Libertarian Today

Iran does not have nuclear weapons, but Israel does, and is trying to sell them on the black market to other countries, say reliable sources

2012-01-31T11:58:00.000-08:00

From:
Iran vs Israel: What The Media Wants You To Forget
(What Really Happened) --

The corporate media have been given their orders to throw the focus back on to Iran.

Here is a recap of what they are trying to make you forget.

1. Last Spring, Rose Gottemoeller, an assistant secretary of state and Washington's chief nuclear arms negotiator, asked Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel refused.

2. The United Nations passed a resolution calling on Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to submit to inspections. Israel refused.

3. The IAEA asked Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to submit to inspections. Israel refused.

4. Iran's formal notification to the IAEA of the planned construction of the backup fuel-rod facility underscores that Iran is playing by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which Iran has signed.

5. Iran allows IAEA inspections of all its facilities.

6. Contrary to face-saving claims, it appears that the US and Israel were both caught off guard by Iran's announcement of a planned underground (to avoid being bombed) enrichment facility. The reasoning is simple. Had the US or Israel announced the existence of he new facility before Iran's notified the IAEA, it would have put Iran on the defensive. As it is now, the US and Israel seem to be playing catch up, casting doubt on the veracity of Israel's claims to "know" that Iran is a nuclear threat.

7. The IAEA and all 16 United States Intelligence Agencies are unanimous in agreement that Iran is not building and does not possess nuclear weapons.

8. In 1986, Mordachai Vanunu blew the whistle and provided photographs showing Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons factory underneath the reactor at Dimona.

9. Israel made the same accusations against Iraq that it is making against Iran, leading up to Israel's bombing of the power station at Osirik. Following the invasion of 2003, international experts examined the ruins of the power station at Osirik and found no evidence of a clandestine weapons factory in the rubble.

10. The United Nations has just released the Goldstone Report, a scathing report which accuses Israel of 37 specific war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza earlier this year. Israel has denounced the report as "Anti-Semitic (even though Judge Goldstone is himself Jewish), and the United States will block the report from being referred to the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague, thereby making the US Government an accessory after-the-fact.

11. Recently revealed documents prove not only that Israel has nuclear weapos, but actually tried to sell some to Apartheid South Africa. Who else Israel approached to sell nuclear weapons remains an unasked question.

12. In 1965, Israel stole over 200-600 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from the United States.

13. Declassified documents from the former South African regime prove not only that Israel has had nuclear weapons for decades, but has tried to sell them to other countries!

We all need to be Joe Wilson right now. We need to stand up and scream, "LIAR!" at every politician and every talking media moron that is pushing this war in Iran. And we need to keep dong it until they get the message that we will not be deceived any more.

Israel wants to send your kids off to die in Iran, and YOU are the only one that can stop them...LINK

MSNBC rips right-wing, Israel-first, Jewish-American billionaire behind Gingrich; When will it call out wealthy Zionists who own Democratic Party?

2012-01-30T10:57:00.000-08:00

(By Chris Moore) -- In the following video, MSNBC's Chris Hayes digs into the background of the wealthy, Jewish-American casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, and finds him to be not only an Israel-firster deeply interested in getting the U.S. to slap down Iran on behalf of the Jewish state, but additionally to be pulling strings for the Chinese government in Washington in a quid pro quo exchange for profitable Asian gambling licenses.

The portrait of Adelson that emerges is that of a truly unpatriotic, scurrilous reprobate who only cares about enriching himself, and about Israel. As Adelson apparently sees it, America is a whore to pumped and dumped for his true loyalties -- namely mammon and Israel.

The problem for the liberal establishment-tool MSNBC, which is essentially a front for the Democratic Party, is that the most wealthy and powerful constituency in the Democratic Party at the national level is itself comprised of Zionist Jews who are exactly like Sheldon Adelson -- individually, perhaps not as wealthy, and often more stealth, serpentine and couth than the gruff, chutzpah-filled Adelson, but collectively, far more wealthy and just as militantly pro-Israel.

And just like Adelson, these pseudo-"liberal" Zionist Jews are equally interested in using the U.S. military as indentured mercenaries to take out any country in Israel's region that even looks sideways at the Jewish state or its aggression, all on the way to eventually starting a world war against Islam on behalf of international Jewish supremacism.

When watching the following video, think of Sheldon Adelson not merely as a metaphor for wealthy, right-wing, Zionist Jews who couch their Israel-first treason in religion (as he is cast by MSNBC), but additionally as a metaphor for the mentality of the entire, racketeering, Diaspora Jewish Zionist nation from left to right that is not only engaged in unpatriotic, Israel-first activism and warmongering, but is additionally engaged in unpatriotic, corrupt, State Capitalist/Corporatist profiteering, and that is pushing the internationalist, Globalist agenda from the shores of America for the same reason that Adelson goes to bat for the Chinese government in the U.S.: self-serving, nation-plundering profit.

This is a "nation within the nation" that exists at the expense of average Americans and their best interests, and to the (potentially fatal) detriment of the long-term survival of the U.S. itself.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Spokesman for Sheldon Adelson, the Israel-first billionaire behind Gingrich's warmongering, compares him to Joseph Kennedy backing JFK

2012-01-29T16:15:00.000-08:00

From:
Gingrich funder isn't trying to 'buy' the presidency, aide says
(MSNBC) -- by Michael Isikoff --

Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino mogul bankrolling Newt Gingrich’s super PAC isn’t trying to “buy” a presidency, his top political consultant tells NBC News. He’s just following in the footsteps of another powerful business tycoon, Joseph Kennedy, father of President John F. Kennedy.

“I don’t think it’s buying a presidency any more than it was when Joe Kennedy helped his son,” Sig Rogich, a veteran Republican operative who serves as Adelson’s government affairs consultant, said in an interview about the massive donations that the casino mogul has made to Gingrich’s super PAC.

Adelson, 78, who has a personal fortune estimated at $21 billion, “plays to win” and “puts his money where his mouth is,” Rogich added.

In the last three weeks, Adelson and his Israeli-born wife Miriam have pumped $10 million into the Winning Our Future Super PAC. Those donations provided a critical cash infusion that helped revive Gingrich’s candidacy, bankrolling attack ads against Mitt Romney in South Carolina and now Florida. They’ve also made the Adelsons the largest known donors so far in a presidential race awash with money under new rules allowing unlimited donations to so-called super PACs.

But the contributions have also raised new questions about Adelson’s outside role in influencing the campaign. Those questions could intensify as a result of potentially provocative comments he has made about Israel uncovered by NBC News.

Adelson owns a newspaper in Israel, 'Israel HaYom,' that backs conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and adamantly opposes any peace settlement with the Palestinians.

But while Adelson and Gingrich have bonded on the issue of a hawkish Mideast policy, especially over the threat of a nuclear Iran, some of the casino mogul’s comments could prove embarrassing.

In a talk to an Israeli group in July, 2010, Adelson said he wished he had served in the Israeli Army rather than the U.S. military—and that he hoped his young son would come back to Israel and “be a sniper for the IDF,” a reference to the Israel Defense Forces. (YouTube video of speech)

“I am not Israeli. The uniform that I wore in the military, unfortunately, was not an Israeli uniform. It was an American uniform, although my wife was in the IDF and one of my daughters was in the IDF ... our two little boys, one of whom will be bar mitzvahed tomorrow, hopefully he’ll come back-- his hobby is shooting -- and he’ll come back and be a sniper for the IDF,” Adelson said at the event.

“All we care about is being good Zionists, being good citizens of Israel, because even though I am not Israeli born, Israel is in my heart,” he said toward the end of his talk...MORE...LINK

Casino Empire of Gingrich's political sugar daddy, Zionist billionaire Sheldon Adelson, investigated for ties to organized crime

2012-01-29T16:03:00.000-08:00

From:
Adelson Casino Empire Investigated for Mob Ties, Prostitution
(Tikkun Olam) -- by Richard Silverstein --

The Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice have been investigating allegations of ties between Sheldon Adelson’s Macau casino and Chinese organized crime rings and prostitution for the past year. ABC News reports a former Sands Casino executive has charged that the Asian business operation relied on the Chinese triads which organized junkets for “high roller” gamblers and prostitution to service their “other” needs. It reports that on the same day Adelson arrived for a major business meeting at the Chinese enclave 100 prostitutes were arrested within the hotel. The charges are being investigated under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which governs crimes like corporate bribery.

Newt Gingrich, not one to observe the highest standards of ” family values” himself with his three wives and history of philandering, might want to explore whether this represents the highest standards of moral values for a Republican presidential candidate. And if it doesn’t trouble Newt, it might trouble some Republican primary voters. They might want to spend a moment thinking how many acts of prostitution or bribery contributed to the $10-million (the largest private gifts ever-given in U.S. campaign history) Adelson has funneled into Gingrich’s campaign, with the likelihood of tens of millions more should his fair-haired goy proceed farther in the primary process.

To see how Adelson has gamed another political system as a model for what he’ll do here in the States, we have to look no farther than his pimping for Bibi Netanyahu over the past decade or more. It is far cheaper to buy the Israeli political system than America’s. All Adelson needed to do was bankroll a new, free newspaper, Yisrael HaYom, to the tune of $40-million annually. The paper was Bibi’s alter ego. Just imagine the Washington Times with infinite resources, free, and distributed nationally. That’s what the Israeli paper’s role is inside Israel. Bibi himself credits it with creating a permanent rightist majority in Israeli politics. The result is the worst political and media system money can buy. Is that what we want here in America?...MORE...LINK

Zionist-front N.Y. Times says Don't worry about starting WWIII against Iran, West won't even feel it

2012-01-27T14:07:00.000-08:00

From:
Quoting Israelis, ‘NYT’ front pager says Iran will take a military strike lying down (won’t even raise oil prices!)
(Mondoweiss) -- by Matthew Taylor --

Front page above the fold today at the 'NYT,' stenographer to the Israelis Ethan Bronner reports, "Israel Senses Bluffing in Iran’s Threats of Retaliation":

Israeli intelligence estimates, backed by academic studies, have cast doubt on the widespread assumption that a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would set off a catastrophic set of events like a regional conflagration, widespread acts of terrorism and sky-high oil prices.

The estimates, which have been largely adopted by the country’s most senior officials, conclude that the threat of Iranian retaliation is partly bluff....

“A war is no picnic,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said. But if Israel feels itself forced into action, the retaliation would be bearable, he said. “There will not be 100,000 dead or 10,000 dead or 1,000 dead. The state of Israel will not be destroyed.”

For American audiences, the translation is: If Israel attacks Iran, the consequences will be...what? Maybe not an enjoyable picnic, but one where ants invade the egg salad?

Nowhere in the story is there a mention of the anticipatable human and environmental consequences to the Iranian people. Additionally, all of those quoted are Israeli or affiliated with the Israeli government. Where is the balance? Where are the quotes from neutral, international conflict experts from organizations like the International Crisis Group or Transcend? This is one of the worst pieces of war journalism I've ever seen. We need peace journalism, now!...LINK

Chalk up another epic failure for the 'Worst Generation': World steadily ditching U.S. dollar for Yuan as world reserve currency

2012-01-27T10:55:00.000-08:00

From:
China and UAE ditch US Dollar, will use Yuan for oil trade
(Commodity Online) -- by ? --

NEW YORK (Commodity Online): The US dollar is fast losing out its reserve currency status with China aggressively replacing the dollar with the Yuan as a currency for bi-lateral trade. The latest is an agreement signed between the China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which will use the Yuan for oil trade.

The deal is worth around $5.5 billion dollars and the Chinese central bank said that the deal aims at “strengthening bilateral financial cooperation, promoting trade and investments and jointly safeguarding regional financial stability”

Earlier, Russia and Iran had decided to use Rubles as a means of currency. With both China and Russia converting their bi-lateral trades into non-US dollar deals, the greenback is now under threat of losing out its status as the world reserve currency. And the impact of such a transition will essentially tip the balance of global power...LINK
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Here's my submission for the Worst Generation's slogan, and the epitaph that should mark what will no doubt eventually be all of their urine-soaked graves:

Never have so few squandered so much, so fast. -- C.M.
-------------------------

'WORST GENERATION' GALLERY OF INFAMY, EVIL AND SHAME

State of the Union under fraud, crime boss, war criminal, moral coward and serial liar Obama

2012-01-26T19:28:00.000-08:00

From:
Obama's Failed State Of The Union
(SteveLendmanBlog) -- by Stephen Lendman --

It was typical Obama, taking credit for what should be condemned. He's a fraud, a crime boss, a war criminal multiple times over, a moral coward, and serial liar.

His State of the Union address was beginning-to-end doublespeak, duplicity, coverup, and denial of failed policies complicit with Wall Street crooks, war profiteers, and other corporate favorites while popular needs go begging.

Not according to fawning New York Times writers, however. Suppressing truth and full disclosure, Helene Cooper headlined, Obama Speech Makes Pitch for Economic Fairness," saying:

Obama "pledged on Tuesday night to use government power to balance the scale between America's rich and the rest of the public....toward an economy 'built to last' and what he called irresponsible policies of the past that caused economic collapse."

Fact check

Throughout his tenure, Obama transferred trillions of dollars to Wall Street, other corporate favorites, and America's rich already with too much. In the process, he deepened a Main Street Depression. As a result, half of US households are impoverished or bordering on it. Hunger and homelessness grow. Nothing's done to help. Unaddressed human need is incalculable.

Over 25 million remain unemployed. Job creation is nil except for low wage/no benefit temp or part-time ones. Inequality in America is unprecedented. Obama supports austerity when massive stimulus is needed. Rich elites never had it so good at the expense of ordinary people left out.

Obama's Failed State isn’t fit to live in for growing millions.

Nonetheless, an accompanying Times editorial headlined, "The State of the Union in 2012," saying:

"A year ago....we applauded" Obama's plan to "put millions of struggling people to work (and his support for) wrestl(ing) down the deficit (by requiring) the wealthy (to pay) a fairer share of taxes."

Applause continued, ignoring Obama's duplicitous Tuesday address and agenda.

Fact check

It includes imperial wars, tax cuts for the rich, corporate handouts, and austerity for ordinary people losing out.

His America perpetuates permanent wars, disproportionate wealth extremes, spiraling debt, and unaddressed human need.

He ignores growing millions unemployed and impoverished. He cut Medicare for seniors and America's disabled as well as Medicaid for poor and disadvantaged recipients. He left growing millions of students debt entrapped, many for life.

He's destroying Middle America. His latest proposal involves looting pension funds to enrich mortgage lenders. Yet he's packaging fraud as a boon to ordinary people. It's typical Obama - say one thing, do another.

Nonetheless, major media scoundrels applaud. As a result, they're part of the problem, not the solution.

The editorial highlighted Obama's "achievements" and plans. It ignored his destructive agenda. It was typical Times, backing rogue politics.

Obama's address wreaked of failed state duplicity, coverup and denial. Throughout his tenure, rhetoric and gimmickry substituted for constructive policies. Tuesday was no different.

He left festering social and economic distress unaddressed, as well as the American dream in shambles. Expect continued business as usual to assure harder than ever times ahead...MORE...LINK

GOP establishment torpedoes Gingrich as grandiose, Clintonian

2012-01-26T18:44:00.000-08:00

From:
Drudge, conservative media criticize Newt Gingrich
(Politico) -- by By JIM VANDEHEI and MIKE ALLEN --

Newt Gingrich better hope voters who lapped up his delicious hits on the “elite media” and liberals don’t read the Drudge Report this morning.

Or the National Review. Or the American Spectator. Or Ann Coulter.

If they do, Gingrich comes off looking like a dangerous, anti-Reagan, Clintonian fraud.

It’s as if the conservative media over the past 24 hours decided Gingrich is for real, and they need to come clean about the man they really know before it’s too late. This is just a sampling of what’s hitting Newt:

• The overnight Drudge Report banner: “Insider: Gingrich repeatedly Insulted Reagan.” The headline linked to a devastating takedown by Elliott Abrams in the National Review, who wrote, among other things, that Gingrich had a long record of criticizing and undermining Reagan’s most transformative policies.

• Drudge also linked prominently to the American Spectator’s R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s similarly harsh takedown of Gingrich over character: “William Jefferson Gingrich.” In it, Tyrrell writes: “Newt and Bill are 1960s generation narcissists, and they share the same problems: waywardness and deviancy. Newt, like Bill, has a proclivity for girl hopping… His public record is already besmeared with tawdry divorces, and there are private encounters with the fair sex that doubtless will come out.”

Drudge runs hundreds of links to stories of all stripes about candidates, but has been seen by Republicans as favorable to Romney in the past.

• Bob Dole issued a scathing statement Thursday that the Romney campaign provided to the National Review in which he said “it is now time” to rally to stop Gingrich, blamed the former Speaker for losing House Republican seats in 1996, and warned that it could happen again, at all levels of government.

“I have not been critical of Newt Gingrich but it is now time to take a stand before it is too late,” Dole said. “If Gingrich is the nominee it will have an adverse impact on Republican candidates running for county, state, and federal offices. Hardly anyone who served with Newt in Congress has endorsed him and that fact speaks for itself. He was a one-man-band who rarely took advice. It was his way or the highway.”

Dole added, “In my run for the presidency in 1996 the Democrats greeted me with a number of negative TV ads and in every one of them Newt was in the ad. He was very unpopular and I am not only certain that this did not help me, but that it also cost House seats that year.”

• Conservatives are circulating a piece written by the editors of the National Review: “The Hour of Newt.” The editors, who have been extremely critical of Gingrich for weeks, waved conservatives off the Gingrich bandwagon. “Gingrich backers say that he is inspiring. What he mostly seems to inspire is opposition.”

• Ann Coulter, the conservative columnist writing on her self-titled website, warns: “Re-elect Obama, Vote Newt!” She, too, gets Drudge promotion, with a column punctuated with this punch: “Hotheaded arrogance is neither conservative nor attractive to voters.”

• Tom DeLay, a top deputy to Gingrich during the Republican revolution of the mid-1990s, joined the chorus of other conservative members breaking their silence about Gingrich’s erratic leadership style. In a radio interview with KTRH, DeLay said: “He’s not really a conservative. I mean, he’ll tell you what you want to hear. He has an uncanny ability, sort of like Clinton, to feel your pain and know his audience and speak to his audience and fire them up. But when he was speaker, he was erratic, undisciplined.”

A top conservative media figure said the flood of attacks reflects a “Holy crap, it could happen” moment in the movement, as Republican leaders began to realize after Gingrich’s South Carolina victory that he could become the nominee, the global face and voice of their party and theology.

“It could happen, and it would be a disaster,” said the conservative, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect private conversations. “All of us who were around and saw how he operated as speaker — there’s no one who’s not appalled by the prospect of what could happen. He thinks he embodies conservatism and if he wakes up one day and has a grandiose thought, he is going to expect all of us to fall in line behind him...MORE...LINK

Haughty, disconnected elites out of touch with both Iranian and Western reality seek to escalate what's obviously become a war against Islam

2012-01-26T08:30:00.000-08:00

From:
Avoiding a ‘Dumb War’ With Iran
(Antiwar.com) -- by Philip Giraldi --

The media and the punditry have been deliberately misrepresenting facts to persuade the people of the United States to start another war, not unlike in the lead-up to the Iraq fiasco. Since 9/11, hard-liners in the United States have depicted one Muslim country after another as major threats to U.S. security. They have justified attacks on Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, and Afghanistan, and they have endorsed Israel’s military actions against Syria, Gaza, and Lebanon — 10 Muslim countries.

This time around, Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and New Gingrich are all promising to disarm Iran by force. Romney has a neocon-heavy foreign policy team, while Gingrich’s campaign received at least $5 million in financial support from Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a passionate supporter of Israel. Meanwhile, the White House continues to dither by drawing “red lines” that appear to be more debating points meant to appease the Israelis than substantive policies.

Those arguing for war in Congress, think tanks, and the media have been exploiting a new International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report issued in November 2011, which they interpret to mean that Iran is building a nuclear weapon that poses a major threat to the United States. But the truth is that the IAEA document is essentially political, not factual. It is based on old intelligence assessments made mostly by the United States and Israel using sometimes fabricated information in an attempt to discredit Iran. In reality, the IAEA makes regular inspection visits to Iran’s nuclear facilities and has TV cameras monitoring its sites. While there is legitimate reason to challenge some of Iran’s actions, the nuclear program is not as threatening as many maintain.

Even those who are arguing against the rush to war frequently have succumbed to the propaganda. Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, in a piece titled “Think Before Acting on Iran,” states that “Iran’s leaders are bad guys capable of doing dangerous things” and then goes on to describe “its relentless moves toward acquiring nuclear weapons.” Well, Gelb should be well-informed enough to know that Iran’s leadership is both cautious and pragmatic because it is primarily interested in regime preservation, not in exporting the revolution or converting the world to Shi’ism. He should also be aware that there is no evidence whatsoever that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Gelb’s lack of connection with objective reality is reflected in his recommendation to openly debate the wisdom of going to war with Iran in a suitable forum like the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...MORE...LINK

Obama State of the Union: His speechwriters need new material, his party does nothing but spin its wheels

2012-01-24T22:20:00.000-08:00

From:
Familiar Rhetoric, Failed Record
(YouTube.com) -- by rnc --

As feds blow billions overseas and on crony-bankster government, U.S. is turning into a lawless social cesspool that threatens all Americans

2012-01-24T22:05:00.000-08:00

From:
America After Dark: Desperate Meth Heads, Rampant Human Trafficking And Millions Of Criminal Predators Searching For A New Victim
(The Economic Collapse) -- by ?

When the sun goes down every night, America becomes a very frightening place. There are communities all over the country where drug dealing, human trafficking and gang violence have gotten so out of control that authorities don't really know what to do about it. In America tonight, thousands of meth heads will break into homes as they desperately search for enough money for another hit. In America tonight, thousands of children will be sold for sex at truck stops and on street corners. In America tonight, millions of criminal predators will be searching for a new victim. From the top levels of the federal government all the way down to the most depraved criminals on the street, America is rotting. Once upon a time our tremendous affluence masked the moral decay that was happening in this nation, but now that the economy is falling apart the damage to the fabric of our society is being revealed. We have become a nation of addicts, junkies, thrill seekers and predators. When we finally see the U.S. economy fully collapse, millions of desperate, angry and depraved monsters will take out their sick frustrations on all the rest of us...MORE...LINK

A pseudo-libertarian, statist liberal for years, Bill Maher finally mocks brainwashed liberalism, comes out for Ron Paul

2012-01-24T21:43:00.000-08:00

From:
Bill Maher Stands Up For Ron Paul & Calls His Audience "Brainwashed Liberals"
(YouTube.com) -- by ThePinkfloyd51 --

TSA harassment of Rand Paul reveals draconian airport "security" measures are actually about government intimidation and cowing of Americans

2012-01-24T11:05:00.000-08:00

From:
PAUL: TSA’s intrusions undermine security
Senator or not, we’re all stripped of our freedom and dignity
(The Washington Times) -- by Sen. Rand Paul --

Today, while en route to Washington to speak to hundreds of thousands of people at the March for Life, I was detained by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for not agreeing to a patdown after an irregularity was found in my full body scan. Despite removing my belt, glasses, wallet and shoes, the scanner and TSA also wanted my dignity. I refused.

I showed them the potentially offending part of my body, my leg. They were not interested. They wanted to touch me and to pat me down. I requested to be rescanned. They refused and detained me in a 10-foot-by-10-foot area reserved for potential terrorists.

I told them that I was a frequent flier and that just days ago I was allowed to be rescanned when the scanner made an error. At no time did I ask for special treatment, but I did insist that all travelers be awarded some decency and leniency in accommodating the screening process.

My detention was real and I was repeatedly instructed not to leave the holding area. When I used my phone to inform my office that I would miss my flight, and thus miss my speech to the March for Life, I was told that now I would be subjected to a full body patdown.

I asked if I could simply restart the screening process to show that the machine had made an error. I was denied and informed that since I used my phone, to call for help, I must now submit or not fly.

Let me be clear: I neither asked for nor expect any special treatment for being a U.S. senator. In fact, this case is not about me at all. This is about every single one of us and how we are sick of the intrusive nature of our government.

While sitting in the cubicle, I thought to myself, have the terrorists won? Have we sacrificed our liberty and our dignity for security? Finally, the airport head of TSA arrived after I had missed my flight. He let me go back through the scanner and this time the scanner did not go off. The only comment from TSA was that some of the alarms are simply random.

So passengers who do everything right, remove their belts, remove their wallets, remove their shoes, their glasses and all of the contents in their pockets are then subjected to random patdowns and tricked into believing that the scanners actually detected something.

I have been through some of this with TSA Director John S. Pistole before. Last spring, a 6-year-old girl from Bowling Green was subjected to an invasive search despite her parent’s objections. Mr. Pistole claimed that small children were indeed a risk because a girl in Kandahar, Afghanistan, had exploded a bomb in a market in Afghanistan. But Mr. Pistole, this girl wasn’t from Kandahar and she wasn’t in Afghanistan. Isn’t there a significant difference?

In writing, he replied that TSA concluded because a child in a market in Afghanistan exploded a bomb, all American children needed to be evaluated as potential threats. My response: If you treat everyone equally as a potential threat, then you direct much attention to those who are never going to attack us and spend less time with those whose risk profiles indicate a need for tougher screening...MORE...LINK

Greedy, scheming, billionaire-political opportunist Soros fears populist blowback from economic collapse he and his low-cunning Zionist ilk created

2012-01-24T10:05:00.000-08:00

From:
George Soros on the Coming U.S. Class War
(Daily Beast) -- by John Arlidge --

'The situation is about as serious and difficult as I've experienced in my career.'

You know George Soros. He’s the investor’s investor—the man who still holds the record for making more money in a single day’s trading than anyone. He pocketed $1 billion betting against the British pound on “Black Wednesday” in 1992, when sterling lost 20 percent of its value in less than 24 hours and crashed out of the European exchange-rate mechanism. No wonder Brits call him, with a mix of awe and annoyance, “the man who broke the Bank of England.”...

For the first time in his 60-year career, Soros, now 81, admits he is not sure what to do. “It’s very hard to know how you can be right, given the damage that was done during the boom years,”...

He’s not even doing the one thing that you would expect from a man who knows a crippled currency when he sees one: shorting the euro, and perhaps even the U.S. dollar, to hell. Quite the reverse. He backs the beleaguered euro, publicly urging European leaders to do whatever it takes to ensure its survival. “The euro must survive because the alternative—a breakup—would cause a meltdown that Europe, the world, can’t afford.” He has bought about $2 billion in European bonds, mainly Italian, from MF Global Holdings Ltd., the securities firm run by former Goldman Sachs head Jon Corzine that filed for bankruptcy protection last October.

Has the great short seller gone soft? Well, yes. Sitting in his 33rd-floor corner office high above Seventh Avenue in New York, preparing for his trip to Davos, he is more concerned with surviving than staying rich. “At times like these, survival is the most important thing,” he says, peering through his owlish glasses and brushing wisps of gray hair off his forehead. He doesn’t just mean it’s time to protect your assets. He means it’s time to stave off disaster. As he sees it, the world faces one of the most dangerous periods of modern history—a period of “evil.” Europe is confronting a descent into chaos and conflict. In America he predicts riots on the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties. The global economic system could even collapse altogether.

“I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career,” Soros tells Newsweek. “We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.”...

To many, the idea of Soros lecturing the world on “evil” is, well, rich. Here, after all, is an investor who proved—and profited hugely from—the now much-derided notion that the market, or in his case a single investor, is more powerful than sovereign governments. He broke the Bank of England, destroyed the Conservative Party’s reputation for economic competence, and reduced the value of the pound in British consumers’ pockets by one fifth in a single day. Soros the currency speculator has been condemned as “unnecessary, unproductive, immoral.” Mahathir Mohamad, former prime minister of Malaysia, once called him “criminal” and “a moron.”...

Soros’s fragrant personal life will also prompt many to pooh-pooh his moralizing. Last year, Adriana Ferreyr, his 28-year-old companion for many years, sued him in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan, alleging he reneged on two separate promises to buy her an apartment, causing her extreme emotional distress. Ferreyr, a former soap-opera star in Brazil, said Soros had given the apartment he had promised her to another girlfriend. She also claimed he assaulted her. Soros has dismissed Ferreyr’s claims as “frivolous and entirely without merit” and “riddled with false charges and obviously an attempt to extract money.”

Despite his baggage, the man who now views himself as a statesman-philanthropist is undeterred. Having profited from unregulated markets, he now wants to deliver us from them...MORE...LINK
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Zionist-stooge, pseudo-"liberal" thought control-freaks desperate to police Internet for thought crimes

2012-01-24T09:57:00.000-08:00

From:
Soros Mouthpiece Calls On Google To Police “Conspiracy Theories”
Stanford scholar wants search engines to flag global warming, vaccine skepticism as thought crimes
(Prison Planet.com) -- by Paul Joseph Watson --

Former fellow of George Soros’ Open Society and current Stanford University scholar Evgeny Morozov has called on Google and other search engines to become thought crime enforcers, by providing warnings about websites that contain “conspiracy theories” such as the belief, held by a majority of Americans, that global warming is not primarily man-made.

Morozov, whose biography confirms him as a well-connected insider, decries in a Slate piece how the Internet is a useful tool for “People who deny global warming” as well as “the anti-vaccination movement,” calling on Google to provide a “socially responsible curated treatment” that would marginalize such beliefs by amending search results.

His solution is to, “Nudge search engines to take more responsibility for their index and exercise a heavier curatorial control in presenting search results for issues like “global warming” or “vaccination.” Google already has a list of search queries that send most traffic to sites that trade in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories; why not treat them differently than normal queries? Thus, whenever users are presented with search results that are likely to send them to sites run by pseudoscientists or conspiracy theorists, Google may simply display a huge red banner asking users to exercise caution and check a previously generated list of authoritative resources before making up their minds.”

