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/john-geer-shot-by-police/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/300-pound-officer-shoots-12-pound-terrier-claims-it-threatened-his-life/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/innocent-citizens-held-at-gunpoint-in-terrifying-california-checkpoints/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/police-perform-simulated-drug-raid-on-5th-graders-child-attacked-by-police-dog/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/john-pike-gets-compensation-for-emotional-suffering/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/13-year-old-shot-death-police-open-carrying-toy-rifle/

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/dallas-police-opened-fire-on-unarmed-man-as-he-stood-in-his-doorway/

http://on.rt.com/6w2jqo

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36833.htm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36841.htm

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available

Source: Paul Craig Roberts

There Are Lies, Damned Lies And Democrats

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer certainly is a creative man. Asked about Barack Obama’s promise that everyone would be able to keep his health coverage if he liked it and the recent revelation that the Democrats knew all along that millions of Americans would lose their health plans under ObamaCare, he had an answer.

“I think the message [the promise] was accurate. It was not precise enough…[it] should have been caveated with – ‘assuming you have a policy that in fact does do what the bill is designed to do,’” reports National Review.

My, that’s rich.

Almost Frank Rich.

Since Hoyer’s lie about a lie speaks for itself, let’s just have a little fun here. Try this on for size:

Subject: “But you said that if we supported your law, no one would lose his freedom of speech!”

Leader: “My message was accurate. It just wasn’t precise enough. It should have been caveated with, ‘assuming you agree with me.’”

Or how about this:

Subject: “But you said that if we gave you power, no one would be killed!”

Leader: “My message was accurate. It just wasn’t precise enough. It should have been caveated with, ‘assuming I like you.’”

Man, I’m good at this. Hey, DNC, do I have a future?

If you’re old enough to have lived through the days of “no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe” (hat tip: the liberal Gerald Ford), you may remember the spectacle of a Soviet government representative being interviewed on American television. He would just tell the most ridiculous lies. I mean, up was down, black was white, day was night. It really was laughable for any quasi-informed American viewer.

For Soviet subjects, however, it was no joke.

They were living under a government of the lie.

You see, one thing about this big, crazy world we live in where there’s one in every bunch, is that — no matter how corrupt or wicked you are — you can always find someone to do your bidding. There are always a few people willing to stuff the ballot boxes, intimidate political opponents, pull the gas-chamber lever or the trigger, or tell any lie you want told with a face straighter than the last man in a world of women (Jay Blarney comes to mind — the straight face part, not the man part). “I vas just following orders, you zee.”

Of course, we see people telling little lies all the time, lies that don’t exceed the boundaries of their moral framework (it’s not right, just reality). But do understand that with some people, there’s only one limiting factor determining what lies they’ll tell:

What they can get away with.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Hussein Obama (PBUH) said, when ObamaCare was up before the U.S. Extreme Court, that he was confident the “Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” Of course, as many know, it was only unprecedented when men still wore powdered wigs — the Court has been overturning laws enacted by “democratically elected” Congresses for 200 years. It’s called “judicial review.”

Now, being a former constitutional law lecturer, Obama (PBUH) knew this full well. But he also knew the media wouldn’t call him on his ridiculous Sovietesque lie and that the average reality-TV-watching American hasn’t the foggiest idea what the Court’s role is, anyway. Heck, recent man-on-the-street interviews show that some Americans don’t know what the Holocaust was and that others were willing to sign a petition advocating an “Orwellian,” “Nazi-style police state.”

This, by the way, is why Obama (PBUH) et al. want to import and legalize as many low-info undocumented Democrats as possible. Many people in this world are accustomed to overlords with whom they have a patron-client relationship, and they accept government lies as long as the slave pork barrel is kept stocked. It reminds me of a Mexican fellow I saw a few years ago wearing a shirt stating, “Everybody lies. Nobody cares.” Well, I care, even though I realize many Americans don’t care that I care.

The increased acceptance of lies is a sign of a nation in decline. But the good news — or the bad news (depending on whether or not one is a liar) — is that you can well live a lie, but you can’t live well with the consequences of living a lie.

Are Americans Ready To Accept A Police State?

Are Americans ready to accept a police state? Are pastors and Christians ready to accept a police state? Are Republicans and conservatives ready to accept a police state? Are Democrats and liberals ready to accept a police state? Are there truly enough people left in this country who even understand what a police state is, and if they do, would they really support it?

I can hear many readers shouting, “No!” But I truly wonder just how many Americans have already accepted the police state in their hearts and minds. It is absolutely true that before despots and tyrants can put shackles around men’s necks, they must first put them around men’s hearts. So, just how many of the American people are walking around every day with shackles already around their hearts? How many pastors mount the pulpits with shackles around their hearts? How many teachers enter the classroom with shackles around their hearts? How many State lawmakers walk into their various capitols with shackles around their hearts? How many police officers get into their squad cars with shackles around their hearts? How many military personnel put on their uniforms with shackles around their hearts?

Those of us who are passionate about the freedom fight spend a lot of time discussing and debating the nuances of how best to protect liberty. Except for a precious few, our State governors, attorney generals, legislators, senators, mayors, county commissioners, city councilmen, etc., are doing a fantastically lousy job of honoring their oaths to the Constitution and to the principles contained in our Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. Except for a precious few, our pastors, deacons, elders, and church leaders are doing a fantastically lousy job of defending freedom principles. Except for a precious few, our civic and business leaders are doing a fantastically lousy job of defending liberty. And needless to say, you could put the people on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., who are even doing diddly-squat about preserving liberty into an old-fashioned phone booth.

Republicans? Most of them have never seen a bill that expands the police state at home and foreign wars abroad that they did not absolutely love. Democrats? Most of them have never seen a bill that expanded government (any government) that they did not absolutely love. Yes, yes, I know that there are a few–a precious few–exceptions to the above, but not many.

But are the American people truly ready to accept a police state? A recent report at InfoWars.com is quite shocking to those of us who tend to believe that most of our fellow Americans would recoil at the thought of an open police state.

Reporting for InfoWars.com, Paul Joseph Watson writes, “After illustrating their enthusiasm for repealing the Bill of Rights, a video shows Americans happily signing a petition to support a ‘Nazi-style Orwellian police state,’ in what easily represents the most shocking footage of its kind to date.

“Citing issues with how the government shutdown has impacted the ability of the police to ‘keep the community safe,’ [Mark] Dice tells San Diegans that there is a need to ‘increase the Orwellian system.’

“‘Not a problem,’ responds one man as he signs the petition.

“‘We just want to model it after the Nazi Germany system to keep people safe and secure,’ Dice tells another individual.

“After signing the petition to ‘implement the Orwellian police state,’ another man responds, ‘You find the pot of money though,’ apparently more concerned about how much a Nazi-style police state would cost than its actual consequences.

“‘They’re trying to cut the budget by 20 per cent so we just want to make sure that we can model the police state after the Nazi Germany system,’ Dice tells another couple who sign the petition, before adding, ‘Thanks for supporting the police state.’

“‘We’re going to model it after the Nazi Germany-style police state,’ Dice clearly tells another man who signs the petition.

“‘We need this Orwellian-style system to keep everybody safe,’ Dice tells a woman as she is signing the petition, to which she responds, ‘Yeah.’”

See Watson’s report at:

So, how many of your friends, relatives, co-workers, neighbors, fellow club members, fellow pastors, and fellow church members would be willing to sign such a petition as mentioned above? Probably more than you would think. Why don’t you use Mark Dice’s technique and go stand with a petition on a street corner in your town or on a sidewalk outside the entrance of your church and find out? But be prepared for a shock. It is not just San Diegans that are already wearing the shackles around their hearts.

Those of us in the liberty movement are knocking our brains out trying to devise the best strategy to preserve the vestiges of freedom that are left in this country. The assaults against our liberties are ubiquitous–and so are the battlefronts upon which our fellow freedom-fighters are tirelessly and relentlessly defending the hill. Thank God for every one of them! I may or may not agree with each strategy or the people who come up with them, but if they are in the liberty fight, they are my brothers and compatriots.

But it is time for us to ask ourselves, are we living in a country in which a sizeable percentage of people do not care about, and may actually not WANT, liberty? Are we living in a country in which a sizeable percentage of people have already accepted the shackles of tyranny around their hearts?

I’m talking about Democrats and Republicans; Christians and unbelievers; pastors and pagans; liberals and conservatives; whites and blacks; educated and illiterate; rich and poor; men and women; northerners and southerners; easterners and westerners; military and civilians. How many are already wearing the shackles of tyranny around their hearts? I’m afraid far more than most of us want to admit.

At this point, I must make the following observation: if you are living in a State that does not recognize your right to keep and BEAR arms, if you live in a State that significantly impedes your right to possess and CARRY arms, if you live in a State that is unfriendly to the Second Amendment, you are living in a State in which a majority of lawmakers and citizens are already wearing the tyrant’s yoke around their hearts–and they want you to wear it, too.  And if you live in a large metropolitan city anywhere, you are living in one of liberty’s most inhospitable and hostile places. In all candor, one of the chief reasons why my family and I moved to a small town in a rural State (the Flathead Valley of Montana) is because of what I’m talking about right now.

