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Sunday, March 31, 2013

Bush and JFK assassination...

Did George H.W. Bush coordinate a JFK hit team?

by Richard Hooke (with Jim Fetzer)


This is not the first time and surely will not be the last that George H.W. Bush, former Director of the CIA and the 41st President of the United States, has been implicated in the death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, our 35th president. In an earlier study, for example, “Was George H.W. Bush involved in the assassination of JFK?”, John Hankey and I both address this question, where he provides a great deal of evidence supporting a role for GHWB in the Dealey Plaza turkey shoot. In this new study, Richard Hooke substantiates that claim and advances additional proof of his own. I believe that they are right.

That GHWB knew Malcolm “Mac” Wallace from Yale is especially stunning. ”Mac” Wallace was LBJ’s personal hit man and murdered as many as a dozen persons for Lyndon, including one of his own sisters, who was talking too much about his business to allow her to continue to speak. There is substantial proof that LBJ was involved in the assassination, where his life had been dedicated to becoming “the president of all the people”. As Phil Nelson, LBJ: Mastermind of JFK’s Assassination (2nd revised edition, 2011) documents, he was relentless in its pursuit. Madeleine Duncan Brown, Texas in the Morning (1997), Barr McClellan, Blood, Money & Power (2003), and Billy Sol Estes, A Texas Legend (2004), have also identified LBJ as the pivotal player, which has been confirmed by E. Howard Hunt, “Last Confessions” (2007), who identified LBJ, Cord Meyer, David Atlee Phillips, William Harvey and David Sanchez Morales as in “the chain of command”.

Even Jack Ruby, who was in the position to know, asserted that, if someone else had been Vice President, the assassination would never have occurred. McClellan concluded that Texas oil men, such as Clint Murchison and H. L. Hunt, had provided financing for the assassination in order to preserve the oil depletion allowance at 27.5%, which remained unchanged under LBJ. I had over 100 conversations with Madeleine Duncan Brown, who began an affair with Lyndon in 1948 and bore him a son, Steven, in 1950 (who was not his only child out of wedlock but was his only male offspring), who told me about their renderzvous at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, TX, on New Year’s Eve, only six weeks after the assassination, when she confronted him with rumors that he had been involved, since no one stood to gain more personally, whereupon Lyndon blew up and told her that the CIA and the oil boys had decided that JFK had to be taken out. And that Mac Wallace was involved is not in serious doubt...


Read the rest here:
http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com/2013/03/did-george-hw-bush-coordinate-jfk-hit.html

Public Education has become indoctrination and distraction...

Former CNN Reporter (Amber Lyon) threatened & silenced by CNN reveals CNN Lies & War Propaganda...

FOX News Thinks Rand Paul and the Constitution are More To The Left Than Obama...

Obamacare's Broken Promises...

F**k the IMF...


Fox News reveals IMF wants a $1.40 tax more per gallon in U.S, for world 'climate control' - Mentions same thing Jim Willie wrote about "West dying, East Rising"

The IMF wants to tax the U.S. citizens $1.40 per gallon for 'the climate'. Fox News had Charles Payne on the show to talk about it.

What is amazing he was able to get some truth out, in the fact that the West is being left behind. He said the East is rising up and doing excellent.

This goes in exactly with what Jim Willie wrote about on 3/29/13 and gave a lot of information of what the East is doing and how they are rising up and the U.S. and Europe is dying. Jim put a lot of detail of what is happening and how in his article.

I highly advise everyone to read it to have a better understanding of what is happening and will happen. I was able to interview Jim on 3/26/13 about Cyprus and the Eurasian Trade. Here is the first paragraph of Jim's article on Goldseek:

An unstoppable sequence of events has been put into motion finally. The pressure has been building for months. Some themes are plainly evident, except to those who wear rose colored glasses in the US Dome of Perception. The USTreasury Bond will be brought home to the US and British banks, where it will choke its bankers, then be devalued for survival reasons, after a painful isolation. The Chinese and Russians will conspire to finance the Eurasian Trade Zone corridor foundation with USTBonds, held in reserve, put to usage. The British will play a very unusual role, selling out the United States in order to be squires to the Eastern Duo. The process has begun; it cannot be stopped. The events are already being grossly misinterpreted and minimized in the US press, where devoted lapdogs, artistic swindlers, and creative writers prevail. The Paradigm Shift eastward is showing its next face, with a truly massive trade zone for cooperation and reduced cost overhead as the giant foundation. The Untied States for all of its past hegemony and devious manipulations and vicious attacks, will be excluded. The British will assist in the exclusion in order to avoid the Third World themselves. The following blueprint is the result of years of planning, with steady information and hints and confirmations by at least two Hat Trick Letter sources. The sunset of the USDollar has a blueprint. As a personal embroidery, let me state that this article is the most important the Jackass has ever written. Let it be taken seriously for its grave somber message.

Here is the video segment, revealing the IMF wants a gas tax and how the East is rising and flourishing while the West is dying. They obviously are going to suck money from the people anyway they can, from stealing right out of the bank accounts to taxing us in every way.




Link:
http://sherriequestioningall.blogspot.com/2013/03/fox-news-reveals-imf-wants-140-tax-more.html

OOPS!!! Pray for global warming this fine Easter day...

Scientist predicts earth is heading for another Ice Age

AS Arctic Britain prepares to shiver for at least another month, a leading scientist today predicted the world was heading for another Ice Age.


Giles Sheldrick

Incredibly, British Summer Time officially starts tomorrow but millions of brassed off Brits pining for warmth will have to endure freezing temperatures and biting winds until May.

The misery will continue with daytime temperatures struggling to reach a bracing 5C (41F). The only ray of sunshine, forecasters said, is that it will stay dry.

As if the outlook wasn’t bleak enough already, meteorologists believe the shivering start to 2013 has been the coldest in more than 200 years.

More worryingly, the combination of sub-zero temperatures and heavy snow experienced across much of the country recently could be the prelude to a new Ice Age that will begin next year and last for 200 years.

Russian scientist Dr Habibullo Abdussamatov, of the St Petersburg Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory, painted the Doomsday scenario saying the recent inclement weather simply proved we were heading towards a frozen planet.

Dr Abdussamatov believes Earth was on an “unavoidable advance towards a deep temperature drop”. The last big freeze, known as the Little Ice Age, was between 1650 and 1850.

Today he said: “The last global decrease of temperature (the most cold phase of the Little Ice Age) was observed in Europe, North America and Greenland.

“All channels in the Netherlands were frozen, glaciers were on the advance in Greenland and people were forced to leave their settlements, inhabited for several centuries.

“The Thames river in London and Seine in Paris were frozen over every year. Humanity has always been prospering during the warm periods and suffering during the cold ones. The climate has never been and will never be stable.”

The miserable weather since the turn of the year has been blamed on two episodes of high pressure.

A poorly positioned jet stream means ice cold temperatures and the continuing risk of snow showers across the north and east.

Almost all of the UK can expect a continuation of night frost, which will turn severe at times.

April is forecast to be a drier than average month in the north and east, slightly wetter to the south and west but it is expected to be one of the oldest on record.

Forecaster Jonathan Powell, of Vantage Weather Services, said: “My goodness haven’t we suffered over the winter, but if people are after sunshine in the next month my advice would be to head for the airport.

“It is going to remain dry at least, but we will all need to remember to pull on an extra layer of clothing before stepping outside.

“May could well be our saving grace because at the moment it’s looking a lot better but I am sorry to say after that we are heading down the same route as last year.”

Numbing temperatures of -11C (12F) last night Friday broke the previous coldest Easter with some describing the past few months as “Britain’s lost spring”...

Read more here:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/science-technology/387971/Scientist-predicts-earth-is-heading-for-another-Ice-Age

Fusion center spying: For your own safety of course...

Arkansas Fusion Center Admits It Spies On “Antigovernment” Groups

Kurt Nimmo


The federal government and its “partners” on the state and local level are not utilizing the high-tech police state apparatus locked in place in the years following the 9/11 attacks to spy on al-Qaeda terrorists. It was built to keep tabs on Americans exercising their First Amendment rights, Americans the national security state considers an existential threat.

During an interview earlier this week, the director of the Arkansas State Fusion Center, Richard Davis, said the fusion center in Little Rock does not waste its time surveilling al-Qaeda and other supposed foreign terror threats.

“We focus a little more on that, domestic terrorism and certain groups that are anti-government,” Davis told nwahomepage.com. “We want to kind of take a look at that and receive that information.”




“I do what I do because of what happened on 9/11,” Davis added. “There’s this urge and this feeling inside that you want to do something, and this is a perfect opportunity for me.”

In other words, a “perfect opportunity” to violate the constitutional rights of millions of Americans.

Naturally, this comes as no surprise. In 2009, we reported on a Missouri fusion center report that described supporters of presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr as “militia” influenced terrorists.

The now infamous MIAC (Missouri Information Analysis Center) report instructed Missouri police to be on the lookout for supporters displaying bumper stickers and other paraphernalia associated with the Constitutional, Campaign for Liberty, and Libertarian parties.

Last October, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said the Department of Homeland Security spent up to $1.4 billion funding fusion centers plagued by abuse and secrecy.

Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the panel, said the government has “opted not to inform Congress or the public of serious problems plaguing its fusion centers and broader intelligence efforts. When this subcommittee requested documents that would help it identify these issues, the department initially resisted turning them over, arguing that they were protected by privilege, too sensitive to share, were protected by confidentiality agreements, or did not exist at all. The American people deserve better. I hope this report will help generate the reforms that will help keep our country safe.”




Despite criticism in Congress, it doesn’t look like fusion centers are going away anytime soon. A Department of Homeland Security white paper on budget recommendations for 2013 placed a strong emphasis on maintaining and growing fusion centers.

“The Budget continues to build State and local analytic capabilities through the National Network of Fusion Centers, with a focus on strengthening cross-Department and cross-government interaction with fusion centers,” the DHS paper states.


Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/arkansas-fusion-center-admits-it-spies-on-%E2%80%9Cantigovernment%E2%80%9D-groups.html

"The Democratic Party, with all of its proclamations of humanism and respect for civil liberties, is a perfect example. How quickly did the rank and file Democrats turn away from their anti-war, anti-torture, anti-banker, anti-surveillance, anti-tyranny stance once Barack Obama, a self proclaimed Democrat, was placed in office? Very quickly!"

Big Government: An Unnecessary Evil That Should Be Abolished

Brandon Smith


There are two types of people in this world; those who worship the ideal of centralized command authority, and those who do not. Those who value freedom regardless of risk or pain, and those who value slavery in a desperate bid to avoid risk and pain. When I consider the ultimate folly of man, in the end I look to the meek and unquestioning masses who strive to avoid risk, because it is they who always end up feeding the machines of war, despair, and tyranny. The power thirsty halls of elitism surely instigate and manipulate the tides of this wretched ocean of quivering souls, but ultimately, the weak-hearted and weak minded make all terrible conquests possible.

They live by the rule of fear, and their fear drives them to seek control; control of their environment, control of others, and by extension they believe, control of the future. They attempt to mitigate their overwhelming fear by containing the world and sterilizing it of everything wild, untamed, and unknown. They dream of a society of pure predictability, and zero responsibility. They are willing to sacrifice almost anything to attain this position of artificial comfort.

The concept of “big government” appeals to such people for many reasons…

Government in most cases is nothing but an abstraction. It is merely a tool that serves the interests of a particular group of people at any given time. Modern politics is an expression of the foolish cat fight between factions of people to decide who gets to wield the weapon of government and impose their ideology on the rest of us. At least, that’s what it almost always devolves into. The great illusion of the system, though, is that ANY group of average people ever actually wields any power. The truth is, big governments are always operated by very small and exclusive clubs of root beneficiaries out of the sight of the population.

The smaller this dominant group becomes, the more corrupt and criminal the government generally is. A government reaches a state of despotism whenever its functions are twisted for the sake of an elite few to the detriment of the common man, and when it ignores the natural inborn rights of the individual for the sake of some fabricated collective . If one were to closely examine the birth of every iron-fisted oligarchy throughout history, they would find a cyclical pattern of centralization; the removal of checks and balances, the removal of legitimate public involvement in the political process, a dependent and infantized citizenry, and the rise of a “bureaucratic class” which regards itself as superior and born to lead. All steps taking place within Western societies today.

Unfortunately, the masses tend to view big government as an inevitability of life; as a natural extension of culture. Rarely if ever do they ask what tangible purpose it serves. Are they really getting what they want out of their government? Or, is the government taking what it wants from them?

I have always found the worshipful attitude that some citizens ascribe to government simultaneously fascinating and disturbing, because these people are not bowing down to a wise and benevolent entity. Rather, they are bowing down to their own delusions of what they believe that entity to be. The most dangerous and insidious of governments present themselves as a kind of social vanity mirror. They allow the citizenry to project their collective desires, biases, shortcomings, and fears, and reflect back an image that entices and placates the majority. The lies and manipulations of big government are designed to satiate our basest fantasies, but what we see as a concrete edifice of political and legal might, in the end, is a mirage mired in the fog of our own naïve expectations.

So, the question again arises; if the structure of big government is built upon deceit and misrepresentation, what tangible purpose does it really serve?

The answer is no purpose…at least, no purpose that elevates and enriches the public at large.

Big government is not a “necessary evil”. It is just evil. Like the ring of Sauron, it lures in the weak with promises of power, but this power is a ruse. Each side of our false left/right paradigm, Democrat and Republican, thinks that if only THEY were the bearers of the ring they would “finally use it for good”. But once in their possession, they are overtaken, overwhelmed, and corrupted by personal temptation.

The Democratic Party, with all of its proclamations of humanism and respect for civil liberties, is a perfect example. How quickly did the rank and file Democrats turn away from their anti-war, anti-torture, anti-banker, anti-surveillance, anti-tyranny stance once Barack Obama, a self proclaimed Democrat, was placed in office? Very quickly!

And what about the common Republican? How many of them utterly abandoned their ideals of limited government, reduced spending, Constitutional rights, and Christian understanding as soon as Bush and the Neo-Con regime was installed? Most of them!

And when all is said and done, who has reaped profits and gained dominance during both disastrous administrations? The corporate high priests and international banking cartels, not the oblivious participants of the fake political theater. Yet, a masochistic cycle of misplaced trust in the system on the part of the masses continues…

If these latest signs of big government corruption aren’t enough to make the public question the validity of the establishment, I’m not sure what will…

The Rape Of Cyprus

Even in the face of unmitigated government theft, I still hear the occasional rationalization of the Cyprus debacle. Defenders of the bailout measures (which the EU demanded) allowing the confiscation of private citizen savings to pay off government mismanaged debt, argue two things:

1) The banks that were targeted contained “Russian blood money” and hidden funds, so confiscation really amounted to a “punishment of rich criminals” rather than the Cyprus public.

2) It is “better” that the citizens go along with the confiscation of a percentage of their accounts, rather than lose everything through collapse.

Just to be clear, any sizable Russian funds being stored in Cyprus were removed before the bailout measures were instituted. Therefore, the assertion that such people were “punished” is a lie and a distraction. The Russian scapegoat was merely being promoted by global financiers and political elites in order to con people around the world (not just those in Cyprus) to accept the concept of government theft of private funds as being “moral” under “certain extraneous circumstances”. When a government wants you to set aside your conscience in support of an immoral action that serves their interests, they will almost always conjure a false villain and engineered consequences for you to direct your fear and anger at. Once they can convince you to abandon your own principles to smite an imaginary enemy or avoid a manufactured threat, even if only one time, it will be much easier for them to convince you again a second time.

Large and corrupt governments love to use the magic of the false choice. For instance, “…it is better to sacrifice some of your money and your principles to the establishment than it is to live through total collapse of the nation…” This false choice process, though, never ends. The offending government will demand more property and more freedom from the citizenry everyday while constantly warning that if we do not submit, the alternative will be “far worse”.

The truth is, Cyprus is not the issue. What the disaster in Cyprus reflects, however, concerns us all. It is a moment of precedence; an action which sets the stage for the final destruction of the idea of private property. It dissolves one of the final barriers to total government control. Governments and elitists have always stolen from the public through misspent taxation and rampant inflation, but with Cyprus, we see a renewed feudalistic paradigm. The EU and the banking hierarchy are sending a message to the Western world: You are now their personal emergency fund, and nothing you own is actually yours anymore.

When an institution confiscates property and capital at will from a subdued and frightened populace without consent, they are essentially exploiting the labor of that populace. In any culture or language, this is called “slavery”.

Private Corporations Openly Dictating The Law

As most in the Liberty Movement know, the seeds of Fascism germinate in the soil where the corporate world meets the political world. This is one of the primary reasons why we will stop at nothing to eliminate entities like the Federal Reserve; a privately run banking cartel that mingles with government yet answers to no one, including Congress or the people. The Fed has existed since 1913, and has dominated the value and circulation of our currency ever since. However, today, they are taking on new powers…

As a part of the recent bailout bonanza and the legislation surrounding it, the Fed has begun writing operational policy for other private banking institutions:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/26/us-citigroup-moneylaundering-idUSBRE92P0OO20130326

The transition has been subtle but the implications are dangerous. The Fed is becoming a regulatory body with expanding influence outside of the electoral process. It is preparing the ground for other private central banks to become fully unaccountable governing structures. Right now, they are limited to the banking sector, but eventually, this dynamic will poison every aspect of the financial world until every economic decision will be made without any oversight from the public.

Moving in a slightly different direction, the Federal Government is beginning to establish law which removes the ability of the public to have any means of redress against particular corporations. The ‘Monsanto Protection Act’ hidden within the pages of the HR 933 spending bill creates special circumstances that protect the GMO producer from litigation and public examination over the dangerous genetic products it markets. This legislation, in essence, builds a coalition between Monsanto and the government, and even allows Monsanto in some cases to dictate what the government can and cannot do when dealing with GMO’s.

The Obama Administration’s support of this bill should be a shock to any environmentally inclined Democrat, and any Democrat who is still willing to defend Obama after learning of this legislation, in my opinion, is a lost cause.

This move on the part of our government is striking because of its open criminality. It shows that we have entered a new stage of the totalitarian process; one that will invariably lead us to catastrophe.