Morozov describes the potential that such a move will be judged as Google “shilling for Big Pharma or for Al Gore” as “a risk worth taking”.

This represents a similar argument to Cass Sunstein’s “cognitive infiltration,” an effort by Obama’s information czar to slap government warnings on controversial websites (including those claiming that exposure to sunlight is healthy). In a widely derided white paper, Sunstein called for political blogs to be forced to include pop ups that show “a quick argument for a competing view”. He also demanded that taxes be levied on dissenting opinions and even suggested that outright bans on certain thoughts should be enforced.

Giving companies like Google, which has grown to virtually become the gatekeeper of the entire Internet itself and is already engaging in SOPA-like acts of censorship, the power to denote which political and scientific positions are acceptable and which are fringe “conspiracy theories” is an insult to free thinking and smacks of Chinese-style thought control.

Morozov’s argument is also completely undermined by the fact that the two so-called fringe “conspiracy theories” he forwards as being in need of Google’s thought crime control, skepticism about global warming and the dangers of vaccines, are views held by millions of Americans and are not “fringe” at all...MORE...LINK

Charlatan rubes, or crypto Christ-haters? Why do warmongering Judeo-Christian Zionist evangelicals even identify themselves with the Prince of Peace?

2012-01-24T09:40:00.001-08:00

From:
Evangelicals, Ron Paul and War
(The American Conservative) -- by Jon Basil Utley --

Is supporting war more important for evangelicals than their social values? Isn’t Ron Paul a social conservative? He opposes abortion, gay marriage and promiscuous sex, he has never been divorced and certainly supports family values, but he believes in limited government. Two of his brothers are ministers. Why then are evangelical leaders now opting for Santorum, and before him Gingrich? The one big area of disagreement with Ron Paul is war; foreign wars and the domestic one against drugs. For this they oppose him. Santorum supports unending war in Afghanistan, backing Israel without limit and a new war against Iran.

Earlier there was a major far leftist candidate who supported all the issues that evangelicals oppose, and was a vocal proponent for expanding Israeli settlements on the West Bank and promoting the war on Iraq. He was overjoyed when open homosexuality became allowed in the military, he supports abortion, gay marriage and the leftist agenda for big, intrusive government; power to labor unions as well as expanded, unconstitutional police powers within the U.S. Evangelicals adore him and went all out to support him 2006, when he lost his primary race and ran as an independent for the Senate. He is Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

All this shows how evangelical leaders put support for wars ahead of their social values. Their support includes every new law giving Washington ever greater police powers over American citizens, such as the Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act and the recent National Defense Authorization Act which tear asunder much of the Bill of Rights. Most also supported torture of prisoners of war (with the notable exception of Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship). All this comes with their “social values.”

They loved George Bush. They were major supporters of the two wars against Iraq and the occupation of Afghanistan. Fear and ignorance of the outside world joins together with a belief that God uniquely favors America. Mostly poorer Southerners they also have strong affinity for the American military and its industrial complex. In addition, author Chris Hedges has written about how they are joined by many Northern blue collar families hurting from new technology, globalization, and poor schools in seeing government as out to undermine their communities and social values. Their solace is to hope for Armageddon. I know many of their leaders from the Reagan era when they joined in supporting his anti-communism, indeed in making his electoral victories possible. While the older ones consider my views against empire and for peace in the Middle East anathema, I find many younger ones much more receptive. Pollster John Zogby also notes that there is a strong divide on issues between evangelicals over 40 and younger ones. Christian economist Gary North wrote some years ago that they numbered about 20 million. He told me also that younger evangelicals were not so enthused with end of the world dreams as their elders. If you think this view excessive see this video of Tom Delay hoping for the end times and others saying that the Anti-Christ is a leader who seeks peace in the Middle East...MORE...LINK

Hoping to start yet another war, neo-fascist, Zionist-occupied governments provocatively parade warships near Iran

2012-01-24T09:18:00.000-08:00

From:
Britain, US and France send warships through Strait of Hormuz
(Telegraph) -- by By David Blair --

Britain, America and France delivered a pointed signal to Iran, sending six warships led by a 100,000 ton aircraft carrier through the highly sensitive waters of the Strait of Hormuz.

This deployment defied explicit Iranian threats to close the waterway. It coincided with an escalation in the West's confrontation with Iran over the country's nuclear ambitions.

European Union foreign ministers are today expected to announce an embargo on Iranian oil exports, amounting to the most significant package of sanctions yet agreed. They are also likely to impose a partial freeze on assets held by the Iranian Central Bank in the EU.

Tehran has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation. Tankers carrying 17 million barrels of oil pass through this waterway every day, accounting for 35 per cent of the world's seaborne crude shipments. At its narrowest point, located between Iran and Oman, the Strait is only 21 miles wide.

Last month, Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, commander of the Iranian navy, claimed that closing the Strait would be "easy," adding: "As Iranians say, it will be easier than drinking a glass of water."

But USS Abraham Lincoln, a nuclear-powered carrier capable of embarking 90 aircraft, passed through this channel and entered the Gulf without incident yesterday. HMS Argyll, a Type 23 frigate from the Royal Navy, was one of the escort vessels making up the carrier battle-group. A guided missile cruiser and two destroyers from the US Navy completed the flotilla, along with one warship from the French navy...MORE...LINK
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Related:
Neo-fascist/Zionist modus-operandi: start wars to indebt average citizens to bankers, enrich the fascist racket, kill off goyim soldiers and impoverished natives

Can a Jewish-American Zionist oligarch buy another U.S. Mideast war for Israel for a mere $13 million? We'll find out if Gingrich is elected

2012-01-23T22:15:00.000-08:00

From:
Is Gingrich’s Hard Line on Palestine Paid for by Sheldon Adelson?
(The Daily Beast) -- by Wayne Barrett --

Gingrich went from Middle East moderate to saber-rattling hawk after Sheldon Adelson’s millions began flowing into the candidate’s coffers.

The linkage between campaign contributions and compromised candidates has grown so familiar that it no longer shocks, and indeed rarely even interests, most of us. But in the super-PAC era, when a single, $5 million, donation can resuscitate a broken Newt Gingrich, the search for a quid pro quo explanation expands with the enlarged dimensions of the donation. In the case of Las Vegas casino king Sheldon Adelson, Gingrich’s Daddy Warbucks, the size of the subsidy can literally shape a candidate’s views on matters of war and peace, and I’m not talking about a battle for gaming rights.

Adelson uses his money to abuse or anoint Israeli prime ministers (ask Ehud Olmert, on the abuse side, and the still-anointed Bibi Netanyahu) and American presidents (Gingrich versus Obama). He even pulled his money out of AIPAC, the top-pro Israel lobbying group, when it appeared to support a 2007 peace initiative championed by Olmert, President Bush, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, an effort denounced by Gingrich at the time. “I don’t continue to support organizations that help friends committing suicide just because they say they want to jump,” explained Adelson, who was already spearheading a coup designed to replace Olmert with Netanyahu.

As significant as his 2012 check was to Gingrich’s Winning Our Future PAC, paying for the negative ads now swamping South Carolina, Adelson actually became Newt Gingrich’s biggest donor in 2006, pumping a million startup dollars into an otherwise empty and similarly named Gingrich PAC, American Solutions for Winning Our Future. He gave $7.7 million over four years to this group, widely seen as “the springboard” for Gingrich’s presidential campaign, making him the largest donor over those years to any 527 independent committees, the supposedly issue-oriented precursors to the super PACs that now dominate presidential campaign finance. The PAC spent $8 million flying Gingrich in private jets around the country in anticipation of a 2008 candidacy that he flirted with before abandoning, and in the lead-up to this race. It was during these years, and in recent jolting comments, that Gingrich appeared to begin talking to an audience of one, at least when it came to his Middle East views.

One way to test how this generosity might have influenced the always hardline Gingrich is how these views hardened even more after he climbed aboard the Adelson gravy train, who has so far donated nearly $13 million to Gingrich’s two White House-tied PACS, a record in American politics. In the summer of 2005, a year before Gingrich founded American Solutions with Adelson as the initial donor, the ex-speaker candidate penned a treatise for a right-wing U.S. publication called the Middle East Quarterly. Compared to the views he expresses now, which are a full-blown echo of Adelson’s, the Gingrich of six years ago was a moderate, endorsing Obama-like policies he now condemns...MORE...LINK

Did neo-fascist thugs target Sen. Rand Paul for criticising TSA boss John Pistole in Congressional hearings? Isn't that an illegal conspiracy?

2012-01-23T20:51:00.000-08:00

From:
Did TSA Target Rand Paul for Intrusive Pat-down?
(Infowars.com) -- by Kurt Nimmo --

Following Rand Paul’s incident earlier today [1/23] with the TSA, the corporate media spun the story to say Paul was not detained. Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, set the tone when he insisted Paul – or rather, the passenger in question – was not detained.

“Let’s just be clear,” Carney said in his Monday press briefing. “The passenger was not detained. He was escorted out of the area by local law-enforcement.”

“If you’re told you can’t leave, does that count as detention?” Paul asked in response to Carney’s assertion. “I tried to leave the cubicle to speak to one of the TSA people and I was barked at: ‘Do not leave the cubicle!’ So, that, to me sounds like I’m being asked not to leave the cubicle. It sounds a little bit like I’m being detained.”

During an interview following the incident, Paul said TSA alarms are often set off as “part of a random process” in an effort to be unpredictable. (See video above.)

Infowars.com, however, has confirmed from sources that the TSA often targets certain individuals for intrusive pat-downs and uses alarms to initiate the process.

It appears Rand Paul was deliberately targeted, although this cannot be definitively confirmed.

Paul questioned the TSA after a 6-year-old Bowling Green girl on a trip with her parents in April of last year was patted-down at an airport in New Orleans. The parents videotaped the incident and uploaded it to YouTube, where it went viral and created a public relations headache for the agency.

Paul had called TSA boss John Pistole “clueless” during a hearing held by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in June of 2011...MORE...LINK
-------------------------
Steely-eyed authoritarian Pistole may not have appreciated Paul's characterization as "clueless" during Congressional hearings last June

U.S. nouveau riche, international-oriented, corporate-oligarch class couldn't care less about creating American jobs

2012-01-22T20:32:00.000-08:00

From:
How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work
(New York Times) -- by CHARLES DUHIGG and KEITH BRADSHER --

When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley’s top luminaries for dinner in California last February, each guest was asked to come with a question for the president.

But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?

Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.

Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.

Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.

The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

Apple has become one of the best-known, most admired and most imitated companies on earth, in part through an unrelenting mastery of global operations. Last year, it earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or Google.

However, what has vexed Mr. Obama as well as economists and policy makers is that Apple — and many of its high-technology peers — are not nearly as avid in creating American jobs as other famous companies were in their heydays...MORE...LINK

Did the Israel lobby just buy Newt Gingrich a victory in S. Carolina on the way to buying itself a U.S. war with Iran?

2012-01-22T20:21:00.000-08:00

From: ‎
'Zionists buying out US politicians'‎
(Press TV) --

Press TV has conducted an interview with Jeff Gates, author of "Guilt By Association," from Los Angeles, to further discuss the issue. The following is a transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Projected results suggest that Gingrich would win in the southern state, but tell us about the ramifications of this win for the Gingrich camp?

Gates: I think it's a big news of momentum, which is what he's looking for. He got an enormous amount of support on Friday. Eight days ago, he got a five-million-dollar check from a casino magnate named Sheldon Adelson, a very strong pro-Israeli supporter. He is the one that we think has put Gingrich up to notion of saying that the Palestinians are an invented people.

So, it's a big deal. It sort of serves notice of the strength that the Israeli lobby continues to have with them, the government here in the US. It will also pull the Republican field, already way to the right, politically. This will pull them further to the right.

Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Santorum and Ron Paul would be considered fringe candidates 15 - 20 years ago, and now they're considered mainstream Republicans. So the ramifications for Gingrich are very strong for the implications for the foreign policy of the US. Frankly, it's rather scary.

Press TV: And in the bigger picture, where do the other candidacy hopefuls stand in the race?

Gates: Well, I think it's instructive that Barrack Obama was in New York on Thursday night at a huge fundraiser with pro-Israelis. And he made a point of saying how pro-Israeli he was, and how he would ensure that Iran is very much in the middle of our elections here - again, making sure that Iran would not get any nuclear weapons.

Gingrich is already on the record saying he thinks that the Iranian scientists should be murdered. And it's certainly something that is ongoing that it was an Israeli operation. So again, I think it's really showing the strength of the Israel lobby inside the US.

Once again, whether you're a left, right, or centralist, and certainly if you're a mainstream candidate - whether Republican or Democrat - not only are you funding but also your platform is traceable not so much to the Americans but quite a bit more to Israel and to Tel Aviv...MORE...LINK

Fed up with being indentured mercenaries for the 1% and its cronies? Rank and file can only afford small amounts, but military donors prefer Ron Paul

2012-01-22T11:13:00.000-08:00

From:
Military Donors Prefer Ron Paul
(Opensecrets.org) -- by Viveca Novak --

...Paul has collected $95,567 in campaign contributions from individuals who listed their occupation as one of the branches of the US military or US Department of Defense. That's more than any other current presidential contender, including, notably, President Barack Obama.

OpenSecrets Blog reported in September that, during the first few months of the presidential campaign, Paul was doing well among donors that are members of the military or US Department of Defense -- better, in fact, than any other GOP presidential candidate...

This latest analysis updates those figures to cover the period between January to September 2011, and will be further updated to include the fourth quarter after the candidates file their year-end reports on Jan. 31.

Donor Obama Romney Gingrich Paul Santorum
National Guard $1,262 $0 $0 $4,068 $0
US Air Force $9,785 $4,400 $4,400 $23,736 $0
US Army $15,600 $3,500 $250 $24,503 $250
US Coast Guard $6,002 $0 $0 $3,716 $0
US Dept of Defense $27,613 $2,150 $0 $9,527 $0
US Marine Corps $1,700 $250 $0 $7,662 $0
US Military $200 $0 $0 $2,083 $0
US Navy $10,454 $3,000 $250 $20,272 $500
TOTAL $72,616 $13,300 $4,900 $95,567 $750...MORE...LINK

Official Iowa Caucus website declares official results can “never be certified”; evidence suggest Ron Paul voters defrauded by GOP insiders

2012-01-22T10:39:00.000-08:00

From:
Iowa vote fraud official
(Denver Conspiracy Examiner) -- by Jeffrey Phelps --

It’s official, or is it? Once again the establishment is showing it’s cards in an obvious attempt to defraud Ron Paul from the nomination, as Iowa GOP ‘officials’ purposely disrupt and permanently invalidate the 2012 Iowa Caucus.

The official Caucus website, in conjunction with the Des Moines Register, had to come forward Thursday to claim the official results can “never be certified” after 8 different precincts turn up invalid results due to “missing votes” and changing stories.

For the first time in history, the Iowa GOP decided to change the final vote count to a “Secret location” for what was claimed to be “security concerns.” The unprecedented change in venue came as a shock to most Iowans who are used to seeing the final results tallied at State Party Headquarters in Des Moines, in full view of the public.

This time, however, instead of business as usual, all of the final results were to be counted at an undisclosed location, completely hidden from public scrutiny, the seemingly ‘new’ business as usual.

What played out as a result was a mockery of democracy as Iowa election officials permanently skewed the results of the caucus, illegally miscounting and completely dismissing votes for Ron Paul, many of which were ironically from precincts that Romney lost in ’08.

Other missing or “uncounted” votes were expected to be heavy Ron Paul supporting, major populated areas and college town precincts, now leaving the true winner forever in question.

Originally, the results had Romney winning by 8 votes over Santorum with 30,015 votes. Now the establishment’s media claims new ‘official’ results show Santorum winning by 34 votes over Romney with 29,839 votes, but oddly 168 votes fewer than the ‘official’ total he was previously given, 30,007.

Additionally, Iowa’s establishment politicians now say 121,503 people voted overall, strangely down from the 122,255 it had originally reported. This could be due to new official results not including the 8 precincts that showed skewed results in the new final totals, but the truth may never be fully understood.

As if that’s not odd enough, hidden within all the commotion, even though many votes were missing, uncounted, and changed, including the official result totals for both Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, no mention at all has been given to the new total Ron Paul should now have and if his votes were also miscounted or left out like the two ‘front-runners” votes were reported to have been. Especially considering how close Ron Paul came to winning, one would think his totals would be just as important to review as well...MORE...LINK

Strange wording of Atlanta Jewish Times' call for Mossad to consider assassinating Obama has people wondering about Israeli connection to JFK hit

2012-01-21T13:44:00.000-08:00

(By Chris Moore) -- The strange wording of the Atlanta Jewish Times' call for Israel's Mossad to consider assassinating President Barack Obama "in order to preserve Israel’s existence" has people talking about the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, and again pondering whether Israel was behind that assassination, as well. (For a quick rundown of some of those theories, HERE'S a Google search).

First, Alan Hart nicely summarizes the current controversy here:

From:
Have Israel’s “Inner Circles” Discussed Assassinating President Obama?
(Alanhart.net) -- by Alan Hart --

One man who apparently thinks the answer is “Yes” is Andrew Adler, the owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times...

In his weekly newspaper Adler listed three options for Israel “to counter Iran’s nuclear weapons”. (Never mind that, unlike Israel, Iran does not possess nuclear weapons and that the latest assessment of Israel’s intelligence community – an usually honest assessment – is that Iran has not yet taken a decision to go nuclear for weapons).

Option 1 according to what Adler wrote “is to launch a pre-emptive strike against Hamas and Hezbollah.”

Option 2 “is to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.”

Option 3 “is to give the go-ahead for US-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.”

To make sure his readers got the message, Adler added this:

“Yes, you read ‘three correctly’. Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence. Think about it. If you have thought of this Tom-Clancy-type scenario, don’t you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles?”...MORE...LINK

Now, connecting the dots between Adler's musings about a possible Mossad assassination of Obama and its relationship to Israeli interests, and the actual assassination of JFK and its relationship to Israeli interests, are a couple of commenters at Mondoweiss, a popular blog that concentrates on Israel and Zionist-related news and issues, who note the strange mention by Adler of an assassinated president being succeed by a vice president who is devoutly pro-Israel. (Vice President Joe Biden is on record as declaring himself a devout Zionist).

Mikesailor says:
January 20, 2012 at 10:58 pm
Perhaps the publisher read Victor Ostrovsky’s book : ‘By Way Of Deception’. In it, Ostrovsky describes how, during his Mossad training, his instructors held the Kennedy assassination as a prime example of a political murder performed correctly. Although never admitting the Mossad was behind the ‘hit’, one must wonder at the coincidences. After Kennedy told the Israelis that Dimona should be declared and Israel should join the NPT, he was assassinated and the much more ‘pliable’ Lyndon Johnson inaugurated. How ‘pliable’ was Johnson? He scotched all mention of Dimona and the NPT, and even when the Israelis attacked the Liberty, he attempted a ham-handed cover-up which remains to this day as the ‘official’ explanation. Where do you think the US policy toward Israeli nuclear weapons i.e. ‘ambiguity’ arose; with such policy remaining to this day? And investigation of the role of the Zionist gun-runner, Jack Ruby, is anathema to the main-stream media. Interesting, isn’t it?

Jeffrey Blankfort says:
January 21, 2012 at 1:08 pm
You beat me to it, Mikesailor. When I reread these lines:

“Three, give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies,”

it occurred to me that this may have been the thinking behind the JFK assassination, not only because of Kennedy’s steadfast opposition to Israel obtaining nuclear weapons but because he supported Res. 194, the Palestinian right of return, and through brother RFK at the Justice Dept., was seriously attempting to get the American Zionist Council, AIPAC’s name at birth, to register as a foreign agent which the AZC’s lawyers were able to stymie until JFK was out of the way. Had the AZC/AIPAC been forced to register as a foreign agent–which it was then and remains as much so today–it not would have been able to function as it does today in the nation’s capitol and in the halls of Congress.

These were three red lines that Israel could not allow to be crossed and it is worth noting that no president since has attempted to cross even one of them. Cui bono? You got it.

MW readers should check out Grant Smith’s Foreign Agents: “The American Israel Public Affairs Committee from the 1963 Fulbright Hearings to the 2005 Espionage Scandal” available at IRmep, WRMEA, or online. Two years ago, Smith presented 360 pages of evidence at a two-hour meeting with the Justice Dept.’s Foreign Agents Registration unit, requesting that it re-open the case to get AZC-now-AIPAC to register begun by RFK in 1963 but in Israeli Occupied Washington, even though members of the unit seemed sympathetic, it didn’t stand a chance. The paper trail, however, hasn’t gone away. See Smith’s Israel Lobby Archive at irmep.org/ila/

In the cases of both JFK and Obama, one reason a Mossad assassination is theoretically possible and even likely is the Zionist psychology revealed behind Adler's statement that assassinating Obama might be necessary to "preserve Israel's existence."

Even though Israel is armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, and has one of the 10 most powerful military forces in the world, and as Alan Hart mentioned above, Iran has no nuclear weapons of its own whatsoever, the way the leadership of Zionism helps facilitate the continual expansionism of Israel itself, and Diaspora Zionist power as well, is to convince itself, its Jewish Zionist agents and allies in the Diaspora, and potential sympathizers in the West and elsewhere, that Israel is a literal and metaphorical stand-in for "the Jewish people," and is under perpetual existential threat, and constantly facing another Holocaust. Hence any and all actions are justified in order to "save the Jews."

It's a massive lie of course, and one used by Zionists throughout history to justify their mass murder (for example, saving the Jews from anti-Semitism and extermination was one of the rationales used by Communist Jews as a pretext to exterminate millions of "anti-Semitic" Christians in the early Soviet sphere many years before the Holocaust), but it is a highly effective (if incredibly cynical) means to rally the troops, justify all manner of atrocities, and incite Diaspora Zionists to engage in high treason time and again -- all in order to manipulatively serve the fascist interests of the insatiably greedy, expansionist, ambitious and totalitarian Judeofascists patriarchs at the core of the Zionist nation of Israel, and at the core of the various virtual nations in the Diaspora.

And it's also helpful in roping in Gentile useful idiots, opportunistic collaborators, and gullible bleeding hearts to betray their own interests and nations in order to "save the Jews."

The problem is, this fascist, murderous, Zionist scam is wearing thin, and like the boy who cried wolf, fewer and fewer intelligent people come running, because in the end, serving "the Jews" amounts to actually serving the Judeofascists who seek to exploit, subvert, manipulate and subjugate anyone who isn't Jewish, and even a lot of people who are.

With fascist wars of aggression and US-industry stripping Wall St Ponzi schemes collapsing, Money Powers have political lackeys turn guns on Americans

2012-01-21T11:16:00.000-08:00

From:
Alex Jones: Military Industrial Complex has declared war on the US
(YouTube.com) -- by RT America --

Worse than Commies? GOP pseudo-patriots who ape neo-totalitarian, Beltway party-line too brainwashed to realize they're tools and useful idiots

2012-01-21T10:34:00.000-08:00

From:
Creeping authoritarianism on Capitol Hill
What we can learn from one congressman's convoluted defense of the NDAA
(Salon.com) -- by John Knefel --

On the day Occupy Congress came to Washington, I tagged along with seven Bard College students who went to talk to their representative, first-term Republican Chris Gibson from the 20th Congressional District of New York. Listening to Gibson defend his vote for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which President Obama signed on New Year’s Eve and which allows for the indefinite detention of American citizens, I had a rare glimpse into the contemporary authoritarian mind-set in all its banality. It illustrated how the slow erosion of civil liberties manifests itself in the halls of power in Washington.

Gibson is a retired Army colonel, and it shows. From the Airborne division name plate on his desk, to the photographs of camouflaged soldiers that adorn his walls, to the “Beat Navy” button on his desk, his military background is on display. He spoke about serving in the military to defend American’s rights – rights that he claims to take very seriously...

When one of the Bard students asked about the NDAA, Gibson was well prepared. He removed three documents from his bag: a copy of Section 1021 of the bill, Obama’s signing statement, and an on-the-congressional-record conversation between two congressmen declaring the writ of habeas corpus was unaffected by anything in the NDAA...

And that, as they say, is the rub. After spending 15 minutes defending the NDAA, offering argument after argument about how it doesn’t change anything about citizens’ rights, how it doesn’t erode our liberties, he abandoned the point. When faced with the most egregious example of unconstitutional behavior by the executive branch – deprivation of life without due process – this staunch defender of the NDAA is forced to concede the point. What kind of logical pretzel must Gibson’s mind be twisted into? How can one cite “existing law” as the anchor of that section of the bill — as the language that prevents the executive from overreaching its power — and then, when faced with abhorrent existing law, simply concede the point? An argument that flimsy would not do well in a high school debate tournament. In the context of the U.S. Congress, it’s what passes for nuance.

This is how civil liberties get eroded: not by landslides, but by glaciers. Inch by inch. Those who claim to believe in liberty sacrifice it for the illusion of security, all the while holding themselves up as staunch defenders of the American Way. To whatever extent Gibson believes his own rhetoric about the importance of the Bill of Rights, his actions tell a different story, a story of illusion trumping logic and fact.

The greatest threat to America is the steady drip of, “I’ll concede that point,” but, after all, you’re citing a fringe example from which we can’t extrapolate. We are a Free Country, and no bill or act or presidential decree can take that away. Those who find comfort in that line of reasoning – and Gibson has plenty of company in both parties – are, whether they know it or not, acting as authoritarians. They must confront their own complacency and reverse course if they wish to actually defend civil liberties, instead of just claiming they do...MORE...LINK

Who were stiff-necked rubes booing Ron Paul reciting Jesus’ Golden Rule in S. Carolina debates: Satanists, Zionist Jews or Judeo-Christian Zionists?

2012-01-19T16:47:00.000-08:00

From:
Ron Paul Booed For Mentioning Golden Rule Then Cheered - SC Debate 1-16-2012
(YouTube.com) -- by LiveFreeorDieReport --

Sleazy liberal corporate interests like Hollywood and MSM, along with anti-free speech authoritarians, all big losers as PIPA, SOPA fall apart

2012-01-19T08:27:00.000-08:00

From:
PIPA support collapses, with 13 new Senators opposed
(arstechnica) -- by Timothy B. Lee --

Members of the Senate are rushing for the exits in the wake of the Internet's unprecedented protest of the Protect IP Act (PIPA). At least 13 members of the upper chamber announced their opposition on Wednesday. In a particularly severe blow for Hollywood, at least five of the newly-opposed Senators were previously co-sponsors of the Protect IP Act. (Update: since we ran this story, the tally is up to 18 Senators, of which seven are former co-sponsors. See below.)

The newly-opposed Senators are skewed strongly to the Republican side of the aisle. An Ars Technica survey of Senators' positions on PIPA turned up only two Democrats, Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who announced their opposition on Wednesday. The other 11 Senators who announced their opposition on Wednesday were all Republicans. These 13 join a handful of others, including Jerry Moran (R-KS), Rand Paul (R-KY), Mark Warner (D-VA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR), who have already announced their opposition.

Marco Rubio, a freshman Republican Senator from Florida who some consider to be a rising star, withdrew his co-sponsorship of the bill, citing "legitimate concerns about the impact the bill could have on access to the Internet and about a potentially unreasonable expansion of the federal government's power to impact the Internet." He urged the Senate to "avoid rushing through a bill that could have many unintended consequences."...MORE...LINK
-------------------------

From:
SOPA Co-Sponsors Abandon Bill Amid Massive Protests
13 Senators Announce Opposition, Including Five Former Sponsors
(AntiWar.com) -- by Jason Ditz --

Some 7,000 websites went dark Wednesday to protest the the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a law that would give the government more power to censor the Internet in service to corporations. The protests appear to have had an impact, and have caused several co-sponsors of to come out opposed to the bill.

In fact, it looks like the Senate version, called PIPA, is effectively dead at this point, with 13 Senators announcing their opposition today alone. Among the 13 were five of the bill’s co-sponsors.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), one of the primary corporate backers of SOPA, lashed the public protests against it, with former Sen. Chris Dodd (D – CT), the current MPAA Chairman, insisting protests by private websites fearing censorship amounted to an “abuse of power.”...MORE...LINK

Totalitarian sociopaths have altered their dialectic model to socialist-capitalist synthesis run by oligarchs rather than commissars

2012-01-18T16:41:00.000-08:00

From:
The Left - "Useful Idiots" of the Rich
(henrymakow.com) -- by Kerry Bolton --

A self-appointed elite that Huxley called the 'World Controllers' and Caroll Quiqley described as 'an international network' has for generations been intent on establishing a 'World State' (Huxley) or what David Rockefeller calls a 'World Order' and and what President George W. Bush and others ...call the 'New World Order.'

In more common parlance it is called 'globalization' but it is seldom understood in its wider ramifications, as set forth here, especially by the Left, whose activists support aspects of the same globalization process: multiculturalism, feminism, marijuana liberalization, abortion rights, open borders, and feel-good causes in the name of democracy and 'human rights,' the results of which are further control by the global plutocracy.

The Left, including the communists have generally served as the useful idiots of international capital ... The Left, whether in its Fabian, communist or New Left varieties has been appropriated by the system it is supposedly exposing. A post- New Left has emerged since the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc, and takes the form of the so-called 'color revolutions' under the patronage of the Soros network, and others.

The strategy used by the international oligarchy is the same as that more generally recognized as being a major element in Marxist doctrine; namely dialectics, the conflict of opposing forces that generates a synthesis. This dialecto method is something that Sutton realized when he was trying to understand why the oligarchy so often seems to be backing opposing ideologies, governments, and policies.