For more information on our move to Montana, please go to this web page:

I realize that we have our share of big-government weenies here in Montana, too. I know we have a bunch of politicians and people who carry the shackles of tyranny around their hearts. I won’t argue that. But I also know that if police agencies in this area attempted a military lockdown such as took place in Boston after the marathon bombings, they would start a modern-day revolution. I KNOW that the majority of people in the Flathead Valley would never submit to such a police state. I also believe that the vast majority of law enforcement officers in this area would never attempt to enact such a police state.

As an example, according to published reports, the average home in the State of Montana has 27 firearms in it. Yes, you read it right: 27. I dare say that the average pickup truck in Montana has more guns in it than the average house in just about any other State.

Ladies and gentlemen, Thomas Jefferson was right: big cities are the “bane” of freedom. And those states that are controlled by big cities are also a major culprit in the demise of liberty.

Several years ago, Boston’s Gun Bible (BGB) ranked the states in order of their recognition of the right to keep and bear arms. According to BGB, the freest states are:

1. Vermont
2. Idaho and Kentucky (tie)
3. Louisiana and Alaska (tie)
4. Wyoming
5. Montana

And, again, according to BGB, the least free states are:

1. New Jersey
2. Illinois
3. Hawaii
4. Massachusetts
5. New York

Now, I would personally argue BGB’s ranking of Montana as number 5 in the list of freest states–especially when it comes to the Second Amendment. Regardless, notice the absence of the dominance of big-cities within the list of freest states, contrasted with the obvious dominance of big-cities within the list of least free states. In the list of freest states, only Kentucky and Louisiana have a metro area with over one million population. And in the case of Vermont, Idaho, Alaska, Wyoming, and Montana, the State with the largest population is Idaho with just over 1.5 million–in the ENTIRE STATE. The conclusion should be obvious: big cities equal less freedom; rural states equal more freedom.

Ladies and gentlemen, this divergence of philosophy and the willingness or unwillingness of people in big city states and rural states to either accept or reject tyranny is a boiling pot that at some point is going to spill over onto the eye of the stove. Notice that Mr. Dice’s petition was asked of people in one of America’s largest population centers: San Diego, California. Take that same petition to the streets of Kalispell, Montana; Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Cheyenne, Wyoming; or Wasilla, Alaska; and the response would be MUCH different.

I don’t believe tyranny will come to America all at once; it will come piecemeal, city by city, State by State, and region by region. And liberty will be preserved the same way.

So, are Americans ready to accept a police state? It all depends on where you live.

P.S. This weekend, selected cities across the country will be privileged to see the premiere screening of James Jaeger’s fantastic new movie, “MOLON LABE: How The Second Amendment Guarantees America’s Freedom.” The film features such notable freedomists as Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, Larry Pratt, G. Edward Griffin, Alex Jones, and, yes, yours truly–along with several others. It is terrific film. The people of the Flathead Valley in Montana are fortunate to be able to attend this premiere showing at the Mountain Cinema 4 theaters in Whitefish, Montana, at 11am Mountain Time, this Saturday, October 26. If you live within driving distance, you are invited to attend this premiere screening. DVDs of the film will be available at the showing.

If you are not able to go see MOLON LABE this weekend and would like to order the DVD of this new film, you may do so NOW. Order the MOLON LABE DVD here:

War On Terror Advocate To Head Homeland Security

Obama intends to nominate former Defense Department general counsel Jeh Johnson as new DHS chief.

He’s responsible for endorsing some of Washington’s most lawless policies. His rap sheet reveals great cause for concern. More on him below.

Post-9/11, police state terror followed. Obama expanded it.

It’s unprecedented in size, scope and ruthlessness.

DHS is America’s Gestapo. The November 25, 2002 Homeland Security Act established it. Twenty-two federal agencies were combined under one authority.

They include Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Transportation Security, the Secret Service, FEMA, National Protection and Programs Directorate, and the Coast Guard among others.

DHS concentrates unprecedented executive branch military and law enforcement empowerment. It’s a rogue agency. It’s insidious.  It’s a police state apparatus writ large. It’s a dagger at the heart of freedom.

• Its four main mandates include:

• border and transportation security;
• emergency and disaster preparedness;
• developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons countermeasures; and
• centralizing storage and analysis of potential threat information.

US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) was established months earlier (April 25, 2002). Doing so was unprecedented.

For the first time, America’s mainland, Alaska, Canada, Mexico, Gulf waters, Florida straits, and portions of the Caribbean were militarized. Troops may be deployed on US streets.

Doing so violates core 1807 Insurrection Act and 1878 Posse Comitatus Act principles.

They prohibit using federal and National Guard forces for domestic law enforcement except as constitutionally allowed or expressly authorized by Congress in times of insurrection or other national emergency.

No longer. Usurped diktat authority lets presidents claim emergency powers, declare martial law, suspend the Constitution, and deploy federal and/or National Guard troops on US streets to suppress whatever is called disorder.

Fundamental freedoms are endangered. First Amendment ones matter most. Without them all others are at risk. They include free expression, assembly, religion, and right to petition government for redress.

Police state ruthlessness defines today’s America. International, constitutional and US statute laws no longer matter. They lie in history’s dustbin.

Diktat power replaced them. No one any longer is safe. Doing the right thing is dangerous. Guilt by accusation is policy.

Anyone can be arrested, held uncharged, and detained indefinitely. Due process, judicial fairness, and other civil rights no longer protect.

If confirmed, Johnson will replace Janet Napolitano. She reflected the worst of repressive governance. Throughout her tenure, she violated fundamental rule of law principles.

She terrorized Latino immigrants. She waged war on Occupy Wall Street. She obstructed FOIA requests.

She advanced America toward full-blown tyranny. Expect Johnson to pick up where she left off. His record gives pause for concern.

His legal career combined private and government service. From 1989 – 1991, he was GHW Bush’s Assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

From 1998 – 2001, he was Clinton’s Air Force Department general counsel. He’s currently a Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison partner.

His former Defense Department responsibilities included legal review and approval of all military related operations.

An unnamed senior Obama administration official said:

“The president is selecting Johnson because he is one the most highly qualified and respected national security leaders, having served as the senior lawyer for the largest government agency in the world.”

“During his tenure at the Department of Defense he was known for his sound judgment and counsel.”

It includes defending military commission prosecutions. They’re for so-called “unprivileged enemy belligerents.” Bush called them “unlawful enemy combatants.”

Francis Boyle called this designation a “quasi-category to create an anti-matter universe of legal nihilism where human beings (including US citizens) can be disappeared, detained incommunicado, denied access to attorneys and regular courts, tried by kangaroo courts, executed, tortured, assassinated and subjected to numerous other manifestations of State Terrorism.”

Johnson supports all of the above. Doing so qualifies him to head DHS. He endorses targeted assassinations by drones or other means.

He defends lawless NSA spying. He champions waging war on terror at home and abroad.

On November 30, 2012, he addressed the Oxford Union in London. He titled his talk “The Conflict Against Al Qaeda and its Affiliates: How Will It End?”

He claimed credit for working with Congress “to enact the Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2009.” It renewed its initial 2006 authorization.

It scrapped habeas protection. It granted sweeping police state powers. They’re unchanged today. MCA states:

“(N)o (civil) court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause for action whatsoever…relating to the prosecution, trial, or judgment of a military commission (including) challenges to the lawfulness of (its) procedures…”

With or without evidence, “Any person is punishable who aids, abets, counsels, commands, procures,” or in any way provides “material support” to alleged terrorists.

Charged suspects are guilty by accusation. Enhanced interrogations (aka torture) are authorized.

So is denying detainees international law protections. Presidents can authorize military commissions at their discretion.

Torture coerced confessions are admissible. Hearsay and secret evidence is permitted. Kangaroo court justice follows.

Johnson vowed to keep fighting Al Qaeda. “(W)e are taking the fight directly to AQAP (Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula),” he said.

He omitted explaining that Washington uses Al Qaeda and similar groups strategically as enemies and allies.

He called targeting Al Qaeda “a new kind of war. It is an unconventional war against an unconventional enemy.”

He implied that old rules don’t apply. Waging war on Al Qaeda won’t “end in conventional terms,” he said.

The most “unconventional” tactics are used. Fundamental rule of law principles are violated doing so.

On February 16, 2012, New York City Bar President Samuel Seymour wrote Johnson, saying:

“(W)e write to express our concern with the Order Governing Written Communications Management for Detainees Involved in Military Commissions, dated December 27, 2011.”

“The Association is alarmed at the dramatic impingement on the attorney-client privilege resulting from the procedures set forth in the Order.”

“The sanctity of the attorney-client privilege is fundamental to our system of justice.”

“If the Order is implemented, (it) will be gravely undermined.”

“We urge the appropriate authority to vacate the Order and (replace it with) a (proper) legal framework.”

It’s in stark contrast to civil proceedings. It’s fundamentally unfair and unjust.

Seymour’s letter was comprehensive. It was lengthy. It ran nine pages.

