Mystery, Fear, And Confusion

The Product of The American Government…

I have vowed not to watch programs on TV Channels that select the majority of their participants from two particular racial minorities. C-Span has been guilty of that distortion and I have purposely neglected it as a result.  However, I like Brian Lamb’s interviews when he is not stuck with the anointed races.  Recently he interviewed James Risen http://www.c-span.org/video/?322401-1/qa-james-risen , a New York Times writer and the author of a couple of investigative books that have gotten him indicted by our tyrannical government.

It is difficult to comprehend how in about two centuries the United States of America has evolved from a new nation whose leaders advised that it not become involved with foreign intrigues to a nation that seeks to dominate the entire world.

There were clues.  Even in its infancy it was avaricious.  Expansion seemed to be in its blood.  It captured the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific and garnered the Far Eastern island of the Philippines, Cuba in the Caribbean, and Alaska to our North.  It imposed its will on South American nations and fought several wars including one with our Southern neighbor, Mexico.  It even tried to annex Canada.

Following the devious imposition of the Federal Reserve System it flowered into international leadership.  Wars became a means for gaining control over other nations and no longer had anything to do with the nation’s welfare.  From that time on a mysterious power seemed to have hand on the rudder of the America ship.  The League of Nations, founded after WWI, was unable to gain widespread support but following WWII the United Nations, a second similar organization, emerged and has been working behind the scenes to gain control over various entities within nations around the world.

Suddenly, after the mysterious 9/11 event, United States separated itself from the United Nations and became the leader of an operation called the “War on Terror”.  The War on Terror did not specify an enemy; the dictionary defines terror as a “state of intense fear”.  From that definition it appears that the United States has embarked on a mission to eliminate fear by bombing, invading, and tyrannizing a series of Middle Eastern nations most of which are Muslim and enemies of neo-Israel.

While we fight the endless war on terror Muslims have been encouraged to immigrate into Western nation in both Europe and America.  Allowing the so-called enemy to infiltrate the adversary’s borders is a seeming contradiction in intent and has caused serious conflicts.

Near the end of the interview with Brian Lamb, Risen tells Lamb that the purpose of the War on Terror is mysterious and that many things are hard to understand.  He says it is difficult to determine what is real and what is fiction.  Lamb made no comment and did not pursue the subject.

Risen recounted a story about Senator Ron Wyden who for several months spoke of some injurious action that would upset the American people but he could not say what it was.  Only after Edward Snowden’s NSA revelation did the Senator admit that this was the thing he had not mentioned.  Risen used this to illustrate the lack of oversight that surrounds our intelligence agencies and the war in general.

If James Risen with his extensive investigation cannot understand the war on terror it is not wonder that United States citizens neither understand it nor pay much attention it.  Life goes on as if continuous war is normal. Trillions of dollars of debt accumulate to the account of American citizens and neither congress nor the people, nor the press mounts a substantial challenge.

This mysterious war on terror has caused the structure of a police state to rise over freedom.  Most of the laws enacted to protect the people from the government have been abolished and the structure that has been erected can be activated at will.

Risen has challenged a tiny part of the monster.  He seeks freedom of the press as indispensable for the maintenance of a free nation.  He is not challenging the entire series of questionable events that have brought us to this point nor the pervasive press control that has saturated all of our news outlets. The destruction of the World Trade Centers has never been properly investigated.  The evidence available defies the government’s story but our timid elected officials fail to provide a challenge. The mysterious power that seems to control us has frightened everyone and the highly visible, small, though brave, challenge Risen has mounted is a drop in the bucket.

As airplanes fly over our cities and create long slender clouds citizens ignore them.  The mention of this startling operation brings a hush to the conversation.  People know that a mysterious force is operating and are afraid of it.  In previous times a shocking appearance of this kind would have brought a crowd to government offices demanding to know what was going on.  Today, like frogs in the boiling pot we are accepting more and more serious infractions without protest.

The Bush family has been pawns in the quest for world tyranny for several generations.  In the coming national election Jeb Bush, the former Governor of Florida, is positioning himself to be the Republican nominee.  The American people will not be given a choice.  Jeb Bush affixed his signature to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century  This organization bears substantial responsibility for the war on terror.  It signers and crafters were stained with the philosophies of Leon Trotsky.

As a presidential election looms the press and media begin to give the pre-selected candidates free publicity.  Widely hated former President George W. Bush wrote a book and is now seen on TV doing light and jolly sessions with former President William J. Clinton.  Though Jeb Bush is not shown the publicity is designed to create a favorable impression of the candidate in the minds of the public.  It is effective.  One need only look to the inappropriate candidacy of President Barak Obama to understand the ability of the press and media to manipulate the electorate.

Any candidate for President of the United States that sincerely means to act in the best interests of the people of the United States will be purposely marginalized by the press and media.  Both Congressman Dr. Ron Paul and Patrick Buchanan had to fight a negative press.  Though these candidates had a sizeable following their platform was never given serious coverage.  They were lucky to be allowed to join the presidential debates and when they did they were marginalized and were made to look foolish.

The next President of the United States of America will continue the policies set in place by President George W. Bush and President Barak Obama.  Massive debt will continue to accumulate, perpetual war will continue, moral deterioration will progress, the presidency will increase in power, and freedom will continue to deteriorate.  It is in the best interests of the world power seekers to maintain peace but that does not mean the riots will not continue.  Trotskyites in the press and media view riots as an opportunity to consolidate power.

We have forgotten the Creator, the Triune Christian God who was the power behind the founding of our nation.  We have forsaken the humility of the creature and usurped the station of the Creator, a position we are ill equipped to occupy.  We are created beings, unable to govern ourselves; the confusion of cognitive dissonance is a result.   Peace tarries until we begin to allow the Master to assume His role of King and Ruler.

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again. And Again. And Yet Again… Using Saddam’s WMD

“Russia reinforced what Western and Ukrainian officials described as a stealth invasion on Wednesday [August 27], sending armored troops across the border as it expanded the conflict to a new section of Ukrainian territory. The latest incursion, which Ukraine’s military said included five armored personnel carriers, was at least the third movement of troops and weapons from Russia across the southeast part of the border this week.”

None of the photos accompanying this New York Times story online showed any of these Russian troops or armored vehicles.

“The Obama administration,” the story continued, “has asserted over the past week that the Russians had moved artillery, air-defense systems and armor to help the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. ‘These incursions indicate a Russian-directed counteroffensive is likely underway’, Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, said. At the department’s daily briefing in Washington, Ms. Psaki also criticized what she called the Russian government’s ‘unwillingness to tell the truth’ that its military had sent soldiers as deep as 30 miles inside Ukraine territory.”

Thirty miles inside Ukraine territory and not a single satellite photo, not a camera anywhere around, not even a one-minute video to show for it. “Ms. Psaki apparently [sic] was referring to videos of captured Russian soldiers, distributed by the Ukrainian government.” The Times apparently forgot to inform its readers where they could see these videos.

“The Russian aim, one Western official said, may possibly be to seize an outlet to the sea in the event that Russia tries to establish a separatist enclave in eastern Ukraine.”

This of course hasn’t taken place. So what happened to all these Russian soldiers 30 miles inside Ukraine? What happened to all the armored vehicles, weapons, and equipment?

“The United States has photographs that show the Russian artillery moved into Ukraine, American officials say. One photo dated last Thursday, shown to a New York Times reporter, shows Russian military units moving self-propelled artillery into Ukraine. Another photo, dated Saturday, shows the artillery in firing positions in Ukraine.”

Where are these photographs? And how will we know that these are Russian soldiers? And how will we know that the photos were taken in Ukraine? But most importantly, where are the fucking photographs?

Why am I so cynical? Because the Ukrainian and US governments have been feeding us these scare stories for eight months now, without clear visual or other evidence, often without even common sense. Here are a few of the many other examples, before and after the one above:

• The Wall Street Journal (March 28) reported: “Russian troops massing near Ukraine are actively concealing their positions and establishing supply lines that could be used in a prolonged deployment, ratcheting up concerns that Moscow is preparing for another [sic] major incursion and not conducting exercises as it claims, US officials said.”
• “The Ukrainian government charged that the Russian military was not only approaching but had actually crossed the border into rebel-held regions.” (Washington Post, November 7)
• “U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove told reporters in Bulgaria that NATO had observed Russian tanks, Russian artillery, Russian air defense systems and Russian combat troops enter Ukraine across a completely wide-open border with Russia in the previous two days.” (Washington Post, November 13)
• “Ukraine accuses Russia of sending more soldiers and weapons to help rebels prepare for a new offensive. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied aiding the separatists.” (Reuters, November 16)

Since the February US-backed coup in Ukraine, the State Department has made one accusation after another about Russian military actions in Eastern Ukraine without presenting any kind of satellite imagery or other visual or documentary evidence; or they present something that’s very unclear and wholly inconclusive, such as unmarked vehicles, or unsourced reports, or citing “social media”; what we’re left with is often no more than just an accusation. The Ukrainian government has matched them.

On top of all this we should keep in mind that if Moscow decided to invade Ukraine they’d certainly provide air cover for their ground forces. There has been no mention of air cover.

This is all reminiscent of the numerous stories in the past three years of “Syrian planes bombing defenseless citizens”. Have you ever seen a photo or video of a Syrian government plane dropping bombs? Or of the bombs exploding? When the source of the story is mentioned, it’s almost invariably the rebels who are fighting against the Syrian government. Then there’s the “chemical weapon” attacks by the same evil Assad government. When a photo or video has accompanied the story I’ve never once seen grieving loved ones or media present; not one person can be seen wearing a gas mask. Is it only children killed or suffering? No rebels?

And then there’s the July 17 shootdown of Malaysia Flight MH17, over eastern Ukraine, taking 298 lives, which Washington would love to pin on Russia or the pro-Russian rebels. The US government – and therefore the US media, the EU, and NATO – want us all to believe it was the rebels and/or Russia behind it. The world is still waiting for any evidence. Or even a motivation. Anything at all. President Obama is not waiting. In a talk on November 15 in Australia, he spoke of “opposing Russia’s aggression against Ukraine – which is a threat to the world, as we saw in the appalling shoot-down of MH17”. Based on my reading, I’d guess that it was the Ukranian government behind the shootdown, mistaking it for Putin’s plane that reportedly was in the area.

Can it be said with certainty that all the above accusations were lies? No, but the burden of proof is on the accusers, and the world is still waiting. The accusers would like to create the impression that there are two sides to each question without actually having to supply one of them.

The United States punishing Cuba

For years American political leaders and media were fond of labeling Cuba an “international pariah”. We haven’t heard that for a very long time. Perhaps one reason is the annual vote in the United Nations General Assembly on the resolution which reads: “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”. This is how the vote has gone (not including abstentions):

 
This year Washington’s policy may be subject to even more criticism than usual due to the widespread recognition of Cuba’s response to the Ebola outbreak in Africa.

Each fall the UN vote is a welcome reminder that the world has not completely lost its senses and that the American empire does not completely control the opinion of other governments.

Speaking before the General Assembly before last year’s vote, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez declared: “The economic damages accumulated after half a century as a result of the implementation of the blockade amount to $1.126 trillion.” He added that the blockade “has been further tightened under President Obama’s administration”, some 30 US and foreign entities being hit with $2.446 billion in fines due to their interaction with Cuba.

However, the American envoy, Ronald Godard, in an appeal to other countries to oppose the resolution, said:

The international community … cannot in good conscience ignore the ease and frequency with which the Cuban regime silences critics, disrupts peaceful assembly, impedes independent journalism and, despite positive reforms, continues to prevent some Cubans from leaving or returning to the island. The Cuban government continues its tactics of politically motivated detentions, harassment and police violence against Cuban citizens.

So there you have it. That is why Cuba must be punished. One can only guess what Mr. Godard would respond if told that more than 7,000 people were arrested in the United States during the Occupy Movement’s first 8 months of protest in 2011-12 ; that many of them were physically abused by the police; and that their encampments were violently destroyed.

Does Mr. Godard have access to any news media? Hardly a day passes in America without a police officer shooting to death an unarmed person.

As to “independent journalism” – What would happen if Cuba announced that from now on anyone in the country could own any kind of media? How long would it be before CIA money – secret and unlimited CIA money financing all kinds of fronts in Cuba – would own or control most of the media worth owning or controlling?

The real reason for Washington’s eternal hostility toward Cuba has not changed since the revolution in 1959 – The fear of a good example of an alternative to the capitalist model; a fear that has been validated repeatedly over the years as many Third World countries have expressed their adulation of Cuba.

How the embargo began: On April 6, 1960, Lester D. Mallory, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in an internal memorandum: “The majority of Cubans support Castro … The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. … every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba.” Mallory proposed “a line of action which … makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

Later that year, the Eisenhower administration instituted its suffocating embargo against its everlasting enemy.

The United States judging and punishing the rest of the world

In addition to Cuba, Washington currently is imposing economic and other sanctions against Burma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, China, North Korea, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Turkey, Germany, Malaysia, South Africa, Mexico, South Sudan, Sudan, Russia, Syria, Venezuela, India, and Zimbabwe. These are sanctions mainly against governments, but also against some private enterprises; there are also many other sanctions against individuals not included here.

Imbued with a sense of America’s moral superiority and “exceptionalism”, each year the State Department judges the world, issuing reports evaluating the behavior of all other nations, often accompanied by sanctions of one kind or another. There are different reports rating how each lesser nation has performed in the previous year in areas such as religious freedom, human rights, the war on drugs, trafficking in persons, and sponsors of terrorism. The criteria used in these reports are often political. Cuba, for example, is always listed as a sponsor of terrorism whereas anti-Castro exile groups in Florida, which have committed literally hundreds of terrorist acts over the years, are not listed as terrorist groups or supporters of such.

Cuba, which has been on the sponsor-of-terrorism list longer (since 1982) than any other country, is one of the most glaring anomalies. The most recent State Department report on this matter, in 2012, states that there is “no indication that the Cuban government provided weapons or paramilitary training to terrorist groups.” There are, however, some retirees of Spain’s Basque terrorist group ETA (which appears on the verge of disbanding) in Cuba, but the report notes that the Cuban government evidently is trying to distance itself from them by denying them services such as travel documents. Some members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been allowed into Cuba, but that was because Cuba was hosting peace talks between the FARC and the Colombian government, which the report notes.

The US sanctions mechanism is so effective and formidable that it strikes fear (of huge fines) into the hearts of banks and other private-sector organizations that might otherwise consider dealing with a listed state.