The Marxist dialecticians stated that history is engaged in a process towards world communism that would arise out of the conflict of capitalism and socialism. The oligarchs, on the other hand, apparently operate on the dialectical premise that what will result from their "controlled conflict" will be a socialist-capitalist synthesis which we might call the "World Collectivist State;" a world order that will be Communistic in organization but run by oligarchs rather than commissars. Aaron Russo, after talking with Nick Rockefeller, alluded to this as "selling socialism as capitalism."...MORE...LINK
----------------------------
Out with the commissar sociopaths modeled on Lazar Kaganovich (above) and in with the supposedly "oppositional" (but actually allied) oligarch sociopaths modeled on George Soros and Rupert Murdoch

Is the left-wing, Hegelian dialectic behind perpetual war, neo-imperialism, and the endless strife of Globalism?

2012-01-17T11:24:00.000-08:00

From:
What is the Hegelian Dialectic?
(Crossroad.to) -- By Niki Raapana and Nordica Friedrich --

Introduction: Why study Hegel?

"...the State 'has the supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the State... for the right of the world spirit is above all special privileges.'" Author/historian William Shirer, quoting Georg Hegel in his The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959, page 144)

In 1847 the London Communist League (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels) used Hegel's theory of the dialectic to back up their economic theory of communism. Now, in the 21st century, Hegelian-Marxist thinking affects our entire social and political structure. The Hegelian dialectic is the framework for guiding our thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead us to a predetermined solution. If we do not understand how the Hegelian dialectic shapes our perceptions of the world, then we do not know how we are helping to implement the vision. When we remain locked into dialectical thinking, we cannot see out of the box.

Hegel's dialectic is the tool which manipulates us into a frenzied circular pattern of thought and action. Every time we fight for or defend against an ideology we are playing a necessary role in Marx and Engels' grand design to advance humanity into a dictatorship of the proletariat. The synthetic Hegelian solution to all these conflicts can't be introduced unless we all take a side that will advance the agenda. The Marxist's global agenda is moving along at breakneck speed. The only way to completely stop the privacy invasions, expanding domestic police powers, land grabs, insane wars against inanimate objects (and transient verbs), covert actions, and outright assaults on individual liberty, is to step outside the dialectic. This releases us from the limitations of controlled and guided thought.

When we understand what motivated Hegel, we can see his influence on all of our destinies. ... Hegelian conflicts steer every political arena on the planet, from the United Nations to the major American political parties, all the way down to local school boards and community councils. Dialogues and consensus-building are primary tools of the dialectic, and terror and intimidation are also acceptable formats for obtaining the goal. The ultimate Third Way agenda is world government. Once we get what's really going on, we can cut the strings and move our lives in original directions outside the confines of the dialectical madness. Focusing on Hegel's and Engel's ultimate agenda, and avoiding getting caught up in their impenetrable theories of social evolution, gives us the opportunity to think and act our way toward freedom, justice, and genuine liberty for all.

Today the dialectic is active in every political issue that encourages taking sides. We can see it in environmentalists instigating conflicts against private property owners, in democrats against republicans, in greens against libertarians, in communists against socialists, in neo-cons against traditional conservatives, in community activists against individuals, in pro-choice versus pro-life, in Christians against Muslims, in isolationists versus interventionists, in peace activists against war hawks. No matter what the issue, the invisible dialectic aims to control both the conflict and the resolution of differences, and leads everyone involved into a new cycle of conflicts.

We're definitely not in Kansas anymore...

The Hegelian dialectical formula: A (thesis) versus B (anti-thesis) equals C (synthesis).

For example: If (A) my idea of freedom conflicts with (B) your idea of freedom then (C) neither of us can be free until everyone agrees to be a slave...

The communitarian purpose for the Hegelian dialectic

Hegel's theory is basically that mankind is merely a series of constant philosophical conflicts. Hegel was an idealist who believed that the highest state of mankind can only be attained through constant ideological conflict and resolution. The rules of the dialectic means mankind can only reach its highest spiritual consciousness through endless self-perpetuating struggle between ideals, and the eventual synthesizing of all opposites. Hegel's dialectic taught all conflict takes man to the next spiritual level. But in the final analysis, this ideology simply justifies conflict and endless war. It is also the reasoning behind using military power to export an illogical version of freedom and false democratic ideals.

The reason we can call it the justification for modern conflicts and war, with impunity, is because no one can prove Hegel's theory is true. No matter how many new words they make up to define it, or how many new theories they come up with to give it validity, we can prove beyond a doubt that it is all false. And, we can show the final equation in Hegels' Dialectic is:

A: The [your nation goes here] System of Political Economy (List 1841)
B: state controlled world communism
C: state controlled global communitarianism.

The Hegelian dialectic is the ridiculous idea that constant conflict and continual merging of opposite ideologies, as established by extreme right or left belief systems, will lead spiritual mankind into final perfection. (Americans understood man's spiritual quests to be outside the realm of government control). Hegel's brilliance rests in his ability to confuse and obfuscate the true motives of the planners, and millions of people world-wide have been trying to make sense of why it doesn't work for over 150 years. But like the AA definition of insanity, the world keeps trying it over and over expecting different results. ...

When Frederick Engels and Karl Marx based their communist theory on Hegel's theory of spiritual advancement via constant resolution of differences, they based the theory of communism on an unproven theory.

While Darwin's theory of evolution is still being debated, there's absolutely no proof that societies are continually evolving. When Engels and Marx later based their communist theory on Lewis Henry Morgan's theory of anthropology in 1877, they again based the theory of communism on an unprovable theory.

And when Amitai Etzioni used Hegelian reasoning to base the Communitarian Network on a "balance" between (A) Rights and (B) Responsibilities, he built the entire theory of (C) communitarianism on nothing but disproven and unprovable unscientific theories....

Already gaining substantial ground against the Americans, British Marxism was bolstered when Charles Darwin published his theory of human evolution in 1859. Engels, according to modern day scholars, seized upon Darwin's theory to substantiate communism:

"When Marx read The Origin of Species he wrote to Engels that, 'although it is developed in the crude English style, this is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view.' They turned against what they saw as the social, as opposed to the biological, implications of Darwinism when they realised that it contained no support for their shibboleth of class oppression. Since they were slippery customers rather than scientists, they were not likely to relinquish their views just because something did not fit." (see: Marxism and Darwinism by Anton Pannekoek, 1912.)

In 1877 Lewis Henry Morgan published Ancient Society, or Researches in Life, Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, through Barbarism, to Civilization. Then the "slippery" Engels seized upon Morgan's work as the constantly "evolving" basis for the totally unsubstantiated theory of natural social evolution into utopian world communism...

While the Marxist-communitarian argument has not provided a shred of evidence to prove their utopian vision, and their synthesis does not match their own projected conclusions of world justice, we are convinced their argument does in fact substantiate our conclusion, that the entire philosophical dialectical argument is nothing but a brilliant ruse. We used to call it "a cheap parlor trick" until a responder to this page wondered how we could call it "cheap" when it's been so successful. And he was right. The dialectical arguments for human rights, social equity, and world peace and justice are a perfectly designed diversion in the defeated British Empire's Hegelian-Fabian-Metaphysical-Theosophical Monopoly game. It's the most successful con job in the history of the modern world. (For a well presented Christian overview of the con, see American Babylon: Part Five-the Triumph of the Merchants by Peter Goodgame.)

The communitarian synthesis is the final silent move in a well-designed, quietly implemented plot to re-make the world into colonies. To us it doesn't matter if there is some form of ancient religion that propels the plotters, nor does it really matter if it turns out they're aliens (as some suggest). The bottom line is the Hegelian dialectic sets up the scene for state intervention, confiscation, and redistribution in the U.S., and this is against our ENTIRE constitutional based society. The Hegelian dialectic is not a conspiracy theory because the Conspiracy Theory is a fraud. We've all been duped by global elitists who plan to take totalitarian control of all nation's people, property, and produce. Communitarian Plans exist in every corner of the world, and nobody at the local level will explain why there's no national legal avenue to withdraw from the U.N.'s "community" development plans...MORE...LINK

Ron Paul's simple, common sense morality causing fits on the opportunistic, identity-politics left by exposing its pseudo humanitarianism

2012-01-16T20:50:00.000-08:00

From:
Ron Paul Debate Flushes Out Gender-Baiting Right Wing Opportunists Masquerading as Progressives
(Naked Capitalism) -- by Yves Smith --

The intense debate precipitated by a post on this site, “How Ron Paul Challenges Liberals,” and follow up posts by Glenn Greenwald and here serve to prove their simple yet frequently misrepresented thesis: that Ron Paul’s anti-war, anti-Fed positions expose fault lines among those traveling under the “liberal” banner.

Anyone who read comments on NC prior to this debate would have noticed some sympathy for Paul, ranging from the more common “he’s batshit and I’d never vote for him, but his opposition to our Middle East adventurism and the lack of accountability at the Fed is refreshing” to some making a stronger case for him. That shouldn’t be surprising given the point often made here and in the few lonely “progressive” outposts on the blogosphere (“progressive” is in the process of being co-opted in the same way “liberal” has been): that the Democratic party has been so deeply penetrated by the neoliberal/Robert Rubin/Hamilton Project types that it isn’t that different from the right on economic issues.

It should not be controversial to point out that the Democratic party uses identity politics as a cover for its policy of selling out the middle class to banks and big corporate interests, just on a slower and stealthier basis than the right. And we’ve seen the identity card used in a remarkably dishonest manner in this Ron Paul contretemps.

The strategy used is shameless straw manning in combination with gender baiting. Both Katha Pollitt (in “Progressive Man Crushes on Ron Paul“) and Megan Carpentier (“Ron Paul’s useful idiots on the left“) grossly misrepresent Glenn Greenwald’s posts on Paul, in which he says repeatedly that he is talking about broad policy issues, and not standing behind any candidate:

I’m about to discuss the candidacies of Barack Obama and Ron Paul, and no matter how many times I say that I am not “endorsing” or expressing support for anyone’s candidacy, the simple-minded Manicheans and the lying partisan enforcers will claim the opposite…”There are, as I indicated, all sorts of legitimate reasons for progressives to oppose Ron Paul’s candidacy on the whole.

What does this become in Pollitt’s piece? She depicts Greenwald as being on a par with Ron Paul enthusiasts like Andrew Cockburn:

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald is so outraged that progressives haven’t abandoned the warmongering, drone-sending, indefinite-detention-supporting Obama for Paul that he accuses them of supporting the murder of Muslim children…And yes, these are all white men; if there are leftish white women and people of color who admire Paul, they’re keeping pretty quiet.

Ah, the gender baiting card! No women or non whites have anything nice to say about Ron Paul! That’s patently untrue, but identity bigots like Pollitt apparently can’t wrap their minds around the notion that many people see themselves as citizens first and their demography second, and can and do have nuanced views based on how they weigh multiple political considerations: class, concentration of power, rule of law, civil liberties, and gender/race/sexual orientation. I’m not a Paul booster, yet I applaud his effort to curb the Fed, which has circumvented Constitutional budgetary processes to support a predatory financial services industry, as well as his criticism of Iran war-mongering. The fact that I ran a piece on how Paul is inconvenient to liberals meant I support this view, but Pollitt omits anything that undermines her tidy Obama-defending narrative.

But most important, I object to the presumption of the Pollitt position, that right-thinking women of the left-leaning persuasion must of course agree with her. I find myself appalled by the culture, such that it is, of soi-disant progressives in DC. That isn’t to say that there aren’t many talented individuals laboring to make things better. But from what I can tell, their efforts are too often at odds with and deliberately undermined by a puerile, often vicious style of discourse that values petty conformity over substantive contributions. And the sacred cow of petty conformity is political correctness (well, unless you are a “progressive” woman, that makes is OK to yell “white male oppressor” when you run out of arguments)...

Does that mean that I am a fan of Ron Paul? No. Do I admire the fact that he’s articulating an anti-war platform? Yes, but very cautiously and very sadly…And in part, we have only Paul to look to, because of “white leftish women” like Katha Pollitt, who says,

I, too, would love to see the end of the “war on drugs” and our other wars. I, too, am shocked by the curtailment of civil liberties in pursuit of the “war on terror,” most recently the provision in the NDAA permitting the indefinite detention, without charge, of US citizens suspected of involvement in terrorism. But these are a handful of cherries on a blighted tree.

Really? Half a million Iraqi civilians dead? Dozens of Pakistani children dead because of drones (or more. We are not allowed to know)? The reproductive systems of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women decimated by decades of US-led chemical warfare? The curtailment of civil liberties of legal residents (and not merely citizens) in the US? The indefinite detention of tens of thousands of migrants, documented or otherwise? Those migrants include Latinos, South Asians, Arabs, Middle Easterners, Muslims from other parts of the world–detained not just for migrating without papers, but for merely being suspected of terrorism and held without charges, without lawyers, without family knowing, without judicial review–without a way out. These are what an anti-war position would resist. Seriously? Pollitt believes these are cherries on a blighted tree?..

Essentially, Pollitt’s column comes down to this: We want solidarity among liberals and progressives—but only on terms determined by WHITE leftish women and a segment of white men and some people of color...MORE...LINK

Even more cynical and hypocritical than Bush, depraved "progressives" have taken over right-wing race war against Muslims

2012-01-16T14:38:00.000-08:00

From:
Who are the victims of civil liberties assaults and Endless War?
Policies aimed at marginalized, easily demonizable minorities are much easier to shield from political challenge
(Salon.com) -- by Glenn Greenwald --

In The Washington Post yesterday, Law Professor Jonathan Turley has an Op-Ed in which he identifies ten major, ongoing assaults on core civil liberties in the U.S. Many of these abuses were accelerated during the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11, but all have been vigorously continued and/or expanded by President Obama. Turley points out that these powers have long been deemed (by the U.S.) as the hallmark of tyranny, and argues that their seizure by the U.S. Government has seriously called into question America’s status as a free nation: “They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian.” All ten of these powers are ones very familiar to readers here: Assassination of U.S. citizens; Indefinite detention; Arbitrary justice; Warrantless searches; Secret evidence; War crimes; Secret court; Immunity from judicial review; Continual monitoring of citizens; and Extraordinary renditions.

I’ve written volumes on all of those powers over the last several years, but — especially today — I want to focus on one narrow but vital question: who are generally the victims of these civil liberties assaults? The answer is the same as the one for this related question: who are the prime victims of America’s posture of Endless War? Overwhelmingly, the victims are racial, ethnic and religious minorities: specifically, Muslims (both American Muslims and foreign nationals). And that is a major factor in why these abuses flourish: because those who dominate American political debates perceive, more or less accurately, that they are not directly endangered (at least for now) by this assault on core freedoms and Endless War (all civil liberties abuses in fact endanger all citizens, as they inevitably spread beyond their original targets, but they generally become institutionalized precisely because those outside the originally targeted minority groups react with indifference).

To see how central a role this sort of selfish provincialism plays in shaping political priorities, just compare (a) the general indifference to Endless War and the massive civil liberties assaults described by Turley (ones largely confined to Muslims) to (b) the intense outrage and media orgy generated when a much milder form of invasiveness — TSA searches — affected Americans of all backgrounds. The success of Endless War and civil liberties attacks depends on ensuring that the prime victims, at least in the first instance, are marginalized and easily demonizable minorities.

The fundamental interconnectedness between war and civil liberties abuses on the one hand, and the targeting of minorities as part of those policies on the other, is, of course, nothing new. It was most eloquently emphasized in the largely forgotten, deliberately whitewashed 1967 speech about the Vietnam War by Martin Luther King, Jr. (who himself was targeted for years with abusive domestic surveillance by the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover). Dr. King devoted that extraordinary speech generally to the way in which the war in Vietnam was savaging not only the people of that country but also America’s national character. He specifically sought to answer his critics who were objecting that his increasingly strident opposition to the Vietnam War was a distraction from his civil rights work; instead, he insisted, his war opposition and advocacy of civil rights are, in fact, causes that are inextricably linked...

Over the weekend, I recorded a BloggingheadsTV session with The Nation‘s Katha Pollitt in which several of these same themes were discussed; it was a good, civil, constructive discussion, and the video is below. Part of the debate over the last couple weeks among progressives regarding political priorities, the Obama presidency, the Ron Paul candidacy and the like has entailed a litany of accusations — smears — hurled at those of us who insist on the prioritization of issues of war and civil liberties abuses, and who vocally highlight the ways in which the Democratic Party generally and President Obama specifically have been so awful on these matters. Some Democratic loyalists have explicitly argued that contrasting Obama with Ron Paul on these issues is warped because issues of war and civil liberties are, at best, ancillary concerns, while others have gone so far as to claim that only racial and/or gender bias — white male “privilege” — would cause someone to use the Paul candidacy to highlight how odious Obama has been in these areas.

Leaving aside the fact that (as I detail in the discussion with Pollitt), numerous women and people of color have made the same points about the vital benefits of Paul’s candidacy — voices which these accusers tellingly ignore and silence — these accusations are pure projection. Those who were operating from such privilege would not seek to prioritize issues of war and civil liberties; that’s because it isn’t white progressives and their families who are directly harmed by these heinous policies. The opposite is true: it’s very easy, very tempting, for those driven by this type of “privilege” — for non-Muslims in particular– to decide that these issues are not urgent, that Endless War and civil liberties abuses by a President should not be disqualifying or can be tolerated, precisely because these non-Muslim progressive accusers are not acutely affected by them. The kind of “privilege” these accusers raise would cause one to de-prioritize and accept civil liberties abuses, drone slaughter, indefinite detention and the like (i.e, do what they themselves do), not demand that significant attention be paid to them when assessing political choices.

As I noted the other day, it isn’t white males being indefinitely detained, rendered, and having their houses and cars exploded with drones — the victims of those policies are people like Lakhdar Boumediene, or Gulet Mohamed, or Jose Padilla, or Awal Gul, or Sami al-Haj, or Binyam Mohamed, or Murat Kurnaz, or Afghan villagers, or Pakistani families, or Yemeni teenagers. In order to get the full depth of the oppression and injustice of these ongoing War on Terror policies, one has to do things like listen to this amazing — and tragically rare — interview conducted by Chris Hayes this weekend with Boumediene, as the former GITMO detainee explained in Arabic how his life was devastated by indefinite detention. It’s easy to convince yourself that these abuses are not an urgent priority if, like those above-linked accusers, your non-Muslim privilege (to use their accusatory terminology) enables you to be shielded from their harms.

This is the primary point made so brilliantly by Falguni Sheth, the Political Theory and Philosophy Professor, in arguing that white progressives throwing around these accusations are themselves the ones guilty of it by virtue of their willingness to subordinate these issues to partisan gain — in other words, no longer desiring that these abuses be vested with prime political priority now that it’s their Party and their President guilty of them...MORE...LINK

Is Ron Paul too sane, rational, reasonable, moderate and responsible to be elected President of a country long enthralled by wicked crazies?

2012-01-16T11:21:00.000-08:00

From:
2012 Election
The Shapeshifting Obstetrician
(Takimag.com) -- by Guy Somerset --

Ron Paul is a dangerous man. He is many things to many people. There is the very real suspicion that Paul is something more than what he seems. He is not to be trusted.

Ron Paul changes minds. He is a confounder of the worst sort. People who call themselves Republicans hear him and approve. His silver tongue likewise deceives people who would classify themselves as Democrats. Those who denote Libertarian on their identification cards flock to his clarion call. So too the unaffiliated and independents. Paul has the strange ability to coalesce seemingly disparate philosophies. He is the bane of clerks in states from east to west, as people supposedly settled in their parties switch and alter and reorder their beliefs and their registrations. He holds a dangerous power.

“There is the very real suspicion that Paul is something more than what he seems.”
Ron Paul makes political “independents” meaningless. For the past thirty years Americans have been informed that independents are vital to modern electioneering. Variously termed “soccer moms,” “NASCAR dads,” and “Reagan Democrats,” this steadily enlarging group has proved itself crucial to success—except in Ron Paul’s case. When the Des Moines Register recently reported that 42% of Paul’s Iowa supporters described themselves as “independents,” this class of voters became worthless. Every pundit said so, from Fox News to MSNBC. Paul effectively made the most essential political assemblage in modern history meaningless overnight. Astonishing.

Ron Paul controls the airwaves. Whenever a US soldier who has a positive impression of Paul is interviewed live on television, the signal will automatically encounter difficulty. If the anchor is a former reporter for The Jerusalem Post such as Wolf Blitzer and the soldier is a decorated corporal who states that “Israel is more than capable of taking care of itself,” the feed will immediately go dead. There will be no ready explanation for this occurrence.

Ron Paul can alter comedy’s principles. Should a single supporter who is not officially affiliated with his campaign in any way create a humorous satire of a rival candidate who was once the US Ambassador to China, this is not merely a joke, it is a hate crime worthy of a special United Nations tribunal.

Ron Paul mystifies otherwise intelligent people, especially college-educated people, and they immediately go wistful and quiver with empathy as they think of long-passed family members of the “eccentric uncle” variety. Such voters are not moved by Paul’s message of fiscal responsibility nor his mantra that civil rights, so long as practiced with civility, are none of the government’s business. No, these voters are all agog with nostalgia. They are unconcerned the nation is rapidly approaching bankruptcy. Theirs is a simple reverie for long-gone relatives of whom Paul reminds them. They are led by their hearts and we must pay no attention to whatever facts and figures they give to justify their enthusiasm for Ron Paul, as these genuine folk are merely masking the emotional hold he has over them.

Ron Paul is a verbal magician. By his very use of otherwise ordinary words he transforms vocabulary into a strange tool which speaks in code to the land’s moral trolls and fifth columnists. When Paul advocates “responsibility,” it means “racism.” When Paul says “defense,” it means “isolation.” When Paul recommends “constitutionalism,” it means “anarchy.” It is little wonder his message seduces so many easily obfuscated souls...MORE...LINK

Jewish state's dark ploy to draw America into war fails for now as U.S. warns Israel on Iran strikes

2012-01-14T09:58:00.000-08:00

From:
U.S. Warns Israel on Strike
Officials Lobby Against Attack on Iran as Military Leaders Bolster Defenses
(The Wall Street Journal) -- by ADAM ENTOUS,JULIAN E. BARNES and JAY SOLOMON --

WASHINGTON—U.S. defense leaders are increasingly concerned that Israel is preparing to take military action against Iran, over U.S. objections, and have stepped up contingency planning to safeguard U.S. facilities in the region in case of a conflict.

President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other top officials have delivered a string of private messages to Israeli leaders warning about the dire consequences of a strike. The U.S. wants Israel to give more time for the effects of sanctions and other measures intended to force Iran to abandon its perceived efforts to build nuclear weapons.

Stepping up the pressure, Mr. Obama spoke by telephone on Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will meet with Israeli military officials in Tel Aviv next week.

The high-stakes planning and diplomacy comes as U.S. officials warn Tehran, including through what administration officials described Friday as direct messages to Iran's leaders, against provocative actions.

The U.S. and Iran, however, have taken steps in recent days apparently designed to ease tensions. Iran has agreed to host a delegation of United Nations nuclear inspectors this month. The U.S., meanwhile, has twice this month rescued Iranian sailors in the region's seas.

Tehran has warned that it could retaliate to tightened sanctions by blocking oil trade through the Strait of Hormuz. On Thursday, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed to punish the perpetrators of the assassination—blamed by Iran on the U.S. and Israel—of an Iranian scientist involved in the nuclear program.

The U.S. denied the charge and condemned the attack. Israel hasn't commented...MORE...LINK

Does Romney own the major neocon, "conservative"-radio talking heads? His company does

2012-01-13T08:31:00.000-08:00

From:
Bain Capital Owns Clear Channel (Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Etc.)
(End of the American Dream) -- by ?

Wouldn't it be great if a Republican presidential candidate could just buy the support of just about every major conservative talk show host in America? Well, it may not be as far-fetched as you may think. Clear Channel owns more radio stations (850) than anyone else in the United States. They also own Premiere Radio Networks, the company that syndicates the radio shows of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck, among others. Needless to say, Clear Channel basically owns conservative talk radio in the United States. So who owns Clear Channel? Well, it turns out that Bain Capital is one of the primary owners of Clear Channel. Yes, you read that correctly. The company that Mitt Romney ran for so long is one of the "big bosses" over virtually all conservative talk radio in America. Of course Mitt Romney is not running Bain Capital anymore. He is a "retired partner", but he still has a huge financial stake in Bain Capital. We're talking about millions upon millions of dollars. If you doubt this, just check out page 34 of this public financial disclosure report. So if you have been wondering why so many conservative talk show hosts are being so incredibly kind to Mitt Romney, this just might be the answer.

In the media world, there is a clear understanding that you simply do not bite the hand that feeds you. Some of the most prominent conservative talk radio hosts are earning tens of millions of dollars a year.

If you were making tens of millions of dollars a year, wouldn't you be very careful to avoid offending your boss?

The deal in which Bain Capital became one of the owners of Clear Channel was initiated just a short time before Mitt Romney's first run for president...MORE...LINK

Obama's top handlers nothing but a syndicate of Wall Street crony capitalists who revolve in and out of government

2012-01-12T22:23:00.000-08:00

From:
Obama’s third chief of staff, like first two, got rich on Wall Street
(The Daily Caller) -- By Neil Munro --

All three of President Barack Obama’s chiefs of staff earned millions of dollars after passing through the revolving doors that lie between the Democratic Party and Wall Street.

Yet Obama is positioning himself as Wall Street’s foe in the 2012 election, aided by millions of dollars in political donations from Wall Street companies, including Goldman Sachs.

Rahm Emanuel and Bill Daley, and now Jacob Lew, are all career Democrats who have taken lucrative trips through those revolving doors, eliciting jeers from Republicans who say Obama is running an administration of crony capitalists.

Obama’s self-portrayal as defender of the common man was displayed Jan. 3, for example, when he used a campaign-style speech in the swing-state of Ohio to announce that he planned to install Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“Does anyone think the reason we got in such a financial mess [in 2007] was because of too much oversight? Of course not,” Obama said at a high school in a tony suburb of Cleveland. “Financial firms have armies of lobbyists in Washington looking out for their interests. … Every day that Richard waited to be confirmed was another day when millions of Americans are left unprotected.”...

On Wall Street, Emanuel earned $16.2 million as an investment banker — without any prior experience in business or finance.

When Emanuel quit to run for Chicago mayor, Obama hired Bill Daley as his chief of staff. Another long-time Democratic political figure, Daley had also worked as a top executive at JPMorgan Chase for four years. He joined the boards at Boeing, drug-maker Merck & Co. and Boston Properties, a commercial real-estate firm.

Daley’s departure, announced Jan. 9, prompted Obama to elevate Jacob Lew, another veteran of the revolving door who most recently helmed Obama’s budget office.

From 2006 to 2009, Lew worked at banking giant Citigroup, where he headed its Alternative Investments Unit and and made more than $1 million per year, plus a bonus of nearly another $1 million in 2009. In 2008 and 2009, Lew’s subdivisions made tens of millions of dollars in profits by investing in a fund that correctly bet real-estate prices would collapse. It lost billions of dollars through other complex transactions, however, according to a June 2010 article by a Huffington Post financial reporter...MORE...LINK

If vulture capitalist Romney gets GOP nomination over Paul, Dems are going to eat him alive with films like this...

2012-01-12T21:17:00.000-08:00

From:
When Mitt Romney Came To Town — Full, complete version
(YouTube.com) -- by MarcinCalifornia

Profiteering, left-wing, government con artist "activists" looking to sue over "hate" are actually behind Internet "hate crimes"

2012-01-12T12:52:00.000-08:00

Modern liberals are humanitarian frauds who don't object to statist murder when it's their coalition dishing it out

2012-01-12T09:46:00.000-08:00

From:
Iran and the Terrorism game
When Iran allegedly engages in targeted assassination, that's terrorism; when it's the victim of that, it isn't
(Salon.com) -- by Glenn Greenwald --

In the few venues which yesterday denounced as “Terrorism” the ongoing assassinations of Iranian scientists, there was intense backlash against the invocation of that term. That always happens whenever “Terrorism” is applied to acts likely undertaken by Israel, the U.S. or its allies — rather than its traditional use: violence by Muslims against the U.S. and its allies — because accusing Israel and/or the U.S. of Terrorism remains one of the greatest political taboos (even when the acts in question involve not only assassinations but also explosions which kill numerous victims whose identities could not have been known in advance). But the case of these scientist assassinations particularly highlights how meaningless and manipulated this term is.

Several days ago I referenced a controversy that arose in 2007 when the law professor and right-wing blogger Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds criticized President Bush for not doing enough to stop Iran’s nuclear program and then advocated that the U.S. respond by murdering that nation’s religious leaders and nuclear scientists. “We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and Iranian atomic scientists . . . ,” he argued. The backlash against Reynolds’ suggestion was intense, especially among progressive writers.

Back then, I wrote about Reynolds’ suggestion several times, but I was far from alone. Law Professor Paul Campos wrote a column in the Rocky Mountain News denouncing Reynolds for publicly advocating “murder,” which, he pointed out, is exactly what this would be given that the U.S. is not at war with Iran (he went on to suggest that targeting civilian religious leaders and scientists would still be murder even if the U.S. were at war with Iran); Campos added: “government-sponsored assassinations of the sort Reynolds is advocating are expressly and unambiguously prohibited by the laws of the United States.” Law Professor Kevin Jon Heller documented with absolute clarity that such assassinations would be illegal in the absence of a formal war.

But the angriest reactions came from progressive bloggers, who widely denounced Reynolds as “contemptible” for suggesting this; one progressive writer, Lindsay Beyerstein, was horrified that one could even suggest such a thing, explaining that she ”despair[s] for our society when it’s necessary to supply a rigorous analytical exposition of why our government shouldn’t have scientists and religious leaders whacked.” Scott Lemieux railed against what he called Reynolds’ “kooky scheme for illegal death squads” as “crackpot,” “dumb” and “nuttier than a Planters factory.” And Kevin Drum, then of Washington Monthly, went the furthest of all — in a post he entitled “Terrorism” — branding the killing of Iran’s scientists as “Terrorism”...

What is most amazing about all this is that, a mere three years later, some combination of Israel and the U.S. are doing exactly that which Reynolds recommended. Numerous Iranian nuclear scientists are indeed being murdered.

