Globalists Exploit ISIS Threat to Empower UN
Alex Newman
Establishment forces from around the world are exploiting the threat posed by the terrorist group styling itself the “Islamic State,” often referred to as ISIS or ISIL, to advance globalism and to further empower the United Nations. Indeed, the barbaric terror organization, which Vice President Joe Biden recently admitted was created, armed, and funded by the Obama administration’s supposed “anti-ISIS” coalition, is now being paraded around by globalist extremists to push a dizzying array of longtime establishment goals. Without a massive public outcry, they may succeed.
From a UN war on “non-violent extremism” and international restrictions on speech to a UN-led global terror war and more power for the global “criminal court,” the self-styled “Islamic State” has become a convenient and widely cited pretext for advancing a broad range of attacks on liberty and national sovereignty. Quietly and largely under the radar, some of those efforts have already succeeded in recent months. However, the international establishment has even more ambitious plans underway as its own operatives stir up hysteria about ISIS barbarism to push more internationalism.
Last week, for example, the 15-member UN Security Council, which contains multiple brutal regimes, voted unanimously to approve a far-reaching resolution purportedly dealing with ISIS. In reality, though, the controversial measure, combined with other UN and globalist schemes, aims to drastically expand the role of the dictator-dominated organization into a planetary regime involved in everything from supposedly “fighting terror” and “crime” to waging a propaganda war against what it considers to be “extremism” in "all forms."
For instance, the resolution adopted by the Security Council at the November 19 summit on “International Cooperation in Combating Terrorism and Violent Extremism” touts the alleged “continued need to improve the visibility and effectiveness of the UN’s role in countering the spread of violent ideologies.” Because the UN as an entity was sold to the masses as a tool for preserving “international peace,” the resolution also claims that terrorism “in all forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security.” Ironically, numerous UN members and even agencies have been implicated in terrorism.
In his remarks to the UN Security Council, however, UN boss Ban Ki-moon celebrated the “unity of purpose” among UN member governments and dictatorships in supposedly combating ISIS. Unsurprisingly, he failed to mention the well-documented role of prominent UN member regimes — Sunni Islamic dictatorships in particular — in creating the ruthless terror group to begin with in an effort to overthrow the "apostate" autocracy ruling Syria. But for Ban and other fellow globalists, ISIS — like climate alarmism — is almost certainly just a convenient excuse to boost UN power, as his own words revealed.
“We are increasingly seeing terrorism, drug trafficking and transnational crime grow in intensity and feed off each other,” Ban told the Security Council, implying that the UN’s job now includes global law enforcement. “The international community and the UN must ensure the full implementation of our many tools for action — including Security Council resolutions and the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy.”
Ban touted, among other developments, efforts by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime — a widely ridiculed outfit led by a former diplomat for the mass-murdering Soviet regime who recently blasted the United States for not complying with “international law” — in foisting UN demands on the world. He claimed UNODC was working to “strengthen the legal and criminal justice capacity of Middle East and Northern African countries to address the threat posed by foreign fighters.” The UN also works with brutal regimes to disarm law-abiding citizens under the guise of "criminal justice" and "peace."
Now it is in the business of countering “ideologies” and “extremism,” too. “Violent extremism is a multi-dimensional challenge that needs to be effectively addressed at the grassroots level,” the UN boss continued, touting the planetary outfit’s self-proclaimed mission of addressing the supposed “socio-economic roots” of the “scourge” of extremism. “We must continue to think more deeply into the fundamental conditions that allow extremism to thrive. Looking at these challenges solely through a military lens has shown its limits.”
The latest UN schemes purporting to deal with ISIS come on the heels of the previous UN Security Council meeting that took place in September. Unsurprisingly, as The New American reported at the time, that gathering, too, featured shameless exploitation of the ISIS threat to empower the dictator-dominated organization. Among other victories for globalism under the guise of battling ISIS, the supposedly “binding” UN resolution approved a new global “terror” regime that purports to control travel — essentially a global “no-fly” list. It also demands that national governments pass “terror” laws demanded by the UN.
That scheme was pushed primarily by the Obama administration — increasingly infamous for its role in funding, arming, training, and supporting the very same jihadist forces that the UN resolution purports to target (See Libya). “I called this meeting because we must come together as nations and as an international community to confront a real and growing threat of foreign terrorist fighters,” Obama said, referring to “nations” when he really meant the governments and dictatorships ruling over nations. “The historic resolution we just adopted enshrines our commitment to meet this challenge.”
Resolutions, though, “will not be enough,” Obama added. “The words spoken here today must be matched and translated into action, into deeds, concrete action.” True to his word, shortly after that, the Obama administration announced broad new powers for Interpol, a self-styled international law-enforcement agency once controlled by the National Socialists (Nazis) that even recently has reportedly been used by Islamic dictatorships to hunt down converts to Christianity. Obama’s outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder claimed that “Interpol — as the world’s largest international police organization — has a vital role to play in safeguarding our homeland and protecting the American people.”
In response to the September Security Council resolution, the UN is now “helping” its member governments and dictatorships to “analyze” the extremism phenomenon, to “develop policy responses,” and to “address the multi-dimensional challenges of extremist ideologies,” Ban told the Security Council last week. The UN is also “examining how best to strengthen the counter-terrorism capabilities of UN Special Political Missions, Peacekeeping Operations and UN Country Teams,” declared the controversial UN boss. “People need equality and opportunity in their lives.”
Apparently the UN’s military, war-making forces outlandishly described as “peace” armies, are preparing to impose those goals — as if ISIS fighters just needed some more “equality.” Indeed, as The New American reported last month, the Obama administration, working with a wide array of brutal autocracies, is currently working on overdrive to expand the power and resources of the UN’s “peacekeeping” military — the very same UN forces responsible for slaughtering, raping, terrorizing, and abusing civilians around the world with impunity. Efforts to empower the controversial global military are being justified largely by pointing to ISIS.
Even while globalist schemes to radically expand planetary military and “law enforcement” outfits gain traction under the guise of fighting terror and extremism, the UN is also seeking to boost its controversial kangaroo “court” known as the International Criminal Court. Again, the excuse is ISIS. Just this week, UN “High Commissioner for Human Rights” Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, who presides over a gaggle of dictators, governments, and serial human-rights abusers styling themselves the UN “Human Rights Council,” argued that ISIS members should be prosecuted at the pseudo-“court” in The Hague. While the U.S. government is not a member of the body, which recognizes none of the constitutionally protected rights enshrined in the Constitution, the ICC purports to have “jurisdiction” over every person on Earth for a wide range of vague and undefined “crimes” such as “aggression.”
For some globalists, though, even the fast-accelerating empowerment of the UN to “fight” ISIS is not proceeding quickly enough. “Although a concerted effort is now clearly visible in this direction, the United Nations has yet to sufficiently leverage the expertise of many of its own departments and agencies with relevant and valuable experience on core elements of countering violent extremism, including development, education and strategic communications,” claimed Global Center on Cooperative Security Executive Director Alistair Millar in a recent piece published by the Baltimore Sun. “A special representative would be essential for getting this job done, optimizing the resources and focusing the attention of the vast U.N. bureaucracy on a threat that is likely to shape many of the key conflicts of our time.”
Of course, calls to empower the UN and a “special representative” to wage war on “extremism” have been growing quickly. As The New American reported last month, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron wants the autocrat-dominated global body to appoint a “special representative” in charge of countering “non-violent extremism” — which he said includes everything from doubting official storylines about terror attacks to believing in “nonsense” religious prophecies about the end-times.
“We must be clear: to defeat the ideology of extremism we need to deal with all forms of extremism — not just violent extremism,” Cameron explained to the UN’s largely autocratic member regimes, acknowledging that the machinations would not be entirely “compatible” with free speech and intellectual inquiry. “We shouldn’t stand by and just allow any form of non-violent extremism. And we need the strongest possible international focus on tackling this ideology — which is why here at the United Nations, the United Kingdom is calling for a new Special Representative on extremism.”
As the globalist establishment continues hyping the threat of ISIS to justify its anti-freedom and anti-sovereignty plotting, that same establishment continues to coddle and even arm Islamists and jihadists across the Middle East — and especially in Syria right now. Biden, U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, and virtually every credible analyst who has commented on the subject acknowledges that ISIS was armed and funded by Obama’s supposed “anti-ISIS” coalition, even as the administration continues to shower U.S. weapons and support on terrorist groups seeking to overthrow the Syrian dictatorship. Rather than further empowering the UN to wage a “global terror war,” a much more sensible approach would be to start by ending weapons shipents to terrorists.
Link:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/item/19620-globalists-exploit-isis-threat-to-empower-un
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Saturday, November 29, 2014
"This risk of terrorism is minimal in absolute terms. It is minimal in relative terms too as compared with a far, far greater prospect that has already invaded the land and continues to threaten all of us. That risk is the fascist state. This is a genuine fascist threat, and it far surpasses any terrorist threat whatsoever that the state is exploiting for purposes of its own enlargement."
“We Are All Fascists Now”
Michael S. Rozeff
Our leaders, often echoed by warmongers, raise the cry of “appeasement” in order to rally Americans around their latest wars and warring. They raise in the minds of many a risk of terrorist invasions and attacks, from within and without.
The labeling of domestic persons as “terrorists” is becoming more common. The labeling of any domestic act of violence as terrorist is entering the common conversation.
Peaceful protests and demonstrations, anti-government rhetoric, and other activities right down to that of little kids are increasingly being labeled and thought of as terrorist. The government is successfully creating a phantom domestic enemy that enhances its own controlling presence and lends it a measure of respect that it doesn’t deserve. This is the behavior of a fascist state.
This risk of terrorism is minimal in absolute terms. It is minimal in relative terms too as compared with a far, far greater prospect that has already invaded the land and continues to threaten all of us. That risk is the fascist state. This is a genuine fascist threat, and it far surpasses any terrorist threat whatsoever that the state is exploiting for purposes of its own enlargement.
Our government’s entire foreign and domestic militarized response to heightened perceptions of terrorism is a fraud. It is the fraud generated by a fascist state and designed to build up that fascist state to an even greater degree. The Department of Homeland Security is emblematic of this fascist aggrandizement.
The real threat America faces is the fascist threat of its own state and government. The threat is of growing fascist state invasions of freedom, personal dignity, privacy, property, political power, movement, justice, personal belief and speech. The threat is of growing totalitarianism.
America is not as obviously totalitarian as noted examples in the past in other countries, although even in the details there is a growing correspondence and resemblance. It is in the broader picture that the parallels become evident.
How did Germany go fascist? The fascist state attracted converts and supporters in two main ways. One, it offered solutions to problems peculiar to the Germany of that time. Two, it offered appeals that would satisfy deeply-held desires and views peculiar to Germans of that time. Its solutions and appeals were broad enough to put together a coalition of Left and Right.
In his brilliant talk and essay, The Fascist Threat, Lew Rockwell explains how the New Deal similarly entrenched fascism in America. (See also here.) The American problems were not the same as those of the Germany. The different psychology of Americans meant different appeals appeared here. Yet the process was the same. The fascist state, German or American, offers solutions to problems; and it markets appeals that are supposed to satisfy psychological needs.
The American fascist state continues to this day. It is evolving. As problems change and as the psychology of Americans changes, the fascist state changes the details of its solutions and appeals. The main constant is that Washington presents itself as solving problems and satisfying us. There are other broad similarities that define the fascist state as well, and Lew explains these with his customary clarity.
Fascism won’t go away until enough Americans recognize that Washington has no solutions to our problems and offers destructive appeals. Better still, Americans need to recognize that Washington’s policies and appeals are highly destructive. The fascist state is a fraud.
We should not look for exact parallels in the details of American fascism that mirror the details of Italian or German fascism because the problems and appeals vary for different times, countries and peoples. However, the process by which fascism entrenches itself is the same. The fascist state in all cases offers false hopes.
More broadly, the belief that the fascist state solves problems and satisfies other desires of a people is one variant of a broader belief in statism. This is a belief that personal and social problems can be handled effectively by the State. Statism is a belief that the centralized powers of the State can ameliorate or resolve social, economic, psychological and other kinds of problems.
The belief that centralized power is a good thing, even an essential and necessary thing, is the foundation that supports the state and the fascist state, in particular.
There is not widespread recognition that this belief is false.
There is not widespread recognition that this belief is a major cause of problems, not a solution.
There is a recognizable measure of disillusionment with particular policies of the state, but this has not yet been translated into a disbelief in the state itself.
The current White House occupant presented himself as a problem-solver who’d use government to solve problems. This is the statist mindset. He evidently has leftist-socialist-progressive leanings, but like all presidents since FDR who have that bias, he has been perfectly content with working it out and putting it into effect via the fascist state.
Nixon should have said of American politicians “We are all fascists now.”
But as with all politicians being Keynesians now, so with all being fascists now. Repeated applications of Keynesianism and fascism haven’t solved any problems. They’ve made them all worse. They’ve created new problems.
Militarism is a facet of the fascist state. America’s continual wars overseas are related to the fascist state.
These wars and the domestic (and fascist) war on drugs have caused militarized police forces and deadly police violence across America. Riots in Ferguson bear a direct relation to these causes. Fascism has corrupted the justice system.
Fascism has taken over the political system and it’s invaded the social system.
Neither major political party offers a choice that’s different from fascism.
This situation will not change until many more Americans decide that statism is the problem, not the solution.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/we-are-all-fascists-now/#more-521708
Michael S. Rozeff
Our leaders, often echoed by warmongers, raise the cry of “appeasement” in order to rally Americans around their latest wars and warring. They raise in the minds of many a risk of terrorist invasions and attacks, from within and without.
The labeling of domestic persons as “terrorists” is becoming more common. The labeling of any domestic act of violence as terrorist is entering the common conversation.
Peaceful protests and demonstrations, anti-government rhetoric, and other activities right down to that of little kids are increasingly being labeled and thought of as terrorist. The government is successfully creating a phantom domestic enemy that enhances its own controlling presence and lends it a measure of respect that it doesn’t deserve. This is the behavior of a fascist state.
This risk of terrorism is minimal in absolute terms. It is minimal in relative terms too as compared with a far, far greater prospect that has already invaded the land and continues to threaten all of us. That risk is the fascist state. This is a genuine fascist threat, and it far surpasses any terrorist threat whatsoever that the state is exploiting for purposes of its own enlargement.
Our government’s entire foreign and domestic militarized response to heightened perceptions of terrorism is a fraud. It is the fraud generated by a fascist state and designed to build up that fascist state to an even greater degree. The Department of Homeland Security is emblematic of this fascist aggrandizement.
The real threat America faces is the fascist threat of its own state and government. The threat is of growing fascist state invasions of freedom, personal dignity, privacy, property, political power, movement, justice, personal belief and speech. The threat is of growing totalitarianism.
America is not as obviously totalitarian as noted examples in the past in other countries, although even in the details there is a growing correspondence and resemblance. It is in the broader picture that the parallels become evident.
How did Germany go fascist? The fascist state attracted converts and supporters in two main ways. One, it offered solutions to problems peculiar to the Germany of that time. Two, it offered appeals that would satisfy deeply-held desires and views peculiar to Germans of that time. Its solutions and appeals were broad enough to put together a coalition of Left and Right.
In his brilliant talk and essay, The Fascist Threat, Lew Rockwell explains how the New Deal similarly entrenched fascism in America. (See also here.) The American problems were not the same as those of the Germany. The different psychology of Americans meant different appeals appeared here. Yet the process was the same. The fascist state, German or American, offers solutions to problems; and it markets appeals that are supposed to satisfy psychological needs.
The American fascist state continues to this day. It is evolving. As problems change and as the psychology of Americans changes, the fascist state changes the details of its solutions and appeals. The main constant is that Washington presents itself as solving problems and satisfying us. There are other broad similarities that define the fascist state as well, and Lew explains these with his customary clarity.
Fascism won’t go away until enough Americans recognize that Washington has no solutions to our problems and offers destructive appeals. Better still, Americans need to recognize that Washington’s policies and appeals are highly destructive. The fascist state is a fraud.
