Author Finds Out What Happens When You Try to Tell Glenn Beck Our Rights Don’t Come From God
Erica Ritz
What happens when you write an open letter to Glenn Beck criticizing his belief that man’s rights come from God? …You’re probably going to get an earful.
Such was the case on Beck’s radio program Wednesday, when Beck read an letter from a man named James Kirk Wall.
“[Wall] wrote a response to my claim — and let me attribute where actually I first heard the outrageously ridiculous claim that our rights come from God,” Beck began sarcastically. “America’s Founding Fathers, that’s how ridiculous my source is. So he has in reality … written a response to our Founding Fathers … In fact, I think you’d probably actually have to go back to Moses, maybe.”
Beck proceeded to read the man’s assertion that “whenever you hear someone claim that rights come from God, that speaker is a person who intentionally or unintentionally wants to take your rights away.”
The radio host described the sentence as “the most outrageous claim” he has ever heard in his life, pointing out a number of brutal genocidal rulers who were in fact, not religious.
Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Beck said sarcastically, “those were God-serving guys.”
“They were God-serving as they took away the rights of millions and then killed them,” he added. “In ditches, in concentration camps, whatever. They were — in fact, they were so religious, it was almost like they had no religion!”
Beck continued to say that “godless communists” are responsible for killing more human beings than “anything else in human history, [except for] disease.”
Beck continued to read the listener’s letter, tackling the man’s point that one can lose their rights by breaking the law — which he seems to think shouldn’t be possible if rights come from God.
“Arguing that their rights come from God doesn’t remove the bars,” the man wrote. “The law is created by mankind, not God. The laws are made by people in government, and the laws are enforced by the people in government. The laws of society dictate our rights.”
But Beck said Wall is looking at the issue “exactly backwards.”
“Rights dictate laws, not the other way around,” Beck said. “The United States Constitution dictates our rights. The United States Constitution, based on the rights given to us by God. From there the Constitution says these things cannot be changed at all.”
But beyond that, Beck added, humans can make all the laws they want.
“And that’s where mankind changes his mind: Slavery’s right, slavery’s wrong, smoking’s good, smoking’s bad. That’s man. That’s not God,” Beck continued. “God didn’t say ‘Thou shalt not smoke!’ He didn’t say that … Where is the problem? Do not murder, that’s what God said. Do not murder.”
“That’s the difference between rights – God’s law – and man’s law,” Beck said. “Or as our Founders said, ‘nature’s law and nature’s God.’ Everything else you come up with.”
Beck said the listener is “confusing laws with rights,” and warned that if rights come from people, then they can be taken away.
He noted that if Wall was “beamed” to China (making fun of the man’s middle name, Kirk), he would likely protest any mistreatment by saying something like, “I have rights!”
Wall would probably be disappointed to find that those “rights” only extend as far as the government is willing to acknowledge them, Beck said, and since he believes those rights come from the government he really wouldn’t have anywhere to turn.
“Would you say, James, that the people in China have a right to be free?” Beck asked. “Do they have a right to speak their mind? Do they have a right to protest? Do they have a right to not have their doors broken down in the middle of the night and hauled off to jail?”
Beck’s co-host Pat Gray said the man would probably be forced to say no, by his own logic, since the leaders in China “have decided no.”
But after finishing the letter, Beck concluded on a conciliatory note, saying that they likely don’t disagree on many of the fundamentals.
“If I was saying that all laws come from God, then you would have a complaint with me. But I’m not. Laws come from man, and laws change, and that’s why you want to have as few of those as you possibly can,” Beck said. “But you and I both know, whether you live here or whether you live in China, that people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And those are not changeable. And James, who gives you those rights? It is not man. Now, you can call it a space octopus, you can call it the grand universe, but you know it to be true … No man is born a slave. If they are, then what’s wrong with slavery? … But we all instinctively know that all men are born free. They are born and created equal. Now, what you do after that is up to you.”
Link:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/30/author-finds-out-what-happens-when-you-try-to-tell-glenn-beck-our-rights-dont-come-from-god/
Thursday, October 31, 2013
The destruction of US sovereignty and the rise of global government is on the line...
By JOEL GEHRKE
Justice Department attorneys are advancing an argument at the Supreme Court that could allow the government to invoke international treaties as a legal basis for policies such as gun control that conflict with the U.S. Constitution, according to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
Their argument is that a law implementing an international treaty signed by the U.S. allows the federal government to prosecute a criminal case that would normally be handled by state or local authorities.
That is a dangerous argument, according to Cruz.
"The Constitution created a limited federal government with only specific enumerated powers," Cruz told the Washington Examiner prior to giving a speech on the issue today at the Heritage Foundation.
"The Supreme Court should not interpret the treaty power in a manner that undermines this bedrock protection of individual liberty,” Cruz said.
In his speech, Cruz said the Justice Department is arguing "an absurd proposition" that "could be used as a backdoor way to undermine" Second Amendment rights, among other things.
The underlying case, Bond v. United States, involves a woman charged with violating the international ban on chemical weapons because she used toxic chemicals to harass a former friend who had an affair with her husband.
Under the Constitution, such an offense would be handled at the state level. In Bond's case, the federal government prosecuted her under the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act.
That law implements the Chemical Weapons Convention, the international treaty Syrian dictator Bashar Assad is accused of violating in that country's vicious civil war.
"The problem here is precisely that Congress, rather than implementing the treaty consistent with our constitutional system of federalism, enacted a statute that, if construed to apply to petitioner’s conduct, would violate basic structural guarantees and exceed Congress's enumerated powers," according to Bond's lawyers.
The Judicial Crisis Network's Carrie Severino said the Bond case could have ramifications for many other issues.
"If the administration is right, the treaty power could become a backdoor way for the federal government to do everything from abolishing the death penalty nationwide, to outlawing homeschooling, to dramatically curtailing the states' rights to regulate abortion," she told the Washington Examiner.
Link:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/ted-cruz-criticizes-doj-for-arguing-international-treaty-can-trump-the-constitution/article/2538205
"Genuine freedom and the free market is the only way to restore health to America’s healthcare system."
The Healthcare Reform Syndrome
by Jacob G. Hornberger
For the life of me, I still don’t understand why Republican congressmen had that big fight over Obamacare and the budget resolution. I mean, why start a fight when you know that you’re going to throw in the towel before the fight is over? After the Republicans started the fight, I tweeted my prediction: that the Republicans would end up throwing in the towel. Why? Because Republicans always throw in the towel. They’ll huff and puff about the importance of principle but it usually only lasts a short while before they throw in the towel and succumb to the forces of statism. Of course, President Obama also knew that the Republicans would throw in the towel, which is why he called their bluff and refused to negotiate.
But there is something much more fundamental going on here. One might call it the reform syndrome, which has long afflicted the conservative movement. Having long ago thrown in the towel on the principles of economic liberty, conservatives have relegated themselves to criticizing liberal reform plans from the Left and coming up with their own conservative reform plans for socialist and interventionist programs.
What’s wrong with that?
Well, for one thing, it’s important to recognize that no matter what reform plan is adopted, conservative or liberal, it’s always going to lead to a new crisis and, therefore, new calls for reform.
Why is that?
Because that’s the way that socialist and interventionist programs work. Socialism and economic interventionism are inherently defective systems. Their programs can never be made to work. They always produce crises. Then, once the crisis occurs, the last thing statists want to do is acknowledge that their system produced the crisis. So, they come up with a reform of the program. The reform though produces a new crisis, oftentimes worse than the original crisis. The process continues, as the government takes over an increasingly large part of people’s lives.
Healthcare is an almost perfect example of this phenomenon. America once had the finest healthcare system in the world, one in which there was very little government involvement. Healthcare costs were reasonably priced. Doctors did very well financially. Many of them, along with private hospitals, donated their services to poor people. It was a fantastic system, one that was improving the quality of healthcare every year. And unlike today, doctors loved their jobs.
Then came Medicare and Medicaid, President Lyndon Johnson’s socialistic healthcare programs. Combined with medical licensure laws, which were nothing more than a protection racket for doctors designed to keep doctors’ incomes high, America’s long downward healthcare spiral began. There was really no other way, given the inherent defectiveness of socialism and interventionism. Ever-increasing insurance regulation and income-tax manipulation on employer-employee medical insurance only exacerbated the problem.
For a while, conservatives opposed Medicare and Medicaid, warning people of the disaster that lay ahead. But finally, wanting to maintain “credibility” and “respectability,” conservatives threw in the towel, accepted Medicare and Medicaid, and devoted themselves to coming up with what they have come to call “free-market” healthcare reforms.
But they are not “free market” healthcare reforms. They are statist healthcare reforms. They might (or might not) be better than liberal healthcare reforms but they are statist reforms nonetheless. They are as far from genuine freedom and free markets as one can get. They are akin to adopting reforms that improved work conditions for 19th-century slaves and calling them “free-market” slavery reforms.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that Obamacare is going to be a disaster. One thing is certain: At some point in the future, Congress will be debating some new reform plan for Obamacare. But the thing we have to remember is that even if conservatives succeeded in getting Obamacare repealed, it wouldn’t have made any difference. There still would have been a major healthcare crisis, the same crisis that gave rise to Obamacare. And even if Congress were to adopt some conservative “free market” reform, it would still produce new crises and then new calls for reform. The situation would continue to get worse and worse.
One of the sad tragedies in all this is how conservatives have inculcated in conservative youth that their healthcare reform plans constitute “free enterprise” while those of liberals, such as Obamacare, constitute “socialism.” It’s sad because it’s just a lie and so these young people grow up and become adults honestly believing that America’s healthcare system would be “free enterprise” if only conservative reforms were adopted.
Fortunately, libertarianism provides an antidote to this life of the lie and to the reform syndrome, which is no doubt why so many young people are gravitating to libertarianism. The only way to achieve a genuine free-market healthcare system is to remove all governmental involvement in healthcare — i.e., a total separation of healthcare and the state, much as our American ancestors separated religion and the state. That necessarily means repeal, not reform, of Medicare, Medicaid, medical licensure, insurance regulation, and income-tax manipulation. Genuine freedom and the free market is the only way to restore health to America’s healthcare system.
Link:
http://fff.org/2013/10/31/the-healthcare-reform-syndrome/
by Jacob G. Hornberger
For the life of me, I still don’t understand why Republican congressmen had that big fight over Obamacare and the budget resolution. I mean, why start a fight when you know that you’re going to throw in the towel before the fight is over? After the Republicans started the fight, I tweeted my prediction: that the Republicans would end up throwing in the towel. Why? Because Republicans always throw in the towel. They’ll huff and puff about the importance of principle but it usually only lasts a short while before they throw in the towel and succumb to the forces of statism. Of course, President Obama also knew that the Republicans would throw in the towel, which is why he called their bluff and refused to negotiate.
But there is something much more fundamental going on here. One might call it the reform syndrome, which has long afflicted the conservative movement. Having long ago thrown in the towel on the principles of economic liberty, conservatives have relegated themselves to criticizing liberal reform plans from the Left and coming up with their own conservative reform plans for socialist and interventionist programs.
What’s wrong with that?
Well, for one thing, it’s important to recognize that no matter what reform plan is adopted, conservative or liberal, it’s always going to lead to a new crisis and, therefore, new calls for reform.
Why is that?
Because that’s the way that socialist and interventionist programs work. Socialism and economic interventionism are inherently defective systems. Their programs can never be made to work. They always produce crises. Then, once the crisis occurs, the last thing statists want to do is acknowledge that their system produced the crisis. So, they come up with a reform of the program. The reform though produces a new crisis, oftentimes worse than the original crisis. The process continues, as the government takes over an increasingly large part of people’s lives.
Healthcare is an almost perfect example of this phenomenon. America once had the finest healthcare system in the world, one in which there was very little government involvement. Healthcare costs were reasonably priced. Doctors did very well financially. Many of them, along with private hospitals, donated their services to poor people. It was a fantastic system, one that was improving the quality of healthcare every year. And unlike today, doctors loved their jobs.
Then came Medicare and Medicaid, President Lyndon Johnson’s socialistic healthcare programs. Combined with medical licensure laws, which were nothing more than a protection racket for doctors designed to keep doctors’ incomes high, America’s long downward healthcare spiral began. There was really no other way, given the inherent defectiveness of socialism and interventionism. Ever-increasing insurance regulation and income-tax manipulation on employer-employee medical insurance only exacerbated the problem.
For a while, conservatives opposed Medicare and Medicaid, warning people of the disaster that lay ahead. But finally, wanting to maintain “credibility” and “respectability,” conservatives threw in the towel, accepted Medicare and Medicaid, and devoted themselves to coming up with what they have come to call “free-market” healthcare reforms.