Legislation By Special Interest Group

In the halls of big government, politicians do not produce major legislation. Rather, bureaucrats and think tanks fashion policy while elected officials serve as mouthpieces and middlemen.

How often do we discover after the passage of particularly nefarious pieces of legislation that the politicians who voted for them NEVER read the bills themselves?

This past week, sources within NY governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration claimed that he didn’t actually read the NY Safe Act before championing it, and blamed the vast mistakes and unconstitutional oversteps of the bill on Mayor Bloomberg and the Brady Center.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/gov_faking_care_of_business_execs_9uIcEq5lJPk96ayylaRAGL

Now, I do not believe that Cuomo was not aware of the implications of the Safe Act, even if he didn’t read the bill. But I do believe that the bill was drafted purely by special interest groups like the Brady Center without any oversight from actual state legislators, who then passed it overnight without a second thought.

In a big government system, legislative wrangling is non-stop. A bureaucracy thrives on the endless introduction of new laws and new restrictions, and so it makes perfect sense that political representatives, who now act merely as mascots, never have the time to read all the paperwork. Why would they read it, when they are no longer making decisions on such policies anyway? All they have to do is vote how they are told to vote by their handlers, and trust that they will be protected by the establishment from public anger.

Legislation by proxy is rampant in our government today, and it begs us to consider this – If our government has become so oversized and complex that our elected leaders can no longer oversee the actual writing of legislation and must use private think tanks to write it for them, perhaps we should cut the system down until their work load is manageable. The alternative is a legal and political structure that is engineered entirely by obscure interest groups with an agenda, and this is highly unacceptable.

Complete Disregard For Individual Rights

In the evolution of big government, there comes a point at which the oligarchy has attained enough power that it feels safe in admitting its true intentions. Usually, this is done in the name of the “greater good”. Sometimes, they don’t even try to sugar coat it.

This past week, NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg in an unguarded moment stated the underlying philosophy behind the impositions of government control over the people. When questioned about the Constitutionality of the growing drone surveillance grid in American skies, Bloomberg had this to say:

“Everybody wants their privacy, but I don’t know how you’re going to maintain it. It’s just we’re going into a different world, uncharted, and, like it or not, what people can do, what governments can do, is different. And you can to some extent control, but you can’t keep the tides from coming in.”

“The argument against using automation, it’s this craziness– oh, it’s Big Brother. Get used to it.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bloomberg-new-york-eventually-surveillance-city-article-1.1296103

And there you have it. The new age (for Bloomberg and big government elites like him) is a place in which government is separate and above the people. The government does not exist to serve the citizenry; the citizenry exists to serve the government. Privacy is a privilege that governments can take anytime they wish. Citizens, being slaves, should not expect such privileges. And, this subjugated nightmare world is a place that we must accept as a natural extension of progress. Big Brother is the future, so grow up and “get used to it”…

I will not be “getting used to it”, and neither will millions of Americans like me. We’ll tear the whole monstrosity down first.

Institutions of law and order are supposed to reflect the highest inherent principles of humanity and defend those principles regardless of the nature of the times. Honor and conscience do not suddenly become obsolete simply because danger looms, or catastrophe strikes.

Big government bastardizes the original intent of the founders, who formed a small subservient central federal structure to fulfill one purpose – as a protector of the natural freedoms of the population. The federal system was never meant to have any domestic power beyond this task, nor should it. Today, as we have shown over and over again, the centralized political behemoth we live under is absolutely unnecessary and completely destructive to the freedom and prosperity of the culture it was originally tasked to defend. It can and must be dissolved, and it is time for average Americans to deeply and seriously ponder this option rather than ignorantly assume that because it exists, it should exist. Otherwise, like a weaponized cancer, it will devour what is left of the healthy fabric of our society and destroy whatever good remains within us.


Link:
http://www.alt-market.com/articles/1417-big-government-an-unnecessary-evil-that-should-be-abolished

Saturday, March 30, 2013

ANIMAL HOUSE: How To Defend A Banker...

OOPS!!! That's because it is getting colder because it is getting warmer...


Twenty-year hiatus in rising temperatures has climate scientists puzzled

by: Graham Lloyd, Environment Editor


DEBATE about the reality of a two-decade pause in global warming and what it means has made its way from the sceptical fringe to the mainstream.

In a lengthy article this week, The Economist magazine said if climate scientists were credit-rating agencies, then climate sensitivity - the way climate reacts to changes in carbon-dioxide levels - would be on negative watch but not yet downgraded.

Another paper published by leading climate scientist James Hansen, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says the lower than expected temperature rise between 2000 and the present could be explained by increased emissions from burning coal.

For Hansen the pause is a fact, but it's good news that probably won't last.

International Panel on Climate Change chairman Rajendra Pachauri recently told The Weekend Australian the hiatus would have to last 30 to 40 years "at least" to break the long-term warming trend.
Digital Pass $1 for first 28 Days

But the fact that global surface temperatures have not followed the expected global warming pattern is now widely accepted.

Research by Ed Hawkins of University of Reading shows surface temperatures since 2005 are already at the low end of the range projections derived from 20 climate models and if they remain flat, they will fall outside the models' range within a few years.

"The global temperature standstill shows that climate models are diverging from observations," says David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

"If we have not passed it already, we are on the threshold of global observations becoming incompatible with the consensus theory of climate change," he says.

Whitehouse argues that whatever has happened to make temperatures remain constant requires an explanation because the pause in temperature rise has occurred despite a sharp increase in global carbon emissions.

The Economist says the world has added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010, about one-quarter of all the carbon dioxide put there by humans since 1750. This mismatch between rising greenhouse gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now, The Economist article says.

"But it does not mean global warming is a delusion."

The fact is temperatures between 2000 and 2010 are still almost 1C above their level in the first decade of the 20th century.

"The mismatch might mean that for some unexplained reason there has been a temporary lag between more carbon dioxide and higher temperatures in 2000-2010.

"Or it might mean that the 1990s, when temperatures were rising fast, was the anomalous period."

The magazine explores a range of possible explanations including higher emissions of sulphur dioxide, the little understood impact of clouds and the circulation of heat into the deep ocean.

But it also points to an increasing body of research that suggests it may be that climate is responding to higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide in ways that had not been properly understood before.

"This possibility, if true, could have profound significance both for climate science and for environmental and social policy," the article says.

There are now a number of studies that predict future temperature rises as a result of man-made carbon dioxide emissions at well below the IPCC best estimate of about 3C over the century.

The upcoming IPCC report is expected to lift the maximum possible temperature increase to 6C.

The Research Council of Norway says in a non-peer-reviewed paper that the best estimate concludes there is a 90 per cent probability that doubling CO2 emissions will increase temperatures by only 1.2C to 2.9C, the most likely figure being 1.9C.

Another study based on the way the climate behaved about 20,000 years ago has given a best guess of 2.3C.

Other forecasts, accepted for publication, have reanalysed work cited by the IPCC but taken account of more recent temperature data and given a figure of between 1C and 3C.

The Economist says understanding which estimate is true is vital to getting the best response.

"If as conventional wisdom has it, global temperatures could rise by 3C or more in response to a doubling of emissions, then the correct response would be the one to which most of the world pays lip service; rein in the warming and the greenhouse gases causing it," the article says.

"If, however, temperatures are likely to rise by only 2 degrees Celsius in response to a doubling of carbon emissions (and if the likelihood of a 6 degrees Celsius is trivial) the calculation might change," it says.

"Perhaps the world should seek to adjust to (rather than stop) the greenhouse-gas splurge.

"There is no point buying earthquake insurance if you don't live in an earthquake zone."

According to The Economist, "given the hiatus in warming and all the new evidence, a small reduction in estimates of climate sensitivity would seem to be justified." On face value, Hansen agrees the slowdown in global temperature rises can be seen as "good news".

But he is not ready to recalculate the Faustian bargain that weighs the future cost to humanity of continued carbon dioxide emissions.

Hansen argues that the impact of human carbon dioxide emissions has been masked by the sharp increase in coal use, primarily in China and India.

Increased particulate and nitrogen pollution has worked in the opposite direction of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

Another paper published in Geophysical Research Letters on research from the University of Colorado Boulder found small volcanoes, not more coal power stations in China, were responsible for the slowdown in global warming.

But this did not mean that climate change was not a problem.

"Emissions from volcanic gases go up and down, helping to cool or heat the planet, while greenhouse gases from human activity just continue to go up," author Ryan Neely says.

Hansen's bottom line is that increased short-term masking of greenhouse gas warming by fossil fuel particulate and nitrogen pollution represents a "doubling down" of the Faustian bargain, an increase in the stakes.

"The more we allow the Faustian debt to build, the more unmanageable the eventual consequences will be," he says.


Link:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/twenty-year-hiatus-in-rising-temperatures-has-climate-scientists-puzzled/story-e6frg6z6-1226609140980

"In America, everyone has the "equal right" to kill, torture, maim, and otherwise abuse those who dare defy the wishes of our wise and benevolent rulers. This is what happens when egalitarianism displaces liberty at the core of the American psyche."

