"So watch the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries very carefully. It is the most important number in the entire U.S. economy."

The Most Important Number In The Entire U.S. Economy

By Michael Snyder

There is one vitally important number that everyone needs to be watching right now, and it doesn't have anything to do with unemployment, inflation or housing. If this number gets too high, it will collapse the entire U.S. financial system. The number that I am talking about is the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries. When that number goes up, long-term interest rates all across the financial system start increasing. When long-term interest rates rise, it becomes more expensive for the federal government to borrow money, it becomes more expensive for state and local governments to borrow money, existing bonds lose value and bond investors lose a lot of money, mortgage rates go up and monthly payments on new mortgages rise, and interest rates throughout the entire economy go up and this causes economic activity to slow down. On top of everything else, there are more than 440 trillion dollars worth of interest rate derivatives sitting out there, and rapidly rising interest rates could cause that gigantic time bomb to go off and implode our entire financial system. We are living in the midst of the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, and the only way that the game can continue is for interest rates to stay super low. Unfortunately, the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries has started to rise, and many experts are projecting that it is going to continue to rise.

On August 2nd of last year, the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries was just 1.48%, and our entire debt-based economy was basking in the glow of ultra-low interest rates. But now things are rapidly changing. On Wednesday, the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries hit 2.70% before falling back to 2.58% on "good news" from the Federal Reserve.

Historically speaking, rates are still super low, but what is alarming is that it looks like we hit a "bottom" last year and that interest rates are only going to go up from here. In fact, according to CNBC many experts believe that we will soon be pushing up toward the 3 percent mark...

Round numbers like 1,700 on the S&P 500 are well and good, but savvy traders have their minds on another integer: 2.75 percent

That was the high for the 10-year yield this year, and traders say yields are bound to go back to that level. The one overhanging question is how stocks will react when they see that number.

"If we start to push up to new highs on the 10-year yield so that's the 2.75 level—I think you'd probably see a bit of anxiety creep back into the marketplace," Bank of America Merrill Lynch's head of global technical strategy, MacNeil Curry, told "Futures Now" on Tuesday.

And Curry sees yields getting back to that level in the short term, and then some. "In the next couple of weeks to two months or so I think we've got a push coming up to the 2.85, 2.95 zone," he said.

This rise in interest rates has been expected for a very long time - it is just that nobody knew exactly when it would happen. Now that it has begun, nobody is quite sure how high interest rates will eventually go. For some very interesting technical analysis, I encourage everyone to check out an article by Peter Brandt that you can find right here.

And all of this is very bad news for stocks. The chart below was created by Chartist Friend from Pittsburgh, and it shows that stock prices have generally risen as the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries has steadily declined over the past 30 years...

When interest rates go down, that spurs economic activity, and that is good for stock prices.

So when interest rates start going up rapidly, that is not a good thing for the stock market at all.

The Federal Reserve has tried to keep long-term interest rates down by wildly printing money and buying bonds, and even the suggestion that the Fed may eventually "taper" quantitative easing caused the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries to absolutely soar a few weeks ago.

So the Fed has backed off on the "taper" talk for now, but what happens if the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries continues to rise even with the wild money printing that the Fed has been doing?

At that point, the Fed would begin to totally lose control over the situation. And if that happens, Bill Fleckenstein told King World News the other day that he believes that we could see the stock market suddenly plunge by 25 percent...

Let’s say Ben (Bernanke) comes out tomorrow and says, ‘We are not going to taper.’ But let’s just say the bond market trades down anyway, and the next thing you know we go through the recent highs and a month from now the 10-Year is at 3%. And people start to realize they are not even tapering and the bond market is backed up....

They will say, ‘Why is this happening?’ Then they may realize the bond market is discounting the inflation we already have.

At some point the bond markets are going to say, ‘We are not comfortable with these policies.’ Obviously you can’t print money forever or no emerging country would ever have gone broke. So the bond market starts to back up and the economy gets worse than it is now because rates are rising. So the Fed says, ‘We can’t have this,’ and they decide to print more (money) and the bond market backs up (even more).

All of the sudden it becomes clear that money printing not only isn’t the solution, but it’s the problem. Well, with rates going from where they are to 3%+ on the 10-Year, one of these days the S&P futures are going to get destroyed. And if the computers ever get loose on the downside the market could break 25% in three days.

And as I have written about previously, we have seen a huge spike in margin debt in recent months, and this could make it even easier for a stock market collapse to happen. A recent note from Deutsche Bank explained precisely why margin debt is so dangerous...

Margin debt can be described as a tool used by stock speculators to borrow money from brokerages to buy more stock than they could otherwise afford on their own. These loans are collateralized by stock holdings, so when the market goes south, investors are either required to inject more cash/assets or become forced to sell immediately to pay off their loans – sometimes leading to mass pullouts or crashes.

But of much greater concern than a stock market crash is the 441 trillion dollar interest rate derivatives bubble that could implode if interest rates continue to rise rapidly.

Deutsche Bank is the largest bank in Europe, and at this point they have 55.6 trillion euros of total exposure to derivatives.

But the GDP of the entire nation of Germany is only about 2.7 trillion euros for a whole year.

We are facing a similar situation in the United States. Our GDP for 2013 will be somewhere between 15 and 16 trillion dollars, but many of our big banks have exposure to derivatives that absolutely dwarfs our GDP. The following numbers come from one of my previous articles entitled "The Coming Derivatives Panic That Will Destroy Global Financial Markets"...

JPMorgan Chase

Total Assets: $1,812,837,000,000 (just over 1.8 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $69,238,349,000,000 (more than 69 trillion dollars)

Citibank

Total Assets: $1,347,841,000,000 (a bit more than 1.3 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $52,150,970,000,000 (more than 52 trillion dollars)

Bank Of America

Total Assets: $1,445,093,000,000 (a bit more than 1.4 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $44,405,372,000,000 (more than 44 trillion dollars)

Goldman Sachs

Total Assets: $114,693,000,000 (a bit more than 114 billion dollars - yes, you read that correctly)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $41,580,395,000,000 (more than 41 trillion dollars)

That means that the total exposure that Goldman Sachs has to derivatives contracts is more than 362 times greater than their total assets.

And remember, the biggest chunk of those derivatives contracts is made up of interest rate derivatives.

Just imagine what would happen if a life insurance company wrote millions upon millions of life insurance contracts and then everyone suddenly died.

What would happen to that life insurance company?

It would go completely broke of course.

Well, that is what our major banks are facing today.

They have written trillions upon trillions of dollars worth of interest rate derivatives contracts, and they are betting that interest rates will not go up rapidly.

But what if they do?

And the truth is that interest rates have a whole lot of room to go up. The chart below shows how the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries has moved over the past couple of decades...

As you can see, the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries was hovering around the 6 percent mark back in the year 2000.

Back in 1990, the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries hovered between 8 and 9 percent.

If we return to "normal" levels, our financial system will implode. There is no way that our debt-addicted system would be able to handle it.

So watch the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries very carefully. It is the most important number in the entire U.S. economy.

If that number gets too high, the game is over.

Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-most-important-number-in-the-entire-u-s-economy

Ben Swann Interviews G. Edward Griffin...

Pledge of Allegiance - The Whitest Kids U'Know on IFC...

Greenwald Tears Into Toobin Over Manning, Snowden...

Song of the day: Telekinesis...

"The United States once had the greatest middle class in the history of the world, but now it it dying. This is causing a tremendous amount of anger and frustration to build in this nation, and when the next major wave of the economic collapse strikes, a lot of that anger and frustration will likely be unleashed."

44 Facts About The Death Of The Middle Class That Every American Should Know

Michael Snyder

What is America going to look like when the middle class is dead? Once upon a time, the United States has the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the world. When I was growing up, it seemed like almost everyone was “middle class” and it was very rare to hear of someone that was out of work. Of course life wasn’t perfect, but most families owned a home, most families had more than one vehicle, and most families could afford nice vacations and save for retirement at the same time. Sadly, things have dramatically changed in America since that time. There just aren’t as many “middle class jobs” as there used to be. In fact, just six years ago there were about six million more full-time jobs in our economy than there are right now. Those jobs are being replaced by part-time jobs and temp jobs. The number one employer in America today is Wal-Mart and the number two employer in America today is a temp agency (Kelly Services). But you can’t support a family on those kinds of jobs. We live at a time when incomes are going down but the cost of living just keeps going up. As a result, the middle class in America is being absolutely shredded and the ranks of the poor are steadily growing. The following are 44 facts about the death of the middle class that every American should know…

1. According to one recent survey, “four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives”.

2. The growth rate of real disposable personal income is the lowest that it has been in decades.

3. Median household income (adjusted for inflation) has fallen by 7.8 percent since the year 2000.

4. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.

5. The home ownership rate in the United States is the lowest that it has been in 18 years.

6. It is more expensive to rent a home in America than ever before. In fact, median asking rent for vacant rental units just hit a brand new all-time record high.

7. According to one recent survey, 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

8. The U.S. economy actually lost 240,000 full-time jobs last month, and the number of full-time workers in the United States is now about 6 million below the old record that was set back in 2007.

9. The largest employer in the United States right now is Wal-Mart. The second largest employer in the United States right now is a temp agency (Kelly Services).

10. One out of every ten jobs in the United States is now filled through a temp agency.

11. According to the Social Security Administration, 40 percent of all workers in the United States make less than $20,000 a year.

12. The ratio of wages and salaries to GDP is near an all-time record low.

13. The U.S. economy continues to trade good paying jobs for low paying jobs. 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs.

14. Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

15. At this point, one out of every four American workers has a job that pays $10 an hour or less.

16. According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 declined by 27 percent after you account for inflation.

17. In the year 2000, about 17 million Americans were employed in manufacturing. Today, only about 12 million Americans are employed in manufacturing.

18. The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

19. The average number of hours worked per employed person per year has fallen by about 100 since the year 2000.

20. Back in the year 2000, more than 64 percent of all working age Americans had a job. Today, only 58.7 percent of all working age Americans have a job.

21. When you total up all working age Americans that do not have a job, it comes to more than 100 million.

22. The average duration of unemployment in the United States isnearly three times as long as it was back in the year 2000.

23. The percentage of Americans that are self-employed has steadily declined over the past decade and is now at an all-time low.

24. Right now there are 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing. That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.

25. In 1989, the debt to income ratio of the average American family was about 58 percent. Today it is up to 154 percent.

26. Total U.S. household debt grew from just 1.4 trillion dollars in 1980 to a whopping 13.7 trillion dollars in 2007. This played a huge role in the financial crisis of 2008, and the problem still has not been solved.

27. The total amount of student loan debt in the United States recently surpassed the one trillion dollar mark.

28. Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.

29. Back in the year 2000, the mortgage delinquency rate was about 2 percent. Today, it is nearly 10 percent.

30. Consumer debt in the United States has risen by a whopping1700% since 1971, and 46% of all Americans carry a credit card balance from month to month.

31. In 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance. Today, only 55.1 percent are covered by employment-based health insurance.

32. One study discovered that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt, and according to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine medical bills are a major factor inmore than 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies in the United States.