But they are not “free market” healthcare reforms. They are statist healthcare reforms. They might (or might not) be better than liberal healthcare reforms but they are statist reforms nonetheless. They are as far from genuine freedom and free markets as one can get. They are akin to adopting reforms that improved work conditions for 19th-century slaves and calling them “free-market” slavery reforms.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that Obamacare is going to be a disaster. One thing is certain: At some point in the future, Congress will be debating some new reform plan for Obamacare. But the thing we have to remember is that even if conservatives succeeded in getting Obamacare repealed, it wouldn’t have made any difference. There still would have been a major healthcare crisis, the same crisis that gave rise to Obamacare. And even if Congress were to adopt some conservative “free market” reform, it would still produce new crises and then new calls for reform. The situation would continue to get worse and worse.
One of the sad tragedies in all this is how conservatives have inculcated in conservative youth that their healthcare reform plans constitute “free enterprise” while those of liberals, such as Obamacare, constitute “socialism.” It’s sad because it’s just a lie and so these young people grow up and become adults honestly believing that America’s healthcare system would be “free enterprise” if only conservative reforms were adopted.
Fortunately, libertarianism provides an antidote to this life of the lie and to the reform syndrome, which is no doubt why so many young people are gravitating to libertarianism. The only way to achieve a genuine free-market healthcare system is to remove all governmental involvement in healthcare — i.e., a total separation of healthcare and the state, much as our American ancestors separated religion and the state. That necessarily means repeal, not reform, of Medicare, Medicaid, medical licensure, insurance regulation, and income-tax manipulation. Genuine freedom and the free market is the only way to restore health to America’s healthcare system.
Link:
http://fff.org/2013/10/31/the-healthcare-reform-syndrome/
Radiation??? What radiation???
‘Melting’ Starfish Along West Coast Prompts Fukushima Fears
by Mikael Thalen
Scientists are attempting to find out why one species of starfish is literally melting in the waters off of Washington state and Canada.
Biologists in Seattle took to the Puget Sound waters last weekend to collect sick and healthy sunflower starfish for testing. Several labs including one at Cornell University will examine and compare samples with Canadian specimens already being analyzed.
“We’ve got some sea stars that look like they’re melting on the bottom,” Seattle Aquarium biologists Jeff Christiansen said.
Whether the cause is environmental or disease related is currently unknown, but the number of melting starfish increases drastically with each passing day.
“At this time, we don’t have a good idea of what’s causing it, so we’re going to look for everything,” Christiansen said. “There are a lot of melting sea stars out there, more than even a couple days ago.”
According to Veterinarian Lesanna Lahner, the starfish specie’s condition is rapidly deteriorating, with more than half displaying the same disturbing symptoms.
“It’s concerning to hear in a short time period we’re seeing 60% of this species diseased in this area,” Lahner said.
Strangely, the symptoms have only been seen in certain areas of Washington’s Puget Sound and Canadian waters. While the verdict is still unknown, many are pointing fingers to Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant, which has continued to leak over 300 tons of highly radioactive water into the ocean every day.
As reported by investigative journalist Michael Snyder, massive evidence of Fukushima’s effect on the West Coast continues to be evident despite the silence from most western media.
Earlier this month, Canadian authorities found massively high radiation levels in sea bass, with one fish showing 1,000 becquerels per kilogram of cesium.
Plankton tested from Hawaii to the West Coast have been found to have high levels of cesium-137, with scientists in California finding the same isotopes present in 15 out of 15 Bluefin Tuna tested.
Even in light of one Canadian study that found cesium-137 present in 100 percent of carp, seaweed, shark and monkfish sold to the Canadian public, western governments have continued to import Japanese sea food.
As radiation levels rise, it is likely the EPA will continue to raise ‘acceptable levels’ of radiation in the food supply. With experts predicting a grim outlook, the best options now available are informing others while protecting one’s thyroid health from increased radiation exposure.
Read more: http://www.storyleak.com/melting-starfish-along-west-coast-prompts-fukushima-fears/#ixzz2jITsDJun
by Mikael Thalen
Scientists are attempting to find out why one species of starfish is literally melting in the waters off of Washington state and Canada.
Biologists in Seattle took to the Puget Sound waters last weekend to collect sick and healthy sunflower starfish for testing. Several labs including one at Cornell University will examine and compare samples with Canadian specimens already being analyzed.
“We’ve got some sea stars that look like they’re melting on the bottom,” Seattle Aquarium biologists Jeff Christiansen said.
Whether the cause is environmental or disease related is currently unknown, but the number of melting starfish increases drastically with each passing day.
“At this time, we don’t have a good idea of what’s causing it, so we’re going to look for everything,” Christiansen said. “There are a lot of melting sea stars out there, more than even a couple days ago.”
According to Veterinarian Lesanna Lahner, the starfish specie’s condition is rapidly deteriorating, with more than half displaying the same disturbing symptoms.
“It’s concerning to hear in a short time period we’re seeing 60% of this species diseased in this area,” Lahner said.
Strangely, the symptoms have only been seen in certain areas of Washington’s Puget Sound and Canadian waters. While the verdict is still unknown, many are pointing fingers to Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant, which has continued to leak over 300 tons of highly radioactive water into the ocean every day.
As reported by investigative journalist Michael Snyder, massive evidence of Fukushima’s effect on the West Coast continues to be evident despite the silence from most western media.
Earlier this month, Canadian authorities found massively high radiation levels in sea bass, with one fish showing 1,000 becquerels per kilogram of cesium.
Plankton tested from Hawaii to the West Coast have been found to have high levels of cesium-137, with scientists in California finding the same isotopes present in 15 out of 15 Bluefin Tuna tested.
Even in light of one Canadian study that found cesium-137 present in 100 percent of carp, seaweed, shark and monkfish sold to the Canadian public, western governments have continued to import Japanese sea food.
As radiation levels rise, it is likely the EPA will continue to raise ‘acceptable levels’ of radiation in the food supply. With experts predicting a grim outlook, the best options now available are informing others while protecting one’s thyroid health from increased radiation exposure.
Read more: http://www.storyleak.com/melting-starfish-along-west-coast-prompts-fukushima-fears/#ixzz2jITsDJun
"...he is more than simply divisive. He is grossly incompetent, and his actions - and those of the people he has put in various positions of power - have so routinely demonstrated as much that now even once-trusted allies are reconsidering their relationship with the U.S."
Obama causing the entire world to hate America: Spying, currency devaluation, torture and more
J. D. Heyes
Barack Hussein Obama is without question the most divisive president of our generation, even more so than the hapless Jimmy Carter, who at least managed to broker a peace deal between Egypt and Israel that remains today (though it is tenuous, but that's not Carter's fault).
But he is more than simply divisive. He is grossly incompetent, and his actions - and those of the people he has put in various positions of power - have so routinely demonstrated as much that now even once-trusted allies are reconsidering their relationship with the U.S.
Obama's problems are aptly summarized by McClatchy DC:
Whether miffed over spying revelations or feeling sold out by U.S. moves in the Middle East, some of the United States' closest allies are so upset that the Obama administration has gone into damage-control mode to ensure the rifts don't widen and threaten critical partnerships.
The quarrels differ in their causes and degrees of seriousness. As a whole, however, they pose a new foreign policy headache for an administration whose overseas track record is seen in many quarters at home and abroad as reactive and lacking direction.
Friends in Europe, the Middle East wonder who is in charge
Perhaps what is more damning than anything is that the foreign policy rifts - well, they are more than simply rifts at this point - in the past would have been settled quietly, out of the glaring spotlight of the press.
But increasingly, these battles are becoming public - in one way or another - which has only served to amplify the damage and widen the rift.
Consider these examples:
NSA spying across Europe -- European leaders were recently upset by revelations that the National Security Agency had directed much of its spying at them. It's highly likely that European leaders like Germany's Angela Merkel already knew or suspected that the U.S. spied on its friends and enemies alike. But to see the issue explode in public required outrage, feigned or not, and served as both an embarrassment to the European leaders as well as something that had to then be addressed - also in public (though I suspect there is much back-channel discussion taking place as well).
"The uproar in Europe over revelations from fugitive former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the United States spied on as many as 35 government leaders, including Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, has become so great that... 28 European leaders said Merkel and French President Francois Hollande would open negotiations with the United States over a 'no-spying agreement,'" McClatchy reported.
Weakness in the Middle East -- I don't know if Obama has simply given up on the Middle East, because it is a region stuck in a cycle of turmoil and violence, or because he simply has no clue what to do next, but either way, our friends there - and they are strictly "friends" of convenience, by the way - are getting nervous as well. And not the least bit frustrated - all by the lack of U.S. leadership.
"In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, already fed up with U.S. reluctance to get more deeply involved in the Syrian civil war, has become alarmed by Obama's overtures to the Saudis' archenemy, Iran, with which the Saudis are locked in a battle for regional supremacy. Reports indicate it is considering breaking over cooperation with the Obama administration on a range of issues, including training for so-called moderate Syrian rebels," McClatchy reported.
Obama has problems at home, too
And of course, Egypt - mired in violence with an uncertain future - is upset that Washington has cut some of the massive annual assistance it provides, compliments of the U.S. taxpayer. Earlier this month, Nabil Fahmy told a state newspaper that U.S.-Egyptian ties were in "turmoil" and that "anyone who says otherwise is not speaking honestly."
The rift with the Saudis is especially noteworthy, because as McClatchy points out, the royal family rarely airs diplomatic clashes outside of palace walls.
"It's part of an overall trend, America's disengagement and a seemingly aloof Obama, and in the Syrian case, that aloofness ran counter to the Syrians' and Saudis' interests," said Andrew Tabler, who focuses on Syria and U.S. policy in the Middle East at The Washington Institute For Near East Policy. "The Syrian conflict has become so regionalized that our Saudi allies will now openly criticize the White House. It's amazing."
And this is just how things are playing out overseas. At home, Obama is now under fire following an NBC News report this week indicating that the president and his team knew that millions under Obamacare would not get to keep their insurance policies, as Obama has promised repeatedly.
And of course, scores of Americans were upset by a number of other scandals, including IRS targeting of Tea Party groups, NSA monitoring of American citizens, Obama's Benghazi fiasco and the Fast and Furious operation.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/042725_Obama_global_anti-Americanism_government_scandals.html#ixzz2jITIuBD1
J. D. Heyes
Barack Hussein Obama is without question the most divisive president of our generation, even more so than the hapless Jimmy Carter, who at least managed to broker a peace deal between Egypt and Israel that remains today (though it is tenuous, but that's not Carter's fault).
But he is more than simply divisive. He is grossly incompetent, and his actions - and those of the people he has put in various positions of power - have so routinely demonstrated as much that now even once-trusted allies are reconsidering their relationship with the U.S.
Obama's problems are aptly summarized by McClatchy DC:
Whether miffed over spying revelations or feeling sold out by U.S. moves in the Middle East, some of the United States' closest allies are so upset that the Obama administration has gone into damage-control mode to ensure the rifts don't widen and threaten critical partnerships.
The quarrels differ in their causes and degrees of seriousness. As a whole, however, they pose a new foreign policy headache for an administration whose overseas track record is seen in many quarters at home and abroad as reactive and lacking direction.
Friends in Europe, the Middle East wonder who is in charge
Perhaps what is more damning than anything is that the foreign policy rifts - well, they are more than simply rifts at this point - in the past would have been settled quietly, out of the glaring spotlight of the press.
But increasingly, these battles are becoming public - in one way or another - which has only served to amplify the damage and widen the rift.
Consider these examples:
NSA spying across Europe -- European leaders were recently upset by revelations that the National Security Agency had directed much of its spying at them. It's highly likely that European leaders like Germany's Angela Merkel already knew or suspected that the U.S. spied on its friends and enemies alike. But to see the issue explode in public required outrage, feigned or not, and served as both an embarrassment to the European leaders as well as something that had to then be addressed - also in public (though I suspect there is much back-channel discussion taking place as well).
"The uproar in Europe over revelations from fugitive former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the United States spied on as many as 35 government leaders, including Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, has become so great that... 28 European leaders said Merkel and French President Francois Hollande would open negotiations with the United States over a 'no-spying agreement,'" McClatchy reported.
Weakness in the Middle East -- I don't know if Obama has simply given up on the Middle East, because it is a region stuck in a cycle of turmoil and violence, or because he simply has no clue what to do next, but either way, our friends there - and they are strictly "friends" of convenience, by the way - are getting nervous as well. And not the least bit frustrated - all by the lack of U.S. leadership.
"In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, already fed up with U.S. reluctance to get more deeply involved in the Syrian civil war, has become alarmed by Obama's overtures to the Saudis' archenemy, Iran, with which the Saudis are locked in a battle for regional supremacy. Reports indicate it is considering breaking over cooperation with the Obama administration on a range of issues, including training for so-called moderate Syrian rebels," McClatchy reported.