Some selected thoughts on American elections and democracy

In politics, as on the sickbed, people toss from one side to the other, thinking they will be more comfortable.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

• 2012 presidential election:
  223,389,800 eligible to vote
  128,449,140 actually voted
  Obama got 65,443,674 votes
  Obama was thus supported by 29.3% of eligible voters
• There are 100 million adults in the United States who do not vote. This is a very large base from which an independent party can draw millions of new votes.
• If God had wanted more of us to vote in elections, he would give us better candidates.
• “The people can have anything they want. The trouble is, they do not want anything. At least they vote that way on election day.” – Eugene Debs, American socialist leader (1855-1926)
• “If persons over 60 are the only American age group voting at rates that begin to approximate European voting, it’s because they’re the only Americans who live in a welfare state – Medicare, Social Security, and earlier, GI loans, FHA loans.” – John Powers
• “The American political system is essentially a contract between the Republican and Democratic parties, enforced by federal and state two-party laws, all designed to guarantee the survival of both no matter how many people despise or ignore them.” – Richard Reeves (1936- )
• The American electoral system, once the object of much national and international pride, has slid inexorably from “one person, one vote”, to “one dollar, one vote”.
• Noam Chomsky: “It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars. Their professional concern in their regular vocation is not to provide information. Their goal, rather, is deceit.”
• If the Electoral College is such a good system, why don’t we have it for local and state elections?
• “All the props of a democracy remain intact – elections, legislatures, media – but they predominantly function at the service of the oligarchy.” – Richard Wolff
• The RepDem Party holds elections as if they were auctions; indeed, an outright auction for the presidency would be more efficient. To make the auction more interesting we need a second party, which must at a minimum be granted two privileges: getting on the ballot in all 50 states and taking part in television debates.
• The US does in fact have two parties: the Ins and the Outs … the evil of two lessers.
• Alexander Cockburn: “There was a time once when ‘lesser of two evils’ actually meant something momentous, like the choice between starving to death on a lifeboat, or eating the first mate.”
• Cornel West has suggested that it’s become difficult to even imagine what a free and democratic society, without great concentrations of corporate power, would look like, or how it would operate.
• The United States now resembles a police state punctuated by elections.
• How many voters does it take to change a light bulb? None. Because voters can’t change anything.
• H.L. Mencken (1880-1956): “As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
• “All elections are distractions. Nothing conceals tyranny better than elections.” – Joel Hirschhorn
• In 1941, one of the country’s more acerbic editors, a priest named Edward Dowling, commented: “The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.”
• “Elections are a necessary, but certainly not a sufficient, condition for democracy. Political participation is not just a casting of votes. It is a way of life.” – UN Human Development Report, 1993
• “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain!” I reply, “You have it backwards. If you DO vote, you can’t complain. You asked for it, and they’re going to give it to you, good and hard.”
• “How to get people to vote against their interests and to really think against their interests is very clever. It’s the cleverest ruling class that I have ever come across in history. It’s been 200 years at it. It’s superb.” – Gore Vidal
• We can’t use our democracy/our vote to change the way the economy functions. This is very anti-democratic.
• What does a majority vote mean other than that the sales campaign was successful?
• Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius: “The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.”
• We do have representative government. The question is: Who does our government represent?
• “On the day after the 2002 election I watched a crawl on the bottom of the CNN news screen. It said, ‘Proprietary software may make inspection of electronic voting systems impossible.’ It was the final and absolute coronation of corporate rights over democracy; of money over truth.” – Mike Ruppert, RIP
• “It’s not that voting is useless or stupid; rather, it’s the exaggeration of the power of voting that has drained the meaning from American politics.” – Michael Ventura
• After going through the recent national, state and local elections, I am now convinced that taxation without representation would have been a much better system.
• “Ever since the Constitution was illegally foisted on the American people we have lived in a blatant plutocracy. The Constitution was drafted in secret by a self-appointed elite committee, and it was designed to bring three kinds of power under control: Royalty, the Church, and the People. All were to be subjugated to the interests of a wealthy elite. That’s what republics were all about. And that’s how they have functioned ever since.” – Richard K. Moore
• “As demonstrated in Russia and numerous other countries, when faced with a choice between democracy without capitalism or capitalism without democracy, Western elites unhesitatingly embrace the latter.” – Michael Parenti
• “The fact that a supposedly sophisticated electorate had been stampeded by the cynical propaganda of the day threw serious doubt on the validity of the assumptions underlying parliamentary democracy as a whole.” – British Superspy for the Soviets Kim Philby (1912-1988), explaining his reasons for becoming a Communist instead of turning to the Labour Party
• US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (1856-1941): “We may have democracy in this country, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”
• “We don’t need to run America like a business or like the military. We need to run America like a democracy.” – Jill Stein, Green Party presidential candidate 2012

Notes

1. Democracy Now!, October 30, 2013
2. Huffingfton Post, May 3, 2012
3. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume VI, Cuba(1991), p.885 (online here)
4. For the complete detailed list, see U.S. Department of State, Nonproliferation Sanctions
5. U.S. Department of State, “Country Reports on Terrorism 2012, Chapter 3: State Sponsors of Terrorism,” May 20, 2013

Gloves Come Off In Lebanon

Sunni-Shia Bellum Sacrum Fault Lines Deepen…

Historically, the term “religious war” (Bellum Sacrum) was used to describe various European wars among Christian denominations spanning mainly the 16th to the 18th century such as the Seven Year’s War (1756-1763) which spread widely throughout Europe and on to North America, Central America, the also to the West African coast, India, and the Philippines. There were dozens of other intra-Christian religious wars the seeds of which began to sprout shortly after the death of Jesus Christ.

The Encyclopedia of Wars, by authors Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod, estimate that only 7% of the 1,783 wars they chronicled involve religion. Lebanon is one of these and is still mired in a cold war phase of its 15 year (1975-90) Civil War, from which Lebanon yet to recover. Religious differences are one of the major causes on Lebanon’s many problems today and it is within this context that the mushrooming intra-Muslim war between Sunni and Shia is spreading and intensifying. Sunni comprise approximately 90% percent of the followers of Islam and their increasingly vilified coreligionists, Shia Muslims, 10%. This month Lebanon’s Shia are commemorating Ashoura and the martyrdom of Imam Hussein Ibn Ali at the battle of Karbala in 680 under increased security with additional checkpoints manned by the Lebanese army and Hezbollah forces because Da’ish and al Nursa have announced their intent to target the Shia worshipers.

Many among Lebanon’s older Sunni and Shia generation, report that as youngsters they were not aware of Shia-Sunni antagonisms nor did they harbor animosity with their neighbors. Sometimes inter-marrying, sharing holidays and developing strong friendships with each other. “That is all changed now, perhaps until End Times” according to an employee at Beirut’s Dar al Fatwa in the mixed neighborhood of Aisha Bikar near the American University of Beirut.

The gentleman and his colleague elaborated:

“Everyone alive today in Lebanon and for many generations to come will have their family’s lives negatively affected by the rapidly spreading sectarian hostility. The Sunni-Shia hatred is poisonous—it’s the new political Ebola virus! Can it be eradicated? How can we stop it from engulfing the Middle East or has it already done so?” Another added, “And forget about the Christians! In a few years’ time there will probably not be enough of them left in the Middle East to matter.”

To this observer, the spiraling sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia in Lebanon appears to be coming mainly from Sunni groups and militia who vent a laundry list of complaints against their fellow Muslims. Many but not all stemming from Hezbollah’s involvement in the civil war still raging across the anti-Lebanon mountain range to the east.

Members of the two Muslim sects have co-existed for centuries and share many fundamental beliefs and practices. But there are Sunni-Shia differences in doctrine, ritual, law, theology and religious organization and are based in part over a political dispute soon after the death of the Prophet Muhammad over who should lead the Muslim community. Sunni Muslims regard themselves as the orthodox and traditionalist branch of Islam and adhere to traditions and practices based on precedent or reports of the actions of the Prophet Muhammad and those close to him. Sunnis venerate all the prophets mentioned in the Koran, but particularly Muhammad as the final prophet. In early Islamic history the Shia were a political faction – literally “Shiat Ali” or the party of Ali and they claimed the right of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, and his descendants to lead the Islamic community.

In Sunni ruled countries, for hundreds of years Shias made up the poorest sections of society and today many view themselves as victims of discrimination and oppression as some extremist Sunni doctrines continue to preach hatred of Shia. Some argue that the Shia-Sunni Bellum Sacrum is more political than religious. If true, the mutually destructive conflict now intensifying in Lebanon would share much in common with other religious wars which were basically political conflicts justified in the name of religion. Iran which supports some Shia militias beyond its borders is in conflict with some Sunni countries, especially regional neighbors who support Sunni militia. Lebanon’s hemmed population-Sunni and Shia has been put in a difficult situation caught up also in spill-over from the Syrian civil war. Teheran’s policy of supporting Shia militias and parties beyond its borders is essentially matched by the Sunni Gulf states with Shia and Sunni leaders often seem to be in competition as the latter continue to strengthen their links to Sunni governments and movements abroad.

Lebanon is paying a big price. Lawmakers failed on 10/29/2014 for the fifteenth time to elect a new president over a lack of quorum at parliament they will “try again” on 11/19/2014 with likely the same result because those holding power want a deadlock. Only 54 members out the 128 in Parliament showed up, well short of a quorum. The others were instructed to boycott by their parties, including the pro-Hezbollah Change and Reform and Loyalty to the Resistance blocs of the March 8 alliance. Their motive, their opponents the pro-Saudi March 14 alliance claim are purely political. The latest failed session was also boycotted by Speaker Nabih Berri, the Shia leader of the pro- Bashar Assad, Amal militia with Berri insisting he is simply trying to encourage ‘dialogue”.

“It has never been this bad” explains the proprietor of a neighborhood grocery store, agreeing with ever more of his fellow countrymen, as now opening curses both sides in public.

A few brief examples from the past week illustrate the rapidly intensifying Sunni-Shia clash.

As the Hezbollah continues boycotting Parliamentary electoral sessions due to disagreements with the mainly Sunni March 14 camp over a compromise presidential candidate. Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, himself a presidential candidate, this week accused Hezbollah of “blocking Parliament in to order to blackmail political blocs into electing, their puppet, Michel Aoun.” Aoun who is as anti-Palestinian as Geagea is, denies media speculation “ that the ongoing obstruction is no longer a political maneuver, but an attempt to target Lebanon’s political system,”
Hezbollah is also being accused of joining the Syrian war and sacrificing Lebanese young men while killing many innocent Syrians solely on orders from Tehran. According to one March 14th Member of Parliament, “No one believes, not even the Hezbollah leadership that Hezbollah is fighting in Syria to protect Lebanon whose people are paying a big price for their adventure. “ Sunni opponents of Shia Hezbollah, including the spokesman for the March 14th alliance claim that “terrorists” or the so-called ‘Takfiries” would never have come to Lebanon if Hezbollah had not invaded Syria and started killing Sunni.”

The largely Sunni families of the 27 captive troops and policemen being held for ransom by the al-Nursa front are blaming Hezbollah and the Shia leader of Lebanon’s Internal Security Force, (ISF) Major-General Abbas Ibrahim, for not acting seriously to negotiate their loved ones release from captivity for purely sectarian reasons. On 10/30/14 the families threatened again to escalate their protests and have been burning tires at the Riad al-Solh Square in downtown Beirut while their relatives captors, al-Nusra Front, in increasingly setting up sleeper cells and advocating for the Sunni community in Lebanon is also accusing the ISF director of not being serious are obtaining the release of Sunni captives.

Meanwhile, Notre Dame University – Louaize and Saint Joseph University decided this week to suspend student elections for the current academic year as sectarianism spreads. “The political and security situation in Lebanon, which could impact the campus, will not allow the students to practice their democratic role positively,” USJ board of members said in a statement. Religion is a factor in this conflict also according to campus security guards on the scene trying to maintain order.

The United Nations has warned again this week that foreign religiously motivated jihadists are swarming into the twin conflicts in Iraq and Syria on “an unprecedented scale and some with religious motives and from countries that had not previously contributed combatants to global terrorism”. More than 1,500 foreign fighters are streaming into Syria each month, a rate that has increased since US airstrikes against Da’ish (Isis) began last month (9/23/14). The trend line established over the past year would mean that the total number of foreign fighters in Syria exceeds 16,000, and the pace eclipses that of any comparable conflict in recent decades, including the 1980s war in Afghanistan. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights just announced that 560 people have been killed in airstrikes since they began. That group counted 32 civilian deaths, including six children and five women.

The Pentagon estimates that each of the more than 600 US airstrikes in Syria and Iraq costs the American taxpayer approximately $ 9 million which given the claimed “kill count” means each death costs roughly $ 1.4 million each, militiamen or civilians. The rate of jihadists arriving just in Syria, again according to the Pentagon, were 12,000 in July, and 7,000 in March. But other US government’s estimates for just Syria put the jihadist arrival figures at currently 1,500 each month with the numbers accelerating and increasing coming to Lebanon. There are higher estimates according to U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights who rank “Democracy Success Story and Arab Spring Winner” Tunisia as the country contributing the most jihadists currently arriving in the Levant.

As noted above, many of the religiously motivated jihadists are coming to Lebanon, especially up north near Tripoli which has seen heavy fighting between Sunni and Shia backed militia. If one credits their social media, several want to fight Hezbollah which they often label the “Party of Satan” and “Iran’s militia.”

On 10/30/13 Saudi National Guard Minister Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah, directing his comments to the KSA’s arch foe Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nassrallah proclaimed that “The parties embracing terrorism in the region have become well-known.” Within minutes Saudi media outlets open with commentary and statements like those currently appearing in Lebanese media outlets such as Naharnet: “Yes those supporting terrorism they are the same who killed Rafik el Hariri and the remaining M14 leaders. They are the same who refuse to abide by Lebanese justice and deliver the accused/witness for investigations, they are the same who in order to remain in power, decide to destroy their country and kill their people and allow a huge inflow of terrorist into their land to show a worse alternative.”

Sentiments shared by some in the Sunni community who, unlike during the years following the 2006 July war, and Hezbollah’s widely acknowledged success against the Zionist regime still occupying Palestine, are no longer reluctant to criticize openly Shia Muslims generally and Hezbollah specifically.

Where this all ends is anyone’s guess but a ceasefire in the Syrian conflict, even limited area by area as Washington, Tehran and Moscow are discussing would perhaps help—or, as various analysts and some serious scholars postulate, the latest Sunni-Shia manifestation of Bellum Sacrum may take a long time to control if not resolve. Tens of years or centuries they advise only time will tell.

The Islamist State

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Berlin Wall – Another Cold War Myth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Al Franken, the liberal’s darling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

Who’s Bombing Libya?

In the bizarro world which is the Middle East these days, nothing is more bizarre than the repeated bombing of Libya by parties unknown. There were off-and-on aerial attacks in the eastern part of the country – Benghazi, Derna, Ajdabiyah – last spring which were believed to have been carried out by one of the contending parties in the civil war raging in Libya, but lately there have been a number of attacks in the west, around Tripoli, which no one has taken the credit – or blame – for.

The attacks in the east are attributed to remnants of the Libyan air force under the command of a dissident general from the Qaddafi era, Khalifa Haftar. Haftar spent the last couple of decades prior to NATO’s aggression against Libya ensconced in McLean, Virginia, where he would take his kids trick-or-treating down the street at his neighbor’s place: CIA Headquarters (got some treats for himself there as well no doubt). He now leads one of the umpteen militias competing for power in Libya. He calls his campaign “Operation Dignity” and has won the support of the more secular, Western-oriented players in Libyan politics.       

The Operation Dignity supporters are embodied in a House of Representatives elected last June. It presently rules the country from Tobruk, a town east of Benghazi almost on the border with Egypt (yes, WW II buffs, that Tobruk),. Funny place for what bills itself as the government of the nation and is recognized as such by those countries which believe Libya has a government to reside; but they had no choice, having been driven out of the real capital, Tripoli, by an amalgam of Islamist militias calling themselves “Operation Libyan Dawn”. The Dawnists enjoy the support of the Grand Mufti of Libya and have succeeded in securing control of Tripoli and most of Benghazi.

(Funny sidelight: Tobruk, being a fairly small place, doesn’t have sufficient accommodations for all the HoR legislators and bureaucrats, so they leased a Greek car ferry, the Elyros, to live on. Now the ship’s owner wants his ship back and has demanded that they leave. As of this date, they have refused to disembark.)