We should not look for exact parallels in the details of American fascism that mirror the details of Italian or German fascism because the problems and appeals vary for different times, countries and peoples. However, the process by which fascism entrenches itself is the same. The fascist state in all cases offers false hopes.
More broadly, the belief that the fascist state solves problems and satisfies other desires of a people is one variant of a broader belief in statism. This is a belief that personal and social problems can be handled effectively by the State. Statism is a belief that the centralized powers of the State can ameliorate or resolve social, economic, psychological and other kinds of problems.
The belief that centralized power is a good thing, even an essential and necessary thing, is the foundation that supports the state and the fascist state, in particular.
There is not widespread recognition that this belief is false.
There is not widespread recognition that this belief is a major cause of problems, not a solution.
There is a recognizable measure of disillusionment with particular policies of the state, but this has not yet been translated into a disbelief in the state itself.
The current White House occupant presented himself as a problem-solver who’d use government to solve problems. This is the statist mindset. He evidently has leftist-socialist-progressive leanings, but like all presidents since FDR who have that bias, he has been perfectly content with working it out and putting it into effect via the fascist state.
Nixon should have said of American politicians “We are all fascists now.”
But as with all politicians being Keynesians now, so with all being fascists now. Repeated applications of Keynesianism and fascism haven’t solved any problems. They’ve made them all worse. They’ve created new problems.
Militarism is a facet of the fascist state. America’s continual wars overseas are related to the fascist state.
These wars and the domestic (and fascist) war on drugs have caused militarized police forces and deadly police violence across America. Riots in Ferguson bear a direct relation to these causes. Fascism has corrupted the justice system.
Fascism has taken over the political system and it’s invaded the social system.
Neither major political party offers a choice that’s different from fascism.
This situation will not change until many more Americans decide that statism is the problem, not the solution.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/we-are-all-fascists-now/#more-521708
"The history you were taught in school wasn’t exactly a lie, but it was selectively presented. Useful facts were presented to you and less useful facts were excluded."
The Image of the State: How History Becomes Propaganda… and Doesn’t Make Sense
By Paul Rosenberg
As much as I love history now, I found it a confused jumble when I was in school. I was able to memorize the dates and events (for whatever that was worth), but I could find no depth to anything I was taught: it had no meaning, no purpose, no clarity.
I spent decades digging through books and museums before I located the problem, which is this: The history you were taught in school wasn’t exactly a lie, but it was selectively presented. Useful facts were presented to you and less useful facts were excluded.
The big question, of course, is this: Who decided what was “useful”?
In the case of schoolbooks, the answer to the “who decided” question is simple: The group that paid for the books.
As a result, textbooks present the history that makes government look good. The government pays for all those books, after all. And since private schools typically end up using the same books, their students are affected right along with the kids in government schools.
The truth is that history books are written to justify the rulership of their place and time. That’s precisely the wrong way to write history, of course: mandating that the past must justify our current way of life, then fitting facts into that framework.
In other words, nearly all textbooks support a specific political conclusion. And since most authors and editors dare not deviate from the norm, privately produced history books usually toe that same line.
But the important fact here is not that governments do bad things—it’s that we’ve never been exposed to the great lessons and truths of history. Our intellects have been robbed.
I’m doing my part to republish those lessons and truths in my newsletter, but my reach—especially compared to textbooks—is microscopically small.
So for today, I want to do two things:
Explain why governments have to manipulate history.
Give you a few examples of how it happens.
Legitimization Is Job #1 for Government
Governments have no choice but to mold history, and the reason is simple: legitimization is indispensable to them. The populace must believe that supporting government (giving it their wealth and blood) is a higher and more important concern than their own lives. Without this, government would have to survive on fear and pain alone… and that isn’t a winning proposition.
So, convincing people to spend their lives servicing government is job number one for any successful state. This has always been true, whether the state in question was a monarchy, theocracy, democracy, socialist republic, or whatever.
And among the best ways to secure long-term legitimacy is to train the populace to see the current regime as the necessary and obvious end of human development. And that requires history to lead to this glorious present.
For example, the Goths, trying to replace the Romans as the lords of Europe, promoted their own creation myth, saying that their race began at the battle of Troy—the same place the history of Rome was said to have begun. The story was a ridiculous fraud, but they promoted it, and their people believed it just the same. The story associated the Goths with Rome, making them their logical successors.
But the lie of the Goths did even more than to make their rule look like an inevitable development—it allowed their people to elevate themselves in importance, and that has an instinctive draw, no matter how patently false the story may be.
The same self-praise trick continues throughout the world today. Frenchmen are given reasons to think that they (and their state) are superior. Italians are given reasons why they’re special, and so on. We’re repetitively trained in this (mostly at school) with pledges, anthems, and patriotic stories. This goes on in more or less every political entity on the planet. It is necessary to effective rulership.
Truth Is an Also-Ran
Truth, as compared to the urgent need of state legitimacy, is an also-ran when it comes to history textbooks—a minor concern. The great modern example of this is the Armenian Genocide.
This horrifying event was nearly written out of American textbooks, as well as those of many other nations. Truth has been sacrificed in order to keep the bosses of Turkey happy.
Since it was the Turkish hierarchy that ordered and/or allowed the Armenian Genocide, they’d rather that the event vanished from history. And since Turkey sits in such a strategic place, the US and many others are quite willing to squash the truth if it will please the Turkish rulers.
I’ve spent decades in the publishing industry, and I happened to work with one of the editors who was forced to make these alterations. He was at his desk one day when his phone rang. The voice on the other end introduced himself as an official of the US State Department. My friend asked him what he could possibly want. “It’s about the history book you’re editing,” the man said. “We need you to cut back the section on the Armenian genocide.”
My friend was horrified and complained that it was the true history. “Yes,” said the man, “but we need to keep the Turks happy.” My friend’s 2-3 pages on the Armenian Genocide was reduced to 2-3 paragraphs, and it was a triumph that he got that much space.
This story is hardly unique, but most people involved learn to shut up about their stories—they cause too much trouble, and most people don’t want to know anyway.
Institutionalized Legitimization
The modification of history, however, is done indirectly more than directly. The educational institutions of the West are effectively government agencies; their money and approval to operate comes from government—and everyone involved knows it. As a result, they keep their areas of inquiry in line with what makes their employers happy.
College students know very well that voicing the wrong political opinions can take a solid point off their GPA, and it can be horrifying to hear how grad students are treated. Likewise, if the professors begin to step out of line, they are quickly (and unpleasantly) brought into conformity.
For example, nearly all anthropology and archeology programs are deeply focused on “state formation.” The state is at the center of their theories, their investigations, and their conclusions. To write a contrary paper would be career suicide.
I suspect that government officials rather seldom need to call universities the way they called my friend at a private publishing house. At this point, there really isn’t any need. The legitimization of government is de rigueur throughout the entire Western academy, and most of the Eastern academy with it. It’s just the way things are done these days.
And…
And that’s why history never really made sense. Making sense wasn’t a primary concern.
It wasn’t that you were stupid.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/11/paul-rosenberg/to-fool-the-people-into-obedience/
By Paul Rosenberg
As much as I love history now, I found it a confused jumble when I was in school. I was able to memorize the dates and events (for whatever that was worth), but I could find no depth to anything I was taught: it had no meaning, no purpose, no clarity.
I spent decades digging through books and museums before I located the problem, which is this: The history you were taught in school wasn’t exactly a lie, but it was selectively presented. Useful facts were presented to you and less useful facts were excluded.
The big question, of course, is this: Who decided what was “useful”?
In the case of schoolbooks, the answer to the “who decided” question is simple: The group that paid for the books.
As a result, textbooks present the history that makes government look good. The government pays for all those books, after all. And since private schools typically end up using the same books, their students are affected right along with the kids in government schools.
The truth is that history books are written to justify the rulership of their place and time. That’s precisely the wrong way to write history, of course: mandating that the past must justify our current way of life, then fitting facts into that framework.
In other words, nearly all textbooks support a specific political conclusion. And since most authors and editors dare not deviate from the norm, privately produced history books usually toe that same line.
But the important fact here is not that governments do bad things—it’s that we’ve never been exposed to the great lessons and truths of history. Our intellects have been robbed.
I’m doing my part to republish those lessons and truths in my newsletter, but my reach—especially compared to textbooks—is microscopically small.
So for today, I want to do two things:
Explain why governments have to manipulate history.
Give you a few examples of how it happens.
Legitimization Is Job #1 for Government
Governments have no choice but to mold history, and the reason is simple: legitimization is indispensable to them. The populace must believe that supporting government (giving it their wealth and blood) is a higher and more important concern than their own lives. Without this, government would have to survive on fear and pain alone… and that isn’t a winning proposition.
So, convincing people to spend their lives servicing government is job number one for any successful state. This has always been true, whether the state in question was a monarchy, theocracy, democracy, socialist republic, or whatever.
And among the best ways to secure long-term legitimacy is to train the populace to see the current regime as the necessary and obvious end of human development. And that requires history to lead to this glorious present.
For example, the Goths, trying to replace the Romans as the lords of Europe, promoted their own creation myth, saying that their race began at the battle of Troy—the same place the history of Rome was said to have begun. The story was a ridiculous fraud, but they promoted it, and their people believed it just the same. The story associated the Goths with Rome, making them their logical successors.
But the lie of the Goths did even more than to make their rule look like an inevitable development—it allowed their people to elevate themselves in importance, and that has an instinctive draw, no matter how patently false the story may be.
The same self-praise trick continues throughout the world today. Frenchmen are given reasons to think that they (and their state) are superior. Italians are given reasons why they’re special, and so on. We’re repetitively trained in this (mostly at school) with pledges, anthems, and patriotic stories. This goes on in more or less every political entity on the planet. It is necessary to effective rulership.
Truth Is an Also-Ran
Truth, as compared to the urgent need of state legitimacy, is an also-ran when it comes to history textbooks—a minor concern. The great modern example of this is the Armenian Genocide.
This horrifying event was nearly written out of American textbooks, as well as those of many other nations. Truth has been sacrificed in order to keep the bosses of Turkey happy.
Since it was the Turkish hierarchy that ordered and/or allowed the Armenian Genocide, they’d rather that the event vanished from history. And since Turkey sits in such a strategic place, the US and many others are quite willing to squash the truth if it will please the Turkish rulers.
I’ve spent decades in the publishing industry, and I happened to work with one of the editors who was forced to make these alterations. He was at his desk one day when his phone rang. The voice on the other end introduced himself as an official of the US State Department. My friend asked him what he could possibly want. “It’s about the history book you’re editing,” the man said. “We need you to cut back the section on the Armenian genocide.”
My friend was horrified and complained that it was the true history. “Yes,” said the man, “but we need to keep the Turks happy.” My friend’s 2-3 pages on the Armenian Genocide was reduced to 2-3 paragraphs, and it was a triumph that he got that much space.
This story is hardly unique, but most people involved learn to shut up about their stories—they cause too much trouble, and most people don’t want to know anyway.
Institutionalized Legitimization
The modification of history, however, is done indirectly more than directly. The educational institutions of the West are effectively government agencies; their money and approval to operate comes from government—and everyone involved knows it. As a result, they keep their areas of inquiry in line with what makes their employers happy.
College students know very well that voicing the wrong political opinions can take a solid point off their GPA, and it can be horrifying to hear how grad students are treated. Likewise, if the professors begin to step out of line, they are quickly (and unpleasantly) brought into conformity.
For example, nearly all anthropology and archeology programs are deeply focused on “state formation.” The state is at the center of their theories, their investigations, and their conclusions. To write a contrary paper would be career suicide.
I suspect that government officials rather seldom need to call universities the way they called my friend at a private publishing house. At this point, there really isn’t any need. The legitimization of government is de rigueur throughout the entire Western academy, and most of the Eastern academy with it. It’s just the way things are done these days.
And…
And that’s why history never really made sense. Making sense wasn’t a primary concern.
It wasn’t that you were stupid.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/11/paul-rosenberg/to-fool-the-people-into-obedience/
Friday, November 28, 2014
"So how could this Thanksgiving dinner be 100 to 200 times cheaper in 1909, just one century ago? The answer is because the Federal Reserve banking cartel has stolen almost 99% of America's wealth over the last century."
Thanksgiving dinner in 1909 for just 50 cents reveals how much of America's wealth has been stolen by the Federal Reserve
by Mike Adams
A Thanksgiving dinner at the Hotel Gettysburg in 1909 offered a lush array of gourmet food for just 50 cents. (h/t to The Burning Platform)
The menu, shown below, offered diners fresh lobster salad, broiled lake trout, beechnut ham, roast ribs of prime beef, young Vermont turkey with cranberry sauce, oyster patties, Gettysburg pudding, vanilla cream pie, apple pie, chocolate cake, a variety of cheeses, appetizers and beverages... all for just 50 cents!
Even better, the entire menu was 100% organic and non-GMO because chemical pesticides and GMOs didn't exist in 1909.
Today, a similar Thanksgiving buffet is impossible to find because everything is grown with toxic chemicals and GMOs. But even if you could find such a Thanksgiving buffet, it would easily cost $50 - $100.
So how could this Thanksgiving dinner be 100 to 200 times cheaper in 1909, just one century ago? The answer is because the Federal Reserve banking cartel has stolen almost 99% of America's wealth over the last century.
By creating trillions of dollar in fiat (counterfeit) currency, the Fed has flooded the global marketplace with new dollars that erode the value of all dollars in circulation. Over the last hundred years, this has caused a quiet, insidious theft of almost 99% of the value of money... a fact that's readily apparent in the never-ending price inflation of food. Inflation is NOT a natural phenomenon. If the Fed weren't stealing your wealth, food prices would be the same in 2014 as 1909.
Here's what 50 cents bought you in 1909. Today that same 50 cents doesn't even buy you a crappy taco at Taco Bell:
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/047807_Thanksgiving_dinner_food_inflation_Federal_Reserve.html#ixzz3KNgp9PzV
by Mike Adams
A Thanksgiving dinner at the Hotel Gettysburg in 1909 offered a lush array of gourmet food for just 50 cents. (h/t to The Burning Platform)
The menu, shown below, offered diners fresh lobster salad, broiled lake trout, beechnut ham, roast ribs of prime beef, young Vermont turkey with cranberry sauce, oyster patties, Gettysburg pudding, vanilla cream pie, apple pie, chocolate cake, a variety of cheeses, appetizers and beverages... all for just 50 cents!
Even better, the entire menu was 100% organic and non-GMO because chemical pesticides and GMOs didn't exist in 1909.
Today, a similar Thanksgiving buffet is impossible to find because everything is grown with toxic chemicals and GMOs. But even if you could find such a Thanksgiving buffet, it would easily cost $50 - $100.
So how could this Thanksgiving dinner be 100 to 200 times cheaper in 1909, just one century ago? The answer is because the Federal Reserve banking cartel has stolen almost 99% of America's wealth over the last century.
By creating trillions of dollar in fiat (counterfeit) currency, the Fed has flooded the global marketplace with new dollars that erode the value of all dollars in circulation. Over the last hundred years, this has caused a quiet, insidious theft of almost 99% of the value of money... a fact that's readily apparent in the never-ending price inflation of food. Inflation is NOT a natural phenomenon. If the Fed weren't stealing your wealth, food prices would be the same in 2014 as 1909.
Here's what 50 cents bought you in 1909. Today that same 50 cents doesn't even buy you a crappy taco at Taco Bell:
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/047807_Thanksgiving_dinner_food_inflation_Federal_Reserve.html#ixzz3KNgp9PzV
Bilderberg...
Global Power Project: Meet the Bilderberg Group, High Priests of Globalization
By Andrew Gavin Marshall
This is the first instalment in a series examining the activities and individuals behind the Bilderberg Group.
Meet the Bilderberg Group – an annual gathering of 130 of the Western world’s top financial, corporate, political, academic, media, military and policy elites, held every year since 1954.
They meet behind closed doors, at five-star hotels, where participants are encouraged to speak frankly – meaning “off the record” and away from the prying eyes and piercing ears of the public. Some journalists and media executives are invited, but they don’t actually cover the meetings: they simply attend them as guests.
The famous exclusivity and secrecy of the Bilderberg Group, we are told, is designed to encourage frank and open discussions among some of the most influential people in North America and Western Europe. But unlike its portrayal as a place where powerful people simply “talk shop,” critics for years have considered the meetings a form of secret world government, and a shadowy cabal.