Obama has problems at home, too
And of course, Egypt - mired in violence with an uncertain future - is upset that Washington has cut some of the massive annual assistance it provides, compliments of the U.S. taxpayer. Earlier this month, Nabil Fahmy told a state newspaper that U.S.-Egyptian ties were in "turmoil" and that "anyone who says otherwise is not speaking honestly."
The rift with the Saudis is especially noteworthy, because as McClatchy points out, the royal family rarely airs diplomatic clashes outside of palace walls.
"It's part of an overall trend, America's disengagement and a seemingly aloof Obama, and in the Syrian case, that aloofness ran counter to the Syrians' and Saudis' interests," said Andrew Tabler, who focuses on Syria and U.S. policy in the Middle East at The Washington Institute For Near East Policy. "The Syrian conflict has become so regionalized that our Saudi allies will now openly criticize the White House. It's amazing."
And this is just how things are playing out overseas. At home, Obama is now under fire following an NBC News report this week indicating that the president and his team knew that millions under Obamacare would not get to keep their insurance policies, as Obama has promised repeatedly.
And of course, scores of Americans were upset by a number of other scandals, including IRS targeting of Tea Party groups, NSA monitoring of American citizens, Obama's Benghazi fiasco and the Fast and Furious operation.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/042725_Obama_global_anti-Americanism_government_scandals.html#ixzz2jITIuBD1
"But why are we doing this? Is it all really about coping with the terrorist threat? Or is it because we have the ability to do it, and the more information we have, even stolen surreptitiously from friends and allies, the better?"
Brave New World
By Patrick J. Buchanan
The first reports in early May of 1960 were that a U.S. weather plane, flying out of Turkey, had gone missing.
A silent Moscow knew better. After letting the Americans crawl out on a limb, expatiating on their cover story, Russia sawed it off.
Actually, said Nikita Khrushchev, we shot down a U.S. spy plane 1000 miles inside our country flying over a restricted zone.
We have the pilot, we have the camera, we have the pictures. We have the hollow silver dollar containing the poisoned-tipped needle CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers declined to use.
Two weeks later, Khrushchev used the U-2 incident and Ike’s refusal to apologize to dynamite the Paris summit and the gauzy Spirit of Camp David that had come out of his ten-day visit to the USA.
Eisenhower’s reciprocal trip to Russia was now dead.
A year later, President Kennedy would be berated by Khrushchev in Vienna. The Berlin Wall would go up. And Khrushchev would begin secretly to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from Key West.
Had there been no U-2 incident, would the history of the Cold War have been different? Perhaps.
Yet, while there were critics of launching Power’s U-2 flight so close to the summit, Americans understood the need for espionage. Like us, the Soviets were installing ballistic missiles, every single one of which could incinerate an American city.
Post 9/11, too, Americans accepted the necessity for the National Security Agency to retrieve and sift through phone calls and emails to keep us secure from terror attacks. Many have come to accept today’s risks of an invasion of their privacy — for greater security for their family.
And there remains a deposit of trust among Americans that the NSA, the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency are not only working for us, they are defending us.
How long Americans will continue to repose this trust, however, is starting to come into question.
Last week, we learned that a high official of the U.S. government turned 200 private phone numbers of 35 friendly foreign leaders, basically the Rolodex of the president, over to the NSA for tapping and taping.
Allied leaders, with whom America works toward common goals, have for years apparently had their private conversations listened to, transcribed and passed around by their supposed U.S. friends.
Angela Merkel has apparently been the subject of phone taps since before she rose to the leadership of Germany and Europe.
A victim of the East German Stasi, Ms. Merkel is not amused.
We are told not to be na‹ve; everyone does it. Spying, not only between enemies but among allies, is commonplace.
This is how the world works. Deal with it.
But why are we doing this? Is it all really about coping with the terrorist threat? Or is it because we have the ability to do it, and the more information we have, even stolen surreptitiously from friends and allies, the better? Gives us a leg up in the great game of nations.
U.S. diplomats say that one of their assignments abroad is to know what the host government is thinking and planning politically, economically, strategically. That this is an aspect of diplomacy.
But relations among friendly nations are not unlike the NFL. While films are taken of rival teams’ games and studied, scouts observe practices, and rumors are picked up of injuries, there are lines that most opposing NFL teams do not cross.
The lines of unethical conduct and criminality.
To learn that an owner or coach of one NFL franchise had wiretapped the home phones of coaches and players of a Super Bowl rival would, if revealed, be regarded as rotten business.
What kind of camaraderie, cooperation or friendship can endure in an environment where constant snooping on one’s closest friends is accepted practice?
In the Nixon White House, there were serious leaks that revealed our secret bombing of Communist sanctuaries in Cambodia to protect our troops, and of our fallback position in the strategic arms talks.
Wiretaps were planted on aides to Henry Kissinger and White House staffers who had no knowledge of what had been leaked.
Relationships were altered, some poisoned for a lifetime.
Why should we not expect a similar reaction among foreign friends who discover their personal and political secrets have been daily scooped up and filed by their American friends, and found their way into the president’s daily intelligence brief?
The Cold War was a clash of ideologies and empires for the future of the world. Men took drastic measures to preserve what they had. At the end of the Cold War, the old tactics and measures were not set aside, but improved upon, and now are no longer restricted for use against the likes of al-Qaida, but against allies.
At the Cold War’s end, the late Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick talked hopefully of America becoming again “a normal country in a normal time.” Seems as though the normal times are never coming back.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/10/patrick-j-buchanan/brave-new-world%e2%80%a8/
By Patrick J. Buchanan
The first reports in early May of 1960 were that a U.S. weather plane, flying out of Turkey, had gone missing.
A silent Moscow knew better. After letting the Americans crawl out on a limb, expatiating on their cover story, Russia sawed it off.
Actually, said Nikita Khrushchev, we shot down a U.S. spy plane 1000 miles inside our country flying over a restricted zone.
We have the pilot, we have the camera, we have the pictures. We have the hollow silver dollar containing the poisoned-tipped needle CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers declined to use.
Two weeks later, Khrushchev used the U-2 incident and Ike’s refusal to apologize to dynamite the Paris summit and the gauzy Spirit of Camp David that had come out of his ten-day visit to the USA.
Eisenhower’s reciprocal trip to Russia was now dead.
A year later, President Kennedy would be berated by Khrushchev in Vienna. The Berlin Wall would go up. And Khrushchev would begin secretly to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from Key West.
Had there been no U-2 incident, would the history of the Cold War have been different? Perhaps.
Yet, while there were critics of launching Power’s U-2 flight so close to the summit, Americans understood the need for espionage. Like us, the Soviets were installing ballistic missiles, every single one of which could incinerate an American city.
Post 9/11, too, Americans accepted the necessity for the National Security Agency to retrieve and sift through phone calls and emails to keep us secure from terror attacks. Many have come to accept today’s risks of an invasion of their privacy — for greater security for their family.
And there remains a deposit of trust among Americans that the NSA, the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency are not only working for us, they are defending us.
How long Americans will continue to repose this trust, however, is starting to come into question.
Last week, we learned that a high official of the U.S. government turned 200 private phone numbers of 35 friendly foreign leaders, basically the Rolodex of the president, over to the NSA for tapping and taping.
Allied leaders, with whom America works toward common goals, have for years apparently had their private conversations listened to, transcribed and passed around by their supposed U.S. friends.
Angela Merkel has apparently been the subject of phone taps since before she rose to the leadership of Germany and Europe.
A victim of the East German Stasi, Ms. Merkel is not amused.
We are told not to be na‹ve; everyone does it. Spying, not only between enemies but among allies, is commonplace.
This is how the world works. Deal with it.
But why are we doing this? Is it all really about coping with the terrorist threat? Or is it because we have the ability to do it, and the more information we have, even stolen surreptitiously from friends and allies, the better? Gives us a leg up in the great game of nations.
U.S. diplomats say that one of their assignments abroad is to know what the host government is thinking and planning politically, economically, strategically. That this is an aspect of diplomacy.
But relations among friendly nations are not unlike the NFL. While films are taken of rival teams’ games and studied, scouts observe practices, and rumors are picked up of injuries, there are lines that most opposing NFL teams do not cross.
The lines of unethical conduct and criminality.
To learn that an owner or coach of one NFL franchise had wiretapped the home phones of coaches and players of a Super Bowl rival would, if revealed, be regarded as rotten business.
What kind of camaraderie, cooperation or friendship can endure in an environment where constant snooping on one’s closest friends is accepted practice?
In the Nixon White House, there were serious leaks that revealed our secret bombing of Communist sanctuaries in Cambodia to protect our troops, and of our fallback position in the strategic arms talks.
Wiretaps were planted on aides to Henry Kissinger and White House staffers who had no knowledge of what had been leaked.
Relationships were altered, some poisoned for a lifetime.
Why should we not expect a similar reaction among foreign friends who discover their personal and political secrets have been daily scooped up and filed by their American friends, and found their way into the president’s daily intelligence brief?
The Cold War was a clash of ideologies and empires for the future of the world. Men took drastic measures to preserve what they had. At the end of the Cold War, the old tactics and measures were not set aside, but improved upon, and now are no longer restricted for use against the likes of al-Qaida, but against allies.
At the Cold War’s end, the late Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick talked hopefully of America becoming again “a normal country in a normal time.” Seems as though the normal times are never coming back.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/10/patrick-j-buchanan/brave-new-world%e2%80%a8/
"The above photograph speaks for itself; police should not be pointing military style rifles at our faces absent a real threat or probable cause."
By Paul Huebl
Chicago, IL—I can remember the days when the Chicago Police Department rejected the idea of SWAT teams as a horrible idea. They did not want the public relations fallout from the SWAT concept. They recoiled at the idea we would become urban commandos.
They did have so-called heavy weapons training but that only involved the Ithaca Model 37 .12 gauge shotgun, the .30 US M-1 Carbine and a few 308 hunting style scoped bolt action rifles. These weapons were kept in wagons dubbed, The War Wagon and they were dispatched to difficult crime calls.
Ballistic vests were yet unheard of and our issued batons were made of wood. Our required duty weapon was a Colt or Smith & Wesson revolver chambered for a .357 or .38 special round. We were issued 12 round of .38 special ammunition. They were solid lead, round nose 158-grain bullets that bounced off most car windows.
Later they went to a hollow point all lead .38+P round that was somewhat better. We were allowed a second firearm either semi-automatic or another Colt or Smith & Wesson revolver. Many chose the Dirty Harry .44 magnum Model 29 or 1911 .45 semi-auto pistols. Now they heavily restrict the types of secondary handguns allowed.
Today they operate something they call the Hostage and Barricade Unit. It’s a SWAT team by another name. They have adopted military methods and now they have all that commando equipment.
The militarization of police agencies is reminiscent of the darkest times of Germany 1933-1945. They created the Brown Shirts (SA) and later the SS to do things most honorable military men would be ashamed to be involved with.
At a rapid pace our police have been ignoring our Bill of Rights and advancing on Americans with military tactics and rules of engagement. That is frightening for sure.
The response by Boston authorities to raid homes and remove families at gunpoint while they were looking for the marathon bombing suspects was incredibly un-American and wrong. That was absolute TYRANNY!
The above photograph speaks for itself; police should not be pointing military style rifles at our faces absent a real threat or probable cause.
I can’t help but believe that our own government has nasty plans for those of us that disagree with the administration’s Red politics.
Link:
http://www.crimefilenews.com/2013/10/military-tactics-and-rules-of.html
"Peace and non-aggression is ”above politics”. Standing in line (like cattle) at a voting booth does not mean that you’re paying attention to anything. The person that you are electing is not bound to anything. They do not have to (nor do they) tell the truth in order to get your vote. This should be obvious by now. It’s not like this charade started yesterday."
Political Disengagement Is For The Virtuous
By Chris Rossini
As the “American System” of paper money and empire continues its decay, the number of American citizens who are losing faith in it appears to be growing. I come to this conclusion based on the burgeoning number of commentaries that I see from people who comprise what is known as the class of “respectable opinion”.
Today, I came across yet another plea that without politics, life itself would grind to a screaming halt.
Kathryn Jean Lopez seeks to remind everyone that reads National Review, that “political disengagement is not an option”. In other words, you were born into a system where robbing your neighbor, and using force against your neighbor, is your only option. Seeking to live peacefully by not taking part is simply not a choice for you to make.
Lopez writes:
If we start thinking that we are above politics, we need to remember that if we don’t get our hands dirty paying attention to who it is we are electing, and to policy and pending decisions, we are shirking a responsibility. Disengagement is dangerous. Engagement is our civic duty.
Peace and non-aggression is ”above politics”. Standing in line (like cattle) at a voting booth does not mean that you’re paying attention to anything. The person that you are electing is not bound to anything. They do not have to (nor do they) tell the truth in order to get your vote. This should be obvious by now. It’s not like this charade started yesterday.