No one believes Haftar’s forces have the capability to have carried out the bombings in the west of the country. The first, on August 17th and 18th, occurred in Tripoli. This was followed by an attack on an ammo dump in the town of Ghariyan on September 15th. Then, just today (9/24), Tripoli was bombed again. All the air attacks have been against positions held by Islamist forces.

No one has claimed responsibility for these attacks. We attributed the August bombings to the United Arab Emirates acting in collaboration with Egypt, but those two countries denied it was them and we rescinded our attribution. The head of the government in domestic exile, Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni, does not hold the UAE or Egypt responsible. Nor does Libya’s UN ambassador. So who’s bombing Libya? 

Interestingly, the most recent attack came two days after 15 countries released a communique at the United Nations calling for non-interference in Libya. The countries are Algeria, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Tunisia, Turkey, the UAE, UK, US. If we take these signatories at their word (which I am not suggesting is appropriate as they have been the prime meddlers in Libyan affairs), who does that leave who could be conducting the raids?

Everyone’s, well, almost everyone’s, favorite bete noire in the area comes to mind: Israel. In fact, the Israelis pretty much win by default. Some might like to blame that other Middle Eastern bete noire,Iran, but that hardly seems likely or feasible. Why would they intervene in support of Our Man from Langley and how could they, lacking appropriate bases on land or sea. Russia? China? Burkina Fasso? No one other than the Israelis makes much sense. Now if you assume someone had their fingers crossed when they signed that communique, then a whole host of suspects arises, in fact the entire list!

If we ever do find out who is bombing Libya, it might shed some light on developments elsewhere in the turbulently jumbled Middle East. On the other hand, it might prove to be an inconsequential sideshow, a mere addendum to Libya’s existing entry in world trivia: the country in which the first aerial bombardment took place (by the Italians in 1911). Who bombed Libya in 2014? If you know the answer, you must be clairvoyant!

Ukraine And Neo-Nazis

Ever since serious protest broke out in Ukraine in February the Western mainstream media, particularly in the United States, has seriously downplayed the fact that the usual suspects – the US/European Union/NATO triumvirate – have been on the same side as the neo-Nazis. In the US it’s been virtually unmentionable. I’m sure that a poll taken in the United States on this issue would reveal near universal ignorance of the numerous neo-Nazi actions, including publicly calling for death to “Russians, Communists and Jews”. But in the past week the dirty little secret has somehow poked its head out from behind the curtain a bit.

On September 9 NBCnews.com reported that “German TV shows Nazi symbols on helmets of Ukraine soldiers”. The German station showed pictures of a soldier wearing a combat helmet with the “SS runes” of Hitler’s infamous black-uniformed elite corps. (Runes are the letters of an alphabet used by ancient Germanic peoples.) A second soldier was shown with a swastika on his helmet.

On the 13th, the Washington Post showed a photo of the sleeping quarter of a member of the Azov Battalion, one of the Ukrainian paramilitary units fighting the pro-Russian separatists. On the wall above the bed is a large swastika. Not to worry, the Post quoted the platoon leader stating that the soldiers embrace symbols and espouse extremist notions as part of some kind of “romantic” idea.

Yet, it is Russian president Vladimir Putin who is compared to Adolf Hitler by everyone from Prince Charles to Princess Hillary because of the incorporation of Crimea as part of Russia. On this question Putin has stated:

The Crimean authorities have relied on the well-known Kosovo precedent, a precedent our Western partners created themselves, with their own hands, so to speak. In a situation absolutely similar to the Crimean one, they deemed Kosovo’s secession from Serbia to be legitimate, arguing everywhere that no permission from the country’s central authorities was required for the unilateral declaration of independence. The UN’s international court, based on Paragraph 2 of Article 1 of the UN Charter, agreed with that, and in its decision of 22 July 2010 noted the following, and I quote verbatim: No general prohibition may be inferred from the practice of the Security Council with regard to unilateral declarations of independence.

Putin as Hitler is dwarfed by the stories of Putin as invader (Vlad the Impaler?). For months the Western media has been beating the drums about Russia having (actually) invaded Ukraine. I recommend reading: “How Can You Tell Whether Russia has Invaded Ukraine?” by Dmitry Orlov

And keep in mind the NATO encirclement of Russia. Imagine Russia setting up military bases in Canada and Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Remember what a Soviet base in Cuba led to.

Has the United States ever set a bad example?

Ever since that fateful day of September 11, 2001, the primary public relations goal of the United States has been to discredit the idea that somehow America had it coming because of its numerous political and military acts of aggression. Here’s everyone’s favorite hero, George W. Bush, speaking a month after 9-11:

“How do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries there is vitriolic hatred for America? I’ll tell you how I respond: I’m amazed. I’m amazed that there’s such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us. I am – like most Americans, I just can’t believe it because I know how good we are.”

Thank you, George. Now take your pills.

I and other historians of US foreign policy have documented at length the statements of anti-American terrorists who have made it explicitly clear that their actions were in retaliation for Washington’s decades of international abominations. But American officials and media routinely ignore this evidence and cling to the party line that terrorists are simply cruel and crazed by religion; which many of them indeed are, but that doesn’t change the political and historical facts.

This American mindset appears to be alive and well. At least four hostages held in Syria recently by Islamic State militants, including US journalist James Foley, were waterboarded during their captivity. The Washington Post quoted a US official: “ISIL is a group that routinely crucifies and beheads people. To suggest that there is any correlation between ISIL’s brutality and past U.S. actions is ridiculous and feeds into their twisted propaganda.”

The Post, however, may have actually evolved a bit, adding that the “Islamic State militants … appeared to model the technique on the CIA’s use of waterboarding to interrogate suspected terrorists after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”

Talk given by William Blum at a Teach-In on US Foreign Policy, American University, Washington, DC, September 6, 2014

Each of you I’m sure has met many people who support American foreign policy, with whom you’ve argued and argued. You point out one horror after another, from Vietnam to Iraq. From god-awful bombings and invasions to violations of international law and torture. And nothing helps. Nothing moves this person.

Now why is that? Are these people just stupid? I think a better answer is that they have certain preconceptions. Consciously or unconsciously, they have certain basic beliefs about the United States and its foreign policy, and if you don’t deal with these basic beliefs you may as well be talking to a stone wall.

The most basic of these basic beliefs, I think, is a deeply-held conviction that no matter what the United States does abroad, no matter how bad it may look, no matter what horror may result, the government of the United States means well. American leaders may make mistakes, they may blunder, they may lie, they may even on the odd occasion cause more harm than good, but they do mean well. Their intentions are always honorable, even noble. Of that the great majority of Americans are certain.

Frances Fitzgerald, in her famous study of American school textbooks, summarized the message of these books: “The United States has been a kind of Salvation Army to the rest of the world: throughout history it had done little but dispense benefits to poor, ignorant, and diseased countries. The U.S. always acted in a disinterested fashion, always from the highest of motives; it gave, never took.”

And Americans genuinely wonder why the rest of the world can’t see how benevolent and self-sacrificing America has been. Even many people who take part in the anti-war movement have a hard time shaking off some of this mindset; they march to spur America – the America they love and worship and trust – they march to spur this noble America back onto its path of goodness.

Many of the citizens fall for US government propaganda justifying its military actions as often and as naively as Charlie Brown falling for Lucy’s football.

The American people are very much like the children of a Mafia boss who do not know what their father does for a living, and don’t want to know, but then wonder why someone just threw a firebomb through the living room window.

This basic belief in America’s good intentions is often linked to “American exceptionalism”. Let’s look at how exceptional US foreign policy has been. Since the end of World War 2, the United States has:

1. Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected.
2. Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
3. Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.
4. Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.
5. Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
6. Led the world in torture; not only the torture performed directly by Americans upon foreigners, but providing torture equipment, torture manuals, lists of people to be tortured, and in-person guidance by American teachers, especially in Latin America.

This is indeed exceptional. No other country in all of history comes anywhere close to such a record.

So the next time you’re up against a stone wall … ask the person what the United States would have to do in its foreign policy to lose his support. What for this person would finally be TOO MUCH. If the person mentions something really bad, chances are the United States has already done it, perhaps repeatedly.

Keep in mind that our precious homeland, above all, seeks to dominate the world. For economic reasons, nationalistic reasons, ideological, Christian, and for other reasons, world hegemony has long been America’s bottom line. And let’s not forget the powerful Executive Branch officials whose salaries, promotions, agency budgets and future well-paying private sector jobs depend upon perpetual war. These leaders are not especially concerned about the consequences for the world of their wars. They’re not necessarily bad people; but they’re amoral, like a sociopath is.

Take the Middle East and South Asia. The people in those areas have suffered horribly because of Islamic fundamentalism. What they desperately need are secular governments, which have respect for different religions. And such governments were actually instituted in the recent past. But what has been the fate of those governments?

Well, in the late 1970s through much of the 1980s, Afghanistan had a secular government that was relatively progressive, with full rights for women, which is hard to believe, isn’t it? But even a Pentagon report of the time testified to the actuality of women’s rights in Afghanistan. And what happened to that government? The United States overthrew it, allowing the Taliban to come to power. So keep that in mind the next time you hear an American official say that we have to remain in Afghanistan for the sake of women’s rights.

After Afghanistan came Iraq, another secular society, under Saddam Hussein. And the United States overthrew that government as well, and now the country is overrun by crazed and bloody jihadists and fundamentalists of all kinds; and women who are not covered up are running a serious risk.

Next came Libya; again, a secular country, under Moammar Gaddafi, who, like Saddam Hussein, had a tyrant side to him but could in important ways be benevolent and do marvelous things for Libya and Africa. To name just one example, Libya had a high ranking on the United Nation’s Human Development Index. So, of course, the United States overthrew that government as well. In 2011, with the help of NATO we bombed the people of Libya almost every day for more than six months. And, once again, this led to messianic jihadists having a field day. How it will all turn out for the people of Libya, only God knows, or perhaps Allah.

And for the past three years, the United States has been doing its best to overthrow the secular government of Syria. And guess what? Syria is now a playground and battleground for all manner of ultra militant fundamentalists, including everyone’s new favorite, IS, the Islamic State. The rise of IS owes a lot to what the US has done in Iraq, Libya, and Syria in recent years.

We can add to this marvelous list the case of the former Yugoslavia, another secular government that was overthrown by the United States, in the form of NATO, in 1999, giving rise to the creation of the largely-Muslim state of Kosovo, run by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The KLA was considered a terrorist organization by the US, the UK and France for years, with numerous reports of the KLA being armed and trained by al-Qaeda, in al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan, and even having members of al-Qaeda in KLA ranks fighting against the Serbs of Yugoslavia. Washington’s main concern was dealing a blow to Serbia, widely known as “the last communist government in Europe”.

The KLA became renowned for their torture, their trafficking in women, heroin, and human body parts; another charming client of the empire.

Someone looking down upon all this from outer space could be forgiven for thinking that the United States is an Islamic power doing its best to spread the word – Allah Akbar!

But what, you might wonder, did each of these overthrown governments have in common that made them a target of Washington’s wrath? The answer is that they could not easily be controlled by the empire; they refused to be client states; they were nationalistic; in a word, they were independent; a serious crime in the eyes of the empire.

So mention all this as well to our hypothetical supporter of US foreign policy and see whether he still believes that the United States means well. If he wonders how long it’s been this way, point out to him that it would be difficult to name a single brutal dictatorship of the second half of the 20th Century that was not supported by the United States; not only supported, but often put into power and kept in power against the wishes of the population. And in recent years as well, Washington has supported very repressive governments, such as Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Indonesia, Egypt, Colombia, Qatar, and Israel.

And what do American leaders think of their own record? Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was probably speaking for the whole private club of our foreign-policy leadership when she wrote in 2000 that in the pursuit of its national security the United States no longer needed to be guided by “notions of international law and norms” or “institutions like the United Nations” because America was “on the right side of history.”

Let me remind you of Daniel Ellsberg’s conclusion about the US in Vietnam: “It wasn’t that we were on the wrong side; we were the wrong side.”

Well, far from being on the right side of history, we have in fact fought – I mean actually engaged in warfare – on the same side as al Qaeda and their offspring on several occasions, beginning with Afghanistan in the 1980s and 90s in support of the Islamic Moujahedeen, or Holy Warriors.

The US then gave military assistance, including bombing support, to Bosnia and Kosovo, both of which were being supported by al Qaeda in the Yugoslav conflicts of the early 1990s.

In Libya, in 2011, Washington and the Jihadists shared a common enemy, Gaddafi, and as mentioned, the US bombed the people of Libya for more than six months, allowing jihadists to take over parts of the country; and they’re now fighting for the remaining parts. These wartime allies showed their gratitude to Washington by assassinating the US ambassador and three other Americans, apparently CIA, in the city of Benghazi.

Then, for some years in the mid and late 2000s, the United States backed Islamic militants in the Caucasus region of Russia, an area that has seen more than its share of religious terror going back to the Chechnyan actions of the 1990s.

Finally, in Syria, in attempting to overthrow the Assad government, the US has fought on the same side as several varieties of Islamic militants. That makes six occasions of the US being wartime allies of jihadist forces.

I realize that I have fed you an awful lot of negativity about what America has done to the world, and maybe it’s been kind of hard for some of you to swallow. But my purpose has been to try to loosen the grip on your intellect and your emotions that you’ve been raised with – or to help you to help others to loosen that grip – the grip that assures you that your beloved America means well. US foreign policy will not make much sense to you as long as you believe that its intentions are noble; as long as you ignore the consistent pattern of seeking world domination, which is a national compulsion of very long standing, known previously under other names such as Manifest Destiny, the American Century, American exceptionalism, globalization, or, as Madeleine Albright put it, “the indispensable nation” … while others less kind have used the term “imperialist”.

In this context I can’t resist giving the example of Bill Clinton. While president, in 1995, he was moved to say: “Whatever we may think about the political decisions of the Vietnam era, the brave Americans who fought and died there had noble motives. They fought for the freedom and the independence of the Vietnamese people.” Yes, that’s really the way our leaders talk. But who knows what they really believe?

It is my hope that many of you who are not now activists against the empire and its wars will join the anti-war movement as I did in 1965 against the war in Vietnam. It’s what radicalized me and so many others. When I hear from people of a certain age about what began the process of losing their faith that the United States means well, it’s Vietnam that far and away is given as the main cause. I think that if the American powers-that-be had known in advance how their “Oh what a lovely war” was going to turn out they might not have made their mammoth historical blunder. Their invasion of Iraq in 2003 indicates that no Vietnam lesson had been learned at that point, but our continuing protest against war and threatened war in Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, and elsewhere may have – may have! – finally made a dent in the awful war mentality. I invite you all to join our movement. Thank you.

Notes

1. NBC News, “German TV Shows Nazi Symbols on Helmets of Ukraine Soldiers”, September 6 2014
2. BBC, March 18, 2014
3. Information Clearinghouse, “How Can You Tell Whether Russia has Invaded Ukraine?”, September 1 2014
4. Boston Globe, October 12, 2001
5. See, for example, William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower(2005), chapter 1
6. Washington Post, August 28, 2014
7. Foreign Affairs magazine (Council on Foreign Relations), January/February 2000

Cold War Two

During Cold War One those of us in the American radical left were often placed in the position where we had to defend the Soviet Union because the US government was using that country as a battering ram against us. Now we sometimes have to defend Russia because it may be the last best hope of stopping TETATW (The Empire That Ate The World). Yes, during Cold War One we knew enough about Stalin, the show trials, and the gulags. But we also knew about US foreign policy.