The truth, as it often is, rests somewhere between these extremes.
Bilderberg is a meeting of the movers and shakers, the managers and policy-makers, the plutocrats, technocrats, financiers and imperialists of the North Atlantic powers. Its original purpose was to provide a forum where Western European elites could meet in private with American officials to encourage the strengthening of the “Atlantic Alliance.” The forum has provided the geopolitical and economic framework for behind-the-scenes collaboration and cooperation between the major NATO powers.
Founding members of the group in 1954 included Joseph Retinger, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, and David Rockefeller of the United States. Named after the Hotel de Bilderberg in the Netherlands, where the first conference took place, attendees decided to hold a conference annually with locations rotating between Europe and North America. In its early years, much of the funding for the group came from the CIA and American philanthropic foundations such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
These institutions, along with the CIA, other major foundations and the Bilderberg conference itself, were pivotal in the early process of post-WWII European integration, laying the groundwork for what decades later would become the European Union.
In the 1955 meeting of the Bilderberg Group, the topic of “European Unity” was a major discussion point, with attendees articulating the need to eventually create a “common currency” and “a central political authority” in Europe. One American participant reportedly encouraged the European attendees “to be practical and work fast.” Within two years, the Treaty of Rome was signed, establishing the European Economic Community (EEC).
A New York Times article from 1957 noted that the first Bilderberg meeting to take place on U.S. soil represented “an unpublicized backdoor approach to better relations among nations” of NATO, and noted that U.S. State Department officials were “meeting in secret for three days for an unofficial but frank exchange of views.” Among the American participants were former Ambassador to the Soviet Union (and architect of America’s “containment” policy) George F. Kennan; World Bank President Eugene R. Black, and Gabriel Hauge, an economic adviser to President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The issue of European integration remained important to attendees at Bilderberg, as a Reuters article noted in 1965, when a communiqué was issued confirming that the meeting’s participants “believed that only a united Europe could join the United States in effective direction of the Atlantic alliance.”
How It Works and Who Is Involved
Bilderberg is run by its Steering Committee of roughly 40 members whose responsibility is to organize the annual meetings and invite guests from their respective countries, bringing the average yearly attendance to roughly 130 people.
Participants and Steering Committee members come from the largest banks, corporations and think tanks; they run media empires, military and intelligence agencies. They include European royalty and representatives from some of the world’s most prominent financial and corporate dynasties, including the Rockefellers of the U.S., the Rothschilds of Europe, the Agnellis of Italy, the Wallenbergs of Sweden, the Desmarais of Canada, and the Koc family of Turkey, among others.
These elites meet together with top foreign and economic policy makers from North American and European nations, as well as up-and-coming politicians being groomed for high office and the heads of major international and regional organizations including NATO, the European Union, IMF, World Bank, WTO and some of the world’s most powerful central banks.
Still, its members and leadership contend that there is nothing the public needs to worry about when all these people get together in secret meetings to discuss the major geopolitical and economic issues of the day. Etienne Davignon, one of the chief architects of European integration in recent decades, has been a long-time Bilderberg member and was, until recently, the chairman of the steering committee. In 2005, Davignon was quoted by the Financial Times saying that the meeting is “not a capitalist plot to run the world… If we really believed we were running the world, we would immediately resign in complete despair.” In 2009, Davignon acknowledged that the formation of the euro was debated and promoted in annual Bilderberg meetings.
A decade ago, The New York Times wrote that the guest list of Bilderberg meetings “would more or less overlap with the ‘Wanted’ posters of anti-globalization protesters,” noting that a former participant, Will Hutton, once referred to the Bilderberg members and participants as the “high priests of globalization.”
More recently, a 2013 article from the Daily Telegraph asserted that while many members contend the group “is still merely a debating society,” interviews with past guests and steering committee members referred to the conference as among “the most important events they ever went to,” where “the discussions that took place decisively shaped modern Europe.”
Referring to the group as “a club for life’s winners,” the article noted that former steering committee member Denis Healey said he debated the Vietnam War with Henry Kissinger, and that the group brought “the architects of the European integration… together for open-ended discussions with bankers and economists about how the European monetary system might work.” Healey was quoted saying: “The great advantage of the Bilderberg thing was they did not have to reach agreement. You had time to discuss things with people who influence events who normally you would not meet at all… People could talk very freely, much more freely than they would at home.”
Other former participants noted that it was at Bilderberg meetings where they first heard of the intentions of the West Germans to unify Germany, and where British policymakers convinced other nations in attendance to apply sanctions on Argentina during the Falklands War. As Denis Healey explained: “I found it the most useful of all the meetings I attended regularly. The Bilderberg was the best because the level of the people attending regularly was so much higher… Bilderberg was the most useful of the lot.”
Indeed, in a June 1974 Argus-Press article, the then-Chairman of Bilderberg, and one of its founding members, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, explained that “the purpose of the conference… is that eminent persons in every field get the opportunity to speak freely without being hindered by the knowledge that their words and ideas will be analyzed, commented upon and eventually criticized in the press.”
Gerald Ford, who attended two Bilderberg meetings long before becoming vice president and president of the United States, was quoted in 1965 saying: “You don’t really belong to the organization: one gets an invitation from the prince,” referring to Bernhard.
It should be noted, however, that there was one year in which the annual meeting was cancelled – 1976 – due to revelations of corruption involving bribes between the Lockheed military contractor and Prince Bernhard, leading to his resignation as chairman of the group.
In 2005, the BBC quoted then-chairman Etienne Davignon as saying: “I don’t think (we are) a global ruling class because I don’t think a global ruling class exists. I simply think it’s people who have influence interested to speak to other people who have influence… Bilderberg does not try to reach conclusions – it does not try to say ‘what we should do’… Business influences society and politics influence society – that’s purely common sense. It’s not that business contests the right of democratically-elected leaders to lead.”
Will Hutton, who attended a 1997 meeting, explained: “On every issue that might influence your business you will hear first-hand the people who are actually making those decisions and you will play a part in helping them to make those decisions and formulating the common sense.”
Former NATO Secretary-General and Bilderberg participant, Willy Claes, said in a 2010 interview with a Belgian radio program, “Well look, it’s not all that secret really. There is an agenda for the day with the most pressing problems the world is confronted with… that is discussed… there is never a vote, no resolutions are being put to paper.” However, he added, “naturally… the rapporteur always tries to draw up a synthesis, and everyone is assumed to make use of these conclusions in the circles where he has influence.”
An anonymous former participant in Bilderberg meetings was quoted by the Financial Times in 2013 saying: “The reason it’s perceived as sinister is because it brings together big international institutions – the IMF, the World Bank and the European Union – with heads of state, royalty and corporate leaders, and they don’t produce a statement at the end of it.”
In 2001, founding member Denis Healey told the Guardian in an interview, “We aren’t secret… We’re private.” Speaking of the meeting’s critics who contend that the member of the conference aim to achieve a type of “global government,” Healey told journalist Jon Ronson: “To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn’t go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing.”
The key issue, however, is that the world which Bilderberg is helping to shape and support is one in which financiers and industrialists are the key beneficiaries – one in which democratically-elected politicians engage with their real constituents behind closed doors, in “private” conversations that have profound and real effects upon policy and thus upon entire populations who are given no such access to public officials.
Elected leaders and policy-makers don’t meet in secret with the world’s major financiers and industrialists so they can discuss the best ways to serve the interests of the public, or populations, of their respective nations. They meet to serve their own collective and individual interests. It is not a conspiracy: it is a forum in which leaders from the upper echelons of Western power structures aim to establish consensus on priorities and policies for major political and economic issues.
Bilderberg contributes to directly undermining democracy, while further institutionalizing technocracy – the “rule by experts” – at the national and international level. This series of the Global Power Project aims to examine and further bring to light the activities and individuals behind the Bilderberg Group. Stay tuned for the second installment next week.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/11/no_author/meet-the-bilderberg-group/
By Andrew Gavin Marshall
This is the first instalment in a series examining the activities and individuals behind the Bilderberg Group.
Meet the Bilderberg Group – an annual gathering of 130 of the Western world’s top financial, corporate, political, academic, media, military and policy elites, held every year since 1954.
They meet behind closed doors, at five-star hotels, where participants are encouraged to speak frankly – meaning “off the record” and away from the prying eyes and piercing ears of the public. Some journalists and media executives are invited, but they don’t actually cover the meetings: they simply attend them as guests.
The famous exclusivity and secrecy of the Bilderberg Group, we are told, is designed to encourage frank and open discussions among some of the most influential people in North America and Western Europe. But unlike its portrayal as a place where powerful people simply “talk shop,” critics for years have considered the meetings a form of secret world government, and a shadowy cabal.
The truth, as it often is, rests somewhere between these extremes.
Bilderberg is a meeting of the movers and shakers, the managers and policy-makers, the plutocrats, technocrats, financiers and imperialists of the North Atlantic powers. Its original purpose was to provide a forum where Western European elites could meet in private with American officials to encourage the strengthening of the “Atlantic Alliance.” The forum has provided the geopolitical and economic framework for behind-the-scenes collaboration and cooperation between the major NATO powers.
Founding members of the group in 1954 included Joseph Retinger, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, and David Rockefeller of the United States. Named after the Hotel de Bilderberg in the Netherlands, where the first conference took place, attendees decided to hold a conference annually with locations rotating between Europe and North America. In its early years, much of the funding for the group came from the CIA and American philanthropic foundations such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
These institutions, along with the CIA, other major foundations and the Bilderberg conference itself, were pivotal in the early process of post-WWII European integration, laying the groundwork for what decades later would become the European Union.
In the 1955 meeting of the Bilderberg Group, the topic of “European Unity” was a major discussion point, with attendees articulating the need to eventually create a “common currency” and “a central political authority” in Europe. One American participant reportedly encouraged the European attendees “to be practical and work fast.” Within two years, the Treaty of Rome was signed, establishing the European Economic Community (EEC).
A New York Times article from 1957 noted that the first Bilderberg meeting to take place on U.S. soil represented “an unpublicized backdoor approach to better relations among nations” of NATO, and noted that U.S. State Department officials were “meeting in secret for three days for an unofficial but frank exchange of views.” Among the American participants were former Ambassador to the Soviet Union (and architect of America’s “containment” policy) George F. Kennan; World Bank President Eugene R. Black, and Gabriel Hauge, an economic adviser to President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The issue of European integration remained important to attendees at Bilderberg, as a Reuters article noted in 1965, when a communiqué was issued confirming that the meeting’s participants “believed that only a united Europe could join the United States in effective direction of the Atlantic alliance.”
How It Works and Who Is Involved
Bilderberg is run by its Steering Committee of roughly 40 members whose responsibility is to organize the annual meetings and invite guests from their respective countries, bringing the average yearly attendance to roughly 130 people.
Participants and Steering Committee members come from the largest banks, corporations and think tanks; they run media empires, military and intelligence agencies. They include European royalty and representatives from some of the world’s most prominent financial and corporate dynasties, including the Rockefellers of the U.S., the Rothschilds of Europe, the Agnellis of Italy, the Wallenbergs of Sweden, the Desmarais of Canada, and the Koc family of Turkey, among others.
These elites meet together with top foreign and economic policy makers from North American and European nations, as well as up-and-coming politicians being groomed for high office and the heads of major international and regional organizations including NATO, the European Union, IMF, World Bank, WTO and some of the world’s most powerful central banks.
Still, its members and leadership contend that there is nothing the public needs to worry about when all these people get together in secret meetings to discuss the major geopolitical and economic issues of the day. Etienne Davignon, one of the chief architects of European integration in recent decades, has been a long-time Bilderberg member and was, until recently, the chairman of the steering committee. In 2005, Davignon was quoted by the Financial Times saying that the meeting is “not a capitalist plot to run the world… If we really believed we were running the world, we would immediately resign in complete despair.” In 2009, Davignon acknowledged that the formation of the euro was debated and promoted in annual Bilderberg meetings.
A decade ago, The New York Times wrote that the guest list of Bilderberg meetings “would more or less overlap with the ‘Wanted’ posters of anti-globalization protesters,” noting that a former participant, Will Hutton, once referred to the Bilderberg members and participants as the “high priests of globalization.”
More recently, a 2013 article from the Daily Telegraph asserted that while many members contend the group “is still merely a debating society,” interviews with past guests and steering committee members referred to the conference as among “the most important events they ever went to,” where “the discussions that took place decisively shaped modern Europe.”
Referring to the group as “a club for life’s winners,” the article noted that former steering committee member Denis Healey said he debated the Vietnam War with Henry Kissinger, and that the group brought “the architects of the European integration… together for open-ended discussions with bankers and economists about how the European monetary system might work.” Healey was quoted saying: “The great advantage of the Bilderberg thing was they did not have to reach agreement. You had time to discuss things with people who influence events who normally you would not meet at all… People could talk very freely, much more freely than they would at home.”
Other former participants noted that it was at Bilderberg meetings where they first heard of the intentions of the West Germans to unify Germany, and where British policymakers convinced other nations in attendance to apply sanctions on Argentina during the Falklands War. As Denis Healey explained: “I found it the most useful of all the meetings I attended regularly. The Bilderberg was the best because the level of the people attending regularly was so much higher… Bilderberg was the most useful of the lot.”
Indeed, in a June 1974 Argus-Press article, the then-Chairman of Bilderberg, and one of its founding members, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, explained that “the purpose of the conference… is that eminent persons in every field get the opportunity to speak freely without being hindered by the knowledge that their words and ideas will be analyzed, commented upon and eventually criticized in the press.”
Gerald Ford, who attended two Bilderberg meetings long before becoming vice president and president of the United States, was quoted in 1965 saying: “You don’t really belong to the organization: one gets an invitation from the prince,” referring to Bernhard.
It should be noted, however, that there was one year in which the annual meeting was cancelled – 1976 – due to revelations of corruption involving bribes between the Lockheed military contractor and Prince Bernhard, leading to his resignation as chairman of the group.
In 2005, the BBC quoted then-chairman Etienne Davignon as saying: “I don’t think (we are) a global ruling class because I don’t think a global ruling class exists. I simply think it’s people who have influence interested to speak to other people who have influence… Bilderberg does not try to reach conclusions – it does not try to say ‘what we should do’… Business influences society and politics influence society – that’s purely common sense. It’s not that business contests the right of democratically-elected leaders to lead.”
Will Hutton, who attended a 1997 meeting, explained: “On every issue that might influence your business you will hear first-hand the people who are actually making those decisions and you will play a part in helping them to make those decisions and formulating the common sense.”
Former NATO Secretary-General and Bilderberg participant, Willy Claes, said in a 2010 interview with a Belgian radio program, “Well look, it’s not all that secret really. There is an agenda for the day with the most pressing problems the world is confronted with… that is discussed… there is never a vote, no resolutions are being put to paper.” However, he added, “naturally… the rapporteur always tries to draw up a synthesis, and everyone is assumed to make use of these conclusions in the circles where he has influence.”
An anonymous former participant in Bilderberg meetings was quoted by the Financial Times in 2013 saying: “The reason it’s perceived as sinister is because it brings together big international institutions – the IMF, the World Bank and the European Union – with heads of state, royalty and corporate leaders, and they don’t produce a statement at the end of it.”
In 2001, founding member Denis Healey told the Guardian in an interview, “We aren’t secret… We’re private.” Speaking of the meeting’s critics who contend that the member of the conference aim to achieve a type of “global government,” Healey told journalist Jon Ronson: “To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn’t go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing.”
The key issue, however, is that the world which Bilderberg is helping to shape and support is one in which financiers and industrialists are the key beneficiaries – one in which democratically-elected politicians engage with their real constituents behind closed doors, in “private” conversations that have profound and real effects upon policy and thus upon entire populations who are given no such access to public officials.
Elected leaders and policy-makers don’t meet in secret with the world’s major financiers and industrialists so they can discuss the best ways to serve the interests of the public, or populations, of their respective nations. They meet to serve their own collective and individual interests. It is not a conspiracy: it is a forum in which leaders from the upper echelons of Western power structures aim to establish consensus on priorities and policies for major political and economic issues.