The Militarization of American Life

From women in combat to the invasion of the sciences

by Justin Raimondo


As the American Empire transforms itself from a constitutional republic into a social democratic monstrosity – where everyone is "equal," and no one is free – egalitarianism is the fuel that runs the engine of imperialism. A perfect example is the recent announcement that the US military is getting with the times and allowing women in combat. What’s pretty disheartening is that not even the woman’s-place-is-in-the-home Neanderthals of the "traditionalist" camp even bothered to oppose this: for them, a more efficient war machine is much more important than any attachment to such "archaic" ideas as the men do the fighting while the women wait at home.

This innovation was followed up pretty quickly by a new proposal: that as long as we allow gays in the military we ought to allow transsexuals in, too. After all, the usual objections to women in combat don’t apply to them: they have the genetic makeup of men, and the sexual equipment of women (or as close as surgical science can conjure) – so why not?

In America, everyone has the "equal right" to kill, torture, maim, and otherwise abuse those who dare defy the wishes of our wise and benevolent rulers. This is what happens when egalitarianism displaces liberty at the core of the American psyche.

Women, gays, transsexuals, and presumably dwarves afflicted with Tourette’s Syndrome – all have an "equal right" to commit mass murder. Did the leftists who brought this Political Correctness down on our heads ever dream of the uses to which it would be put? And now that they’ve "grown up" and made their peace with the Empire, do they even care? Of course they don’t. All they care about is the great god Equality, on whose altar every value they every pretended to hold is being slaughtered.

It isn’t just them, however: militarism is a disease that spreads without effort, once it’s implanted in the body politic. It quite naturally infects the sciences, what with the diversion of scientific and technical talent that might have gone into productive civilian projects, and I’m not just talking about the hard sciences. Witness the co-opting of the "soft" science of anthropology by the same people who brought us the war in Afghanistan and the "COIN" strategy that was supposed to give us victory. These folks have created the so-called Human Terrain System, which seeks to utilize anthropology as a weapon in counterinsurgency warfare. Billions are being poured into "scientific research" on how best to subdue recalcitrant natives out in the colonies: when you’re talking about the military-industrial complex, it isn’t just Lockheed-Martin and Boeing.

The marriage of science and militarism is nothing new, but there are some resistors. As Inside Higher Education reports:

"The eminent University of Chicago anthropologist Marshall Sahlins resigned from the National Academy of Sciences on Friday, citing his objections to its military partnerships and to its electing as a member Napoleon Chagnon, a long-controversial anthropologist who is back in the news thanks to the publication of his new book, Noble Savages." [Hat tip: Jordan Bloom at The American Conservative]

You don’t have to be an anthropologist to get in on the action: yes, you too can access via live webcast the April 3 Pentagon/NAS "workshop," "New Directions in Assessing Individuals and Groups,"and hear the keynote address by Frederick Vollrath, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness and Force Management. I’ll bet those anthropologists are making out like bandits!


Read the rest here:
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2013/03/26/the-militarization-of-american-life/

Fractional reserve theft...

The Cyprus Deal and the Unraveling of Fractional-Reserve Banking

by Joseph T. Salerno


The “Cyprus deal” as it has been widely referred to in the media may mark the next to last act in the the slow motion collapse of fractional-reserve banking that began with the implosion of the savings-and-loan industry in the U.S. in the late 1980s. This trend continued with the currency crises in Russia, Mexico, East Asia and Argentina in the 1990s in which fractional-reserve banking played a decisive role. The unraveling of fractional-reserve banking became visible even to the average depositor during the financial meltdown of 2008 that ignited bank runs on some of the largest and most venerable financial institutions in the world. The final collapse was only averted by the multi-trillion dollar bailout of U.S. and foreign banks by the Federal Reserve.

Even more than the unprecedented financial crisis of 2008, however, recent events in Cyprus may have struck the mortal blow to fractional-reserve banking. For fractional reserve banking can only exist for as long as the depositors have complete confidence that regardless of the financial woes that befall the bank entrusted with their “deposits,” they will always be able to withdraw them on demand at par in currency, the ultimate cash of any banking system. Ever since World War Two governmental deposit insurance, backed up by the money-creating powers of the central bank, was seen as the unshakable guarantee that warranted such confidence. In effect, fractional-reserve banking was perceived as 100-percent banking by depositors, who acted as if their money was always “in the bank” thanks to the ability of central banks to conjure up money out of thin air (or in cyberspace). Perversely the various crises involving fractional-reserve banking that struck time and again since the late 1980s only reinforced this belief among depositors, because troubled banks and thrift institutions were always bailed out with alacrity – especially the largest and least stable. Thus arose the “too-big-to-fail doctrine.” Under this doctrine, uninsured bank depositors and bondholders were generally made whole when large banks failed, because it was widely understood that the confidence in the entire banking system was a frail and evanescent thing that would break and completely dissipate as a result of the failure of even a single large institution.

Getting back to the Cyprus deal, admittedly it is hardly ideal from a free-market point of view. The solution in accord with free markets would not involve restricting deposit withdrawals, imposing fascistic capital controls on domestic residents and foreign investors, and dragooning taxpayers in the rest of the Eurozone into contributing to the bailout to the tune of 10 billion euros. Nonetheless, the deal does convey a salutary message to bank depositors and creditors the world over. It does so by forcing previously untouchable senior bondholders and uninsured depositors in the Cypriot banks to bear part of the cost of the bailout. The bondholders of the two largest banks will be wiped out and it is reported that large depositors (i.e. those holding uninsured accounts exceeding 100,000 euros) at the Laiki Bank may also be completely wiped out, losing up to 4.2 billion euros, while large depositors at the Bank of Cyprus will lose between 30 and 60 percent of their deposits. Small depositors in both banks, who hold insured accounts of up to 100,000 euros, would retain the full value of their deposits.

The happy result will be that depositors, both insured and uninsured, in Europe and throughout the world will become much more cautious or even suspicious in dealing with fractional-reserve banks. They will be poised to grab their money and run at the slightest sign or rumor of instability. This will induce banks to radically alter the sources of the funds they raise to finance loans and investments, moving away from deposit and toward equity and bond financing. As was reported this week, this is already expected by many analysts:

One potential spillover from yesterday’s agreement is the knock-on effects for bank funding, analysts said. Banks typically fund themselves with some combination of deposits, equity, senior and subordinate notes and covered bonds, which are backed by a pool of high-quality assets that stay on the lender’s balance sheet.

The consequences of the Cyprus bailout could be that banks will be more likely to use contingent convertible bonds – known as CoCos – to raise money as their ability to encumber assets by issuing covered bonds reaches regulatory limits, said Chris Bowie at Ignis Asset Management Ltd. in London.

“We’d expect to see some deposit flight and a shift in funding towards a combination of covered bonds, real equity and quasi-equity,” said Bowie, who is head of credit portfolio management at Ignis, which oversees about $110 billion.

If this indeed occurs it will be a significant move toward a free-market financial system in which the radical mismatching of the maturities of assets and liabilities in the case of demand deposits is eliminated once and for all. A few more banking crises in the Eurozone – especially one in which insured depositors are made to participate in the so-called “bail-in” – will likely cause the faith in government deposit insurance to completely evaporate and with it confidence in fractional-reserve banking system. There may then naturally arise on the market a system in which equity, bonds, and genuine time deposits that cannot be redeemed before maturity become the exclusive sources of finance for bank loans and investments. Demand deposits, whether checkable or not, would be segregated in actual deposit banks which maintain 100 percent reserves and provide a range of payments systems from ATMs to debit cards. While this conjecture may we overly optimistic, we are certainly a good deal closer to such an outcome today than we were before the “Cyprus deal” was struck. Of course we would be closer still if there were no bailout and the full brunt of the bank failures were borne solely by the creditors and depositors of the failed banks rather than partly by taxpayers. The latter solution would have completely and definitively exposed the true nature of fractional-reserve banking for all to see.


Link:
http://lewrockwell.com/salerno/salerno17.1.html

Is this looking more and more like Germany in the 1930's???

Video: Planned Parenthood Official Argues for Right to Post-Birth Abortion

JOHN MCCORMACK




Florida legislators considering a bill to require abortionists to provide medical care to an infant who survives an abortion were shocked during a committee hearing this week when a Planned Parenthood official endorsed a right to post-birth abortion.

Alisa LaPolt Snow, the lobbyist representing the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, testified that her organization believes the decision to kill an infant who survives a failed abortion should be left up to the woman seeking an abortion and her abortion doctor...


Read more here:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/video-planned-parenthood-official-argues-right-post-birth-abortion_712198.html

"It is now a daily occurrence for school officials somewhere in America to freak out and discipline students, and sometimes even call the police, over anything vaguely resembling a weapon."

Middle School Girl Suspended Over Butter Knife

Cutting up fruit is the new terrorism

Steve Watson


A thirteen year old girl was suspended from a Boston school this week for bringing a butter knife with her to cut up a pear for lunch, in the latest crackdown on kids taking anything vaguely resembling a weapon to school with them.

As reported by Fox Boston, Morgan LaPlaume, a Wamsutta Middle School student, was suspended for a day over the incident. The girl needed the knife to cut up the fruit because she has braces and cannot eat the fruit whole.

Of course, in the new America that fact is irrelevant because she could be an extremist.