He concluded saying “the Association believes the Written Communications Order is problematic because it invades the attorney-client privilege, inappropriately inserts outsiders into the defense team, and reverses the presumption that the privilege should be respected, all on a blanket basis and without any particularized showing of need.”

“We believe the Order threatens to undermine the proper functioning of the adversary system and” helps delegitimize military commission prosecutions.

On March 18, 2013, Johnson spoke at the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School.” He titled his address “A ‘Drone Court:’ Some Pros and Cons.”

He claimed “appropriate lethal force” made America’s homeland safer. It’s never been less safe.

He advocates drone killings. He asked what about establishing a drone court? He’s comfortable about an authority acting as judge, jury and executioner.

He wants it kept within the executive branch. Targeted assassination authorizations aren’t suited for judicial review. Quick action is needed to implement them.

Doing so violates core international, constitutional and US statute laws. Johnson didn’t explain. Nor that drones mostly kill innocent civilians.

A tiny fraction of deaths are so-called “high value targets.” Innocent men, women and children comprise most others. It doesn’t matter.

Johnson calls “targeted lethal force” justifiable. “The essential mission of the US military is to capture or kill an enemy,” he said.

In a February 2012 Yale Law School address, he called US citizens fair game.

“Belligerents who also happen to be US citizens do not enjoy immunity where non-citizen belligerents are valid military objectives,” he said.

“(U)nder well-settled legal principles, lethal force against a valid military objective, in an armed conflict, is consistent with the law of war and does not, by definition, constitute an ‘assassination.’ ”

America’s domestic “war on terror” will be in good hands with Johnson. Expect freedom to suffer another major body blow. Perhaps it won’t survive his tenure. Ends justifying means alone matters.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at .

His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Government Siege And National Rape

All Americans share the shame of the charade that pretends to be the Federal Government. The governance class operates in a manner that thinks the voice of the people is irrelevant. The current shutdown of public services is a selected con game run by “Federalies” thugs. This latest extortion racket intends to break the spirit of reform and sensible opposition. The crony capitalist takeover of the health care system only benefits the corporatists. The insurance companies stand to reap tribute from the masses, while the special interest friends of the Obama syndicate get exemptions. Make no mistake, the den of thieves that defend Obamacare, as the “law of the land” is a herd of habitual liars.

The Democrats prove their symbol, the ass, is more stubborn than usual. The Senate refusal to conference with the House and observe the constitutional duties of Congress means that Senator Harry Reid and his cohorts own this shutdown. Barack Hussein Obama is busy campaigning and lecturing the recalcitrant Republican House members for not capitulating to his dictates. The hordes of zombie groups that luv Barry Soetoro still have not figured out that the promised free health care has a zinger of a cost.

The Republicans Senators, who just sit on their hands as Dingy Harry trashes and lies from the well of the chamber floor, refuses to react to Reid’s mea culpa, “saying he and his colleagues have simply gotten too personal and nasty in their floor debates.” The long silence of most GOP RINO’s is taken as implied consent, has the beleaguered public frustrated and confused.

What is at stake is the total enslavement of the populace. This confrontation is not over Obamacare alone. No, it has more to do with the very nature of the representative government. Democratic principles are not synonymous with mob rule. However, when the entrenched Senators in safe districts refuse to pass a budget and demand that continued resolutions must keep funding unnecessary programs, you get an imperial government.

Speaker John A. Boehner makes a sensible argument.

FACT: Senate Democrats haven’t passed a budget in nearly four years. The president’s is late again (for the fourth time). Neither have a plan to replace the Obama sequester.

The last time Senate Democrats passed a budget was April 29, 2009 – nearly four years ago. One Democratic leader called budgeting “foolish.”

Only now that their paychecks are on the line under the GOP-led No Budget, No Pay Act are Senate Democrats talking about passing a budget. The “no budget, no pay” effort is supported by 72 percent of the American people.

“Ordinary people … meet their deadlines,” said President Obama. But his budget is late for the fourth time. That’s the most of any president. Ever. []

When the president finally submitted a budget last year, it received zero votes in the House and Democrat-controlled Senate. Zero.

House Republicans have routinely sought to address major challenges: the House passed budgets in 2011 and 2012 that protect and strengthen our entitlement programs for future generations; first voted to replace the president’s sequester in May 2012 and to address the rest of the “fiscal cliff” in August 2012; and more.

Folks, you are on the verge of a national crisis not seen since the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Over one hundred and fifty years ago, the tyrant of union supremacy caused the destruction of the constitutional republic. Today, you have a globalist cabal in change of an empire at war with its citizens. The shutdown, seen as an opportunity to marginalize the last vestige of patriotic opposition, is a tactic of coercive compliance.

The presstitute media, owned and edited by statist enablers and apologists spins a fantasy viewpoint of responsible government. The reality is that deficit spending is so systemic that the added cost of Obamacare is ignored from the debate for a revamping of the health care establishment.

An administration, so fond of claiming to be the champion of equality, is eager to pervert the ill-conceived and destructive Affordable Care Act by executive orders. Only a demented utopia is still willing to contend that the public will experience improved health care at an affordable price.

Put aside the civic funding component in all the passed House resolutions, the true cost of this shutdown centers upon the violation of the social compact bargain with the people. A true populist advocacy is realistic of the dangers and risks from power politics. However, such a representative and self-governing moral alternative requires a serious dialogue on the limits of fiat governance. It is especially, imperative to recognize when despotism becomes the normal method of any governing body.

When Tea Party activists are called domestic terrorists, the discussion transforms into pure demagogic intimidation. The police state thrives on the capitulation of scared citizens. The Disunited States of Amerika, once known as the home of the brave, now trembles in fear. Government clones are equivalent to the blue belly troops that pillaged the sovereign southern states in their quest to impose their version and vision of an authoritarian central government.

WE CAN STOP OBAMACARE!!!

Now you may dismiss such a minor endeavor, as a small effort to change the world, but the rhetorical question is what are you doing today to confront an evil system that no longer represents the ordinary hard working family, attempting to live their lives with dignity and responsibility?

Inaction guarantees that well funded public mercenaries push through their plans for subjugation without any resistance. At bear minimum, engage and build relationships with like-minded activists willing to push back. Joining the Tea Party Community is a start. Communicate and keep informed. Sign-up for the BATR RealPolitik Newsletter and work your own mailing lists as a regular activity.The government has encircled your neighborhood with a siege of starvation, both economically and spiritually. The establishment has raped your offspring with a financial burden and tax penalties that steal their future.

Hate the NeoCons in the Republican Party, BATR certainly does; but crawl out of your easy chair and demonstrate your support for any political figure or organization that is lobbying or pressuring the Obama administration to recognize the tremendous opposition coming from grassroots America.

Network across the web, but even more significant is to organize your own neighborhoods. “All politics is local” is not just a throw away term. It is where the rubber meets the road of your daily life. Add to your area and regional agenda, the need to confront federal agencies, whenever the destructive statists seek to enforce their punitive regulations.

This federal shutdown might be the last warning that the Chicago Saul Alinsky strategies carried out by criminal operatives in the Obama presidency are the enemy. They are annihilating radicals and extremists, dedicated to the total destruction of the country.

When Boehner says: ‘This isn’t some damn game’, the public need to act upon the warning, and participate immediately is imperative.What will the nation look like if the political career class purges out of office all opposition to the collectivist society? The answer should be frightening to any person grounded in the history and traditions of this nation.

The POTUS is waging war on ordinary citizens. Recent presidents have been following the same script, just from different chapters. Looking for allies within the federal bureaucracy is difficult, when their latest paid vacation is just another reward for implicating the draconian policies of the Obama junto.

All those “Federalies” who walk over protestors and trash civil liberties are rapists. They betray and violate their oath of office, as protected outlaws for the system.

When the federal government shreds fundamental legal protections and perverts the law to impose government by executive orders, a federal government shutdown is not out of place. However, the Obama crew is determined on making this disruption as painful and ugly as possible. Such leadership as this deserves a toast in Hades.

The American public deserves better, but the commander of theft is hell bent on letting Senator Reid do much of the dirty work. The fearless Lou Dobbs report, Democrats’ harsh words over the government shutdown, says it all. My fellow citizens the evil anarchists are not the constitutional defenders within the Tea Party, the real nihilists and legislative arsonists are the arrogant sycophant Democrats on their Jihad campaign against Middle America.

The War On Terrorism … Or Whatever

“U.S. hopes of winning more influence over Syria’s divided rebel movement faded Wednesday after 11 of the biggest armed factions repudiated the Western-backed political opposition coalition and announced the formation of an alliance dedicated to creating an Islamist state. The al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, designated a terrorist organization by the United States, is the lead signatory of the new group.” 1

Pity the poor American who wants to be a good citizen, wants to understand the world and his country’s role in it, wants to believe in the War on Terrorism, wants to believe that his government seeks to do good … What is he to make of all this?