The person you vote for has no idea that you specifically voted for him/her. How on Earth can you possibly be “responsible” for what the politician does? As hard as it is for many to come to grips with, you are responsible for your actions.
Disengagement is dangerous?
How so?
Lopez doesn’t say.
Her job is to make sure people keep believing. The fact that she’s writing on this subject means that the believers must be going through a phase where their faith is being tested. That darn Internet must be making them second guess a few things.
Cynicism about politics can be seductive, too. The media thrive on conflict and scandal, and so it’s often the worst of political life that we focus on. But politics is necessary. “Politics is,” [Charles] Krauthammer explains, “the moat, the walls, beyond which lie the barbarians. Fail to keep them at bay, and everything burns.
Oh sure it’s the media’s fault. They just focus on the worst.
Politics is the worst. For it the use of violence and force to settle your disputes. It’s a never-ending struggle to gain control of the monopolistic use of violence. If you don’t control it, someone else will, and they’ll beat you over the head with it.
And Lopez wants us to believe that “politics is necessary”?
One can see why those who control The State would want you to think its necessary; and why they would want to keep everyone “Rocking The Vote”. But mankind’s long history of failed governments has proven that for 99.999% of everyone who has ever lived, politics is poison.
Finally, is Lopez really trotting out a quote for Charles Krauthammer? This is a man who never saw a bomb that he didn’t want dropped on some non-American. And he’s the voice who is to tell us that without politics “barbarians” will take over and “everything burns”?
Governments have killed so many hundreds of millions that it’s impossible to keep count anymore. No other group of organized individuals could possibly accomplish such a feat.
It’s time to stop buying into the stories of the real barbarians. It’s imperative to celebrate when people “politically disengage”. For it can possibly a sign that people are becoming more virtuous.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/10/chris-rossini/neocons-fear-political-disengagement/
By Chris Rossini
As the “American System” of paper money and empire continues its decay, the number of American citizens who are losing faith in it appears to be growing. I come to this conclusion based on the burgeoning number of commentaries that I see from people who comprise what is known as the class of “respectable opinion”.
Today, I came across yet another plea that without politics, life itself would grind to a screaming halt.
Kathryn Jean Lopez seeks to remind everyone that reads National Review, that “political disengagement is not an option”. In other words, you were born into a system where robbing your neighbor, and using force against your neighbor, is your only option. Seeking to live peacefully by not taking part is simply not a choice for you to make.
Lopez writes:
If we start thinking that we are above politics, we need to remember that if we don’t get our hands dirty paying attention to who it is we are electing, and to policy and pending decisions, we are shirking a responsibility. Disengagement is dangerous. Engagement is our civic duty.
Peace and non-aggression is ”above politics”. Standing in line (like cattle) at a voting booth does not mean that you’re paying attention to anything. The person that you are electing is not bound to anything. They do not have to (nor do they) tell the truth in order to get your vote. This should be obvious by now. It’s not like this charade started yesterday.
The person you vote for has no idea that you specifically voted for him/her. How on Earth can you possibly be “responsible” for what the politician does? As hard as it is for many to come to grips with, you are responsible for your actions.
Disengagement is dangerous?
How so?
Lopez doesn’t say.
Her job is to make sure people keep believing. The fact that she’s writing on this subject means that the believers must be going through a phase where their faith is being tested. That darn Internet must be making them second guess a few things.
Cynicism about politics can be seductive, too. The media thrive on conflict and scandal, and so it’s often the worst of political life that we focus on. But politics is necessary. “Politics is,” [Charles] Krauthammer explains, “the moat, the walls, beyond which lie the barbarians. Fail to keep them at bay, and everything burns.
Oh sure it’s the media’s fault. They just focus on the worst.
Politics is the worst. For it the use of violence and force to settle your disputes. It’s a never-ending struggle to gain control of the monopolistic use of violence. If you don’t control it, someone else will, and they’ll beat you over the head with it.
And Lopez wants us to believe that “politics is necessary”?
One can see why those who control The State would want you to think its necessary; and why they would want to keep everyone “Rocking The Vote”. But mankind’s long history of failed governments has proven that for 99.999% of everyone who has ever lived, politics is poison.
Finally, is Lopez really trotting out a quote for Charles Krauthammer? This is a man who never saw a bomb that he didn’t want dropped on some non-American. And he’s the voice who is to tell us that without politics “barbarians” will take over and “everything burns”?
Governments have killed so many hundreds of millions that it’s impossible to keep count anymore. No other group of organized individuals could possibly accomplish such a feat.
It’s time to stop buying into the stories of the real barbarians. It’s imperative to celebrate when people “politically disengage”. For it can possibly a sign that people are becoming more virtuous.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/10/chris-rossini/neocons-fear-political-disengagement/
"The president claims he can start secret foreign wars using the CIA, secretly kill Americans using drones, and now secretly spy on anyone anywhere using the NSA. Is the president an unwitting dupe to a secret rats’ nest of uncontrolled government spies and killers? Or is he a megalomaniacal, totalitarian secret micromanager who lies regularly, consistently and systematically about the role of government in our lives?"
Spying on the President
By Andrew P. Napolitano
When German Chancellor Angela Merkel celebrated the opening of the new U.S. embassy in Berlin in 2008, she could not have imagined that she was blessing the workplace for the largest and most effective gaggle of American spies anywhere outside of the U.S.
It seems straight out of a grade-B movie, but it has been happening for the past eleven years: The NSA has been using Merkel to spy on the president of the United States. We now know that the NSA has been listening to and recording Merkel’s cellphone calls since 2002. In 2008, when the new embassy opened, the NSA began using more sophisticated techniques that included not only listening, but also following her. Merkel uses her cellphone more frequently than her landline, and she uses it to communicate with her husband and family members, the leadership of her political party, and her colleagues and officials in the German government.
She also uses her cellphone to speak with foreign leaders, among whom have been President George W. Bush and President Obama. Thus, the NSA — which Bush and Obama have unlawfully and unconstitutionally authorized to obtain and retain digital copies of all telephone conversations, texts and emails of everyone in the U.S., as well as those of hundreds of millions of persons in Europe and Latin America — has been listening to the telephone calls of both American presidents whenever they have spoken with the chancellor.
One could understand the NSA’s propensity to listen to the conversations of those foreign leaders who wish us ill. And one would expect that it would do so. But the urge to listen to the leadership of our allies serves no discernible intelligence-gathering purpose. Rather, it fuels distrust between our nations and in the case of Merkel exacerbates memories of the all-seeing and all-hearing Stasi, which was the East German version of the KGB that ruled that police state from the end of World War II until it collapsed in 1989. Merkel was raised in East Germany, and she has a personal revulsion at the concept of omnipresent state surveillance.
Obama apparently has no such revulsion. One would think he’s not happy that his own spies have been listening to him. One would expect that he would have known of this. Not from me, says Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, who disputed claims in the media that he told Obama of the NSA spying network in Germany last summer. Either the president knew of this and has denied it, or he is invincibly ignorant of the forces he has unleashed on us and on himself.
When Susan Rice, Obama’s national security advisor, was confronted with all of this by her German counterpart, she first told him the White House would deny it. Then she called him to say that the White House could not deny it, but the president would deny that he personally knew of it.
How did we get here? What are the consequences of a president spying on himself? What does this mean for the rest of us?
Neither Bush nor Obama has had a strong fidelity to the Constitution.
They share the views of another odd couple of presidents from opposing political parties, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, in that the Constitution is not the supreme law of the land as it proclaims to be, but rather a guideline that unleashes the president to do all that it does not expressly forbid him to do. In the progressive era 100 years ago, that presidential attitude brought us the Federal Reserve, the federal income tax, Prohibition, World War I, prosecutions for speech critical of the government and the beginnings of official modern government racial segregation.
That same attitude in our era has brought us the Patriot Act, which allows federal agents to write their own search warrants, government borrowing that knows no end — including the $2 trillion Bush borrowed for the war in Iraq, a country which is now less stable than before Bush invaded, and the $7 trillion Obama borrowed to redistribute — and an NSA that monitors all Americans all the time. In the case of the NSA spying, this came about by the secret orders of Bush and Obama, animated by that perverse TR/Wilsonian view of the Constitution and not by a congressional vote after a great national debate.
Just as people change when they know they are being watched, the government changes when it knows no one can watch it. Just as we can never be ourselves when we fear that we may need to justify our most intimate thoughts to an all-knowing government, so, too, the government knows that when we cannot see what it is doing, it can do whatever it wants. And it is in the nature of government to expand, not shrink. Thomas Jefferson correctly predicted that 175 years ago.
But spying on yourself is truly asinine and perhaps criminal. You see, the president can officially declassify any secrets he wants, but he cannot — without official declassification — simply reveal them to NSA agents. One can only imagine what NSA agents learned from listening to Bush and Obama as they spoke to Merkel and 34 other friendly foreign leaders, as yet unidentified publicly.
Now we know how pervasive this NSA spying is: It not only reaches the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, the CIA, the local police and the cellphones and homes of all Americans; it reaches the Oval Office itself. Yet when the president denies that he knows of this, that denial leads to more questions.
The president claims he can start secret foreign wars using the CIA, secretly kill Americans using drones, and now secretly spy on anyone anywhere using the NSA. Is the president an unwitting dupe to a secret rats’ nest of uncontrolled government spies and killers? Or is he a megalomaniacal, totalitarian secret micromanager who lies regularly, consistently and systematically about the role of government in our lives?
Which is worse? What do we do about it?
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/10/andrew-p-napolitano/is-el-jefe-the-dupe-of-spies-and-killers/
By Andrew P. Napolitano
When German Chancellor Angela Merkel celebrated the opening of the new U.S. embassy in Berlin in 2008, she could not have imagined that she was blessing the workplace for the largest and most effective gaggle of American spies anywhere outside of the U.S.
It seems straight out of a grade-B movie, but it has been happening for the past eleven years: The NSA has been using Merkel to spy on the president of the United States. We now know that the NSA has been listening to and recording Merkel’s cellphone calls since 2002. In 2008, when the new embassy opened, the NSA began using more sophisticated techniques that included not only listening, but also following her. Merkel uses her cellphone more frequently than her landline, and she uses it to communicate with her husband and family members, the leadership of her political party, and her colleagues and officials in the German government.
She also uses her cellphone to speak with foreign leaders, among whom have been President George W. Bush and President Obama. Thus, the NSA — which Bush and Obama have unlawfully and unconstitutionally authorized to obtain and retain digital copies of all telephone conversations, texts and emails of everyone in the U.S., as well as those of hundreds of millions of persons in Europe and Latin America — has been listening to the telephone calls of both American presidents whenever they have spoken with the chancellor.
One could understand the NSA’s propensity to listen to the conversations of those foreign leaders who wish us ill. And one would expect that it would do so. But the urge to listen to the leadership of our allies serves no discernible intelligence-gathering purpose. Rather, it fuels distrust between our nations and in the case of Merkel exacerbates memories of the all-seeing and all-hearing Stasi, which was the East German version of the KGB that ruled that police state from the end of World War II until it collapsed in 1989. Merkel was raised in East Germany, and she has a personal revulsion at the concept of omnipresent state surveillance.
Obama apparently has no such revulsion. One would think he’s not happy that his own spies have been listening to him. One would expect that he would have known of this. Not from me, says Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, who disputed claims in the media that he told Obama of the NSA spying network in Germany last summer. Either the president knew of this and has denied it, or he is invincibly ignorant of the forces he has unleashed on us and on himself.
When Susan Rice, Obama’s national security advisor, was confronted with all of this by her German counterpart, she first told him the White House would deny it. Then she called him to say that the White House could not deny it, but the president would deny that he personally knew of it.
How did we get here? What are the consequences of a president spying on himself? What does this mean for the rest of us?
Neither Bush nor Obama has had a strong fidelity to the Constitution.
They share the views of another odd couple of presidents from opposing political parties, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, in that the Constitution is not the supreme law of the land as it proclaims to be, but rather a guideline that unleashes the president to do all that it does not expressly forbid him to do. In the progressive era 100 years ago, that presidential attitude brought us the Federal Reserve, the federal income tax, Prohibition, World War I, prosecutions for speech critical of the government and the beginnings of official modern government racial segregation.
That same attitude in our era has brought us the Patriot Act, which allows federal agents to write their own search warrants, government borrowing that knows no end — including the $2 trillion Bush borrowed for the war in Iraq, a country which is now less stable than before Bush invaded, and the $7 trillion Obama borrowed to redistribute — and an NSA that monitors all Americans all the time. In the case of the NSA spying, this came about by the secret orders of Bush and Obama, animated by that perverse TR/Wilsonian view of the Constitution and not by a congressional vote after a great national debate.
Just as people change when they know they are being watched, the government changes when it knows no one can watch it. Just as we can never be ourselves when we fear that we may need to justify our most intimate thoughts to an all-knowing government, so, too, the government knows that when we cannot see what it is doing, it can do whatever it wants. And it is in the nature of government to expand, not shrink. Thomas Jefferson correctly predicted that 175 years ago.