“As we were walking to his office I asked him and he said you are not allowed to have knives in school and I said I was using it to cut my pear, I wasn’t harming any other student and he said I know but it’s the policy,” Morgan told reporters.

At time of writing embedding isn’t working on this video report. See WXFT’s report on the story here.

According to the report, the school’s vice principal was strolling past Morgan during lunch, witnessed the blunt knife, and ordered her to accompany him to his office, where he informed her she would be suspended.

The principal of the school told reporters that the vice principal was “following the rules set forth in the handbook”.

The girl’s parents told reporters that they feel the incident was unnecessary and that the “rules” should not be so broad.

“It’s a butter knife, she has braces, there was no intent at all there,” the girl’s mother Melissa LaPlaume said, adding that she is scheduled to meet with a guidance counselor on Monday.

It is now a daily occurrence for school officials somewhere in America to freak out and discipline students, and sometimes even call the police, over anything vaguely resembling a weapon.

In this case how is a blunt butter knife any more dangerous than a sharp pencil or a pen?


Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/middle-school-girl-suspended-over-butter-knife.html

"...no bank account, no pension fund, no retirement account and no stock portfolio will be able to be considered 100% safe ever again."

This Is What It Feels Like To Have Your Life Savings Confiscated By The Global Elite

Michael Snyder


What would you do if you woke up one day and discovered that the banksters had “legally” stolen about 80 percent of your life savings? Most people seem to assume that most of the depositors that are getting ripped off in Cyprus are “Russian oligarchs” or “wealthy European tycoons”, but the truth is that they are only just part of the story. As you will see below, there are small businesses and aging retirees that have been absolutely devastated by the wealth confiscation that has taken place in Cyprus. Many businesses can no longer meet their payrolls or pay their bills because their funds have been frozen, and many retirees have seen retirement plans that they have been working toward for decades absolutely destroyed in a matter of days. Sometimes it can be hard to identify with events that are happening on the other side of the globe, but I want you to try to put yourself into their shoes for a few minutes. How would you feel if something like this happened to you?

For example, just consider the case of one 65-year-old retiree that has had his life savings totally wiped out by the “wealth tax” in Cyprus. His very sad story was recently featured by the Sydney Morning Herald…

”Very bad, very, very bad,” says 65-year-old John Demetriou, rubbing tears from his lined face with thick fingers. ”I lost all my money.”

John now lives in the picturesque fishing village of Liopetri on Cyprus’ south coast. But for 35 years he lived at Bondi Junction and worked days, nights and weekends in Sydney markets selling jewellery and imitation jewellery.

He had left Cyprus in the early 1970s at the height of its war with Turkey, taking his wife and young children to safety in Australia. He built a life from nothing and, gradually, a substantial nest egg. He retired to Cyprus in 2007 with about $1 million, his life savings.

He planned to spend it on his grandchildren – some of whom live in Cyprus – putting them through university and setting them up. There would be medical bills; he has a heart condition. The interest was paying for a comfortable retirement, and trips back to Australia. He also toyed with the idea of buying a boat.

He wanted to leave any big purchases a few years, to be sure this was where he would spend his retirement. There was no hurry. But now it is all gone.

”If I made the decision to stay, I was going to build a house,” John says. ”Unfortunately I didn’t make the decision yet.

”I went to sleep Friday as a rich man. I woke up a poor man.”

You can read the rest of the article right here.

How would you feel if you suddenly lost almost everything that you have been working for your entire life?

And many small and mid-size businesses have been ruined by the bank account confiscation that has taken place in Cyprus.

The following is a bank account statement that was originally posted on a Bitcoin forum that has gone absolutely viral all over the Internet. One medium size IT business has lost a staggering amount of money because of the “bail-in” that is happening in Cyprus…




The following is what the poster of this screenshot had to say about what this is going to do to his business…

Over 700k of expropriated money will be used to repay country’s debt. Probably we will get back about 20% of this amount in 6-7 years.

I’m not Russian oligarch, but just European medium size IT business. Thousands of other companies around Cyprus have the same situation.

The business is definitely ruined, all Cypriot workers to be fired.
We are moving to small Caribbean country where authorities have more respect to people’s assets. Also we are thinking about using Bitcoin to pay wages and for payments between our partners.

Special thanks to:

- Jeroen Dijsselbloem
- Angela Merkel
- Manuel Barroso
- the rest of officials of “European Comission”

With each passing day, things just continue to get worse for those with deposits of over 100,000 euros in Cyprus. A few hours ago, a Reuters story entitled “Big depositors in Cyprus to lose far more than feared” declared that the initial estimates of the losses by big depositors in Cyprus were much too low.

And of course the truth is that those that have had their deposits frozen will be very fortunate to ever see any of that money ever again.

But just a few weeks ago, the Central Bank of Cyprus was swearing that nothing like this could ever possibly happen. Just check out the following memo from the Central Bank of Cyprus dated “11 February 2013″ that was recently posted on Zero Hedge…




Sadly, the truth is that the politicians will lie to you all the way up until the very day that they confiscate your money.

You can believe our “leaders” when they swear that nothing like this will ever happen in the United States, in Canada or in other European nations if you want.

But I don’t believe them.

In fact, as an outstanding article by Ellen Brown recently detailed, the concept of a “bail-in” for “systemically important financial institutions” has been in the works for a long time…

Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few Eurozone “troika” officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England dated December 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the making; that they originated with the G20 Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland (discussed earlier here); and that the result will be to deliver clear title to the banks of depositor funds.

If you do not believe that what just happened in Cyprus could happen in the United States, you need to read the rest of her article. The following is an extended excerpt from that article…

*****

Although few depositors realize it, legally the bank owns the depositor’s funds as soon as they are put in the bank. Our money becomes the bank’s, and we become unsecured creditors holding IOUs or promises to pay. (See here and here.) But until now the bank has been obligated to pay the money back on demand in the form of cash. Under the FDIC-BOE plan, our IOUs will be converted into “bank equity.” The bank will get the money and we will get stock in the bank. With any luck we may be able to sell the stock to someone else, but when and at what price? Most people keep a deposit account so they can have ready cash to pay the bills.

The 15-page FDIC-BOE document is called “Resolving Globally Active, Systemically Important, Financial Institutions.” It begins by explaining that the 2008 banking crisis has made it clear that some other way besides taxpayer bailouts is needed to maintain “financial stability.” Evidently anticipating that the next financial collapse will be on a grander scale than either the taxpayers or Congress is willing to underwrite, the authors state:

An efficient path for returning the sound operations of the G-SIFI to the private sector would be provided by exchanging or converting a sufficient amount of the unsecured debt from the original creditors of the failed company [meaning the depositors] into equity [or stock]. In the U.S., the new equity would become capital in one or more newly formed operating entities. In the U.K., the same approach could be used, or the equity could be used to recapitalize the failing financial company itself—thus, the highest layer of surviving bailed-in creditors would become the owners of the resolved firm. In either country, the new equity holders would take on the corresponding risk of being shareholders in a financial institution.

No exception is indicated for “insured deposits” in the U.S., meaning those under $250,000, the deposits we thought were protected by FDIC insurance. This can hardly be an oversight, since it is the FDIC that is issuing the directive. The FDIC is an insurance company funded by premiums paid by private banks. The directive is called a “resolution process,” defined elsewhere as a plan that “would be triggered in the event of the failure of an insurer . . . .” The only mention of “insured deposits” is in connection with existing UK legislation, which the FDIC-BOE directive goes on to say is inadequate, implying that it needs to be modified or overridden.

*****

You can find the rest of her excellent article right here. I would encourage everyone to especially pay attention to what she has to say about derivatives.

Sadly, what is happening in Cyprus right now is just the continuation of a trend. In recent years, governments all over the world have turned to the confiscation of private wealth in order to solve their financial problems. The following examples are from a recent article posted on Deviant Investor…

October 2008 – Argentina’s leftist government, facing a gigantic revenue shortfall, proposes to nationalize all private pensions so as to meet national debt payments and avoid its second default in the decade.

November 2010 – Headline – Hungary Gives Its Citizens an Ultimatum: Move Your Private Pension Fund Assets to the State or Permanently Lose Your Pension – This is an effective nationalization of all pensions.

November 2010 – Ireland elects to appropriate ten billion euros from its National Pension Reserve Fund to help fund an eighty-five billion euro rescue package for its besieged banks. Ireland also moves to consider a regulatory move that compels some private Irish pension funds to hold more Irish government debt, thereby providing the state with a captive investor base but hugely raising the risk for savers.

December 2010 – France agrees to transfer twenty billion euros worth of assets belonging to its Fonds de Reserve pour les Retraites (FRR), the funded portion of its retirement system, to help pay off recurring social benefits costs. No pensioners are consulted.

April 2012 – Argentina announces that its Economy Ministry has taken an emergency loan from the national pension fund in the amount of $4.3 billion. No pensioners were consulted.

June 2012 – Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner unilaterally appropriates $45 billion from US federal pension funds to help tide over US deficits for the remainder of fiscal year 2011.

January 2013 – Treasury Secretary Geithner again announces that the government has begun borrowing from the federal employees pension fund to keep operating without passing the approaching “fiscal cliff” debt limit. The move effectively creates $156 billion in borrowing authority from federal pension funds.