In January, 2010, a remote-controlled bomb attached to a motorcycle killed Masoud Ali Mohammadi, 50, who “taught neutron physics at Tehran University.” In November, 2010, two separate car bombs exploded within minutes of each other on the same day, one that killed nuclear scientist Majid Shahriar and wounded his wife, and the other which wounded another nuclear scientist, Fereidoun Abbasi, along with his wife. Then, in July of last year, Darioush Rezaei, 35, was shot dead and his wife was wounded by two gunmen firing from motorcycles outside of their daughter’s kindergarten; Rezaei “did his doctorate in neutron transport – which lies at the heart of nuclear chain reactions in reactors and bombs” and “was a member of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, the country’s official atomic energy commission.”

And now, yet another Iranian scientist has been killed. According to Iranian media, a 32-year-old university professor, Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, died when an assailant riding on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to his car, which then detonated and killed him. According to The Washington Post‘s Thomas Erdbrink, a conservative news outlet in Iran reported that the young scientist “was believed to be involved in procuring materials for Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz.”

What’s most remarkable here is to compare the boisterous, furious denunciations of the mere suggestion by a blogger on the Internet that Iranian scientists be killed, versus the relative silence in the face of its actually being done in real life, now that the corpses of murdered Iranian scientists are beginning to pile up. Does anyone doubt that some combination of the two nations completely obsessed with Iran’s nuclear program — Israel and the U.S. — are responsible? (U.S. officials deny involvement while pointing the finger at Israel, whose officials will not comment but “smile” when asked; the CIA has “targeted” Iran’s scientists in the past, several of whom have disappeared only to end up in U.S. custody, including one who “resurfaced in the United States after defecting to the CIA in return for a large sum of money”). At the very least, there has been no denunciation from any Obama officials of whoever it might be carrying out such acts.

I have no doubt that Professors Campos and Heller would apply the same legal rationale now that it’s actually being done, but what about the progressives who so stridently denounced Reynolds? Does Lemieux still believe that whoever is responsible — Israel, the U.S., or some combination — is guilty of dispatching “illegal death squads”? Does Beyerstein still “despair for our society” that such acts could even be contemplated? Does Drum still believe that whichever political leaders are responsible for these killings are Terrorists; specifically: if, as is widely assumed, the Israelis are responsible, does that mean that Israel is a Terrorist state, and if U.S. agencies are complicit in some way, does that mean President Obama is a Terrorist, a state sponsor of Terrorism or, at the very least, a supporter of Terrorism?...MORE...LINK

Lefties brainwashed or vested in statist "liberal" racket too blinkered to see it, but Paul is far more progressive than Obama where it counts

2012-01-12T09:26:00.000-08:00

From:
Who’s a real progressive?
Obama and Paul both hold positions anathema to liberals. Voters need to choose which ones to overlook
(Salon.com) -- by David Sirota --

It’s rather sad that nearly every article written by a non-libertarian about Ron Paul begins with a disclaimer that the writer is not endorsing Paul for president. Yet, with a virulent case of Ron Paul Derangement Syndrome plaguing partisan Obama loyalists, it bears repeating if only to preempt future mischaracterizations and slander: I am not endorsing Ron Paul for president.

That said, I believe the argument being forwarded by progressive-minded Paul supporters is significant because it embodies a calculating pragmatism that highlights uncomfortable truths both about liberal priorities and about presidential power.

To review the basic Paul profile: When it comes to government social spending and regulation, Paul is more antithetical to progressive goals than any candidate running for the White House. This is indisputable. At the same time, though, when it comes to war, surveillance, police power, bank bailouts, cutting the defense budget, eliminating corporate welfare and civil liberties, Paul is more in line with progressive goals than any candidate running in 2012 (or almost any Democrat who has held a federal office in the last 30 years). This, too, is indisputable.

In seeing Paul’s economic views, positions on a woman’s right to choose, regulatory ideas and ties to racist newsletters as disqualifying factors for their electoral support, many self-identified liberal Obama supporters are essentially deciding that, for purposes of voting, those set of issues are simply more important to them than the issues of war, foreign policy, militarism, Wall Street bailouts, surveillance, police power and civil liberties — that is, issues in which Paul is far more progressive than the sitting president.

There’s certainly a logic to that position, and that logic fits within the conventionally accepted rubric of progressivism. But let’s not pretend here: Holding this position about what is and is not a disqualifying factor is a clear statement of priorities — more specifically, a statement that Paul’s odious economics, regulatory ideas, position on reproductive rights and ties to bigotry should be more electorally disqualifying than President Obama’s odious escalation of wars, drone killing of innocents, due-process-free assassinations, expansion of surveillance, increases in the defense budget, massive ongoing bank bailouts and continuation of the racist drug war.

By contrast, Paul’s progressive-minded supporters are simply taking the other position — they are basically saying that, for purposes of voting, President Obama’s record on militarism, civil liberties, foreign policy, defense budgets and bailouts are more disqualifying than Paul’s newsletter, economics, abortion and regulatory positions. Again, there’s an obvious logic to this position — one that also fits well within the conventional definition of progressivism. And just as Obama supporters shouldn’t pretend they aren’t expressing their preferences, Paul’s supporters shouldn’t do that either. Their support of the Republican congressman is a statement of personal priorities within the larger progressive agenda.

Hence, we reach one of those impossible questions: From a progressive perspective, which is a more legitimate camp to be in? In terms of ideological allegiance to the larger progressive agenda, I don’t really think there’s a right or wrong answer. But in terms of realpolitik, there’s a strong case to be made that Paul’s progressive-minded supporters understand something that Obama’s supporters either can’t or don’t want to: namely, that a presidential election is a vote for president, not a vote to elect the entire federal government. As such, when faced with candidates whom you agree with on some issues and totally disagree with on other issues, it’s perfectly rational — and wholly pragmatic — to consider one’s own multifaceted policy preferences in the context of what a prospective president will have the most unilateral power to actually enact.

With Paul, it just so happens that most of the ultra-progressive parts of his platform (and legislative career) correspond to the presidential powers that are most unilateral in nature. As President Obama so aptly proved when he ignored the War Powers Act during the Libya conflict and started drone wars in various other countries, a president can start and end military conflicts with the stroke of a pen — and without any congressional check on power. Likewise, as President Obama showed when he assassinated American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki and then his family without so much as a single criminal charge, a president can now trample or expand civil liberties with the stroke of the same pen. The president also appoints the chairman of the Federal Reserve bank, which now unilaterally grants trillions of dollars in bailouts without intervention from Congress. And, as President Obama proved with his administration’s crackdown on California’s marijuana laws, a president has far more operational control over the drug war than the congressional committees charged with oversight.

By contrast, the policy areas where Paul is most at odds with progressives are the areas Congress has far more control over — specifically, budgets and regulatory statutes...MORE...LINK

Political elite and its wealthy constituency have enriched themselves via State Capitalism, stuck American taxpayers with insurmountable debt

2012-01-11T21:38:00.000-08:00

From:
34 Shocking Facts About U.S. Debt That Should Set America On Fire With Anger
(theeconomiccollapseblog.com)

We have all been lied to. For decades, the leaders of both major political parties have promised us that they can fix our current system and that they can get our national debt under control. As the 2012 election approaches, they are making all kinds of wild promises once again. Well you know what? It is all a giant sham. The United States has gotten into so much debt that there will be no coming back from this. The current system is irretrievably broken. 30 years ago the U.S. debt was a horrific crisis that was completely and totally out of control. If we would have dealt with it back then maybe we could have done something about it. But now it is 15 times larger, and we are adding more than a trillion dollars to the debt every single year. The facts that you are about to read below should set America on fire with anger. Please share them with as many people as you can. What we are doing to our children and our grandchildren is absolutely nightmarish. Words like "abuse", "financial rape", "theft" and "crime" do not even begin to describe what we are doing to future generations. We were the wealthiest nation on earth, but it wasn't good enough just to squander all of our own money. We had to squander the money of our children and our grandchildren as well. America has been so selfish and so self-centered that it is hard to argue that we don't deserve what is about to happen to this country. We have stolen the future of America, and yet we strut around as if we are the smartest generation that ever walked the face of the earth.

All of this prosperity that we see all around us is just an illusion. It is a false prosperity that has been purchased by the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.

Did you know that if you added up all forms of debt in the United States and divided it up equally that every single family in the country would owe more than $683,000?

We are a nation that is absolutely addicted to debt, and the U.S. debt crisis threatens to destroy everything that our forefathers built.

Yes, everything may seem fine for the moment, but what do you think would happen if the federal government suddenly adopted a balanced budget?

1.3 trillion dollars a year would be sucked right out of the economy and we would be looking at an "economic readjustment" that would be mind blowing.

Enjoy this false prosperity while you can, because it is not going to last.

Debt is a very cruel master, and our day of reckoning is almost here.

The following are 34 shocking facts about U.S. debt that should set America on fire with anger....MORE...LINK

Poisoned against Ron Paul by neocon GOP establishment and with nowhere left to turn, Tea Partiers sink into irrelevance

2012-01-09T16:15:00.000-08:00

From:
Whither the Tea Party: Is the Movement Now Irrelevant?
(The New American) -- by Joe Wolverton, II --

After nearly three years in existence, the Tennessee Tea Party disbanded Thursday, according to a message sent to members from the leaders of the group, Robert and Tami Kilmarx.

While there yet remain other Tea Party-affiliated groups in the Volunteer State, the end of even one of them may augur a decline in the electoral influence of the Tea Party.

This perceived de crescendo of the Tea Party symphony is distinctly different from the loud and animating drumbeat that helped march scores of Tea Party-backed candidates into Washington in 2010.

There is no question that the Tea Party wasn’t without failure in the 2010 midterm elections (for instance, the defeats of Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell), but Sarah Palin became a household name and legitimate constitutionalists such as Rand Paul now sit in Congress, faithfully protecting the Constitution from enemies, foreign and domestic.

The voting trends developing in the presidential election campaign reveal the rapidity of the decline in Tea Party clout, however.

For example, in the Iowa caucuses, the three candidates most closely associated with the Tea Party — Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich — finished very far down the tote board. Bachmann, in fact, bowed out of the race after failing to make a respectable showing in a very conservative state.

Let’s not forget Herman Cain. Cain, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, was being wooed by Tea Partiers (who actually briefly shot the candidate to the top of the leader board) around the country and being touted by them as the favorite to replace President Obama in the White House.

As everyone knows, Cain dropped out of the race for the Oval Office amid allegations of sexual harassment and marital infidelity.

Regarding the sub-par showing of these Tea Party favorites, Judson Phillips takes a very pragmatic approach: “God bless them, they’re good people, but, for whatever reason, their campaigns did not take off,” he mused.

Republican voters in Iowa instead voted for one man — Mitt Romney — who is perhaps the Tea Party’s least desirable candidate, and another — Rick Santorum — a “conservative” who voted repeatedly while serving in the Senate to increase the federal debt ceiling and to exponentially expand the size and scope of the Department of Education as a result of his vote in favor of the “No Child Left Behind” program.

Toby Marie Walker, founder of the Waco (Texas) Tea Party, was “upset” by the success of the former Senator from Pennsylvania. As reported by Business Mirror, “She [Walker] said that Santorum would appeal to some socially conservative voters but that he violated the core tenet of the Tea Party — fiscal responsibility — during his tenure in the Senate.

In light of the dearth of genuine constitutionalists among the slate of Republican presidential hopefuls, one would think that Tea Party adherents in the Hawkeye State would gleefully get behind a legitimate conservative such as Ron Paul. While it is true that 26,000 Republicans participating in that party’s Iowa Caucus voted for Ron Paul, a significant number of those were Independents.

According to data breaking down entrance polls conducted by Edison Research, Ron Paul won 43 percent of Independents who voted in Tuesday's caucus.

The question, therefore, of why those who align themselves with the Tea Party would not rally behind a man with unassailable constitutional bona fides such as Ron Paul, remains unanswered. This inexplicable contradiction may contain a clue to the Tea Party’s slouch into electoral irrelevance...

Perhaps the longevity of the Tea Party was doomed from the beginning. As a loose coalition of various simpatico organizations that prided themselves on the lack of a central authority, it is a difficult proposition to expect them to coalesce behind any one candidate. Binding a few groups together long enough to propel this or that local or state candidate into office is one thing, but finding a candidate who can appeal to a significant majority of groups across the country is probably too much too hope for out of any movement...MORE...LINK
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Chris Moore comments:

Let's review that last paragraph again, because the same principle applies to the Occupy movement.
As a loose coalition of various simpatico organizations that prided themselves on the lack of a central authority, it is a difficult proposition to expect them to coalesce behind any one candidate. Binding a few groups together long enough to propel this or that local or state candidate into office is one thing, but finding a candidate who can appeal to a significant majority of groups across the country is probably too much too hope for out of any movement
The corrupt, Israel-frist neocons have triangulated the right, poisoned the Tea Partiers against Ron Paul, and then abandoned the remainder to wither and die. The corrupt, Israel-first neolibs are doing the same to the Occupy movement -- triangulating it via the Jewish-owned Democratic Party, and leaving those they can't co-opt to whither away.

If Ron Paul can't somehow eke out a victory, it's time for an America-first party that represents soldiers, patriots, civil libertarians, war opponents, constitutionalists, private unions, the Working Class, the Middle Class, the rural, Christians and Main Street.

To the devil with the two-party regime, the neolib and neocon Israel-firsters and their Zionist-Globalist fascism. They putrefy everything the touch, which is why America is really starting to stink under their psychotic hegemony.

Corrupt SEC and Fed sanction corrupt banking regime that is busy inflating next economic bubble scam

2012-01-09T07:46:00.000-08:00

From:
How Banks Are Using Your Money to Create the Next Crash
The slimy process of rehypothecation may trigger a global crisis
(investorplace.com) -- by Keith Fitz-Gerald --

In 2008, reckless credit default swaps nearly obliterated the global economy. Now comes the next crisis — “rehypothecated” assets. It’s a complicated, fancy term in the global banking complex. Yet it’s one you need to know.

The term rehypothecation starting coming into more general parlance after the fall of IMF Global. And if you understand it, you’ll get the scope of the risks we currently face — and it’s way bigger than just Greece.

So follow with me on this one. I guarantee you’ll be outraged and amazed — and better educated. You’ll also be in a better position to protect your assets because at the end of this article, I’ll give you three important action steps to take. Here goes. . .

Their Profits on Your Money
Few people know this, but there’s a process through which banks and trading houses are leveraging your money to increase their profits — just like they did in the run-up to the last financial crisis. Only this time, things may be worse, as hard as it is to imagine.

Consider that in 2007, the IMF estimated that this form of “leverage” accounted for more than half of the total activity in the “shadow” banking system, which equates to something in the $5 trillion to $10 trillion range. This is in addition to the bailouts and money printing that’s happened so far.

Wall Street would have you believe this figure has gone down in recent years as regulators and customers alike expressed outrage that their assets were being used in ways beyond regulation and completely off the balance sheet. But I have a hard time believing that.

Wall Street is addicted to leverage, and when given the opportunity to self-police, it has rarely, if ever, taken actions that would threaten profits.

Further, what I’m about to share with you is one of the main reasons why Europe is in such deep trouble and why our banking system will get hammered if the EU goes down.

And what makes this so disgusting — take a deep breath — is that it’s our money that’s at stake. Regulators like the Securities & Exchange Commission and their overseas equivalents are not only letting big banks get away with what I am about to describe, but they have made it an integral part of the present banking system.

Worse, central bankers condone it.

As you might expect, the concept behind this malfeasance is complicated. But it’s key to understanding the financial crisis and to avoiding a possible global recession in 2012 and beyond.

What we’re talking about is “rehypothecation.”...MORE...LINK

Ron Paul touches a GOP nerve by calling warmongering, country club conservatives like Gingrich who've never served in the military "chicken hawks"

2012-01-08T08:32:00.000-08:00

From:
Paul & Gingrich Spar Over “Chicken Hawk” Charge
(AntiWar.com) -- by John Glaser --

Ron Paul again called Newt Gingrich a “chicken hawk” in Saturday night’s GOP debate, noting Newt’s avoiding service in the Vietnam War and his simultaneous willingness to send young Americans today into war.

“I think people who don’t serve when they could and they get three or four or even five deferments aren’t — they — they have no right to send our kids off to war, and — and not be even against the wars that we have,” Paul said. “I’m trying to stop the wars, but at least, you know, I went when they called me up.”

Gingrich was angered by the comment, calling it a slur, and attacked Paul for having “a long history of saying things that are inaccurate and false.” Apparently, the antiwar message embedded within Paul’s point were lost on him.

“The fact is, I never asked for deferment. I was married with a child. It was never a question. My father was, in fact, serving in Vietnam in the Mekong Delta at the time he’s referring to,” Gingrich said. “I think I have a pretty good idea of what it’s like as a family to worry about your father getting killed. And I personally resent the kind of comments and aspersions he routinely makes without accurate information and then just slurs people with.”

Gingrich claimed that because of his educational and familial circumstances, he wasn’t eligible for the draft. But Paul ended the spat with a final retort: “When I was drafted, I was married and had two kids and I went.”...LINK
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Wealthy, warmongering, country club conservatives in the GOP, and their corollary -- wealthy, militant, Israel-first limousine liberals in the Democratic Party -- are all birds of a satanic feather. The sniveling cowards they are, they're more than happy to beat their chests, rattle their sabers, and send other Americans off to fight for their stock portfolios, economic interests, and their "nation of priests" clique of pampered Zionists in the Levant, but ask them to enlist themselves? No, they're too busy with wine and cheese, clever ripostes, and facile party banter inside their country clubs and gated communities.

Has there ever been a more powerful, yet corrosive, worthless, hypocritical and cowardly "elite" in the history of the world? -- C.M.

Barack Obama and Dick Cheney: long lost brothers?

2012-01-08T08:10:00.000-08:00

From:
Czar Barack
The candidate who criticized Bush-Cheney became the president who continued their legacy
(Reason) -- by Steve Chapman --

Back in 2007, when Barack Obama was running for president, a mildly surprising bit of news emerged: He and Dick Cheney were eighth cousins. Today, though, it appears that report was wrong. Judging from Obama's record in office, the two are practically brothers.

As a candidate, Obama criticized the last administration for holding Americans as enemy combatants without trial. He faulted it for wiretapping citizens without a warrant. He rejected the Republican claim that the president has the "inherent power" to go to war without congressional consent. He depicted George W. Bush and his vice president as a menace to constitutional limits and personal freedom.

But look at him now. Last week, Obama signed a bill letting him detain U.S. citizens in military custody without convicting them of anything -- not for a month or a year, but potentially forever.

Obama pledges he will never use that power to hold an American. But Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said the bill originally applied only to non-citizens. Citizens were included, he said, at the request of the White House. Even if Obama doesn't plan to use the power, it will be sitting on the shelf for Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum.

Those who voted for Obama in 2008 expected something different. "The detention of American citizens, without access to counsel, fair procedure, or pursuant to judicial authorization, as enemy combatants is unconstitutional," he told The Boston Globe.

His reversal brings to mind not only Cheney but another Republican. "Obama has eclipsed Nixon in the establishment of an imperial presidency," George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told me. And Turley voted for Obama.

There is plenty of evidence for that conclusion...MORE...LINK
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With GOP and Democrats triangulated by neo-fascist Globalists and Zionists, is Ron Paul a precursor to the next Lincoln and a new party?

2012-01-07T09:40:00.000-08:00

From:
Is Paul a precursor of a more presentable candidate in 2016?
(Mondoweiss) -- by Philip Weiss --

I'm stunned by the way that mainstream newscasters continue to overlook Ron Paul. He's running second in the New Hampshire polls after Mitt Romney, but commentators can only talk about Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich-- even when those polls are right up on the screen. The blindness (evident on NBC Nightly News, Chris Matthews, and NPR) feeds conspiracy theory-- and may only foster the movement that Paul is leading. A couple people have pointed me to this video above, in which CNN reporter Dana Bash says she's "worried" that Ron Paul will continue to hang in there through the nominating season.

Meantime, here are two realists arguing that while they couldn't vote for Ron Paul, he presages an important shift in our politics.

Pat Lang says Paul is too old to be president, but likens our historical moment (as I have done) to the 1850s, when the slave power was regnant and it required a new party to break it.

IMO what you are seeing in the highly disciplined mass of young people who support Paul is the commencement of a powerful movement that will result in a political party.

In 1856 the Republican Party ran its first presidential candidate. Paul should run as a representative of a new party.

By the way, Lincoln, who of course ran on the Republican ticket in 1860, repeatedly attacked a "conspiracy" of the slave power inside our politics in the 1858 Douglas debates, a race he lost. He said the conspiracy corrupted Whigs and Democrats, who coordinated matters like the Dred Scott decision behind the scenes. He wanted the debate out in the open...MORE...LINK

In post-Constitutional America, it isn't the neo-fascist war criminals who get prosecuted, but the whistle blowers

2012-01-06T19:10:00.000-08:00

From:
AMERICA DOOMED
(Darkmoon) -- by Paul Craig Roberts (Pictures and bolded notations by Lasha Darkmoon)

Writers who are critical of Washington’s illegal wars and the overthrow of the US Constitution could soon find themselves in indefinite detention. This is because criticism of Washington’s policies can be alleged to be aiding Washington’s enemies—which might include charities that provide aid to bombed Palestinian children and flotillas that attempt to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The Bush/Obama regimes have put the foundation in place for imprisoning critics of the government without due process of law. The First Amendment is being all but restricted to rah-rah Americans who chant USA! USA! USA! Washington has set itself up as world prosecutor, forever berating other countries for human rights violations, while Washington alone bombs half a dozen countries into the stone age and threatens several more with the same treatment, all the while violating US statutory law and the Geneva Conventions by torturing detainees.

Washington rounds up assorted foreign politicians, whose countries were afflicted with civil wars, and sends them off to be tried as war criminals, while its own war crimes continue to mount. However, if a person exposes Washington’s war crimes, that person is held without charges in conditions that approximate torture.

Bradley Manning is the case in point. Manning, a US soldier, is alleged to be the person who released to WikiLeaks the “Collateral Murder” video, which, in the words of Marjorie Cohn, “depicts U.S. forces in an Apache helicopter killing 12 unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists. People trying to rescue the wounded were also fired upon and killed.”

One of the Good Samaritans was a father with two small children. The video reveals the delight that US military personnel experienced in blowing them away from the distant skies. When it became clear that the Warriors Bringing The People Democracy had blown away two small children, instead of remorse we hear an executioner’s voice saying: “that’s what he gets for bringing children into a war zone.”

The quote is from memory, but it is accurate enough. When I first saw this video, I was astonished at the brazen war crime. It is completely obvious that the dozen or so murdered people were simply people walking along a street, threatening no one, unarmed, doing nothing out of the ordinary. It was not a war zone. The horror is that the US soldiers were playing video games with live people. You can tell from their commentary that they were having fun by killing these unsuspecting people walking along the street. They enjoyed killing the father who stopped to help and shooting up his vehicle with the two small children inside.

This was not an accident of a drone, fed with bad information, blowing up a school full of children, or a hospital, or a farmer’s family. This was American soldiers having fun with high tech toys killing anyone that they could pretend might be an enemy.

I was about to write that nothing has been done about the crime. But something was done about it. An American soldier who recognized the horrific war crime knew that the US military knew about it and had done nothing about it. He also knew that as a US soldier he was required to report war crimes. But to whom? War crimes dismissed as “collateral damage” are the greatest part of Washington’s 21st century wars.
A soldier with a moral conscience gave the video to WikiLeaks. We don’t know who the soldier is. Washington alleges that the soldier is Bradley Manning, but Washington lies every time it opens its mouth. So we will never know.

All we know is that retribution did not fall on the perpetrators of the war crime. It fell upon the two accused of revealing it–Bradley Manning and Julian Assange...MORE...LINK

Did Obama reveal classified information to sleazy Hollywood war merchants in exchange for propagandist election boost?

2012-01-06T13:05:00.000-08:00

From:
New intrigue over U.S. role in bin Laden film
Newly released letters from the Pentagon and the CIA indicate they will examine their cooperation with Sony Pictures Entertainment and director Kathryn Bigelow on a forthcoming bin Laden film.
(By Seattle Times news services) --

WASHINGTON — Until it achieved its objective, the raid that killed Osama bin Laden was one of the best-kept secrets in the history of Washington. Whether the Obama administration later went too far in spilling secrets about the operation to Hollywood is getting a look.

Newly released letters from the Pentagon and the CIA indicate they will examine their cooperation with Sony Pictures Entertainment and director Kathryn Bigelow on a forthcoming bin Laden film.

At issue is whether the filmmakers — Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, who both won Oscars for their 2009 Iraq war movie, "The Hurt Locker" — were given access to classified information about the mission that ended in bin Laden's death. While newspapers and magazines have published detailed accounts about the May raid, much remains unknown to all but a few.

The planned film has potential political implications. Sony moved its release date into 2013 amid concerns that the original October 2012 release could boost Obama's prospects one month before the presidential election. The bin Laden raid is widely viewed as a political plus for Obama, who sent Navy SEALs to kill the al-Qaida leader at his Pakistan compound even though the CIA could not say with certainty he was there.

The Pentagon and CIA letters were sent to Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, in response to his calls for an investigation into whether the Obama administration had given filmmakers "top-level access to the most classified mission in history."

King's interest was aroused last summer, when New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that "the moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration."

Boal, Dowd wrote, "got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently — to the surprise of some military officers — at a CIA ceremony celebrating the hero SEALs."

When King first raised the issue in August, administration officials scoffed, noting the White House and other federal agencies routinely work with authors, filmmakers and others to ensure they have access to accurate information. A National Security Council spokesman called King's claims "ridiculous."

Months later, the Pentagon, at least, is being a little less dismissive. "We plan to begin subject investigation immediately," Patricia Brannin, the Pentagon's deputy inspector general for intelligence and special-program assessments, wrote in a memo that King emailed to reporters...MORE...LINK

Ron Paul, the last true patriot in Washington, tried to warn U.S. about looming disasters prior to Iraq war; nearly all his prophesies came to pass

2012-01-06T10:54:00.000-08:00

From:
Ron Paul - Predictions in Due Time
(YouTube.com) -- by CollectiveCheckup --

American voters easily brainwashed by the 1%, its influence and money into voting for narrow band of politically correct, pre-fab candidates

2012-01-06T10:32:00.000-08:00

From:
Iowa: The Meaningless Sideshow Begins
(Rolling Stone) -- by Matt Taibbi --

...The race for the White House is normally an event suffused with drama, sucking eyeballs to the page all over the globe. Just as even the non-British were at least temporarily engaged by last year’s royal wedding, people all over the world are normally fascinated by the presidential race: both dramas arouse the popular imagination as real-life versions of universal children’s fairy tales.

Instead of a tale about which maiden gets to marry the handsome prince, the campaign is an epic story, complete with a gleaming white castle at the end, about the battle to succeed to the king’s throne. Since the presidency is the most powerful office in the world, the tale has appeal for people all over the planet, from jungles to Siberian villages.

It takes an awful lot to rob the presidential race of this elemental appeal. But this year’s race has lost that buzz. In fact, this 2012 race may be the most meaningless national election campaign we’ve ever had. If the presidential race normally captivates the public as a dramatic and angry ideological battle pitting one impassioned half of society against the other, this year’s race feels like something else entirely.

In the wake of the Tea Party, the Occupy movement, and a dozen or more episodes of real rebellion on the streets, in the legislatures of cities and towns, and in state and federal courthouses, this presidential race now feels like a banal bureaucratic sideshow to the real event – the real event being a looming confrontation between huge masses of disaffected citizens on both sides of the aisle, and a corrupt and increasingly ideologically bankrupt political establishment, represented in large part by the two parties dominating this race.

Let’s put it this way. What feels more like a real news story – Newt Gingrich calling Mitt Romney a liar for the ten millionth time, or this sizzling item that just hit the wires by way of the Montana Supreme Court:

HELENA — The Montana Supreme Court restored the state's century-old ban on direct spending by corporations on political candidates or committees in a ruling Friday that interest groups say bucks a high-profile U.S. Supreme Court decision granting political speech rights to corporations…

A group seeking to undo the Citizens United decision lauded the Montana high court, with its co-founder saying it was a "huge victory for democracy."

"With this ruling, the Montana Supreme Court now sets up the first test case for the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit its Citizens United decision, a decision which poses a direct and serious threat to our democracy," John Bonifaz, of Free Speech For People, said in a statement.

Now that is real politics -- real protest, real change. Exactly the opposite of the limp and sterile charade in Iowa. This caucus, let’s face it, marks the beginning of a long, rigidly-controlled, carefully choreographed process that is really designed to do two things: weed out dangerous minority opinions, and award power to the candidate who least offends the public while he goes about his primary job of energetically representing establishment interests.

If that sounds like a glib take on a free election system that allows the public to choose whichever candidate it likes best without any censorship or overt state interference, so be it. But the ugly reality, as Dylan Ratigan continually points out, is that the candidate who raises the most money wins an astonishing 94% of the time in America.

That damning statistic just confirms what everyone who spends any time on the campaign trail knows, which is that the presidential race is not at all about ideas, but entirely about raising money.

The auctioned election process is designed to reduce the field to two candidates who will each receive hundreds of millions of dollars apiece from the same pool of donors. Just take a look at the lists of top donors for Obama and McCain from the last election in 2008.

Obama’s top 20 list included:

Goldman Sachs ($1,013,091)
JPMorgan Chase & Co ($808,799)
Citigroup Inc ($736,771)
WilmerHale LLP ($550,668)
Skadden, Arps et al ($543,539)
UBS AG ($532,674), and...
Morgan Stanley ($512,232).