E-mail sent to the Washington Post July 23, 2014 about the destruction of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17:

Dear Editor,

Your July 22 editorial was headed: “Russia’s barbarism. The West needs a strategy to contain the world’s newest rogue state.”

Pretty strong language. Vicious, even. Not one word of hard evidence in the editorial to back it up. Then, the next day, the Associated Press reported:

Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday that Russia was responsible for ‘creating the conditions’ that led to the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, but they offered no evidence of direct Russian government involvement. … the U.S. had no direct evidence that the missile used to shoot down the passenger jet came from Russia.

Where were these words in the Post? You people are behaving like a rogue newspaper.

– William Blum

I don’t have to tell you whether the Post printed my letter. I’ve been reading the paper for 25 years – six years during Vietnam (1964-1970) and the last 19 years (1995-2014) – usually spending about three hours each day reading it very carefully. And I can say that when it comes to US foreign policy the newspaper is worse now than I can remember it ever was during those 25 years. It’s reached the point where, as one example, I don’t take at face value a word the Post has to say about Ukraine. Same with the State Department, which makes one accusation after another about Russian military actions in Eastern Ukraine without presenting any kind of satellite imagery or other visual or documentary evidence; or they present something that’s wholly inconclusive and/or unsourced or citing “social media”; what we’re left with is often no more than just an accusation.  Do they have something to hide?

The State Department’s Public Affairs spokespersons making these presentations exhibit little regard or respect for the reporters asking challenging questions. It takes my thoughts back to the Vietnam era and Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, the man most responsible for “giving, controlling and managing the war news from Vietnam”. One day in July 1965, Sylvester told American journalists that they had a patriotic duty to disseminate only information that made the United States look good. When one of the reporters exclaimed: “Surely, Arthur, you don’t expect the American press to be handmaidens of government,” Sylvester replied: “That’s exactly what I expect,” adding: “Look, if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you’re stupid. Did you hear that? – stupid.”

Such frankness might be welcomed today as a breath of fresh air compared to the painful-to-observe double-talk of a State Department spokesperson.

My personal breath of fresh air in recent years has been the television station RT (formerly Russia Today). On a daily basis many progressives from around the world (myself included occasionally) are interviewed and out of their mouths come facts and analyses that are rarely heard on CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, PBS, Fox News, BBC, etc. The words of these progressives heard on RT are typically labeled by the mainstream media as “Russian propaganda”, whereas I, after a long lifetime of American propaganda, can only think: “Of course. What else are they going to call it?”

As for Russia being responsible for “creating the conditions” that led to the shooting down of Flight 17, we should keep in mind that the current series of events in Ukraine was sparked in February when a US-supported coup overthrew the democratically-elected government and replaced it with one that was more receptive to the market-fundamentalism dictates of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the European Union. Were it not for the coup there would have been no eastern rebellion to put down and no dangerous war zone for Flight 17 to be flying over in the first place.

The new regime has had another charming feature: a number of outspoken neo-Nazis in high and low positions, a circumstance embarrassing enough for the US government and mainstream media to turn it into a virtual non-event. US Senator John McCain met and posed for photos with the leader of the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party, Oleh Tyahnybok (). Ukraine – whose ties to Naziism go back to World War Two when their homegrown fascists supported Germany and opposed the Soviet Union – is on track to becoming the newest part of the US-NATO military encirclement of Russia and possibly the home of the region’s newest missile base, target Moscow.

It is indeed possible that Flight 17 was shot down by the pro-Russian rebels in Eastern Ukraine in the mistaken belief that it was the Ukrainian air force returning to carry out another attack. But other explanations are suggested in a series of questions posed by Russia to the the Secretary-General of the UN General Assembly, accompanied by radar information, satellite images, and other technical displays:

“Why was a military aircraft flying in a civil aviation airway at almost the same time and the same altitude as a civilian passenger aircraft? We would like to have this question answered.”

“Earlier, Ukrainian officials stated that on the day of the accident no Ukrainian military aircraft were flying in that area. As you can see, that is not true.”

“We also have a question for our American colleagues. According to a statement by American officials, the United States has satellite images which show that the missile aimed at the Malaysian aircraft was launched by the militants. But no one has seen these images.”

There is also this intriguing speculation, which ties in to the first Russian question above. A published analysis by a retired Lufthansa pilot points out that Flight 17 looked similar in its tricolor design to that of Russian President Putin’s plane, whose plane with him on board was at the same time “near” Flight 17. In aviation circles “near” would be considered to be anywhere between 150 to 200 miles.  Could Putin’s plane have been the real target?

There is as well other serious and plausible questioning of the official story of Russia and/or Ukrainian anti-Kiev militias being responsible for the shootdown. Is Flight 17 going to become the next JFK Assassination, PanAm 103, or 9-11 conspiracy theory that lingers forever? Will the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the Syrian chemical weapons be joined by the Russian anti-aircraft missile? Stay tuned.

Will they EVER leave Cuba alone? No.

The latest exposed plot to overthrow the Cuban government … Oh, pardon me, I mean the latest exposed plot to bring democracy to Cuba …

Our dear friends at the Agency For International Development (USAID), having done so well with their covert sub-contractor Alan Gross, now in his fifth year in Cuban custody … and their “Cuban Twitter” project, known as ZunZuneo, exposed in 2012, aimed at increasing the flow of information amongst the supposedly information-starved Cubans, which drew in subscribers unaware that the service was paid for by the US government … and now, the latest exposure, a project which sent about a dozen Venezuelan, Costa Rican and Peruvian young people to Cuba in hopes of stirring up a rebellion; the travelers worked clandestinely, using the cover of health and civic programs, or posing as tourists, going around the island, on a mission to “identify potential social-change actors” to turn into political activists. Can you believe that? Can you believe the magnitude of naiveté? Was it a conviction that American exceptionalism would somehow work its magic? Do they think the Cuban people are a bunch of children just waiting for a wise adult to come along and show them what to think and how to behave?

One of these latest USAID contracts was signed only days after Gross was detained, thus indicating little concern for the safety of their employees/agents. As part of the preparation of these individuals, USAID informed them: “Although there is never total certainty, trust that the authorities will not try to harm you physically, only frighten you. Remember that the Cuban government prefers to avoid negative media reports abroad, so a beaten foreigner is not convenient for them.”

It’s most ironic. The US government could not say as much about most of their allies, who frequently make use of physical abuse. Indeed, the statement could not be made in regard to almost any American police force. But it’s this Cuba that doesn’t beat or torture detainees that is the enemy to be reformed and punished without mercy … 55 years and counting.

The United States and torture

Two of the things that governments tend to cover-up or lie about the most are assassinations and torture, both of which are widely looked upon as exceedingly immoral and unlawful, even uncivilized. Since the end of the Second World War the United States has attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders and has led the world in torture; not only the torture performed directly by Americans upon foreigners, but providing torture equipment, torture manuals, lists of people to be tortured, and in-person guidance and encouragement by American instructors, particularly in Latin America.

Thus it is somewhat to the credit of President Obama that at his August 1 press conference he declared “We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values.”

And he actually used the word “torture” at that moment, not “enhanced interrogation”, which has been the euphemism of preference the past decade, although two minutes later the president used “extraordinary interrogation techniques”. And “tortured some folks” makes me wince. The man is clearly uncomfortable with the subject.

But all this is minor. Much more important is the fact that for several years Mr. Obama’s supporters have credited him with having put an end to the practice of torture. And they simply have no right to make that claim.

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

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

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

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

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

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

No official in the Bush and Obama administrations has been punished in any way for torture or other war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and the other countries they waged illegal war against. And, it could be added, no American bankster has been punished for their indispensable role in the world-wide financial torture they inflicted upon us all beginning in 2008. What a marvelously forgiving land is America. This, however, does not apply to Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, or Chelsea Manning.

In the last days of the Bush White House, Michael Ratner, professor at Columbia Law School and former president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, pointed out:

The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it. I don’t see how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not held accountable.

I’d like at this point to once again remind my dear readers of the words of the “Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment”, which was drafted by the United Nations in 1984, came into force in 1987, and ratified by the United States in 1994. Article 2, section 2 of the Convention states: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

Such marvelously clear, unequivocal, and principled language, to set a single standard for a world that makes it increasingly difficult for one to feel proud of humanity.

The Convention Against Torture has been and remains the supreme law of the land. It is a cornerstone of international law and a principle on a par with the prohibition against slavery and genocide.

“Mr. Snowden will not be tortured. Torture is unlawful in the United States.” – United States Attorney General Eric Holder, July 26, 2013

John Brennan, appointed by President Obama in January 2013 to be Director of the CIA, has defended “rendition” as an “absolutely vital tool”; and stated that torture had produced “life saving” intelligence.

Obama had nominated Brennan for the CIA position in 2008, but there was such an outcry in the human-rights community over Brennan’s apparent acceptance of torture, that Brennan withdrew his nomination. Barack Obama evidently learned nothing from this and appointed the man again in 2013.

During Cold War One, a common theme in the rhetoric was that the Soviets tortured people and detained them without cause, extracted phony confessions, and did the unspeakable to detainees who were helpless against the full, heartless weight of the Communist state. As much as any other evil, torture differentiated the bad guys, the Commies, from the good guys, the American people and their government. However imperfect the US system might be – we were all taught – it had civilized standards that the enemy rejected.

Just because you have a right to do something does not make it right.

The city of Detroit in recent months has been shutting off the supply of water to city residents who have not paid their water bills. This action affects more than 40% of the customers of the Detroit Water and Sewage Department, bringing great inconvenience and threats to the health and sanitation of between 200 and 300 thousand residents. Protests have of course sprung up in the city, with “Water is a human right!” as a leading theme.

Who can argue with that? Well, neo-conservatives and other true believers in the capitalist system who maintain that if you receive the benefit of a product or service, you pay for it. What could be simpler? What are you, some kind of socialist?

For those of you who have difficulty believing that an American city could be so insensitive, allow me to remind you of some history.

On December 14, 1981 a resolution was proposed in the United Nations General Assembly which declared that “education, work, health care, proper nourishment, national development are human rights”. Notice the “proper nourishment”. The resolution was approved by a vote of 135-1. The United States cast the only “No” vote.

A year later, December 18, 1982, an identical resolution was proposed in the General Assembly. It was approved by a vote of 131-1. The United States cast the only “No” vote.

The following year, December 16, 1983, the resolution was again put forth, a common practice at the United Nations. This time it was approved by a vote of 132-1. There’s no need to tell you who cast the sole “No” vote.

These votes took place under the Reagan administration.

Under the Clinton administration, in 1996, a United Nations-sponsored World Food Summit affirmed the “right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food”. The United States took issue with this, insisting that it does not recognize a “right to food”. Washington instead championed free trade as the key to ending the poverty at the root of hunger, and expressed fears that recognition of a “right to food” could lead to lawsuits from poor nations seeking aid and special trade provisions.

The situation of course did not improve under the administration of George W. Bush. In 2002, in Rome, world leaders at another UN-sponsored World Food Summit again approved a declaration that everyone had the right to “safe and nutritious food”. The United States continued to oppose the clause, again fearing it would leave them open to future legal claims by famine-stricken countries.

I’m waiting for a UN resolution affirming the right to oxygen.

Notes

1. See various examples at RT.com, such as “Jen Psaki’s most embarrassing fails, most entertaining grillings”, or simply search the site for “Ukraine Jen Psaki”
2. Congressional Record (House of Representatives), May 12, 1966, pp. 9977-78, reprint of an article by Morley Safer of CBS News
3. “Letter dated 22 July 2014 from the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General”, released by the UN 24 July, Document No. A/68/954-S/2014/524
4. “Pre-WWIII German Pilot Shocker, MH17 ‘Not Hit By Missile’”, Before It’s News, July 31 2014
5. Associated Press, August 4, 2014
6. Los Angeles Times, February 1, 2009
7. New York Times, February 6, 2009
8. Associated Press, November 17, 2008
9. Associated Press, November 26, 2008
10. Washington Post, November 18, 1996
11. Reuters news agency, June 10, 2002

The Psychological Trauma of Catastrophe: Gaza’s Children

Despite the on-again, off-again ceasefires between the Palestinian Resistance and Israel, attacks in Gaza have continued. According to 8/10/14 announcement from Tel Aviv, they will continue, doubtlessly as ruthless as ever. After Israel launched the first attack on July 7th, tension continues as an omnipresent essence whirling about the winds of the greatly sought-after Holy land. Bombarded by airstrikes, shelling and bombs, civilians of the Gaza strip are incarcerated in what seems to be a never-ending battle with no escape. Recent reports from numerous sources and journalists describe the weight of the devastation Palestinians have endured in Gaza.

Within the last ten years, Israel has provoked three offensive movements against the Palestinian territory in Gaza: Operation Cast Lead, which began at the end of 2008 and 2009, Operation Pillar of Defense, which last eight days in November 2012, and most recently, Operation Protective Edge, which started on July 7th, 2014. During this period of devastation, homes have been obliterated, nearly two thousands civilians have been killed, and humanitarian resources are extremely limited due to the Israeli blockade. Catastrophic damage has already been done, some irreparable and some of the most important consequences are often overlooked.

According to Dr. Jesse Ghannam, a clinical psychologist working for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, reported that the rate of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among children has doubled since the 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense attack. These children will most likely suffer from mood disorders, anxiety, depression, problems with attachment and develop antisocial personality traits. Children of Gaza who are nine years old have spent whole lives experiencing the terror of ruthless violence.

The UN relief and works agency reported that approximately 270,000 Gazans are taking UN schools as shelters. The organization also calculates that more than 350,000 children need mental health services because of severe and persisting psychological trauma. How can children cope when they witness the loss of their homes and their entire families from a single explosion? These children are witnessing their mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, friends and neighbors being blown apart with no understanding of why.

Many Gazan children who have survived view life as an inescapable war. There are many psychological principles to consider when assessing the future of these children, psychosocial development being a prominent one. The UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization recently stated that about 75% of teachers at primary and secondary levels reported a decline in their students’ academic performance since Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012. Furthermore, Operation Protective Edge has damaged 138 schools, including 89 run by the UNRWA.

IRIN, a UN Humanitarian news and information service, reported that the lack of locations to attend school and lack of education resources leaves students having to wait, prolonging their education with no guarantee of returning. Erica Silverman reported from the 2008-2009 attack that due to the trauma of these children and lack of psychological counseling resources, many are hesitant and anxious about even going to school. Six years later, with two more perennial offenses, these children of Gaza are overwrought. Iyad Zaqut, a psychiatrist managing the UN community mental health programs in the Gaza strip, reports fewer than 100 specialist teachers are treating more than 100,000 children.

The lack of schools, teachers, and school supplies make education for these children a fallacy. In addition to the scarcity of academic availability, many of these schools do not offer mental health services because of the abundance of children suffering from psychological trauma and limited mental health providers. As a result, these children are in dire need of aid which is unattainable. It’s important to consider Maslow’s hierarchy of needs when thinking about these children. These kids do not even have their basic safety and physiological needs met, which are basic human rights which many take for granted. They have nothing but memories of explosions and imprinted images of violence in their minds.

They live in a world they cannot change, that is cruel and violent. Their only solace is uttering the words “Inch’Allah” as they hide with their families and try to avoid the destruction surrounding them. Many of them don’t. Thousands of Palestinians are restricted from leaving Gaza Strip and are confined, condemned by the Israeli agenda with their fate already determined. How can children conceptualize this, what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamen Netanyahu has described as “complicated” yet “justified”?