For about two years, his dear American government has been supporting the same anti-government side as the jihadists in the Syrian civil war; not total, all-out support, but enough military hardware, logistics support, intelligence information, international political, diplomatic and propaganda assistance (including the crucial alleged-chemical-weapons story), to keep the jihadists in the ball game. Washington and its main Mideast allies in the conflict – Turkey, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia – have not impeded the movement to Syria of jihadists coming to join the rebels, recruited from the ranks of Sunni extremist veterans of the wars in Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, while Qatar and the Saudis have supplied the rebels with weapons, most likely bought in large measure from the United States, as well as lots of of what they have lots of – money.

This widespread international support has been provided despite the many atrocities carried out by the jihadists – truck and car suicide bombings (with numerous civilian casualties), planting roadside bombs à la Iraq, gruesome massacres of Christians and Kurds, grotesque beheadings and other dissections of victims’ bodies (most charming of all: a Youtube video of a rebel leader cutting out an organ from the chest of a victim and biting into it as it drips with blood). All this barbarity piled on top of a greater absurdity – these Western-backed, anti-government forces are often engaged in battle with other Western-backed, anti-government forces, non-jihadist. It has become increasingly difficult to sell this war to the American public as one of pro-democracy “moderates” locked in a good-guy-versus-bad-guy struggle with an evil dictator, although in actuality the United States has fought on the same side as al Qaeda on repeated occasions before Syria. Here’s a brief survey:

Afghanistan, 1980-early 1990s: In support of the Islamic Moujahedeen (“holy warriors”), the CIA orchestrated a war against the Afghan government and their Soviet allies, pouring in several billions of dollars of arms and extensive military training; hitting up Middle-Eastern countries for donations, notably Saudi Arabia which gave hundreds of millions of dollars in aid each year; pressuring and bribing Pakistan to rent out its country as a military staging area and sanctuary.

It worked. And out of the victorious Moujahedeen came al Qaeda.

Bosnia, 1992-5: In 2001 the Wall Street Journal declared:

It is safe to say that the birth of al-Qaeda as a force on the world stage can be traced directly back to 1992, when the Bosnian Muslim government of Alija Izetbegovic issued a passport in their Vienna embassy to Osama bin Laden. … for the past 10 years, the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the Balkans, including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and 1996. The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factories and money-laundering and drug-trading networks throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia. This has gone on for a decade. 2

A few months later, The Guardian reported on “the full story of the secret alliance between the Pentagon and radical Islamist groups from the Middle East designed to assist the Bosnian Muslims – some of the same groups that the Pentagon is now fighting in “the war against terrorism”. 3

In 1994 and 1995 US/NATO forces carried out bombing campaigns over Bosnia aimed at damaging the military capability of the Serbs and enhancing that of the Bosnian Muslims. In the decade-long civil wars in the Balkans, the Serbs, regarded by Washington as the “the last communist government in Europe”, were always the main enemy.

Kosovo, 1998-99: Kosovo, overwhelmingly Muslim, was a province of Serbia, the main republic of the former Yugoslavia. In 1998, Kosovo separatists – The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) – began an armed conflict with Belgrade to split Kosovo from Serbia. The KLA was considered a terrorist organization by the US, the UK and France for years, with numerous reports of the KLA having contact with al-Qaeda, getting arms from them, having its militants trained in al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan, and even having members of al-Qaeda in KLA ranks fighting against the Serbs. 4

However, when US-NATO forces began military action against the Serbs the KLA was taken off the US terrorist list, it “received official US-NATO arms and training support” 5 , and the 1999 US-NATO bombing campaign eventually focused on driving Serbian forces from Kosovo.

In 2008 Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia, an independence so illegitimate and artificial that the majority of the world’s nations still have not recognized it. But the United States was the first to do so, the very next day, thus affirming the unilateral declaration of independence of a part of another country’s territory.

The KLA have been known for their trafficking in women, heroin, and human body parts (sic). The United States has naturally been pushing for Kosovo’s membership in NATO and the European Union.

Nota bene: In 1992 the Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Serbs reached agreement in Lisbon for a unified state. The continuation of a peaceful multi-ethnic Bosnia seemed assured. But the United States sabotaged the agreement. 6

Libya, 2011: The US and NATO to the rescue again. For more than six months, almost daily missile attacks against the government and forces of Muammar Gaddafi as assorted Middle East jihadists assembled in Libya and battled the government on the ground. The predictable outcome came to be – the jihadists now in control of parts of the country and fighting for the remaining parts. The wartime allies showed their gratitude to Washington by assassinating the US ambassador and three other Americans, presumably CIA, in the city of Benghazi.

Caucasus (Russia), mid-2000s to present: The National Endowment for Democracy and Freedom House have for many years been the leading American “non-government” institutions tasked with destabilizing, if not overthrowing, foreign governments which refuse to be subservient to the desires of US foreign policy. Both NGOs have backed militants in the Russian Caucasus area, one that has seen more than its share of terror stretching back to the Chechnyan actions of the 1990s. 7

“Omission is the most powerful form of lie.” – George Orwell

I am asked occasionally why I am so critical of the mainstream media when I quote from them repeatedly in my writings. The answer is simple. The American media’s gravest shortcoming is much more their errors of omission than their errors of commission. It’s what they leave out that distorts the news more than any factual errors or out-and-out lies. So I can make good use of the facts they report, which a large, rich organization can easier provide than the alternative media.

A case in point is a New York Times article of October 5 on the Greek financial crisis and the Greeks’ claim for World War Two reparations from Germany.

“Germany may be Greece’s stern banker now, say those who are seeking reparations,” writes theTimes, but Germany “should pay off its own debts to Greece. … It is not just aging victims of the Nazi occupation who are demanding a full accounting. Prime Minister Antonis Samarass government has compiled an 80-page report on reparations and a huge, never-repaid loan the nation was forced to make under Nazi occupation from 1941 to 1945. … The call for reparations has elicited an emotional outpouring in Greece, where six years of brutal recession and harsh austerity measures have left many Greeks hostile toward Germany. Rarely does a week go by without another report in the news about, as one newspaper put it in a headline, ‘What Germany Owes Us’.”

“The figure most often discussed is $220 billion, an estimate for infrastructure damage alone put forward by Manolis Glezos, a member of Parliament and a former resistance fighter who is pressing for reparations. That amount equals about half the country’s debt. … Some members of the National Council on Reparations, an advocacy group, are calling for more than $677 billion to cover stolen artifacts, damage to the economy and to the infrastructure, as well as the bank loan and individual claims.”

So there we have the morality play: The evil Germans who occupied Greece and in addition to carrying out a lot of violence and repression shamelessly exploited the Greek people economically.

Would it be appropriate for such a story, or an accompanying or follow-up story, to mention the civil war that broke out in Greece shortly after the close of the world war? On one side were the neo-fascists, many of whom had cooperated with the occupying Germans during the war, some even fighting for the Nazis. Indeed, the British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, acknowledged in August 1946 that there were 228 ex-members of the Nazi Security Battalions – whose main task had been to track down Greek resistance fighters and Jews – on active service in the new Greek army. 8

On the other side was the Greek left who had fought the Nazis courageously, even forcing the German army to flee the country in 1944.

So guess which side of the civil war our favorite military took? … That’s right, the United States supported the neo-fascists. After all, an important component of the Greek left was the Communist Party, although it wouldn’t have mattered at all if the Greek left had not included any Communists. Support of the left (not to be confused with liberals of course) anywhere in the world, during and since the Cold War, has been verboten in US foreign policy.

The neo-fascists won the civil war and instituted a highly brutal regime, for which the CIA created a suitably repressive internal security agency, named and modeled after itself, the KYP. For the next 15 years, Greece was looked upon much as a piece of real estate to be developed according to Washington’s political and economic needs. One document should suffice to capture the beauty of Washington’s relationship to Athens – a 1947 letter from US Secretary of State George Marshall to Dwight Griswold, the head of the American Mission to Aid Greece, said:

During the course of your work you and the members of your Mission will from time to time find that certain Greek officials are not, because of incompetence, disagreement with your policies, or for some other reason, extending the type of cooperation which is necessary if the objectives of your Mission are to be achieved. You will find it necessary to effect the removal of these officials. 9

Where is the present-day Greek headline: “What The United States Owes Us”? Where is the New York Times obligation to enlighten its readers?

The latest step in the evolution of America’s Police State

“If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.”

So say many Americans. And many Germans as well.

But one German, Ilija Trojanow, would disagree. He has lent his name to published documents denouncing the National Security Agency (NSA), and was one of several prominent German authors who signed a letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel urging her to take a firm stance against the mass online surveillance conducted by the NSA. Trojanow and the other authors had nothing to hide, which is why the letter was published for the public to read. What happened after that, however, was that Trojanow was refused permission to board a flight from Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, to Miami on Monday, September 30. Without any explanation.

Trojanow, who was on his way to speak at a literary conference in Denver, told the Spiegel magazine online website that the denial of entry might be linked to his criticism of the NSA. Germany’s Foreign Ministry says it has contacted US authorities “to resolve this issue”. 10

In an article published in a German newspaper, Trojanow voiced his frustration with the incident: “It is more than ironic if an author who raises his voice against the dangers of surveillance and the secret state within a state for years, will be denied entry into the ‘land of the brave and the free’.”11

Further irony can be found in the title of a book by Trojanow: “Attack on freedom. Obsession with security, the surveillance state and the dismantling of civil rights.”