But spying on yourself is truly asinine and perhaps criminal. You see, the president can officially declassify any secrets he wants, but he cannot — without official declassification — simply reveal them to NSA agents. One can only imagine what NSA agents learned from listening to Bush and Obama as they spoke to Merkel and 34 other friendly foreign leaders, as yet unidentified publicly.
Now we know how pervasive this NSA spying is: It not only reaches the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, the CIA, the local police and the cellphones and homes of all Americans; it reaches the Oval Office itself. Yet when the president denies that he knows of this, that denial leads to more questions.
The president claims he can start secret foreign wars using the CIA, secretly kill Americans using drones, and now secretly spy on anyone anywhere using the NSA. Is the president an unwitting dupe to a secret rats’ nest of uncontrolled government spies and killers? Or is he a megalomaniacal, totalitarian secret micromanager who lies regularly, consistently and systematically about the role of government in our lives?
Which is worse? What do we do about it?
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/10/andrew-p-napolitano/is-el-jefe-the-dupe-of-spies-and-killers/
"It flies in the face of more than 200 years of American law. In fact, experts say that the NSA spying program is wildly illegal, and is exactly the kind of thing which King George imposed on the American colonists … which led to the Revolutionary War."
Head of Congressional Intelligence Committee: “You Can’t Have Your Privacy Violated If You Don’t KNOW Your Privacy Is Violated”
by WashingtonsBlog
Argues Spying Okay As Long As Government Doesn’t Get Caught
The chair of the House Intelligence Committee – Mike Rogers – said yesterday in an NSA spying hearing which he led that there is no right to privacy in America.
Constitutional expert Stephen I. Vladeck – Professor of Law and the Associate Dean for Scholarship at American University Washington College of Law – disagreed.
Here’s the exchange:
Rogers: I would argue the fact that we haven’t had any complaints come forward with any specificity arguing that their privacy has been violated, clearly indicates, in ten years, clearly indicates that something must be doing right. Somebody must be doing something exactly right.
Vladeck: But who would be complaining?
Rogers: Somebody who’s privacy was violated. You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.
Vladeck: I disagree with that. If a tree falls in the forest, it makes a noise whether you’re there to see it or not.
Rogers: Well that’s a new interesting standard in the law. We’re going to have this conversation… but we’re going to have wine, because that’s going to get a lot more interesting…
What Rogers is really saying is that the government has the right to spy on everyone so long as it doesn’t get caught doing so. How’s that different from arguing that it’s okay for a thief to takes $100 from your bank account as long as you don’t notice that the money is missing? Or that it’s okay to rape a woman while she’s passed out so long as she doesn’t realize what happened? That’s beyond ridiculous. It flies in the face of more than 200 years of American law. In fact, experts say that the NSA spying program is wildly illegal, and is exactly the kind of thing which King George imposed on the American colonists … which led to the Revolutionary War. Link: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/head-of-congressional-intelligence-committee-you-cant-have-your-privacy-violated-if-you-dont-know-your-privacy-is-violated.html
by WashingtonsBlog
Argues Spying Okay As Long As Government Doesn’t Get Caught
The chair of the House Intelligence Committee – Mike Rogers – said yesterday in an NSA spying hearing which he led that there is no right to privacy in America.
Constitutional expert Stephen I. Vladeck – Professor of Law and the Associate Dean for Scholarship at American University Washington College of Law – disagreed.
Here’s the exchange:
Rogers: I would argue the fact that we haven’t had any complaints come forward with any specificity arguing that their privacy has been violated, clearly indicates, in ten years, clearly indicates that something must be doing right. Somebody must be doing something exactly right.
Vladeck: But who would be complaining?
Rogers: Somebody who’s privacy was violated. You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.
Vladeck: I disagree with that. If a tree falls in the forest, it makes a noise whether you’re there to see it or not.
Rogers: Well that’s a new interesting standard in the law. We’re going to have this conversation… but we’re going to have wine, because that’s going to get a lot more interesting…
What Rogers is really saying is that the government has the right to spy on everyone so long as it doesn’t get caught doing so. How’s that different from arguing that it’s okay for a thief to takes $100 from your bank account as long as you don’t notice that the money is missing? Or that it’s okay to rape a woman while she’s passed out so long as she doesn’t realize what happened? That’s beyond ridiculous. It flies in the face of more than 200 years of American law. In fact, experts say that the NSA spying program is wildly illegal, and is exactly the kind of thing which King George imposed on the American colonists … which led to the Revolutionary War. Link: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/head-of-congressional-intelligence-committee-you-cant-have-your-privacy-violated-if-you-dont-know-your-privacy-is-violated.html
Inflation??? What inflation???
Don’t Worry – The Government Says That The Inflation You See Is Just Your Imagination
By Michael Snyder
If you believe that there is high inflation in the United States, you are just imagining things. That is the message that the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve would have us to believe. You might have noticed that the government announced on Wednesday that the cost of living increase for Social Security beneficiaries will only be 1.5 percent next year. This is one of the smallest cost of living increases that we have ever seen. The federal government is able to get away with this because the official numbers say that there is hardly any inflation in the U.S. right now. Of course anyone that shops for groceries or that pays bills regularly knows what a load of nonsense the official inflation rate is. The U.S. government has changed the way that inflation is calculated numerous times since 1978, and each time it has been changed the goal has been to make inflation appear to be even lower. According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if the inflation rate was still calculated the same way that it was back when Jimmy Carter was president, the official rate of inflation would be somewhere between 8 and 10 percent today. But if the mainstream news actually reported such a number, everyone would be screaming and yelling about getting inflation under control. Instead, the super low number that gets put out to the public makes it look like the Federal Reserve has plenty of room to do even more reckless money printing. It is a giant scam, but most Americans are falling for it.
Meanwhile, the prices of the things that most Americans buy on a regular basis just keep going up. The following are just a few examples of price inflation that we have seen lately...
-McDonald's has killed the dollar menu because it is becoming impossible to "make any money selling burgers for $1".
But don't worry - the government says that the inflation you see is just your imagination.
-Amazon.com has raised the minimum order size required for free shipping from $25 to $35.
But don't worry - you can afford to order more stuff thanks to the great new job that you got during this "economic recovery".
-It is being projected that those using natural gas to heat their homes will see their heating costs rise by 13 percent this winter.
But don't worry - "global warming" should kick in to high gear any day now.
-The price of chocolate has gone up by 45 percent since 2007, and it is being projected that it will now be increasing at an even faster pace.
But don't worry - eating chocolate is bad for you anyway.
-Thanks to Obamacare, the health insurance premiums of many American families are absolutely skyrocketing. As I wrote about the other day, one family down in Texas just got a letter informing them that their health insurance premiums are going up by 539 percent.
But don't worry - this is just "health care reform" in action.
Meanwhile, things just continue to get tougher for middle class American families. Household incomes have actually been declining for five years in a row and total consumer credit has risen by a whopping 22 percent over the past three years.
The quality of our jobs continues to go down and our paychecks are not keeping up with inflation. In fact, 40 percent of all U.S. workers are now making less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968 after you account for inflation.
So what do the "authorities" say that the solution to our problems is?
They want even more inflation of course. According to CNBC, many Federal Reserve officials (including Janet Yellen) believe that what the U.S. economy really needs is a lot more inflation...
Inflation is widely reviled as a kind of tax on modern life, but as Federal Reserve policy makers prepare to meet this week, there is growing concern inside and outside the Fed that inflation is not rising fast enough.
Some economists say more inflation is just what the American economy needs to escape from a half-decade of sluggish growth and high unemployment.
The Fed has worked for decades to suppress inflation, but economists, including Janet Yellen, President Obama's nominee to lead the Fed starting next year, have long argued that a little inflation is particularly valuable when the economy is weak. Rising prices help companies increase profits; rising wages help borrowers repay debts. Inflation also encourages people and businesses to borrow money and spend it more quickly.
The rest of that article goes on and on about how wonderful inflation is for an economy and about how the U.S. economy desperately needs some more of it.
Well, if that was actually true, then the Weimar Republic should have had one of the best economies in the history of mankind.
But this inevitably happens when a nation starts producing fiat currency that is backed by absolutely nothing. There is always a temptation to just print a little bit more.
In the end, we are going to be destroyed by our own foolishness. We have the de facto reserve currency of the planet, and the rest of the world has trusted it for decades. But now we are systematically destroying our currency, and the rest of the globe is looking on in horror.
If you want to see a very good example of the impact that inflation has had on our economy in recent years, just check out this amazing chart which shows what the Federal Reserve's reckless policies have done to the prices of commodities.
Ultimately, the U.S. dollar will be destroyed, and we will have done it to ourselves.
Many people are attempting to protect themselves against this inevitability by putting a lot of their money into hard assets such as gold and silver, but before you do that you might want to make sure that you don't have a vengeful spouse that will toss it all into a dumpster someday. The following is from a recent New York Post article...
A Colorado man was so angry at his ex-wife for divorcing him that he had the couple’s life savings of $500,000 converted to gold — then tossed it in a dumpster so she couldn’t have any of it, the Colorado Springs Gazette reports.
In June, Earl Ray Jones, 52, of Divide, Colorado, was ordered by a judge to pay $3,000 a month to the woman he’d been married to for 25 years, so he pillaged the couple’s retirement account and had it converted into 22 pounds worth of gold and silver bars, the paper reports.
Jones claims he then tossed the modern-day treasure into a dumpster behind a motel, where he had been living temporarily, later telling the judge he had no money to give his ex-wife, according to the paper.
Did that story make you smile? It sure did the trick for me.
But that story is also a picture of what the Federal Reserve is doing with our dollar.
Our currency has been used for decades by almost everyone else around the planet. In fact, more U.S. dollars are used outside of our country than inside of it.
But now the Federal Reserve is systematically trashing the dollar and the rest of the globe is starting to lose faith in it.
Instead of realizing their mistakes, Fed officials say that we need to create even more inflation and they just keep on wildly printing more money.
In the end, we will all pay a great price for their foolishness.
Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/dont-worry-the-government-says-that-the-inflation-you-see-is-just-your-imagination
By Michael Snyder
If you believe that there is high inflation in the United States, you are just imagining things. That is the message that the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve would have us to believe. You might have noticed that the government announced on Wednesday that the cost of living increase for Social Security beneficiaries will only be 1.5 percent next year. This is one of the smallest cost of living increases that we have ever seen. The federal government is able to get away with this because the official numbers say that there is hardly any inflation in the U.S. right now. Of course anyone that shops for groceries or that pays bills regularly knows what a load of nonsense the official inflation rate is. The U.S. government has changed the way that inflation is calculated numerous times since 1978, and each time it has been changed the goal has been to make inflation appear to be even lower. According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if the inflation rate was still calculated the same way that it was back when Jimmy Carter was president, the official rate of inflation would be somewhere between 8 and 10 percent today. But if the mainstream news actually reported such a number, everyone would be screaming and yelling about getting inflation under control. Instead, the super low number that gets put out to the public makes it look like the Federal Reserve has plenty of room to do even more reckless money printing. It is a giant scam, but most Americans are falling for it.
Meanwhile, the prices of the things that most Americans buy on a regular basis just keep going up. The following are just a few examples of price inflation that we have seen lately...
-McDonald's has killed the dollar menu because it is becoming impossible to "make any money selling burgers for $1".
But don't worry - the government says that the inflation you see is just your imagination.
-Amazon.com has raised the minimum order size required for free shipping from $25 to $35.
But don't worry - you can afford to order more stuff thanks to the great new job that you got during this "economic recovery".
-It is being projected that those using natural gas to heat their homes will see their heating costs rise by 13 percent this winter.
But don't worry - "global warming" should kick in to high gear any day now.
-The price of chocolate has gone up by 45 percent since 2007, and it is being projected that it will now be increasing at an even faster pace.
But don't worry - eating chocolate is bad for you anyway.
-Thanks to Obamacare, the health insurance premiums of many American families are absolutely skyrocketing. As I wrote about the other day, one family down in Texas just got a letter informing them that their health insurance premiums are going up by 539 percent.
But don't worry - this is just "health care reform" in action.
Meanwhile, things just continue to get tougher for middle class American families. Household incomes have actually been declining for five years in a row and total consumer credit has risen by a whopping 22 percent over the past three years.
The quality of our jobs continues to go down and our paychecks are not keeping up with inflation. In fact, 40 percent of all U.S. workers are now making less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968 after you account for inflation.
So what do the "authorities" say that the solution to our problems is?
They want even more inflation of course. According to CNBC, many Federal Reserve officials (including Janet Yellen) believe that what the U.S. economy really needs is a lot more inflation...