33. Each year, the average American must work 107 days just to make enough money to pay local, state and federal taxes.

34. Today, approximately 46.2 million Americans are living in poverty.

35. The number of Americans living in poverty has increased by more than 15 million since the year 2000.

36. Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.

37. At this point, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.

38. In the year 2000, there were only 17 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are more than 47 million Americans on food stamps.

39. Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.

40. Right now, the number of Americans on food stamps exceeds the entire population of the nation of Spain.

41. According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”

42. At this point, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. This is the first time that has ever happened in our history. That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.

43. According to U.S. Census data, 57 percent of all American children live in a home that is either considered to be “poor” or “low income”.

44. In the year 2000, the ratio of social welfare benefits to salaries and wages was approximately 21 percent. Today, the ratio of social welfare benefits to salaries and wages is approximately 35 percent.

And not only is the middle class being systematically destroyed right now, we are also destroying the bright economic future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have by accumulating gigantic mountains of debt in their names. The following is from a recent articleby Bill Bonner…

Today, the U.S. lumbers into the future with total debt equal to about 350% of GDP. In Britain and Japan, the total is over 500%. Debt, remember, is the homage that the future pays to the past. It has to be carried, serviced… and paid. It has to be reckoned with… one way or another.

And the cost of carrying debt is going up! Over the last few weeks, interest rates have moved up by about 15% — an astounding increase for the sluggish debt market. How long will it be before long-term borrowing rates are back to “normal”?

At 5% interest, a debt that measures 3.5 times your revenue will cost about one-sixth of your income. Before taxes. After tax, you will have to work about one day a week to keep up with it (to say nothing of paying it off!).

That’s a heavy burden. It is especially disagreeable when someone else ran up the debt. Then you are a debt slave. That is the situation of young people today. They must face their parents’ debt. Even serfs in the Dark Ages had it better. They had to work only one day out of 10 for their lords and masters.

We were handed the keys to the greatest economic machine in the history of the planet and we wrecked it.

As young people realize that their futures have been destroyed, many of them are going to totally lose hope and give in to despair.

And desperate people do desperate things. As our economy continues to crumble, we are going to see crime greatly increase as people do what they feel they need to do in order to survive. In fact, we are already starting to see this happen. Just this week, CNBC reported on the raging epidemic of copper theft that we are seeing all over the nation right now…

Copper is such a hot commodity that thieves are going after the metal anywhere they can find it: an electrical power station in Wichita, Kan., or half a dozen middle-class homes in Morris Township, N.J.Even on a Utah highway construction site, crooks managed to abscond with six miles of copper wire.

Those are just a handful of recent targets across the U.S. in the $1 billion business of copper theft.

“There’s no question the theft has gotten much, much worse,” said Mike Adelizzi, president of theAmerican Supply Association, a nonprofit group representing distributors and suppliers in the plumbing, heating, cooling and industrial pipe industries.

The United States once had the greatest middle class in the history of the world, but now it it dying.

This is causing a tremendous amount of anger and frustration to build in this nation, and when the next major wave of the economic collapse strikes, a lot of that anger and frustration will likely be unleashed.

The American people don’t understand that these problems have taken decades to develop. They just want someone to fix things. They just want things to go back to the way that they used to be.

Unfortunately, the great economic storm that is coming is not going to be averted.

Get ready while you still can. Time is running out.

Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/44-facts-about-the-death-of-the-middle-class-that-every-american-should-know

You can't make this stuff up...

The Real Criminals Under Our National-Security State System
by Jacob G. Hornberger

Let’s recap the situation regarding criminal conduct within the U.S. national-security state, just to see how the national-security state has succeeded in corrupting the morals and values of our nation.

People Who Are Considered Heroes by the National-Security State

1. The officials who devised the scheme that plunged America into the illegal world of torture.

2. The officials who actually committed the crime of torture.

3. The officials who induced private telecommunication firms to engage in illegal monitoring of their customer’s telephone calls.

4. The officials who devised the scheme that plunged America into the illegal world of assassination.

5. The officials who have actually committed the assassinations.

6. The officials who devised the scheme to establish a Constitution-free torture and indefinite-incarceration zone at Guantanamo Bay.

7. The officials who have actually supervised and operated the torture and indefinite-incarceration zone at Guantanamo Bay.

8. The officials who devised the illegal scheme to kidnap a man on the streets of Milan, Italy, and transport him to the Egypt for the purpose of having him brutally tortured by the U.S.- supported Egyptian military dictatorship.

9. The officials who actually kidnapped a man on the streets of Milan, Italy, drugged him, and then transported him to Egypt, for the purpose of having him brutally tortured by the U.S.-supported Egyptian military dictatorship.

10. The officials who have harbored the CIA officials who have been convicted by an Italian court for the illegal kidnapping in Milan and who have refused to extradite these convicted felons to Italy to face justice.

11. The officials who have supported, worked with, and trained brutal foreign dictatorships, such as those in Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Tunisia, Egypt, Chile, Guatemala, and many others.

12. The officials who have harbored a CIA operative who is accused of having committed the terrorist downing of a Cuban civilian airliner, killing dozens of innocent people, and who have steadfastly refused to honor an extradition request from Venezuela, where the crime took place.

13. The officials who have imposed and enforced brutal sanctions and embargoes against foreign regimes, which have succeeded in causing untold suffering, including death, for the people of the targeted countries.

14. The officials whose dirty wars have killed countless women and children and other innocent people.

15. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper’s perjury before Congress regarding the NSA’s super-secret surveillance scheme on the American people and the people of the world.

People Who Are Considered Criminals by the National Security State

1. Daniel Ellsberg, who revealed the national-security state’s lies and crimes arising out of the Vietnam War.

2. Jesselyn Radack, who revealed the national-security state’s brutal and illegal treatment of John Walker Lindh.

3. Bradley Manning, who revealed the national-security state’s lies and crimes arising out of its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

4. Julian Assange, whose organization WikiLeaks published the information revealed to the world by Bradley Manning.

5. Edward Snowden, who revealed the national-security state’s massive secret surveillance scheme on the American people and the people of the world.

6. Every other government official or government contractor, and possibly also journalists and others, who reveal or publish the national-security state’s crimes to the people of the world.

Link:
http://fff.org/2013/07/31/the-real-criminals-under-our-national-security-state-system/

Where's the outrage over this like we see on TV or from our leaders when someone kills another in self-defense???

XKeyscore: NSA tool collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

XKeyscore gives 'widest-reaching' collection of online data; NSA analysts require no prior authorization for searches; Sweeps up emails, social media activity and browsing history

by Glenn Greenwald

A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest-reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet.

The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian's earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight.

The files shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10.

"I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email".

US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden's assertion: "He's lying. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do."

But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.

XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA's "widest reaching" system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet", including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.

Analysts can also use XKeyscore and other NSA systems to obtain ongoing "real-time" interception of an individual's internet activity.

Under US law, the NSA is required to obtain an individualized Fisa warrant only if the target of their surveillance is a 'US person', though no such warrant is required for intercepting the communications of Americans with foreign targets. But XKeyscore provides the technological capability, if not the legal authority, to target even US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant provided that some identifying information, such as their email or IP address, is known to the analyst.

One presentation claims the XKeyscore program covers ‘nearly everything a typical user does on the internet’A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its “widest-reaching” system for developing intelligence from the internet.

The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian’s earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and surveillance court oversight.

The files shed light on one of Snowden’s most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10.

“I, sitting at my desk,” said Snowden, could “wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email”.

US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden’s assertion: “He’s lying. It’s impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do.”

But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any personnel before it is processed.

XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the ‘s “widest reaching” system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (). One presentation claims the program covers “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet”, including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their .

Analysts can also use XKeyscore and other systems to obtain ongoing “real-time” interception of an individual’s internet activity.

Under US law, the is required to obtain an individualized warrant only if the target of their surveillance is a ”, though no such warrant is required for intercepting the communications of Americans with foreign targets. But XKeyscore provides the technological capability, if not the legal authority, to target even US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant provided that some identifying information, such as their email or IP address, is known to the analyst.

One training slide illustrates the digital activity constantly being collected by XKeyscore and the analyst’s ability to query the databases at any time.

The purpose of XKeyscore is to allow analysts to search the as well as the content of emails and other internet activity, such as browser history, even when there is no known email account (a “selector” in parlance) associated with the individual being targeted.

Analysts can also search by name, telephone number, IP address, keywords, the language in which the internet activity was conducted or the type of browser used.

One document notes that this is because “strong selection [search by email address] itself gives us only a very limited capability” because “a large amount of time spent on the web is performing actions that are anonymous.”

The documents assert that by 2008, 300 terrorists had been captured using intelligence from XKeyscore.

Analysts are warned that searching the full database for content will yield too many results to sift through. Instead they are advised to use the also stored in the databases to narrow down what to review.

A slide entitled “plug-ins” in a December 2012 document describes the various fields of information that can be searched. It includes “every email address seen in a session by both username and domain”, “every phone number seen in a session (eg address book entries or signature block)” and user activity – “the webmail and chat activity to include username, buddylist, machine specific cookies etc”.
Email monitoring

In a second Guardian interview in June, Snowden elaborated on his statement about being able to read any individual’s email if he had their email address. He said the claim was based in part on the email search capabilities of XKeyscore, which Snowden says he was authorized to use while working as a Booz Allen contractor for the .

One top-secret document describes how the program “searches within bodies of emails, webpages and documents”, including the “To, From, CC, BCC lines” and the ‘Contact Us’ pages on websites”.

To search for emails, an analyst using XKS enters the individual’s email address into a simple online search form, along with the “justification” for the search and the time period for which the emails are sought.

The analyst then selects which of those returned emails they want to read by opening them in reading software.

The system is similar to the way in which analysts generally can intercept the communications of anyone they select, including, as one NSA document put it, “communications that transit the United States and communications that terminate in the United States”.

One document, a top secret 2010 guide describing the training received by analysts for general surveillance under the Amendments Act of 2008, explains that analysts can begin surveillance on anyone by clicking a few simple pull-down menus designed to provide both legal and targeting justifications. Once options on the pull-down menus are selected, their target is marked for electronic surveillance and the analyst is able to review the content of their communications:

Chats, browsing history and other internet activity

Beyond emails, the XKeyscore system allows analysts to monitor a virtually unlimited array of other internet activities, including those within social media.

An tool called Presenter, used to read the content of stored emails, also enables an analyst using XKeyscore to read the content of Facebook chats or private messages.

An analyst can monitor such Facebook chats by entering the Facebook user name and a date range into a simple search screen.

Analysts can search for internet browsing activities using a wide range of information, including search terms entered by the user or the websites viewed.

As one slide indicates, the ability to search HTTP activity by keyword permits the analyst access to what the calls “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet”.

The XKeyscore program also allows an analyst to learn the IP addresses of every person who visits any website the analyst specifies.

The quantity of communications accessible through programs such as XKeyscore is staggeringly large. One report from 2007 estimated that there were 850bn “call events” collected and stored in the NSA databases, and close to 150bn internet records. Each day, the document says, 1-2bn records were added.

William Binney, a former mathematician, said last year that the agency had “assembled on the order of 20tn transactions about US citizens with other US citizens”, an estimate, he said, that “only was involving phone calls and emails”. A 2010 Washington Post article reported that “every day, collection systems at the [NSA] intercept and store 1.7bn emails, phone calls and other type of communications.”