March 2013 – Open Bank Resolution finance minister, Bill English, is proposing a Cyprus style solution for potential New Zealand bank failures. The reserve bank is in the final stages of establishing a rescue scheme which will put all bank depositors on the hook for bailing out their banks. Depositors will overnight have their savings shaved by the amount needed to keep distressed banks afloat.

Can you see the pattern?

As I wrote about the other day, no bank account, no pension fund, no retirement account and no stock portfolio will be able to be considered 100% safe ever again.

And once the global derivatives casino melts down, there are going to be a lot of major banks that are going to need to be “bailed in”.

When that day arrives, they are going to try to come after your money.

So don’t leave your entire life savings sitting in a single bank – especially not one of the banks that has a tremendous amount of exposure to derivatives.

Hopefully we can get more people to wake up and realize what is happening. We are moving into a time of great financial instability, and what worked in the past is not going to work in the future.

Be smart and get prepared while you still can.

Time is running out.


Link to article and hyperlinks:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/this-is-what-it-feels-like-to-have-your-life-savings-confiscated-by-the-global-elite

Friday, March 29, 2013

The war on terror is the lie of the century...


'Underwear bomber' was working for the CIA

Bomber involved in plot to attack US-bound jet was working as an informer with Saudi intelligence and the CIA, it has emerged

Paul Harris and Ed Pilkington


A would-be "underwear bomber" involved in a plot to attack a US-based jet was in fact working as an undercover informer with Saudi intelligence and the CIA, it has emerged.

The revelation is the latest twist in an increasingly bizarre story about the disruption of an apparent attempt by al-Qaida to strike at a high-profile American target using a sophisticated device hidden in the clothing of an attacker.

The plot, which the White House said on Monday had involved the seizing of an underwear bomb by authorities in the Middle East sometime in the last 10 days, had caused alarm throughout the US.

It has also been linked to a suspected US drone strike in Yemen where two Yemeni members of al-Qaida were killed by a missile attack on their car on Sunday, one of them a senior militant, Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso.

But the news that the individual at the heart of the bomb plot was in fact an informer for US intelligence is likely to raise just as many questions as it answers.

Citing US and Yemeni officials, Associated Press reported that the unnamed informant was working under cover for the Saudis and the CIA when he was given the bomb, which was of a new non-metallic type aimed at getting past airport security.

The informant then turned the device over to his handlers and has left Yemen, the officials told the news agency. The LA Times, which first broke the news that the plot had been a "sting operation", said that the bomb plan had also provided the intelligence leads that allowed the strike on Quso.

Earlier John Brennan, Barack Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser and a former CIA official, told ABC's Good Morning America that authorities are "confident that neither the device nor the intended user of this device pose a threat to us".

US officials have said the plot was detected in its early stages and that no American airliner was ever at risk.

The FBI is conducting forensic tests on the bomb as a first step towards discovering whether it would have cleared existing airport scanning systems. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic senator for California who heads the Senate intelligence committee, gave an early hint when she said that she had been briefed about the device which she called "undetectable".

But AP quoted an unnamed US official as saying current detection methods probably would have spotted the shape of the explosive in the latest device.

Just how major an escalation in threat is posed by the bomb remains unclear. Security sources have told news agencies that it was a step up in levels of sophistication from the original underwear bomb that was used in a failed attempt to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009.

The device used a more refined detonation system, and Brennan said "it was a threat from a standpoint of the design".

When it comes to who made the device the focus is on an al-Qaida's offshoot, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Matthew Levitt, a counter-terrorism expert at the Washington Institute, said that the interception of the plot amounted to a significant achievement for US security agencies.

He said: "The FBI is holding the device, which suggests that this was done by having boots on the ground. This was a sophisticated operation that shows we are making in-roads in serious places."

Levitt, who was involved as a senior analyst in the FBI's investigation into 9/11, said that it was natural to be sceptical in a presidential election year about security announcements. "But this was not political, it didn't come from the White House and my sense was that it was a really unique success," he said.

Levitt said that the spotlight would now be even more intense on Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, AQAP's assumed bomb-making chief, who is thought to be hiding out in Yemen.

Asiri is believed to have been the creator of the Detroit underwear bomb as well as explosives that were packed into printer cartridges bound for Chicago in 2010.


Link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/09/underwear-bomber-working-for-cia

I you believe in the Constitution you just might be a terrorist...

Fox Drama: Constitutionalists Work for Terrorist Serial Murderers

Kurt Nimmo


Fox, the entertainment network founded by Rupert Murdoch and Barry Diller, is working with the federal government and the Southern Poverty Law Center in a concerted effort to demonize Americans identifying themselves constitutionalists.

During an episode of “The Following,” a television drama starring Kevin Bacon, constitutionalists are portrayed as extremists in league with a group of serial murderers. The series follows an ex-FBI agent who has joined a social network of copycat killers attracted to a charismatic leader.



In the above clip featured during Infowars Night News on Thursday, two recruits are asked if they are ex-military. They respond by saying they were raised in a militia and are “constitutional extremists.”

The Department of Homeland Security has worked closely with the Southern Poverty Law Center to portray a large and diverse patriot community as a violent threat to the national security of the United States.

In 2009 a document produced by the Department of Homeland Security, under the Bush and Obama administrations, characterized patriot and constitutionalist groups as potentially violent and linked them to white supremacists.

The following year, a Department of Justice guide for investigators listed “constitutionalists” and “survivalists” alongside al-Qaeda and the Aryan Brotherhood. The guide describes members of the patriot movement as “white supremacists, sovereign citizens, tax protesters, militia members, and sometimes antiabortion or anti-environmental groups.”

The demonization process is active on the state government level as well. The Missouri Information Analysis Center, for instance, produced a report titled “The Modern Militia Movement” in March of 2009. It describes supporters of presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr as “militia” influenced terrorists and instructed the Missouri police to be on the lookout for supporters displaying bumper stickers and other paraphernalia associated with the Constitutional, Campaign for Liberty, and Libertarian parties.

More recently, the SPLC sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano urging the government to establish a task force to investigate the supposed domestic terror threat posed by the likes of Alex Jones, We Are Change, Oath Keepers, the Constitution Party, the Tyranny Response Team and thousands of other Americans outside of the orbit of the establishment.

“Today, we write to express similar concerns,” the letter sent by the president and CEO of the SPLC, J. Richard Cohen, begins, making a sensationalistic reference to the Oklahoma City bombing. “In the last four years, we have seen a tremendous increase in the number of conspiracy-minded, antigovernment groups as well as in the number of domestic terrorist plots.”

Cohen specifically warns about the alleged threat presented by advocates of the Second Amendment who are mobilizing in response to efforts by Obama and Congress to curtail the right of Americans to own firearms. “Because of the looming dangers, we urge you to establish an interagency task force to assess the adequacy of the resources devoted to responding to the growing threat of non-Islamic domestic terrorism.”

Earlier this year, we reported on an AMC sitcom titled “We Hate Paul Revere,” an effort to portray the silversmith patriot in a negative light.

In 2012, Deadline Hollywood reported that ABC was working on drama called “Founding Fathers, described as “Donnie Brasco set in the world of Texas militias.”

Alex Jones told Infowars.com today the violent patriot and constitutionalist narrative runs through numerous mainstream television shows. Jones said his wife reports witnessing repeated instances of constitutionalists portrayed as violent criminals engaged in terrorist activity on hospital and police dramas. The repeated meme of violent Constitution supporters sends a message that patriot groups are on par with al-Qaeda and Muslim terrorists, a point made by the SPLC’s Cohen on March 5 of this year.

A successful effort to demonize and portray the patriot and constitutionalist community as criminally insane is essential if the establishment is going to effectively and definitively undermine the political opposition. Films and television shows are essential to this effort and are being used to condition the public prior to a move to attack as a terrorist threat any effective resistance.

The fact the establishment media has produced such television shows and has created a violent mythology – including an effort to portray constitutionalists as serial murderers – reveals growing desperation as the federal government confronts and responds to a large and diverse political opposition engaged in an effort to return the nation to its constitutional roots and end the influence and criminal behavior of a globalist financial elite.


Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/fox-drama-constitutionalists-work-for-terrorist-serial-murderers-2.html

Photo of the day: Watch out America, here I come...

Education news...

Breaking News: Adults’ Test Scores Released in Providence!

Diane Ravitch's blog

The results are in.

Most of the adults who took the test would not be able to graduate.

Are we a failed nation of illiterate professionals or are the tests unreasonable?

Here’s a thought: Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates, and Arne Duncan should take the test.

This is the press release from the Providence Student Union:

PRESS RELEASE

March 19, 2013

CONTACT: Aaron Regunberg | Aaron@ProvidenceStudentUnion.org | 847-809-6039 (cell)

STUDENTS RELEASE “TAKE THE TEST” RESULTS –

SUPER MAJORITY OF ACCOMPLISHED PROFESSIONALS SCORE BELOW DIPLOMA THRESHOLD

Providence, Rhode Island – March 19, 2013 – Members of the student activist group the Providence Student Union (PSU) released the results of this weekend’s “Take the Test” event today. Of the 50 accomplished adults who took a shortened, sample version of the Math NECAP exam, 60% scored at a level that would put them at risk of not graduating under Rhode Island’s new diploma system.