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., who oversees the NSA and other intelligence agencies, said recently that the intelligence community “is only interested in communication related to valid foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes.” 12

It’s difficult in the extreme to see how this criterion would apply in any way to Ilija Trojanow.

The story is a poignant caveat on how fragile is Americans’ freedom to criticize their Security State. If a foreigner can be barred from boarding a flight merely for peaceful, intellectual criticism of America’s Big Brother (nay, Giant Brother), who amongst us does not need to pay careful attention to anything they say or write.

Very few Americans, however, will even be aware of this story. A thorough search of the Lexis-Nexis media database revealed a single mention in an American daily newspaper (The St. Louis Post-Dispatch), out of 1400 daily papers in the US. No mention on any broadcast media. A single one-time mention in a news agency (Associated Press), and one mention in a foreign English-language newspaper (New Zealand Herald).

Notes

1. Washington Post, September 26, 2013 ↩
2. Wall Street Journal, November 1, 2001 ↩
3. The Guardian (London), April 22, 2002 ↩
4. RT TV (Moscow), May 4, 2012 ↩
5. Wall Street Journal, November 1, 2001 ↩
6. New York Times, June 17, 1993, buried at the very end of the article on an inside page ↩
7. Sibel Edmonds’ Boiling Frogs Post, “Barbarians at the Gate: Terrorism, the US, and the Subversion of Russia”, August 30, 2012 ↩
8. Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, October 16, 1946, column 887 (reference is made here to Bevin’s statement of August 10, 1946) ↩
9. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, Vol. V (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971), pp. 222-3. See William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, chapter 3 for further details of the US role in postwar Greece. ↩
10. Associated Press, October 2, 2013 ↩
11. Huffington Post, “Ilija Trojanow, German Writer, Banned From US For Criticizing NSA”, October 1, 2013 ↩
12. Washington Post, October 5, 2013 ↩

The Rapture Problem

In this column last week, I stated the salient reasons why pastors will not take a public stand on issues regarded as controversial or political. I believe every point I made are the real reasons pastors refuse to stand for much of anything–or even objectively study anything outside their comfort zone. To read this column, go to:

Why Pastors Won’t Take A Stand

To review, most pastors refuse to take a stand because:

1. They are success oriented and have an innate aversion to anything that is considered to be controversial. And, to them, there is nothing more controversial than politics.

2. They are afraid that if they take a controversial stand, they will lose members–and more importantly, tithes and offerings. Most churches are neck-deep in debt and are heavy-laden with staff and overhead. The thought of losing even a few giving families is enough intimidation to make sure that they do nothing to offend the people of the congregation. And since the pastor never addresses controversial issues or preaches “hard” sermons, his congregation is filled with people who harbor myriads of big-government, socialist ideas and would immediately bolt at any mention of Biblical Natural Law principles that ran counter to their leftist ideologies.

3. They have an erroneous interpretation of Romans 13 that civil government must be submitted to regardless of how evil or immoral its laws might be. This fallacious interpretation of Romans 13 (which is taught in practically every Christian school and college in America) has made them de facto slaves and worshippers of the state. As did Germany’s pastors and Christians in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, America’s pastors and Christians suffer from national “exceptionalism.” This fallacy leads them to believe that by serving the state, they are serving God. In their minds, one cannot be “right with God” if they are not totally submissive to the state.

4. The 501c3 non-profit corporation status of the Internal Revenue Code under which the vast majority of churches throughout America operate has intimidated pastors and church leaders to the point that they will do–or not do–almost anything to stay in the good graces of the IRS. To most pastors, this means staying absolutely as far away from political issues as possible–even if those issues were moral and spiritual in nature a long time before they were considered political.

5. Most pastors are ignorant of the Biblical Natural Law principles of liberty. In the same way that many attorneys are completely ignorant of constitutional government, pastors are completely ignorant of Biblical Natural Law principles. Attorneys are not taught constitutional principles in law school, and pastors are not taught Biblical Natural Law principles in Bible school.

But there is one more reason why many pastors will not take a stand that I did not address in the aforementioned column: their belief in a pre-tribulation rapture.

The word “rapture” does not appear in the Bible. The English word “rapture” is taken from the Latin word “rapere” and means to “catch away.” Theologically, it means that Christians will be caught away or taken to Heaven while they are still alive. There are several scriptural passages that Christians believe relate to this event, but the most cited is I Thessalonians 4:16, 17: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up (Greek word “harpazo”) together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

Of course, Christians throughout the centuries have taught and believed a variety of nuances of eschatology. The various interpretations of The Second Coming of Christ are almost limitless. There are pre-tribulational, pre-millennialists; mid-tribulational, pre-millennialists; post-tribulational, pre-millennialists; partial-rapture, pre-tribulational, pre-millennialists; post-millennialists; pre-wrath, (almost) post-millennialists; amillennialists, etc. And to each of these interpretations there is a plethora of sub-divisions and schisms.

Christians have historically believed that they will be resurrected to be with Christ. However, that conviction–historically and by itself–did not prevent Christians from being engaged in whatever the political, social, or cultural battles of the time might have been. From the earliest days of Christianity, believers were politically and socially engaged in their communities and countries. During the Roman Empire, a baby was not protected by law until the father granted it official human status. Until then, babies could be legally killed or allowed to die. Christians by the thousands would go out into the streets at night and rescue babies that had been “thrown away” and left to die. During the Dark Ages, when the Bible was banned, Christians continued to widely copy and distribute the scriptures. Reformers such as Ulrich Zwingli died defending Switzerland’s Protestant Reformation on the battlefield. Colonial Christians (including pastors) in great numbers participated in America’s War for Independence. The great German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, joined a Nazi resistance movement. Each of these Christian believers held their individual, respective views of the Lord’s coming and personal resurrection, but this did not keep them from being politically, socially, and culturally–and sometimes militarily–involved in their communities and countries.

However, with the broad acceptance of what has become known as Dispensationalism, many pastors and churches in America have almost totally removed themselves from political affairs. Except for voting (which is mostly kept private), pastors avoid politics like the plague. A few will talk in very broad and general terms about America “turning back to God,” etc., but what that means specifically is seldom addressed. And if pressed for an explanation, most pastors will piously say, “God has not called me to get involved in politics.” I’m not sure that God has called them to play golf either, but that doesn’t prevent a host of them from engaging regularly in that worldly activity.

Dispensationalism, as it is called today, was popularized by John Darby, C. I. Scofield, and Lewis Sperry Chafer. In more modern times, John Walvoord, J. Dwight Pentecost, Charles Ryrie, Tim LaHaye, and Hal Lindsey contributed immensely to Dispensationalism’s theological acceptance. The key element of Dispensationalism, as it relates to eschatology, is the doctrine of a pre-tribulation rapture of Christians. The idea is that the world is going to continue to get worse and worse until finally the Anti-Christ will arise as a global leader and will usher in seven years of “Great Tribulation,” wherein a sizeable portion of the world’s population will be destroyed. But before “The Great Tribulation” begins, Christian believers will be raptured into Heaven. Dispensationalists further believe that following the seven year Tribulation period, Christ will physically return to Jerusalem and establish a 1,000 year reign (called The Millennium) in which the Davidic Kingdom will be restored to Israel.

Now, let me state plainly that it is not my intention at this point to disparage the sincerity of faith and belief of the vast numbers of pastors and Christians who subscribe to Dispensationalism. Whether the pre-tribulation rapture is a correct Biblical interpretation or not is NOT the focus of this discussion. I find a sizeable number of pastors and Christians who subscribe to post-millennialism and other forms of eschatology to be just as disengaged from speaking out and engaging the political process as pre-tribulationists.

That being said, I believe it is an absolute fact that many pastors and Christians are using the doctrine of a pre-tribulation rapture to justify sitting back and doing nothing to actively resist evil and wickedness. In their minds, there is no need to be politically involved because everything is going to get worse anyway–but they are going to be raptured to Heaven before it all falls apart. I have actually had pastors say to me, “Chuck, by resisting evil government, you are fighting against God, because it is God’s will that government gets worse and worse so that Jesus can come back.”

The wretchedness of this kind of thinking should be obvious to any rational person. In the first place, how arrogant are these American Christians to think that they are so special that God would have to rapture them before any real tribulation began? Think of the millions of Christians in oppressed nations throughout history–and even today–who have already been, and continue to be, IN GREAT TRIBULATION. The tribulation of Christian martyrs throughout church history is legendary. Have they never read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs? Do they not know what has taken place in southern Sudan over the last 20 years? Have they not read the history of Christians in Mao’s China, Amin’s Uganda, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, etc. Who do they think they are? Why should Christians in America be spared what Christians throughout the world have endured and are enduring? Even if their interpretation of a pre-tribulation rapture is correct, that doesn’t mean for one moment that Christians in America would not be called on to suffer great tribulation at the hands of a wicked and oppressive government–especially considering that the vast majority of pastors are doing almost nothing to resist our government from becoming wicked and oppressive. For the doctrine of a pre-tribulation rapture to be used as some kind of sit-back-and-do-nothing-because-a-divine-Seventh-Cavalry-is-coming-to-rescue-us attitude is the height of absurdity. Dare I say it borders on blasphemy?