The XKeyscore system is continuously collecting so much internet data that it can be stored only for short periods of time. Content remains on the system for only three to five days, while is stored for 30 days. One document explains: “At some sites, the amount of data we receive per day (20+ terabytes) can only be stored for as little as 24 hours.”

To solve this problem, the has created a multi-tiered system that allows analysts to store “interesting” content in other databases, such as one named Pinwale which can store material for up to five years.

It is the databases of XKeyscore, one document shows, that now contain the greatest amount of communications data collected by the.

In 2012, there were at least 41 billion total records collected and stored in XKeyscore for a single 30-day period.

Legal v technical restrictions

While the Amendments Act of 2008 requires an individualized warrant for the targeting of US persons, analysts are permitted to intercept the communications of such individuals without a warrant if they are in contact with one of the NSA’s foreign targets.

The ACLU’s deputy legal director, Jameel Jaffer, told the Guardian last month that national security officials expressly said that a primary purpose of the new law was to enable them to collect large amounts of Americans’ communications without individualized warrants.

“The government doesn’t need to ‘target’ Americans in order to collect huge volumes of their communications,” said Jaffer. “The government inevitably sweeps up the communications of many Americans” when targeting foreign nationals for surveillance.

An example is provided by one XKeyscore document showing an target in Tehran communicating with people in Frankfurt, Amsterdam and New York.

In recent years, the has attempted to segregate exclusively domestic US communications in separate databases. But even NSA documents acknowledge that such efforts are imperfect, as even purely domestic communications can travel on foreign systems, and NSA tools are sometimes unable to identify the national origins of communications.

Moreover, all communications between Americans and someone on foreign soil are included in the same databases as foreign-to-foreign communications, making them readily searchable without warrants.

Some searches conducted by analysts are periodically reviewed by their supervisors within the NSA. “It’s very rare to be questioned on our searches,” Snowden told the Guardian in June, “and even when we are, it’s usually along the lines of: ‘let’s bulk up the justification’.”

In a letter this week to senator Ron Wyden, director of national intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that analysts have exceeded even legal limits as interpreted by the NSA in domestic surveillance.

Acknowledging what he called “a number of compliance problems”, Clapper attributed them to “human error” or “highly sophisticated technology issues” rather than “bad faith”.

However, Wyden said on the Senate floor on Tuesday: “These violations are more serious than those stated by the intelligence community, and are troubling.”

In a statement to the Guardian, the said: “NSA’s activities are focused and specifically deployed against – and only against – legitimate foreign intelligence targets in response to requirements that our leaders need for information necessary to protect our nation and its interests.

“XKeyscore is used as a part of ‘s lawful foreign signals intelligence collection system.

“Allegations of widespread, unchecked analyst access to collection data are simply not true. Access to XKeyscore, as well as all of NSA’s analytic tools, is limited to only those personnel who require access for their assigned tasks … In addition, there are multiple technical, manual and supervisory checks and balances within the system to prevent deliberate misuse from occurring.”

“Every search by an analyst is fully auditable, to ensure that they are proper and within the law.

“These types of programs allow us to collect the information that enables us to perform our missions successfully – to defend the nation and to protect US and allied troops abroad.”

Link:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data

Is that a lot of Money???

What one trillion in one hundred dollar bills looks like...

US national debt is actually $70 trillion

Press TV

A new study by an American economist concludes that the U.S. federal debt is mind-bogglingly larger than it is officially said to be. The study by James D. Hamilton of the University of California, San Diego, says the U.S. government’s off-balance-sheet liabilities are six times the size of the official debt or $70.1 trillion.

“U.S. federal debt has exploded in recent years, growing from $5 trillion (or 36% of GDP) in 2007 to an estimated $12 trillion (72% of GDP) by the end of 2013,” Hamilton said in a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research.

But the $12 trillion federal debt is only the tip of the iceberg because the figure is not inclusive of a number of off-balance-sheet commitments and liabilities.

“But the officially reported debt is only one respect in which current policy has left a burden for future taxpayers. In addition the government has made a number of implicit and explicit commitments that are not included in the net debt figures just reported, but which could potentially require much larger adjustments in future spending or taxes than those associated with paying interest on the official debt itself. The biggest items in this category come from Social Security and Medicare which, if current policy is maintained, will require enormous sacrifices from future taxpayers.”

The study identifies five key off-balance-sheet commitments which are “support for housing, other loan guarantees (including federal loan guarantee programs in addition to those involving housing such as loans for post-high-school education, small business loans and loans from the Export-Import Bank of the United States), deposit insurance, actions taken by the Federal Reserve, and government trust funds.”

The biggest category of off-balance-sheet liabilities comes from the additional funds that the trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds believe would need to be found in order to fulfill commitments to current program participants (i.e., those currently aged 15 and older). These are reported to be $26.5 trillion for Social Security and $27.6 trillion for Medicare.

“These numbers are so huge it is hard even to discuss them in a coherent way … But although one can quarrel with the specific numbers, there is an undeniable important reality that they reflect-- the U.S. population is aging, and an aging population means fewer people paying in and more people expecting benefits. This reality is unambiguously going to be a key constraint on the sustainability of fiscal policy for the United States. One would think we should be saving as a nation today as preparation for retirement, and if in fact we are not, the current enormous on-balance-sheet federal debt is all the more of a concern,” the paper says.

“Adding all these items together, I calculate total off-balance-sheet federal liabilities of around $70 T, or 6 times the size of reported on-balance-sheet liabilities,”

The paper working concludes that “Some may argue that the current off-balance-sheet liabilities of the U.S. federal government are smaller than those tabulated here; others could arrive at larger numbers. These off-balance-sheet concerns may or may not translate into significant on-balance-sheet problems. But one thing seems undeniable-- they are huge. And implicit or explicit commitments of such a huge size have the potential to have huge economic consequences, perhaps for the better, perhaps for the worse. Acknowledging their size is a necessary first step for making wise policy decisions.”

Link:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/07/30/316406/us-national-debt-is-actually-70-trillion/

What Depression???

Recession Forever? 10 Reasons American Workers Are Screwed

By Moira Herbst

The US economy is engaged in a vicious cycle in which low-wage jobs and under-employment stimulate little demand, giving companies little reason to hire workers.

More than five years after the great recession hit, the US economy is still sputtering. The government revised GDP growth figures down last month to a meager 1.8% for the first quarter of this year. It doesn't take a PhD in economics to understand why: we have a demand problem. And we have a demand problem because the vast majority of consumers – aka workers – are not earning enough to pay for healthcare, education and retirement, let alone all the other stuff stores and service providers have to sell.

The reality is that we're hollowing out the middle class by wiping out well-paid jobs with benefits and replacing them with low-wage ones that often lack them. That's damaging not only to people who are living on smaller paychecks – or who are indeed unemployed – but also to the health and viability of the overall economy.

No matter what New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and his followers say, we are not living in a "sharing economy". We are living in a zero-sum economy – in which a handful of investors and owners win at everyone else's expense.

But ultimately, it will catch up with investors, too. The US economy is engaged in a vicious cycle in which low-wage jobs and under-employment stimulate little demand, giving companies little reason to hire workers. Would-be workers then get discouraged and drop out of the workforce. They lack money to buy things, so consumer spending sags and companies don't hire or offer raises to workers they know they can keep. Repeat.

So, sorry Friedman et al: you can strain your brains for as many offbeat ideas and back-of-taxicab discoveries as you like, but the only way to break the cycle is to ensure everyone can work – and that those workers get more of the fruits of their labor. Until we address the following 10 problems head-on, the idea that the economy is truly recovering will remain a fantasy.

Problem 1: wages are falling

The recession caused a giant drop in consumer demand, but the culprit wasn't just a loss of housing wealth. Wages for most workers are either stagnating or declining. In fact, real median wages fell by about 2.8% between 2009 and 2012. That's bad for workers and bad for the economy. It's also insulting because the drop happened even as productivity increased 4.5%. So much for the sharing economy.

What's worse, lower-wage workers – who are already struggling to keep up – saw bigger declines than those in the middle and higher end. Those earning between $10.61 and $14.21 per hour saw real wages drop by 4.1% on average.

As Reuters' Felix Salmon points out in his crafty analysis of the data, hairstylists and cosmetologists earned $12 an hour on average in 2009. But by 2012, they earned just $10.91 an hour – a drop of more than 9%. Restaurant cooks lost 7.1% over the same period.

Problem 2: the middle class is losing ground and getting hollowed out

The most recent census data shows that while a small group of rich people are getting richer, the middle class is taking a serious beating. US median income fell to $50,054 in 2011, the most recent full year in which that data is available. That's down 8.1% since 2007, just before the great recession started. Overall, median income has fallen 8.9% from its peak in 1999. Meanwhile, the middle class is shrinking, as many Americans slide down the economic ladder – the very inverse of the American dream of economic mobility.

Problem 3: McJobs are taking over

The economy is shedding good jobs, which are increasingly replaced with low-wage, often part-time jobs. During the recovery, job gains have been concentrated in lower-wage occupations, which grew nearly three times as quickly as middle- and higher-wage occupations. State and federal governments, for example, have cut 835,000 jobs over the past four years – many of them middle-income positions.

Job growth projections show that this trend will continue. The healthcare, social assistance and retail sectors are among areas expected to add the most jobs by 2020 – all industries notorious for jobs with meager pay and poor working conditions. A lot of these positions will pay the federal minimum wage ($7.25 an hour) – the inflation-adjusted value of which has declined by more than 30% since the 1960s. That's not going to help the approximately 100 million Americans – one in three – either living in poverty or in "the fretful zone just above it", as the New York Times put it.

Problem 4: capital is hammering labor

Again, so much for the sharing economy. Workers' wages as a percentage of the economy just hit another all-time low. In other words, corporations are now paying employees less than they ever have done, as a share of GDP.

At least in the short term, less for workers means more for corporations: corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are now at an all-time high. Big companies are hoarding cash at historically high levels – not using it for investment, hiring, pay raises or even to reward shareholders. Last time I checked, hoarding is the opposite of sharing. Again, it's a zero-sum economy, and workers are losing. Badly.

Problem 5: unemployment is twice what they say

Our official 7.6% unemployment rate is bad enough, but the real number is actually about twice that. Buried in the monthly jobs report, you'll find what's called the U-6 figure, which includes the unemployed, plus those "marginally attached" to the labor force (that is, they want a job but have largely given up looking), plus those working part-time but who want a full-time job. The U-6 number for June 2013 was an astonishing 14.3%, up half a percentage point from May.

Problem 6: America is going part-time – and not for fun

In staggering numbers, more Americans are working part-time – but not because they want to. These involuntary part-timers now number more than 8.2 million – an increase of 322,000 workers from May and almost double the number this time five years ago. It's the highest it's been all year, and the trend line is going in the wrong direction.

Problem 7: workers aren't working

Here's another way of looking at under-employment: fewer working-age Americans are working than at any time in the past three decades. That is, the employment-to-population ratio has collapsed. In June, the ratio was 58.7% – a drop from 63% five years ago, before the recession hit. Of course, workers sitting on the sidelines aren't collecting paychecks, meaning they have much less to spend.