Bilderberg contributes to directly undermining democracy, while further institutionalizing technocracy – the “rule by experts” – at the national and international level. This series of the Global Power Project aims to examine and further bring to light the activities and individuals behind the Bilderberg Group. Stay tuned for the second installment next week.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/11/no_author/meet-the-bilderberg-group/
Death by cop...
“Justifiable Homicides” by Police at Record High: Notes on Police Violence in America
By Tom Hall
FBI data released over the past month reveals that so-called “justifiable homicides” reached a record high last year, while the number of officers killed in the line of duty fell to its lowest level in decades.
According to the data, which appeared in a Monday article on theWashington Post web site, 461 American civilians were killed by on-the-job police officers in 2013, while 27 police officers were killed by civilians.
The article notes the correlation between the record killings and the militarization of American police over the same period, “fueled by a glut of surplus military equipment heading home from Iraq and Afghanistan.” The FBI’s “justifiable homicide” figures increase steadily around 1998, the year after the start of the US Government’s Defense Logistics Agency’s 1033 program, which parcels out surplus military equipment to state and local police.
The FBI figures for “justifiable homicide,” defined by the agency as “the killing of a felon by a law enforcement officer in the line of duty,” is widely acknowledged to be an undercount, according to thePost, because the methodology is not uniform from state to state. There are no comprehensive nationwide statistics on police brutality, despite the government being required to do so by the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act passed in 1994. However, a Facebook page titled “Killed by Police,” which posts links to news stories on police killings, has counted more than 1,450 killings by police officers since its launch on May 1, 2013.
Los Angeles police kill two more over replica weapon
Sheriff’s deputies in Los Angeles gunned down Eduardo Bermundez, 26, and Ricardo Avelar-Lara, 57, early in the morning of Sunday, November 16, after Bermundez was alleged to have threatened someone with a handgun that later turned out to be a replica.
This was at least the fourth police murder this year involving a person holding a toy or replica weapon. It follows the deaths of John Crawford III for carrying a pellet gun and Darrien Hunt for carrying a replica samurai sword. Only a week ago, police killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice on a Cleveland playground for carrying a toy pistol.
An eyewitness claimed that at around 2:20 AM Bermundez and Avelar-Lara pulled up alongside his car in an East Los Angeles parking lot and pointed the “weapon,” a replica .45 caliber handgun, at him. The eyewitness tailed their car while calling 911, eventually flagging down a sheriff’s patrol vehicle.
Deputies pulled the car over in a nearby apartment complex, where according to the police report Bermundez “started to pull a handgun out of his pants and point it in the direction of the deputies.” Police immediately opened fire, killing both Bermundez and Avelar-Lara, who was standing behind him. They were pronounced dead at the scene one minute later at 2:40 AM, twenty minutes from the first alleged incident.
Bermundez had been at his 3 year-old nephew’s birthday party the previous afternoon not far from where he was murdered, according to relatives. “It’s just hard to imagine that from one day to another he’s gone,” Bermundez’s cousin told the local ABC affiliate. “He was always a happy guy.”
NYPD beating of subway turnstile jumper captured on video
A New York police officer was caught on video Thursday night beating a black youth in the head with his baton for attempting to enter a Brooklyn subway station without paying the $2.50 fare.
The video shows the officer, who is also black, striking 20-year-old Donovan Lawson twice, first in the leg and then on the crown of his head, causing extensive bleeding. Striking a suspect in the head with a baton is against official NYPD policy. Lawson then stumbles through the station with the officer on his back before finally being pinned against a wall and handcuffed by four officers while his horrified girlfriend looks on.
In the video Lawson’s forehead bleeds so profusely that his girlfriend is drenched in his blood by the time the officers are able to pull her away. The eyewitness who shot the video on his cell phone said that before the video began Lawson had been pepper-sprayed, which was confirmed by the police.
Lawson, who had no criminal record prior to his arrest last week, was charged with fare beating, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and disrupting government administration. He later received treatment for cuts to his head at Woodhull Hospital. The officer was taken to Wyckoff Heights Hospital, where he was treated for injuries to his arm and hand.
New Jersey cops kill schizophrenic man during welfare check
Police in Phllipsburg, New Jersey killed Thomas Read, a 36-year old schizophrenic man, after his mother asked them to monitor him during an episode. Read was wielding a knife and “refused to comply with police orders,” according to the police.
Read had run out of his medication due to problems with his medical insurance, according to his mother Anne Read. According to family friend Joel Andreano, who told the Express-Timesnewspaper, “He was talking about flaming swords and stuff,” when he called him on Thursday. “He obviously was delusional. I called [his mother back] back and told her, ‘No, I don’t think he’s doing good.’ She should call the police.”
Police checked up on Read the following Friday without incident, according to Andreano, who toldThe Express-Times that Read seemed “calm, happy” when he met with him later that day.
The following Monday, police conducted another welfare check at Reid’s apartment, after his neighbor expressed concerns about threatening letters and a knife stuck to Reid’s front door, according to Adreano. Police found Read in his house when they arrived, and talked to him through his window, according to footage shown to The Express-Times. Read hurled an “unknown object” through an opening in the window at police, who responded by breaking the window and unsuccessfully attempting to climb through to get at Read. Police entered the house through a back entrance, according to residents, who reported that they heard “four or five” gunshots.
Andreano expressed his dismay at the police’s handling of the situation. “He needed help … He needed to get to the hospital because he didn’t have his medicine.”
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/11/no_author/cop-killing/
By Tom Hall
FBI data released over the past month reveals that so-called “justifiable homicides” reached a record high last year, while the number of officers killed in the line of duty fell to its lowest level in decades.
According to the data, which appeared in a Monday article on theWashington Post web site, 461 American civilians were killed by on-the-job police officers in 2013, while 27 police officers were killed by civilians.
The article notes the correlation between the record killings and the militarization of American police over the same period, “fueled by a glut of surplus military equipment heading home from Iraq and Afghanistan.” The FBI’s “justifiable homicide” figures increase steadily around 1998, the year after the start of the US Government’s Defense Logistics Agency’s 1033 program, which parcels out surplus military equipment to state and local police.
The FBI figures for “justifiable homicide,” defined by the agency as “the killing of a felon by a law enforcement officer in the line of duty,” is widely acknowledged to be an undercount, according to thePost, because the methodology is not uniform from state to state. There are no comprehensive nationwide statistics on police brutality, despite the government being required to do so by the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act passed in 1994. However, a Facebook page titled “Killed by Police,” which posts links to news stories on police killings, has counted more than 1,450 killings by police officers since its launch on May 1, 2013.
Los Angeles police kill two more over replica weapon
Sheriff’s deputies in Los Angeles gunned down Eduardo Bermundez, 26, and Ricardo Avelar-Lara, 57, early in the morning of Sunday, November 16, after Bermundez was alleged to have threatened someone with a handgun that later turned out to be a replica.
This was at least the fourth police murder this year involving a person holding a toy or replica weapon. It follows the deaths of John Crawford III for carrying a pellet gun and Darrien Hunt for carrying a replica samurai sword. Only a week ago, police killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice on a Cleveland playground for carrying a toy pistol.
An eyewitness claimed that at around 2:20 AM Bermundez and Avelar-Lara pulled up alongside his car in an East Los Angeles parking lot and pointed the “weapon,” a replica .45 caliber handgun, at him. The eyewitness tailed their car while calling 911, eventually flagging down a sheriff’s patrol vehicle.
Deputies pulled the car over in a nearby apartment complex, where according to the police report Bermundez “started to pull a handgun out of his pants and point it in the direction of the deputies.” Police immediately opened fire, killing both Bermundez and Avelar-Lara, who was standing behind him. They were pronounced dead at the scene one minute later at 2:40 AM, twenty minutes from the first alleged incident.
Bermundez had been at his 3 year-old nephew’s birthday party the previous afternoon not far from where he was murdered, according to relatives. “It’s just hard to imagine that from one day to another he’s gone,” Bermundez’s cousin told the local ABC affiliate. “He was always a happy guy.”
NYPD beating of subway turnstile jumper captured on video
A New York police officer was caught on video Thursday night beating a black youth in the head with his baton for attempting to enter a Brooklyn subway station without paying the $2.50 fare.
The video shows the officer, who is also black, striking 20-year-old Donovan Lawson twice, first in the leg and then on the crown of his head, causing extensive bleeding. Striking a suspect in the head with a baton is against official NYPD policy. Lawson then stumbles through the station with the officer on his back before finally being pinned against a wall and handcuffed by four officers while his horrified girlfriend looks on.
In the video Lawson’s forehead bleeds so profusely that his girlfriend is drenched in his blood by the time the officers are able to pull her away. The eyewitness who shot the video on his cell phone said that before the video began Lawson had been pepper-sprayed, which was confirmed by the police.
Lawson, who had no criminal record prior to his arrest last week, was charged with fare beating, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and disrupting government administration. He later received treatment for cuts to his head at Woodhull Hospital. The officer was taken to Wyckoff Heights Hospital, where he was treated for injuries to his arm and hand.
New Jersey cops kill schizophrenic man during welfare check
Police in Phllipsburg, New Jersey killed Thomas Read, a 36-year old schizophrenic man, after his mother asked them to monitor him during an episode. Read was wielding a knife and “refused to comply with police orders,” according to the police.
Read had run out of his medication due to problems with his medical insurance, according to his mother Anne Read. According to family friend Joel Andreano, who told the Express-Timesnewspaper, “He was talking about flaming swords and stuff,” when he called him on Thursday. “He obviously was delusional. I called [his mother back] back and told her, ‘No, I don’t think he’s doing good.’ She should call the police.”
Police checked up on Read the following Friday without incident, according to Andreano, who toldThe Express-Times that Read seemed “calm, happy” when he met with him later that day.
The following Monday, police conducted another welfare check at Reid’s apartment, after his neighbor expressed concerns about threatening letters and a knife stuck to Reid’s front door, according to Adreano. Police found Read in his house when they arrived, and talked to him through his window, according to footage shown to The Express-Times. Read hurled an “unknown object” through an opening in the window at police, who responded by breaking the window and unsuccessfully attempting to climb through to get at Read. Police entered the house through a back entrance, according to residents, who reported that they heard “four or five” gunshots.
Andreano expressed his dismay at the police’s handling of the situation. “He needed help … He needed to get to the hospital because he didn’t have his medicine.”
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/11/no_author/cop-killing/
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Good idea...
More schools look to armed teachers as first line of defense against shooters
by Sam Rolley
Officials at an Ohio school district are considering a proposal that would place guns in strategic locations on campuses to give teachers and faculty a potential advantage in the event on an active shooter scenario.
Riverside Local School board members discussed the issue of guns on campus for protection last week and will revisit proposals in mid-December, according to a report in the Dayton Daily News.
One such proposal would involve placing firearms in hidden lockboxes throughout the school and training willing teachers and staff to be part of an armed response team. Only those trained would be able to access the firearms.
The plan would follow the lead of Ohio’s Sidney City School District, which recently added hidden firearms and a collection of bulletproof vests to its safety provisions.
According to reports, 37 teachers in the district have access to the guns.
“We have some families that have indicated to us that they have open enrolled their children in Sidney City Schools because of the school security measures we have taken,” that district’s superintendent, John Scheu, told WDTN over the summer.
Sidney schools also feature signs notifying visitors that the campus is protected by an armed response team.
Riverside superintendent Scott Mann told local reporters that his district is investigating a similar plan because he believes the threat of an immediate armed response could be enough to deter would-be attackers.
“If people know you are protected and that can help us a little bit more, I’m all for it,” Mann said. “Just to reiterate — it’s going to be a community decision.”
Riverside board members have also discussed allowing teachers to carry firearms on their person, but Mann said he doesn’t think it’s a good idea.
“I do not want guns on teachers in the classroom,” Mann said. “I think that’s one of the worst safety plans you can have.”
The Ohio school districts aren’t alone in looking at ways to protect students by arming teachers.
In January, officials at the Argyle Independent School District in Texas voted in favor of allowing school marshals on campus under the Protection of Texas Children Act, meaning students started the school year with the knowledge that some teachers on campus are armed and prepared to defend themselves and students against armed intruders.
And for those who are unaware of the policy, Argyle ISD schools send a clear message with signs at campus entrances informing visitors, “Please be aware that the staff at Argyle ISD are armed and may use whatever force is necessary to protect our students.”
Argyle is one of a handful of Texas school districts which have chosen to take advantage of the added safety provided by arming teachers.
Laws allowing armed teachers also exist in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Tennessee.
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/schools-look-armed-teachers-first-line-defense-shooters/
by Sam Rolley
Officials at an Ohio school district are considering a proposal that would place guns in strategic locations on campuses to give teachers and faculty a potential advantage in the event on an active shooter scenario.
Riverside Local School board members discussed the issue of guns on campus for protection last week and will revisit proposals in mid-December, according to a report in the Dayton Daily News.
One such proposal would involve placing firearms in hidden lockboxes throughout the school and training willing teachers and staff to be part of an armed response team. Only those trained would be able to access the firearms.
The plan would follow the lead of Ohio’s Sidney City School District, which recently added hidden firearms and a collection of bulletproof vests to its safety provisions.
According to reports, 37 teachers in the district have access to the guns.
“We have some families that have indicated to us that they have open enrolled their children in Sidney City Schools because of the school security measures we have taken,” that district’s superintendent, John Scheu, told WDTN over the summer.
Sidney schools also feature signs notifying visitors that the campus is protected by an armed response team.
Riverside superintendent Scott Mann told local reporters that his district is investigating a similar plan because he believes the threat of an immediate armed response could be enough to deter would-be attackers.
“If people know you are protected and that can help us a little bit more, I’m all for it,” Mann said. “Just to reiterate — it’s going to be a community decision.”
Riverside board members have also discussed allowing teachers to carry firearms on their person, but Mann said he doesn’t think it’s a good idea.
“I do not want guns on teachers in the classroom,” Mann said. “I think that’s one of the worst safety plans you can have.”
The Ohio school districts aren’t alone in looking at ways to protect students by arming teachers.
In January, officials at the Argyle Independent School District in Texas voted in favor of allowing school marshals on campus under the Protection of Texas Children Act, meaning students started the school year with the knowledge that some teachers on campus are armed and prepared to defend themselves and students against armed intruders.
And for those who are unaware of the policy, Argyle ISD schools send a clear message with signs at campus entrances informing visitors, “Please be aware that the staff at Argyle ISD are armed and may use whatever force is necessary to protect our students.”
Argyle is one of a handful of Texas school districts which have chosen to take advantage of the added safety provided by arming teachers.
Laws allowing armed teachers also exist in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Tennessee.
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/schools-look-armed-teachers-first-line-defense-shooters/
"I think we've lost our collective minds. We're arresting people who should be lauded and lauding people on Wall Street and elsewhere who should be arrested..."
It is now illegal to share food with the homeless in Florida
by: J. D. Heyes
If you're someone who believes in personal (not government-provided) charity and who likes to make sure that as many homeless people as possible get a decent meal each day, good for you. But you might want to avoid Fort Lauderdale, Florida, because you could wind up with a hefty fine and some jail time.
Seriously.
According to reports, police in the city issued citations and further threatened to arrest two priests and a 90-year-old World War II vet for the "crime" of feeding homeless people. A group of bozos on the city council recently approved a measure making the sharing of food a citable offense. As reported by The Daily Sheeple:
Fort Lauderdale police removed at least three volunteers, as well as the Sunday lunch they were serving to several dozen homeless people, citing a controversial new ordinance that prohibits food sharing. Passed in October, the measure was created to try to cut down the growing population of homeless people in Fort Lauderdale.
All it has really done is put a chill on charity.
'The whole world is watching'
In video footage located on this web page, you can see three police officers show up and disrupt an in-progress feeding program, removing Arnold Abbott, 90, the Rev. Canon Mark Sims of St. Mary Magdalene Episcopal Church, and the Rev. Dwayne Black of the Sanctuary Church.
As the men are being removed and the operation disrupted, several people begin to protest the police action, following the police officers as they escort the men to their patrol cars.
"Shame on you, arresting an elderly man!" shouted someone in the assembled crowd.