“In total, 50 people—successful elected officials, attorneys, scientists, engineers, reporters, college professors, and directors of leading nonprofits—took a sample version of the Math portion of the New England Common Assessment Program that we put together from released items on RIDE’s website,” said Darren Fleury, a junior at Central High School and a member of PSU. “According to RIDE’s scoring guidelines, 4 of these 50 people would have scored ‘proficient with distinction,’ 7 would have scored ‘proficient,’ 9 would have scored ‘partially proficient,’ and 30 individuals—or 60%—would have scored ‘substantially below proficient,’ meaning they did not get a high enough score to receive a diploma.”

The Providence Student Union’s “Take the Test” event was the latest component of a campaign that students—along with parents and other community members—have been organizing against a new Rhode Island policy that turns the state’s main standardized test, the NECAP, into a make-or-break barrier to graduation.

“My eyes have been opened,” said Teresa Tanzi, a State Representative from Wakefield and a participant in Saturday’s “Take the Test” event. “As one of the many capable and relatively accomplished participants who scored ‘substantially below proficient’ on this exercise, I do believe this points to a problem with our state’s new diploma system. The fact that a majority of very successful adults—nearly all of whom have completed college and many of whom have advanced degrees—cannot meet this requirement should make us reconsider whether a NECAP score, on its own, is an appropriate arbiter for a high school graduation decision.”

“This is a fundamental misuse of this measurement tool,” explained Tom Sgouros, a policy analyst who also took the test. “The original goal of NECAP was to evaluate schools, and, to some extent, students within the schools. In order to make a reliable ranking among schools, you need to ensure that the differences between one school and another are statistically significant. To do that, the statistics demand that you design it to ensure that a significant number of students will flunk. If every student passed this test, they would redesign it. That’s what it means to be a diagnostic tool. To attach high-stakes to such an exam is simply an abuse of the tool, and one that will have real consequences for many young people.”

Priscilla Rivera, a junior at Hope High School and a PSU member, offered additional context to the results. “Of course, it is true that many of these professionals who participated in our event had not been prepared to take the test,” she said. “But our point is, neither have we. For 10, 11, or 12 years we have been taught to different standards. We have not been following a curriculum aligned with this test, and we are trapped in an education system that is failing to give us the education we deserve. If it does not make sense to punish adults for not being prepared to take this particular test, we believe it does not make sense to punish us for not having been effectively taught this material over a period of years. Give us a good education, not a test!”

“We know different people show their knowledge in different ways,” said Dulari Tahbilder, the executive director of Breakthrough Providence. “I did not do very well on that test. But I am more than a single test score, and I think our students are too.”


Link:
http://dianeravitch.net/2013/03/19/adults-test-scores-released-in-providence/

We've heard it all before...


All the years Israel said an Iranian nuke was imminent…

by Sunny Hundal


The US media is once again reporting Israeli speculation on Iranian attempts to build a nuclear weapon.

Now, I do think the current Iranian government would like to have nuclear weapons capability.

But here’s a timeline of Israeli warnings on Iranian nukes (via Opinio Juris)

1984: West German intelligence sources claim that Iran’s production of a bomb “is entering its final stages.” US Senator Alan Cranston claims Iran is seven years away from making a weapon.

1992: Israeli parliamentarian Benjamin Netanyahu tells his colleagues that Iran is 3 to 5 years from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.

1995: The New York Times reports that US and Israeli officials fear “Iran is much closer to producing nuclear weapons than previously thought” – less than five years away. Netanyahu claims the time frame is three to five years.

1996: Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres claims Iran will have nuclear weapons in four years.

1998: Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claims Iran could build an ICBM capable of reaching the US within five years.

1999: An Israeli military official claims that Iran will have a nuclear weapon within five years.

2001: The Israeli Minister of Defence claims that Iran will be ready to launch a nuclear weapon in less than four years.

2002: The CIA warns that the danger of nuclear weapons from Iran is higher than during the Cold War, because its missile capability has grown more quickly than expected since 2000 – putting it on par with North Korea.

2003: A high-ranking Israeli military officer tells the Knesset that Iran will have the bomb by 2005 — 17 months away.

2006: A State Department official claims that Iran may be capable of building a nuclear weapon in 16 days.

2008: An Israeli general tells the Cabinet that Iran is “half-way” to enriching enough uranium to build a nuclear weapon and will have a working weapon no later than the end of 2010.

2009: Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak estimates that Iran is 6-18 months away from building an operative nuclear weapon.

2010: Israeli decision-makers believe that Iran is at most 1-3 years away from being able to assemble a nuclear weapon.

2011: IAEA report indicates that Iran could build a nuclear weapon within months.

2013: Israeli intelligence officials claim that Iran could have the bomb by 2015 or 2016.

There shouldn’t be any doubt that it is entirely foolish to rely on Israeli intelligence on the matter.


Link:
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2013/01/29/all-the-years-israel-said-an-iranian-nuke-was-imminent/

Police Prevent Hungry Crowd From Taking Free Food 2013...

"And they tell us being armed the way our soldiers are is unnecessary."

What Happens When a Government Disarms Its Citizens

by David LaPell


I’ve heard gun control advocates ask blithely, “Why would our government ever want to hurt its own people?” They say it as if the point was self-evident and usually in that special kind of talking down to you tone they somehow think discredits gun owners’ concerns as paranoid. To that I say it isn’t self-evident because it never has been, and I don’t listen to sheep because they never studied history. The last hundred years are marred by examples of governments first depriving their citizens of their arms before forcing their own will on the unwilling without fear of reprieve. Calculated moves to create an unarmed populace for the purpose of crowd-control; on this subject, we have numerous testimonies.



In this country, the Second Amendment was framed as (and currently remains) an insurance policy against such tyranny, and while I hope I never live to see such a thing in my own life, I leave these examples as a reminder for those who think gun control is necessary of the things that can happen when a disarmed population faces the tyranny of a gun grabbing government.
The Krakow ghetto: The liquidation of 55,000 people

The liquidation of the Krakow ghetto at the hands of the dreaded German SS was one of the most shocking events in the 20th century and likely one of the most haunting for Westerners particularly. Today, the few who survived Hitler’s Holocaust routinely remind us of how it was an unarmed populace that fell victim to Nazi tyranny (like this compelling story from Austrian survivor Kitty Werthmann).

When Germany invaded Poland there were nearly 70,000 Jews in Krakow. Only 15,000 of these Jews were allowed to remain (because they were “workers”). The rest were moved out of the city to other areas while those remaining were crammed into an area designed for one fifth of their number. Conditions were cramped to say the least with many families forced to survive on the streets — so walls were built to surround the ghetto and with four guarded entrances.

On May 30, 1942 the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto began — the process of shipping out all the town’s Jews and other enemies of the state to various concentration camps. More than 7,000 were shipped out in the first wave and then 4,000 in the next, all destined to be killed at or en route to Belzec. On March 13, 1943 the final liquidation began on the order of the ruthless Amon Goth. Around 8,000 remaining Krakow Jews and other ‘undesirables’ were shipped to a Plaszow labor camp while another 2,000 were killed in the streets and apartments of the city. Goth shipped any left off to Auschwitz.

You can see this struggle depicted in the movie Schindler’s List in detail, and of the 70,000 Jews, Oskar Schindler was only able to save about 1,200 people. I think the film should be required viewing for any adult or mature child who values freedom.

Today we can wonder what would have came of the Jews in Krakow had they kept their weapons. In the famous Warsaw Ghetto uprising around 220 Jewish and Gentile resistance fighters were able to repel the first wave of German invaders, much to Nazi Jürgen Stroop’s surprise.

“When we invaded the Ghetto for the first time, the Jews and the Polish bandits succeeded in repelling the participating units, including tanks and armored cars, by a well-prepared concentration of fire.” – Jürgen Stroop, high-ranking Nazi and SS official

This victory would be short lived for the resistance fighters. The Warsaw Jews had been subject to the same disarmament as the Krakow Jews and, even with significantly more cached weapons and a slight tactical advantage over their attackers, they were incredibly out gunned against the Axis. One of the last remaining survivors, Marek Edelman, who was interviewed in 1986, reported that each individual fighter only had a handgun, some grenades and homemade Molotov cocktails while there were only three rifles, two landmines and a single submachine gun in the entire ghetto. Handmade weapons, created in hopes of rounding out their arsenal, were also used, but many reportedly jammed.

And they tell us being armed the way our soldiers are is unnecessary.


Read more here:
http://www.guns.com/2013/03/27/editorial-what-happens-when-governments-disarm-their-citizens/

The anniversaries the government wants you to forget...

The 12th Anniversary of American Cowardice

by Tom Engelhardt


American Anniversaries from Hell: What You Don't Know Can Hurt You

It’s true that, last week, few in Congress cared to discuss, no less memorialize, the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Nonetheless, two anniversaries of American disasters and crimes abroad – the “mission accomplished” debacle of 2003 and the 45th anniversary of the My Lai massacre – were at least noted in passing in our world. In my hometown paper, the New York Times, the Iraq anniversary was memorialized with a lead op-ed by a former advisor to General David Petraeus who, amid the rubble, went in search of all-American “silver linings.”