McCain’s list, meanwhile, included (drum roll please):

JPMorgan Chase & Co ($343,505)
Citigroup Inc ($338,202)
Morgan Stanley ($271,902)
Goldman Sachs ($240,295)
UBS AG ($187,493)
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher ($160,346)
Greenberg Traurig LLP ($147,437), and...
Lehman Brothers ($126,557).

Obama’s list included all the major banks and bailout recipients, plus a smattering of high-dollar defense lawyers from firms like WilmerHale and Skadden Arps who make their money representing those same banks. McCain’s list included exactly the same banks and a similar list of law firms, the minor difference being that it was Gibson Dunn instead of WilmerHale, etc.

The numbers show remarkable consistency, as Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup all gave roughly twice or just over twice as much to Obama as they did to McCain, almost perfectly matching the overall donations profile for both candidates: overall, Obama raised just over twice as much ($730 million) as McCain did ($333 million).

Those numbers tell us that both parties rely upon the same core of major donors among the top law firms, the Wall Street companies, and business leaders – basically, the 1%. Those one-percenters always give generously to both parties and both presidential candidates, although they sometimes will hedge their bets significantly when they think one side or the other has a lopsided chance at victory. That’s clearly what happened in 2008, when Wall Street correctly called Obama as a 2-1 (or maybe a 7-3) favorite to beat McCain.

The 1% donors are remarkably tolerant. They’ll give to just about anyone who polls well, provided they fall within certain parameters. What they won’t do is give to anyone who is even a remote threat to make significant structural changes, i.e. a Dennis Kucinich, an Elizabeth Warren, or a Ron Paul (hell will freeze over before Wall Street gives heavily to a candidate in favor of abolishing their piggy bank, the Fed). So basically what that means is that voters are free to choose anyone they want, provided it isn’t Dennis Kucinich, or Ron Paul, or some other such unacceptable personage...MORE...LINK

Americans now have a clear choice: Romney, Santorum and Obama on the one hand, Ron Paul on the other

2012-01-05T14:32:00.000-08:00

From:
Judge Napolitano Endorses Ron Paul; Slaughters Romney and Santorum - Fox Business
(YouTube.com) -- by THANKYOUCALLAGAIN --

Warmongering State Capitalist elites use lackey mainstream media to lie Americans into war after war, decade after decade

2012-01-05T13:18:00.000-08:00

From:
Faking It: How the Media Manipulates the World into War
(YouTube.com) -- by GlobalResearchTV --

Psychopath takeover of Wall St. and financial sector helps explain continuing, intractable economic crisis

2012-01-04T14:51:00.000-08:00

From:
Did Psychopaths Take Over Wall Street Asylum?: William D. Cohan
(Bloomberg.com) -- by William Cohan --

It took a relatively obscure former British academic to propagate a theory of the financial crisis that would confirm what many people suspected all along: The “corporate psychopaths” at the helm of our financial institutions are to blame.

Clive R. Boddy, most recently a professor at the Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University, says psychopaths are the 1 percent of “people who, perhaps due to physical factors to do with abnormal brain connectivity and chemistry” lack a “conscience, have few emotions and display an inability to have any feelings, sympathy or empathy for other people.”

As a result, Boddy argues in a recent issue of the Journal of Business Ethics, such people are “extraordinarily cold, much more calculating and ruthless towards others than most people are and therefore a menace to the companies they work for and to society.”

How do people with such obvious personality flaws make it to the top of seemingly successful corporations? Boddy says psychopaths take advantage of the “relative chaotic nature of the modern corporation,” including “rapid change, constant renewal” and high turnover of “key personnel.” Such circumstances allow them to ascend through a combination of “charm” and “charisma,” which makes “their behaviour invisible” and “makes them appear normal and even to be ideal leaders.”

Stable Environment

Until the last third of the 20th century, he writes, companies were mostly stable and slow to change. Lifetime employment was a reasonable expectation and people rose through the ranks.

This stable environment meant corporate psychopaths “would be noticeable and identifiable as undesirable managers because of their selfish egotistical personalities and other ethical defects.”

For Wall Street -- a rapidly changing and highly dynamic corporate environment if there ever was one, especially when the firms transformed themselves from private partnerships into public companies with quarterly reporting requirements -- the trouble started when these charmers made their way to corner offices of important financial institutions.

Then, according to Boddy’s “Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis,” these men were “able to influence the moral climate of the whole organization” to wield “considerable power.”

They “largely caused the crisis” because their “single- minded pursuit of their own self-enrichment and self- aggrandizement to the exclusion of all other considerations has led to an abandonment of the old-fashioned concept of noblesse oblige, equality, fairness, or of any real notion of corporate social responsibility.”

Boddy doesn’t name names, but the type of personality he describes is recognizable to all from the financial crisis.

He says the unnamed “they” seem “to be unaffected” by the corporate collapses they cause. These psychopaths “present themselves as glibly unbothered by the chaos around them, unconcerned about those who have lost their jobs, savings and investments, and as lacking any regrets about what they have done. They cheerfully lie about their involvement in events, are very convincing in blaming others for what has happened and have no doubts about their own worth and value. They are happy to walk away from the economic disaster that they have managed to bring about, with huge payoffs and with new roles advising governments how to prevent such economic disasters.”...MORE...LINK

Report: Obama administration intends to destroy the dollar to "solve" economic crisis, wiping out savings of millions

2012-01-03T20:09:00.000-08:00

From:
Gold Price: “We’re Going to Kill the Dollar,” Senior Obama Official
(Beacon Equity Research) -- by Dominique de Kevelioc de Bailleul --

Thinking the gold market has seen its best days? Not a chance, if the Fed and the Washington pathocrats get their way.

Speaking at AmeriCatalyst 2011, in November, hedge fund manager extraordinaire Kyle Bass of Hayman Capital Management LP told attendees he was given one of the strategies for reviving a dying U.S. economy. It involves devaluing the U.S. dollar to affect renewed export demand. Sign-up for my 100% FREE Alerts

No surprise there, really, as the playbook for mature economies, strapped with bizarre levels of public and private debt, deficits and stagnant employment, always opt for trashing the currency to make good on debt promises.

“The governments idea right now is we are going to export our way out of this,” Bass said with a grin. “And when I asked a senior Obama administration official last week how are we going to grow exports if we won’t allow nominal wage deflation, he said we are just going to kill the dollar.”

Gold should soar in the coming years as the cat can no long be contained in the bag, even too obvious to the most financially illiterate among us. How the Fed will explain a continuation of rising food and energy costs should prove interesting.

Why should Bass be told about such a sensitive issue? Most likely the “senior Obama official” wasn’t especially concerned with Kyle Bass and his obscure name recognition level with the public, nor was this “official” prepared to lose credibility with a pretty sharp hedge fund manager with tired government propaganda.

So, how rapidly could the dollar decline to achieve this export miracle.

If the signing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), suspending a good chunk of the Bill of Rights, by a sitting U.S. president doesn’t provide a strong enough clue to the extent of mayhem expected (feared?) in the coming months in the U.S., it would take similarly blind faith to expect that a baby crawling across a busy highway during rush hour will reach the other side unscathed.

The Godless and humorless woman, Ayn Rand, once said “We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality.” Or, taken from another philosophical prospective, the shaman priest could recommend to his ‘flock’ to use the brain that God had given them to figure out what’s most likely in store for the U.S.

And for those who feel too old to bother with such nonsense of currency devaluations and the extra chore involved in learning more about precious metals while living the romanticized ‘golden’ years, the pathocracy that has crept into America’s forefathers’ Republic has already counted the vast majority of you out—sizing up the more-than-65-years-old group as the Greenback cannon fodder for the State of alleged free people dependent upon pensions and savings, too old, too civilized and too shocked to take on low-IQ goon squads in defense of their life savings...MORE...LINK

U.S. soldiers fed up with endless wars for pampered ruling class Ron Paul's top contributors; Romney and Obama's top contributors? Goldman Sachs

2012-01-03T17:21:00.000-08:00

From:
Romney’s top contributor: Goldman Sachs, Ron Paul’s: US Army
(Milwaukee Story) -- by Andy Booker --

Democrats are shocked to see President Obama treat Wall Street's top banks with respect and kindness. In order to predict his kindness (Obama's justice department has failed to prosecute the crimes that helped lead to the financial crisis of 2008) towards the top financial institutions it didn't take a crystal ball, all it took was a list of his top donors which included Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Citigroup. Applying this same logic to the GOP primary election Romney is the candidate that will likely be buddy-buddy with Wall Street. Mitt Romney's top ten is made up of Goldman Sachs, followed by Credit Suisse (Switzerland), Morgan Stanley, Barclays (UK), Bank of America and JP Morgan. In contrast Romney's co-frontrunner in Iowa, Ron Paul, has a top three donor list made up of the US Army, US Navy and US Airforce.

Obviously Goldman Sachs and company donate heavily to Romney not because they like his stance on the social issues but because he will continue the rigged game of crony capitalism. The revolving door from Wall Street (particularly from Goldman Sachs) to the White House will remain open and Goldman and company will maintain not only their rigged game but their influence.

The active duty military that make up Ron Paul's top donor list are attempting to send a signal to the American people that Ron Paul's foreign policy is the right choice.

So yes Romney and Paul are in a race to get the nomination from the same party but they could not be more polar opposites when it comes to their intentions for the Presidency.

Perhaps this is why Romney has not yet attacked Ron Paul directly. Attacking Ron Paul opens Romney up to a direct debate with Ron Paul on the issues. Such a debate would draw a clear distinction between Romney and Paul on the issues that a majority of the electorate, particularly the issue of support for TARP and future bank bailouts.

In October Milwaukee Story published this article that broke down Romney's pledge to continue US interventionist/first-strike foreign policy. That foreign policy white paper was an additional signal to Wall Street that Romney was a safe bet as an establishment candidate and could be trusted to pull from Washington and Wall Street establishments to fill his cabinet posts.

It is critical to understand that even though Goldman Sachs tops Romney's donor list does not mean they are lining up all of their resources behind Romney alone. Goldman has also donated heavily to Obama's reelection campaign. And while this may signal a subtle divide in the Goldman ranks, a more likely scenario is that Goldman is simply hedging their bets and lending their Wall Street credibility to each candidate that they believe will allow the crony capitalism necessary for them to continue their winning ways...MORE...LINK

Establishment left joins neocon right in assault on Ron Paul's candidacy in order that its feigned "progressivism" is never put to the test

2012-01-03T11:48:00.000-08:00

Introduction by Chris Moore:

In the following article, influential anti-Zionist blogger Philip Weiss, an Obama supporter, makes the argument that even though he thinks incumbent Obama can, will and should win the presidential election, Ron Paul's presence in the horse race challenges what amounts to the corrupt, Zionist-Globalist, warmongering, left-right status quo, and forces "progressives" to ponder their own bigotry, narrow-mindedness, and Democratic Party-tool status by raising issues that otherwise would not go addressed by the left-liberal/neocon establishment.

My question to progressive anti-Zionists like Weiss is, why do you want Obama to win the presidency over Paul? Aren't you aware that Zionist organized Jewry essentially owns the Democratic Party at the national level? Aren't you aware that there are only minuscule differences between the neocon Republican and left-liberal Democrat establishment not only in terms of warmongering, but in terms of their condescending, elitist, and outright neo-fascist world view? Aren't you aware that along with the Zionists, the State Capitalist/Corporatist establishment essentially owns and controls all of the candidates other than Ron Paul? Aren't you aware that average Americans across the entire country of both left and right persuasion have been used, suckered, conned, hoodwinked and all-out defrauded by the neocon-liberal fascist amalgamation?

Hence, a vote for Barack Obama is simply a vote for a Newt Gingrich, only with a (D) next to his name, a slightly slicker delivery with a slightly more effective flim-flam man narrative aimed at a slightly more liberal audience, and a slightly lower chance of starting a war with Iran.

Indeed, all of this begs the question of whether dedicated Democrat voters are truly "progressive" at all, or whether they are simply a gaggle of liberal careerists and self-serving opportunists and special interests, all supported by a base of brainwashed useful idiots being kept in a smug false consciousness of self-righteous, pseudo-humanitarianism by their wealthy establishment social, intellectual and material string-pullers.

I guess we'll only ever really know the answer to that if Ron Paul gets the GOP nomination -- which is no doubt why establishment liberals are joining with neocon fascists at this very moment to strangle his candidacy in the primaries.

To Weiss' credit, at least he hasn't stooped to that level yet, and is willing to support Ron Paul far enough to put all "progressives" to the test in the general election -- which is far more than can be said for most of the Big Government-racket, "humanitarian" frauds and moral cowards that comprise so much of the left.
-----

From:
Paul’s challenge to progressives
(Mondoweiss) -- by Philip Weiss --

I’ve been pleased to see several progressives making qualified defenses of Ron Paul in the last few days, and I wanted to join in. The most important point about Ron Paul’s campaign from a progressive standpoint is that it might politicize the militant American policy in the Middle East. Americans will get to argue this openly. That is why the Washington Post is slamming Paul--it doesn't want that to happen. That is why the New York Times has conflated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and white supremacism--to marginalize Ron Paul's ideas.

Imagine for a moment that Ron Paul is not there. And that Mitt Romney, or Rick Santorum, or Michele Bachmann, gets the Republican nomination and it's him/her against Barack Obama. Who is going to be framing an antiwar position? None of them. Obama's big donors are pushing an attack on Iran and Romney's Super Pac is pushing the same and Santorum and Bachmann's Christian Zionist friends are pushing war.

Ron Paul represents the opportunity to push an antiwar agenda inside the center-ring political system. His candidacy might actually force Romney and Obama into more antiwar positions. If he disappears, that prospect all but vanishes. An attack on Iran might actually be in the balance. On the other hand, if he sticks around, we might have a presidential debate in which candidates openly dispute aid to Israel, an attack on Iran, and what Paul has called apartheid conditions on the West Bank, with honesty no other candidate is capable of...

There is a larger political challenge to progressives in Paul's movement. He has a populist movement behind him that seems to have a couple of good ideas. Can progressives engage populists? What class and cultural divides stop us from doing so? Is this a blue-state/red-state issue, or a working and middle class issue? And what is the public-square role of progressives? Are we only in Zuccotti Park? Are we so intolerant of American political processes that we will refuse to engage, holding our nose or not, to try and shift a popular movement? I'm not telling progressives to engage with social conservatives or Tea Partiers-- but Ron Paul has embraced the great Bradley Manning and denounced the Patriot Act.

And if you deny the importance of red state populism, then what is the progressive political program? With our books and our websites, are we just elites staking out righteous positions and not dealing with the vast ignorance of the American people on any number of issues? In that sense, the question of engaging with Ron Paul is the question of whether you believe in the messy business of American politics, in organizing the kind of people who may have to go serve in those awful wars, in bands of public opinion that you can either loftily disdain, or hear out...

One way Paul is unbearable is his whiteness. His movement seems almost entirely white, and there is the white racism in his past. But these are not skinheads. And the issue is: Can progressives engage these people? Can they learn anything from Paul's radical economic agenda? And while you are judging that racism, look at the role of Zionism in progressive communities. The casually-racist statements about Arabs that are absolutely routine in my community. "Arabs and other animals"-- chapter title, Erica Jong's bestseller, Fear of Flying.

Or look at this: Obama campaigns with Eric Yoffie, who doesn't want "too many Arabs" in Israel. Yoffie didn't say that in the '90s. He says it now, all the time. And Obama goes happily to AIPAC, which all but sponsors ethnic cleansing.

You say promoting Paul is dangerous. Here is my insurance policy. Ron Paul will not win. He can’t. Our society is so constituted that if the media elites don’t get him, the mainstream voters will. He’s too eccentric. “Erratic,” as the CSPAN callers like to say. His economic positions (not his foreign policy positions) are the ones that are way outside the mainstream. He won’t win. In the meantime, the further he goes the more he will politicize foreign-policy issues. Myself, I will almost certainly follow Tony Kushner's imperative at the Nation Institute gala last month, to support Barack Obama. I'm going to have to hold my nose to do that. In other years I've voted for Ralph Nader and Jesse Jackson; but I don't think I'll have that option this year...MORE...LINK

Neo-fascist Globalists and Zionists drop their "democracy" pretense (but still mask their totalitarianism in empty human rights platitudes)

2012-01-03T08:47:00.000-08:00

From:
End of the pro-democracy pretense
(Salon.com) -- by Glenn Greenwald --

Media coverage of the Arab Spring somehow depicted the U.S. as sympathetic to and supportive of the democratic protesters notwithstanding the nation’s decades-long financial and military support for most of the targeted despots. That’s because a central staple of American domestic propaganda about its foreign policy is that the nation is “pro-democracy” — that’s the banner under which Americans wars are typically prettified — even though “democracy” in this regard really means “a government which serves American interests regardless of how their power is acquired,” while “despot” means “a government which defies American orders even if they’re democratically elected.”

It’s always preferable when pretenses of this sort are dropped — the ugly truth is better than pretty lies — and the events in the Arab world have forced the explicit relinquishment of this pro-democracy conceit. That’s because one of the prime aims of America’s support for Arab dictators has been to ensure that the actual views and beliefs of those nations’ populations remain suppressed, because those views are often so antithetical to the perceived national interests of the U.S. government. The last thing the U.S. government has wanted (or wants now) is actual democracy in the Arab world, in large part because democracy will enable the populations’ beliefs — driven by high levels of anti-American sentiment and opposition to Israeli actions – to be empowered rather than ignored.

So acute is this contradiction — between professed support for Arab democracy and the fear of what it will produce — that America’s Foreign Policy Community is now dropping the pro-freedom charade and talking openly (albeit euphemistically) about the need to oppose Arab democracy. Here is Jon Alterman, the director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a very typical member of the National Security priesthood, writing on Friday in The New York Times about Egyptian elections (via As’ad AbuKhali):

Many in Israel and America, and even some in Egypt, fear that the elections will produce an Islamist-led government that will tear up the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, turn hostile to the United States, openly support Hamas and transform Egypt into a theocracy that oppresses women, Christians and secular Muslims. They see little prospect for more liberal voices to prevail, and view military dictatorship as a preferable outcome.

American interests, however, call for a different outcome, one that finds a balance — however uneasy — between the military authorities and Egypt’s new politicians. We do not want any one side to vanquish or silence the other. And with lopsided early election results, it is especially important that the outcome not drive away Egypt’s educated liberal elite, whose economic connections and know-how will be vital for attracting investment and creating jobs.

Our instinct is to search for the clarity we saw in last winter’s televised celebrations. However, what Egyptians, and Americans, need is something murkier — not a victory, but an accommodation.

I love this passage both for its candor and for what it lamely attempts to obfuscate. Why should “American interests” determine the type of government Egypt has? That it should is simply embedded as an implicit, unstated assumption in Alterman’s advocacy. That’s because the right of the U.S. to dictate how other nations are governed is one of the central, unchallenged precepts of the American Foreign Policy Community’s dogma and it thus needs no defense or even explicit acknowledgment. It simply is. It’s an inherent imperial right.

But Alterman here is expressly admitting the reality that most media accounts ignore: that the U.S. does not, in fact, want democracy in Egypt. It fears it. That’s because public opinion polls show overwhelming opposition among the Egyptian populace to the policies which the U.S. (for better or worse) wants to foist on that country: animus toward Iran, preservation of the peace agreement with Israel, ongoing indifference to the plight of the Palestinians, and subservience to U.S. goals. Indeed, according to the 2011 Pew finding, “nearly eight-in-ten Egyptians have an unfavorable opinion of the U.S.” That tracks opinion in the Arab world generally, where the two nations perceived as the biggest threat are — by far — the U.S. and Israel (not Iran), and the three most admired foreign leaders are Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, followed by Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinijad...MORE...LINK

Ron Paul unmasks neocons as self-serving warmongers and Big Government, fraud "conservatives" inspired by Trotskyism

2012-01-02T16:43:00.000-08:00

From:
Ron Paul vs. Neocons
(YouTube.com) -- by SilverShieldGrp --

Establishment GOP hustlers stick average Americans patsies with bills for their failed foreign adventures and exotic welfare queens

2012-01-02T07:23:00.000-08:00

From:
Irresponsible Foreign Policy: The Republican Establishment, Not Ron Paul
(Huffington Post) -- by Doug Bandow --

Even loyal Republicans are disheartened by their choices this year: the man who flips and flops whenever convenient, the official turned lobbyist who imagines he is Churchill (or maybe Caesar) reincarnated, and the governor with memory problems. But the man the GOP elite most fear is a genial 76-year-old congressman from Texas. He actually believes in something and remembers what it is. And he has been largely right on the big issues.

Of course, Rep. Ron Paul suffers from some self-inflicted problems. But for most of his critics what most matters is his stand on the issues. Especially on foreign policy. If the Republicans ignore him they deserve to lose the 2012 election.

A decade ago President George W. Bush chose arrogance over humility as his foreign policy. Since then virtually every Republican presidential candidates has embraced his philosophy of endless war: in effect, the GOP mantra is "we're all neoconservatives now."

Only Paul (and Gary Johnson, excluded from most of the debates) challenge America's role as a de facto empire. Paul observed that conservatives enjoyed spending money, only "on different things. They like embassies, and they like occupation. They like the empire. They like to be in 135 countries and 700 bases."

All of Paul's establishment GOP opponents support defending a gaggle of prosperous and populous "welfare queens" around the world. Rick Santorum warned: as commander-in-chief Ron Paul "can shut down our bases in Germany. He can shut down the bases in Japan. He can pull our fleets back."

Why would this be bad? The European nations have a larger GDP and population than America. The U.S. faces fiscal crisis: after 66 years, it is time for the Europeans to defend themselves. Japan, long possessing the world's second largest economy, also could take care of itself.

Americans must worry about the transition of power in North Korea primarily because nearly 30,000 U.S. troops remain on station in the South. Yet South Korea has about 40 times the GDP and twice the population of the North. Why, nearly six decades after the end of the Korean War, are Americans still paying for Seoul's defense? Observed Paul: "How long do we have to stay in Korea? We were there since I was in high school."

No less bizarre is the new-found Republican love affair with nation-building. It is widely recognized--outside of neoconservative think tanks and Republican presidential campaigns, anyway--that Iraq was a disaster. The war, fought under false pretenses, killed thousands of Americans, wounded tens of thousands more, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, drove millions more from their homes, and will end up costing Americans trillions of dollars. The chief beneficiary of Bush's foolish misadventure was Iran.

Yet the GOP presidential contenders criticized the Obama administration for not forcing Iraq's elected government from accepting a continued U.S. military presence...MORE...LINK

Obama's communications commissar takes foul-mouthed, bullying Bolshevik approach to media relations

2012-01-02T07:12:00.000-08:00

From:
Obama's spin doctor bruises hacks with 'nastygrams'
Jay Carney's combative approach has led to formal complaints about profane language
(The Independent) -- by Guy Adams --

He is no Alastair Campbell.

Neither is he in quite the same league as C J Cregg, the gruff, no-nonsense spin doctor from The West Wing. But a growing proportion of White House news correspondents are starting to discover that you cross swords with Jay Carney at your peril.

Mr Carney, who became Barack Obama's press secretary in February, has taken such a combative approach to media management that senior members of the presidential press pool recently called a crisis meeting to demand that he soften his tone.

At the centre of their complaints, according to The Washington Post, are so-called "nastygrams", aggressive, critical emails sent with growing frequency by Mr Carney and his staff.

Some of the more delicate members of the press have also been upset by profane language with which they are increasingly upbraided over the telephone by government spin doctors. Their concerns were formally raised at a meeting in November between the White House Correspondents Association [WHCA] and Mr Carney's office.

According to the WHCA president, Caren Bohan, who is a reporter for Reuters, the meeting was held to discuss a series of "tense interactions" between the two sides. Several reporters interviewed by the Post claimed that the nature of official communications has become more hostile under Mr Carney.

Among them was Carl Cannon, the Washington editor of the Real Clear Politics website. He described the official reaction to his article about Mr Obama's use of the White House for his party's political fundraisers as: "a screaming, profane diatribe that lasted two or three phone calls." The incident convinced him that Mr Obama's media managers "either favour you or try to punish you, depending if they see you as friend or foe"...MORE...LINK

Ron Paul's candidacy forces deluded liberals to face what "humanitarian" frauds and hypocritical reprobates their self-serving leaders truly are

2012-01-01T21:42:00.000-08:00

From:
Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies
The benefits of his candidacy are widely ignored, as are the Democrats' own evils
(Salon.com) -- by Glenn Greenwald --

...Whatever else one wants to say, it is indisputably true that Ron Paul is the only political figure with any sort of a national platform — certainly the only major presidential candidate in either party — who advocates policy views on issues that liberals and progressives have long flamboyantly claimed are both compelling and crucial. The converse is equally true: the candidate supported by liberals and progressives and for whom most will vote — Barack Obama — advocates views on these issues (indeed, has taken action on these issues) that liberals and progressives have long claimed to find repellent, even evil.

As Matt Stoller argued in a genuinely brilliant essay on the history of progressivism and the Democratic Party which I cannot recommend highly enough: “the anger [Paul] inspires comes not from his positions, but from the tensions that modern American liberals bear within their own worldview.” Ron Paul’s candidacy is a mirror held up in front of the face of America’s Democratic Party and its progressive wing, and the image that is reflected is an ugly one; more to the point, it’s one they do not want to see because it so violently conflicts with their desired self-perception.

The thing I loathe most about election season is reflected in the central fallacy that drives progressive discussion the minute “Ron Paul” is mentioned. As soon as his candidacy is discussed, progressives will reflexively point to a slew of positions he holds that are anathema to liberalism and odious in their own right and then say: how can you support someone who holds this awful, destructive position? The premise here — the game that’s being played — is that if you can identify some heinous views that a certain candidate holds, then it means they are beyond the pale, that no Decent Person should even consider praising any part of their candidacy.

The fallacy in this reasoning is glaring. The candidate supported by progressives — President Obama — himself holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians — Muslim children by the dozens — not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack. He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs. He has institutionalized the power of Presidents — in secret and with no checks — to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of a Congressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.

He has entrenched for a generation the once-reviled, once-radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism powers of indefinite detention, military commissions, and the state secret privilege as a weapon to immunize political leaders from the rule of law. He has shielded Bush era criminals from every last form of accountability. He has vigorously prosecuted the cruel and supremely racist War on Drugs, including those parts he vowed during the campaign to relinquish — a war which devastates minority communities and encages and converts into felons huge numbers of minority youth for no good reason. He has empowered thieving bankers through the Wall Street bailout, Fed secrecy, efforts to shield mortgage defrauders from prosecution, and the appointment of an endless roster of former Goldman, Sachs executives and lobbyists. He’s brought the nation to a full-on Cold War and a covert hot war with Iran, on the brink of far greater hostilities. He has made the U.S. as subservient as ever to the destructive agenda of the right-wing Israeli government. His support for some of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes is as strong as ever.

Most of all, America’s National Security State, its Surveillance State, and its posture of endless war is more robust than ever before. The nation suffers from what National Journal‘s Michael Hirsh just christened “Obama’s Romance with the CIA.” He has created what The Washington Post just dubbed “a vast drone/killing operation,” all behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy and without a shred of oversight. Obama’s steadfast devotion to what Dana Priest and William Arkin called “Top Secret America” has severe domestic repercussions as well, building up vast debt and deficits in the name of militarism that create the pretext for the “austerity” measures which the Washington class (including Obama) is plotting to impose on America’s middle and lower classes.

The simple fact is that progressives are supporting a candidate for President who has done all of that — things liberalism has long held to be pernicious. I know it’s annoying and miserable to hear. Progressives like to think of themselves as the faction that stands for peace, opposes wars, believes in due process and civil liberties, distrusts the military-industrial complex, supports candidates who are devoted to individual rights, transparency and economic equality. All of these facts — like the history laid out by Stoller in that essay — negate that desired self-perception. These facts demonstrate that the leader progressives have empowered and will empower again has worked in direct opposition to those values and engaged in conduct that is nothing short of horrific. So there is an eagerness to avoid hearing about them, to pretend they don’t exist. And there’s a corresponding hostility toward those who point them out, who insist that they not be ignored.

The parallel reality — the undeniable fact — is that all of these listed heinous views and actions from Barack Obama have been vehemently opposed and condemned by Ron Paul: and among the major GOP candidates, only by Ron Paul. For that reason, Paul’s candidacy forces progressives to face the hideous positions and actions of their candidate, of the person they want to empower for another four years. If Paul were not in the race or were not receiving attention, none of these issues would receive any attention because all the other major GOP candidates either agree with Obama on these matters or hold even worse views.

Progressives would feel much better about themselves, their Party and their candidate if they only had to oppose, say, Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann. That’s because the standard GOP candidate agrees with Obama on many of these issues and is even worse on these others, so progressives can feel good about themselves for supporting Obama: his right-wing opponent is a warmonger, a servant to Wall Street, a neocon, a devotee of harsh and racist criminal justice policies, etc. etc. Paul scrambles the comfortable ideological and partisan categories and forces progressives to confront and account for the policies they are working to protect. His nomination would mean that it is the Republican candidate — not the Democrat — who would be the anti-war, pro-due-process, pro-transparency, anti-Fed, anti-Wall-Street-bailout, anti-Drug-War advocate (which is why some neocons are expressly arguing they’d vote for Obama over Paul). Is it really hard to see why Democrats hate his candidacy and anyone who touts its benefits?...MORE...LINK

Happy New Year, America! Now hands on your head! "Liberal" Obama signs neo-totalitarian NDAA

2012-01-01T07:52:00.000-08:00

From:
THE INAUGURATION OF POLICE STATE USA 2012. Obama Signs the “National Defense Authorization Act "
(Global Research) -- by Michel Chossudovsky --

With minimal media coverage, at a time when Americans are celebrating the New Year with their loved ones, the “National Defense Authorization Act " H.R. 1540 is signed into law by President Obama. The actual signing took place on the 31st of December.

According to Obama, the threat of Al Qaeda to the security of the Homeland is the justification for repealing fundamental rights and freedoms, with a stroke of the pen.