"The whole world is watching!" another shouted.
But the officers, who don't have any choice but to enforce laws the city passes, were unrelenting. In the video one officer explains to the three men, "Basically you are going to be cited for serving to the community without proper accommodations. Everything is explained in here. This is a citation. If you guys continue to come out here you will face arrest."
As The Daily Sheeple further reported:
The ban on sharing food is part of city officials' recent efforts to cut down on the burgeoning downtown homeless population. The most recent law - passed by a 4-1 vote - limits where outdoor feeding can be located. It can't be situated near another feeding site; it has to be at least 500 feet from residential property; and feed program organizers must seek permission from property owners for sites in front of their buildings.
City officials say the new laws are merely "public health and safety measures," but opponents have begun referring to them as "homeless hate laws," the Sun-Sentinel newspaper reported.
"We are simply trying to feed people who are hungry," Sims told the paper. "To criminalize that is contrary to everything that I stand for as a priest and as a person of faith."
The program in question is operated by a group called Love Thy Neighbor. Abbott, its founder, has served food to homeless people for two decades.
'We've lost our collective minds'
The anti-homeless feeding ordinances follow additional mandates in Fort Lauderdale that have banned homeless people from soliciting at the city's busiest intersections, from sleeping on public property uptown, and have strengthened measures against defecating in public. There is also a new measure making it illegal for anyone to store their personal belongings on public property.
"I'm not satisfied with having a cycle of homeless in the city of Fort Lauderdale," said Mayor Jack Seiler, in an interview with the Sun-Sentinel. "Providing them with a meal and keeping them in that cycle on the street is not productive."
But such ordinances don't really do anything to address the cycle, either, or correct it - they just penalize anyone who wants to help such people.
"I think we've lost our collective minds. We're arresting people who should be lauded and lauding people on Wall Street and elsewhere who should be arrested," Joel Berg, executive director of the New York Coalition Against Hunger, according to Sheeple's source.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/047802_feeding_homeless_illegal_charity_hunger.html#ixzz3KD5t6bSi
by: J. D. Heyes
If you're someone who believes in personal (not government-provided) charity and who likes to make sure that as many homeless people as possible get a decent meal each day, good for you. But you might want to avoid Fort Lauderdale, Florida, because you could wind up with a hefty fine and some jail time.
Seriously.
According to reports, police in the city issued citations and further threatened to arrest two priests and a 90-year-old World War II vet for the "crime" of feeding homeless people. A group of bozos on the city council recently approved a measure making the sharing of food a citable offense. As reported by The Daily Sheeple:
Fort Lauderdale police removed at least three volunteers, as well as the Sunday lunch they were serving to several dozen homeless people, citing a controversial new ordinance that prohibits food sharing. Passed in October, the measure was created to try to cut down the growing population of homeless people in Fort Lauderdale.
All it has really done is put a chill on charity.
'The whole world is watching'
In video footage located on this web page, you can see three police officers show up and disrupt an in-progress feeding program, removing Arnold Abbott, 90, the Rev. Canon Mark Sims of St. Mary Magdalene Episcopal Church, and the Rev. Dwayne Black of the Sanctuary Church.
As the men are being removed and the operation disrupted, several people begin to protest the police action, following the police officers as they escort the men to their patrol cars.
"Shame on you, arresting an elderly man!" shouted someone in the assembled crowd.
"The whole world is watching!" another shouted.
But the officers, who don't have any choice but to enforce laws the city passes, were unrelenting. In the video one officer explains to the three men, "Basically you are going to be cited for serving to the community without proper accommodations. Everything is explained in here. This is a citation. If you guys continue to come out here you will face arrest."
As The Daily Sheeple further reported:
The ban on sharing food is part of city officials' recent efforts to cut down on the burgeoning downtown homeless population. The most recent law - passed by a 4-1 vote - limits where outdoor feeding can be located. It can't be situated near another feeding site; it has to be at least 500 feet from residential property; and feed program organizers must seek permission from property owners for sites in front of their buildings.
City officials say the new laws are merely "public health and safety measures," but opponents have begun referring to them as "homeless hate laws," the Sun-Sentinel newspaper reported.
"We are simply trying to feed people who are hungry," Sims told the paper. "To criminalize that is contrary to everything that I stand for as a priest and as a person of faith."
The program in question is operated by a group called Love Thy Neighbor. Abbott, its founder, has served food to homeless people for two decades.
'We've lost our collective minds'
The anti-homeless feeding ordinances follow additional mandates in Fort Lauderdale that have banned homeless people from soliciting at the city's busiest intersections, from sleeping on public property uptown, and have strengthened measures against defecating in public. There is also a new measure making it illegal for anyone to store their personal belongings on public property.
"I'm not satisfied with having a cycle of homeless in the city of Fort Lauderdale," said Mayor Jack Seiler, in an interview with the Sun-Sentinel. "Providing them with a meal and keeping them in that cycle on the street is not productive."
But such ordinances don't really do anything to address the cycle, either, or correct it - they just penalize anyone who wants to help such people.
"I think we've lost our collective minds. We're arresting people who should be lauded and lauding people on Wall Street and elsewhere who should be arrested," Joel Berg, executive director of the New York Coalition Against Hunger, according to Sheeple's source.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/047802_feeding_homeless_illegal_charity_hunger.html#ixzz3KD5t6bSi
"A lot of Americans have an impression that drone strikes are less damaging to civilian populations than conventional airstrikes. This would be false."
U.S. Drone Strike Math – 41 Terrorists Targeted, 1,147 People Killed
Michael Krieger
While I haven’t covered the topic of drones very much as of late, it was a core topic at Liberty Blitzkrieg several years ago. The most recent, relevant piece I published on it was during the summer of 2013 and titled: The Truth About Drones.
Here’s an excerpt:
A lot of Americans have an impression that drone strikes are less damaging to civilian populations than conventional airstrikes. This would be false. In fact, earlier this month I highlighted an article from the Guardian that demonstrated how in reality drone strikes are 10x more likely to harm civilians per incident. Now, thanks to a recently leaked document we find that many more civilians including children have been killed in these strikes than many of us would like to admit. In fact, of the 746 people killed in drone strikes in Pakistan from 2006-2009, an incredible 20% were civilians and 94 (13% of the total) were children.
I strongly believe that the reason so many Americans blindly support the widespread use of drones is due to the mistaken belief that they are precise and result in few civilian casualties. It’s important to get some of the facts out to the public in order to have a more informed debate on the matter.
In the latest news, the Guardian reports that:
The drones came for Ayman Zawahiri on 13 January 2006, hovering over a village in Pakistan called Damadola. Ten months later, they came again for the man who would become al-Qaida’s leader, this time in Bajaur.
Eight years later, Zawahiri is still alive. Seventy-six children and 29 adults, according to reports after the two strikes, are not.
However many Americans know who Zawahiri is, far fewer are familiar with Qari Hussain. Hussain was a deputy commander of the Pakistani Taliban, a militant group aligned with al-Qaida that trained the would-be Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, before his unsuccessful 2010 attack. The drones first came for Hussain years before, on 29 January 2008. Then they came on 23 June 2009, 15 January 2010, 2 October 2010 and 7 October 2010.
Finally, on 15 October 2010, Hellfire missiles fired from a Predator or Reaper drone killed Hussain, the Pakistani Taliban later confirmed. For the death of a man whom practically no American can name, the US killed 128 people, 13 of them children, none of whom it meant to harm.
A new analysis of the data available to the public about drone strikes, conducted by the human-rights group Reprieve, indicates that even when operators target specific individuals – the most focused effort of what Barack Obama calls “targeted killing” – they kill vastly more people than their targets, often needing to strike multiple times.Attempts to kill 41 men resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1,147 people, as of 24 November.
Some 24 men specifically targeted in Pakistan resulted in the death of 874 people. All were reported in the press as “killed” on multiple occasions, meaning that numerous strikes were aimed at each of them. The vast majority of those strikes were unsuccessful. An estimated 142 children were killed in the course of pursuing those 24 men, only six of whom died in the course of drone strikes that killed their intended targets.
Like all weapons, drones will inevitably miss their targets given enough chances. But the secrecy surrounding them obscures how often misses occur and the reasons for them. Even for the 33 named targets whom the drones eventually killed – successes, by the logic of the drone strikes – another 947 people died in the process.
For more articles on the drone issue, see:
New Report: Drone Strikes 10x More Deadly to Civilians than Manned Aircraft
The FBI Has Been Using Drones Domestically Since 2006
Three of the Four U.S. Citizens Killed with Drones were Killed by Accident
McClatchy Study: Obama Administration Has No Idea Who They are Killing with Drones
Link with hyperlinks:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/u-s-drone-strike-math-41-terrorists-targeted-1147-people-killed.html
Michael Krieger
While I haven’t covered the topic of drones very much as of late, it was a core topic at Liberty Blitzkrieg several years ago. The most recent, relevant piece I published on it was during the summer of 2013 and titled: The Truth About Drones.
Here’s an excerpt:
A lot of Americans have an impression that drone strikes are less damaging to civilian populations than conventional airstrikes. This would be false. In fact, earlier this month I highlighted an article from the Guardian that demonstrated how in reality drone strikes are 10x more likely to harm civilians per incident. Now, thanks to a recently leaked document we find that many more civilians including children have been killed in these strikes than many of us would like to admit. In fact, of the 746 people killed in drone strikes in Pakistan from 2006-2009, an incredible 20% were civilians and 94 (13% of the total) were children.
I strongly believe that the reason so many Americans blindly support the widespread use of drones is due to the mistaken belief that they are precise and result in few civilian casualties. It’s important to get some of the facts out to the public in order to have a more informed debate on the matter.
In the latest news, the Guardian reports that:
The drones came for Ayman Zawahiri on 13 January 2006, hovering over a village in Pakistan called Damadola. Ten months later, they came again for the man who would become al-Qaida’s leader, this time in Bajaur.
Eight years later, Zawahiri is still alive. Seventy-six children and 29 adults, according to reports after the two strikes, are not.
However many Americans know who Zawahiri is, far fewer are familiar with Qari Hussain. Hussain was a deputy commander of the Pakistani Taliban, a militant group aligned with al-Qaida that trained the would-be Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, before his unsuccessful 2010 attack. The drones first came for Hussain years before, on 29 January 2008. Then they came on 23 June 2009, 15 January 2010, 2 October 2010 and 7 October 2010.
Finally, on 15 October 2010, Hellfire missiles fired from a Predator or Reaper drone killed Hussain, the Pakistani Taliban later confirmed. For the death of a man whom practically no American can name, the US killed 128 people, 13 of them children, none of whom it meant to harm.
A new analysis of the data available to the public about drone strikes, conducted by the human-rights group Reprieve, indicates that even when operators target specific individuals – the most focused effort of what Barack Obama calls “targeted killing” – they kill vastly more people than their targets, often needing to strike multiple times.Attempts to kill 41 men resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1,147 people, as of 24 November.
Some 24 men specifically targeted in Pakistan resulted in the death of 874 people. All were reported in the press as “killed” on multiple occasions, meaning that numerous strikes were aimed at each of them. The vast majority of those strikes were unsuccessful. An estimated 142 children were killed in the course of pursuing those 24 men, only six of whom died in the course of drone strikes that killed their intended targets.
Like all weapons, drones will inevitably miss their targets given enough chances. But the secrecy surrounding them obscures how often misses occur and the reasons for them. Even for the 33 named targets whom the drones eventually killed – successes, by the logic of the drone strikes – another 947 people died in the process.
For more articles on the drone issue, see:
New Report: Drone Strikes 10x More Deadly to Civilians than Manned Aircraft
The FBI Has Been Using Drones Domestically Since 2006
Three of the Four U.S. Citizens Killed with Drones were Killed by Accident
McClatchy Study: Obama Administration Has No Idea Who They are Killing with Drones
Link with hyperlinks:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/u-s-drone-strike-math-41-terrorists-targeted-1147-people-killed.html
"...the greater question—whether anything will really change to rein in militarized police, police shootings, lack of accountability and oversight, and a military industrial complex with a vested interest in turning America into a war zone—remains unanswered."
We Are the Enemy: Is This the Lesson of Ferguson?
By John W. Whitehead
If you dress police officers up as soldiers and you put them in military vehicles and you give them military weapons, they adopt a warrior mentality. We fight wars against enemies, and the enemies are the people who live in our cities—particularly in communities of color.—Thomas Nolan, criminology professor and former police officer
Should police officer Darren Wilson be held accountable for the shooting death of unarmed citizen Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014?
That the police officer was white and his victim black should make no difference. In a perfect world, it would not matter. In an imperfect world such as ours, however, racism is an effective propaganda tool used by the government and the media to distract us from the real issues.
As a result, the national dialogue about the dangers of militarized, weaponized police officers being trained to act like soldiers on the battlefield, shooting first and asking questions later, has shifted into a largely unspoken debate over race wars, class perceptions and longstanding, deep-seated notions of who deserves our unquestioning loyalty and who does not.
Putting aside our prejudices, however, let’s not overlook the importance of Ferguson and this grand jury verdict. Tasked with determining whether Wilson should stand trial for Brown’s shooting, the grand jury ruled that the police officer will not face charges for the fatal shooting.
However, the greater question—whether anything will really change to rein in militarized police, police shootings, lack of accountability and oversight, and a military industrial complex with a vested interest in turning America into a war zone—remains unanswered.
Ferguson matters because it provides us with a foretaste of what is to come. It is the shot across the bow, so to speak, a warning that this is how we will all be treated if we do not tread cautiously in challenging the police state, and it won’t matter whether we’re black or white, rich or poor, Republican or Democrat. In the eyes of the corporate state, we are all the enemy.
This is the lesson of Ferguson.
Remember that in the wake of the shooting, Ferguson police officers clad in body armor, their faces covered with masks, equipped with assault rifles and snipers and riding armored vehicles, showed up in force to deal with protesters. Describing that show of force by police in Ferguson, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, stated, “This was a military force, and they were facing down an enemy.”
Yes, we are the enemy. As I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, since those first towers fell on 9/11, the American people have been treated like enemy combatants, to be spied on, tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, locked up, and denied due process.
There was a moment of hope after Ferguson that perhaps things might change. Perhaps the balance would be restored between the citizenry and their supposed guardians, the police. Perhaps our elected officials would take our side for a change and oppose the militarization of the police. Perhaps warfare would take a backseat to more pressing national concerns.
That hope was short-lived.
It wasn’t long before the media moved on to other, more titillating stories. The disappearance of a University of Virginia college student and the search for her alleged abductor, the weeks-long man-hunt for an accused cop killer, the Republican electoral upset, a Rolling Stone expose on gang rapes at fraternity parties, Obama’s immigration amnesty plan, and the rape charges against Bill Cosby are just a few of the stories that have dominated the news cycle since the Ferguson standoff between police and protesters.
It wasn’t long before the American public, easily acclimated to news of government wrongdoing (case in point: the national yawn over the NSA’s ongoing domestic surveillance), ceased to be shocked, outraged or alarmed by reports of police shootings. In fact, the issue was nowhere to be found in this year’s run-up to Election Day, which was largely devoid of any pressing matters of national concern.
And with nary a hiccup, the police state marched steadily forth. In fact, aided and abetted by the citizenry’s short attention span, its easily distracted nature, and its desensitization to anything that occupies the news cycle for too long, it has been business as usual in terms of police shootings, the amassing of military weapons, and the government’s sanctioning of police misconduct. Most recently, Ohio police shot and killed a 12-year-old boy who was seen waving a toy gun at a playground.
Rubbing salt in our wounds, in the wake of Ferguson, police agencies not only continued to ramp up their military arsenals but have used them whenever possible. In fact, in anticipation of the grand jury’s ruling, St. Louis police actually purchased more equipment for its officers, including “civil disobedience equipment.”
Just a few weeks after the Ferguson showdown, law enforcement agencies took part in an $11 million manhunt in Pennsylvania for alleged cop killer Eric Frein. Without batting an eye, the news media switched from outraged “shock” over the military arsenal employed by police in Ferguson to respectful “awe” of the 48-day operation that cost taxpayers $1.4 million per week in order to carry out a round-the-clock dragnet search of an area with a 5-mile-radius.