Children are unable to understand the nature of this ongoing destruction. The children who have witnessed all three of the Israeli offenses are old enough to have reached Concrete Operations of Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development. Even so, how can they begin to conceptualize such oppression being justifiable? They don’t. Instead, these children, who are completely traumatized, are taught that survival is retaliating against these forces. The innate human compassion that every single human is born with is drowned with the blood of their people, leaving these children as empty shells, with their only hope to survival becoming filled with hatred and violence to join an extremist organization, where they will become like their oppressors—ruthlessly inhuman and unaffected by bloodshed.

In addition to the trauma they experience from witnessing these horrors themselves, family tensions contribute to their psychological issues. It’s difficult for children to feel safe when their parents, older relatives and other adults are stressed. Children need reassurance from adults and a healthy and supportive environment. Their parents are also suffering and face their own worries, so these children of Gaza cannot even retrieve comfort from their family.

The children of Gaza, who may initially be socially withdrawn and reclusive, quiet yet scarred and suffering, are at grave risk of growing into killing machines with nothing but bitter resentment for Israel. The attacks on children in Gaza are only fueling the ongoing violence, because for these children the only option is to avenge their dead family members, their homes, their schools, and their lack of human resources. Essentially, these kids have never known a proper society and will undoubtedly return to a very barbaric nature because that is their only means of survival.

These children are unable to have normal lives and development—besides the psychological trauma and lack of resources—because their identity is not fostered in a normal, healthy way. One of the most notable theories of development comes from Erik Erikson, who developed the 8 stages of psychosocial development. The nine-year old survivors of the Israeli offenses in Gaza, for instance, would be in Erikson’s stage of Industry vs. Inferiority. This is a crucial stage of human development, but these children will not be able to surpass this stage and continue to develop in a healthy manner. The Industry, which we can compare to the Israeli militant forces, dominate over the Palestinians. The children of Gaza who have lost everything—while never really having anything—are robbed of their dignity and the right to a stable life and identity of self.

The Palestinian suffering and Israeli-Palestinian conflict is nothing new. This problem has been raging on, but it is important to ease the suffering of these children and provide resources to help them and help the world. There is a way to stop the cycle, with humanitarian efforts and discussion about what needs to be done. These children are innocent, and yet they are subjected to so much. It is a moral responsibility of the international community to provide assistance to alleviate the strife of these children and rebuild what is left of the home of the Palestinian people.

Our Population Growth Totalitarian Future

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

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

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

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

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

Is There a Limit?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Impact of Over-Population

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: The Millennium Report

Weapons of Mass Destruction

A Centennial For The Forces of Evil…

Destruction of the culture by massive immigration supported by the government. Read Here.

Destruction of moral standards by humanists in media, education, and government.

Aberrant media propaganda and entertainment.

Unending war.

Promoting a potentially disastrous conflict with Russian.  Read Here.

Iimperialistic use of Executive Orders to pass controversial legislation.

Legal decisions by the courts that codify wickedness.

Constant attempts to promote violence by distorting the news and according immigrants and Black citizens privileged status over White citizens.

Destruction of the educational system.

Robbing the nation of its wealth by allowing cheap foreign products to destroy American businesses.

Forcing  American industry to move jobs and entire industries to foreign countries.

Destroying the family by promotion feminism and homosexuality.

Constant government distortions and outright lies.

Lethal false flag operations that are never challenged by the media or elected representatives.

Destruction of the Christian religion by legislation and massive propaganda.

Normalizing cognitive dissonance by creating opposing programs – i.e. Allowing Muslim immigration while waging war on Muslims in their own lands.

Failure of elected representatives to confront and correct media lies and distortions.

Destruction of the First Amendment by restricting public speech – against racial groups, about conspiracies, against the progression of the world order or the United Nations, about the control of news, or against the State of Israel.

Terminating media employees for expressing unpopular or politically incorrect opinions.

Distorting the law, traumatizing the public, and filling our prisons with sex related offenders that should be handled locally.

Representative James Sensenbrenner chairs a committee attempting to reform the thousands of laws that make up the Federal Criminal Code but nothing is being done about the equally ponderous laws that are now enforced by militarized local police forces.

This list could be continued – -

The European culture that was the foundation of our wealth and freedom has been destroyed.  The wealth has been stolen and we have saddled future generations with an insurmountable debt.

The United States of America that a few short decades ago was the world’s wealthiest and most moral nation is now like an egg shell that has been emptied of its contents.  Aside from a lethal and vibrant military establishment, there is nothing left but fourth rate medical facilities and a plethora of food factories.  Our medical doctors are imported and the adulteration of our food supply is rampant with uninspected imports for third world nations, mutants, cellulose (wood chips) and other fillers.

The battle, if there ever was an effective deterrent, for the culture of the United States of American is over.  Our nation is hopelessly Balkanized with immigrants from every nation in the world.  Dozens of different languages are spoken by voters who are easily manipulated by unscrupulous politicians.  There is little attempt to learn English and assimilate.  They know nothing about the nation and have no concern for its well-being.  Their primary concern is often for the land they left behind.

The Pharisaical cadre that controls us, as well as much of the world, hates Christianity and is successfully destroying the gossamer Christian ethic that filled most of our churches.  They are doing this with the help of hundreds of thousands of obtuse Christians who lend them unrestrained support.  If it wasn’t so tragic it would be laughable!

While our free fall is in progress other dumb Americans work tirelessly in the political arena hoping the vehicle that was responsible for our downfall will miraculously redeem itself and us.at the same time.

Millions of our citizens are unaware that they are reading and listening to news that is filled with lies and distortions; they are so badly maligned that they no longer recognize truth, so brain washed that they quickly brand a the truth teller as a deluded conspiracy theorist

History is replete with power seekers who have murdered and ravaged to create empires but the current quest for world domination is the granddaddy of them all.

Plans for world domination seem to have begun in earnest at the end of the First World War.  The United States congress approved the Federal Reserve System in 1913; the conflict began in Europe in 1914 and the United States entered the War in 1917.  U. S. participation quickly ended the conflict in 1918.  Under the aegis of world peace the ill-fated League of Nations was formed in 1920.  It soon lost the support of the world’s major nations and failed in its stated mission to produce peace.   It was replaced by the United Nations at the conclusion of the Second World War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II in 1945.  Peace was also the stated mission of the United Nations.

The United States provided major support to the United Nations but paid little attention to its peaceful mission, entering a war in Korea in 1950 a scant five years later.  Under the aegis of peace the real agenda of these two organizations was always world domination.

World Government at the point of a gun has been foisted on the world very slowly.  We are living in the Centennial. It has taken nearly a hundred years for the brutal character of the movement to become public.

Now, all the power centers of our nation are occupied with men and women who support world government and are willing to manipulate the public into complacency as its tentacles begin to grasp the world.  Incrementalism has allowed the incarceration of the world to progress with only token resistance.

Talented individuals are spotted early in their careers and are ushered into Ivy League educations; following stints at Oxford where they are indoctrinated with an International ethic they are mentored into power center jobs where they are stalwart supporters of world government and the shadowing cabal that is behind it..

Michele Flournoy is a case in point.  She was a guest on C-Span on Sunday for the fifteenth time since 1988.  She identified herself as an Internationalist and responded to Brian Lamb’s queries like the pro that she is.  From California she was educated at Harvard and Oxford.  She was mentored and groomed and has become a go to expert on defense issues.  She held a strategic job as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Obama Administration and is now President of the Center for a New American Security, a think tank that directs government defense policy.  She is one of a host of dependable Internationalists that have been groomed and inserted into important positions in government; all willingly do the bidding of their mentors.  Defense is a misnomer that has now become an aggressive military offensive to control the world.

The hugely successful incremental incarceration of the world has been accomplished by a patient promotion of several generations of seekers.  It is a sinful grab for power and control which is familiar to any historian but of a size and strength that is larger and more ominous than any of its predecessors.

This new, total oppression is coming upon us because we have and are rejecting the obvious conclusion that we were not created to govern ourselves.  Not only do we reject that clear fact but we cling to the heresy that we can play god by developing our own legal system and curbing the horrific sinful nature of every human being by requiring obedience to our particular legal opinions.  Again, we refuse to understand that if we are governed by the legal opinions of one human power they are no better than the legal opinions of another which makes war and murder inevitable.

The confusion, the proliferation of legal standards, the breakdown of law and order, police brutality, government oppression, and the resulting loss of freedom are predictable results of humanism.  We are all sinners, every one of us – all have sinned and fallen short of the mark.

It is easy for us to critique the government.  Such critiques are common and often virulent.  Each critique is a direct blow to God Who has given us His Law, the only form of righteousness available to His creation.  It is sin to assume that we have the solution to humanistic government – it is sin to think such a thought!   God created us and if we are ever to experience lasting peace and prosperity we must stop playing God and begin to obey His Commandments.

Today I read excellent critiques by Paul Craig Roberts, Pat Buchanan, and Jacob Hornberger.  All three of these men believe they have solutions to our problem.  But, all three of these men are sinners whose only righteous alternative is to turn to the Laws of the Creator.  Their thoughts are good thoughts from a human perspective, but they do not direct us to obey God’s Law.  We can point out the results of allowing sinful men and women to control the world but we cannot fix it by having our opinions set in place.  Human wisdom is not the solution.  If we had spent our lives promoting obedience to God’s Law instead of depending on our own opinions and understandings we would not be in this situation.

We have found the culprit and it is us!

Tracking ISIS’s Supply Line: Even The Devil Has To Eat

Anyone watching the nightly news in America these days has surely seen some of those in-your-worst-nightmare videos showing hair-raising images of the fire-breathing minions of ISIS as they invade Syria and Iraq — blazing across bone-dry deserts in brand new Toyota trucks, brandishing AK-47s and looking like something out of a Hounds of Hell horror movie.  And we all shudder involuntarily, imagining the chaos and terror being spread by these horrible men-in-black, waving pirate flags and screaming for blood.

And we can also probably imagine, far back in the most primitive lobes of our brains, what it would be like to see these very same nightmarish denizens screaming down Route 66, heading toward us too, driving straight for our own town, positively drooling over the thought of beheading us in our sleep and raping our sons and daughters.

But then we come to our senses and realize that this sort of thing can never happen here in America.  This sort of nightmare only plays out in the Middle East (hopefully).

But forget about all that.  Instead, let’s just focus in on the ISIS terrorists and pirates themselves, now safely out there in the Iraqi desert, aka “those terrible rough beasts, their hour come round at last, slouching toward Baghdad to be born, their gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,” to paraphrase William Butler Yeats.

And then let’s ask ourselves next, “While happily out there terrorizing and raping the countryside, just what the freak do these guys eat and drink?  And where in the freak do they find a 7-11 or a Raley’s way out there in the desert?  And when the freak do they even have time to cook and do dishes or pee?”  And don’t even tell me that they are the Devil’s minions and thus live only on air.  And where are their burn barrels and port-a-potties?  And where are their grab-and-go bins full of “Meal, Ready-to-Eat,” menu number 15, beef enchilada, made by the Ameriqual Packaging Company, Evansville, Indiana 47710?

Surely even these devilish super-fiends must have an occasional craving for toilet paper?  Or even perhaps the occasional shower?

So exactly who is providing ISIS with its supply line?

Don’t even dare tell me that ISIS doesn’t have one.

These aren’t ghosts or krakens or the mythological First Beasts referred to in the Book of Revelations.  These are just ordinary human schmucks like the rest of us, who still put on their terrorist Halloween costumes one leg at a time.  The Devil’s minions still have to eat.  And pee.  And they still have to get their shiny new Toyota trucks from an automobile showroom somewhere — one obviously not located in Hell.  And they still have to use earthly rocket-launchers, not ones supplied by Lucifer himself.

Plus sacking and looting can only get these pirates so far before they run out of booty.  And even if they now have billions of $$$ in plundered oil, they still have to sell it to someone.  OPEC they are not.

So where do all these tons and tons of food and weapons and terrorist-chic outfits and port-a-potties all come from?   Your guess is as good as mine.  And I am guessing, based on all that I have read and seen lately, that all these goodies are being supplied by American, Israeli and Saudi oligarchs and neo-cons.  And probably at us taxpayers’ expense too. 

These terrible terrorist ISIS operations appear to be all a part of the American, Israeli and Saudi neo-con oligarchs’ continuing (and very successful) “Land for Blood” program — wherein neo-cons get all the land and the men, women and children of the Middle East get to bleed.  

Of course I can’t prove most of this without breaking and entering NASDAQ and CIA vaults.  Hoping for transparency is like flogging a dead horse.  Just ask Edward Snowden about that one.  But there still is a pattern here, one that started in Vietnam, worked its way through East Timor, Kuwait, Iraq and Guatemala, and is now surfacing again in Ukraine, Syria, Libya and Gaza.  Leopards don’t change their spots.

“What the devil…” you might say at this point.  And you would be right.

PS:  And speaking of tracking supply lines, what about all those other supply lines — all those abundant supply lines that should have been pouring out goodies all this time, streaming them out to the average American, Israeli/Palestinian and Saudi citizen like you and me?  What happened to those?

Those supply lines are all pretty much toast.

Just think of all the trillions of dollars that have been spent on all these damned, useless, murderous and unnecessary “wars” that the oligarchs ruling our countries in the past 15-odd years have indulged themselves in — enough dollars to fix all of our infrastructures, pave all of our roads, create jobs for all of us like there was no tomorrow, educate all of our children for free up to a doctoral degree, make sure we all have top-notch healthcare, and dress every single man, woman and child in America, Arabia and Israel/Palestine with at least one pair of Jimmy Choo shoes!

Just because we don’t dress up like Freddy Kruger, don’t play at being the Devil’s disciples and don’t eat live human hearts on national TV doesn’t mean that we don’t need supply lines too.

All these amazing opportunities for you and me have been wasted.  All that money is now gone with the wind, lost, wasted, never to return.  That ship has sailed.

“But Jane,” you might ask next, “does this mean that America, Israel/Palestine and Saudi Arabia are currently being ruled by selfish, immoral and blood-thirsty idiots?”  Well, yeah.

And here’s another hard truth:  American, Israeli and Saudi neo-con supply lines are also limited too.  They just can’t keep goosing us for our life-blood forever.  Eventually the oligarchs will run out of MREs, cruise missiles and port-a-potties too.  Theirs is not an endless supply line either.

Sooner or later, we average Americans, Israelis and Saudi Arabians are going to be empty and broken like the victims of so many vampires.  What then?  How will the neo-cons keep their war machines supplied once We the People are drained of our life’s blood?

How much money can these three countries spend on weapons and Iron Domes that don’t work and drones and bullets and missiles that cost a half-million dollars each (Israeli neo-cons just fired off 1,500 of them at the poor trapped citizens of Gaza) before the economies of these three countries are broken like rag dolls?  Oops, too late.  We are almost already there.

PPS:  And here’s another supply line to track:  Whoever is supplying the United Nations has also clearly purchased its soul as well — lock, stock and barrel.  For instance, this whole devastation of the civilian population of Gaza?  Women and children being slaughtered for their land — and not a peep from the UN in their defense.  Not even one word.  That’s just shameful.

According to journalist Robert Fisk, “The people who lived in Sederot in early 1948 were not Israelis, but Palestinian Arabs.  Their village was called Huj.  Nor were they enemies of Israel.  Two years earlier, these same Arabs had actually hidden Jewish Haganah fighters from the British Army.  But when the Israeli army turned up at Huj on 31 May 1948, they expelled all the Arab villagers – to the Gaza Strip!  Refugees, they became.  David Ben Gurion (Israel’s first Prime Minister) called it an ‘unjust and unjustified action’.  Too bad.  The  Palestinians of Huj were never allowed back.  And today, well over 6,000 descendants of the Palestinians from Huj – now Sederot – live in the squalor of Gaza….” 