Problem 8: union wages are harder to come by. Much

There is power in a union. There's also a higher wage. In 2012, the median salary for a unionized worker was about $49,000, as opposed to about $39,000 for their non-union counterparts. But fewer and fewer workers are earning union salaries. Thirty years ago, one in five US workers were union members; now, it's about one in 10.

Problem 9: the cost of college is skyrocketing

Higher education in the US is becoming an unaffordable luxury. By conservative estimates, the cost of a college education is now 50% higher than it was 30 years ago. Public colleges and universities are cheaper, but not cheap enough. As states cut funding, the cost of attending a four-year public institution has risen by 5.2% each year of the last decade. Student loan debt in this country now exceeds $1tr.

Upon graduation, debt-saddled young people face a fierce job market; youth unemployment has hovered around 16% for the last year and a half. The conundrum is that, although college degrees are exorbitantly expensive, they're increasingly necessary to even get in the door for a decent job.

Problem 10: inequality is getting worse

It's well-known that the US ranks near the top of most unequal countries in the developed world – and that income inequality here has reached its highest levels since the great depression. A few statistics fill out the bleak picture: the top 1% of earners took 93% (pdf) of the income gains in the first full year of the recovery. The poorest 50% of Americans now collectively own just 2.5% of the nation's wealth.

What level of inequality is healthy for a society may be debatable, but an increasing number of economists and regulators – including those at the IMF and Federal Reserve – are recognizing that US-style inequality is bad for business, and the economy as a whole.

As these experts are starting to realize, the recovery will only come when workers get their due. Until then, American corporations are sowing the seeds of their own destruction – and taking the rest of us down with them.

Link:
http://www.alternet.org/recession-forever-10-reasons-american-workers-are-screwed?paging=off

The benefits of colloidal silver...

Colloidal Silver Benefits: The Truth About Colloidal Silver

By Paul Fassa

Have you heard of a ‘miracle’ product known as colloidal silver? The basic reason for any colloidal silver efficacy and safety controversy is that the medical establishment (medical mafia) and the pharmaceutical industry (Big Pharma) see colloidal silver as a financial threat. While you may have been cautioned against using colloidal silver, know that colloidal silver benefits are tried and true.

Both the medical establishment and Big Pharma have put silver medical products to work in hospital equipment and medical tools as well as anti-infection burn remedies to prevent MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus) infections, which are potentially lethal and have become antibiotic resistant.

Yet the medical establishment promotes fear mongering lies through various media outlets and threatens colloidal silver manufacturers through various federal, state, and local health agencies.

The difference between their medical products and colloidal silver is patent rights that yield royalties for several years. Colloidal silver can be made by anyone with inexpensive equipment and it can’t be patented.

As of January 2009, the EU has banned colloidal silver manufacturing in its European member nations. Whenever Codex Alimentarius gets “harmony” compliance from the USA, the same will happen here.

So now is the right time to stock up and try it yourself or buy a kit permitting you to make it yourself indefinitely.

How Colloidal Silver (CS)Works and Colloidal Silver Benefits

Many consider colloidal silver an antiseptic and not an antibiotic because it kills more than bacteria; it destroys viruses and eliminates fungal infections. So far, bacteria that are resistant to silver haven’t developed, while colloidal silver can destroy antibiotic-resistant pathogens, even the dreaded MRSA.

As a matter of fact, now the medical mafia has been covertly adding colloidal silver into antibiotics to conquer the super-bug strains that have developed immunity to those antibiotics. I say covertly because they aren’t talking too much about it!

Keep in mind that while antibiotics don’t touch viruses and fungus’s, colloidal silver eliminates them – making colloidal silver benefits incredibly useful. It eliminates anaerobic pathogens by destroying the enzymes that fend off oxygen molecules, thus oxidizing them to death.

Conversely, the silver nano-particles neutralize the minority of aerobic pathogens by disrupting their ability to use oxygen. This begs the question: will colloidal silver destroy friendly gut bacteria the way pharmaceutical antibiotics do? Some colloidal silver advocates claim it is so readily assimilated into the blood through the stomach and gut linings before it can linger in the lower intestines where our friendly bacteria mostly reside. Therefore, it isn’t an issue.

Others consider electrical charge bonding as the main factor for eliminating pathogens while sparing gut friendly bacteria. Most friendly bacteria are not negatively charged, eliminating any attraction to the positively charged silver particles.

However, a couple of key colloidal advocates, one from whom I purchased my colloidal silver making machine, don’t think that the intestinal flora issue has been clearly established. They recommend the following:

Have probiotic materials on hand and use them an hour or more after ingesting colloidal silver.

Swish and hold a dose of colloidal silver in your mouth to absorb most of the particles sublingually into the bloodstream through the capillaries under and around your tongue as long as possible before swallowing.

Nebulize the colloidal silver solution, making it go directly into your bloodstream via the lungs blood vessels.

As magnetic scavengers, they don’t have to collide into pathogens by chance the way antibiotics do. Because the tiny colloidal silver particles (colloids) have strong positive charges, they are attracted to or attract negatively charged microbes, including viruses.
How It’s Made

A colloidal silver solution is made from a small electrical current applied to silver strips placed in distilled water. After some time, the distilled water becomes flooded with tiny nanoparticles of silver.

The liquid itself should be clear, and it’s important that it be shielded from sunlight exposure. As the nanoparticles get oxidized from light exposure and they settle out of solution, coloration occurs.

Since colloidal silver may become banned someday, because it’s so effective and safe, it would be wise to purchase the apparatus for making your own to protect you from epidemics, whether incidental or created. Its cost makes future colloidal silver use very cost-effective.

Here a site I have personally used for reasonably priced silver or gold colloidal products and a silver colloidal machine.
Big Pharma’s Colloidal Silver Bad Press

The blue grandpa “smurf” photos of Paul Karason’s Argyria (an almost permanent blue skin disease) has made the mainstream media rounds for anti colloidal silver propagandists.

What isn’t mentioned is that Paul made his own crude large particle colloidal silver and drank at least a pint and up to quart a day for years! The normal dosage is a teaspoonful one to three times daily, depending on the severity of infection.

Another disinformation meme is that the silver accumulates in the kidneys and creates a toxic situation. This would only happen if the kidneys are already defective, and even then accumulation factor has not been actually established or proven.

Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/colloidal-silver-health-benefits-truth/#ixzz2adkYFR4L

Mind control is no longer science fiction...

Secret DARPA Mind Control Project Revealed: Leaked Document

Whistleblower Reveals Military Mind Control Project At Major University

Activist Post

What if the government could change people’s moral beliefs or stop political dissent through remote control of people’s brains?Sounds like science fiction, right? Well, a leaked document reveals that the US government, through DARPA research, is very close to accomplishing this.Activist Post was recently contacted by an anonymous whistleblower who worked on a secret ongoing mind-control project for DARPA. The aim of the program is to remotely disrupt political dissent and extremism by employing “Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation” (TMS) in tandem with sophisticated propaganda based on this technology. TMS stimulates the temporal lobe of the brain with electromagnetic fields.The program, conducted by The Center for Strategic Communication, is based at Arizona State University. The DARPA funding for this project can be confirmed on the ASU website here. The head of the project, Steve Corman, has worked extensively in the area of strategic communication as it applies to terrorism and “extremism” – or what could be called “the war of ideas.”Corman’s latest project Narrating The Exit From Afghanistan and his many presentations make it quite obvious that the mission is to shape the narrative and literally change people’s minds. Lest one believe it will be contained to overseas extremists, we should keep in mind that the wordextremist is increasingly used domestically. The dissenters of yesterday could easily become theterrorist sympathizers and supporters of political violence tomorrow.

This DARPA research brings about many ethical questions and dilemmas. Mainly, this research aims to literally induce or disrupt the operation of narratives within the brain. In other words, this research aims to stop individuals from thinking certain thoughts and make others believe things they normally would not believe. This research has tremendous interrogation possibilities and could potentially be used to more successfully spread propaganda or stop political upheaval to an unsuspecting public. This research is being conducted by The Center for Strategic Communication at ASU and is entitled“Toward Narrative Disruptors and Inductors: Mapping the Narrative Comprehension Network and its Persuasive Effects” A detailed overview of the project can be found in the document below. Highlights include:

In phase 3 of the research, the research group will “selectively alter aspects of narrative structure and brain functions via Transcranial Magnetic Simulation (TMS) to induce or disrupt selected features of narrative processing.” (Page 16, emphasis added)

TMS is a very powerful tool used to impair the brain functioning of individuals. See the videos below for a brief demonstration of the effects of TMS.





Once the research group determines which parts of the brain are associated with cognitive reasoning and narrative comprehension, they will be attempt to impair those sections in order to “create a fundamental basis for understanding how to disrupt or enhance aspects of narrative structure and/or brain functioning to minimize or maximize persuasive effects on subject proclivity to engage in political violence.”(Page 23)

Once it is determined that disruption of certain portions of the brain can enhance persuasive messaging, individuals can be persuaded to do things they normally would not do and believe things they normally would not believe. This could include something as simple as telling a closely guarded secret, to believing in government propaganda, or even committing a violent act. The group writes on page 26, “once we have produced a narrative comprehension model [i.e., how individuals comprehend stories and persuasive messages], end users [aka the government] will understand how to activate known neural networks (e.g., working memory or attention) and positive behavioral outcome (e.g., nonviolent actions) nodes with strategic communication messages as a means to reduce incidences of political violence in contested populations.” The group will investigate “possibilities for literally disrupting the activity of the NCN [narrative comprehension network] through Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation.” (page 30) [text added]
The group is so confident that they will be able to induce or disrupt the operations of narratives in the brain, that they say on page 26 that the research “offers the capability to induce or disrupt the operation of narratives in the brain, and develops the capability to induce narrative validity [i.e., the believability of a particular narrative/message], transportation [i.e., the ability to be engaged by a narrative], and integration [i.e., associating a particular narrative with a larger, more culturally specific narrative] with certainty.” [text added]
The group gives the following example of this projects usefulness: “If it is the case that activation in one particular neural network enables people to connect personal narrative to master narratives [i.e., cultural narratives], by disrupting activity in that brain area, we should be able to selectively impair that specific aspect of narrative processing while holding other meaning making processes constant, effectively creating a ‘narrative disruptor.’ Not only would this be an important finding in the science of neural networks and narrative persuasion, but would also have considerably practical and strategic importance.” (page 40) [text added]

Essentially, the research aims to literally disrupt how people think and comprehend ideas and messages.

Further, and perhaps even more terrifying, on page 40, the group writes, “Mechanical disruptions of narrative processing may be, ultimately, replicated in through targeted strategic communication campaigns that approximate the narrative disruptions induced via magnetic stimulation.” So, after figuring out which parts of the brain are activated by particular persuasive messages and propaganda, the government can test out messages that only activate particular portions of the brain and not others, in order to persuade individuals to believe or not believe something. Essentially, they are attempting to modify brain functioning without TMS, and only words. One can only imagine the strategies the government could use with this technology. They could make the public believe almost anything that suits their needs. It could literally lead to mass brainwashing.