The Frein operation brought together 1,000 officers from local, state and federal law enforcement, as well as SWAT teams and cutting edge military equipment (high-powered rifles, body armor, infrared sensors, armored trucks, helicopters and unmanned, silent surveillance blimps)—some of the very same weapons and tactics employed in Ferguson and, a year earlier, in Boston in the wake of the marathon bombing.
The manhunt was a well-timed, perfectly choreographed exercise in why Americans should welcome the police state: for our safety, of course, and to save the lives of police officers.
Opposed to any attempt to demilitarize America’s police forces, the Dept. of Homeland Security has been chanting this safety mantra in testimony before Congress: Remember 9/11. Remember Boston. Remember how unsafe the world was before police were equipped with automatic weapons, heavily armored trucks, night-vision goggles, and aircraft donated by the DHS.
Contrary to DHS rhetoric, however, militarized police—twitchy over perceived dangers, hyped up on their authority, and protected by their agencies, the legislatures and the courts—have actually made communities less safe at a time when violent crime is at an all-time low and lumberjacks, fishermen, airline pilots, roofers, construction workers, trash collectors, electricians and truck drivers all have a higher risk of on-the-job fatalities than police officers.
Moreover, as Senator Tom Coburn points out, the militarization of America’s police forces has actually “created some problems that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.” Among those problems: a rise in the use of SWAT team raids for routine law enforcement activities (averaging 80,000 a year), a rise in the use and abuse of asset forfeiture laws by police agencies, a profit-driven incentive to criminalize lawful activities and treat Americans as suspects, and a transformation of the nation’s citizenry into suspects.
Ferguson provided us with an opportunity to engage in a much-needed national dialogue over how police are trained, what authority they are given, what weaponry they are provided, and how they treat those whom they are entrusted with protecting.
Caught up in our personal politics, prejudices and class warfare, we have failed to answer that call. In so doing, we have played right into the hands of all those corporations who profit from turning America into a battlefield by selling the government mine-resistant vehicles, assault rifles, grenade launchers, and drones.
As long as we remain steeped in ignorance, there will be no reform.
As long as we remain divided by our irrational fear of each other, there will be no overhaul in the nation’s law enforcement system or institution of an oversight process whereby communities can ensure that local police departments are acting in accordance with their wishes and values.
And as long as we remain distracted by misguided loyalties to military operatives who are paid to play the part of the government’s henchmen, there will be no saving us when the events of Ferguson unfold in our own backyards.
When all is said and done, it doesn’t matter whose “side” you’re on as far as what transpired in Ferguson, whether you believe that Michael Brown was a victim or that Darren Wilson was justified in shooting first and asking questions later.
What matters is that we not allow politics and deep-rooted prejudices of any sort to divert our efforts to restore some level of safety, sanity and constitutional balance to the role that police officers play in our communities. If we fail to do so, we will have done a disservice to ourselves and every man, woman and child in this country who have become casualties of the American police state.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/11/john-w-whitehead/the-purpose-of-racism/
By John W. Whitehead
If you dress police officers up as soldiers and you put them in military vehicles and you give them military weapons, they adopt a warrior mentality. We fight wars against enemies, and the enemies are the people who live in our cities—particularly in communities of color.—Thomas Nolan, criminology professor and former police officer
Should police officer Darren Wilson be held accountable for the shooting death of unarmed citizen Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014?
That the police officer was white and his victim black should make no difference. In a perfect world, it would not matter. In an imperfect world such as ours, however, racism is an effective propaganda tool used by the government and the media to distract us from the real issues.
As a result, the national dialogue about the dangers of militarized, weaponized police officers being trained to act like soldiers on the battlefield, shooting first and asking questions later, has shifted into a largely unspoken debate over race wars, class perceptions and longstanding, deep-seated notions of who deserves our unquestioning loyalty and who does not.
Putting aside our prejudices, however, let’s not overlook the importance of Ferguson and this grand jury verdict. Tasked with determining whether Wilson should stand trial for Brown’s shooting, the grand jury ruled that the police officer will not face charges for the fatal shooting.
However, the greater question—whether anything will really change to rein in militarized police, police shootings, lack of accountability and oversight, and a military industrial complex with a vested interest in turning America into a war zone—remains unanswered.
Ferguson matters because it provides us with a foretaste of what is to come. It is the shot across the bow, so to speak, a warning that this is how we will all be treated if we do not tread cautiously in challenging the police state, and it won’t matter whether we’re black or white, rich or poor, Republican or Democrat. In the eyes of the corporate state, we are all the enemy.
This is the lesson of Ferguson.
Remember that in the wake of the shooting, Ferguson police officers clad in body armor, their faces covered with masks, equipped with assault rifles and snipers and riding armored vehicles, showed up in force to deal with protesters. Describing that show of force by police in Ferguson, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, stated, “This was a military force, and they were facing down an enemy.”
Yes, we are the enemy. As I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, since those first towers fell on 9/11, the American people have been treated like enemy combatants, to be spied on, tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, locked up, and denied due process.
There was a moment of hope after Ferguson that perhaps things might change. Perhaps the balance would be restored between the citizenry and their supposed guardians, the police. Perhaps our elected officials would take our side for a change and oppose the militarization of the police. Perhaps warfare would take a backseat to more pressing national concerns.
That hope was short-lived.
It wasn’t long before the media moved on to other, more titillating stories. The disappearance of a University of Virginia college student and the search for her alleged abductor, the weeks-long man-hunt for an accused cop killer, the Republican electoral upset, a Rolling Stone expose on gang rapes at fraternity parties, Obama’s immigration amnesty plan, and the rape charges against Bill Cosby are just a few of the stories that have dominated the news cycle since the Ferguson standoff between police and protesters.
It wasn’t long before the American public, easily acclimated to news of government wrongdoing (case in point: the national yawn over the NSA’s ongoing domestic surveillance), ceased to be shocked, outraged or alarmed by reports of police shootings. In fact, the issue was nowhere to be found in this year’s run-up to Election Day, which was largely devoid of any pressing matters of national concern.
And with nary a hiccup, the police state marched steadily forth. In fact, aided and abetted by the citizenry’s short attention span, its easily distracted nature, and its desensitization to anything that occupies the news cycle for too long, it has been business as usual in terms of police shootings, the amassing of military weapons, and the government’s sanctioning of police misconduct. Most recently, Ohio police shot and killed a 12-year-old boy who was seen waving a toy gun at a playground.
Rubbing salt in our wounds, in the wake of Ferguson, police agencies not only continued to ramp up their military arsenals but have used them whenever possible. In fact, in anticipation of the grand jury’s ruling, St. Louis police actually purchased more equipment for its officers, including “civil disobedience equipment.”
Just a few weeks after the Ferguson showdown, law enforcement agencies took part in an $11 million manhunt in Pennsylvania for alleged cop killer Eric Frein. Without batting an eye, the news media switched from outraged “shock” over the military arsenal employed by police in Ferguson to respectful “awe” of the 48-day operation that cost taxpayers $1.4 million per week in order to carry out a round-the-clock dragnet search of an area with a 5-mile-radius.
The Frein operation brought together 1,000 officers from local, state and federal law enforcement, as well as SWAT teams and cutting edge military equipment (high-powered rifles, body armor, infrared sensors, armored trucks, helicopters and unmanned, silent surveillance blimps)—some of the very same weapons and tactics employed in Ferguson and, a year earlier, in Boston in the wake of the marathon bombing.
The manhunt was a well-timed, perfectly choreographed exercise in why Americans should welcome the police state: for our safety, of course, and to save the lives of police officers.
Opposed to any attempt to demilitarize America’s police forces, the Dept. of Homeland Security has been chanting this safety mantra in testimony before Congress: Remember 9/11. Remember Boston. Remember how unsafe the world was before police were equipped with automatic weapons, heavily armored trucks, night-vision goggles, and aircraft donated by the DHS.
Contrary to DHS rhetoric, however, militarized police—twitchy over perceived dangers, hyped up on their authority, and protected by their agencies, the legislatures and the courts—have actually made communities less safe at a time when violent crime is at an all-time low and lumberjacks, fishermen, airline pilots, roofers, construction workers, trash collectors, electricians and truck drivers all have a higher risk of on-the-job fatalities than police officers.
Moreover, as Senator Tom Coburn points out, the militarization of America’s police forces has actually “created some problems that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.” Among those problems: a rise in the use of SWAT team raids for routine law enforcement activities (averaging 80,000 a year), a rise in the use and abuse of asset forfeiture laws by police agencies, a profit-driven incentive to criminalize lawful activities and treat Americans as suspects, and a transformation of the nation’s citizenry into suspects.
Ferguson provided us with an opportunity to engage in a much-needed national dialogue over how police are trained, what authority they are given, what weaponry they are provided, and how they treat those whom they are entrusted with protecting.
Caught up in our personal politics, prejudices and class warfare, we have failed to answer that call. In so doing, we have played right into the hands of all those corporations who profit from turning America into a battlefield by selling the government mine-resistant vehicles, assault rifles, grenade launchers, and drones.
As long as we remain steeped in ignorance, there will be no reform.
As long as we remain divided by our irrational fear of each other, there will be no overhaul in the nation’s law enforcement system or institution of an oversight process whereby communities can ensure that local police departments are acting in accordance with their wishes and values.
And as long as we remain distracted by misguided loyalties to military operatives who are paid to play the part of the government’s henchmen, there will be no saving us when the events of Ferguson unfold in our own backyards.
When all is said and done, it doesn’t matter whose “side” you’re on as far as what transpired in Ferguson, whether you believe that Michael Brown was a victim or that Darren Wilson was justified in shooting first and asking questions later.
What matters is that we not allow politics and deep-rooted prejudices of any sort to divert our efforts to restore some level of safety, sanity and constitutional balance to the role that police officers play in our communities. If we fail to do so, we will have done a disservice to ourselves and every man, woman and child in this country who have become casualties of the American police state.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/11/john-w-whitehead/the-purpose-of-racism/
"...the Lincoln cultists know these facts but are once again doing everything they can to confuse and misinform the American public about their own country’s history. As such, it is not an exaggeration to label them as the new generation of holocaust deniers."
The New Generation of Holocaust Deniers
By Thomas DiLorenzo
“[F]rom the military policies of Sherman and Sheridan there lies but an easy step to the total war of the Nazis, the greatest affront to Western civilization since its founding.”
–Richard M. Weaver, The Southern Essays of Richard M.
Weaver, pp. 168-169.
Having lied about secession, states’ rights, the origins of the Constitution, Lincoln, and just about everything having to do with the American “Civil War” for many generations, the Lincoln cult is now hard at work on its biggest lie of all: that General William Tecumseh Sherman’s famous “march to the sea” did not negatively affect Southern civilians or their property.
In a November 14 New York Times article one Alan Blinder wrote of “an expanding body of more forgiving scholarship about the general’s behavior.” In its ten thousandth attempt (at least) to mentally “reconstruct” Southerners, the government-funded Georgia Historical Society, in cahoots with the Jimmy Carter Presidential Museum, recently paced a marker in Atlanta “near the picnic tables at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum” that is supposedly “a reassessment of Sherman” that has been “decades in the making” by the Lincoln cult.
Sherman was not “gratuitously destructive,” says the marker. He only targeted “military infrastructure.” Of course, in reality Sherman considered every Southern person, every acre of Southern land, every house, every barn, every blade of grass, every farm animal, and even every family pet as part of the Confederacy’s “military infrastructure.” Honest historians have documented this in spades for the past 150 years. It is also documented beyond all doubt by the U.S. government’s own Official Records of the war.
Nevertheless, the Lincoln cultists now dismiss the extraordinarily well-documented history of Sherman’s army’s pillaging, plundering, raping, and murdering of Southern civilians as “fables” and mere “family accounts of cruelty.” One source of such talk is John F. Marszalek, the executive director of the “Mississippi-based Ulysses S. Grant Association.” (A Grant museum in Mississippi is not unlike having a pro-Hitler Museum in Auschwitz, Poland). “The facts are coming out,” Marszalek ludicrously proclaimed to the Times. Sherman’s behavior “hastened . . . the reunification of the union,” the marker at the Jimmy Carter shrine absurdly announces. Yes, just as the German blitzkrieg “united” Germany with Poland and France during World War II, or how Soviet tanks “united” Eastern and Central Europe during the Cold War.
It is child’s play to prove what a pack of liars this new generation of Holocaust deniers are. It does require a little effort, however, which is probably what the Deniers are depending on when they spread their lies in places like the picnic area at the Jimmy Carter shrine. For example, consider just a few of the facts taken from the U.S. War Department publication, War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, as discussed in Walter Brian Cisco’s outstanding work of scholarship, War Crimes Against Southern Civilians.
From the Official Records, a Colonel Adin Underwood of Massachusetts described Sherman’s gratuitous bombing and burning of Atlanta after the Confederate Army had left the city as having burned to the ground “37 percent of the city” according to Sherman’s military engineers. This included many private homes and even churches.
An Ohio infantryman is quoted as describing “an ocean of fire” all throughout Atlanta. Eventually, at least “two-thirds of Atlanta lay in ashes” according to the Official Records. A Major Nichols was told that “the holocaust devoured no fewer than five thousand buildings.”
When Sherman’s chief military engineer, Captain O.M Poe, voiced dismay over seeing so many corpses of women and children in the streets of Atlanta, and informed Sherman that the day-and-night bombardment of the city was of no military significance, Sherman coldly called the corpses “a beautiful sight” that would quicken the ending of the war (Michael Fellman, Citizen Sherman, p. 184). There were approximately 4,000 private homes in Atlanta before Sherman’s bombing, with only around 400 left standing.
Sherman left a paper trail that was obviously intended to cover his murderous tracks, but at times he issued direct orders to murder civilians. Bothered by his inability to apprehend Confederate snipers who had been shooting at his railroad trains, he sent the following order to a General Louis D. Watkins: “Cannot you send over about Fairmount and Adairsville, burn ten or twelve houses of known secessionists, kill a few at random, and let them know it will be repeated every time a train is fired on . . ?” (John Walters, Merchant of Terror: General Sherman and Total War, p. 137). In order to carry out such war crimes, Sherman biographer Lee Kennett writes of how “the New York regiments were . . . filled with big city criminals and foreigners fresh from the jails of the Old World.” It took a special kind of “soldier” to carry out Sherman’s war crimes. (Lee Kennett, Marching Through Georgia, p. 279).
The Official Records also record how federal soldiers extorted money from Southern civilians by demanding “insurance” payments to avoid having their homes ransacked and burned down. A Major James Austin Connolly is quoted in the following way in response to reports that Southerners were hiding their valuables from thieving U.S. Army soldiers:
“Let them do it if they dare. We’ll burn every house, barn, church, and everything else we come to; we’ll leave their families homeless without food; their towns will all be destroyed and nothing but the most complete desolation will be found in our track. “
The Official Records also write of how Northern reporters associated with Republican Party newspapers often accompanied Sherman’s “bummers” as they were called, and then entertained the folks up North with tales of their raping, pillaging, plundering, burning, and murdering. One Northern reporter is quoted as saying of Sherman’s rampaging looters:
“If the spoil were ample, the depradators were satisfied, and went off in peace; if not, everything was destroyed . . . . Hogs were bayoneted to bleed; chickens, geese, and turkeys knocked over and hung in garlands . . . cows and calves . . . are shot . . . . the furniture [of private homes] is smashed to pieces, music is pounded out of . . . pianos with the ends of muskets.”
Another federal soldier is quoted as saying “I rather feel sorry for some of the women who cried and begged so piteously for the soldiers to leave them a little,” but nevertheless, “extermination [of the civilian population] is our only means now.”
When Sherman reached Hardeeville, South Carolina, one of his bummers is quoted in the Official Records as saying that “In a few hours a town of half century’s growth is thus leveled to the ground.” This even included a church where “First the pulpit and the seats were torn out . . . . Many axes were at work.” This is undoubtedly an example of what the Lincoln cult means when they refer to “military infrastructure.”
One of Sherman’s degradations was known as his “war on dogs.” A U.S. Army Colonel is quoted in the Official Records as saying, “We were determined that no dogs should escape . . . we exterminate all. The dogs were easily killed. All we had to do was to bayonet them.”