Inflation is widely reviled as a kind of tax on modern life, but as Federal Reserve policy makers prepare to meet this week, there is growing concern inside and outside the Fed that inflation is not rising fast enough.
Some economists say more inflation is just what the American economy needs to escape from a half-decade of sluggish growth and high unemployment.
The Fed has worked for decades to suppress inflation, but economists, including Janet Yellen, President Obama's nominee to lead the Fed starting next year, have long argued that a little inflation is particularly valuable when the economy is weak. Rising prices help companies increase profits; rising wages help borrowers repay debts. Inflation also encourages people and businesses to borrow money and spend it more quickly.
The rest of that article goes on and on about how wonderful inflation is for an economy and about how the U.S. economy desperately needs some more of it.
Well, if that was actually true, then the Weimar Republic should have had one of the best economies in the history of mankind.
But this inevitably happens when a nation starts producing fiat currency that is backed by absolutely nothing. There is always a temptation to just print a little bit more.
In the end, we are going to be destroyed by our own foolishness. We have the de facto reserve currency of the planet, and the rest of the world has trusted it for decades. But now we are systematically destroying our currency, and the rest of the globe is looking on in horror.
If you want to see a very good example of the impact that inflation has had on our economy in recent years, just check out this amazing chart which shows what the Federal Reserve's reckless policies have done to the prices of commodities.
Ultimately, the U.S. dollar will be destroyed, and we will have done it to ourselves.
Many people are attempting to protect themselves against this inevitability by putting a lot of their money into hard assets such as gold and silver, but before you do that you might want to make sure that you don't have a vengeful spouse that will toss it all into a dumpster someday. The following is from a recent New York Post article...
A Colorado man was so angry at his ex-wife for divorcing him that he had the couple’s life savings of $500,000 converted to gold — then tossed it in a dumpster so she couldn’t have any of it, the Colorado Springs Gazette reports.
In June, Earl Ray Jones, 52, of Divide, Colorado, was ordered by a judge to pay $3,000 a month to the woman he’d been married to for 25 years, so he pillaged the couple’s retirement account and had it converted into 22 pounds worth of gold and silver bars, the paper reports.
Jones claims he then tossed the modern-day treasure into a dumpster behind a motel, where he had been living temporarily, later telling the judge he had no money to give his ex-wife, according to the paper.
Did that story make you smile? It sure did the trick for me.
But that story is also a picture of what the Federal Reserve is doing with our dollar.
Our currency has been used for decades by almost everyone else around the planet. In fact, more U.S. dollars are used outside of our country than inside of it.
But now the Federal Reserve is systematically trashing the dollar and the rest of the globe is starting to lose faith in it.
Instead of realizing their mistakes, Fed officials say that we need to create even more inflation and they just keep on wildly printing more money.
In the end, we will all pay a great price for their foolishness.
Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/dont-worry-the-government-says-that-the-inflation-you-see-is-just-your-imagination
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
DR. MALCOM PERRY: "There was an entrance wound in the neck. As regards the one on the head, I cannot say...It appeared to be coming at him."
Dallas Doctors First Statements
PRESS CONFERENCE
PARKLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
DALLAS, TEXAS
NOVEMBER 22, 1963
2:16 P.M. CST
AT THE WHITE HOUSE WITH WAYNE HAWKS
MR. HAWKS-
Let me have your attention, please. You wanted to talk to some of the attending physicians. I have two of them here, Dr. Malcolm Perry, an attending surgeon here at Parkland Memorial Hospital. He will talk to you first, and then Dr. Kemp Clark, the chief neurosurgeon here at the hospital. He will tell you what he knows about it. Dr. Perry.
QUESTION-
Were you in attendance when the President died?
QUESTION-
Let him tell his story.
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
I was summoned to the Emergency Room shortly after the President was brought in, on an emergency basis, immediately after the President’s arrival. Upon reaching his side, I noted that he was in critical condition from a wound of the neck and of the head. Immediate resuscitative measures—
QUESTION-
Would you go slower?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
I noted he was in critical condition from the wound in the neck and the head.
QUESTION-
Could that be done by one shot?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
I cannot conjecture. I don’t know.
QUESTION-
A wound of the neck and of the—
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
—of the head. Immediate resuscitative measures were undertaken, and Dr. Kemp Clark, Professor of Neurosurgery, was summoned, along with several other members of the surgical and medical staff. They arrived immediately, but at this point the President’s condition did not allow complete resuscitation.
QUESTION-
What do you mean by "complete resuscitation"?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
He was critically ill and moribund at the time these measures were begun.
QUESTION-
Completely ill and what?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
Moribund.
QUESTION-
What does that mean?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
Near death.
QUESTION-
What was the word you used?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
Moribund. Dr. Clark arrived thereafter, immediately.
QUESTION-
Could you tell us what resuscitative measures were attempted?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
Assisted respiration.
QUESTION-
What is that?
QUESTION-
With what?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
Assisted respiration with oxygen and an anesthesia machine, passage of an endotracheal tube.
QUESTION-
Does that mean you stick it in?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
Yes, place it in the trachea.
QUESTION-
Spell it for us, please.
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
E-n-d-o-t-r-a-c-h-e-a-l. A tracheostomy.
QUESTION-
Did they perform a tracheostomy?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
Yes.
QUESTION-
Would you spell it?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
T-r-a-c-h-e-o-s-t-o-m-y.
QUESTION-
Was there a priest in the room at this time, Doctor?
MR. HAWKS-
The doctor is just telling you about the operation.
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
Blood and fluids were also given, and an electrocardiograph monitor was attached to record any heart beat that might be present. At this point, Dr. Clark was also in attendance.
QUESTION-
What is his name?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
Dr. Kemp Clark. And Dr. Charles Baxter.
DR. KEMP CLARK-
I was called by Dr. Perry because the President—
QUESTION-
You are Dr. Clark?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
I am Dr. Clark. —because the President had sustained a brain wound. On my arrival, the resuscitative efforts, the tracheostomy, the administration of chest tubes to relieve any possible—
QUESTION-
Could you slow down a little bit, Doctor, please?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
—to relieve any possibility of air being in the pleural space, the electrocardiogram had been hooked up, blood and fluids were being administered by Dr. Perry and Dr. Baxter. It was apparent that the President had sustained a lethal wound.
A missile had gone in or out of the back of his head, causing extensive lacerations and loss of brain tissue. Shortly after I arrived, the patient, the President, lost his heart action by the electrocardiogram, his heart action had stopped.
We attempted resuscitative measures of his heart, including closed chest cardiac massage, but to no avail.
QUESTION-
Was that closed chest?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
Yes.
QUESTION-
Does that mean external, Doctor, closed?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
Yes. We were able to obtain palpable pulses by this method, but, again, to no avail.
QUESTION-
What is palpable?
MR. HAWKS-
What did you ask?
QUESTION-
Palpable?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
Palpable.
QUESTION-
Palpable what?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
Pulses.
QUESTION-
Doctor, how many doctors were in attendance at the time of the President’s death?
QUESTION-
Doctor, can you tell us how long after he arrived on the Emergency table before he expired? In other words, how long was he living while in the hospital?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
40 minutes, perhaps.
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
I was far too busy to tell. I didn’t even look at my watch.
DR. KEMP CLARK-
I would guess about 40 minutes.
QUESTION-
Doctor, can you describe the course of the wound through the head?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
We were too busy to be absolutely sure of the track, but the back of his head.
QUESTION-
And through the neck?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
Principally on his right side, towards the right side.
QUESTION-
What was the exact time of death, doctor?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
That is very difficult to say. We were very busy, and in answer to someone else’s question, we had a lot of people in attendance. We elected to make this at 1300.
QUESTION-
You elected?
QUESTION-
What, sir?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
We pronounced him at 1300 hours.
QUESTION-
Thirteen of?
MR. HAWKS-
1:00 o’clock.
QUESTION-
Can you describe his neck wound?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
I was busy with his head wound. I would like to ask the people took care of that part to describe that to you.
QUESTION-
What was the question?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
The neck wound, as visible on the patient, revealed a bullet hole almost in the mid line.
QUESTION-
What was that?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
A bullet hole almost in the mid line.
QUESTION-
Would you demonstrate?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
In the lower portion of the neck, in front.
QUESTION-
Can you demonstrate, Doctor, on your own neck?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
Approximately here (indicating).
QUESTION-
Below the Adam’s apple?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
Below the Adam’s apple.
QUESTION-
Doctor, is it the assumption that it went through the head?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
That would be on conjecture on my part. There are two wounds, as Dr. Clark noted, one of the neck and one of the head. Whether they are directly related or related to two bullets, I cannot say.
QUESTION-
Where was the entrance wound?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
There was an entrance wound in the neck. As regards the one on the head, I cannot say.
QUESTION-
Which way was the bullet coming on the neck wound? At him?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
It appeared to be coming at him.
QUESTION-
And the one behind?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
The nature of the wound defies the ability to describe whether it went through it from either side. I cannot tell you that. Can you, Dr. Clark?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
The head wound could have been either the exit wound from the neck or it could have been a tangential wound, as it was simply a large, gaping loss of tissue.
QUESTION-
That was the immediate cause of death — the head wound?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
I assume so, yes.
QUESTION-
There is a rumor that Lyndon Johnson had a heart attack, and I would like to check that out.
DR. KEMP CLARK-
I have no information.
MR. HAWKS-
I don’t believe these gentlemen were in attendance with the Vice President.
QUESTION-
Where was he when this was going on?
MR. HAWKS-
That is not a question you should put to this doctor.
QUESTION-
Can you tell us where he is?
MR. HAWKS-
I can’t now, but Mr. Kilduff will be available later and we will take those details then.
QUESTION-
We can’t hear you.
MR. HAWKS-
They were asking where the Vice President was, but I don’t know at the moment. That is not the proper question to put to these gentlemen. They were busy with the President at the time.
QUESTION-
Where was Mrs. Kennedy?
MR. HAWKS-
I don’t know that detail either. As you might suspect, we were all busy around here.
QUESTION-
Can’t we clear this up just a little more? In your estimation, was there one or two wounds? Just give us something.
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
I don’t know. From the injury, it is conceivable that it could have been caused by one wound, but there could have been two just as well if the second bullet struck the head in addition to striking the neck, and I cannot tell you that due to the nature of the wound. There is no way for me to tell.
QUESTION-
Doctor, describe the entrance wound. You think from the front in the throat?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
The wound appeared to be an entrance wound in the front of the throat; yes, that is correct. The exit wound, I don’t know. It could have been the head or there could have been a second wound of the head. There was not time to determine this at the particular instant.
QUESTION-
Would the bullet have to travel up from the neck wound to exit through the back?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
Unless it was deviated from its course by striking bone or some other object.
QUESTION-
Doctor, can you give us your ages, please?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
I am 34.
QUESTION-
You are Doctor who?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
Perry.
MR. HAWKS-
This is Dr. Malcom Perry, attending surgeon, and this is Dr. Kemp Clark, chief of neurosurgery at this hospital.
QUESTION-
How old are you, sir?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
38.
QUESTION-
Is that C-l-a-r-k?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
Yes.
QUESTION-
Can you tell us whether the autopsy will be performed here or elsewhere?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
I do not have that information.
MR. HAWKS-
I don’t know either.
QUESTION-
Will there be one?
MR. HAWKS-
I don’t know that.
QUESTION-
Where is the President’s body?
MR. HAWKS-
I couldn’t tell you.
QUESTION-
Was the President ever conscious after the bullet struck him?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
No, not while I was in attendance.
QUESTION-
How much blood was used?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
I don’t know. There was considerable bleeding.
QUESTION-
How soon did you see him after he got in?
QUESTION-
Did you have to send for blood?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
Blood was sent for and obtained; yes.
QUESTION-
Where?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
From our Blood Bank.
QUESTION-
Here in the hospital?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
Here in the hospital.
QUESTION-
How much was used?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
I don’t know.
QUESTION-
Doctor, were the last rites performed in the Emergency Room?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
Yes.
QUESTION-
Yes, they were?
MR. HAWKS-
Yes, they said they were. Kilduff told you, too.
QUESTION-
Which room was this? What is the room like?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
Emergency Operating Room No. 1.
QUESTION-
How far from the door is that, and which way?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
Straight in from the Emergency Room entrance, at the back of the hospital, approximately 40 feet.
QUESTION-
Approximately what?
MR. HAWKS-
Forty feet from the emergency entrance.
QUESTION-
The first floor?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
The ground floor.
QUESTION-
How many doctors and nurses were in attendance at the time of death?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
There were at least eight or ten physicians at that time.
QUESTION-
At least eight or ten physicians?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
Yes.
QUESTION-
Did you think him mortally wounded at the time you first examined him, or did you think there was no possibility of saving his life at that point?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
No, I did not.
DR. KEMP CLARK-
No, sir.
QUESTION-
Did you say there were eight or ten doctors or doctors and nurses?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
Eight or ten doctors.