But what does this mean, practically? It means that if this research succeeds, the government will be able to modify how one personally thinks. They could strap you in a chair, put a machine to your head, turn off parts of your brain, introduce a persuasive message, and make you believe it.

Further, through extensive research, they may be able to replicate the machine’s brain disrupting functioning simply through carefully crafted and researched persuasive messages and propaganda. They can use brain imaging to determine which portions of the brain are activated when a particular message is presented to an individual, and if the “right” portions are activated, they know the message will circumvent one’s mental reasoning and lead to almost automatic acceptance. With enough data, the government could spread propaganda through the media that people will almost automatically believe, whether it is true or not.

In terms of interrogation possibilities, Transcranical Magnetic Stimulation can be forced upon individuals to make them believe certain things, say certain things, and perhaps admit to acts they did not actually commit (as the TMS can induce narrative validity), or commit acts they normally would not commit.

The government is literally trying to brainwash the public. This is not science fiction. Technology has made it possible to induce and disrupt cognitive functioning in individuals. In the future, your thoughts may not be your own, but ones that have been implanted into your brain through exceedingly successful and validated propaganda.

Meeting notes indicate concern about how the project will be perceived, particularly the focus on the Christian/Muslim element.

We encourage you to embed these documents on your own website or blog and share them with everyone you know. Page numbers listed above are based on Scribd conversion below; enter the page number you wish to view in the Scribd search box.

Link to article and documents:
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/07/secret-darpa-mind-control-project.html

"Frisler's spirit is alive today and exists in every courtroom of the world where judges refuse or fail to protect the rights of those unfortunate enough to appear before them."

Meet “The People’s Court”

By Crimefile

Berlin, Germany-Just outside the beautiful and spectacular Sony Center Shopping mall here there is a simple sidewalk brass marker. It is a reminder of terrible time in history when total judicial tyranny was practiced under National Socialism 1933-1945. Murder under color of law was the mission of the Chief Justice, Roland Frisler.

Frisler served in the WWI German Military where he was wounded and captured by Russians. While in captivity, Frisler embraced Marxism turning his back on his homeland. He joined the Communist party upon release but once again switched his allegiance joining the burgeoning Nazi Party. Frisler proved to be quite a social climber.

Frisler was a lawyer and was later appointed by Adolph Hitler as the People’s Court President. It has been said that he Frisler constantly proving himself as a super Nazi to counter those who questioned his changing loyalties.

Frisler was ruthless and merciless as he sent over 5,000 German men, women and teenagers to the guillotine or gallows for even the most minor acts of resistance. Evidence presented before the court was often simple hearsay. The People’s Court court acquitted only a scant few before it.

Frisler was also one of Hitler’s Judges that made sure everything done by the Nazi government was legal. He was also chosen as one of 15 high ranking Nazis that promulgated the Holocaust at the Wansee Conference during a two-hour luncheon.

Frisler escaped the hangman when he was killed during an Allied bombing raid on February 3, 1945 successfully targeted the People’s Court building. Rather than take refuge in a bomb shelter Frisler was busy safeguarding case files of those he was trying to murder.

Americans have a strong Constitution that contains a Bill of Rights. Frisler's spirit is alive today and exists in every courtroom of the world where judges refuse or fail to protect the rights of those unfortunate enough to appear before them. We must make doubly sure that as our judges that lose sight of their duty to protect citizen’s rights are brought to book and harshly punished for any and all tyrannical acts.

This Brass Marker translated into English reads:

“On this site 1935-1945 was the entrance to the People’s Court.
In violation of fundamental principles of constitutional justice, they condemned more than five thousand people to death. Freedom was taken from even a higher number that were targeted for persecution and extermination of all opposed to the Nazi regime.”

Learn more about Roland Frisler in this video:



Link:
http://www.crimefilenews.com/2013/07/meet-peoples-court.html

"Thomas Jefferson or John McCain? John Adams or Lindsey Graham? Alfred Mahan or Smedley Butler? The Pentagon or the ocean? Which one is better for defense?"

Natural National Defense

By Laurence M. Vance

The preamble to the Constitution states that one of the reasons it was ordained and established was to help provide for the common defense. Of the eighteen paragraphs in article I, section 8, of the Constitution, six of them relate in some way to the war, the military, or the militia.

The budgets passed earlier this year by the Republican-controlled House and Democratic-controlled Senate each called for spending about $6 trillion on national defense over the next ten years. This is even though, according to Treasury Department data, “Over the past ten fiscal years, inflation-adjusted Defense Department spending has increased by approximately 54 percent.”

But as economist Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute concluded after his analysis of the fiscal year 2009 defense budget: “The government is currently spending at a rate well in excess of $1 trillion per year for all defense-related purposes.” This would include supplemental war appropriations and the defense-related spending of NASA and the departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Energy, State, the Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, as well as the interest expense on the national debt attributable to defense spending. This means that real defense spending accounts for about 25 percent of the federal budget.

But even using just the stated defense budget, U.S. defense spending dwarfs that of the rest of the world. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Yearbook 2012, which includes a list on the world’s top 15 military spenders in 2011, the United States spends almost as much on defense as every other country combined. The United States spends about five times as much as China and ten times as much as Russia.

According to a report by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States wasted $12 million per day fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But it’s not just that the military wastes money. As Ron Paul said in an interview on Face the Nation: “Those troops overseas aggravate our enemies, motivate our enemies. I think it’s a danger to national defense, and we can save a lot of money cutting out the military expenditures that contribute nothing to our defense.”

What is so mind boggling about the United States maintaining an empire of troops and bases around the world and spending so much money on “defense” is that America has been blessed with natural national defense.

It’s called the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Thomas Jefferson recognized this over 200 years ago:

At such a distance from Europe and with such an ocean between us, we hope to meddle little in its quarrels or combinations. Its peace and its commerce are what we shall court

The insulated state in which nature has placed the American continent should so far avail it that no spark of war kindled in the other quarters of the globe should be wafted across the wide oceans which separate us from them.

But rather than view the ocean as a defensive bulwark, naval historian and imperialist Alfred Mahan (1840-1914) instead compared it to a “great highway.” Beginning with the Spanish-American War, the United States rejected the foreign policy of John Quincy Adams and went abroad searching for monsters to destroy.

The first step to end the destructive and immoral interventionist foreign policy of the United States is to bring the troops home and keep them home.

In his suggested “Amendment for Peace,” Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler (1881-1940) proposed the following three points:

1. The removal of members of the land armed forces from within the continental limits of the United States and the Panama Canal Zone for any cause whatsoever is hereby prohibited.

2. The vessels of the United States Navy, or of the other branches of the armed service, are hereby prohibited from steaming, for any reason whatsoever except on an errand of mercy, more than five hundred miles from our coast.

3. Aircraft of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps is hereby prohibited from flying, for any reason whatsoever, more than seven hundred and fifty miles beyond the coast of the United States.

Butler maintained that such an amendment “linked with adequate naval and military defenses at home, would guarantee everlasting peace to our nation.”

“How would such an amendment insure peace?” he asked, and then answered:

In the first place, the United States is in no danger whatever of military invasion. Even the Navy and Army Departments, which are always preparing for war, and the State Department, which is always talking about peace but thinking about war, agree on that. By reason of our geographical position, it is all but impossible for any foreign power to muster, transport and land sufficient troops on our shores for a successful invasion.

There is another bar to any invasion of the United States by the political dimensions abroad, which prohibit any one nation from leaving its own borders unguarded in order to make war on a foe three thousand or six thousand miles distant. Yet if, by some incomprehensible diplomatic hocus pocus, an agreement could be reached among certain foreign powers whereby they would forget their own differences for the time being and pool their resources in a joint effort against the United States, there still would be very little fear of successful invasion.

Our fleet, bound by this Peace Amendment to stay close to home shores, would be on hand to repel such invasion at sea: if, through some series of unforeseen circumstances or disasters, an enemy army did succeed in landing on our shores — the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific — the entire manpower of this nation would spring to arms. Every American, every man and boy, would be ready, without conscription, without pleading — every American would be ready to grasp a rifle and rush forth to defend his home and his country.

Butler also reasoned that:

The efficiency of our navy can be maintained by maneuvers a few hundred miles off our own coast just as well as it can be maintained by maneuvers thousands of miles away, and almost in Japan’s back yard, where our navy conducted its main maneuvers last year.

THERE is nothing un-American in the Peace Amendment. When our forefathers planned this government, they foresaw no necessity for preparing for wars in Europe: for wars that didn’t concern us. As a matter of fact, after the Revolutionary War had been won and after the new United States Government was established, our army and navy were eliminated. There was no provision for an army or a navy. True, we had a militia. That is, each state had its own militia. We still have them. We call them National Guards now. But the militia, the only armed force in the United States at that time, was not to be used beyond the territorial limits of the United States.

That’s what our army and navy should be. Home defenders, ready and able to defend our homes, to defend us against attack — that’s all.

The efficiency of our navy can be maintained by maneuvers a few hundred miles off our own coast just as well as it can be maintained by maneuvers thousands of miles away, and almost in Japan’s back yard, where our navy conducted its main maneuvers last year.

Thomas Jefferson or John McCain? John Adams or Lindsey Graham? Alfred Mahan or Smedley Butler? The Pentagon or the ocean? Which one is better for defense?

Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/07/laurence-m-vance/the-military-junta-is-seizing-control/

Song of the day: Old Crow Medicine Show...

The real subversives aren't the American people...

America’s Real Subversives — The FBI and NSA, Spying on the Public

As the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington approaches, commemorating that historic gathering where Martin Luther King Jr gave his famous “I have a dream” speech, it is important to recall the extent to which King was targeted by the government’s domestic spying apparatus. The FBI operation against King is one of the most shameful episodes in the long history of our government’s persecution of dissenters.

Fifty years later, Edward Snowden, who is seeking temporary asylum to remain in Russia, took enormous personal risk to expose the global reach of surveillance programs overseen by President Barack Obama. His revelations continue to provoke worldwide condemnation of the US.

In a heavily redacted, classified FBI memo dated 4 January 1956 – just a little more than a month after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger – the Mobile, Alabama, FBI office stated that an agent “had been assigned by [redacted] to find out all he could about Reverend Martin L King, colored minister in Montgomery and leader in the bus boycott … to uncover all the derogatory information he could about King.”

The FBI at that time was run by its founding director, J Edgar Hoover, who was deploying the vast resources he controlled against any and all perceived critics of the United States. The far-reaching clandestine surveillance, infiltration and disruption operation Hoover ran was dubbed ” COINTELPRO“, for counterintelligence program.

The FBI’s COINTELPRO activities, along with illegal operations by agencies like the CIA, were thoroughly investigated in 1975 by the Church Committee, chaired by the Democratic US senator from Idaho, Frank Church. The Church committee reported that the FBI “conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of first amendment rights of speech and association.” Among COINTELPRO’s perverse activities was an FBI effort to threaten Martin Luther King Jr with exposure of an alleged extramarital affair, including the suggestion, made by the FBI to King, that he avoid embarrassment by killing himself.

Following the Church committee, Congress imposed serious limitations on the FBI and other agencies, restricting domestic spying. Among the changes was the passage into law of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa). Fisa compelled the FBI and others in the government to go to a secret court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, in order to engage in domestic wiretapping.