By the time Sherman was done with South Carolina, one of his officers boasted in the Official Records that “We have . . . burnt one city, the capital, and most of the villages on our route as well as most barns, outbuildings and dwelling houses, and every house that escaped fire has been pillaged.” This was no “family myth,” as the Lincoln cult shamelessly claims, but the words of a senior officer in Sherman’s army.
Sherman’s “march to the sea” was nothing new: he had been waging total war on the civilian population of the South for years. In 1862 he ordered the complete destruction through fire of the town of Randolph, Tennessee, near Memphis. Around that time, Sherman wrote a letter to his wife saying that “extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people” in general, was his intention. (Cited in John Walters, Merchant of Terror, p. 61).
In 1863 Sherman ordered the systematic bombardment of Jackson, Mississippi every five minutes, day and night. The city was sacked, looted, and destroyed, after which Sherman boasted in a letter to Grant that “the [civilian] inhabitants are subjugated. They cry aloud for mercy. The land is devastated for 30 miles around.” (Cited in Walters, Merchant of Terror, p. 101). He also boasted of the complete destruction of Meridian, Mississippi: “For five days, ten thousand of our men worked hard and with a will, in that work of destruction, with axes, sledges, crowbars, clawbars, and with fire, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing the work well done. Meridian . . . no longer exists.” (Walters, Merchant of Terror, p. 116). This, too, took place after the Confederate Army was long gone from the area.
James McPherson estimated that some 50,000 Southern civilians perished during the War to Prevent Southern Independence, but the true figure is probably much higher. Sherman himself boasted of how his “bummers” destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of private property and walked off with hundreds of millions of dollars more. There are thousands of pictures of the burned out Southern landscape in the wake of Sherman’s “march” in addition to all the Official Records that record his war crimes.
But of course in war, the victors are never prosecuted. This probably explains why Sherman – and all the other Union Army top command, including Lincoln himself, became more and more murderous when it came to Southern civilians in the latter years of the war. They all understood that if the South was victorious, it would have been well within its rights to hang all of them as war criminals.
In the past, before the Lincoln cult commenced its current campaign to whitewash Sherman’s reputation, some cultists admitted this. Sherman biographer Lee Kennett wrote that “had the Confederates somehow won, had their victory put them in position to bring their chief opponents before some sort of tribunal, they would have found themselves justified . . . in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violation of the laws of war, specifically for waging war against noncombatants.” (Lee Kennett, Marching Through Georgia, p. 286). This proves that the Lincoln cultists know these facts but are once again doing everything they can to confuse and misinform the American public about their own country’s history. As such, it is not an exaggeration to label them as the new generation of holocaust deniers.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/11/thomas-dilorenzo/war-crimes-denial/
By Thomas DiLorenzo
“[F]rom the military policies of Sherman and Sheridan there lies but an easy step to the total war of the Nazis, the greatest affront to Western civilization since its founding.”
–Richard M. Weaver, The Southern Essays of Richard M.
Weaver, pp. 168-169.
Having lied about secession, states’ rights, the origins of the Constitution, Lincoln, and just about everything having to do with the American “Civil War” for many generations, the Lincoln cult is now hard at work on its biggest lie of all: that General William Tecumseh Sherman’s famous “march to the sea” did not negatively affect Southern civilians or their property.
In a November 14 New York Times article one Alan Blinder wrote of “an expanding body of more forgiving scholarship about the general’s behavior.” In its ten thousandth attempt (at least) to mentally “reconstruct” Southerners, the government-funded Georgia Historical Society, in cahoots with the Jimmy Carter Presidential Museum, recently paced a marker in Atlanta “near the picnic tables at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum” that is supposedly “a reassessment of Sherman” that has been “decades in the making” by the Lincoln cult.
Sherman was not “gratuitously destructive,” says the marker. He only targeted “military infrastructure.” Of course, in reality Sherman considered every Southern person, every acre of Southern land, every house, every barn, every blade of grass, every farm animal, and even every family pet as part of the Confederacy’s “military infrastructure.” Honest historians have documented this in spades for the past 150 years. It is also documented beyond all doubt by the U.S. government’s own Official Records of the war.
Nevertheless, the Lincoln cultists now dismiss the extraordinarily well-documented history of Sherman’s army’s pillaging, plundering, raping, and murdering of Southern civilians as “fables” and mere “family accounts of cruelty.” One source of such talk is John F. Marszalek, the executive director of the “Mississippi-based Ulysses S. Grant Association.” (A Grant museum in Mississippi is not unlike having a pro-Hitler Museum in Auschwitz, Poland). “The facts are coming out,” Marszalek ludicrously proclaimed to the Times. Sherman’s behavior “hastened . . . the reunification of the union,” the marker at the Jimmy Carter shrine absurdly announces. Yes, just as the German blitzkrieg “united” Germany with Poland and France during World War II, or how Soviet tanks “united” Eastern and Central Europe during the Cold War.
It is child’s play to prove what a pack of liars this new generation of Holocaust deniers are. It does require a little effort, however, which is probably what the Deniers are depending on when they spread their lies in places like the picnic area at the Jimmy Carter shrine. For example, consider just a few of the facts taken from the U.S. War Department publication, War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, as discussed in Walter Brian Cisco’s outstanding work of scholarship, War Crimes Against Southern Civilians.
From the Official Records, a Colonel Adin Underwood of Massachusetts described Sherman’s gratuitous bombing and burning of Atlanta after the Confederate Army had left the city as having burned to the ground “37 percent of the city” according to Sherman’s military engineers. This included many private homes and even churches.
An Ohio infantryman is quoted as describing “an ocean of fire” all throughout Atlanta. Eventually, at least “two-thirds of Atlanta lay in ashes” according to the Official Records. A Major Nichols was told that “the holocaust devoured no fewer than five thousand buildings.”
When Sherman’s chief military engineer, Captain O.M Poe, voiced dismay over seeing so many corpses of women and children in the streets of Atlanta, and informed Sherman that the day-and-night bombardment of the city was of no military significance, Sherman coldly called the corpses “a beautiful sight” that would quicken the ending of the war (Michael Fellman, Citizen Sherman, p. 184). There were approximately 4,000 private homes in Atlanta before Sherman’s bombing, with only around 400 left standing.
Sherman left a paper trail that was obviously intended to cover his murderous tracks, but at times he issued direct orders to murder civilians. Bothered by his inability to apprehend Confederate snipers who had been shooting at his railroad trains, he sent the following order to a General Louis D. Watkins: “Cannot you send over about Fairmount and Adairsville, burn ten or twelve houses of known secessionists, kill a few at random, and let them know it will be repeated every time a train is fired on . . ?” (John Walters, Merchant of Terror: General Sherman and Total War, p. 137). In order to carry out such war crimes, Sherman biographer Lee Kennett writes of how “the New York regiments were . . . filled with big city criminals and foreigners fresh from the jails of the Old World.” It took a special kind of “soldier” to carry out Sherman’s war crimes. (Lee Kennett, Marching Through Georgia, p. 279).
The Official Records also record how federal soldiers extorted money from Southern civilians by demanding “insurance” payments to avoid having their homes ransacked and burned down. A Major James Austin Connolly is quoted in the following way in response to reports that Southerners were hiding their valuables from thieving U.S. Army soldiers:
“Let them do it if they dare. We’ll burn every house, barn, church, and everything else we come to; we’ll leave their families homeless without food; their towns will all be destroyed and nothing but the most complete desolation will be found in our track. “
The Official Records also write of how Northern reporters associated with Republican Party newspapers often accompanied Sherman’s “bummers” as they were called, and then entertained the folks up North with tales of their raping, pillaging, plundering, burning, and murdering. One Northern reporter is quoted as saying of Sherman’s rampaging looters:
“If the spoil were ample, the depradators were satisfied, and went off in peace; if not, everything was destroyed . . . . Hogs were bayoneted to bleed; chickens, geese, and turkeys knocked over and hung in garlands . . . cows and calves . . . are shot . . . . the furniture [of private homes] is smashed to pieces, music is pounded out of . . . pianos with the ends of muskets.”
Another federal soldier is quoted as saying “I rather feel sorry for some of the women who cried and begged so piteously for the soldiers to leave them a little,” but nevertheless, “extermination [of the civilian population] is our only means now.”
When Sherman reached Hardeeville, South Carolina, one of his bummers is quoted in the Official Records as saying that “In a few hours a town of half century’s growth is thus leveled to the ground.” This even included a church where “First the pulpit and the seats were torn out . . . . Many axes were at work.” This is undoubtedly an example of what the Lincoln cult means when they refer to “military infrastructure.”
One of Sherman’s degradations was known as his “war on dogs.” A U.S. Army Colonel is quoted in the Official Records as saying, “We were determined that no dogs should escape . . . we exterminate all. The dogs were easily killed. All we had to do was to bayonet them.”
By the time Sherman was done with South Carolina, one of his officers boasted in the Official Records that “We have . . . burnt one city, the capital, and most of the villages on our route as well as most barns, outbuildings and dwelling houses, and every house that escaped fire has been pillaged.” This was no “family myth,” as the Lincoln cult shamelessly claims, but the words of a senior officer in Sherman’s army.
Sherman’s “march to the sea” was nothing new: he had been waging total war on the civilian population of the South for years. In 1862 he ordered the complete destruction through fire of the town of Randolph, Tennessee, near Memphis. Around that time, Sherman wrote a letter to his wife saying that “extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people” in general, was his intention. (Cited in John Walters, Merchant of Terror, p. 61).
In 1863 Sherman ordered the systematic bombardment of Jackson, Mississippi every five minutes, day and night. The city was sacked, looted, and destroyed, after which Sherman boasted in a letter to Grant that “the [civilian] inhabitants are subjugated. They cry aloud for mercy. The land is devastated for 30 miles around.” (Cited in Walters, Merchant of Terror, p. 101). He also boasted of the complete destruction of Meridian, Mississippi: “For five days, ten thousand of our men worked hard and with a will, in that work of destruction, with axes, sledges, crowbars, clawbars, and with fire, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing the work well done. Meridian . . . no longer exists.” (Walters, Merchant of Terror, p. 116). This, too, took place after the Confederate Army was long gone from the area.
James McPherson estimated that some 50,000 Southern civilians perished during the War to Prevent Southern Independence, but the true figure is probably much higher. Sherman himself boasted of how his “bummers” destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of private property and walked off with hundreds of millions of dollars more. There are thousands of pictures of the burned out Southern landscape in the wake of Sherman’s “march” in addition to all the Official Records that record his war crimes.
But of course in war, the victors are never prosecuted. This probably explains why Sherman – and all the other Union Army top command, including Lincoln himself, became more and more murderous when it came to Southern civilians in the latter years of the war. They all understood that if the South was victorious, it would have been well within its rights to hang all of them as war criminals.
In the past, before the Lincoln cult commenced its current campaign to whitewash Sherman’s reputation, some cultists admitted this. Sherman biographer Lee Kennett wrote that “had the Confederates somehow won, had their victory put them in position to bring their chief opponents before some sort of tribunal, they would have found themselves justified . . . in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violation of the laws of war, specifically for waging war against noncombatants.” (Lee Kennett, Marching Through Georgia, p. 286). This proves that the Lincoln cultists know these facts but are once again doing everything they can to confuse and misinform the American public about their own country’s history. As such, it is not an exaggeration to label them as the new generation of holocaust deniers.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/11/thomas-dilorenzo/war-crimes-denial/
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
"That’s the root of America’s foreign woes and the loss of liberty and privacy here at home. When America abandoned its paradigm of a limited-government republic in favor of a militarized, Cold War, national-security state empire, that was the fateful turn toward perpetual war, perpetual crisis, and perpetual chaos."
Hagel’s Departure Will Make No Difference
by Jacob G. Hornberger
There’s one thing about statists. For them, hope springs eternal. Despite a century of ongoing failure, chaos, and crisis, they still believe that with the right person in charge or with the right reform plan, statism will finally prove to be successful.
Time and again, we have witnessed this phenomenon in such areas as the drug war, healthcare, immigration, monetary policy, Social Security, and foreign intervention. Perpetual crises and chaos, followed by new people in charge replacing former ones, with new reforms being proposed and enacted.
But none of it ever does any good. Notwithstanding the new people and the new reforms, the chaos and crises never go away.
We are, once again, being treated to this statist spectacle with President Obama’s forced resignation of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Besieged with ongoing crises in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Korea, the war on terrorism, and Gitmo, Obama has decided that the solution is to select a new person for Secretary of Defense.
The mindset driving all this is similar to the one that drives many voters. Americans look around and see all the messes, chaos, and crises and think that the solution is to get “better” people in public office. That’s partly why so many of them get upset when people don’t vote. They think that if everyone voted, there would be a better chance of getting “better” people into public office.
So, according to today’s New York Times, President Obama is considering Michele A. Flourney and Ashton B. Carter to replace Hagel. Who are they?, you ask. According to the Times,
Both are seasoned national security professionals whose credibility among members of both parties and the Defense Department experience would be considered assets in managing the threat from the Islamic State, budget cuts and other challenges.
That’s a long way of saying that Obama is considering “better” people to be Defense Secretary — people who hopefully will devise a plan to make all those crises and all that chaos disappear.
Here’s the reality: No matter who Obama selects as Defense Secretary, the crises and the chaos will not only continue, they will continue to get worse.
That’s because all these crises and chaos didn’t occur because the “wrong” person was appointed Secretary of Defense or even because Barack Obama was elected president, as many Republicans would like to believe.
The perpetual crises and chaos are rooted in the U.S. governmental system itself, not in the people running the system, specifically the governmental apparatus we know as a “national-security state,” an apparatus that was grafted onto our original governmental system after the end of World War II and which is driven by the ephemeral concept of “national security.”
This apparatus consists of a vast military establishment, thousands of military installations both at home and abroad, a powerful and influential military-industrial complex, the CIA, and the NSA. This apparatus is the driving force behind America’s foreign policy of interventionism, including coups, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, lies, assassinations, kidnappings, torture, murders, foreign aid, partnerships with dictators, mass surveillance, secrecy, and other unsavory conduct, much of which is not discovered by the citizenry for decades.
That’s the root of America’s foreign woes and the loss of liberty and privacy here at home. When America abandoned its paradigm of a limited-government republic in favor of a militarized, Cold War, national-security state empire, that was the fateful turn toward perpetual war, perpetual crisis, and perpetual chaos.
Since the problem is systemic, it doesn’t matter who is in charge of it. A bad system will always triumph over the people running the system.
It’s not as though Americans weren’t warned. As far back as 1960, President Dwight Eisenhower pointed out that this new militarized system was totally alien to the traditional American way of life. He also said that it constituted a grave threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people.
Three years later, former President Harry Truman pointed out that the CIA had become a sinister force in American life.
And of course, everyone now knows that the NSA has been doing everything it can to keep its massive surveillance scheme over the American people top secret.
Why wouldn’t we expect this apparatus to produce perpetual crises, wars, and chaos? After all, isn’t a national-security state apparatus the governmental system that characterized the Soviet Union and other totalitarian states? Wasn’t the Soviet system riddled with the same types of perpetual crises and chaos that the United States is mired in?
There are Americans who are hoping against hope that this time things will be different. They’re thinking that this time, President Obama will appoint a “better” person to be Secretary of Defense, a person who will bring a plan that will reform or fix all the crises and chaos.
It won’t happen. Their statist hopes will be dashed, as they always are. The only way to end the crises and the chaos is to dismantle the old Cold War apparatus known as the national-security state — to restore a constitutional republic to our land by dismantling the vast military-industrial establishment, closing all the military bases all over the world and discharging the soldiers, abolishing the CIA and the NSA, and ending a foreign policy of interventionism, kidnapping, coups, torture, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, assassination, hiring Nazis, foreign aid, and meddling in the affairs of other nations.
There is no other way to restore a sense of normality to our lives, and it is a necessary prerequisite to restoring liberty to our land. And when that happens, no one will care who the Secretary of Defense is.