The UN is currently as incapable of stopping wars now as the old League of Nations had been back in the day — because the UN’s very reason for being has been bought off by American and Israeli oligarchs.  It is now as dead as the old League of Nations.  The only real difference is that the UN has yet to lie down.

The War Against Our Natural Right of Self-Defense Continues

Culprits Include The City Of Chicago, Big Retailers, The Media, And Churches…

Proponents of the Nanny State have been trying to take away man’s Natural right of self-defense ever since the United Nations was created back in 1945. Of course, the Natural right of self-defense is totally unknown in communist and socialist countries; and big-government toadies in several so-called “democratic” countries have also succeeded in turning citizens into subjects by removing or severely restricting the Natural right of self-defense. Obviously, I’m talking about countries such as Great Britain, France, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.

By self-defense, I am talking about a man’s right to carry a Personal Defense Weapon (PDW)–which, in modern times, mostly requires a firearm–anywhere and everywhere he goes. A state that does not allow a man to be personally armed in his day-to-day activities is literally stripping him of his right of self-defense. To require a citizen to keep his or her PDW in their home or vehicle is to deny the citizen’s Natural right of self-defense. To say a citizen may lawfully protect himself in only limited and duly-prescribed locations is to make the citizen a subject of the state. Furthermore, it removes from him the most fundamental of all the Natural rights that were granted to him by his Creator: the right of self-defense.

Four-legged predators are constantly on the prowl for animals that are defenseless. Two-legged predators do the same thing. These human predators do not respect “gun-free” zones. Like all predators, they are opportunistic beasts. They prey on the weak and vulnerable. When the state takes away a person’s right to be always armed, it makes the entire citizenry weak and vulnerable. As I have said many times, guns don’t kill people; gun-free zones kill people.

Gun control laws are among the most egregious violations of Natural Law. Men and women who are truly free are allowed to carry a PDW everywhere they go. Banks, schools, government buildings, churches, etc., should be no exceptions. It is no coincidence that just about every single mass-shooting in recent memory has taken place in a so-called “gun-free” zone, where the only people who were armed were the perpetrators. Gun-free zones turn free men into human prey.

For all intents and purposes, several states and major cities within the United States have become “gun-free” zones, in that they mostly deny their citizens the right to carry a PDW on their person. Whether the people of these cities and states realize it or not, they have lost the right to be called free men and have been turned into human prey by their own State and municipal governments. There is no greater example of this tyranny than the city of Chicago, Illinois.

Chicago has some of the strictest and most stringent gun-control laws in the entire nation. The government of Chicago has, in effect, turned the town into a giant killing-field where ravenous two-legged beasts are allowed to feast on the millions of defenseless prey that inhabit our country’s third largest city. For example, over the past Independence Day weekend, 82 people were shot and 14 people were killed in Chicago violence. Breitbart.com covered the story:

“Breitbart reported that the violence was high on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning, but when Thursday, the final hours of Sunday, and the first few hours of Monday morning were added to the accounting, the rate of violence proved to be even more appalling.

“On Monday morning, July 7, the Chicago Tribune shocked the city with the list of weekend violence reporting that between Thursday, as the holiday weekend began, to the early hours of Monday morning, Chicago experienced 82 shootings with 14 killed.”

Included in the Breitbart report is the fact that one man’s life was actually saved by virtue of the fact that he had a concealed carry permit (no small feat in the City of Chicago) and used his PDW to protect himself against three violent miscreants. In this case, one of the dead was a violent predator. Had the innocent citizen not been armed, he would have been the statistic. In addition, the report states that eight of the dead were at the hands of Chicago police officers in the line of duty, proving, once again, that policemen carry guns, not for the protection of the citizenry, but for their own protection.

Predictably, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel blamed the increased violence on “weak” gun laws in the neighboring states of Indiana and Wisconsin.

See the Breitbart.com report here:

Of course, what Emanuel won’t tell you is that the violent crime rates of those states where the right to keep AND BEAR arms is less infringed are far less–far less! For example, there are 11 states in the country that allow their citizens to carry firearms freely and openly with no permit or license required. Those states are Alaska, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, South Dakota, Vermont, Kentucky, and Virginia. So, using Emanuel’s logic, one could expect that there should have been hundreds of shootings in those states last weekend–what with their “weak” gun laws and all, right? You know that’s not true.

Check the incidents of shootings in the above-listed states and we might even discover that the City of Chicago may have had more shootings over this past Independence Day weekend than those 11 states COMBINED. Think of it: the City of Chicago (with some of the strictest gun control laws in the country) may have had more shootings than the combined shootings of the 11 states that recognize their citizens’ Natural right of self-defense by allowing them to freely and openly carry a PDW.

Of course, it’s not only various and sundry governments (though they are the most egregious usurpers of the Natural right of self-defense) that want to deny people the right to bear arms; many large retailers are adding their weight to the anti-self-defense hysteria.

Just a few days ago, the giant retailer, Target, announced a corporate policy that asks its patrons to leave their firearms at home. Once again, Breitbart.com covers the story.

“On July 2nd, Target ‘respectfully’ asked law-abiding citizens to ‘not bring firearms’ in their stores.

“The department store chain did this via an announcement posted on its website and shared by interim CEO John Mulligan.

“The announcement says:

“‘As you’ve likely seen in the media, there’s been a debate about whether guests in communities that permit “open carry” should be allowed to bring firearms into Target stores. Our approach has always been to follow local laws, and of course, we will continue to do so. But starting today we will respectfully request that guests not bring firearms to Target–even in communities where it is permitted by law.’

“By taking this step, Target joins Chipotle, Jack in the Box, Sonic, and Chili’s in asking law-abiding citizens not to carry guns in their businesses.”

The author of the report, AWR Hawkins, notes, “Within two weeks of asking law-abiding customers to come unarmed, two Jack in the Box stores were robbed, and a shooting took place at a third. Patrons were robbed at gunpoint in one of the robberies, as well.”

See the report at:

But the war against your Natural right to self-defense doesn’t stop with the City of Chicago or the Target chain-stores. The mainstream media seem absolutely determined to take away your right to defend yourself and your loved ones.

After CNN sacked Piers Morgan due to his immense unpopularity, which was mostly due to his arrogant attacks against America’s Second Amendment, the cable network recently announced that it was replacing Morgan with former America’s Most Wanted host, John Walsh, who immediately proclaimed that his show would continue Morgan’s attacks against the Second Amendment.

Once more, Breitbart.com covers the story:

“Former America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh is hosting a new show on CNN on which he vows to keep the push for gun control and the war on the NRA alive.

“According to The Wrap, Walsh said:

“‘I’m the father of a murdered child. I’ve done nothing but track violence in America since my son was murdered. We have a serious problem with guns in this country… and the NRA solution to arm every grammar-school 80-year-old teacher with a gun is absolutely ludicrous.’

“He claims the NRA has gotten so big and financially powerful through relationships with gun manufacturers that ‘they’re not a lobbyist on Capitol Hill, they’re a gun manufacturer rep.’

“Walsh’s new show, The Hunt, premieres July 13. Walsh says he did not initially realize ‘how much his gun control efforts would be a part of his new show.’”

See the report at:

Obviously, CNN is hoping that it’s continued anti-Second Amendment agenda will be more palatable to the American people if it comes from a fellow American–especially one with whom everyone can truly sympathize with by virtue of his losing a child to an act of violence (although Adam Walsh’s murder did not involve the use of a firearm)–than from the arrogant and pompous British elitist, Piers Morgan. But make no mistake about it: the anti-Second Amendment message is the same. Only the messenger has changed.

And most sadly, churches, too, are often at the forefront of the anti-self-defense fanaticism. Christian leaders from denominations across the board are often the ones who promote gun control (even gun confiscation) among their congregations and who deny their parishioners the right to be armed on church property.

For example, back in 2004, the president of the LDS church issued a declaration to all Mormon churches in Utah that gave “public notice that firearms are prohibited in the church’s houses of worship, including temples, meetinghouses, the Assembly Hall, the Salt Lake Tabernacle, and the Conference Center.”

The declaration went on to say, “Once such public notice is given, persons who bring firearms into a church house of worship should be informed of the church’s position and politely asked to take their firearms to another safe location. Persons who refuse to take their firearms from the house of worship or repeatedly ignore the church’s prohibition should be referred to local law enforcement officers for possible criminal prosecution.”

See the church statement here:

But if you think the LDS church is the only church in the country that has taken such a position, you are sadly misinformed. My educated guess is that the vast majority of denominations and churches in America have a very similar position.

But instead of denying the Christian people of America from exercising their God-given right of self-defense on church property, church leaders should be boldly teaching the Biblical Natural Law principles of self-defense and encouraging their people to jealously guard this most fundamental liberty. By demanding that Christian people not be armed on church property, church leaders are no better than Rahm Emanuel–who insists that Chicago’s residents not be allowed to protect themselves–and are opening up their churches to those two-legged wolves who would seek to devour the sheep.

There are only a small handful of countries today that recognize the Natural right of self-defense. The advent of the United Nations has facilitated the demise of this right in country after country. The United States is the last major power that yet somewhat protects this most precious Natural right.

Obviously, several State and local governments within the United States (not to mention the worst offender of all: the federal government in Washington, D.C.) have themselves assisted the dismantlement of the right of self-defense. Several giant retailers are assisting the attacks against our Natural right of self-defense. The mainstream media is incessant in its attacks against the Second Amendment. And even many of America’s churches have set themselves against the right to BEAR arms. The war against our Natural right of self-defense continues.

However, I need to point out that the architects of the Nanny State have been trying to disarm the American people since even before the United Nations was created. And while the right to keep and bear arms has been severely restricted by myriads of federal, State, and local laws, the American people continue to be the most heavily armed people in the world. Not only is the American citizenry an armed citizenry, it is an absolutely determined citizenry. The message to any and all potential tyrants who would attempt to remove our Natural right of self-defense is the same–whether they are from King George’s London, Mao’s Beijing, Stalin’s Moscow, Emanuel’s Chicago, Obama’s Washington, D.C., or the U.N.’s New York City: MOLON LABE, COME AND TAKE THEM!

Neil Young & Crazy Horse: How About Waging Heavy Peace In Tel Aviv?

On July 17^th Neil Young & Crazy Horse will perform at Hayarkon Park, Tel Aviv, a park built on the ruins of the Palestinian village Al Mirr, a land and people, destroyed and buried amidst unspeakable violence, but not forgotten. 

Neil Young is a Canadian singer, songwriter, guitarist and author of WAGING HEAVY PEACE

Crazy Horse is an American band best known for their association with Young beginning in 1969.

Crazy Horse has been co-credited on 11 studio albums and numerous live albums billed as by “Neil Young and Crazy Horse”.

In Waging Heavy Peace, Neil Young’s 2012 autobiography, Young documents his life and career shifting from the past to present and from career to personal experiences.

On page 346, Neil Young wrote:

Somewhere along the line I had suggested the name Crazy Horse after the great Indian chief and the guys liked it. Neil Young with Crazy Horse. Not ‘and’…I liked that I was with them. Like we were together, not separate.

On page 137, Neil Young wrote:

When music is your life, there is a key that gets you to the core. I am so grateful that I still have Crazy Horse…they are my window to the cosmic world where the music lives and breathes. I can find myself there and go to the special area of my soul…

Just getting there is the key thing, and Crazy Horse is my way of getting there…

Am I too cosmic about this? I think not…

Do not doubt me in my sincerity, for it is that which has brought us to each other now.

In 2005, a coalition of over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations launched a campaign calling the international community to boycott Israel culturally, academically, and commercially  UNTIL Israel recognizes the indigenous Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, UNTIL Israel fully complies with international law and finally honors the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION of HUMAN RIGHTS upon which the Establishment of their very Statehood was contingent upon!

 Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations.- May 14, 1948. The Declaration of the Establishment of Israel

In November 2006, Father Manuel, the parish Priest at the Latin Church and school in Gaza warned the world:

Gaza cannot sleep! The people are suffering unbelievably. They are hungry, thirsty, have no electricity or clean water. They are suffering constant bombardments and sonic booms from low flying aircraft. They need food: bread and water. Children and babies are hungry…people have no money to buy food. The price of food has doubled and tripled due to the situation. We cannot drink water from the ground here as it is salty and not hygienic. People must buy water to drink. They have no income, no opportunities to get food and water from outside and no opportunities to secure money inside of Gaza. They have no hope.

Without electricity children are afraid. No light at night. No oil or candles…Thirsty children are crying, afraid and desperate…Many children have been violently thrown from their beds at night from the sonic booms. Many arms and legs have been broken. These planes fly low over Gaza and then reach the speed of sound. This shakes the ground and creates shock waves like an earthquake that causes people to be thrown from their bed. I, myself weigh 120 kilos and was almost thrown from my bed due to the shock wave produced by a low flying jet that made a sonic boom.

Gaza cannot sleep…the cries of hungry children, the sullen faces of broken men and women who are just sitting in their hungry emptiness with no light, no hope, no love. These actions are War Crimes!

Because this American cannot improve on this Letter to Neil Young from the Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel University Teachers’ Association it follows in full here:

16.03.2014

Besieged Gaza, Palestine

Dear Neil

We are Palestinian students and youth from the besieged Gaza Strip; we write to you now on a night engulfed by huge explosions ripping through our houses and neighborhoods again, more common than the thunder and hard rain also filling the night air.

And now we hear you plan on playing your inspiring music to a packed house in Hayarkon Park, Tel Aviv, a park built on the ruins of the Palestinian village Al Mirr, a land and people, destroyed and buried amidst unspeakable violence, but not forgotten. The residents of that Palestinian village and hundreds of other villages forcibly emptied by the nascent Israeli army, were either killed or denied return, denied the chance to even visit or commemorate the lives they once had. ⁽¹⁾

While the world turns its back, we hope that you don’t turn yours, that you heed the call of over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations, for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the Israeli regime until it abides by international law and stops denying us the right to live as any other human beings would expect.

Just as you didn’t perform in Apartheid South Africa, just as you stood up against racism in the US South, just as you have so admirably supported indigenous rights in Canada against the drilling for Tar Sands, we ask you to support indigenous, displaced people wherever they may be, including we Palestinians. The words of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association in their recent move to boycott the Israeli regime echo the struggle for indigenous rights in America. ⁽²⁾

As this letter is penned the sound of more Israeli bombing reverberates around the tight refugee camps and narrow alleys where we live.

The camps are in complete darkness as the electricity has been cut.

The Israeli siege and previous bombing of our only power-plant has lead to huge fuel shortages, leaving us with just 6 hours of electricity each day.

This is just one night, but it is comparable to many other nights in Gaza, many worse nights.

We are used to facing the wrath of Israeli Merkhava tanks, drones, shellings, bombs and snipers that have brutally murdered and maimed our people for decades, for the crime of being born Palestinians, the wrong “ethnic group” for the Israeli regime who since it was established has done everything to wipe us off the map.