The controversial signing statement by Obama (see transcript below) is a smokscreen. Obama says he disagrees with the NDAA but he signs it into law.

"[I have] serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists."

Obama implements "Police State USA", while acknowledging that certain provisions of the NDAA are unacceptable. If such is the case he could have either vetoed the NDAA HR 1540 or sent it back to Congress with his objections.

The “National Defense Authorization Act " H.R. 1540 is Obama's New Year's "Gift" to Americans.

He justifies signing of the NDAA as a means to combat terrorism. But in substance, any American opposed to the policies of the US government can be labelled a "suspected terrorist".

"Moreover, I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation. My Administration will interpret section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law."

Obama is a lawyer (a graduate from Harvard Law School). He knows fair well that his signing statement --which parrots his commitment to democracy-- is purely cosmetic. It has no force of law.

The signing statement does not in any way invalidate or modify the actual signing by President Obama of NDAA (H.R. 1540) into law.

In substance, the signing statement is intended to mislead americans and provide a "democratic face" to the President.

The "most important traditions and values" in derogation of the Constitution have indeed been repealed, effective on New Year's Day, January 1st 2012...MORE...LINK
-------------------------

Ron Paul actually practices his conservative rhetoric, which is why "conservative" fraud, fascist neocons hate him so much

2011-12-30T22:55:00.000-08:00

From:
The Many Contradictions of the Paulophobe
(The New American) -- by Jack Kerwick, Ph --

...Those suffering most acutely from Paulophobia are Republicans, self-styled “conservatives” (read: neoconservatives). Now, Republicans have always claimed to believe in smaller, more limited, decentralized government. In short, they pride their party on being the party of liberty, the party that is committed to preserving and protecting the U.S. Constitution.

Yet when they have the opportunity to nominate the only presidential candidate in their primary race who even they recognize is most committed to “limited government” and the Constitution, they call him a “kook” and “extremist.” Some Paulophobes such as talk radio hosts Michael Medved and Mark Levin go further to imply that he is evil. Medved continually insinuates that Paul is a “racist” and a “neo-Nazi.” Levin has explicitly said of Paul that he is “poison.” Both adamantly deny that Paul is authentic.

Republicans, especially since they have been ejected from power, inexhaustibly complain about “out of control” spending. Our country is on the precipice of ruin, they note, because of the profound profligacy of the Democrats. This next election promises to be the most important of our lifetime, for this may be our very last chance to save America.

But when one Republican presidential candidate comes along and proposes one trillion dollars in spending cuts within the first year of his term as President, they either pretend that he doesn’t exist or they spare no occasion to marginalize him. This is like a man lost at sea who, in spite of longing for salvation and knowing that the ship in the distance is his last chance at it, refuses to be rescued. Moreover, he attempts to chop off the arm of the ship’s captain who reaches out to him.

Republicans, like professional Paulophobe Rush Limbaugh, repeatedly claim their party alone embodies the spirit of the Founding Fathers. The Founders, mind you, although a philosophically heterogeneous group, never so much as contemplated a federal government that would demand of all Americans that they refrain from using any product, however potentially self-destructive it may be.

However, when Ron Paul contends that it is unconstitutional and immoral for the federal government to criminalize drug usage, such Paulophobes accuse him of wanting to “legalize” drugs. Ron Paul, they shout hysterically, is in favor of legalizing heroin and cocaine! If these Paulophobes were capable of it, just the slightest bit of rudimentary logic would make plain to them the implication of this line of thought. If Paul can be convicted of wanting to “legalize” drugs because of his opposition to the federal government’s criminalization of them, then inasmuch as the Founders didn’t seek to criminalize drugs, they too can be said to have favored the same. Far from being a radical, much less a radical “leftist” (as Paulophobe Dick Morris recently described him), Paul’s position on drugs is but another example of his desire to restore the vision of our Founders.

Republicans have often (and quite pathetically, actually) taken to accusing their Democratic rivals of being “racist.” It is Democrats, they claim, who seek to keep blacks “dependent” upon the government by way of welfare and a massive assortment of race-based preferential treatment policies. Thus, Democrats are “racist” against blacks.

Because of his belief that we should eliminate foreign aid to Israel, these same Paulophobic Republicans say of Ron Paul that he is “anti-Semitic.” Two observations are here in order.

First of all, Ron Paul does not single out Israel: He wants an end to all foreign aid. More importantly, though, these Paulophobes fail to recognize that if Democrats are “racist” because of their desire to keep blacks dependent upon the U.S. government, then inasmuch as these Republicans want to keep Israel dependent upon the U.S. government, it is they who are “anti-Semitic.”

To put the point another way, if it is the enemies of “racism” who oppose welfare dependency for blacks, then it is the enemies of “anti-Semitism” who should oppose welfare dependency — i.e. “foreign aid” — for Israel. This means that it is the Republican Paulophobe who is the real “anti-Semite,” while it is Paul who is “pro-Semitic.”

In accordance with the 9/11 Commission Report, as well as numerous reports that have been supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency, Ron Paul regularly observes that the attacks of September 11, 2001, specifically, and Islamic hostilities toward the United States, generally, are in large measure the function of an interventionist American foreign policy. That is, the federal government’s actions in the Islamic world are causally related to the terrorism that we are now combating.

For this, Republicans accuse of him of “blaming America.”

But if Paul can be said to be a member of “the blame America First” crowd because of his stance that the federal government has acted objectionably vis-à-vis the Islamic world, then his accusers who have made their careers railing against the federal government’s objectionable treatment of American citizens must be members of the same crowd. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and all self-avowed champions of “limited government” and “individual liberty,” it turns out, are in reality the most vociferous of American haters, for they are tirelessly criticizing the federal government for something or other...MORE...LINK

Long an establishment tool, CNN smears populist Ron Paul to protect the social and economic interests of its corrupt, racist masters

2011-12-30T22:21:00.000-08:00

From:
Doing a Background Check on CNN
(Econmic Policy Journal) --

Since CNN broadcasters seem so intent on looking back decades into promo letters and newletters put out by one of Ron Paul's organizations,when everyone admits Ron Paul did not write the letters, lets take a look at the background of some of those affiliated with CNN. It's as elitist as you can get, with strong ties to the CIA recruiting ground, Yale University.

CNN is owned by Times Warner who's CEO Jeffery L. Bewkes is a director of the Council on Foreign Relations and also serves on the board of Yale University.

Also affiliated with Yale and CNN are Anderson Cooper and David Gergen.

Anderson Cooper spent time interning, during his summer breaks in his sophomore and junior years at Yale, at the CIA.

Cooper is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt and the great-great-great-grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt. It was J.P. Morgan, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt who developed Jekyll Island, where the Wall Street elite developed the plan to launch the Federal Reserve.

Cooper is also a member of the Manuscript Society (aka The Wrexham Foundation). The Manuscript Society is a secret society at Yale University, like Skull & Bones. The society holds an annual gathering in its tomb on Halloween.

CNN senior political correspondent, David Gergen, is also a member of the Manuscript Society and was a presidential advisor who served during the administrations of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton.

It is not clear when the Manuscript Society "tapped" blacks for membership, if ever. There are no publicly known black members of the society...MORE...LINK

Racist-warmongering, police-state totalitarian, working class-plundering, elitist misanthropes say Ron Paul morally unqualified to be president

2011-12-30T10:33:00.000-08:00

From:
Marginalizing Ron Paul
(Truthdig) -- by Robert Scheer --

It is official now. The Ron Paul campaign, despite surging in the Iowa polls, is not worthy of serious consideration, according to a New York Times editorial; “Ron Paul long ago disqualified himself for the presidency by peddling claptrap proposals like abolishing the Federal Reserve, returning to the gold standard, cutting a third of the federal budget and all foreign aid and opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

That last item, along with the decade-old racist comments in the newsletters Paul published, is certainly worthy of criticism. But not as an alternative to seriously engaging the substance of Paul’s current campaign—his devastating critique of crony capitalism and his equally trenchant challenge to imperial wars and the assault on our civil liberties that they engender.

Paul is being denigrated as a presidential contender even though on the vital issues of the economy, war and peace, and civil liberties, he has made the most sense of the Republican candidates. And by what standard of logic is it “claptrap” for Paul to attempt to hold the Fed accountable for its destructive policies? That’s the giveaway reference to the raw nerve that his favorable prospects in the Iowa caucuses have exposed. Too much anti-Wall Street populism in the heartland can be a truly scary thing to the intellectual parasites residing in the belly of the beast that controls American capitalism.

It is hypocritical that Paul is now depicted as the archenemy of non-white minorities when it was his nemesis, the Federal Reserve, that enabled the banking swindle that wiped out 53 percent of the median wealth of African-Americans and 66 percent for Latinos, according to the Pew Research Center.

The Fed sits at the center of the rot and bears the major responsibility for tolerating the runaway mortgage-backed securities scam that is at the core of our economic crisis. After the meltdown it was the Fed that led ultra-secret machinations to bail out the banks while ignoring the plight of their exploited customers.

To his credit, Paul marshaled bipartisan support to pass a bill requiring the first-ever public audit of the Federal Reserve. That audit is how readers of the Times first learned of the Fed’s trillions of dollars in secret loans and aid given to the banks as a reward for screwing over the public.

As for the Times’ complaint that Paul seeks to unreasonably cut the federal budget by one-third, it should be noted that his is a rare voice in challenging irrationally high military spending. At a time when the president has signed off on a Cold War-level defense budget and his potential opponents in the Republican field want to waste even more on high-tech weapons to fight a sophisticated enemy that doesn’t exist, Paul has emerged as the only serious peace candidate. As The Wall Street Journal reported, Paul last week warned an Iowa audience, “Watch out for the military-industrial complex—they always have an enemy. Nobody is going to invade us. We don’t need any more [weapons systems].”

As another recent example of Paul’s sanity on the national security issues that have led to a flight from reason on the part of politicians since the 9/11 attacks, I offer the Texan’s criticism this week of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The act would allow the president to order indeterminate military imprisonment without trial of those accused of supporting terrorism, a policy that Obama signed into law and Paul opposes, as the congressman did George W. Bush’s Patriot Act...MORE...LINK

Fed chief Bernanke unilaterally transferring billions to bail out his central banker cronies in Europe, and blatantly lying about it to Congress

2011-12-30T09:22:00.000-08:00

From:
Fed Secretly Bailing Out Europe
(YouTube.com) -- by RonPaulFriends2 --

Defiant, pathological liar Bernanke knows who he really works for, and it's not the U.S. taxpayer or Congress, but the Zionist central banker regime

With so many dependents now clamoring for a shrinking pool of resources, statist-elites feather their own nests before the collapse

2011-12-30T09:10:00.000-08:00

From:
American civilization could be next to collapse
(The Tampa Tribune) -- by SILVIO LACCETTI --

Can American civilization collapse? You bet. All others have. We don't need a Mayan calendar to foreshadow the end. Signs are everywhere, we just need a brain to process the onslaught of information.

Of the various cataclysms that 2012 may herald, the first significant one is the Dissolution of the American State.

In America, when we speak of "the state" we mean something like New Jersey. In Europe and elsewhere, it is the central government, including provincial and local governments. It is an entity or apparatus with a life of its own. For most of the history of the world, with very few exceptions, "the state" has been legitimized by gods and kings. As Louis XIV of France declared, "I am the State." Until the American Revolution, there was a wall of separation between government and its people.

Our American State is founded on the principle of "We the People" as the source of all legitimate authority. Its operation is exemplified by Lincoln's famous characterization of it in the Gettysburg Address: a government of, by and for the people. But who today believes our current government embodies these principles?

There is no government "of the people" because "We the People" can't afford to run for office. Candidates need personal fortunes or else most (but not all) will sell out to the special interests.

"For the people"? Only in a convoluted way. Almost 60 percent of all Americans (dependents included) get 100 percent of their income from government (federal, state and local): as workers, Social Security and SSI recipients, other pension beneficiaries and general assistance. The American State, as paymaster to so many people, has created a class of servants. Perhaps this is why the government has no fear to serve itself first. For example, Congress has its own retirement program (not Social Security) its own health benefits and other lifetime perks. The American State also spends billions and billions on programs for corporate and other special interests, thus assuring its survival.

Worse yet, our government is now a "house divided against itself." It is clearly dysfunctional. Elections are an excuse to sow seeds of hatred and discontent.

There is ubiquitous belief that government doesn't serve the public good, and there is an overwhelming lack of confidence in Congress.

Our state can save itself, but not its people. It cannot solve any of the complex problems we face, such as crushing debt, health care, educational reform, immigration policy, failing infrastructure, poverty and underemployment.

When the general population has no faith or stake in the state, it will collapse...MORE...LINK

Ron Paul's success has his enemies--the parasitic neocon and liberal hawk establishment that has plundered America--in a possessed state of hysteria

2011-12-30T08:51:00.000-08:00

From:
Ron Paul and the Future of American Foreign Policy
The Paul-haters won’t succeed
(AntiWar.com) -- by Justin Raimondo --

...Paul’s success – he is currently the frontrunner in Iowa, although the “mainstream” media is doing its best to downplay the numbers – has provoked an outburst of hysteria and pure hate from the War Party. Iowa, they declare, will be rendered “irrelevant” if Paul wins: Joe McQuaid, the bombastic editor of the neocon Union-Leader, rants that “Ron Paul is a dangerous man.” How is that? Well, you see, Paul agrees with the overwhelming majority of Americans who don’t think the Iraq war – which McQuaid and his tabloid supported – was worth the costs in lives and taxpayer dollars. Paul’s anti-interventionist foreign policy views, says the would-be New Hampshire kingmaker, “have been largely overlooked by a news media more interested in the presidential ‘horse race’ than in the candidates’ positions on issues.”

McQuaid is getting on in years, and so probably doesn’t get out much: while he is railing about the media’s inattention to what he considers to be Paul’s mortal sin, virtually every article assessing Paul’s chances since the beginning of the campaign season has harped on precisely this theme. Paul’s appeal is necessarily “limited” due to this: there is a “ceiling” on his support, they aver. As he began to climb in the polls, and this “ceiling” began to lift, the punditocracy declared that Iowa is passé, irrelevant, and an archaic tradition which ought to be ignored from now on by Those In The Know: Gail Collins gave voice to the New York-Washington axis when she sniffed that we ought to “feel free to ignore Iowa,” because “in some rural districts, the entire caucus will consist of one guy named Earl.” That she wouldn’t dare say that if Earl lived in, say, the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn – where plenty of Earls reside, to be sure – underscores the bigotries our elites allow themselves, these days. In the world of Ms. Collins, some Earls are more equal than others.

The alleged dissonance between Paul’s anti-interventionism and the frothy-mouthed militarism that has been Republican gospel ever since Robert Taft was cheated out of the GOP presidential nomination by the party’s Wall Street wing – (see Phyllis Schlafly’s classic A Choice, Not An Echo, p. 52, for a recap of the Eastern Establishment coup) – has been the constant theme of these pieces, written by youngsters with no understanding or knowledge of history. The one exception, oddly, was John Nichols in The Nation, a liberal-progressive periodical not known for its devotion to libertarianism, who recalled the history of the Old Right in his perceptive piece about the intellectual roots of the Paul campaign. McQuaid, for his part, neither knows nor cares about the history of the conservative movement he presumes to advise: he gets his “conservative” gospel from other sources. He cites Dorothy Rabinowitz’s darkly threatening characterization of Paul as “the best-known of our homegrown propagandists for our chief enemies in the world. One who has made himself a leading spokesman for, and recycler of, the long and familiar litany of charges that point to the United States as a leading agent of evil and injustice, the militarist victimizer of millions who want only to live in peace.”

He left out the part about Paul being a “propagandist for our enemies,” perhaps because it was too much even for him. To the Rabinowitzes of this world – and the Gingriches, the Santorums, the Bachmanns, and the rest of that crazed crew – falls the solemn responsibility of determining the Enemy of the moment. Debate is limited, on this subject, to the question of which Enemy ought to be targeted at this particular point in time. Paul has broken this rule, and allowed that the main enemy – for those who want to limit the power of government, cut $1 trillion dollars from the budget, and emerge out of our economic morass – is in Washington, D.C., not Tehran.

This is literally treason in Rabinowitz’s book, but then again that slim volume only contains several variations on a single theme: anyone who criticizes the regime of war and the constant erosion of our civil liberties is lacking in patriotism, and is quite possibly a “traitor,” a “fifth columnist,” a secret plotter against America and the supporter of its enemies – her enemies. In person – or, at least, on television – her bile is more acidic: here she compares Paul to Hitler and Mussolini while a panel of nattering neocons eggs her on.

One wonders what holds Rabinowitz back from calling for Paul’s arrest as an “enemy combatant” – such restraint goes against the grain of her personal style. It is a style that has long since gone out of style, an echo of the bad old days of the Bush era, when the smoke had hardly cleared from the skies over Manhattan, and the country trembled at the commanding tone of the neocons as they accused war critics – “the decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts,” as neocon tool Andrew Sullivan put it – of wanting to “mount a fifth column.”...MORE...LINK

Neolib propagandist Chris Mathews insists Paul's attacks on fascist factions of U.S. gov an attack on entire U.S.

2011-12-29T19:29:00.000-08:00

From:
MSM Now Says Ron Paul Is 9/11 Truther! (No Wonder The Media Is SO Afraid Of Him!)
(YouTube.com) -- by MOXNEWSd0tC0M --

Salvaging America: Why anyone in a position of State Capitalist public trust should be tested for psychopathy

2011-12-29T19:13:00.000-08:00

From:
Weeding out corporate psychopaths
(TheStar.com) -- by Mitchell Anderson --

Given the state of the global economy, it might not surprise you to learn that psychopaths may be controlling the world. Not violent criminals, but corporate psychopaths who nonetheless have a genetically inherited biochemical condition that prevents them from feeling normal human empathy.

Scientific research is revealing that 21st century financial institutions with a high rate of turnover and expanding global power have become highly attractive to psychopathic individuals to enrich themselves at the expense of others, and the companies they work for.

A peer-reviewed theoretical paper titled “The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis” details how highly placed psychopaths in the banking sector may have nearly brought down the world economy through their own inherent inability to care about the consequences of their actions.

The author of this paper, Clive Boddy, previously of Nottingham Trent University, believes this theory would go a long way to explain how senior managers acted in ways that were disastrous for the institutions they worked for, the investors they represented and the global economy at large.

If true, this also means the astronomically expensive public bailouts will not solve the problem since many of the morally impaired individuals who caused this mess likely remain in positions of power. Worse, they may be the same people advising governments on how to resolve this crisis.

To tackle this problem, we must instead examine this rare and curious condition, and why recent corporate history may have elevated precisely the wrong type of people to positions of great power and public trust.

Unfeeling, but not insane

Psychopathy should not be confused with insanity. It is best described by Robert Hare, global expert and psychologist, as “emotional deafness” — a biochemical inability to experience normal feelings of empathy for others.

This shark-like fixation on self-interest means that psychopaths often feel a clear detachment from other people, viewing them more as sheep to be preyed upon than fellow humans to relate to. For instance, psychopaths in prison often use group therapy sessions not as a healing process, but as an opportunity to learn how to simulate normal human emotions.

Studies on twins have revealed that psychopathy shows a strong genetic signature and there remains no effective treatment. Recent research has linked the condition to physical abnormalities in the amygdala region of the brain.

Only a small subset of psychopaths become the violent criminals so often fictionalized in film. Most simply seek to blend in and conceal their difference in order to more effectively manipulate others. This frightening condition has existed throughout human history, though likely in a marginal and socially parasitic way.

While psychopaths are often portrayed by Hollywood as brilliantly clever, a hypothetical race of Hannibal Lecters would likely perish since they lack the ability to trust each other. Put another way, the human race — a relatively weak, slow, hairless tropical primate — has succeeded so spectacularly in every ecosystem on the planet not because we are so bad, but because we are so good.

Most dangerous 1 per cent

The human ability to build social capital means that people can cooperate and trust each other. We can reliably predict the behaviour of others even if we have never met them. Social capital is the glue that holds together our communities, complex societies, large institutions and the economy. The one and only superpower possessed by psychopaths is their ruthless ability to spend the social capital created by others.

Scientists believe about 1 per cent of the general population is psychopathic, meaning there are more than three million moral monsters among normal United States citizens. There is emerging evidence that this frequency increases within the upper management of modern corporations. This is not surprising since personal ruthlessness and fixation on personal power have become seen as strong assets to large publicly traded corporations (which some authors believe have also become psychopathic).

However, appearance and performance are two different things. While psychopaths are often outwardly charming and excellent self-promoters, they are also typically terrible managers, bullying co-workers and creating chaos to conceal their behaviour.

When employed in senior levels, their pathology also means they are biochemically incapable of something they are legally required to do: act in good faith on behalf of other people. The banking and corporate sector is built on the ancient principle of fiduciary duty — a legal obligation to act in the best interest of those whose money or property you are entrusted with. Asking a psychopath to do that is like recruiting a pyromaniac to be a firefighter.

The folly of mixing psychopathy and senior corporate management has been borne out by recent history. At the end of the last decade, numerous banking institutions representing hundreds of years of corporate financial stability ceased to exist within a few short months due to the reckless acts of a few individuals — none of whom has ever been charged with a crime.

And therein lies the rub. As ruthless as psychopaths are, their pathology dictates that they will ultimately act to the detriment of the organizations and investors they are paid so well to represent...MORE...LINK

Obama aligned with unaccountable clique of fascist CEO's profiteering from wars instigated by their fascist cronies in Congress

2011-12-29T13:49:00.000-08:00

Prominent Jewish-American Zionist warns Israel: Populist Ron Paul insurgency means political change is coming to U.S.; time for Israel to grow up

2011-12-29T08:50:00.000-08:00

From:
Israel is misreading the US election season
(Jerusalem Post) -- by Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie -- outgoing president of the Union for Reform Judaism.

As a supporter of Israel, I love the period prior to presidential elections. Candidates in both parties aggressively vie for the Jewish vote, for the backing of Jewish donors, and for the sympathy of Evangelicals who see Israel as a priority. For one year out of every four, Israel has a honeymoon from the usual give and take of diplomacy and political wrangling to which it is normally subjected by its most important ally.

Still, as much as I love these periods, I know it is a mistake to be misled by them. They provide a respite rather than a fundamental change in American policy. Yes, American presidents have different approaches to Israel but, in truth, not very different. American interests remain essentially the same, whether a Democrat or a Republican sits in the White House. (How many times have we heard promises about moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem? How many times have those promises been fulfilled?)

A danger for Israel is that her leaders will misread American election rhetoric. It is easy to be caught up in the euphoria of the moment and forget that the day after the vote, things will return to normal: America will again struggle to balance commitment to Israel with tough geopolitical realities. Support will be provided to Israel, but pressure will also be applied. Israel’s champions will assert themselves, but so will economic factors, oil lobbyists, and “realists” in the State Department.

Indeed, one of the more distressing aspects of the Republican primary season is the durability and resilience of the Ron Paul campaign, with its isolationist and borderline anti-Israel message. Paul will not be president, but his relative popularity is a grim reminder of the degree to which economic hardship has pushed issues of foreign affairs and foreign aid to the margins.

In short, the support-Israel-at-any-price talk in America is just that, talk. And therefore Israel’s leaders should not overreach. The wise course is to avoid self-delusion and to put forward a modest, cautious foreign policy that will position Israel to establish strong ties with the next American President, whoever that may be. Some things to be avoided: proclamations by Israel’s foreign minister that Britain, France, and Germany must behave or they will become “irrelevant”; declarations by aides to the prime minister that he will not write for the New York Times, the most important newspaper in America, because of its critical views on Israel; and, above all, provocative announcements on settlement activity that infuriate all of Israel’s friends and allies, including American officials who, for the moment, are obligated to remain silent...MORE...LINK

Typical of corrupted, neoconned, GOP establishment buffoons, treacherous Gingrich wouldn't support Paul vs. Obama

2011-12-28T23:23:00.000-08:00

From:
Newt Says Paul Supporters Not "Decent" Americans
(The New American) -- by Jack Kenny --

When Newt Gingrich said he would not vote for rival candidate Ron Paul if Paul wins the Republican presidential nomination, Gingrich may have forfeited whatever support he might receive from a sizable number of conservative and libertarian voters if the former Speaker of the House is himself the nominee.

Gingrich answered with and unqualified "No," when asked if he would vote for Paul if the 12-term Texas congressman were to emerge as the party's standard-bearer. "I think Ron Paul's views are totally outside the mainstream of virtually every decent American," Gingrich said Tuesday on CNN's The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. By its very nature the comment appears to impugn not only Paul, but his legions of supporters as well. The people who support Ron Paul share his views on most or all of the issues the candidate has been espousing in this and in previous campaigns. If those views are "outside the mainstream of virtually every decent American," then the unavoidable implication of Gingrich's statement is that "virtually" everyone who holds such views is not a "decent American." Should Gingrich emerge from the primary battles as the nominee, even those Paul supporters who hold the former speaker in "minimum high regard" might be loath to support the nominee who has, in effect, called them indecent.

Gingrich's indictment falls also on voters who are, for various reasons, backing other candidates, but who share many of the views espoused by Paul. Paul's insistence on non-intervention in the internal affairs of other nations, for example, seems to have more appeal to today's war-weary electorate than it did to Republican primary and caucus voters four years ago, when most of the antiwar voters were drawn to the Clinton-Obama battle in the Democratic primaries. But Paul's message appears to be resonating with likely voters in this year's Iowa Republican caucuses, as polls show him in a virtual three-way tie with Gingrich and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney with less than a week to go before the January 3 voting. In Iowa, as in other locales, Paul has evoked the most enthusiastic applause in several debates with his call to bring American troops home not only from Afghanistan and Iraq, but from overseas deployments in 130 countries around the world...MORE...LINK

Warmongering, money-worshipping, Israel-first GOP establishment and its limousine liberal media allies set to pounce on Paul if he wins Iowa

2011-12-28T17:08:00.000-08:00

From:
GOP Will Take Off the Gloves if Ron Paul Wins Iowa
(Buchanan.org) -- by Timothy P. Carney --

The Republican presidential primary has become a bit feisty, but it will get downright ugly if Ron Paul wins the Iowa caucuses.

The principled, antiwar, Constitution-obeying, Fed-hating, libertarian Republican congressman from Texas stands firmly outside the bounds of permissible dissent as drawn by either the Republican establishment or the mainstream media. (Disclosure: Paul wrote the foreword to my 2009 book.)

But in a crowded GOP field currently led by a collapsing Newt Gingrich and an uninspiring Mitt Romney, Paul could carry the Iowa caucuses, where supporter enthusiasm has so much value.

If Paul wins, how will the media and the GOP react? Much of the media will ignore him (expect headlines like “Romney Beats out Gingrich for Second Place in Iowa”). Some in the Republican establishment and the conservative media will panic. Others will calmly move to crush him, with the full cooperation of the liberal mainstream media.

For a historical analogy, study the aftermath of Pat Buchanan’s 1996 victory in the New Hampshire primary. “It was awful,” Buchanan told me this week when I asked him about his few days as the nominal GOP front-runner. “They come down on you with both feet.”

The GOP establishment that week rallied to squash Buchanan. Just after New Hampshire, Gingrich’s hand-picked group of GOP leaders, known as the Speaker’s Advisory Group, met with one thing on their minds, according to a contemporaneous Newsweek report: “How to deal with Buchanan.”

While many Republicans dismissed Buchanan’s New Hampshire win as irrelevant, arguing his support was too narrow to ever win the nomination, the neoconservative wing of the GOP darkly warned of a Buchanan menace. “People are panicked,” Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard told Newsweek. “If they’re not, it’s only because they don’t know what’s going on.”

The liberal mainstream media dutifully filled out Kristol’s picture of “what’s going on.” Newsweek put an ominously lit picture of Buchanan on the cover under the words “Preaching Fear.” The article stretched itself into contortions to paint Buchanan as a white racist. (Buchanan was campaigning in South Carolina, which still flew the Confederate flag over its capitol.)

Ted Koppel, on “Nightline” in the days after New Hampshire, relied on unsubstantiated tales (for which he later apologized) about Buchanan’s father as a way of tying the son to “bigoted and isolationist radio orator Father Coughlin.” He also cited a Jewish neighbor of the Buchanans who was beaten up and called “Christ-killer” — without mentioning that Pat was off at college at the time.

Insinuations of racism and anti-Semitism were the weapons of the mainstream media, but Buchanan’s sins in the eyes of the GOP establishment were different. They feared Pat because he rejected a rare inviolable article of faith among the party elites: free trade. Also, in the post-Cold War era, Buchanan’s foreign policy had become far less interventionist than that of the establishment.

It’s similar with Paul. There are many reasons he is unacceptable to the Republican elite. Some of these transgressions reflect badly on Paul. Others reflect badly on the party.

In Paul’s favor, he holds to the professed principles of his party. He makes Republicans look bad by firmly opposing overspending and the unconstitutional expansion of federal power. He correctly predicted the troubles that would be caused by housing subsidies and the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Paul is also disliked for his foreign policy. His non-interventionism has provoked clashes with the party elites, but it resonates with a growing number of Republicans who have grown tired of endless war and nation building that doesn’t seem to serve American interests. But Paul regularly goes too far for even these voters, criticizing the killing of al Qaeda leaders and at times sounding like he agrees with Iran’s grievances against the United States.

But neither his establishment-irritating adherence to principle, nor his hawk-angering foreign policy, will be the focus of the anti-Paul attacks should he carry Iowa. His conservative critics and the mainstream media will imply that he is a racist, a kook, and a conspiracy theorist...LINK

For the liberal fascist comrade drones, if benevolent Big Brother Obama and the Party do it, why worry?