Then came 11 September 2001, and the swift passage of the Patriot Act, granting broad, new powers of surveillance to intelligence agencies, including the FBI. Section 215 of that act is widely criticized, first for allowing the FBI to obtain records of what books people are signing out of the library. But now, more than 10 years later, and thanks to the revelations that have come from the Snowden leaks, we see that the government has used this law to perform dragnet surveillance on all electronic communications, including telephone “metadata”, which can be analyzed to reveal intimate details of our lives, legalizing a truly Orwellian system of total surveillance.

In what is considered to be a litmus test of the potential to roll back the Obama administration’s domestic spy programs, a bipartisan coalition of libertarian Republicans and progressive Democrats put forth an amendment to the latest defense authorization bill. Justin Amash, a Republican, and John Conyers, a Democrat, both of Michigan, co-sponsored the amendment, which would deny funding to the NSA to collect phone and data records of people who are not subjects of an investigation.

The White House took seriously the potential that its power to spy might get trimmed by Congress. On the eve of the debate on the Amash/Conyers amendment, House members were lobbied by NSA Director General Keith B Alexander, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, as well as by hawkish members of the congressional intelligence committees.

Link:
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/americas-real-subversives-fbi-and-nsa-spying-public

History stuff: JFK Assassination...

The National Security State and the Assassination of JFK
The CIA, the Pentagon, and the `Peace President`

By Andrew Gavin Marshall
Global Research, November 23, 2010


Just 47 years ago, on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. This marked the turning of the American National Security State apparatus against its own leadership. After having overthrown, assassinated leaders, and orchestrated coups around the world, the moment its growing power was threatened by the civilian leadership in America, the apparatus of empire came home to roost.

The National Security State

The apparatus of the National Security State, largely established in the National Security Act of 1947, laid the foundations for the extension of American hegemony around the globe. In short, the Act laid the foundations for the apparatus of the American Empire. The National Security Act created the National Security Council (NSC) and position of National Security Adviser, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JSC) as the Pentagon high command of military leaders, and of course, the CIA.

The first major foreign operation carried out by the National Security State, or rather, the “secret government,” was the overthrowing of a democratically elected government in Iran. In 1952, the British were concerned at the efforts of Iran’s new Prime Minister Mohommad Mossadeq, in nationalizing Iran’s oil industry, taking the monopoly away from British Petroleum. So the British intelligence, the SIS, proposed to the Americans a joint operation, and the CIA obliged.

In early 1953, with the ascendancy of the Eisenhower administration, two brothers, the Dulles brothers, came to dominate foreign policy decisions. John Foster Dulles became Secretary of State while his brother, Allen Dulles, became director of the CIA. Allen Dulles was a founding member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was a director of the CFR from 1927 to 1969,[1] while John Foster Dulles had joined the Council in the 1930s, and was a career diplomat and Wall Street lawyer.[2] In 1953, the Dulles brothers both worked and lobbied Eisenhower for the removal of Mossadeq from Iran,[3] and subsequently, the CIA and SIS worked together to enact the plan and overthrew the Iranian government.[4]

On January 17, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his farewell address to the nation in which he warned America and indeed the world about the growing influence of the National Security State in what he referred to as the “military-industrial complex”:

“Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”[5]

Eisenhower was speaking from the point of view of having first-hand knowledge of this ‘influence’ in the corridors of power, himself as President being unable to challenge it, and unable to do so simply in the first decade of the American Empire. He was warning against the influence of the interconnected relationship and organized power of the military, government, and industry, in that the growing influence of this ‘complex’ was so vast that it threatened to take over the government and subvert democracy itself. It was the functions of this complex that saw profit created through war and empire, and thus, there was a constant drive and impetus towards pursuing empire and resorting to war. If you build a massive military structure, you are going to use it; if it is profitable to go to war, you will go to war.

The “Secret Government” and the Bay of Pigs

In January of 1959, the Cuban Revolution ousted the military strong man and American-ally Batista, and installed the Communist government of Fidel Castro. Beginning in October of 1959, the United States began a covert bombing and strafing campaign against Cuba, and in the early months of 1960, the US even firebombed Cuban cane fields and sugar mills. The CIA had organized the Cuban exile community, largely under the leadership of former supporters of Batista, in Florida to mount an operation aimed at overthrowing the revolutionary government.[6]

The CIA and the American military, headed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (itself a creation of the National Security Act of 1947), were dead-set against Cuba. The idea of a Communist government so close to the United States was seen as completely unacceptable to the National Security State. Thus, in less than three months of JFK becoming president, in April of 1961, the CIA launched the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, in which nearly 2,000 Cuban exiles trained and supported by the CIA were to invade from the sea. However, Kennedy refused to go along with the operation and cancelled the air support for the invasion, leading to the failure of the invasion and capture of the exiles, and “the CIA, military, and Cuban exiles bitterly blamed Kennedy.” Kennedy, in turn, blamed the CIA and the Pentagon, and fired CIA Director Allen Dulles and Deputy Director of the CIA, Charles Cabell in January of 1962.[7]

The Bay of Pigs reveals some startling information about the “Deep Politics” surrounding the Kennedy administration. ‘Deep politics’ is a term popularized by former Canadian diplomat, author and academic Peter Dale Scott, who – in my opinion – is one of the pre-eminent researchers of the “secret government.” Scott defines ‘deep politics’ as “looking beneath public formulations of policy issues to the bureaucratic, economic, and ultimately covert and criminal activities which underlie them.”[8] In short, ‘deep politics’ is the functions and actions of the ‘secret government’.

David Talbott, former Editor-in-Chief of Salon, wrote a book about the assassinations of JFK and Robert Kennedy, in which he undertook in depth research into what can only be described as the ‘deep politics’ of their deaths. In it, he explained that upon JFK becoming President, Allen Dulles had felt that as he and his late brother John Foster Dulles (who died in 1959) “had largely run America’s foreign policy between the two of them during the 1950s,” that “he expected to continue the family’s policies undisturbed under the new, inexperienced president.” Dulles, in the presence of a close Kennedy confidante, even “started boasting that he was still carrying out his brother Foster’s foreign policy,” saying, “that’s a much better policy. I’ve chosen to follow that one.” The Kennedy confidante who was present informed JFK who was furious, “God damn it! … Did he really say that?”[9]

Richard Bissell, a man who formerly worked with the OSS (the precursor to the CIA), as well as the Ford Foundation, was brought into the CIA by Allen Dulles in 1958 as the Deputy Director for Plans, overseeing and personally running the covert plots to overthrow Arbenz in Guatemala, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam and primarily Fidel Castro. He was in charge of the Bay of Pigs operation. In short, Bissell was a devout acolyte of the ‘secret government.’ Bissell reassembled the key CIA officers involved in the Guatemala coup for the Bay of Pigs operations, including Tracy Barnes, David Atlee Phillips, Howard Hunt (who would later become famous as one of the Watergate burglars) and David Sanchez Morales.[10]

The Bay of Pigs operations, which was organized in the Eisenhower administration, under the guidance of his Vice President, Richard Nixon, was briefed to Kennedy upon becoming president. JFK “made it clear to Dulles and Bissell that he would not commit the full military might of the United States to the Bay of Pigs operation.”[11] During the Bay of Pigs operation, when it was clear that the operation would fail without military support, a major meeting took place with Kennedy, his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Vice President Johnson, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Lyman Lemnitzer, as well as Admiral Burke, the Navy Chief and Richard Bissell of the CIA. Bissell urged the president to take military action, with the support of Navy Chief Burke. Kennedy had refused, and he “was beginning to realize that his top military and intelligence chiefs did not take his instructions that seriously.”[12]

Kennedy had repeatedly told Bissell in the lead up to the Bay of Pigs that as president, he reserved the right to abort the operation at any time. Yet Bissell had informed the military leaders of the Bay of Pigs operation that there were forces in the White House trying to stop it from going forward, and if they succeeded, he advised them to “mutiny against their U.S. advisors and proceed with the invasion.” Further, on the first day of the invasion, Admiral Burke, the Navy Chief, had sent “the U.S. aircraft carrier Essex and helicopter landing ship Boxer close to Cuban shore, in violation of Kennedy’s order to keep U.S. ships fifty miles away.”[13] This was the true first test of the young president:

“The country’s military and intelligence chiefs had clearly believed they could sandbag the young, untested commander-in-chief into joining the battle. But he had stunned them by refusing to escalate the fighting.”[14]

As declassified CIA documents later revealed, the CIA itself knew that the operation was doomed to fail, and had hid these bleak reports from Kennedy and went ahead with the operation anyhow. Startlingly, “the CIA knew that it couldn’t accomplish this type of overt paramilitary mission without direct Pentagon participation,” and further, the CIA had “discovered in advance that the plan had been leaked to Soviet intelligence” and Castro, who even knew the date of the attack. Dulles, therefore, “regarded the band of Cuban exiles who were about to hit the beaches as mere cannon fodder, a device to trigger the real invasion by the U.S. military.”[15]

On the evening that the mission had finally come to an abrupt failure, Allen Dulles sat down to dinner with Richard Nixon, “the man who had spearheaded the plan as vice president,” and Dulles proclaimed, “This is the worst day of my life!” Thus, the Bay of Pigs failure “sent shockwaves through the [central intelligence] agency, particularly among the agents who had worked closely with the Cuban émigrés on the operation.”[16]

Following the Bay of Pigs, “the heavens ripped open for the Kennedy administration” and “never came back together,” as JFK became “estranged from his national security team.” CIA agents like Howard Hunt, who were involved in the operation, would proclaim that the United States “owed the Cuban people a blood debt,” and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Lyman Lemnitzer proclaimed that Kennedy’s actions were “unbelievable… absolutely reprehensible, almost criminal.” With Kennedy’s first test as president, the nations’ top military and intelligence officials saw him “to be a dangerously weak link at the top of the chain of command.”[17]

Kennedy, for his part, said, “I’ve got to do something about those CIA bastards,” and also “lashed out at the Joint Chiefs.” JFK publicly took responsibility for the Bay of Pigs failure, but “CIA and Pentagon officials knew that he privately spread the word that they were to blame.” Subsequently, Kennedy threatened to “shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces, and scatter it to the winds.”[18]

Kennedy Versus the ‘Kings’ of the National Security State

Shortly after the Bay of Pigs, the Joint Chiefs approached Kennedy urging him to invade the Southeast Asian country of Laos, “to respond to the advances of Communist insurgents,” yet Kennedy quickly dismissed their advice, and Kennedy had personally thought of Chairman Lemnitzer as “a dope.” However, “Kennedy was acutely aware of how formidable the institutional powers were that he confronted.” As Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, an old family friend of the Kennedy’s explained, regarding JFK confiding in him, that Kennedy was “seared” by the Bay of Pigs experience, and “he had experienced the extreme power that these groups had, these various insidious influences of the CIA and Pentagon, on civilian policy.” JFK even questioned if he, as president, could “ever be strong enough to really rule these two powerful agencies.”[19]