QUESTION-
Can we get that straight, Doctor? Did you say you did not think there was any possibility of saving his life when you first looked at him?
DR KEMP CLARK-
That is what I said; yes.
QUESTION-
How long had he been in before you saw him, sir?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
This I don’t know because I was not looking at my watch.
QUESTION-
Who was the first doctor who saw him, and how long before he got there?
DR. KEMP CLARK-
Just a matter of a few seconds.
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
I arrived there shortly after his admission. I can’t tell you the exact time because I went immediately and he had just been admitted and I walked in the room. I don’t know the exact time. I was in quite a hurry.
QUESTION-
Were there any members of the family or others in the room besides the doctors, in the Emergency Room?
DR. MALCOM PERRY-
I am afraid I was not aware of that. I was quite too busy to notice.
MR. HAWKS-
We will have to get those details from Mac.
QUESTION-
Do you have any new details about our plans, what you are going to do?
MR. HAWKS-
I can’t until I get a reading from you fellows. For instance, you have a new President.
QUESTION-
Do we? Was he sworn in?
MR. HAWKS-
Well, he went somewhere to get sworn in. I assume he is sworn in at this time, but I wasn’t in attendance. Obviously, you are going to have a new President. Let’s put it that way.
QUESTION-
Where is he going to be?
MR. HAWKS-
That is what I am trying to find out. Mac is with him, trying to get the details, and he will call me or come in here. We will try to find out.
DR. PERRY-
Can we go now?
THE PRESS-
Thank you, Doctors.
MR. HAWKS-
Your plans, what do you want to do?
QUESTION-
First, is there any more about Mrs. Kennedy?
MR. HAWKS-
Let’s do some "supposing" because we need some planning for your press plane.
QUESTION-
How about Mrs. Kennedy? Has she gone back to Washington, or is she going?
MR. HAWKS-
That is what Mac is trying to find out now. This takes a lot of doing.
QUESTION-
Can we stay here with the new President?
MR. HAWKS-
If you want to stay here with the new President, if he stays here. I don’t know that he is going to stay here. That is why I want to "suppose" here for a minute.
QUESTION-
Let’s put it on the basis of what the new President does. If he stays, we stay; and if he goes, we go.
MR. HAWKS-
Suppose the body goes back and the new President stays? Do some of you want to stay, or go?
QUESTION-
Stay with the new President.
MR. HAWKS-
All right, that is what I wanted to find out. You know, there are buses and planes and things like that.
QUESTION-
I know I won’t be going back in any case. Can I get my luggage back here? How do we get luggage on the press plane off of there?
MR. HAWKS-
If we decide to spend the night here, we will get the luggage here. Don’t worry about it.
QUESTION-
We have luggage in the wire car, but God knows where it is.
QUESTION-
Where will the next briefing be, here or where?
MR. HAWKS-
Right here, so far as I know. This is where Mac said he could come back to.
Link:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/press.htm
Witnesses of shot from Grassy Knoll...
Evidence of Shots from the Front
About 40 witnesses to the assassination of President Kennedy claimed either to have heard gunshots from the infamous grassy knoll in the northwest corner of Dealey Plaza, or to have seen smoke or smelled gunpowder in that area.
Interviewing the Dealey Plaza Witnesses
Several of these witnesses were interviewed by newspaper, radio and television reporters immediately after the assassination. The interviews were influential in generating doubt about the lone–gunman theory. Many other interviews have been carried out in the years since the assassination, almost all of them by private researchers.
Examination of photographs and home movies suggests that there were perhaps as many as 600 people in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination. Official interviews or statements exist for around 200 of these witnesses. Because the Warren Commission did no investigation of its own, almost all of the witnesses who testified before the Commission were chosen from those who had already made official statements. The other 400 or so, including many of the spectators nearest to the president, were never interviewed officially at all. Few of these missing witnesses were identified, even when the authorities had been informed of their existence (Warren Commission Hearings, vol.15, pp.525f).
In many cases, the witnesses appear not to have been asked about the origin of the shots. Of those who were asked, probably a small majority claimed that the shots came from the general direction of the Texas School Book Depository. A handful of people claimed to have heard shots from both directions. Many had no opinion.
Status of the Dealey Plaza Witness Evidence
Most of the evidence quoted below falls into four categories:
contemporaneous reports by journalists who were in Dealey Plaza;
statements to the police or sheriff’s deputies within hours of the assassination;
statements to the FBI, mostly within a few days of the assassination;
and interviews by the Warren Commission’s staff attorneys several months after the assassination.
None of the official evidence became publicly available until the Warren Commission’s Hearings and Exhibits were issued in November 1964. Some of it was not published at all, but was placed in the National Archives, and was only discovered at a later date. Access to the evidence was not helped by the fact that the witnesses’ statements and testimony were scattered throughout many of the 26 volumes of the Hearings and Exhibits, none of which contained an index.
There are some curiosities within the evidence:
Emmett Hudson, the only man identified out of the three standing on the steps leading up to the fence on the grassy knoll, claimed that all the shots came from the general direction of the TSBD (see Warren Commission Hearings, vol.7, p.560 and p.564; his earliest statements, however, are ambiguous).
Buell Wesley Frazier, Billy Lovelady and Otis Williams, three men who were standing on the front steps of the TSBD, directly underneath the supposed sniper’s nest, claimed that all the shots came from the general direction of the knoll.
Charles Brehm, who had an excellent view of the assassination, either changed his mind or was misquoted. He was reported in the Dallas Times Herald on the evening of 22 November as thinking that “the shots came from in front of or beside the President.” The FBI two days later stated that “it seemed quite apparent to him that the shots came from one or two buildings back at the corner of Elm and Houston Streets” (Warren Commission Hearings, vol.22, p.837).
Arnold Rowland thought the shots had come from the knoll, despite already having seen a man in the southwest window of the sixth floor of the TSBD, holding a gun (Warren Commission Hearings, vol.2, pp.171–3).
Kenneth O’Donnell and David Powers nominated the TSBD in their testimony, but believed in private that shots had come from the knoll.
Witnesses to Shots from the Grassy Knoll
Here is a list, in alphabetical order by surname, and no doubt incomplete, of those witnesses to President Kennedy’s assassination who claimed that one or more shots came from the general direction of the grassy knoll:
Read the rest here:
http://22november1963.org.uk/jfk-assassination-grassy-knoll-witnesses
The mysterious journey of JFK's body on the evening of Nov. 22, 1963...
by Douglas Horne
At my request, a friend of mine, psychologist Steven Kossor of Pennsylvania, recently used the sophisticated audio equipment he employs in his hobby as an audiophile to create an enhanced excerpt for me of the key passages in the Clifton version of the “Air Force One Tapes” (the GPO/NARA version released to the public in 2012, based on the Clifton version of the AF1 conversations, which is about 27 minutes longer than the version previously released by the LBJ Library), pertaining to the selection of JFK’s autopsy site (Walter Reed Hospital vs. Bethesda Naval Hospital); and the mode of transportation to be used to move JFK’s body from Andrews Air Force Base to the autopsy site (a mortuary style ambulance vs. helicopter).
Those portions of the AF1 tapes have always haunted me, since a tug-of-war was clearly going on between major actors onboard Air Force One, and major actors at the White House Situation Room (“Crown”), regarding where JFK’s autopsy would be performed, and how the body would be transported there. Many people who have studied these conversations have undoubtedly wondered the same things: “What was being planned — and why — and how did those plans change after AF1 landed at Andrews AFB — and why?” This rather lengthy and detailed essay will share with its readers my considered opinions after ruminating about this subject off and on for 32 years, since 1981 — when I first became aware of the LBJ Library version of the AF1 tapes by reading David Lifton’s forensic thriller about the JFK assassination, Best Evidence.
Context is everything
Everything in this essay is grounded around one basic, undeniable fact: that the heavy, bronze, reddish-brown ceremonial casket from Dallas, in which JFK’s body was taken aboard AF1 at Love Field in Dallas, was empty when the public saw it unloaded from Air Force One on live television shortly after 6:04 PM on November 22, 1963, and placed into a light gray Navy ambulance. We know this is so because President Kennedy’s body arrived at the Bethesda morgue twenty minutes BEFORE the motorcade from Andrews AFB, transporting the Dallas casket in a light gray Navy Pontiac ambulance, arrived at the front of the Navy hospital. If the timeline that supports the above conclusion can be trusted, then the only conclusion possible is that JFK’s body had been removed from the Dallas casket onboard the airplane, prior to the arrival of Air Force One at Andrews, and somehow spirited to Bethesda Naval Hospital before the Andrews motorcade arrived. It is essential that the reader review the basic facts proving that the body’s chain-of-custody was broken enroute the autopsy, before we move on to the principal topic of this essay, which is “What do the AF1 tapes reveal about what was intended that night; what actually transpired; and how did those events deviate from what had been planned, and why?”
The timeline can indeed be trusted, and I shall demonstrate why. Two Navy enlisted men, Dennis David and Donald Rebentisch, were part of the working party that unloaded JFK’s body at 6:35 PM at the Bethesda Naval Hospital loading dock that evening. Mr. David was a First Class Navy Corpsman serving as “Chief of the Day” at Bethesda, and was instructed by the Secret Service detail (which had literally taken over Bethesda that afternoon) to assemble a working party of sailors, so that the President’s casket could be unloaded, and taken into the morgue, when it arrived in a vehicle at the Bethesda morgue’s loading dock. HM1 Dennis David was the supervisor of the working party, and Donald Rebentisch was a member of this working party. As reported in Best Evidence, both men, in the early 1980s, had independent and identical recollections of offloading a cheap aluminum shipping casket from a Hearse (a black Cadillac mortuary-style ambulance built specifically for the funeral trade) at the morgue’s loading dock, and of taking the casket into the morgue, and setting it down, before being dismissed. Dennis David’s best recollection when interviewed by the ARRB staff in 1997 was that this event occurred at about 6:45 PM; the precise time of the event was fixed with precision in 1997 when the ARRB staff acquired the November 26th, 1963 typed after-action report of USMC Sergeant Roger Boyajian, whose Marine Barracks security detail had provided physical security during the autopsy. (Mr. Boyajian still had an onionskin carbon copy of the report in 1997, and sent the ARRB a high-quality photocopy, which he authenticated by letter.) In his after-action report, which pertained only to the physical security provided for President Kennedy’s autopsy, Boyajian wrote: “At approximately 1835 the casket was received at the morgue entrance and taken inside.” This pins down much more accurately Dennis David’s estimate to the ARRB staff that the shipping casket event had taken place at about 6:45 PM. The military time of 1835 hours (6:35 PM civilian time) in Boyajian’s report, which was a contemporaneous document typed four days after the autopsy, trumps Dennis David’s estimate in 1997 (very accurate, as it turns out) of 6:45 PM, and can be authoritatively considered the true arrival time of the shipping casket. Later on, during the night of the autopsy, after the autopsy had been concluded, in response to a question from HM1 Dennis David, Dr. J Thornton Boswell, one of the three pathologists who had conducted JFK’s autopsy, confirmed to David that JFK had indeed been in the shipping casket his working party had unloaded from the Hearse at the morgue loading dock hours earlier. [David told Lifton in 1979 that both Dr. Humes and Dr. Boswell (the two Navy pathologists who participated in the autopsy) had been present on the loading dock, along with their commanding officer, Captain Stover, and what he believed to be the Surgeons General of the Army and Air Force.]
In contrast, both the local newspapers, and a Secret Service report, reported that the light gray Navy ambulance containing the Dallas casket, Jackie Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy, had arrived at 6:55 PM in front of Bethesda Naval Hospital, and newspapers the next day reported it had sat there for twelve minutes, before being driven away to the back of the building (its destination at that time — about 7:07 PM — per the two FBI agents who led the way in their own vehicle, was the morgue loading dock). We have a high degree of certainty, therefore, in both key aspects of this timeline — that is, in the arrival time of both caskets at Bethesda. The shipping casket (which Boswell confirmed to Dennis David had contained JFK’s body) arrived twenty minutes prior to the Andrews motorcade and the light gray Navy ambulance, and furthermore, the Navy ambulance had then (according to newspaper reports the next day) sat out in front of the hospital for an additional 12 minutes before even moving. Dennis David also recalled clearly — in 1979, long before he ever knew about the Boyajian report — that after his working party unloaded the shipping casket from the Hearse, he went to the forward part of the hospital and subsequently watched the Andrews motorcade arrive, about 20 or 30 minutes minutes later, from a second floor office window. As it turns out, his sense of time was quite accurate even many years later in 1979, for the Andrews motorcade arrived exactly 20 minutes after the casket arrival mentioned in the Boyajian report. This speaks highly to Dennis David’s reliability as a witness.