Secondly, people who use the pre-tribulation rapture doctrine as an excuse to justify being disconnected from political involvement by saying things like, “Jesus is coming soon, so it doesn’t matter!” are demonstrating either acute cowardice or immeasurable ignorance.”

Christians throughout the millennia have looked for the return of Jesus. The doctrine of the Second Coming of Christ has been held sacred by Christians of every generation for over two thousand years. That Jesus is coming soon doesn’t stop us from going to school and getting an education; it doesn’t stop us from going to work every day to earn a living; it doesn’t stop us from planning our financial futures or saving for retirement; it doesn’t stop us from teaching and training our children; it doesn’t stop us from learning and exercising personal skills; it doesn’t stop us from locking our doors or buying expensive alarm systems to protect us from the bad guys; and it doesn’t stop these disconnected pastors from spending years trying to perfect their golf game. Neither should it stop us from preserving the liberties and freedoms of our nation.

I am reminded of the Old Testament king of Judah, Hezekiah. He was told by the prophet that God was going to judge his country with great oppression, but that it would not happen until after he expired, some 15 years later. Hearing that, Hezekiah said (paraphrase), “Oh goodie! At least it won’t happen while I’m alive.”

I ask you, what kind of father and grandfather would rather see his own children and grandchildren endure persecution and oppression than him do something in his lifetime to prevent it? What kind of uncaring, hard-hearted, pleasure-mad sorry-excuses-for-manhood are we that we would not want to sacrifice our own comfort, our own possessions, our own lives, in order to provide something better for our children and grandchildren?

These stand-for-nothing pastors do NOT know when Jesus is coming. And they do not know what kind of tribulation their children and grandchildren are going to endure at the hands of future tyrants and despots because they refused to do something that could have prevented it.

Our Christian forebears believed in the return of Christ and in personal resurrection. Whether they were pre-millennial, post-millennial, pre-tribulational, mid-tribulational, post-tribulational, etc., they didn’t allow their personal interpretation of Bible prophecy keep them from doing what was the right thing to do when it was in their power to do it. They were statesmen, leaders, and even warriors. They worked; they dug; they studied; they taught; they led; and they fought. And when needed, they risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

Are we really more spiritual than were they? Are we really more studied? More intelligent? More dedicated? More sincere? More courageous? Or more Christ-like?

How dare this generation of spoiled, lazy, comfort-laden, cowardly, sheepish, success-motivated, passive pulpits sit in judgment on the Christian men and women of history who, regardless of their personal interpretation of eschatology, actively engaged in the social, cultural, and, yes, political affairs of their countries–and helped bequeath to us, their posterity, a free and independent land? How dare they use the doctrine of the rapture as an excuse to justify their own indifference? And more importantly, how dare Christians tolerate such cowardice and carnality?

Thirdly, Dispensationalists allow their interpretation of Bible prophecy relating to future Israel to obfuscate the divine principles of liberty as it relates to present America. Preachers such as John Hagee have twisted the scriptures to support almost unlimited wars of aggression against Middle Eastern countries in the name of befriending Israel. In reality, unconstitutional war, nation-building, foreign interventionism, etc., is no friend to Israel, the United States, or any other country.

America’s foreign policy is a global nightmare. It has made enemies where none existed. It has made it increasingly difficult for American missionaries to give the Gospel to people in foreign countries. In many countries, it has inflamed the persecution of Christians. It has greatly contributed to the economic bankruptcy of the United States. It has turned the affections of the world against us. It has turned many American Christians from peacemakers to warmongers. Under the rubric of the “war on terror,” America is being turned into a giant police state. In truth, the Warfare State that has been created in this country is not a blessing to Israel (or any other country), but a curse. But the Dispensationalists’ interpretation of prophecy tends to blind them to these maladies.

Yes, many pastors and Christians have a rapture problem. But the problem is not really the doctrine itself but the way it is misapplied. I know pastors of all theological and eschatological backgrounds who are actively engaged in the freedom fight; and I know pastors of all theological and eschatological backgrounds who are disengaged from the freedom fight. It’s up to the man. If men want to, they can hide behind anything. And when pastors choose to hide behind the rapture, it becomes a problem for all of us.

Shut Down The Military? Go For It!

The government has just shut down? What a wonderful opportunity to re-set, to start again.

Shut down the military? Save six trillion dollars in just a few years, balance the budget immediately, get weaponized tanks out of our cities and stop killing people abroad? Absolutely.

Shut down the nuclear killing fields? No more deformed babies born in Kosovo and Iraq and Libya and Gaza and Afghanistan? No more possible Chernobyls and Fukashimas here in America? No more deadly stockpiles of nuclear waste being generated daily that will last long after the human race is toast? I’m so there.

Shut down the CIA? We’d have world peace within the year! No more rendition and torture camps, no more destabilization of countries with oil? I want that. Badly.

Shut down the NSA? No more spying on our phones and computers? George Orwell would heave a sigh of relief from his grave — and I certainly would too.

Shut down all those perqs to RepubliDem Congressmen? Why not. They have never earned their keep anyway.

Shut down all those subsidies to agribusiness, Monsanto, the Koch brothers’ lumber empire, etc.? Bring back the small farmer and the Lorax? Just imagine that. Wonderful.

Shut down the subsidies to Big Pharma? So we could once again afford to buy our medicine without going to Canada? I’m certainly willing to give that a try.

Shut down Homeland Security? Stop wasting money checking our junk and irradiating us at airports and making us paranoid and spending our money to run a police state? Whoopie!

Shut down the FBI and all those other agencies that didn’t protect JFK and aren’t protecting you and me but rather the corporate mega-state? And spend all their time putting citizen-protestors in jail for years and pursuing whistle-blowers but let Wall Street mega-criminals go? I have no problem with that.

Shut down MediCare? Just try it. You’ll have an army of irate old folks in wheelchairs and walkers descending on Washington with canes in our hands and blood in our eye!

Shut down Social Security? That we earned over time with our bare hands? Do you really want hundreds of thousands of truly-pissed-off senior citizens morphing into full-rebellion mode? The Greatest Generation brought down the Third Reich. And it can bring down the Fourth Reich too.

Just as soon as we find our false teeth.

Obama’s Tipping Point And Implosion

With a failed Presidency, Barak Obama is on the verge of becoming a perpetual buffoon in a skit on Saturday Night Live. Even with such public distain, the destructive policies of the rogue government merrily continue. The bipartisan cabal class of careerists operates as if they are permanently immune from public outrage. Up to now, they are correct. The Tea Party was hijacked and went dormant, the bulk of the anti-war opposition is AWOL and the government trolls within the occupied movement are now interning at Goldman Sacks. As for the throngs of Obama cult worshipers, who continue to place their faith in state decency and righteousness, are still on a pilgrimage to cash their loyalty checks. Yet, something has changed, but is it too late?

The staff at PJ Media, who bills themselves as “Voices from a free America”, compiled The Complete List of Barack Obama’s Scandals, Misdeeds, Crimes and Blunders. Whether you agree or object to their selection, it is very difficult to defend such a record. Oh, maybe for the likes of Obama groupie turned CNN crossfire media whore, , it is just another day at the office. Just what-you-goanna-do; when your hero breaks the law and betrays the trust of the country?

For the true believer fold who remains correct to the doctrine, just deny and lie. The international humiliation that Obama self-inflicted upon himself over his retreat from a Rambo inspired Syria mission is a tipping point for the fools who once saw the man of mystery as a savior. As it turns out, he has more in common with Austin Powers than Col. Aaron Bank.Consistently Pat Buchanan provides the operative insight, as reported in Mediaite.com.

“Fox News analyst Pat Buchanan spoke to Off the Record host Greta van Susteren Wednesday night and praised Vladimir Putin’s op-ed in the New York Times as outstanding, pointing out that it was the Russian president, and not President Barack Obama, who was best speaking to American opinion on Syria.

“I read it twice,” Buchanan said, “and, candidly, it was an outstanding piece. Vladimir Putin made a better case against U.S. strikes in Syria than the President of the United States did last night…He is reaching out to the anti-war community in the United States, the anti-interventionist community on Syria, which, as we know, recently, is probably around 60, 70, 80% of the American people. And he’s doing it in an op-ed, and I think it’s very effective.”

“Frankly, in the last week, Vladimir Putin has looked like a statesman,” Buchanan said, contrasting Putin’s acumen with the “petty” behavior of Obama “stiffing” him at the G20.”

Inescapably, the military-industrial-security-spy complex just continues to prepare for the next opportunity to expand their asinine interventionist involvement. The proponents of the Zionist “Greater Israel” security project view the Middle East conflict, as the ultimate excuse to perfect and execute the domestic police state back in the homeland. In this case, the fatherland is the Disunited States that is rapidly resembling and adopting the Israeli model of oppression.

Barack Hussein Obama is a creation of elitist invention. His usefulness has reached an end for his masters. There is no doubt that the tremendous acceleration in the systematic dismantling of the remains of a constitutional republic, going on for the last quarter century, made great strides under Obama. However, the time has come for a real slowdown in the transition to the empire gulag if he remains as the spokesman in chief.