Following the Bay of Pigs, JFK pulled away from any advice of these National Security kingpins and began to rely upon his most trusted personal advisers, and particularly his brother Robert Kennedy, who was the Attorney General, who would “move into the center of national security decision making for the rest of his brother’s presidency,” and took on the responsibility of supervising the CIA.[20]

Kennedy, for his part, “was more viscerally antiwar than has been recognized in some quarters,” as he once stated, “I am almost a ‘peace-at-any-price’ president.” As Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense, once explained, JFK “brought into the presidency the knowledge of history that many presidents didn’t have when they became president,” and that JFK had thought that, “the primary responsibility of the president is to keep the nation out of war if at all possible.”[21]

Arthur Schlesinger, Special Assistant to President Kennedy, later recalled that, “Certainly we did not control the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” reflecting on the deep divisions within the Kennedy administration. The National Security State’s “secret government,” which had controlled foreign policy in the previous two administrations of Truman and Eisenhower, “was not prepared to cede power to the new Kennedy government. This was soon made clear to the president’s team by the top military commanders.” In particular, Schlesinger explained regarding Kennedy’s fears of the military, “Kennedy’s concern was not that Khrushchev [the Soviet leader] would initiate something, but that something would go wrong in a Dr. Strangelove kind of way,” referring to Stanley Kubrick’s film in which a rogue U.S. general starts World War III. Even Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was struggling to control the generals under his command.[22]

General Curtis LeMay, the Air Force Chief, was a particularly staunch opponent of the Kennedy administration. He had once mused aloud to a Washington Post columnist in July of 1961 that he felt “nuclear war would break out in the final weeks of the year,” and that nuclear war was “inevitable.” LeMay, as McNamara acknowledged, was a staunch advocate of “preemptive nuclear war to rid the world of the Soviet threat,” casually acknowledging that “it would likely incinerate such major U.S. cities as Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit.” LeMay, during World War II, made his name by “laying waste to much of Japan with his infamous firebombing campaign.”[23]

In the summer of 1961, JFK came under intense pressure from both the military and intelligence officials in his government “to consider launching a preemptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union.” On July 20, “at a National Security Council meeting, Kennedy was presented an official plan for a surprise nuclear attack by the Joint Chiefs chairman, General Lemnitzer, and Allen Dulles,” and Kennedy, disgusted, got up and left in the middle of the meeting, then remarked to his Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “and we call ourselves the human race.”[24] Kennedy had, in the fall of 1961, fired Allen Dulles, Charles Cabell, the Deputy Director of the CIA, and Richard Bissell, the Deputy Director of Plans for the CIA. Kennedy had made himself ‘Enemy #1’ of the National Security State apparatus. A retired Marine general at the time once “suggested a coup was in order if the ‘traitors’ could not be voted out.”[25]

As Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General, began to increasingly exert supervision over the CIA, he discovered that the CIA was working with the Mafia in plots to assassinate Castro. JFK had appointed John McCone as CIA director to replace Dulles, however, Richard Helms “emerged as the real power in the agency soon after the downfall of Dulles and Bissell,” leading one top official to even state that, “Helms was running the agency,” and that, “anything McCone found out was by accident.”[26] Richard Helms worked in the OSS, the precursor to the CIA during World War II, and became CIA Director of Plans in 1962, running the covert operations of the CIA.

The Joint Chiefs Propose a Plan for State-Sponsored Terrorism



In 1962, the Pentagon was still pushing for a war with Cuba, and was even drawing up contingency plans for an invasion of Cuba. One such plan, named Operation Northwoods, was recently declassified. On March 13, 1962, Chairman of the Joint Chief General Lemnitzer delivered this plan to McNamara, marked “top secret” and signed by the nation’s highest military commanders.[27]

Operation Northwoods, also named “Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba,” was endorsed by the entire Joint Chiefs, which recommended the operation go into planning stages, and recommended that the Joint Chiefs assume responsibility “for both overt and covert military operations” of the plan.[28] The purpose of the plan was to orchestrate pretexts for a US military intervention in Cuba, and the Joint Chiefs recommended that throughout the operations, the US military will be in an ‘exercise’ mode in order to allow for a “rapid change from exercise to intervention if Cuban response justifies.”[29]

Among the recommended provocations and pretexts to justify a war, the Joint Chiefs suggested that, “a series of well coordinated incidents will be planned to take place in and around [the US military base at] Guantanamo to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces,” including starting rumours, landing “friendly Cubans in uniform” outside of the base to “stage attack on base” in Cuban uniform, capturing friendly “saboteurs inside the base,” and have friendly Cubans “start riots near the base main gate.”[30] Further recommendations were to “blow up ammunition inside the base; start fires,” as well as burning aircraft on the base, or sabotage a ship in the harbor, or to even, “sink [a] ship near harbor entrance. Conduct funerals for mock-victims.”[31]

One startling recommendation was that, “We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,” or that, “we could blow up a drone (unmanned) vessel anywhere in the Cuban waters,” and blame Cuba, and that, “casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”[32] However, the most disturbing aspect of Operation Northwoods was the recommendation that:

“We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington. The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized. Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.”[33]

The general even suggested bombing other Latin American countries such as Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Nicaragua and blaming it on Cuba. They even suggested that a “US military drone aircraft” could be destroyed by a US military plane that, “properly painted would convince air passengers that they saw a Cuban” aircraft.[34] The Joint Chiefs further suggested, “hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft should appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by the government of Cuba.” Startlingly, the plan also recommended concocting a scenario in which an American plane, possibly consisting of “a group of college students,” would be flown over Cuba and blown up, to be blamed on Cuba.[35]

So there you have it, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff put out recommendations for hijacking US aircraft, staging “false flag” attacks, which are covert military operations in which they attack selected targets under the “flag” of another nation/entity in order to blame that particular entity for the attack, such as the recommendations for attacking Guantamo Bay by “friendly Cubans” and conducting a “terror campaign” within the United States, itself.

Three days after Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Lemnitzer presented this plan to McNamara, he was summoned by President Kennedy to the Oval Office for a discussion of Cuba strategy alongside other National Security figures. Many of the figures suggested a military invasion of Cuba, and Lemnitzer jumped at the opportunity to recommend Operation Northwoods, yet spared the specific operational plans of “blowing up people on the streets of Miami and the nation’s capital and blaming it on Castro.” However, “Kennedy was not amused” and he told the general that, “we were not discussing the use of U.S. military force.”[36]

Yet, over the next month, the Joint Chiefs and in particular, Lemnitzer, continued to press both McNamara and Kennedy for a military invasion of Cuba, and “after a National Security Council meeting in June, the president took the general aside and told him he wanted to send him to Europe to become NATO’s new supreme allied commander.” Kennedy thus replaced Lemnitzer with Max Taylor.[37]

The Cuban Missile Crisis: America on the Verge of a Military Coup

Another event of monumental importance to the conduct of JFK challenging the “secret government” apparatus of the National Security State was with the Cuban Missile Crisis, a thirteen-day nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union, which was described by one top official involved as, “the most dangerous moment in human history.” The crisis was started when US reconnaissance observed missile bases being built in Cuba by the Soviet Union. It brought the world closer to nuclear war than ever before or since. During the crisis, JFK, his brother Bobby, and Robert McNamara:

“were trying to steer the decision-making process toward the idea of a naval blockade of Cuba, to stop the flow of nuclear shipments to the island and to pressure the Soviets into a peaceful resolution of the crisis. But virtually his entire national security apparatus was pushing the president to take military action against Cuba. Leading the charge for an aggressive response were the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were urging the president to launch surprise air strikes on the island and then invade.”[38]

Air Force Chief Curtis LeMay, who had been advocating nuclear war with the Soviet Union since the early 1950s, thought Cuba was a “sideshow” and told the President that the United States should “fry it.” LeMay, himself a member of the Joint Chiefs, “was in the habit of taking bullying command of Joint Chiefs meetings,” and with LeMay leading the charge for war, “the other chiefs jumped into the fray, repeating the Air Force general’s call for immediate military action.” LeMay even did something remarkable for a military official:

“He decided to violate traditional military-civilian boundaries and issue a barely veiled political threat. If the president responded weakly to the Soviet challenge in Cuba, he warned him, there would be political repercussions overseas, where Kennedy’s government would be perceived as spineless. “And I’m sure a lot of our own citizens would feel that way too,” LeMay added. With his close ties to militaristic congressional leaders and the far right, LeMay left no doubt about the political damage he could cause the administration. “In other words, you’re in a pretty bad fix at the present time,” LeMay told Kennedy.[39]

Kennedy asked him to repeat what he said, LeMay obliged, and Kennedy retorted, “You’re in there with me.” Kennedy soon left the meeting with McNamara, “the confrontation with his top military men had clearly disturbed the commander-in-chief. Later he told an aide that the administration needed to make sure that the Joint Chiefs did not start a war without his approval, a chronic fear of JFK’s.” After Kennedy and McNamara left the meeting, a secret taping system in the office recorded the conversation between the generals, who “began profanely condemning Kennedy’s cautious, incremental approach to the crisis.”[40]

LeMay’s right-hand man, General Tommy Power, who even LeMay regarded as “not stable,” had taken “it upon himself to raise the Strategic Air Command’s alert status to DEFCON-2, one step from nuclear war,” and ensured that the Soviets knew it. The White House was completely unaware of Power’s actions at the time.[41]

As the crisis continued, Kennedy ordered McNamara “to keep close watch over the Navy to make sure U.S. vessels didn’t do anything that would trigger World War III.” Admiral Anderson, Chief of Naval Operations, who was running the Naval blockade of Cuba, was increasingly frustrated at McNamara’s “hands-on control” of the blockade and clashed with the Defense Secretary in the Navy’s Flag Plot room, suggesting that he didn’t need McNamara’s advice on managing the blockade, prompting McNamara to respond explaining that he doesn’t “give a damn” about past procedures for running blockades, to which Anderson replied, “Mr. Secretary, you go back to your office and I’ll go to mine and we’ll take care of things.” As Anderson later recalled, “Apparently it was the wrong thing to say to somebody of McNamara’s personality,” as when McNamara left the office, he told his aide, “That’s the end of Anderson.” Anderson, months after the Cuban Missile Crisis, was sent to Portugal as ambassador, “where he would be chummy with dictator Antonio Salazar.”[42]

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, it wasn’t the Joint Chiefs alone who were trying to push for war, as the “CIA also played a dangerous game during the crisis,” as Kennedy had ordered the CIA to halt all raids against Cuba during the crisis, “to make sure that no flying sparks from the agency’s secret operations set off a nuclear conflagration.” However, Bill Harvey, the CIA agent in charge of “Operation Mongoose,” the CIA plan which employed the Mafia to attempt to kill Castro, in brazen defiance of Kennedy’s orders, mobilized “every single team and asset that we could scrape together” and then dropped them into Cuba, “in anticipation of the U.S. invasion that the CIA hoped was soon to follow.”[43]

Robert Kennedy became the conduit through which the back-channel negotiations took place with the Soviets that ultimately ended the crisis without catastrophe. Nikita Khrushchev recounted the situation in his memoirs, in which he explained that Robert Kennedy “stressed how fragile his brother’s rule was becoming as the crisis dragged on,” which struck Khrushchev as “especially urgent.” Robert Kennedy warned the Soviets that, “If the situation continues much longer, the president is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power. The American army could get out of control.” Khrushchev even later wrote that, “for some time we had felt there was a danger that the president would lose control of his military,” and that, “now he was admitting this to us himself.” Thus:

“Moscow’s fear that Kennedy might be toppled in a coup, Khrushchev suggested in his memoirs, led the Soviets to reach a settlement of the missile crisis with the president. “We could sense from the tone of the message that tension in the United States was indeed reaching a critical point.””[44]

Thirteen days after the crisis began, the Soviets announced that they would remove the missiles from Cuba, with the US agreeing to remove missiles from US bases in Turkey and “pledging not to invade Cuba,” which Kennedy and future presidents would honour. At the announcement of the end to the crisis, General LeMay roared at Kennedy, “It’s the greatest defeat in our history,” and that, “We should invade today!” A defense analyst at the Pentagon, Daniel Ellsberg, who was consulting with Air Force generals and colonels on nuclear strategy at the end of the crisis, remarked that after the settlement was reached, “there was virtually a coup atmosphere in Pentagon circles,” explaining, “not that I had the fear there was about to be a coup – I just thought it was a mood of hatred and rage. The atmosphere was poisonous, poisonous.”[45]

What’s more, the CIA was further enraged at Kennedy, as “for those militants who were part of the massive juggernaut organized to destroy the Castro regime, the peaceful resolution of the missile crisis was a betrayal worse than the Bay of Pigs.”[46]

Going into 1963, however, the anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Miami continued to undertake covert actions against Castro. The CIA claimed the groups got out of its control, “but the rebels were heavily dependent on agency funding and it was never certain whether the groups’ frequent defiance of Kennedy policy was in fact instigated by their spymasters in Langley and Miami.”[47]

One of these groups was the Cuban Student Directorate (DRE), “a particular favourite of the CIA,” which was founded in 1954 “as a Catholic student group militantly opposed to the dictator Batista,” but in 1960 moved to Miami and shifted its operations against Castro, where its operations were planned by the CIA. A man named Lee Harvey Oswald became affiliated with the group in August of 1963. Oswald made contacts with other Cuban exile groups that summer, some of whom found the “Ex-Marine” to be “suspicious” and even reported on him to Bobby Kennedy.[48]

Kennedy Makes Moves for Peace

In June of 1963, Kennedy delivered his famous “Peace Speech” in which he discussed “the most important topic on earth: world peace.” Kennedy continued:

“What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.

… First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable–that mankind is doomed–that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.

We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade–therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable–and we believe they can do it again.”[49]

Kennedy further stated, “Let us reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union,” suggesting an end to the Cold War, and then remarked: “We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough–more than enough–of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it.” Kennedy famously proclaimed, “We all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”[50]

This was not particularly to the liking of the National Security State, a proclamation for America to follow “not a strategy of annihilation, but a strategy of peace.” Kennedy even stated that America would “never start a war.” As Robert McNamara later recalled, “the American University speech laid out exactly what Kennedy’s intentions were,” and that, “If he had lived, the world would have been different, I feel quite confident of that.”[51]

Kennedy and Vietnam

While the National Security State began maneuvering for an escalation of violence in Vietnam, Kennedy began formulating a plan of his own. He was intent upon the United States withdrawing from the conflict. However, knowing that it would prompt a great outcry, he would wait until after the 1964 election. As Kennedy told one of his top aides, Kenny O’Donnell, “In 1965, I’ll become one of the most unpopular presidents in history. I’ll be damned everywhere as a Communist appeaser. But I don’t care. If I tried to pull out completely now from Vietnam, we would have another Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands, but I can do it after I am reelected. So we had better make damned sure that I am reelected.”[52]

As Vietnam came to crisis late in his term, Kennedy was the lone voice against escalation of military conflict. On October 11, 1963, Kennedy issued National Security Action Memoranda NSAM 263, authorizing his plans “to withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel [from Vietnam] by the end of 1963,” with the longer goal of withdrawing “the bulk of U.S. personnel” by the end of 1965. However, Kennedy ordered that, “no formal announcement be made of the implementation,” yet on November 20, at a top-level conference, “the secrecy was lifted,” and it was reported in the New York Times the following day, which was the day before Kennedy was assassinated.[53]

Following Kennedy’s continuing stealth moves to avoid an escalation of the conflict in Vietnam, the majority of his national security bureaucracy “was in flagrant revolt against him. The Pentagon and CIA were taking steps to sabotage his troop withdrawal plan.” Further:

“Frustrated by the growing instability of South Vietnam’s Diem regime, U.S. officials split over whether to back a military coup to replace it, with Kennedy himself vacillating back and forth on the question.”[54]

An open revolt took place between the two camps with Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, “who supported a coup, and Saigon CIA station chief John Richardson, who backed the increasingly autocratic President Ngo Dinh Diem.” Richard Starnes, a newspaper correspondent in Saigon, wrote on this feud, and explained that “a high U.S. official” in Saigon views the CIA as a “malignancy,” guilty of “insubordination,” and that he “was not sure even the White House could control [it] any longer.” The U.S. official added:

“If the United States ever experiences a [coup attempt] it will come from the CIA and not the Pentagon… [The CIA] represents a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone.”[55]

On November 1, South Vietnamese military plotters killed Diem and his brother in a coup which “was facilitated when the CIA withdrew Richardson from Saigon, allowing the agency to cooperate with the South Vietnamese generals behind the plot.”[56]

Kennedy is Killed

Throughout the fall of 1963, “the CIA pursued its own agenda” with mobsters and militant Cuban exiles, while “the Kennedy’s struggled to control the sprawling operations related to Cuba.”[57]

While in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was killed while driving in his motorcade along Dealey Plaza. E. Howard Hunt, the infamous CIA agent who overthrew the government of Guatemala and worked in the CIA’s anti-Castro Cuban operations, and who later achieved infamy as one of the Watergate burglars, had his deathbed confession revealed by his son in 2007. In his confession, E. Howard Hunt revealed that it was the CIA and Lyndon Banes Johnson who were behind the assassination, and that he, himself, was involved.[58]

Hunt recalled that in 1963, he was invited to a secret meeting in a CIA safe house in Miami by Frank Sturgis, another infamous Watergate burglar, and a “mob-friendly anti-Castro operative.” At the meeting was also CIA agent David Morales, someone Hunt referred to as a “cold-blooded killer,” and William Harvey, another CIA man. The discussion of the meeting was the Kennedy assassination, or what they referred to as “the big event.”[59] Bill Harvey was the man that Richard Helms, CIA Deputy Director for Plans, had put in charge of the CIA’s anti-Castro Cuban operations, and who had a particularly antagonizing relationship with Robert Kennedy, who was trying to supervise Harvey’s operations.[60]

As author Peter Dale Scott revealed, Vice President Lyndon Johnson “had been, since 1961, the ally of the Joint Chiefs (and in particular Air Force General Curtis LeMay) in their unrelenting efforts, against Kennedy’s repeated refusals, to introduce U.S. combat troops into Asia.” The Joint Chiefs had thus taken it upon themselves to keep Johnson more informed than Kennedy on the situation in Southeast Asia, with Chairman Lemnitzer himself going around Kennedy to Johnson. The Joint Chiefs created a back channel where they were delivering “accurate Vietnam reports” to Johnson, “which were denied to the President.” US Army Intelligence reports produced in Saigon were delivered to McNamara and Kennedy, which were “false and optimistic” in order to help “ensure their ongoing support for the war,” while US Army Intelligence in Honolulu produced a second set of reports, described as “accurate and gloomy,” which were supplied to Johnson. When Lemnitzer was replaced as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the man Kennedy chose to replace him, General Max Taylor, continued in taking part in this deception. As Peter Dale Scott explained:

“These divisive intrigues came to a head at the Honolulu conference of November 20, 1963, two days before the assassination. At this meeting the truth about the deterioration of the ineffective war effort “was presented in detail to those assembled, along with a plan to widen the war, while the 1,000-man withdrawal [first publicly acknowledged at the same meeting] was turned into a meaningless paper drill.”

The tone of the meeting, in other words, was in keeping with the policies of the man who would not become President until the shootings in Dallas two days later.”[61]

Thus, “a group within the military command, dissatisfied with Kennedy’s limited support, had already begun secretly to plan for the option preferred by the Vice-President.”[62] Two days after the assassination, Johnson and his top advisers issued a new policy statement in contrast to Kennedy’s NSAM 263 issued on October 11, 1963, which called for a withdrawal of forces from Vietnam. Johnson’s NSAM 273 was finalized on November 26, 1963, four days after the assassination, of which the key policy innovation was “for the United States to begin carrying the war north” in Vietnam. On the very same day Johnson’s NSAM 273 was issued, the Joint Chiefs launched “accelerated planning for escalation against North Vietnam.”[63] Roughly one month later, on December 24, 1963, Lyndon Johnson told the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Just get me elected, and then you can have your war.”[64]

The Warren Commission: The American Establishment Cover-Up Committee

The Warren Commission was established by Lyndon Johnson on November 29, 1963, to investigate the assassination of JFK. Among the members were Gerald Ford, a Congressman who would later become President of the United States, and John J. McCloy, a lawyer, banker, former Assistant Secretary of War in World War II, and former President of the World Bank. McCloy was chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank from 1953 to 1960, was chairman of the Ford Foundation from 1958 to 1965, and was a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1946 to 1949, and again between 1953 and 1958. From 1954 until 1970, McCloy was Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he was succeeded by David Rockefeller, a close associate from Chase Manhattan.

Another notable member of the Warren Commission was none other than Allen Dulles, the former CIA Director whom Kennedy had fired. An interesting fact to note is regarding Dulles’ Deputy Director of the CIA whom Kennedy also fired, Charles Cabell, who was also an Air Force General. Cabell’s brother, Earle Cabell, happened to be mayor of Dallas at the time of Kennedy’s assassination. Allen Dulles was the “Warren Commission’s most active member,” and was adamant in his “unwillingness to let the Commission’s investigation get into a most pertinent project, the CIA-Mafia plots against Castro.”[65]

The Warren Commission was responsible for producing the idea of the “magic bullet theory,” which postulated that three bullets fired from Lee Harvey Oswald at the Texas School Book Depository resulted in the murder of Kennedy. The ‘lone gunman’ and ‘single bullet theory’ were sold to the American people and not subjected to criticism by the mainstream media.

Peter Dale Scott differentiated between the notion of a ‘secret government’ – with the institutional structure of something like a government – and ‘deep politics’ – being, rather, the methods of deception, itself. Thus, it is not within a state structure that the assassination was conducted, but rather it was in the functions of an intricate network that transcends government and industry. Scott explained that, “the President was murdered by a coalition of forces inside and outside government,” and that, “In short, Kennedy was killed by the deep political system.”[66]

As a result of the death of JFK, the National Security State “secret government” – or the ‘deep political’ system, as it is more accurately described, got exactly what it wanted with the escalation of the Vietnam War. The military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned the American people about two years prior, had turned the apparatus of the “secret government” in on the president, himself. It was a political lynching on a grand scale. And it was not to be the last.

Link:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-national-security-state-and-the-assassination-of-jfk/22071