2011-12-28T10:39:00.000-08:00

From:
Snapshots of Washington’s essence
(Salon.com) -- by Glenn Greenwald --

I intended to post sporadically or not at all this week, and that’s still my plan, but there is a new Washington Post article which contains three short passages that I really want to highlight because they so vividly capture the essence of so much. The article, by Greg Miller, is being promoted by the Post this way: “In 3 years, the Obama administration has built a vast drone/killing operation”; it describes the complete secrecy behind which this is all being carried out and notes: “no president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation’s security goals.” Here is the first beautifully revealing passage:

Senior Democrats barely blink at the idea that a president from their party has assembled such a highly efficient machine for the targeted killing of suspected terrorists. It is a measure of the extent to which the drone campaign has become an awkward open secret in Washington that even those inclined to express misgivings can only allude to a program that, officially, they are not allowed to discuss.

In sum: the President can kill whomever he wants anywhere in the world (including U.S. citizens) without a shred of check or oversight, and has massively escalated these killings since taking office (at the time of Obama’s inauguration, the U.S. used drone attacks in only one country (Pakistan); under Obama, these attacks have occurred in at least six Muslim countries). Because it’s a Democrat (rather than big, bad George W. Bush) doing this, virtually no members of that Party utter a peep of objection (a few are willing to express only the most tepid, abstract “concerns” about the possibility of future abuse). And even though these systematic, covert killings are widely known and discussed in newspapers all over the world — particularly in the places where they continue to extinguish the lives of innocent people by the dozens, including children — Obama designates even the existence of the program a secret, which means our democratic representatives and all of official Washington are barred by the force of law from commenting on it or even acknowledging that a CIA drone program exists (a prohibition enforced by an administration that has prosecuted leaks it dislikes more harshly than any other prior administration). Then we have this:

Another reason for the lack of extensive debate is secrecy. The White House has refused to divulge details about the structure of the drone program or, with rare exceptions, who has been killed. White House and CIA officials declined to speak for attribution for this article.

Inside the White House, according to officials who would discuss the drone program only on the condition of anonymity, the drone is seen as a critical tool whose evolution was accelerating even before Obama was elected.

The Most Transparent Administration Ever™ not only prevents public debate by shrouding the entire program in secrecy — including who they’re killing and why, and even including their claimed legal basis for these killings (what Democratic lawyers decried during the Bush years as the tyranny of “secret law”) — but they then dispatch their own officials to defend what they’re doing solely under the cover of anonymity so there is no accountability. And, of course, the Post (in an otherwise good though imperfect article) dutifully allows them to do this. In other words: if you ask us about our systematic killing operation, we’ll refuse to answer or even acknowledge it exists and we will legally bar critics from talking about it in public; nobody in government can comment on any of this except us, which we’ll do only by issuing anonymous decrees declaring it Good and Right...MORE...LINK
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Obama matches Bush war against constitutional and civil rights, and actually raises the abuse; where's the "progressive" outrage?

2011-12-28T09:19:00.000-08:00

From:
Congress, Obama Codify Indefinite Detention
(Future of Freedom Foundatin) -- by Sheldon Richman --

In yet another reversal of his professed commitment to the rule of law, President Obama says he will sign the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which formalizes his authority to imprison terrorism suspects indefinitely without charge or trial.

Where is the “progressive” outrage?

George W. Bush and Obama both claimed that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) empowered them to have the military hold people merely suspected of association with al-Qaeda or related organizations without charge for the duration of the “war on terror.” It didn’t matter if the suspect was a foreigner, a U.S. citizen, or a legal resident. It also didn’t matter if the alleged offense was committed inside or outside the United States. The battlefield encompassed the whole world.

In interpreting the AUMF this way, both administrations went well beyond its language. On its face, the AUMF only authorizes “the President … to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

Clearly the power is restricted to people involved in 9/11 and those who protected them. Yet under novel theories of the executive branch’s constitutional authority, this was turned into a virtual blank check.

The AUMF also makes no reference to indefinite detention or to turning citizens and legal residents over to the military, rather than civilian law enforcement, when they are merely suspected of being involved in a vague class of activities such as “supporting” “associated forces” in the commission of belligerent acts.

Regardless of the absence of the relevant language, both the Bush and Obama administrations claimed these broad powers that make a mockery of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights’ Fifth Amendment in particular.

Now these powers have been formally set down on paper. Ironically, the Obama administration hinted at a veto of the bill because it introduced restrictions on its authority. Carrying on the Bush philosophy that under the Constitution the executive branch has virtually unlimited power, Obama objected to any congressional intrusion into its prerogatives, even if only to codify authority already claimed and exercised...MORE...LINK

Anti-Ron Paul, contemporary GOP establishment comprised not of Reagan conservatives, but of wealthy, chickenhawk neocons

2011-12-28T09:10:00.000-08:00

From:
Why the establishment really fears Ron Paul
(The Daily Caller) -- by Jack Hunter --

...Let’s cut the crap. The GOP establishment’s main beef with Ron Paul is his foreign policy. This ideological chasm is the subtext to most attacks on Paul from the right. To their credit, some of Paul’s critics are man (or woman) enough to confront the congressman on this subject directly. Paul welcomes these challenges and wants his fellow Republicans to debate what a true conservative foreign policy should look like. But the members of the Republican establishment do not want any such discussion. In fact, they fear it.

Most of the 2012 Republican presidential contenders subscribe primarily to a neoconservative foreign policy — the reflexively pro-war, world-police dogma that has been the dominant view in the Republican Party for at least a decade. When Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain was asked by David Gregory on “Meet the Press” in October, “Would you describe yourself as a neoconservative then?” Cain replied: “I’m not sure what you mean by neoconservative … I’m not familiar with the neoconservative movement.” Cain was being honest — he simply knew how most Republicans viewed foreign policy and generally agreed with them. What was this “neoconservatism” Gregory spoke of? Said Cain: “I’m a conservative, yes. Neoconservative — labels sometimes put you in a box.”

“Neoconservative” certainly is a label that puts you in a box. The prefix alone invites curiosity (which is why neoconservatives don’t like it) and the term itself suggests that it represents something different from plain old conservatism (which is why neoconservatives really don’t like it). Neoconservative Max Boot outlined the ideology in 2002: “Neoconservatives believe in using American might to promote American ideals abroad … [The] agenda is known as ‘neoconservatism,’ though a more accurate term might be ‘hard Wilsonianism’ …” Of President Bush’s “hard Wilsonianism,” columnist George Will and National Review founder William F. Buckley said the following during an exchange in 2005:

WILL: Today, we have a very different kind of foreign policy. It’s called Wilsonian. And the premise of the Bush doctrine is that America must spread democracy, because our national security depends upon it. And America can spread democracy. It knows how. It can engage in national building. This is conservative or not?

BUCKLEY: It’s not at all conservative. It’s anything but conservative …

National Rifle Association President David Keene made a distinction between what he saw as Ronald Reagan’s more traditionally conservative foreign policy and the neoconservatives’ comparative extremism:

Reagan resorted to military force far less often than many of those who came before him or who have since occupied the Oval Office. … After the [1983] assault on the Marine barracks in Lebanon, it was questioning the wisdom of U.S. involvement that led Reagan to withdraw our troops rather than dig in. He found no good strategic reason to give our regional enemies inviting U.S. targets.

Keene then asked: “Can one imagine one of today’s neoconservative absolutists backing away from any fight anywhere?”...MORE...LINK

How does Ron Paul really feel about race? The documentary record speaks for itself

2011-12-27T17:23:00.000-08:00

From:
(Reddit.com) -- by ProudLikeCowz --

Exhibit A: Vociferously Supports an Anti-Racist Agenda

"Libertarianism is the enemy of all racism, because racism is a collectivist idea that you put people in categories. You say, well blacks belong here, and whites here, and women here and we don't see people in forms..or gays. You don't have rights because your gays, or women or minorities, you have rights because you’re an individual. So we see people strictly as individuals. We get these individuals in a natural way. So it's exactly opposite of all collectivism and it's absolutely anti-racism because we don't see it in those terms. "

-Ron Paul on Bill Moyers Journal, January 4, 2008

Exhibit B: Ferociously Insists that Courts and The Death Penalty are Racist

“That’s a pretty good question. Because people, somebody asked me yesterday, "When was the last time you ever changed your opinion? And I said well, it's been a while since I've had a major change of opinion, but I try to understand and study and figure out how things work you know and become better at economics and all.

But on that issue (the death penalty), I did have a change of opinion. And I stated this in the debates last go around, they asked…they asked a similar question, ‘when did you change your opinion last?’ And uh, and it, that was just not overnight, but I, my position now is, that since I'm a federal official and I would be a U.S. president, is I do not believe in the federal death penalty and in my book “Liberty Defined”, I explain in it more detail , but basically I make the argument for, uh, against the death penalty but I would not come and say the federal government and the federal courts should tell the states they can't have the death penalty anymore. I don’t go that far.

But no, I just don't think the uh ..with the scientific evidence now- I think I read an article yesterday on the death penalty, and 68 percent of the time they make mistakes. And it’s so racist, too. I think more than half the people getting the death penalty are poor blacks. This is the one place, the one remnant of racism in our country is in the court system, enforcing the drug laws and enforcing the death penalty. I don’t even know, but I wonder how many of those, how many have been executed? Over 200, I wonder how many were minorities? You know, if you're rich, you usually don't meet the death penalty.”

-Ron Paul, Interview with the Concord Monitor Editorial Board, August 18, 2011

Exhibit C: Stubbornly Refuses to Deny That Government Legalized Racism is Cruel and Unjust

“No form of political organization, therefore, is immune to cruel abuses like the Jim Crow laws, whereby government sets out to legislate on how groups of human beings are allowed to interact with one another.

Peaceful civil disobedience to unjust laws, which I support with every fiber of my being, can sometimes be necessary at any level of government. It falls upon the people, in the last resort, to stand against injustice no matter where it occurs.

In the long run, the only way racism can be overcome is through the philosophy of individualism, which I have promoted throughout my life. Our rights come to us not because we belong to some group, but our rights come to us as individuals. And it is as individuals that we should judge one another.

Racism is a particularly odious form of collectivism whereby individuals are treated not on their merits but on the basis of group identity. Nothing in my political philosophy, which is the exact opposite of the racial totalitarianism of the twentieth century, gives aid or comfort to such thinking. To the contrary, my philosophy of individualism is the most radical intellectual challenge to racism ever posed.

Government exacerbates racial thinking and undermines individualism because its very existence encourages people to organize along racial lines in order to lobby for benefits for their group. That lobbying, in turn, creates animosity and suspicion among all groups, each of which believes that it is getting less of its fair share than the others.

Instead, we should quit thinking in terms of race—yes, in 2008 it is still necessary to say that we should Stop thinking in terms of race—and recognize that freedom and prosperity benefit all Americans.”

-Ron Paul, ‘The Revolution: A Manifesto”, 2008

Exhibit D: Refuses to Deny that Courts Discriminate Against Minorities

“But in order to attract Latino votes, I think, you know, too long this country has always put people in groups. They penalize people because they’re in groups, and then they reward people because they’re in groups.

But following up on what Newt was saying, we need a healthy economy, we wouldn’t be talking about this. We need to see everybody as an individual. And to me, seeing everybody as an individual means their liberties are protected as individuals and they’re treated that way and they’re never penalized that way.

So if you have a free and prosperous society, all of a sudden this group mentality melts away. As long as there’s no abuse — one place where there’s still a lot of discrimination in this country is in our court systems. And I think the minorities come up with a short hand in our court system."

-Ron Paul, CNN Western Republican Debate, October 18, 2011

Exhibit E: Refuses to Back the Unfair Punishment of Minorities

"A system designed to protect individual liberty will have no punishments for any group and no privileges.

Today, I think inner-city folks and minorities are punished unfairly in the war on drugs.

For instance, Blacks make up 14% of those who use drugs, yet 36 percent of those arrested are Blacks and it ends up that 63% of those who finally end up in prison are Blacks. This has to change.

We don’t have to have more courts and more prisons. We need to repeal the whole war on drugs. It isn’t working. We have already spent over $400 billion since the early 1970s, and it is wasted money. Prohibition didn’t work. Prohibition on drugs doesn’t work. So we need to come to our senses. And, absolutely, it’s a disease. We don’t treat alcoholics like this. This is a disease, and we should orient ourselves to this. That is one way you could have equal justice under the law."

-Ron Paul, 2007 GOP Presidential Forum at Morgan State University, September 27, 2007

Exhibit F: Vehemently Insists that Drug Wars Harms Blacks and Other Minorities Disproportionately

“…the federal war on drugs has wrought disproportionate harm on minority communities.

Allowing for states’ rights here would surely be an improvement, for the states could certainly do a better and more sensible job than the federal government has been doing if they were free to decide the issue for themselves. And although people studying my record will discover how consistent I have been over the years, they will uncover one major shift: in recent years I have dropped my support for the federal death penalty.

It is a dangerous power for the federal government to have, and it is exercised in a discriminatory way: if you are poor and black, you are much more likely to receive this punishment.

We should not think in terms of whites, blacks, Hispanics, and other such groups. That kind of thinking only divides us. The only us-versus-them thinking in which we might indulge is the people—all the people— versus the government, which loots and lies to us all, threatens our liberties, and shreds our Constitution.

That’s not a white or black issue. That’s an American issue, and it’s one on which Americans of all races can unite in a spirit of goodwill. That may be why polls in 2007 found ours the most popular Republican campaign among black voters.”

-Ron Paul, “The Revolution: A Manifesto”, 2008

Exhibit G: Openly Admits That Skin Color should be Irrelevant in Society. That Racism is a Sin.

“Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans only as members of groups and never as individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike; as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called “diversity” actually perpetuate racism. Their intense focus on race is inherently racist, because it views individuals only as members of racial groups.

Conservatives and libertarians should fight back and challenge the myth that collectivist liberals care more about racism. Modern liberalism, however, well-intentioned, is a byproduct of the same collectivist thinking that characterizes racism. The continued insistence on group thinking only inflames racial tensions.

The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims.

Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence, not skin color, gender, or ethnicity. In a free market, businesses that discriminate lose customers, goodwill, and valuable employees- while rational businesses flourish by choosing the most qualified employees and selling to all willing buyers. More importantly, in a free society every citizen gains a sense of himself as an individual, rather than developing a group or victim mentality.

This leads to a sense of individual responsibility and personal pride, making skin color irrelevant. Rather than looking to government to correct what is essentially a sin of the heart, we should understand that reducing racism requires a shift from group thinking to an emphasis on individualism.”

-Ron Paul, “What Really Divides Us”, December 23, 2002

Exhibit G: Despises Political and Media Code Words for Racism.

“Worst of all, the left has gotten away with using “extreme” as a code word for “racist.” The exceedingly thin “evidence” given for the racism allegation is that Ashcroft once voted against the nomination of a federal judge who happened to be black. Never mind that more than 50 other Senators voted with Ashcroft; the left is all to eager to assure us that the only conceivable rationale is that Ashcroft is a racist. This type of smearing, aided and abetted by a complicit media, is at the heart of the left’s efforts to demonize conservatives who dare oppose their unconstitutional agenda.”

– Ron Paul, “The Ashcroft Controversy Exposes Disdain for Conservative Principles”, January 22, 2001

Exhibit H: Hates Racist Government Stereotyping of Wants and Needs

“One of the worst aspects of the census is its focus on classifying people by race. When government tells us it wants information to help any given group, it assumes every individual who shares certain physical characteristics has the same interests, or wants the same things from government. This is an inherently racist and offensive assumption. The census, like so many federal policies and programs, inflames racism by encouraging Americans to see themselves as members of racial groups fighting each other for a share of the federal pie.”

-Ron Paul, “None of Your Business”, July 12, 2004

Exhibit I: Hates Racist and Xenophobic Government Profiling

“We can think back no further than July of 1996, when a plane carrying several hundred people suddenly and mysteriously crashed off the coast of Long Island. Within days, Congress had passed emergency legislation calling for costly new security measures, including a controversial “screening” method which calls for airlines to arbitrarily detain passengers just because the person meets certain criteria which border on racist and xenophobic.”

-Ron Paul, “Emotion Should Never Dictate Policy”, January 12, 1998

Exhibit K and L: Despises Racist Laws that Intend to Harm What others Called “Cheap Colored Labor”

“The racist effects of Davis-Bacon are no mere coincidence. In fact, many original supporters of Davis-Bacon, such as Representative Clayton Allgood, bragged about supporting Davis-Bacon as a means of keeping cheap colored labor out of the construction industry.”

-Ron Paul, “Repeal of the Davis-Bacon Law”, October 23, 1997, Before the House of Representatives

“The racist effects of Davis-Bacon are no mere coincidence. In fact, many original supporters of Davis-Bacon, such as Representative Clayton Allgood, bragged about supporting Davis-Bacon as a means of keeping `cheap colored labor’ out of the construction industry.”

-Ron Paul, “Introducing the Davis-Bacon Repeal Act”, February 11, 1999, Before the House of Representatives

Exhibit M: Hates Foreign Aid to African Dictators Who Turn Aid into a “Power to Impoverish” their People

African poverty is rooted in government corruption, corruption that actually is fostered by western aid. We should ask ourselves a simple question: Why is private capital so scarce in Africa? The obvious answer is that many African nations are ruled by terrible men who pursue disastrous economic policies. As a result, American aid simply enriches dictators, distorts economies, and props up bad governments. We could send Africa $1 trillion, and the continent still would remain mired in poverty simply because so many of its nations reject property rights, free markets, and the rule of law. As commentator Joseph Potts explains, western money enables dictators like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe to gain and hold power without the support of his nation’s people. African rulers learn to manipulate foreign governments and obtain an independent source of income, which makes them far richer and more powerful than any of their political rivals. Once comfortably in power, and much to the horror of the western governments that funded them, African dictators find their subjects quite helpless and dependent. Potts describes this process as giving African politicians the “power to impoverish.”

-Ron Paul, “What Should Americans do for Africa?”, July 11, 2005, Before the House of Representatives

Exhibit O: Insists on Congratulating our First African-American President. MLK “Would be Proud”

“With the election behind us, our country turns hopeful eyes to the future. I have a few hopes of my own. I congratulate our first African-American president-elect. Martin Luther King, Jr. certainly would be proud to see this day. We are stronger for embracing diversity, and I am hopeful that we can continue working through the tensions and wrongs of the past and become a more just and colorblind society. I hope this new administration will help bring us together, and not further divide us. I have always found that freedom is the best way to break down barriers. A free society emphasizes the importance of individuals, and not because they are part of a certain group. That’s the only way equal justice can be achieved.”

-Ron Paul, “Hope for the Future”, November 9, 2008

Exhibit P: "Despises Racial and Ethnic Stereotyping by Self Serving Politicians"

“After 200 years, the constitutional protection of the right of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is virtually gone. Today’s current terminology describing rights reflects this sad change. It is commonplace for politicians and those desiring special privileges to refer to: black rights, Hispanic rights, handicap rights, employee rights, student rights, minority rights, women’s rights, gay rights, children’s rights, student rights, Asian-American rights, Jewish rights, AIDS victims’ rights, poverty rights, homeless rights, etc. Unless all the terms are dropped & we recognize that only an individual has rights, the solution to the mess in which we find ourselves will not be found. The longer we lack of definition of rights, the worse the economic and social problems will be.”

-Ron Paul, “Freedom Under Siege”, by Ron Paul, p. 14-15 Dec 31, 1987

...LINK

The disturbing state of mind of Newt Gingrich's would-be Secretary of State, John "Bonkers" Bolton

2011-12-27T16:36:00.000-08:00

From:
John Kampfner: How did Obama end up appeasing the neocons?
The President will continue to mind his conservative flank, particularly on security and law and order
(The Independent) -- by John Kampfner --

Last Saturday, as normal people were doing their Christmas shopping, I was hidden away in a Sky television studio in debate with a neocon. I was discussing the treatment of Bradley Manning, the American serviceman accused of leaking secrets to WikiLeaks, with John Bolton, one of the leading lights of the American right.

The point I was trying to make was fairly simple. As the self-professed leader of the free world, the United States should abide by the highest practices of international law. These arguments have been rehearsed incessantly over the past decade with reference to Guantanamo, renditions, Abu Ghraib and the Patriot Act. Yet the manner of Manning's incarceration has been truly horrific.

For the first 10 months after his arrest in Iraq in May 2010, Private Manning was held in solitary confinement in the Marine Corps Brig at Quantico, Virginia. There he was cooped up in his tiny cell for 23 hours a day. He was required to respond to the shouts of his guards every five minutes. At night, he was woken regularly. His detention included periods of forced nudity, which the military justified by labelling him a suicide risk.

Although conditions have improved since he was transferred to a different jail, Manning's treatment has been criticised by groups ranging from US lawyers to members of the European parliament.

It has taken place not on the watch of a Republican president, but that of Barack Obama's Democrat administration. Obama's record on a number of civil liberties areas, notably anti-terrorism and whistleblowers, is as draconian as any of his recent predecessors. The intent towards Manning has been clear: to try to "break" him so that he admits a direct link with WikiLeaks and to deter others from contemplating doing anything similar in future.

The administration's approach poses a conundrum for conservatives and liberals alike. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union are vocal in criticising abuses wherever they find them; but their language towards Obama has been more restrained. The US left (or what approximates to it) fears losing what few crumbs come from the table.

The right is also torn in its reaction to Obama's hawkishness, but for different reasons. Should it praise him for refusing to challenge virtually any of the post-9/11 Bush doctrines, less still amending or repealing any of the legislation? Or should it denounce him for being lily-livered, even where he is not?

Bolton's approach fell into the latter. First, he insisted that I must be a "socialist" to air such concerns. He then betrayed his own confusion by suggesting that I had nothing to worry about as I had a "friend" in the White House by name of "O-ba-ma" – his syllable by syllable pronunciation of the president's name was disturbing.

Manning, he insisted, had committed "heinous" crimes. I suggested that, as the pre-trial hearings had only just begun, perhaps Bolton might want to endorse that basic judicial principle of innocence until proven guilty. He moved swiftly on; he reminded me that army prosecutors had indicated they would not seek the death penalty on the charge of "aiding the enemy". We should, therefore, all be grateful for such mercy.

I insisted throughout this exchange that I was not addressing the substantive charges against Manning. I was talking merely about standards in criminal justice, and would be happy to do so again on US networks such as Fox. The calmer I was, the more incensed Bolton became.

Pundits come and pundits go; on one level, this was merely a small piece of Saturday afternoon entertainment for anyone who happened to be watching. But Bolton is more than that. He was, under Bush, the US Ambassador to the United Nations. Now Newt Gingrich, one of the Republican candidates, has dangled him the post of Secretary of State, in the unlikely event of victory...MORE...LINK
-----------------------
Thousand mile stare of the man Newt Gingrich says will be his Secretary fo State, John Bolton, aka "Bonkers Bolton"

State media stooge CNN's claims that Ron Paul stormed out of interview prove to be smear propaganda and lies

2011-12-26T10:00:00.000-08:00

From:
Raw footage shows Ron Paul DIDN'T storm out of CNN interview over racist newsletters... the interview was simply done
(Daily Mail) -- by Meghan Keneally --

Reports that Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul stormed out of a CNN interview earlier this week seem to be dramatically over-exaggerated.

Raw footage of the Thursday interview shows that it lasted nearly ten minutes, which is not unusually brief on the campaign trail.

After discussing foreign policy, the payroll tax, negative advertisements, and super fund PACs, the interview concluded with three whole minutes of discussion on the issue of the incendiary racist and homophobic letters that were published in Mr Paul's name in the Eighties and Nineties.

Initial news reports made it seem that Mr Paul recited his one line response- that he didn't write the letters, that he didn't read them until about a decade after they were published, and that he disavows them- and stormed off, tossing away his microphone and charging out.

The newly-released CNN footage shows something entirely different.
After fielding repeated questions about the controversial newsletters, Mr Paul began wrapping up the interview.

The footage was released on YouTube on the RonPaul.com channel and has the CNN logo in the bottom right hand corner.

The CNN reporter, Gloria Borger, didn't even seem particularly upset or surprised that the interview was ending considering the fact that she was beginning to repeat the same questions on the issue presumably in hopes of receiving a new answer...MORE...LINK

Related: CNN issues media hit labeling Ron Paul a "racist crank" -- written by a racist, warmongering ex-Bush speechwriter with a history of employing Christian-hating pedarasts, Jewish Zionist Israel-firster David Frum

The Bushcons, neocons and liberal fascists have created a power-mad tyrant in Obama

2011-12-26T09:49:00.000-08:00

From:
Set Your Doomsday Clock to 11:5192
(Veterans Today) -- by David Swanson --

...Obama has claimed the power to imprison people without a trial since his earliest months in office.

He spoke in front of the Constitution in the National Archives while gutting our founding document in 2009.

So why not pick the 220th anniversary of the Bill of Rights to further codify its elimination?

President Obama has claimed the power to torture “if needed,” issued an executive order claiming the power of imprisonment without trial, exercised that power on a massive scale at Bagram, and claimed and exercised the power to assassinate U.S. citizens. Obama routinely kills people with unmanned drones.

As Obama’s Justice Department has broken new ground in the construction of state secrecy and immunity, the Bush era advancers of imperial presidential power have gone on book tours bragging about their misdeeds. One can expect the next step to involve serious abuse of those who question and resist the current bipartisan trajectory.

So what does the latest bill do, other than dumping another $660 billion into wars and war preparation? Well, it says this:

“Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.”

In other words, Congress is giving its stamp of approval to the unconstitutional outrages already claimed by the president. But then, why create a new law at all? Well, because some outrages are more equal than others, and Congress has chosen to specify some of those and in fact to expand some of them. For example:

“Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b)) pending disposition under the law of war.”

And this:

“The disposition of a person under the law of war as described in subsection (a) may include the following: (1) Detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force.”

Jon Stewart explained when those detained without trial under the law might be released: “So when the war on terror ends, and terror surrenders and is no longer available as a human emotion, you are free to go.”

An exception for U.S. citizens was kept out of the bill at President Obama’s request...

President Obama wanted a bill that limited him in no way, and he is likely to issue a law-altering signing-statement that further removes any offensive limits on absolute tyrannical power.

This type of signing statement is another example of something done secretly by Bush, exposed, turned into a temporary scandal, denounced by candidate Obama, then utilized by President Obama, formally established by executive order, and now more or less accepted by everyone as the norm...MORE...LINK

Who lost Turkey? The entire arrogant, ham-handed Israel-first Washington establishment

2011-12-25T22:34:00.000-08:00

From:
Turkey aims for the bomb, slips from America’s grasp
(EndTheLie.com) -- by Richard Cottrell --

...Six months ago, hardly anyone in the US or on the European continent had the faintest clue as to who the Prime Minister of Turkey actually was.

Then, suddenly there he is, glaring from the newsstands around the world. Only the Photoshopped horns sticking out from his forehead were missing.

How did he rise so fast in both the popularity and boogeyman stakes?

The answer lies within a single event, the so called Marmara incident in international waters off the coast of the Gaza Strip. Circle the following date in your memory vaults, because it is likely to carry portentous significance in forthcoming events in the Middle East.

May 31st, 2010.

On that day Israeli commandos seized a six-vessel aid flotilla heading for the embattled Gaza enclave, a gulag hunk of Palestine virtually sealed off by the Israelis with the tacit support of Washington. The armada had set off from Turkey.

In the ensuing struggle eight Turkish citizens and one Turkish-American aboard the MV Mavi Marmara were shot and killed by the boarding party.

Turkey’s demands for an apology from Israel received the response to be expected in the circumstances: zero.

Erdoğan, who is unquestionably the dominant power figure of the Ankara regime, then took a step that was received with rapture throughout the Arab-Islamic world.

He effectively severed relations with Israel, ending a long standing — if frequently uneasy — pact between the Jewish state and the largest Islamic power in the region, dating from Turkish membership of NATO in 1952.

So May 31st, 2010 marked the emergence (as I have written before at End the Lie) of the New Ottomans.

From the perspective of Ankara, the Mamara incident was a fortuitous excuse to hasten the New Ottoman campaign of recovering the Middle East. Erdoğan was transformed to a political rock star, playing to packed houses in Islamic communities around the world.

Washington seethed.

At once Turkey passed from a side player on the tight leash of the US to an independent – and moreover, powerfully armed – force with its own set of strategic priorities.

What is not widely understood outside this turbulent region is the fact that American influence over the course of events is rapidly waning, while that of Turkey is rising fast.

The former arrangement, a bipolar control system managed by the US and Israel, has collapsed.

The New Ottomans’ sudden emergence has changed the cozy two-power happy families game to five; Israel, the US, Iran, Saudi Arabia – and Turkey. In a cauldron bubbling fiercely as the Middle East, this can only spell trouble...

Turkey has most of the main components to join the nuclear club, except the cover story of nuclear power for energy production. She is now forging ahead with nuclear plans by recommitting herself to building an initial three nuclear reactors, with ambitious schemes for a national chain of twenty in place by 2030.

The first is now getting started at Akkuyu on the Mediterranean coast. It will be constructed by the Russian nuclear monopoly Atomstroyexport on a build-and-payback contract from power shunted to the national grid.

Here’s the message. Washington’s attempts to wall off Turkey’s nuclear ambitions have failed, utterly. In former times she could control secular governments or destroy them violently (1961, 1980) if they strayed too far from the imperial agenda.

But since 2001 Turkey has been effectively under one party, popular rule by the Islamist Law and Justice (AK) party, in which the leading figures are Erdoğan and his lifetime collaborator, Abdullah Gül, the president.

Now you can understand the message of the prototype Islamist dictator glaring from the front cover of Time.

Turkey has broken free of the Western, US-orientated support system because the elected Islamists have turned the country into a humming economic power house. She is regularly notching 8% growth rates.

For the first time since the death in the 1930’s of the secularist man-god founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Atatürk, she is a member of the globalist financial and economic club. But she is no longer a colony or anyone’s push-around, for all that.