The reason is clear Obama has lost his effectiveness. Sure, he can make a chump out of Secretary of State John Kerry, but that is a natural reflex out of the windsurfer. The more important development is that he is losing the obedience within the military that usually blindly follow orders. Here is the real hope. A movement within the ranks of the junior officer corps to break with career advancement and stand up to the Generals is necessary. Refusing to deploy for another NWO expedition is the key for the implosion of the evil empire.

The GOP chicken hawks who demand that Syria must be neutralized are pathetic cowards. The entire NeoCon agenda is built upon a false and contrived war on terror. The Obama administration never attempted to change this destructive foreign policy. Proof positive, that he was the establishment choice, to deceive the public once again.

In order to understand better the planned collapse review a short list of Obama’s fiascos: List of Obama’s Failures.

“It’s hard to think of a president that has been more of an Epic Failure than President Obama. Even Carter is glad this guy came along, so at least he knows he is no longer the worst president ever.”

Is this an accident or is it more probable that these catastrophes are designed circumstances?

For the rest of Obama’s term, he will at best be a crippled conveyor of confusion. If the elites truly want to implode the remains of a functional economy and collapse any checks and balances institutions left in the system, having a caretaker President in charge would be delightful. In anticipation of a substitute replacement organism, the elites have the ideal fall guy in the man with no birth records. Who needs George W. Bush anymore? We got an improved idiot in Obama.

Four More Insane Years of Obama Lies illustrates facts that must be denied by the Obama toadies. “With the re-election of Barack Obama, the United States has officially become a banana republic. From a nation that produced patriots like Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy, we have knowingly selected the lowest common denominator as our commander in chief.”Now if you are really up to the challenge a list of Obama’s documented lies so far with the most recent lies first, will make your day.

How long do lies work, even when told to a dumb downed public? Answer – probably as long as the spin deflects from the substance of the scandals and failures, while redirecting responsibility, using false flags diversions for the rapid decline in personal well-being from the masses.

Back to the effectiveness assessment, ultimately this is the standard that Obama is evaluated by from the perspective of the best long-term interests for the globalists that put him in office.

During this window of opportunity of a weaken POTUS, the great diversity of activist organizations and ideological opponents of a fascist state need to network and work towards applying maximum pressure on the plunderers of power.

In the spirit of this effort, a weekly BATR RealPolitik Newsletter is available by email. Subscription sign-up is required with an opt-in approval. Strike while the iron is hot. Contribute ideas and start your own organizational projects that draw in and motivate your own circle of friends and contacts.

Now is the time for serious grassroots activism. For those who see improved prospects and look to the 2014 Congressional and Senate elections, the time to recruit primary challengers is now. Those who are far more cynical and pragmatic about the way truth to power actually functions, should organize serious lobbying and pressure group strategies.

The odds of success may be long but the prospects of meaningful change are nil without active involvement. Acceptability of mass civil disobedience needs to go mainstream.

Implosion is not a “To Be or Not To Be” personal dilemma choice. It is a societal and existential reality. Even if the crippled system crawls along, the pattern of Totalitarian Collectivism goes on uninterrupted.

Seldom are the prospects of disrupting the establishment more promising than when a sitting President is backed down through the communal voice of disgusted citizens. Let us all hope that another insane foreign adventure has been derailed, but without continuous persistency, an averted attack on Syria may well be a temporary victory.

A botched Obama administration causes harm to everyone, except to the top tier sociopaths that just accumulate more control and power. The toppling of their agenda and timetable can launch the tumbling of their best-laid plans.

Engaging a pro Obama supporter in discourse much less serious dialogue is a painful experience. Their denial is their badge of identity. Our synergism of commonality should emphasis a non-intervention foreign policy, a vigorous pro civil liberty defense and fundamental revamping of the debt created money, legal tender, financial banksters fraudulent system.

These three areas of mutual benefit are strategic and indispensible in developing a massive re-alignment of the body politic. Resisting the trap of “gotye politics” is a difficult task for political junkies. However, the practice of divide and conquer, has persisted far too long, and is a major impediment for true representative government based upon natural rights and democratic principles.

The prospects of the next three plus years can become a battlefield for a historic confrontation with the old regime. The Old Right needs to become the new home for frustrated patriots as well as disgruntled Obama boosters. Is it not time to build upon the retreat of incompetent government with a positive initiative?

Propaganda 101: An Introduction And Case Study

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers . . . . The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.” ~ Aldous Huxley

Hello, welcome, come on in. Please find a seat. I’m excited to be here with you today; we will take a look at how public opinion is so easily molded by promoters of the state. Many of us use the word “propaganda” a lot and it’s helpful to understand some basics about what propaganda is and how it is used. Messages released through traditional media organs can now be more effectively challenged directly by interested persons from outside the media priesthood, thanks to the Internet. Until we do this more effectively there will continue to be a trend of hyperactivity towards the police state at home and abroad and the serial-warring will continue. So, here we are; let’s get to it.

The word “propaganda” is often used when trying to explain how the state has been able to maintain such a powerful stranglehold over the collective imagination. Propaganda walks the fine line between what is known and what is purposely hidden while appealing to base emotions of fear and loyalty. Americans have been conditioned to react to this word by associating it with words like Nazi, Fascist, Communist and Terrorist. Basically, propaganda is what Bad Guys do, not Good Guys. Why would Good Guys do anything but tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

You see, Good Guys don’t control the media and good old capitalist media hacks are just giving the people what they want. Right? So, when you say “propaganda,” many people will immediately think that there is no way “our professional journalists” and “our politicians” could possibly do anything so awful to the good people of the United States of America as to inseminate the seed of propaganda into the Red, White and Blue body politic. No sir-ree, only conspiracy theorists believe stuff like that. Only Bad Guys do that and “we,” by definition, are the Good Guys. Now back to reality.

The traditional media machine is sold as being a necessary social institution, completely outside of the state (except for licenses – but don’t mind them), that wields a mighty pen with righteous indignation at political scandals and as giving The People a “voice.” The Third Rail of politics is used to “keep them honest” or “keep their feet to the fire,” for noble purposes, of course, like, say Social Security, Health Care, the Drug War or bombing foreigners. Because these trained and certified journalists had to work their way up the corporate ladder, honing their integrity, sense of honesty and desire to speak truth to power! But, gasp, people today look to the Internet and read ideas written by people who didn’t study in the media education mills or learn to kiss the right spots on the behinds of the right people! The self-serving glorification of mainstream media persons can only be surpassed by politicians themselves. The good news is that liberty has a golden opportunity today because this monopoly on the communication of ideas to the masses controlled by the melded interests of the state and big corporations has been disrupted by new technology.

The manipulation of messages to promote favorable outcomes for a messenger when interpreted by those receiving the message is as old as the first handshake. But how that message is delivered has changed profoundly a few notable times, including the most recent iteration over the past 150 or so years. The written word, developed thousands of years ago, changed communication with the masses from a very personal event with lots of shouting to a non-personal event that put the focus of thought onto the words themselves. It changed everything in society, some good and some not so good. The elite always have used their influence to promote conditions that ensure and/or expand their positions and advantages, often at the expense of the common man. This is not new; however, it has become more complex over the ages.

When the printing press came along in the Middle Ages, it allowed for many copies of written ideas to be distributed simultaneously; this changed how society organized again. The world gets smaller with each advance in communication technology. The most recent step with computers is a continuation of the electronic communications revolution started in the mid to late-1800s. The inventions of telegraph, telephone, radio and television communications made distances literally disappear for people spreading ideas far and wide. The computer has combined all of these technologies into one platform. Now there is a race between liberty and the state seeking to squelch the freedom of ideas in society with laws, regulations, licenses and official messages crowding out the truth.

The term propaganda has its roots in the writings of the Medieval Catholic Church priests wishing to propagate their faith to wider audiences using the new technology: the printing press. Machiavelli wrote a popular book for monarchists that incorporated some age-old theocratic tactics and strategies for modern (at the time) use. Hitler is often given credit for the modern resurgence of propaganda with his use of rituals, including nighttime rallies, fire, symbolism, loudspeakers, mass printing of pamphlets, film distribution, and radio transmissions as well as his autobiographical best-selling book Mein Kampf. But it is Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud and the man known as the “father of public relations” in the United States that deserves the real credit for modern propaganda. I don’t have the time today to go into a detailed history, so please do a search for Edward Bernays for a little interesting homework on the man who inspired the use of modern propaganda.

I want to spend the rest of our limited time looking at a recent article in the mainstream media as a case study in how crude propaganda is passed off of as serious journalism. It goes on everyday in every country, hidden in plain sight. Lies implying the “why” mixed-in with the hard, cold facts of who, what, where and when told by messengers posturing as journalists simply reporting impartial facts to We the People; their agendas hidden behind the façade of good intentions and given legitimacy by official blessings. These statist scribes are the perpetrators of never-ending war as they advertise a continuum of ridiculous propaganda phrases like “Making the World Safe for Democracy,” “World’s Policeman” and “War on Terror.”