Listening to music is difficult in these circumstances, despite our passion for it. We have our own big range of music we love to play and Debka dance. But we have few instruments. Israel’s air, land and sea blockade of all our borders has meant for years musical instruments were banned from entry to Gaza.^[3]

Other items denied to us were coriander, nutmeg, ginger, dried fruit, fresh meat, lentils, pasta, chocolate, fishing rods, cattle, toys, donkey, workbooks and newspapers. Dov Weisglass, an advisor to former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, explicitly outlined their intentions to collectively punish our population, “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger”, he announced, in contravention of article 33 of the Geneva Conventions and condemned by all major human rights organizations. ^(4]

The violence behind Israel’s military occupation of our land is relentless and this week is no different. It began with Israeli border police shooting and killing a 38 year old Palestinian judge Raed Zeitar, the other bus passengers forced to sit and watch as he bled to death. Then 18-year-old Saji Darwish, Humanities student at Birzeit university, was shot in the head in Beitin, near Ramallah. Thousands attended his funeral the following day.

Tuesday saw four more murdered in the West Bank and Gaza.

On Wednesday Israeli authorities approved the construction of 387 housing units in the illegal settlement of Ramat Shlomo, denying the Palestinian towns of Beit Hanina and Shuafat the possibility to expand. And today a three-month old baby Ahmed Ammar Abu Nahal died of enlarged heart and liver as a result of the closure of Gaza crossings, a closure that has also left our hospitals bereft of medical supplies.

And right now we sit paralyzed in our homes as the bombs fall on us in Gaza.

Who knows when the current attacks will end.

Permanently etched on our minds are the rivers of blood that ran through the Gaza streets when for over 3 weeks in 2009 over 1400 were killed including over 330 children, with white phosphorous and other chemical weapons used in civilian areas and contaminating our land with a rise in cancers as a result.

More recently 170 more were killed in the weeklong attacks in late November 2012.

How many more sleeping in their beds now will face the same fate in the coming days, weeks and months? The trauma, fear and uncertainty never goes away.

Over two thirds of the Palestinians here in Gaza are UN registered refugees.

Over half of us are children.

We or our descendants were dispossessed entirely and forcibly removed from our homes.

The extent of this ethnic cleansing was such that one in three refugees worldwide is a Palestinian.

Expulsions of Palestinians continue today especially in Jerusalem and the West Bank, places that we in Gaza are no longer able to visit.

For what crime? The crime of being born Palestinian.

The Israeli regime denies us the freedom to come to enjoy your music, we live our lives surrounded by Navy Gunships along the sea, jeeps and wall tower snipers along the land frontier, and skies filled with the kind of aircraft unleashing yet more devastating attacks tonight.

The Gaza Strip has been made an outdoor prison, a reality beyond which most youth can never imagine, because most can never leave.

Others are hearing us and the world is beginning to wake up.

Many of your contemporaries are taking a stand including Carlos Santana, Roger Waters, Annie Lennox, Elvis Costello and the late, great Pete Seeger and Gil Scott Heron, who said he wouldn’t play in Israel “until everyone is welcome there”. ⁽⁵⁾

As Israeli Apartheid week kicked off in South Africa this week, an event that has taken place in over 150 different locations worldwide, Archbishop Desmond Tutu called for the world to support the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions of Israel, just as many other Anti Apartheid heroes from South Africa have affirmed. Tutu said in his statement on Monday, “I have witnessed the systemic humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces. Their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government.” ⁽⁶⁾

Long before he died, Nelson Mandela demanded that we should have the self determination of any other people. “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”, he said.

Will you sing “living with war” to an audience most of which will have served or are serving in the Israeli army that during the day were bombing our families, or manning the hundreds of checkpoints that make simple journeys daily acts of humiliation?

While we in Gaza can never return to our homes that lay buried around the areas in which you will be travelling freely, will you sing, “A hundred voices from a hundred lands, need someone to listen.  People are dying here and there.”

On the struggle to support First Nations rights in Canada and environmental protection you said: “If you have a conscience, you can`t go through your day without realizing what`s going on, and questioning it, and going, “Is this right?”⁽⁷⁾

This is the question to mull over as here in Gaza a short period of silence has descended after the bombs rained down on us yet again tonight Show the courage to say that this system of violent discrimination and racial segregation is unacceptable in Palestine, just as you showed it to be unacceptable in the American South, unacceptable in Apartheid South Africa and unacceptable for the Indigenous of the Americas.

Stand on the right side of history and stand with us, and don’t entertain apartheid Israel this July.

Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel University Teachers’ Association

###

How about Neil Young & Crazy Horse entertain Tel Aviv and wage some heavy peace by broadcasting this image on the stage at Hayarkon Park on July 17?

References:

(1) http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/place.php?plid=1985

(2) http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/major-indigenous-studies-group-endorses-israel-boycott

(3) http://www.gazagateway.org/tag/musical-instruments/

(4) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/apr/16/israel#sthash.EtPIzrik.dpuf

(5) http://www.usacbi.org/2010/04/gil-scott-heron-announces-cancellation-of-tel-aviv-concert-artist-won%E2%80%99t-play-in-israel-%E2%80%9Cuntil-everyone-is-welcome-there%E2%80%9D/

(6) http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.578872

(7) http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/18/sbt.01.html

Splitting Up Iraq: It’s All For Israel

“It is no longer plausible to argue that ISIS was a result of unintentional screw ups by the US. It is a clear part of a US strategy to break up the Iran-Iraq-Syria-Hezbollah alliance. Now that strategy may prove to be a total failure and end up backfiring, but make no mistake, ISIS IS the strategy.” – Lysander, Comments line, Moon of Alabama

“US imperialism has been the principal instigator of sectarianism in the region, from its divide-and-conquer strategy in the war and occupation in Iraq, to the fomenting of sectarian civil war to topple Assad in Syria. Its cynical support for Sunni Islamist insurgents in Syria, while backing a Shiite sectarian regime across the border in Iraq to suppress these very same forces, has brought the entire Middle East to what a United Nations panel on Syria warned Tuesday was the “cusp of a regional war.” – Bill Van Auken, Obama orders nearly 300 US troops to Iraq, WSWS

Let cut to the chase: Barack Obama is blackmailing Nouri al-Maliki by withholding military support until the Iraqi Prime Minister agrees to step down. In other words, we are mid-stream in another regime change operation authored by Washington. What’s different about this operation, is the fact that Obama is using a small army of jihadi terrorists –who have swept to within 50 miles of Baghdad–to hold the gun to Mr. al Maliki’s head. Not surprisingly, al Maliki has refused to cooperate which means the increasingly-tense situation could explode into a civil war. Here’s the scoop from the Guardian in an article aptly titled “Iraq’s Maliki: I won’t quit as condition of US strikes against Isis militants”:

“A spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has said he will not stand down as a condition of US air strikes against Sunni militants who have made a lightning advance across the country.

Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, on Wednesday made a public call on al-Arabiya television for the US to launch strikes, but Barack Obama has come under pressure from senior US politicians to persuade Maliki… to step down over what they see as failed leadership in the face of an insurgency…

The White House has not called for Maliki to go but its spokesman Jay Carney said that whether Iraq was led by Maliki or a successor, “we will aggressively attempt to impress upon that leader the absolute necessity of rejecting sectarian governance”. (Iraq’s Maliki: I won’t quit as condition of US strikes against Isis militants, Guardian)

Obviously, the White House can’t tell al Maliki to leave point-blank or it would affect their credibility as proponents of democracy. But the fix is definitely in and the administration’s plan to oust al Maliki is well underway. Check out this clip from the Wall Street Journal:

“A growing number of U.S. lawmakers and Arab allies, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are pressing the White House to pull its support for Mr. Maliki. Some of them are pushing for change in exchange for providing their help in stabilizing Iraq, say U.S. and Arab diplomats.” (U.S. Signals Iraq’s Maliki Should Go, Wall Street Journal)

Pay special attention to the last sentence: “Some of them are pushing for change in exchange for providing their help in stabilizing Iraq”. That sounds a lot like blackmail to me.

This is the crux of what is going on behind the scenes. Barack Obama and his lieutenants are twisting al Maliki ‘s arm to force him out of office. That’s what the Thursday press conference was all about. Obama identified the group called the Isis as terrorists, acknowledged that they posed a grave danger to the government, and then breezily opined that he would not lift a finger to help. Why? Why is Obama so eager to blow up suspected terrorists in Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan and yet unwilling to do so in Iraq? Could it be that Obama is not really committed to fighting terrorists at all, that the terror-ruse is just a fig leaf for much grander plans, like global domination?

Of course, it is. In any event, it’s plain to see that Obama is not going to help al Maliki if it interferes with Washington’s broader strategic objectives. And, at present, those objectives are to get rid of al Maliki, who is “too tight” with Tehran, and who refused to sign Status Of Forces Agreement in 2011 which would have allowed the US to leave 30,000 troops in Iraq. The rejection of SOFA effectively sealed al Maliki’s fate and made him an enemy of the United States. It was only a matter of time before Washington took steps to remove him from office. Here’s a clip from Obama’s press conference on Thursday that illustrates how these things work:

Obama: “The key to both Syria and Iraq is going to be a combination of what happens inside the country, working with moderate Syrian opposition, working with an Iraqi government that is inclusive, and us laying down a more effective counterterrorism platform that gets all the countries in the region pulling in the same direction. Rather than try to play whack-a-mole wherever these terrorist organizations may pop up, what we have to do is to be able to build effective partnerships.”

What does this mean in language that we can all understand?

It means that “you’re either on the team or you’re off the team”. If you are on the US team, then you will enjoy the benefits of “partnership” which means the US will help to defend you against the terrorist groups which they arm, fund and provide logistical support for. (through their Gulf State allies) If you are “off the team” –as Mr. al Maliki appears to be, then Washington will look the other way while the hordes of vicious miscreants tear the heads off your soldiers, burn your cities to the ground, and reduce your country to ungovernable anarchy. So, there’s a choice to be made. Either you can play along and follow orders and “nobody gets hurt, or go-it-alone and face the consequences.

Capisce? Obama is running a protection racket just like some two-bit Mafia shakedown-artist from the ‘hood. And I am not speaking metaphorically here. This is the way it really works. The president of the United States is threatening a democratically-elected leader, who–by the way–was hand-picked and rubber-stamped by the Bush administration–because he has not turned out to be sufficiently servile in kowtowing to their demands. So, now they’re going to replace him with another corrupt stooge like Chalabi. That’s right, the shifty Ahmed Chalabi has reemerged from his spiderhole and is making a bid to take al Maliki’s place. This is from the New York Times:

“Iraq officials said Thursday that political leaders had started intensive jockeying to replace Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and create a government that would span the country’s deepening sectarian and ethnic divisions, spurred by what they called encouraging meetings with American officials signaling support for a leadership change…

The names floated so far — Adel Abdul Mahdi, Ahmed Chalabi and Bayan Jaber — are from the Shiite blocs, which have the largest share of the total seats in the Parliament.” (With Nod From U.S., Iraqis Seek New Leader, New York Times)

Remember Chalabi? Neocon favorite, Chalabi. The guy who –as Business Insider notes “was a central figure in the U.S.’s decision to remove the Iraqi dictator over a decade ago” and “who helped get the Iraq Liberation Act passed through Congress in 1998, a law that made regime change in Baghdad an official U.S. policy.” “Chalabi claimed that Saddam was an imminent threat to the U.S., and was both holding and developing a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, (which) became the view of the intelligence community and eventually the majority of the U.S. congress. In the first four years of the Bush administration, Chalabi’s INC recieved $39 million from the U.S. government.” (Business Insider)

You can’t make this stuff up.

So, good old Chalabi is on the short-list of candidates to take al Maliki’s place. Great. That just illustrates the level of thinking about these matters in the Obama White House. I don’t know how anyone can objectively follow these developments and not conclude that the neocons are calling the shots. Of course they’re calling the shots. Chalabi’s “their guy”. In fact, the goals the administration is pursuing, aren’t really even in US interests at all.

Bear with me for a minute: Let’s assume that we’re correct in our belief that the administration has set its sites on four main strategic objectives in Iraq:

1–Removing al Maliki
2–Gaining basing rights via a new Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)
3–Rolling back Iran’s influence in the region
4–Partitioning the country

How does the US benefit from achieving these goals?

The US has plenty of military bases and installations spread around the Middle East. It gains nothing by having another in Iraq. The same goes for removing al Maliki. There’s no telling how that could turn out. Maybe good, maybe bad. It’s a roll of the dice. Could come up snake-eyes, who knows? But, one thing is certain; it will further erode confidence in the US as a serious supporter of democracy. No one is going to believe that fable anymore. (Al Maliki just won the recent election.)

As for “rolling back Iran’s influence in the region”: That doesn’t even make sense. It was the United States that removed the Sunni Baathists from power and deliberately replaced them with members from the Shia community. As we’ve shown in earlier articles, shifting power from Sunnis to Shia was a crucial part of the original occupation strategy, which was transparently loony from the get go. It was as if the British invaded the US and decided to replace career politicians and Washington bureaucrats with inexperienced service sector employees from the barrios of LA. Does that make sense? The results turned out to be a disaster, as anyone with half a brain could have predicted. Because the plan was idiotic. No empire has ever operated like that. Of course, there was going to be a tacit alliance between Baghdad and Tehran. The US strategy made that alliance inevitable! Iraq did not move in Iran’s direction. That’s baloney. Washington pushed Iraq into Iran’s arms. Everyone knows this.

So, now what? So now the Obama team wants a “do over”? Is that it?

There are no do overs in history. The sectarian war the US initiated and promoted with its blistering counterinsurgency strategy–which involved massive ethnic cleansing of Sunnis in Baghdad behind the phony “surge” BS– changed the complexion of the country for good. There’s no going back. What’s done is done. Baghdad is Shia and will remain Shia. And that means there’s going to be some connection with Tehran. So, if the Obama people intend to roll back Iran’s influence, then they probably have something else in mind. And they DO have something else in mind. They want to partition the country consistent with an Israeli plan that was concocted more than three decades ago. The plan was the brainstorm of Oded Yinon who saw Iraq as a serious threat to Israel’s hegemonic aspirations, so he cooked up a plan to remedy the problem. Here’s a blurb from Yinon’s primary work titled, “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties”, which is the roadmap that will be used to divide Iraq:

“Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization.” (A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties, Oded Yinon, monabaker.com)

Repeat: “Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon.”

This is the plan. The United States does not benefit from this plan. The United States does not benefit from a fragmented, Balkanized, broken Iraq. The oil giants are already extracting as much oil as they want. Iraqi oil is, once again, denominated in dollars not euros. Iraq poses no national security threat to the US. US war planners already got what they want. There’s no reason to go back and cause more trouble, to restart the war, to tear the country apart, and to split it into pieces. The only reason to dissolve Iraq, is Israel. Israel does not want a unified Iraq. Israel does not want an Iraq that can stand on its own two feet. Israel wants to make sure that Iraq never remerges as a regional power. And there’s only one way to achieve that goal, that is, to follow Yinon’s prescription of “breaking up Iraq …along ethnic/religious lines …so, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul.”

This is the blueprint the Obama administration is following. The US gains nothing from this plan. It’s all for Israel.

Tyranny And Confusion

The World Has Lost Understanding…

“We regard killing on United Nations ‘peace-keeping-missions’ as ‘necessary’ and to be accepted as a fact of life.  At the same time, our murderous century views with horror God’s law.  God has no right, they hold, to require judgment.  Modern theology believes God should represent love and ‘niceness,’ never justice and judgment.  Humanistic sentiment wants evil-doers to be dealt with gently.  As a result, we have a culture which tolerates criminals, hoodlums, and exploiters of welfare who believe that they have a ‘right’ to pursue their evil ways.  Men are intolerant towards the claims of God and tolerant towards evil.”  R. J. Rushdoony, “Deuteronomy” Pg. 205

Ninety nine percent of the world’s population is controlled by a small group of elite oligarchs that compose less than one percent its inhabitants.