The Islamists have won their power struggle with the alligator generals of the Turkish High Command, who in the past lynched an elected premier.

In 1961 an army coup backed by the Central Intelligence Agency, the NATO secret army unit called Counter-Guerrilla, extremist activists of the Far Right, and for good measure, the Turkish Mafia, toppled the elected administration of premier Adnan Menderes.

After a brief show trial, he and two ministerial colleagues were taken to an army prison in the Sea Of Marmara and summarily lynched.

Times have changed. The military recognizes that the regime’s popularity in the great Anatolian land mass, where much of the economic revival is under way, is not going to be easily undermined by some false ‘color’ revolution propagated by the CIA and other Western intelligence services.

However, the Time article serves clear notice that Washington does indeed intend to terminate the Erdoğan-Gül regime by any means that it may construct for the task. This pair know a reverse compliment when they see one.

Joe Biden’s off the cuff remarks when he was in Turkey were quite illuminating. In the future he said, beaming warmly at Erdoğan, convalescing from his recent operation, “Turkey and the US will draw closer together.”

He might well have added under his breath (and probably did): “But not with you on the scene, buddy.”

All US efforts to date aimed at destabilizing the Islamic government have come to naught. These have not excluded secretly funding Iraqi-based, so-called Kurdish freedom fighters to stage false flag bomb attacks and murders around the country...

By contrast Erdoğan has delivered hitherto unknown and unrealized prosperity. He has also given Turks a sense of ‘face’ in the world, by slapping down Israel and playing fast and loose with NATO and the US. And he and his winsome partner Abdullah Gül are prize winners in the election stakes, with three unprecedented majority governments in a row.

The US policy of hobbling Turkey to eternal poverty and the curse of the IMF, in order to keep her tame and obedient to the imperial will, lies in ruins.

By 2015, the AK Party will have been in power for the best part of fifteen years. That’s a one party government, or even state, if you so choose. But there are no remotely respectable or realistic challengers among the rag bag of sulking secularists and right wing extremists...MORE...LINK

Our dark Lords of War rulers wage eternal battle against the Prince of Peace

2011-12-25T21:53:00.000-08:00

From:
Our Last Christmas in the Old America
Enjoy it while it lasts
(AntiWar.com) -- by Justin Raimondo -

As the world celebrates the birthday of the Prince of Peace, the Lord of War looms large over the land. The shrikes and talking heads are screeching for Iranian blood, and there are ominous signs in the stars. The war god’s acolytes flood the airwaves with “a complex of vaunting and fear,” as an old prophet once put it, and men of peace are disdained as “weak,” “dangerous,” and “extreme.”

Who will save us from the coming slaughter?

There is no Savior, no man on a white horse or divine sacrificial offering who can stop or appease the gathering demons: they will quaff their chalice of blood, have their pound of flesh, these cannibals of the spirit who demand human sacrifice as the price of propitiation. Blood, honor, “national security,” “world leadership,” the “free world” – these are the words they will invoke, the ritual prayers to the great god Mars that will excuse the thousands killed, tens of thousands maimed – and for what?

For Israel – which must be saved at all costs, even at the price of its very soul.

For the authority of the United Nations – a “den of thieves,” as Lenin rightly called it, and Robert Welch agreed.

For the reelection of a failed president – who would gain the opportunity to blame Iran for the economic catastrophe we brought upon ourselves.

In the end, it boils down to pure economics, and the numbers add up to … war. How else to mask the Depression behind the veil of wartime “necessity”? Can you think of a better way to channel the righteous anger of a slowly-awakening people away from the warlords of Washington and toward some foreign Enemy? Before the peasants with pitchforks come marching up the hill, better to put a sign on the road: TRAFFIC DIVERTED – NO ENTRY.

A cowed people will obey it – at least so our rulers hope and pray. That’s the only time they do pray, come to think of it: not even the war-god is honored by their invocations. They worship him in silence, in secret caverns under the earth, accompanied only by the twin devils of hubris and bloodlust...MORE...LINK

Lack of price tag payback for neocons who lied us into Iraq shows how sloppy, weak, corrupt U.S. has become under Zionist domination

2011-12-25T20:25:00.000-08:00

From:
Iraq Nightmare
(Occidental Observer) -- by Kevin MacDonald --

Of all the lies that the neocons came up with to get the U.S. to invade Iraq, the one that most angers me was Bernard Lewis’s lie that Iraq just needed a little nudge in order to unleash the popular surge for democracy and republican government.

Lewis … argues that Arabs have a long history of consensus government, if not democracy, and that a modicum of outside force should be sufficient to democratize the area—a view that runs counter to the huge cultural differences between the Middle East and the West that stem ultimately from very different evolutionary pressures. (see here, p. 50)

I agree that the WMD lie created and promoted mainly by Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Abraham Shulsky was critical. But Bernard Lewis deserves a special place in academic hell because he used his position as an elite academic to influence policy on behalf of his ethnic brethren in Israel and his close friends in the Likud government.

I assumed that Iraq would implode quite quickly after the U.S. left, but the pace is breathtaking. The LATimes report (“Iraq bombings kill 60, revive old fears“) shows that nothing has changed after 8-1/2 years of occupation, over 4400 U.S. armed forces dead and almost 32000 wounded, and over 100,000 Iraqis dead (see here). The Times article shows that the fundamental social structure hasn’t changed. The country remains divided along ethnic and religious lines.

The scenes of devastation were all too familiar after more than a dozen explosions ripped through the Iraqi capital Thursday, killing at least 60 people and injuring nearly 200, just days after the last U.S. troops left the country.

The attacks, some of the worst in Iraq this year, came in the midst of a political standoff between the country’s main Shiite Muslim and Sunni Arab factions. The dispute threatens to unravel a U.S.-backed power-sharing government, and is spreading anxiety over the prospect of a return to the sectarian bloodletting that devastated the country in recent years.

...In the ideal neocon world, the U. S. would have remained in Iraq indefinitely. Since that didn’t happen, they are doubtless not unhappy to see Iraq’s current turmoil—except that it will be more difficult next time to sell attacks on Israel’s enemies as a crusade for democracy.

I suspect that the neocon strategy will now be to blame the Obama administration for premature evacuation and use this as a trump card in the current campaign for a war against Iran. Already, “Republican leaders have sharply criticized President Obama for not trying harder to keep a U.S. military presence in Iraq. Sen. John McCain of Arizona said on CBS television Thursday that Iraq was ‘unraveling tragically.’ ‘We are paying a very heavy price in Baghdad because of our failure to have a residual force there.’”

It is unclear what price we are paying, since it’s unclear what threat Iraq poses or ever posed to the U.S. But it is certainly the case that this will be an issue in presidential politics in the months ahead. One can imagine the Obama administration being more willing to do the bidding of the Israel Lobby on Iran in order to counter the inevitable charges that he “lost Iraq.”

In a sane society, the neocons would have been executed for high treason for their involvement in the death and maiming of thousands of U.S. citizens under false pretenses, not to mention the trillion dollar price tag. In the U.S., they are preparing for their next war.

And the Israel Lobby has their back. Any intimation of Jewish influence related to Israel policy remains off limits. Thomas Friedman recently had the temerity to write, “I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.” But it wasn’t long before he mollified his remarks and said he didn’t subscribe to any “grand conspiracy theories.”

I don’t subscribe to any grand conspiracy theories either. It’s all out in the open. In your face. Just don’t say so in public...MORE...LINK

Wealthy, tough-talking chosen class who've never served a day in the military eager to back up their coddled existence with U.S. military blood

2011-12-24T09:52:00.000-08:00

Introduction by Chris Moore:

There is something incredibly noxious about the post WWII generations of American elites, (and particularly the post Vietnam) most of whom have never served a day in the military, yet are oh-so-eager to prove their "patriotic" and "national security" bona-fides by committing other people's blood (which comes almost entirely from lower downs in the economic pecking order) to back their endless wars against Islamic civilization on behalf of the corrupt status-quo that has so richly rewarded them.

Their haughty mentality seems to be: "We are of a higher caste, a line of chosen. It is our duty to reap the rewards of American society, and the duty of others to sacrifice themselves on our behalf. Our comfortable, grandiose, self-aggrandizing, trifling existence is the highest yearning of society and of the most crucial importance. Never mind that our existence is parasitic upon the masses, and detrimental to the vast majority; that's the natural order, the cosmic-ordained hierarchy. It's only natural that others should sacrifice and die so that we may live out a coddled, self-serving existence and perpetuate our culture of parasitism."

Other than Ron Paul, this is the well-concealed but visceral mentality not only of the current crop of GOP candidates and hierarchy, but of the limousine liberal caste that runs the Democratic Party as well...a mentality that Philip Giraldi captures all too well in the following critique of the new class of chickenhawks that rules Washington, and seeks to rule the world.
-----

From:
Meet the Republican Chickenhawks
(AntiWar.com) -- by Philip Giraldi --

Nearly all the Republican presidential candidates are showing their muscles, supporting the war on terror and a robust military while also vowing to do whatever it takes to disarm Iran. They know that it is essential to play the jingoistic “American exceptionalism” card, and they understand that being president also means becoming commander in chief of America’s armed forces with the responsibility for committing U.S. soldiers to die for their country. But how are they qualified to do that? Of the sorry lot on display, only Ron Paul and Rick Perry have ever served in the military in any capacity, Paul as a U.S. Air Force medical officer and Perry as an Air Force pilot. The dramatically bellicose Newt Gingrich, who wants to coordinate a joint military operation with Israel to attack Iran, did not serve during the Vietnam War. He received deferments because he was a student and because he was, at the time, married to his first of three wives. Other candidates, including Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman, are too young to have been subject to the draft, but neither volunteered for military service. Santorum entered a law firm, and Huntsman went to Indonesia as a Mormon missionary before stepping into the business run by his father.

But perhaps the most spectacular chickenhawk of all is Mitt Romney, frequently cited as the likely Republican candidate, who alone among GOP aspirants to the highest office in the land has advocated increasing the size of the Defense Department. Romney apparently is not aware of the foreign policy misadventures of the past 10 years and is eager to double down on a formula that has not worked very well. He believes that the correct response to the many threats in the world is to throw more money at the Pentagon. He also apparently has not noted the sinking economy, which might suggest to anyone but the politically ambitious that retrenchment would be preferable to more interventionism. But as an experienced self-described “businessman” he is not afraid of running up a little more debt.

Romney has several times declared that Iran will never acquire a nuclear weapon if he is president, suggesting that the other candidates are pusillanimous on the issue and implying that he alone will attack the mullahs “preventively” if such a development appears to be imminent. The willingness to start a war with a country that can hardly threaten the United States is the cornerstone of his foreign policy, which he describes as dealing with the world from a position of strength. If that sounds a bit like the Bush Doctrine, it should...

...It has often been suggested that if the children of leading politicians and neocon pundits were required to take up arms to carry out the schemes concocted by their parents, the desire to engage in frivolous wars would quickly vanish. Be that as it may, Romney is far from unique in that one does not see the children of Huntsman, Santorum, Bachmann, and Gingrich rushing off to enlist either. To give Sarah Palin her due, her eldest son did join the Alaskan National Guard and did do combat duty in Iraq, so she, at least, put her money where her mouth most assuredly was.

One can easily argue that President Barack Obama is even worse than the Mitt Romneys of this world, because he was elected in large part by antiwar voters but he has brought more war and a frightful expansion of the state security apparatus, including the indefinite military detention and even assassination of American citizens. But that is to avoid the issue of how a country that so desperately needs peace and reconstruction can produce so many clueless but hawkish politicians who are themselves completely ignorant of war and soldiering except insofar as they follow the Gingrich model of reading about it in books. Nevertheless, the poor fools persist in mouthing the slogans of empire. And it has consequences. Constant warfare might well mean the end of our experiment in republican government and could quite possibly bring about the impoverishment and death of many of us...MORE...LINK

Obama warmongering in Libya and deliberate abandonment of Arab Spring democracy movement led to current brutality in Egypt

2011-12-22T23:32:00.001-08:00

From:
The Arab Winter: Violence from a US-Backed Military Junta
(Infowars.com) -- by Patrick Henningsen --

Now that the Arab Spring has come and gone, one of the features of the new Arab Winter is watching how a US/UK-backed brutal Egyptian military dictatorship has become increasingly more violent towards its own pro-reform, unarmed citizens.

There are still a few readers left out there who will understandably be a bit confused and ask, “Wait a minute, I thought Egypt’s military dictator President Hosni Mubarak was ousted during the famous Arab Spring? I thought we brought democracy to Egypt?”

The answer, of course, is ‘no’ – as democracy never made it to Egypt during the Arab Spring. Instead, the US and UK were under a very tight time table because of what was going on next door in Libya and could not afford to have a civilian government full of democratic idealists running that country...

It is important to note that the likes of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and David Cameron are supporting this gruesome violence by the Egyptian State, even in the face of prima facia evidence that the military council is beating and killing its own political opponents. Unlike western crusades to capture the assets of Syria and Iran, following the template of Libya, you will hear no serious moral or lofty ‘human rights’ condemnations of Egypt’s supreme military council coming out of Washington or Whitehall.

Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Just look at how both the US and UK deal with their own protesters at home.

After seeing Occupy Wall Street activists being intimidated, beaten and pepper sprayed by New York City law enforcement, Egypt’s military has cited those same heavy-handed US police actions against the OWS demonstrators in order to justify their own violent suppression in Cairo. The message to protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square is not so different than the one delivered to demonstrators in New York’s Zuccotti Park – and that is, “Pack up and go home now, or else you could be seriously hurt – or worse.”

Notice now that the only regimes who are safe from US-UK or NATO routing them are the monarchies and the military dictatorships in the Middle East. This should tell you all you really need to know in order to understand the foreign policy of western countries today...MORE...LINK

From liberal media to neocon right, establishment stooges throw everything they have at Ron Paul

2011-12-22T23:03:00.000-08:00

From:
Mainstream media starts smear campaign against Ron Paul
(RT/USA) --

As Congressman Ron Paul accumulates support in the polls, the mainstream media launched a smear campaign attacking the politician with bit of ammo they can find.
Latest in their arsenal is a decades’ old newsletter than the candidate has long since dismissed.

While rumors of infidelity led to the collapse of pizzaman Herman Cain’s campaign and the adulterous affairs of former-House Speaker Newt Gingrich poses problems for chance at the GOP bid, the mainstream has only now come after Paul with the first piece of fodder it seems fit for news coverage that relies on scandal and sex more than politics and liberty.

To Paul, however, the allegations are laughable. According to the congressman, he has dismissed a 20-year old newsletter with racist remarks under his name for a decade now and will continue to do so. Despite this, the mainstream media is using everything they can find to find Rep. Paul at fault.

The writings in question came from an early-90s newsletter issued by Paul’s campaign, and though his name is on the newsletter, he says he was unaware of the contents that are now causing controversy. As with all stances the congressman takes, he says that this has been the story he’s offered up ever since he became aware of the contents.

An interview with CNN on Wednesday this week ended abruptly after Paul became irritated that the network wanted to tackle the issue of racist remarks for the third day in a row, even after he had answered questions regarding them on the network hours earlier. Pressed by CNN reporter Gloria Borger, Paul responded, “I never read that stuff. I was probably aware of it ten years after it was written. And it’s been going on twenty years that people have pestered me about this, and CNN does it every single time. When are you going to wear yourself out?”

Borger countered Paul’s comment by asking, “Is it a legitimate question to ask?”

“When you get the answer it is legitimate that you take the answers I give. You know what the answer is?” responded Paul. “I didn’t write them, I didn’t read them at the time and I disavow them. That is the answer”

When Borger called Paul out for his allegedly “incendiary” remarks, he told her that they are only being interpreted that way “because of people like you.”

Iowa Governor Terry Branstad has even gone after Paul while the candidate takes the lead in his own state, insisting recently that a first-place win in the Iowa Caucus is meaningless. “People are going to look at who comes in second and who comes in third,” said Branstad, adding, “If Romney comes in a strong second, it definitely helps him going into New Hampshire and the other states.”

Since the beginning of Paul’s campaign, the mainstream media has attacked the candidate as someone on the fringe and without a chance. Now that is success is being proven in the polls, the reality of a President Ron Paul is hitting the establishment hard and the GOP and mainstream media is going after him with everything they have...MORE...LINK

False prophet, money-worshipping GOP establishment fears and loathes authentic conservative Ron Paul

2011-12-22T22:29:00.000-08:00

From:
Why Do GOP Bosses Fear Ron Paul?
(The Nation) -- by John Nichols --

DUBUQUE: Ron Paul represents the ideology that Republican insiders most fear: conservatism.

Not the corrupt, inside-the-beltway construct that goes by that name, but actual conservatism.

And if he wins the Iowa Republican Caucus vote on January 3—a real, though far from certain, prospect—the party bosses will have to do everything in their power to prevent Paul from reasserting the values of the “old-right” Republicans who once stood, steadily and without apology, in opposition to wars of whim and assaults on individual liberty.

Make no mistake, the party bosses are horrified at the notion that a genuine conservative might grab the Iowa headlines from the false prophets. Already, they are claiming a Paul win won’t mean anything. If Paul prevails, says Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, “People are going to look at who comes in second and who comes in third. If [Mitt] Romney comes in a strong second, it definitely helps him going into New Hampshire and the other states.”

The party’s amen corner in the media is doing its part. Republican-insider radio and television programs have begun to go after Paul, the veteran congressman from Texas who is either leading or near the top in recent polls of likely caucus goers. Rush Limbaugh ridicules Paul on his radio show, while Sean Hannity’s Fox show has become a nightly Paul-bashing fest, with guests like former Education Secretary Bill Bennett trashing the congressman with lines like: “his notion of foreign policy is impossible.”

Actually, Paul’s notion of foreign policy is in line with that of conservatives used to believe. The congressman is often referred to as a libertarian, and he has certainly toiled some in that ideological vineyard. But the truth is that his politics descend directly from those of former Ohio Senator Robert “Mr. Republican” Taft and former Nebraska Congressman Howard Buffett—old-right opponents of war and empire who served in the Congress in the 1940s and 1950s and who, in Taft’s case, mounted credible bids for the party’s presidential nomination in 1940, 1948 and finally in 1952. In all three campaigns, Taft opposed what he described as the “Eastern establishment” of the party—the Wall Streeters who, he pointedly noted, had little in common with Main Streeters...MORE...LINK

With U.S. going broke, why are local police departments arming themselves to the teeth with billions in federal funding?

2011-12-22T09:30:00.000-08:00

From:
Cops Ready for War
(The Daily Beast) -- by Andrew Becker --

Nestled amid plains so flat the locals joke you can watch your dog run away for miles, Fargo treasures its placid lifestyle, seldom pierced by the mayhem and violence common in other urban communities. North Dakota’s largest city has averaged fewer than two homicides a year since 2005, and there’s not been a single international terrorism prosecution in the last decade.

But that hasn’t stopped authorities in Fargo and its surrounding county from going on an $8 million buying spree to arm police officers with the sort of gear once reserved only for soldiers fighting foreign wars.

Every city squad car is equipped today with a military-style assault rifle, and officers can don Kevlar helmets able to withstand incoming fire from battlefield-grade ammunition. And for that epic confrontation—if it ever occurs—officers can now summon a new $256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating turret. For now, though, the menacing truck is used mostly for training and appearances at the annual city picnic, where it’s been parked near the children’s bounce house.

“Most people are so fascinated by it, because nothing happens here,” says Carol Archbold, a Fargo resident and criminal justice professor at North Dakota State University. “There’s no terrorism here.”

Like Fargo, thousands of other local police departments nationwide have been amassing stockpiles of military-style equipment in the name of homeland security, aided by more than $34 billion in federal grants since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a Daily Beast investigation conducted by the Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

The buying spree has transformed local police departments into small, army-like forces, and put intimidating equipment into the hands of civilian officers. And that is raising questions about whether the strategy has gone too far, creating a culture and capability that jeopardizes public safety and civil rights while creating an expensive false sense of security.

“The argument for up-armoring is always based on the least likely of terrorist scenarios,” says Mark Randol, a former terrorism expert at the Congressional Research Service, the nonpartisan research arm of Congress. “Anyone can get a gun and shoot up stuff. No amount of SWAT equipment can stop that.”...MORE...LINK

Obama pandering to wealthy, militant, paranoid, limousine neoliberal authoritarians has cost him support of civil libertarians

2011-12-21T11:26:00.000-08:00

From:
The Zenith of Civil Libertarian Anger at President Obama
(The Atlantic) --

On the eve of 2012, President Obama is facing a backlash from civil libertarians that is more widespread and intense than anything he's yet seen. He has previously been subject to complaints about his war on whistleblowers, the humanitarian and strategic costs of his drone war, the illegality of the war he waged in Libya, his use of the state secrets privilege, his defense of Bush-era warrantless wiretapping, and his assertion of the power to kill American citizens accused of terrorism. But news that Obama plans to sign rather than veto a bill enshrining indefinite detention into U.S. law and failing to exempt American citizens is provoking unprecedented ire.

The significance of the backlash is perhaps best understood by looking at what people and organizations who supported Obama's 2008 bid for the presidency are saying about his actions now. The head of the ACLU's legislative office insisted that Obama is poised to damage "both his legacy and American's reputation for upholding the rule of law," and noted that "the last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was during the McCarthy era."

Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch says that "By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law." Says the New York Times editorial board: "Mr. Obama refused to entertain any investigation of the abuses of power under his predecessor, and he has been far too willing to adopt Mr. Bush's extravagant claims of national secrets to prevent any courthouse accountability for those abuses. This week, he is poised to sign into law terrible new measures that will make indefinite detention and military trials a permanent part of American law. This is a complete political cave-in, one that reinforces the impression of a fumbling presidency."...MORE...LINK

Desperate to preserve their self-serving, nation-plundering rackets, conniving elites from left to right in a dirty war against Ron Paul

2011-12-21T09:03:00.000-08:00

From:
We Shall Overcome
Ron Paul's rise has the War Party frothing at the mouth
(AntiWar.com) -- by Justin Raimondo --

The governor of Iowa says that if Ron Paul wins the GOP caucus, the best thing to do is to “ignore him” – and, if you go here, you can see the “mainstream” media agrees. Rich Lowry over at the National Review proclaims that if the only anti-interventionist candidate gets the votes of Iowa Republicans, “no one should take them seriously again.” The neocon solution to their Ron Paul Problem: exile the voters to Gehenna! “Ron Paul’s ascent won’t last,” sneers Ramesh Ponnuru, “or help his cause.” This was doubtless written before the Christian Science Monitor mourned, in a headline: “What if Ron Paul wins Iowa – and New Hampshire too?”

On both the neoconservative “right” and the Obama-ite “left,” the spittle is flying: the gate-keepers of the politically permissible are practically frothing at the mouth, letting fly an outburst of political Tourette’s Syndrome, with epithets like “geezer,” “crank,” “crazy old uncle,” and “pestilential little locust.” There are several themes to these hit-pieces, and they can be broken down accordingly:

The “Ron-Paul-can’t-win-because-he’s-an-‘isolationist’” argument – This is the central meme being floated in the MSM about the Paul campaign, and it suffuses a large proportion of the press coverage. It is a pillar of the “red state/blue state” dichotomy that is supposed to define the American political landscape – and, just coincidentally, of course, happens to encompass the marketing strategy of cable giants Fox and MSNBC.

The problem with this argument, however, is that it’s being disproved every day by the polls, which show Paul steadily gaining strength not only in Iowa but nationally. If Paul takes Iowa, expect a meme-shift along the lines of “those-Midwestern hicks are known for their isolationism.”

The “Ron Paul-can’t-win-the-nomination” argument – This, of course, is meant to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. As the Christian Science Monitor headline cited above indicates, however, his rising poll numbers in Iowa are lifting him to first-tier status in New Hampshire and beyond. For the same reason governments can’t pick winners in industry, the self-appointed guardians of the politically possible can’t pick winners in elections. They can try to predict the political future, and sometimes they may even be right – but how many remember when these same professional prognosticators were telling us Hillary Clinton’s nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate was “inevitable”?

Especially in these troubled times, when the political winds are whipping from unexpected directions, the predictability of the GOP nominating process is highly problematic, and any definitive statements about how it will turn out are not to be trusted.

The “Ron-Paul-is-a-racist-loon-and-conspiracy-theorist” argument – This is the last resort of the Republican Establishment, as represented by the punkish Lowry and the oleaginous Ponnuru, one the editor of National Review and the other an associate editor of that bastion of neoconservative orthodoxy...MORE...LINK

A regulatory model for "too big to fail," federal government-connected U.S. banks?

2011-12-20T16:35:00.000-08:00

From:
Chancellor carves up RBS in bid to create ‘safer bank’
(Scotsman.com) -- by DAVID MADDOX --

CHANCELLOR George Osborne has signalled the end of Royal Bank of Scotland as a major international player and unveiled reforms to the financial services sector to prevent another banking collapse.

The Scottish bank was told yesterday that it would have to get rid of more than half of its international investment operations and instead focus on the “UK domestic market”, concentrating on high street services for consumers and small and medium sized businesses.

The announcement came as the Chancellor laid out the government’s final response to the banking inquiry chaired by Sir John Vickers aimed at protecting the UK financial services system.

Mr Osborne said RBS needed to go even further than the bank’s chief executive Stephen Hester had suggested – and it is understood his announcement yesterday came as a surprise to the bank’s board.

Just a few years ago RBS was building an international empire and was one of the biggest banks in the world, but it was laid low by the purchase of the Dutch bank ABN Amro in late 2007, just before the credit crunch hit.

The Chancellor said that as the government owned more than 80 per cent of the bank it could dictate terms. He pointed out that its value to the taxpayer is £27 billion less than when it was bailed out in 2009.

In wide ranging reforms, Mr Osborne announced a series of measures including forcing banks to ring-fence their high street operations so that any collapse in investment operations – sometimes referred to as “casino banking” – would in future not hit savings and accounts.

It will also become much harder for customers to take out mortgages, as stricter rules are brought in on borrowing, effectively ending the prospect of the return of the 100 per cent mortgage.

And banks will be required to hold equity capital of 10 per cent – some three percentage points higher than the level proposed in the international Basel III agreement – to act as a “cushion” against potential losses.

Mr Osborne said that changes to be in place by September 2013 would enable individuals and small businesses to switch banks swiftly and easily, as part of a drive to boost competition in the sector.

The move on the future of RBS puts under threat more than half the 18,900 investment jobs at RBS, although most of these are in London and none are in Scotland.

The Chancellor said RBS needed to concentrate on becoming a “stronger, safer bank, able to maintain lending to businesses and consumers”.

There is a question mark over whether RBS will have to sell its profitable Citizens retail bank in the US – if it has to concentrate on the UK domestic market.

Mr Osborne yesterday told MPs: “Our objective is to make sure what happened in Britain never happens again, that taxpayers are protected and that customers get a better service.

“We want to separate high street banking from investment banking to protect the British economy, protect British tax-payers and make sure that nothing is too big to fail.”...MORE...LINK

The most vicous and serpentine racists -- the wealthy crypto-racist and warmongering elites -- try to smear Ron Paul as racist

2011-12-20T12:59:00.000-08:00

From:
Busted! Ron Paul racist rant caught on tape! OMG! OMG!
(YouTube.com) -- by withmyfeetupon

Liberal establishment enraged that Ron Paul is perfectly positioned to snatch the populist and anti-war vote from Obama

2011-12-20T10:41:00.000-08:00

From:
Paul’s populist Iran ideas as extremist
(Mondoweiss) -- by Philip Weiss --

On Hardball last night, Howard Fineman said that Ron Paul's views on Iran "would seem to put him outside the mainstream" of American politics. And this is how Fineman characterized Paul's views: "Iran being justified in getting a nuclear weapon."

This is an effort to marginalize the best American political thinking about Iran, and a misrepresentation of Paul's views. Paul said that he could understand why Iran would want nuclear weapons because if you have 'em then you don't get invaded, and right now we're bombing countries all around Iran. And he said that there is no hard evidence that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons.

And most of all, he called on the U.S. to exercise diplomacy as John F. Kennedy, a Democratic president, did during the Cuban missile crisis. We had 30,000 missiles pointed at us through the Cold War without attacking the Soviet Union. People are overreacting to these threats.

Howard Fineman is a liberal Establishment Democrat. And in very much the way that the neoconservative Republican David Brooks is doing (not to mention the Republican Jewish Coalition), Fineman is determined to redline Ron Paul as an extremist. When actually Ron Paul is speaking to a highly reasonable sentiment in the American people, who are the ones whose children are sacrificed to war. This is called populism-- a progressive understanding among the people. The wisdom of populism here is that neoconservative foreign policy is crazy. That same populist wisdom lifted Obama 4 years ago, though Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman now seem determined to forget as much. When Ron Paul says his message has appeal to Democrats and Independents, he is right...LINK

Rumors of armed Chinese troops stomping around Texas vs. actuality of armed Globalist troops stomping around the Mideast

2011-12-20T09:56:00.001-08:00

From:
Armed Chinese Troops in Texas!
(YouTube.com) -- by Revolution PAC --

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Chris Moore comments:

It's funny how rumors of Chinese troops coming to the U.S. to stomp around get the patriots all riled about sovereignty, but the actuality of U.S. troops stomping around the Mideast for fascist elements of Wall Street, international Jewish bankers, and the Globalist agenda don't bother some of them at all.

A people too stiff-necked and self-absorbed to see the log in its own eye ends up either hated or enslaved. That's Christianity 101.

It's time to beat back the money-worshipping, State Capitalist Mammonism and Judeo-Christian Zionism that has overtaken the U.S. establishment, and replace it with the safe and sane Greco-Christian tradition that is the basis of Western civilization.

Put the rootless cosmopolitan rubes and the Judeo-Christian Zionist hicks out to pasture, where they belong. They're simply too insatiably greedy, particularistic, insular, intellectually root bound, and outright ignorant to run a global power, let alone an Empire.