First and foremost, propaganda must maintain the veil of legitimacy by speaking with authority. Power (of Authority) is to be reckoned with is the theme of all primary communications. Further, the faithful must always kneel to the powerful or society will fall apart is the subtext to all statist propaganda. Authority must be seen as the savior of society, so the people will ignore the universal faults of the state’s all too human agents. A good example of this in the run-up to the “strike” on Syria using “precision bombing” is the recent piece by Chuck Todd, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent called “The White House Walk-and-Talk That Changed Obama’s Mind on Syria.” I didn’t choose this example because it is exceptional, quite the contrary, it is all too typical and you have probably read countless versions of the same message in all of the mainstream media organs.

First, a picture is inserted showing the powerful, wise leaders in deep thought as they weigh the fate of the world on the scales of justice. This helps to establish the authority of the words that follow. Then it’s simply the Hegelian Dialectic writ large. Party A’s political agenda (thesis) is reported and discussed along with the opposing political agenda of Party B (anti-thesis). Then what results is not the clear triumph of either argument, it is the advancement to a “superior” argument C (synthesis). Position C was the elite objective all along and now the process starts over again. This is how each step on the path to perpetual war is so seamless no matter who occupies the chairs at the table of authority. Both sides are allowed occasional meaningless victories to shore up their base and stay in the game, but true victory is ever elusive and defeat always on the horizon. This is the futile system of organizing society we have inherited and glorify; a system based on lies and obfuscation to ensure elite control of the debate. We can do better.

Here is the link to the whole article published on August 31, 2013 at NBCNews.com.

Here is the picture of the official deciders provided by official photographers and released by official spokespersons with caption, by-line and intro:

White House

President Barack Obama meets with his national security advisers in the White House Situation Room on Saturday to discuss strategy in Syria. Chief of Staff Denis McDonough is fourth from right.

By Chuck Todd, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent

A stroll around the White House grounds with his top adviser on Friday evening changed President Barack Obama’s mind about getting Congress to sign off on a military strike in Syria, senior White House officials told NBC News.

Obama had been leaning toward attacking Syria without a congressional vote for the past week, the officials said. Obama was convinced he had the evidence to back up a strike and as a result dispatched Secretary of State John Kerry to make a passionate case for U.S. action. But only hours after Kerry called Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “a thug and a murderer” and accused his regime of using chemical weapons to kill 1,429 people, Obama changed his mind as he walked across the South Lawn with Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, the officials said.

NBC’s Chuck Todd says up front these powerful wise men met to “discuss strategy in Syria,” but it is really to discuss strategy for how to get away with bombing Syria. The strategy of bombing Syria is de facto assumed from the start: the leader of the little state on the other side of the world is “a thug and a murderer,” so therefore, the leader of the big state must bomb the people of the little state until they overthrow their leader. Isn’t that the definition of terrorism? State murder is referred to as a strategy, while independent murder is terrorism.

Todd then describes the political process for seeking congressional authorization for a strike on Syria, and says that the president’s decision to wait on Congress is a departure from 30 years of strengthening executive branch power. Thus, Our Fearless Leader is not afraid to go his own way to do the right thing and is a Man of the People.

Obama’s National Security Council had believed since last weekend that requiring a vote was not even on the table and that “consultation” in the form of congressional briefings and behind-the-scenes conversation was all that would be needed before a strike. One senior official noted that no key leaders in Congress had specifically requested a vote on military intervention.

Officials said that after the president met with national security advisers on Aug. 24, they determined the evidence showed Syria’s Assad regime had used chemical weapons in an attack earlier this month. At that time, the president indicated he was leaning toward a strike.

Note the use of institutional words describing mere mortal men to give these deciders the anointing of authority to “strike” at the enemy. These experts “determined the evidence” does indeed support their agenda, as if it could have been any other way. Our Fearless Leader was only “leaning toward a strike.”

But a growing number of Congressional members were beginning to question the administration’s strategy by the end of the week. And an NBC News poll released Friday morning showed that nearly 80 percent of Americans agreed that the president should seek approval in advance of taking military action.

Ah, so the legitimacy of initiating violence and raining bombs upon foreign peoples who are not a threat to this politician’s constituency is undermined by his constituency opposing his attack. Our Allies seem to be having the same problem; this is nasty business in a purported democracy, but just a speed bump for the propagandist to navigate. Note that the article doesn’t say that Congress questioned the President’s strategy of bombing Syria, just his strategy of how to accomplish this already determined goal by selling that agenda.

While Obama’s advisers argued Friday night in private that the humiliating defeat for Cameron starkly illustrated the risks of asking for congressional input, the president responded that the vote in Parliament demonstrated exactly why he should seek a vote on this side of the Atlantic, senior officials told NBC News.

And, the president insisted, seeking legislative backing was the approach most consistent with his philosophy. While debate within the administration continued into late Friday, by Saturday morning the senior advisers acquiesced.

President Obama says the nation should and will take action against the Syrian government, but not without congressional approval.

So President Obama has already made up his mind to bomb Syria, but he wants Congress to publicly back his decision so that when the action goes bad, he can spread the blame around. Congress, on the other hand, wants Obama to order the missile attack on Syria, but is afraid of the voters and doesn’t want to go on record endorsing it. It’s all “legal,” you know, for the emperor to bomb whoever he wants whenever he wants, but it would just be more “consistent with his philosophy” if he had some public support. This entire session was over the timing of the attack with the major concern being getting re-elected, not doing the right thing.

The president also noted, “while I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization, I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course, and our actions will be even more effective.”

White House aides said they are fairly confident that Congress will grant them the authority to launch a strike, although they maintain that Obama would be acting within his constitutional authority even if Congress rejects the authorization and Obama orders military intervention.

There’s an upside to that cooling-off period too, aides said. The delay gives Obama time to make his case to Congress and to keep pushing for international support.

This is the purpose of the article: to “make the case” for a strike. Notice again how the article is careful not to frame the decision as being one between attacking and not attacking Syria, but of how to sell a decision that has already been made. The only question is timing. The rest of the article is pure hypocrisy and emotional appeals seeking to give the impression that killing Syrians is the moral thing to do. Pure theater of the absurd promulgated by a willing hack posing as a “journalist.”

Now, is there some apparatchik sitting in a US Ministry of Propaganda giving orders to NBC newsmen or any other mainstream media hacks about what to write and publish? No, there doesn’t have to be, which is worse, because dribble like the above article is seen as “independent” and “just reporting the news.” And it is well written for accomplishing its purpose. However, does it even hint that there is a case for non-intervention? No. Does it ever mention that the “rebels” being supported by Obama and his minions are “thugs and murderers”? No. Does it say that evidence has been provided indicating that the surrogate terrorists seeking to overthrow the Syrian leader have used chemical weapons, originally started the conflict and are mostly from other Arab countries allied with the US? Of course not, because that does not promote the official agenda.

The fact that this attack has not yet occurred is testament to the power of the Internet and how it affects public opinion. Even just ten years ago, the emperor could send out some trumped up evidence (e.g. yellow cake purchases) against the hated dictator-of-the-month who stopped being useful to their CIA handlers and these lap dog journalists would fight over who could exaggerate the official propaganda the most. Today it is common knowledge that the US government and its surrogates have been backing “thugs and murderers” in Syria and that they have not been successful. Since these agents of death and mayhem are failing at their assignment to overthrow the Syrian dictator, the US government felt compelled to escalate the killing by becoming directly involved.

Ten years ago, the missiles would already be raining down on the water, sewer and electric plants of Syria in “precision strikes,” causing even greater human misery. You see, these brilliant strategic thinkers believe that the way to “save” people from their dictators is to destroy their society and its infrastructure, thus starving the people that aren’t directly killed by missiles and bombs. This then necessitates an occupation with “boots-on-the-ground” (that will be denied will ever happen right up to the time they “must” be sent in) to help them partially rebuild what was destroyed, also to be paid for by US taxpayers. And, of course, this requires giant embassies and military bases to be built by government contractors around the country. How long this game plan can be delayed is hard to foresee, but I doubt that it can be avoided for long, given the sociopathic powers that be. Still, this delay reveals that the elite recognize their grip on popular opinion is waning.

In the interests of full disclosure, it should be noted here that President Obama really didn’t make this decision himself, as it was made years ago by his superiors in the so-called military-industrial-complex. Obama is just the current Puppet-in-Chief trying to sell more wars to the American public. Just listen to this short excerpt from . Here is the main point:

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: …I knew why, because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments.” And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”

Well, there you go. That’s all we have time for today and I’m afraid I’ve already gone long. I hope that when you read and listen to “the news” or “official statements” that you remember to use your propaganda filter and take it with a grain of salt. Challenge official lies whenever and however you can. And when these shameless liars start waving the flag to inspire you to give up more treasure and blood for big corporations and their political machines, don’t fall for it. Remember, real Good Guys don’t need propaganda if they are doing the right thing. So stand up to the powerful media mavens and be heard because your voice is just as legitimate as any journalist’s. Speaking truth to power is essential if we are to break the cycle of endless war. Thank you for coming.

Source: Mark Davis | Strike the Root

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