Still, in our post-9/11 world, there are so many other anniversaries from hell whose silver linings don’t get noticed. Take this April. It will be the ninth anniversary of the widespread release of the now infamous photos of torture, abuse, and humiliation from Abu Ghraib. In case you’ve forgotten, that was Saddam Hussein’s old prison where the U.S. military taught the fallen Iraqi dictator a trick or two about the destruction of human beings. Shouldn’t there be an anniversary of some note there? I mean, how many cultures have turned dog collars (and the dogs that go with them), thumbs-up signs over dead bodies, and a mockery of the crucified Christ into screensavers?

Or to pick another not-to-be-missed anniversary that, strangely enough, goes uncelebrated here, consider the passage of the USA Patriot Act, that ten-letter acronym for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”? This October 26th will be the 11th anniversary of the hurried congressional vote on that 363-page (essentially unread) document filled with right-wing hobbyhorses and a range of provisions meant to curtail American liberties in the name of keeping us safe from terror. “Small government” Republicans and “big government” Democrats rushed to support it back then. It passed in the Senate in record time by 98-1, with only Russ Feingold in opposition, and in the House by 357-66 – and so began the process of taking the oppressive powers of the American state into a new dimension. It would signal the launch of a world of ever-expanding American surveillance and secrecy (and it would be renewed by the Obama administration at its leisure in 2011).

Or what about celebrating the 12th anniversary of Congress’s Authorization for Use of Military Force, the joint resolution that a panicked and cowed body passed on September 14, 2001? It wasn’t a declaration of war – there was no one to declare war on – but an open-ended grant to the president of the unfettered power to use “all necessary and appropriate force” in what would become a never-ending (and still expanding) “Global War on Terror.”

Or how about the 11th anniversary on January 11th – like so many such moments, it passed unnoted – of the establishment of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, that jewel in the crown of George W. Bush’s offshore Bermuda Triangle of injustice, with its indefinite detention of the innocent and the guilty without charges, its hunger strikes, and abuses, and above all its remarkable ability to embed itself in our world and never go away? Given that, on much of the rest of the planet, Guantanamo is now an icon of the post-9/11 American way of life, on a par with Mickey Mouse and the Golden Arches, shouldn’t its anniversary be noted?

Or to look ahead, consider a date of genuine consequence: the CIA’s first known assassination by drone, which took place in Yemen in 2002. This November will be the 11th anniversary of that momentous act, which would embed "targeted killing" deep in the American way of war, and transform the president into an assassin-in-chief. It, too, will undoubtedly pass largely unnoticed, even if the global drone assassination campaigns it initiated may never rest in peace.

And then, of course, there are the little anniversaries from hell that Americans could care less about – those that have to do with slaughter abroad. If you wanted to, you could organize these by the military services. As last year ended, for instance, no one marked the 11th anniversary of the first Afghan wedding party to be wiped out by the U.S. Air Force. (In late December 2001, a B-52 and two B-1B bombers, using precision-guided weapons, eradicated a village of celebrants in eastern Afghanistan; only two of 112 villagers reportedly survived.) Nor in May will anyone here mark the ninth anniversary of an American air strike that took out wedding celebrants in the western Iraqi desert near the Syrian border, killing more than 40 of them.

Nor, this July 12th, to switch to the U.S. Army, should we forget the sixth anniversary of the infamous Apache helicopter attacks on civilians in the streets of Baghdad in which at least 11 adults were killed and two children wounded? All of this was preserved in a military video kept secret until released by WikiLeaks. Or how about the first anniversary of the “Kandahar massacre,” which passed on March 11th without any notice at all? As you undoubtedly remember, Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales allegedly spent that night in 2012 slaughtering 16 civilians, including nine children, in two Afghan villages and, on being taken into custody, “showed no remorse.”

When it comes to the Marines, here’s a question: Who, this November 19th, will mark the eighth anniversary of the slaughter of 24 unarmed civilians, including children and the elderly, in the Iraqi village of Haditha for which, after a six-year investigation and military trials, not a single Marine spent a single day in prison? Or to focus for a moment on U.S. Special Forces: will anyone on August 21st memorialize the 90 or so civilians, including perhaps 15 women and up to 60 children, killed in the Afghan village of Azizabad while attending a memorial service for a tribal leader who had reportedly been anti-Taliban?

And not to leave out the rent-a-gun mercenaries who have been such a fixture of the post-9/11 era of American warfare, this September 16th will be the sixth anniversary of the moment when Blackwater guards for a convoy of U.S. State Department vehicles sprayed Baghdad’s Nisour Square with bullets, evidently without provocation, killing 17 Iraqi civilians and wounding many more.

All of the above only begins to suggest the plethora of blood-soaked little anniversaries that Americans could observe, if they cared to, from a decade-plus of the former Global War on Terror that now has no name, but goes on no less intensely. Consider them just a few obvious examples of what former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once called the “known knowns” of our American world.

Impossible Anniversaries

In anniversary terms, Rumsfeld’s second category – the “known unknowns” – is no less revealing of the universe we now inhabit; that is, our post-9/11 lives have been filled with events or acts whose anniversaries might be notable, if only we knew the date when they occured. Take, for instance, the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. Sometime in the first part of 2002, President Bush granted the National Security Agency the right to eavesdrop without court approval on people in the United States in the course of its terrorism investigations. This (illegal) program’s existence was first revealed in 2005, but it remains shrouded in mystery. We don’t know exactly when it began. So no anniversary celebrations there.

Nor for the setting up of the “Salt Pit,” the CIA “black site” in Afghanistan where Khaled el-Masri, a German car salesman kidnapped by the CIA in Macedonia (due to a confusion of names with a suspected terrorist) was held and mistreated, or other similar secret prisons and torture centers in places like Lithuania, Poland, Rumania, and Thailand; nor for the creation of Camp Nama in Iraq, with its ominously named “Black Room,” run as an interrogation center by the Joint Special Operations Command, where the informal motto was: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it."

Or how about the anniversary of the date – possibly as early as 2006 – when Washington launched history’s first known cyberwar, a series of unprovoked cyberattacks ordered by George W. Bush and later Barack Obama, against Iran’s nuclear program (and evidently some Middle Eastern banks dealing with that country as well). Given its potential future implications, that would seem to be a moment significant enough to memorialize, if only we knew when to do it.

Don’t for a moment think, though, that any little survey of known knowns and known unknowns could cover the totality of America’s unacknowledged anniversaries from hell. After all, there’s Rumsfeld’s third category, the “unknown unknowns.” In our advancing world of secrecy, with the National Security Complex and parts of the U.S. military increasingly operating in a post-legal America, shielded from whistleblowers and largely unaccountable to the rest of us or the courts, you can be guaranteed of one thing: there’s a secret history of the post-9/11 era that we simply don’t know about – yet. Call this last category "the unknown anniversaries." We not only don’t know when they began, but even what they are.

A Hidden History Waiting to Be Written

When I was a boy, I loved a CBS TV series called "You Are There," "anchored" by Walter Cronkite. It took you into history – whether of Joan of Arc’s burning at the stake, the fall of the Aztec ruler Montezuma, or the end of the U.S. Civil War – and “reported” it as if modern journalists had been on the spot. (For years, I used to joke that the typical moment went like this: “General Lee, General Lee, rumor has it you’re about to surrender to Grant at Appomattox!” “No comment.”) The show had a signature tagline delivered in one of those authoritative male voices of the era that still rings in my head. It went: "What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times... all things are as they were then, and you were there."

If such a show were made about the post-9/11 years, it might have to be called “You Weren’t There.” Our days, instead of being filled with “those events that alter and illuminate our times,” would be enshrouded in a penumbra of secrecy that could – as with Bradley Manning, CIA agent John Kiriakou, or other whistleblowers – only be broken by those ready to spend years, or even a lifetime in prison. If the National Security Complex and the White House had their way, we Americans would be left to celebrate a heavily cleansed and censored version of our own recent history in which the anniversaries that should really matter would be squirreled away in the files of the state apparatus. There can be no question that a hidden history of our American moment is still waiting to be uncovered and written.

And yet, despite the best efforts of the last two administrations, secrecy has its limits. We should already know more than enough to be horrified by the state of our American world. It should disturb us deeply that a government of, by, and for the war-makers, intelligence operatives, bureaucrats, privatizing mercenary corporations, surveillers, torturers, and assassins is thriving in Washington. As for the people – that’s us – in these last years, we largely weren’t there, even as the very idea of a government of, by, and for us bit the dust, and our leaders felt increasingly unconstrained when committing acts of shame in our name.

So perhaps the last overlooked anniversary of these years might be the 12th anniversary of American cowardice. You can choose the exact date yourself; anytime this fall will do. At that moment, Americans should feel free to celebrate a time when, for our “safety,” and in a state of anger and paralyzing fear, we gave up the democratic ghost.

The brave thing, of course, would have been to gamble just a little of our safety – as we do any day when we get into a car – for the kind of world whose anniversaries we would actually be proud to mark on a calendar and celebrate.

Among the many truths in that still-to-be-written secret history of our American world would be this: we the people have no idea just how, in these years, we’ve hurt ourselves.


Link:
http://lewrockwell.com/engelhardt/engelhardt456.html