It gets even worse, as far as the body’s chain-of-custody goes. The staff of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) learned in the late 1970s that the two FBI agents sent to Bethesda to obtain any bullets removed from the body, James Sibert and Francis O’Neill, helped two Secret Service agents (Roy Kellerman and William Greer) offload the Dallas casket (which had to be empty) from the light gray Navy ambulance that had just arrived at the morgue loading dock, using a wheeled conveyance (almost certainly what was known as a “church truck”). This was reconfirmed by the ARRB in 1997 when these two men were deposed; and former FBI agent James Sibert clarified for the ARRB that they set it down in the morgue anteroom. So this second casket entry was quite distinctive from the first one, in that: (1) it was a different casket than Dennis David’s working party offloaded [a heavy bronze ceremonial coffin, as opposed to a cheap, unadorned, lightweight gray aluminum shipping casket]; (2) it was delivered by a different vehicle [by a light gray Navy Pontiac ambulance, as opposed to a Hearse, which was a black Cadillac mortuary-style ambulance]; and (3) different people, or “actors,” unloaded the casket from the vehicle which delivered it [namely, the second casket delivery was offloaded by four Federal agents wearing suits, whereas the first casket delivery was offloaded by Navy sailors in working uniforms]. Based on inferences in an internal FBI interview report, this second casket entry by the four Federal agents occurred at approximately 7:17 PM. Unknown by the two FBI agents at the time, the Dallas casket was empty when they moved it into the morgue anteroom. (The two Secret Service agents had to know otherwise, for they had been onboard Air Force One during the flight back to Washington from Dallas.)
The “French Farce” continued that evening, for there was a second entry of the Dallas casket at 8:00 PM. The Honor Guard, or Joint Service Casket Team, after chasing a “decoy ambulance” into the darkness and getting lost, finally found the Dallas casket sitting out front in a light gray Navy ambulance (which one of the two present that night is unclear), and performed their intended ceremonial function by following it to the back of the hospital, manhandling the heavy bronze casket up the narrow steps leading to the morgue loading dock platform, and by then taking it into the morgue proper. The time of this third casket entry (and the second entry for the Dallas casket that night) was recorded in the after-action report of the Military District of Washington (MDW). So the time of this final casket entry — 8:00 PM — is also unassailable. And its actors are startlingly different from the other two casket entries that preceded it: the Joint Service Casket Team, hastily assembled at Andrews AFB, consisted of members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard — all wearing the dress uniform of their respective services, and white gloves. [Unlike the Marine Barracks security detail supervised by USMC Sergeant Boyajian, they carried no weapons.] Furthermore, after setting the heavy bronze casket down next to one of the morgue examining tables, they witnessed the casket being opened, and saw JFK’s body removed from the heavy, reddish-brown ceremonial coffin. Those who were playing a “shell game” with President Kennedy’s body that night understood that the mortified and embarrassed Casket Team had to be allowed to perform its ceremonial function — that is, to “find” the casket that they had lost in the darkness; to take it into the morgue; and to see it opened and to be reassured that all was well, and that the slain Commander-in-Chief’s body was inside. The illusion of an intact chain-of-custody had to be created for this most important audience, and for those supervising its performance, General Phillip Wehle (Commandant, MDW), and his aide, Lt. Richard Lipsey. The first two casket entries that night — the shipping casket at 6:35 PM and the first Dallas casket entry at about 7:17 PM — remained unknown to the Joint Service Casket Team, and to Wehle and Lipsey. [Lipsey later freely admitted knowledge of a “decoy ambulance” to the HSCA staff in an interview in the late 1970s, but seemed completely unaware of its implications; presumably, he and General Wehle were given a benign explanation for the “wild goose chase” conducted in the dark by both of them, and by their honor guard that night. Many of the enlisted Navy personnel on duty the night of the autopsy at Bethesda were aware of a “decoy” Navy ambulance, and its existence was even admitted to them by some of the Secret Service agents at the Naval Hospital.]
So — now that the reader understands the context within which we will be evaluating the Air Force One tapes and other critical data — we can proceed to our examination of the initial tug-of-war over the autopsy site, and the mode of transportation for JFK’s body enroute the autopsy. Something was very much amiss that day. It behooves us to try to understand just what was going on: (1) Why would anyone want to remove JFK’s body from the Dallas casket onboard Air Force One? (2) How did JFK’s body arrive at Bethesda Naval Hospital prior to the Andrews AFB motorcade; (3) What plan for the autopsy and the body’s movement was hatched while AF1 was in flight, and how was that plan altered in its execution? and (4) What happened to JFK’s body at Bethesda in-between its early arrival at 6:35 PM, and the official commencement of the autopsy at 8:00 PM before a large audience of at least 35 people at the Bethesda morgue?
Read the whole article here:
http://fff.org/explore-freedom/article/the-af1-tapes-and-subsequent-events-at-andrews-afb-on-november-22-1963-what-was-supposed-to-happen-vs-what-did-happen/
It still matters...
by Jacob G. Hornberger
On the approaching 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, the obvious question arises: What difference does it make? A half century has passed since the assassination. It’s now history. Why spend any time on it? What relevance does it have to people living today, especially young people to whom the question “Where were you when you learned Kennedy was assassinated?” obviously has no relevance at all.
The answer is: There is a straight line from the Kennedy assassination to NSA spying, CIA assassinations, the military-industrial complex, and all the others aspects of the national-security state that have become an entrenched and permanent part of America’s governmental structure.
Don’t forget, after all, what we have learned about the Kennedy administration and the national-security establishment as information has slowly been disclosed over the past 50 years, thanks largely to assassination researchers: By the time he was assassinated, there was a vicious war that was been waged between Kennedy and the national-security establishment, a war that was being waged beneath the radar screen.
Why is that important? Because if Kennedy had won the war, it is a virtual certainty that the American people today would be living in a society that is totally different from the one in which we now live. That is, one without a vast military establishment, a CIA, and a NSA.
Today, I’d say most American would be shocked at such a notion. From the first grade on up, every American is inculcated with the notion that the national-security apparatus is absolutely essential to “national security” and even the survival of our nation.
And that’s precisely the way the CIA, the Pentagon, the Washington establishment, and American conservatives felt throughout the 1950s and 1960s. They were absolutely convinced that the only thing preventing a communist takeover of the United States was a strong national-security establishment.
While defenders of the Warren Report oftentimes describe people who challenge that report for being paranoid, nothing can compare to the paranoia that afflicted the national-security establishment during the 50s and 60s. In their minds, communists were everywhere. Even worse, according to them, the worldwide communist movement was guided by a cabal situated in the Kremlin, which was moving communists into positions all over the world, like chess pieces. What better proof of that than Cuba, a communist outpost only 90 miles away from American shores? Worst of all, communism was also considered an infection, one that was contagious, one that had already entered the body politic in the form of Social Security and the civil rights movement, which was calling for racial integration.
This was the mindset that U.S. officials developed after World War II and did their best to inculcate into the American people. America’s partner and ally during the war, the Soviet Union, replaced Nazi Germany as the new official enemy, one that was certain put America into the Red zone if Americans didn’t adopt a vast national-security establishment to oppose it.
Don’t forget: After prior wars, the standing army was dismantled, in accordance with the Founding Fathers antipathy toward standing armies. Moreover, never before in American history had there been an intelligence agency, especially one with the power to carry out covert operations. Never had there been a NSA, an agency with the power to secretly spy on people. Most Americans understood that all these things were attributes of totalitarian regimes, not free societies.
But the warfare statists convinced Americans that these totalitarian-like devices had now become necessary in order to prevent a communist takeover of the United States. Opposition to these devices was considered suspect by the national-security establishment, even traitorous and cowardly in the face of the communist threat. The national-security statists were convinced that they were the only things standing in the way of a communist takeover of America.
But then along comes Kennedy.
For 50 years the court historians have taught the American people that Kennedy’s beliefs were no different from those of any other 20th-century president. Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon. They were all of the same mindset, of the same philosophy, we have long been taught. The post-World War II presidents, they said, were all fierce Cold Warriors, fierce anti-communists, and fierce interventionists.
But as documents have slowly leaked out over the years since Kennedy was assassinated — documents that the national-security establishment was doing its best to keep secret — we have learned that it was all a lie. In actuality, by the time he was assassinated, Kennedy’s vision was contrary to that of the national-security establishment. Cautious not to move too fast too soon, it is nonetheless clear that Kennedy was slowly but surely moving America in an entirely different direction, one that was antithetical to that of the national-security statists.
Kennedy was challenging the “communists are coming to get us” paradigm that formed the justification of the national-security state. And the national-security statists knew it. He was opposing everything the generals and the CIA officials statists stood for and believed. The result was one of the fiercest political and bureaucratic wars in U.S. history — a war between Kennedy and the national-security establishment — a war that was being waged beneath the radar screen — a war whose stakes were the very highest for the future direction of our nation.
That war is the subject of Douglas Horne’s excellent series that The Future of Freedom Foundation is currently publishing, appropriately entitled “JFK’s War With the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated.” It’s also the theme of the excellent book JFK and the Unspeakable by James W. Douglass. Indeed, as more and more previously secret information has been divulged in the last 50 years, thanks to the tenacity and determination of assassination researchers, the credible section of the assassination research movement seems to have coalesced behind the notion that as a result of this war, the national-security establishment had much more motive for ridding our nation of Kennedy than did Oswald, whose motive is still unknown to this day.
Also see the recent article in The Atlantic: “JFK vs. the Military” by longtime Kennedy biographer Robert Dallek
The fact is that there was an enormous conflict of visions between Kennedy and the national-security establishment. On one side you have the CIA and the Pentagon, people who are fierce anticommunists, who want the United States to invade Cuba, oust Fidel Castro from power, and install a pro-U.S. dictator, similar to the CIA regime-change operations in Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Chile. Even worse, convinced that nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States is inevitable anyway, they want Kennedy to attack the Soviet Union with a massive nuclear strike with the aim of wiping out most of the country before they can retaliate.
On the other side, you have Kennedy, who comes into office as pretty much a standard Cold Warrior but whose beliefs take a radical shift after the Cuban Missile Crisis. He decides that the Cold War isn’t necessary. He decides that the United States and the Soviet Union can coexist in peace, much as the United States and China (and Russia, Vietnam, North Korea, and Cuba) do today. That’s what his famous Peace Speech at American University is all about, a speech that was broadcast all across the Soviet Union.
But the most telling part of the war that was being waged between JFK and the national-security establishment were the secret negotiations between Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to end the Cold War. Why telling? Because Kennedy didn’t bring the military into what he was secretly doing. And he didn’t bring the CIA into it either. Imagine that: Here the president of the United States is secretly negotiating with the Soviet Union to end the Cold War and he doesn’t even advise the Pentagon or the CIA of what he is doing. What better reflection of the depth of the war than that?
Of course, there is the ongoing debate on whether Kennedy would have pulled out of Vietnam. That really isn’t the critical issue though. The critical issue is what the national-security establishment believed he was going to do. And based on his order to the Pentagon to begin the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam just before he was assassinated, there is no question as to what the generals and the CIA officials believed he would do, especially after the 1964 election.
What would have happened if Kennedy had succeeded in ending the Cold War? Well, remember, this was 1963, only about 15 years after the passage of the National Security Act. That was plenty of time for the military-industrial complex and CIA to expand their budgets, power, and influence. But at that point, everyone knew what the justification for the national-security states was: the Cold War. With no Cold War, there would have been no reason for continuing the existence of the national-security state establishment.
Of course, when the Cold War finally did end in 1989, we all know that the national-security apparatus wasn’t dismantled and instead continued to remain in existence. But by that time, it had had another quarter-century to become a permanent and entrenched part of America’s governmental structure. Moreover, by that time most Americans had been inculcated with the belief that a vast military establishment was absolutely necessary to their peace and safety and to “national security.”
Given Kennedy’s negative attitude toward the national-security state, however, it is a virtual certainty that had he succeeded in ending the Cold War, he would have also sought to dismantle the national-security state, given that the justification for its existence—the Cold War—would have disintegrated and especially given his antipathy toward the Pentagon and the CIA.
That’s why the stakes in Kennedy’s war against the national-security establishment were so high. If Kennedy had lived and succeeded in ending the Cold War, America would have moved in an entirely different direction, one without a national-security state. Ironically, today’s national-security statists take the exact same position as their counterparts who were warring against Kennedy in 1963 — that America couldn’t survive without a national-security state.
But as we all know, Kennedy didn’t prevail because he was assassinated before he could finalize an agreement to end the Cold War with Khrushchev. Since his successor, Lyndon Johnson, shared the same Cold War mindset as the national-security establishment, negotiations to end the Cold War ended, followed by another 25 years of Cold War (and the Vietnam War), followed by the war on terrorism, torture, indefinite detention, NSA surveillance schemes, out of control federal spending, and all the others things that come with the national security state—the things that we would likely be living without if Kennedy had lived and seen his vision fulfilled.
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