Tiny, high flying aircraft cover the sky with mysterious trails that expand into long, thin, vaporous clouds which are even more mysteriously ignore by the people, the media, and the government – no one seems to know who sponsors the flights, what they are spraying or why they are spraying it..  When it started, those that noticed were called “conspiracy theorists” so comments on the beginning of the spraying were quickly squelched.  Now everyone sees the mysterious chemtrails but no one challenges them.

The price of gasoline has followed a similar pattern.  When gas went to $3.00 a gallon there was a considerable outcry but now that it is approaching $4.00 a gallon no one is complaining.

When rumors of the intended overlay of the laws of the world’s nations with world government there was lots of consternation but now that it was begun in earnest during the Twenty-First Century it is quickly progressing with little resistance.

When President Clinton’s Administration was responsible for the deaths of over 80 innocent men, women, and children at the Koresh Compound in Waco, Texas and no one was held responsible it set the stage for what happened under the administrations of President Bush and President Obama; Executive Orders have virtually abolished the Bill of Rights setting in place the structure for a police state far worse than in Russia or Germany..

There was lots of publicity when President George W. Bush’s mendacity led us into war in Iraq.  But now that our armed assault in the Middle East has gone on for over ten years and amassed debt in the trillion dollar range people are disgruntled but are seemingly unaware that debt is an obligation and eventually the citizens of the United States will be forced to pay it.

Hundreds of thousands of nominal, naïve Christians have spent the last several decades trying to defy the Word of God by predicting the Second Coming of Christ.  It has not happened.  A lessor number of those who acknowledged the Conspiracy have been predicting a national catastrophe for several decades. That has not happened.

People know that the world is being drastically changed.  They know that the governments of the individual nations are involved in ominous events that are happening on a daily basis.  They are beginning to realize that governments are part of the problem and therefore cannot become part of the solution.

While the closely controlled media censors the news so that nothing about the dangers to our freedom is leaked to the public the internet has innumerable speculative and prophetic articles that contain kernels of truth but are tragically surrounded by borders of speculation.

We know that the threat to our freedom is real but like the chemtrails we do not know who is giving the orders or when a particular event will occur.

There is very little that can be done about the clouds of tyranny that are falling over us.  The gun packing patriots that flocked to the Bundy Ranch can resist the government but they are fighting against a far superior force that is fully prepared to overcome such resistance.

The American people do not vote on pernicious legislation. The men and women they elect pass these bills even though they often failed to read them.  Major legislation like NAFTA and GATT passed with unknown content.  This procedure allows the veiled authors of inimical legislation to rule the nation as invisible kings.

Our nation has been infused with immigrants who know little or nothing about our culture and are intent on accumulating as much money and power as possible.  Already defiled by the destruction of voter qualifications our electoral system has been destroyed by allowing the wisdom of informed, long term citizens to be destroyed by the ballot of stupid voters and recent immigrants.  The hope that participation the political process will bring us peace and freedom is futile.

C-Span recently hosted a consortium of female power brokers who discussed what could be done about sexual harassment in the armed services.  This group of very smart women never touched on the fact that men were created with a desire to have sex with women and women were designed to succumb.  Instead, they spent the entire house discussing how they could force men and women into close proximity and then force them to control their desires.  They never considered the fact that forcing different sexes to live together and remain chaste is like setting a building on fire and hoping is doesn’t burn.

Fantasy has overtaken our world.  Someone on the internet wondered if chemtrails were real!  The entire government has accepted as fact that our nation is threatened and must sacrifice freedom for safety.  They assume that the attack on the world trade center was perpetrated by Muslim enemies and ignore the sizeable block of evidence that it was a false flag.  Everyone seems to believe that Blacks and Jews are oppressed races and must be protected by sacrificing our right to free speech.  Large segments of our population support our troops and the killing and maiming of innocent people a product of U.S. imperialism.

“In the 21st century it is difficult to find a significant statement made by Washington that is not a lie. Obamacare is a lie. Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction is a lie. Assad’s use of chemical weapons is a lie. Iranian nukes are a lie. Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea is a lie. No fly zones are a lie. Russian aggression against Georgia is a lie. 9/11, the basis for Washington’s destruction of civil liberty and illegal military attacks, is itself a lie. The fantastic story that a few Saudi Arabians without government or intelligence agency backing outwitted the entire national security apparatus of the Western world is unbelievable. It is simply not credible that every institution of the national security state simultaneously failed. That Washington would tell such a fantastic lie shows that Washington has no respect for the intelligence of the American people and no respect for the integrity of the American media. It shows also that Washington has no respect for the intelligence and integrity of its European and Asian allies. Paul Craig Roberts, ”Gangster State America”

Read Robert’s article on the coming nuclear war.

When serious problems are evaded they fester and create bigger problems.  Peace is jeopardized when reality is ignored.  Blacks and Whites cannot live together when bad Black behavior is ignored or erroneously blamed on Whites.  We cannot have peace when the controlled press fails to publish black crime against White citizens and allows denigration of White citizens by both Blacks and Jews; sooner or later this persistent inequity will cause problems.

It would be hard to find another nation that showcases the tragedy of allowing humanist government to erase immutable Law than the United States of America.  Mutable human opinion has reduced the social, legal, and governmental factions of our nation to an absurd jumble of cognitive dissonances that are impervious to order.

Human beings are not gods and their governments are not sovereign.  We live in a created world that is controlled by an Entity Who requires our obeisance.  We were created to live in that world and to obey that Deity, the One True God.  Confusion and tyranny are often results of our disobedience and signs of God’s judgment.  It is time the Christian Church acknowledges the fact the God is indeed still on His Throne and is the Sovereign ruler to this fast deteriorating world.

“It is not lonely man but all the nations that have fallen prey to original sin, to the desire to be as God (Gen. 3:5).   Each makes itself its own source of law, a clear usurpation of God’s prerogative.  Each seeks to limit or prohibit the freedom of God’s Word.  The nations without exception claim sovereignty, a plain assertion of their own lordship or deity.  Every nation is and has been a religious entity.  Moreover, the nations, as they now exist and function, are members of the fallen world of Adam and fanatic advocates of Adam’s faith and rebellion.” R. J. Rushdoony. “Systematic Theology” Vol.1, Pg. 234

Who Is The New Secret Buyer of U.S. Debt?

On the surface, the economic atmosphere of the U.S. has appeared rather calm and uneventful. Stocks are up, employment isn’t great but jobs aren’t collapsing into the void (at least not openly), and the U.S. dollar seems to be going strong. Peel away the thin veneer, however, and a different financial horror show is revealed.

U.S. stocks have enjoyed unprecedented crash protection due to a steady infusion of fiat money from the Federal Reserve known as quantitative easing. With the advent of the “taper”, QE is now swiftly coming to a close (as is evident in the overall reduction in treasury market purchases), and is slated to end by this fall, if not sooner.

Employment has been boosted only in statistical presentation, and not in reality. The Labor Department’s creative accounting of job numbers omits numerous factors, the most important being the issue of long term unemployed. Millions of people who have been jobless for so long they no longer qualify for benefits are being removed from the rolls. This quiet catastrophe has the side bonus of making it appear as though unemployment is going down.

U.S. Treasury bonds, and by extension the dollar, have also stayed afloat due to the river of stimulus being introduced by the Federal Reserve. That same river, through QE, is now drying up.

In my article The Final Swindle Of Private American Wealth Has Begun, I outline the data which leads me to believe that the Fed taper is a deliberate action in preparation for an impending market collapse. The effectiveness of QE stimulus has a shelf-life, and that shelf life has come to an end. With debt monetization no longer a useful tool in propping up the ailing U.S. economy, central bankers are publicly stepping back. Why? If a collapse occurs while stimulus is in full swing, the Fed immediately takes full blame for the calamity, while being forced to admit that central banking as a concept serves absolutely no meaningful purpose.

My research over many years has led me to conclude that a collapse of the American system is not only expected by international financiers, but is in fact being engineered by them. The Fed is an entity created by globalists for globalists. These people have no loyalties to any one country or culture. Their only loyalties are to themselves and their private organizations.

While many people assume that the stimulus measures of the Fed are driven by a desire to save our economy and currency, I see instead a concerted program of destabilization which ismeant to bring about the eventual demise of our nation’s fiscal infrastructure. What some might call “kicking the can down the road,” I call deliberately stretching the country thin over time, so that any indirect crisis can be used as a trigger event to bring the ceiling crashing down.

In the past several months, the Fed taper of QE and subsequently U.S. bond buying has coincided with steep declines in purchases by China, a dump of one-fifth of holdings by Russia, and an overall decline in new purchases of U.S. dollars for FOREX reserves.

With the Ukraine crisis now escalating to fever pitch, BRIC nations are openly discussing the probability of “de-dollarization” in international summits, and the ultimate dumping of the dollaras the world reserve currency.

The U.S. is in desperate need of a benefactor to purchase its ever rising debt and keep the system running. Strangely, a buyer with apparently bottomless pockets has arrived to pick up the slack that the Fed and the BRICS are leaving behind. But, who is this buyer?

At first glance, it appears to be the tiny nation of Belgium.

While foreign investment in the U.S. has sharply declined since March, Belgium has quickly become the third largest buyer of Treasury bonds, just behind China and Japan, purchasing more than $200 billion in securities in the past five months, adding to a total stash of around $340 billion. This development is rather bewildering, primarily because Belgium’s GDP as of 2012 was a miniscule $483 billion, meaning, Belgium has spent nearly the entirety of its yearly GDP on our debt.

Clearly, this is impossible, and someone, somewhere, is using Belgium as a proxy in order to prop up the U.S. But who?

Recently, a company based in Belgium called Euroclear has come forward claiming to be the culprit behind the massive purchases of American debt. Euroclear, though, is not a direct buyer. Instead, the bank is a facilitator, using what it calls a “collateral highway” to allow central banks and international banks to move vast amounts of securities around the world faster than ever before.

Euroclear claims to be an administrator for more than $24 trillion in worldwide assets and transactions, but these transactions are not initiated by the company itself. Euroclear is a middleman used by our secret buyer to quickly move U.S. Treasuries into various accounts without ever being identified. So the question remains, who is the true buyer?

My investigation into Euroclear found some interesting facts. Euroclear has financial relationships with more than 90 percent of the world’s central banks and was once partly owned and run by 120 of the largest financial institutions back when it was called the “Euroclear System”. The organization was consolidated and operated by none other than JP Morgan Bank in 1972. In 2000, Euroclear was officially incorporated and became its own entity. However, one must remember, once a JP Morgan bank, always a JP Morgan bank.

Another interesting fact – Euroclear also has a strong relationship with the Russian government and is a primary broker for Russian debt to foreign investors. This once again proves my ongoing point that Russia is tied to the global banking cabal as much as the United States. The East vs. West paradigm is a sham of the highest order.

Euroclear’s ties to the banking elite are obvious; however, we are still no closer to discovering the specific groups or institution responsible for buying up U.S. debt. I think that the use of Euroclear and Belgium may be a key in understanding this mystery.

Belgium is the political center of the EU, with more politicians, diplomats and lobbyists than Washington D.C. It is also, despite its size and economic weakness, a member of an exclusive economic club called the “Group Of Ten” (G10).

The G10 nations have all agreed to participate in a “General Arrangement to Borrow” (GAB) launched in 1962 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The GAB is designed as an ever cycling fund which members pay into. In times of emergency, members can ask the IMF’s permission for a release of funds. If the IMF agrees, it then injects capital through Treasury purchases and SDR allocations. Essentially, the IMF takes our money, then gives it back to us in times of desperation (with strings attached).  A similar program called ‘New Arrangements To Borrow’ (NAB) involves 38 member countries.  This fund was boosted to approximately 370 billion SDR (or $575 billion dollars U.S.) as the derivatives crisis struck markets in 2008-2009.  Without a full and independent audit of the IMF, however, it is impossible to know the exact funds it has at its disposal, or how many SDR’s it has created.

It should be noted the Bank of International Settlements is also an overseer of the G10. If you want to learn more about the darker nature of globalist groups like the IMF and the BIS, read my articles, Russia Is Dominated By Global Banks, Too, and False East/West Paradigm Hides The Rise Of Global Currency.

The following article from Harpers titled “Ruling The World Of Money,” was published in 1983 and boasts about the secrecy and “ingenuity” of the Bank Of International Settlements, an unaccountable body of financiers that dominates the very course of economic life around the world.

It is my belief that Belgium, as a member of the G10 and the GAB/NAB agreements, is being used as a proxy by the BIS and the IMF to purchase U.S. debt, but at a high price. I believe that the banking elite are hiding behind their middleman, Euroclear, because they do not want their purchases of Treasuries revealed too soon. I believe that the IMF in particular is accumulating U.S. debt to be used later as leverage to absorb the dollar and finalize the rise of their SDR currency basket as the world reserve standard.

Imagine what would happen if all foreign creditors abandoned U.S. debt purchases because the dollar was no longer seen as viable as a world reserve currency.  Imagine that the Fed’s efforts to stimulate through fiat printing became useless in propping up Treasuries, serving only to devalue the domestic buying power of our currency.  Imagine that the IMF swoops in as the lender of last resort; the only entity willing to service our debt and keep the system running.  Imagine what kind of concessions America would have to make to a global loan shark like the IMF.

Keep in mind, the plan to replace the dollar is not mere “theory”.  In fact, IMF head Christine Lagarde has openly called for a “global financial system” to take over in the place of the current dollar based system.

The Bretton Woods System, established in 1944, was used by the United Nations and participating governments to form international rules of economic conduct, including fixed rates for currencies and establishing the dollar as the monetary backbone. The IMF was created during this shift towards globalization as the BIS slithered into the background after its business dealings with the Nazis were exposed. It was the G10, backed by the IMF, that then signed the Smithsonian Agreement in 1971 which ended the Bretton Woods system of fixed currencies, as well as any remnants of the gold standard. This led to the floated currency system we have today, as well as the slow poison of monetary inflation which has now destroyed more than 98 percent of the dollar’s purchasing power.

I believe the next and final step in the banker program is to reestablish a new Bretton Woods style system in the wake of an engineered catastrophe. That is to say, we are about to go full circle. Perhaps Ukraine will be the cover event, or tensions in the South China Sea. Just as Bretton Woods was unveiled during World War II, Bretton Woods redux may be unveiled during World War III. In either case, the false East/West paradigm is the most useful ploy the elites have to bring about a controlled decline of the dollar.

The new system will reintroduce the concept of fixed currencies, but this time, all currencies will be fixed or “pegged” to the value of the SDR global basket. The IMF holds a global SDR summit every five years, and the next meeting is set for the beginning of 2015.

If the Chinese yuan is brought into the SDR basket next year, if the BRICS enter into a conjured economic war with the West, and if the dollar is toppled as the world reserve, there will be nothing left in terms of fiscal structure in the way of a global currency system. If the public does not remove the globalist edifice by force, the IMF and the BIS will then achieve their dream – the complete dissolution of economic sovereignty, and the acceptance by the masses of global financial governance. The elites don’t want to hide behind the curtain anymore. They want recognition. They want to be worshiped. And, it all begins with the secret buyout of America, the implosion of our debt markets, and the annihilation of our way of life.

Source:  Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

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