Link:
http://fff.org/2014/11/25/hagels-departure-will-make-no-difference/
by Jacob G. Hornberger
There’s one thing about statists. For them, hope springs eternal. Despite a century of ongoing failure, chaos, and crisis, they still believe that with the right person in charge or with the right reform plan, statism will finally prove to be successful.
Time and again, we have witnessed this phenomenon in such areas as the drug war, healthcare, immigration, monetary policy, Social Security, and foreign intervention. Perpetual crises and chaos, followed by new people in charge replacing former ones, with new reforms being proposed and enacted.
But none of it ever does any good. Notwithstanding the new people and the new reforms, the chaos and crises never go away.
We are, once again, being treated to this statist spectacle with President Obama’s forced resignation of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Besieged with ongoing crises in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Korea, the war on terrorism, and Gitmo, Obama has decided that the solution is to select a new person for Secretary of Defense.
The mindset driving all this is similar to the one that drives many voters. Americans look around and see all the messes, chaos, and crises and think that the solution is to get “better” people in public office. That’s partly why so many of them get upset when people don’t vote. They think that if everyone voted, there would be a better chance of getting “better” people into public office.
So, according to today’s New York Times, President Obama is considering Michele A. Flourney and Ashton B. Carter to replace Hagel. Who are they?, you ask. According to the Times,
Both are seasoned national security professionals whose credibility among members of both parties and the Defense Department experience would be considered assets in managing the threat from the Islamic State, budget cuts and other challenges.
That’s a long way of saying that Obama is considering “better” people to be Defense Secretary — people who hopefully will devise a plan to make all those crises and all that chaos disappear.
Here’s the reality: No matter who Obama selects as Defense Secretary, the crises and the chaos will not only continue, they will continue to get worse.
That’s because all these crises and chaos didn’t occur because the “wrong” person was appointed Secretary of Defense or even because Barack Obama was elected president, as many Republicans would like to believe.
The perpetual crises and chaos are rooted in the U.S. governmental system itself, not in the people running the system, specifically the governmental apparatus we know as a “national-security state,” an apparatus that was grafted onto our original governmental system after the end of World War II and which is driven by the ephemeral concept of “national security.”
This apparatus consists of a vast military establishment, thousands of military installations both at home and abroad, a powerful and influential military-industrial complex, the CIA, and the NSA. This apparatus is the driving force behind America’s foreign policy of interventionism, including coups, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, lies, assassinations, kidnappings, torture, murders, foreign aid, partnerships with dictators, mass surveillance, secrecy, and other unsavory conduct, much of which is not discovered by the citizenry for decades.
That’s the root of America’s foreign woes and the loss of liberty and privacy here at home. When America abandoned its paradigm of a limited-government republic in favor of a militarized, Cold War, national-security state empire, that was the fateful turn toward perpetual war, perpetual crisis, and perpetual chaos.
Since the problem is systemic, it doesn’t matter who is in charge of it. A bad system will always triumph over the people running the system.
It’s not as though Americans weren’t warned. As far back as 1960, President Dwight Eisenhower pointed out that this new militarized system was totally alien to the traditional American way of life. He also said that it constituted a grave threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people.
Three years later, former President Harry Truman pointed out that the CIA had become a sinister force in American life.
And of course, everyone now knows that the NSA has been doing everything it can to keep its massive surveillance scheme over the American people top secret.
Why wouldn’t we expect this apparatus to produce perpetual crises, wars, and chaos? After all, isn’t a national-security state apparatus the governmental system that characterized the Soviet Union and other totalitarian states? Wasn’t the Soviet system riddled with the same types of perpetual crises and chaos that the United States is mired in?
There are Americans who are hoping against hope that this time things will be different. They’re thinking that this time, President Obama will appoint a “better” person to be Secretary of Defense, a person who will bring a plan that will reform or fix all the crises and chaos.
It won’t happen. Their statist hopes will be dashed, as they always are. The only way to end the crises and the chaos is to dismantle the old Cold War apparatus known as the national-security state — to restore a constitutional republic to our land by dismantling the vast military-industrial establishment, closing all the military bases all over the world and discharging the soldiers, abolishing the CIA and the NSA, and ending a foreign policy of interventionism, kidnapping, coups, torture, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, assassination, hiring Nazis, foreign aid, and meddling in the affairs of other nations.
There is no other way to restore a sense of normality to our lives, and it is a necessary prerequisite to restoring liberty to our land. And when that happens, no one will care who the Secretary of Defense is.
Link:
http://fff.org/2014/11/25/hagels-departure-will-make-no-difference/
"The US led war against the Islamic State is a big lie."
Twenty-six Things About the Islamic State (ISIL) that Obama Does Not Want You to Know About
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
The US led war against the Islamic State is a big lie.
Going after ” Islamic terrorists”, carrying out a worldwide pre-emptive war to “Protect the American Homeland” are used to justify a military agenda.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is a creation of US intelligence. Washington’s “Counter-terrorism Agenda” in Iraq and Syria consists in Supporting the Terrorists.
The incursion of the Islamic State (IS) brigades into Iraq starting in June 2014 was part of a carefully planned military-intelligence operation supported covertly by the US, NATO and Israel.
The counter-terrorism mandate is a fiction. America is the Number One “State Sponsor of Terrorism”
The Islamic State is protected by the US and its allies. If they had wanted to eliminate the Islamic State brigades, they could have “carpet” bombed their convoys of Toyota pickup trucks when they crossed the desert from Syria into Iraq in June.
The Syro-Arabian Desert is open territory (see map below). With state of the art jet fighter aircraft (F15, F22 Raptor, CF-18) it would have been -from a military standpoint- a rapid and expedient surgical operation.
THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF AL QAEDA
1. The US has supported Al Qaeda and its affiliated organizations for almost half a centurysince the heyday of the Soviet Afghan war.
2. CIA training camps were set up in Pakistan. In the ten year period from 1982 to 1992, some 35,000 jihadists from 43 Islamic countries were recruited by the CIA to fight in the Afghan jihad.
“Advertisements, paid for from CIA funds, were placed in newspapers and newsletters around the world offering inducements and motivations to join the Jihad.”
3. Since the Reagan Administration, Washington has supported the Islamic terror network.
Ronald Reagan called the terrorists “freedom fighters”. The US supplied weapons to the Islamic brigades. It was all for “a good cause”: fighting the Soviet Union and regime change, leading to the demise of a secular government in Afghanistan.
4. Jihadist textbooks were published by the University of Nebraska. “. “The United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings”
5. Osama bin Laden, America’s bogyman and founder of Al Qaeda was recruited by the CIA in 1979 at the very outset of the US sponsored jihadist war against Afghanistan . He was 22 years old and was trained in a CIA sponsored guerilla training camp.
Al Qaeda was not behind the 9/11 Attacks. September 11, 2001 provided a justification for waging a war against Afghanistan on the grounds that Afghanistan was a state sponsor of terrorism, supportive of Al Qaeda. The 9/11 attacks were instrumental in the formulation of the “Global War on Terrorism”.
THE ISLAMIC STATE (ISIL)
6. The Islamic State (ISIL) was originally an Al Qaeda affiliated entity created by US intelligence with the support of Britain’s MI6, Israel’s Mossad, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency (GIP), Ri’āsat Al-Istikhbārāt Al-’Āmah ( رئاسة الاستخبارات العامة).
9.There are Western Special Forces and Western intelligence operatives within the ranks of the ISIL. British Special Forces and MI6 have been involved in training jihadist rebels in Syria.
10. Western military specialists on contract to the Pentagon have trained the terrorists in the use of chemical weapons.
“The United States and some European allies are using defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria, a senior U.S. official and several senior diplomats told CNN Sunday. ( CNN Report, December 9, 2012)
11. The ISIL’s practice of beheadings is part of the US sponsored terrorist training programs implemented in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
12. Recruited by America’s ally, a large number of ISIL mercenaries are convicted criminals released from Saudi prisons on condition they join the ISIL. Saudi death row inmates were recruited to join the terror brigades.
13. Israel has supported the ISIL and Al Nusrah brigades out of the Golan Heights.
Jihadist fighters have met Israeli IDF officers as well as Prime Minister Netanyahu. The IDF top brass tacitly acknowledges that “global jihad elements inside Syria” [ISIL and Al Nusrah] are supported by Israel. See image here.
SYRIA AND IRAQ
14 The ISIL are the foot soldiers of the Western military alliance. Their unspoken mandate is to wreck havoc and destruction in Syria and Iraq, acting on behalf of their US sponsors.
15. US Senator John McCain has met up with jihadist terrorist leaders in Syria. (see picture right)
16 The Islamic State (IS) militia, which is currently the alleged target of a US-NATO bombing campaign under a “counter-terrorism” mandate, continues to be supported covertly by the US. Washington and its allies continue to provide military aid to the Islamic State.
17. US and allied bombings are not targeting the ISIL, they are bombing the economic infrastructure of Iraq and Syria including factories and oil refineries.
18. The IS caliphate project is part of a longstanding US foreign policy agenda to carve up Iraq and Syria into separate territories: A Sunni Islamist Caliphate, an Arab Shia Republic, a Republic of Kurdistan.
THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM (GWOT)
19. “The Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) is presented as a “Clash of Civilizations”, a war between competing values and religions, when in reality it is an outright war of conquest, guided by strategic and economic objectives.
20 U.S. sponsored Al Qaeda terror brigades (covertly supported by Western intelligence) have been deployed in Mali, Niger, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, Somalia and Yemen.
These various affiliated Al Qaeda entities in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are CIA sponsored “intelligence assets”. They are used by Washington to wreck havoc, create internal conflicts and destabilize sovereign countries.
21 Boko Haram in Nigeria, Al Shabab in Somalia, the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) (supported by NATO in 2011), Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Jemaah Islamiah (JI) in Indonesia, among other Al Qaeda affiliated groups are supported covertly by Western intelligence.
22. The US is also supporting Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations in the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region of China. The underlying objective is to trigger political instability in Western China.
Chinese jihadists are reported to have received “terrorist training” from the Islamic State “in order to conduct attacks in China”. The declared objective of these Chinese-based jihadist entities (which serves the interests of the US) is to establish a Islamic caliphate extending into Western China. (Michel Chossudovsky, America’s War on Terrorism, Global Research, Montreal, 2005, Chapter 2).
HOMEGROWN TERRORISTS
23 The Terrorists R Us: While the US is the unspoken architect of the Islamic State, Obama’s holy mandate is to protect America against ISIL attacks.
24 The homegrown terrorist threat is a fabrication. It is promoted by Western governments and the media with a view to repealing civil liberties and installing a police state. The terror attacks by alleged jihadists and terror warnings are invariably staged events. They are used to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.
In turn, the arrests, trials and sentences of “Islamic terrorists” sustain the legitimacy of America’s Homeland Security State and law enforcement apparatus, which has become increasingly militarized.
The ultimate objective is to instill in the minds of millions of Americans that the enemy is real and the U.S. Administration will protect the lives of its citizens.
25. The “counter-terrorism” campaign against the Islamic State has contributed to the demonization of Muslims, who in the eyes of Western public opinion are increasingly associated with the jihadists.
26 Anybody who dares to question the validity of the “Global War on Terrorism” is branded a terrorist and subjected to the anti-terrorist laws.
The ultimate objective of the “Global War on Terrorism” is to subdue the citizens, totally depoliticize social life in America, prevent people from thinking and conceptualizing, from analyzing facts and challenging the legitimacy of the inquisitorial social order which rules America.
The Obama Administration has imposed a diabolical consensus with the support of its allies, not to mention the complicit role of the United Nations Security Council. The Western media has embraced the consensus; it has described the Islamic State as an independent entity, an outside enemy which threatens the Western World.
Read the rest here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/11/no_author/26-things-they-dont-want-you-to-know%E2%80%A8/
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
The US led war against the Islamic State is a big lie.
Going after ” Islamic terrorists”, carrying out a worldwide pre-emptive war to “Protect the American Homeland” are used to justify a military agenda.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is a creation of US intelligence. Washington’s “Counter-terrorism Agenda” in Iraq and Syria consists in Supporting the Terrorists.
The incursion of the Islamic State (IS) brigades into Iraq starting in June 2014 was part of a carefully planned military-intelligence operation supported covertly by the US, NATO and Israel.
The counter-terrorism mandate is a fiction. America is the Number One “State Sponsor of Terrorism”
The Islamic State is protected by the US and its allies. If they had wanted to eliminate the Islamic State brigades, they could have “carpet” bombed their convoys of Toyota pickup trucks when they crossed the desert from Syria into Iraq in June.
The Syro-Arabian Desert is open territory (see map below). With state of the art jet fighter aircraft (F15, F22 Raptor, CF-18) it would have been -from a military standpoint- a rapid and expedient surgical operation.
THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF AL QAEDA
1. The US has supported Al Qaeda and its affiliated organizations for almost half a centurysince the heyday of the Soviet Afghan war.
2. CIA training camps were set up in Pakistan. In the ten year period from 1982 to 1992, some 35,000 jihadists from 43 Islamic countries were recruited by the CIA to fight in the Afghan jihad.
“Advertisements, paid for from CIA funds, were placed in newspapers and newsletters around the world offering inducements and motivations to join the Jihad.”
3. Since the Reagan Administration, Washington has supported the Islamic terror network.
Ronald Reagan called the terrorists “freedom fighters”. The US supplied weapons to the Islamic brigades. It was all for “a good cause”: fighting the Soviet Union and regime change, leading to the demise of a secular government in Afghanistan.
4. Jihadist textbooks were published by the University of Nebraska. “. “The United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings”
5. Osama bin Laden, America’s bogyman and founder of Al Qaeda was recruited by the CIA in 1979 at the very outset of the US sponsored jihadist war against Afghanistan . He was 22 years old and was trained in a CIA sponsored guerilla training camp.
Al Qaeda was not behind the 9/11 Attacks. September 11, 2001 provided a justification for waging a war against Afghanistan on the grounds that Afghanistan was a state sponsor of terrorism, supportive of Al Qaeda. The 9/11 attacks were instrumental in the formulation of the “Global War on Terrorism”.
THE ISLAMIC STATE (ISIL)
6. The Islamic State (ISIL) was originally an Al Qaeda affiliated entity created by US intelligence with the support of Britain’s MI6, Israel’s Mossad, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency (GIP), Ri’āsat Al-Istikhbārāt Al-’Āmah ( رئاسة الاستخبارات العامة).
9.There are Western Special Forces and Western intelligence operatives within the ranks of the ISIL. British Special Forces and MI6 have been involved in training jihadist rebels in Syria.
10. Western military specialists on contract to the Pentagon have trained the terrorists in the use of chemical weapons.
“The United States and some European allies are using defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria, a senior U.S. official and several senior diplomats told CNN Sunday. ( CNN Report, December 9, 2012)
11. The ISIL’s practice of beheadings is part of the US sponsored terrorist training programs implemented in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
12. Recruited by America’s ally, a large number of ISIL mercenaries are convicted criminals released from Saudi prisons on condition they join the ISIL. Saudi death row inmates were recruited to join the terror brigades.
13. Israel has supported the ISIL and Al Nusrah brigades out of the Golan Heights.
Jihadist fighters have met Israeli IDF officers as well as Prime Minister Netanyahu. The IDF top brass tacitly acknowledges that “global jihad elements inside Syria” [ISIL and Al Nusrah] are supported by Israel. See image here.
SYRIA AND IRAQ
14 The ISIL are the foot soldiers of the Western military alliance. Their unspoken mandate is to wreck havoc and destruction in Syria and Iraq, acting on behalf of their US sponsors.
15. US Senator John McCain has met up with jihadist terrorist leaders in Syria. (see picture right)
16 The Islamic State (IS) militia, which is currently the alleged target of a US-NATO bombing campaign under a “counter-terrorism” mandate, continues to be supported covertly by the US. Washington and its allies continue to provide military aid to the Islamic State.
17. US and allied bombings are not targeting the ISIL, they are bombing the economic infrastructure of Iraq and Syria including factories and oil refineries.
18. The IS caliphate project is part of a longstanding US foreign policy agenda to carve up Iraq and Syria into separate territories: A Sunni Islamist Caliphate, an Arab Shia Republic, a Republic of Kurdistan.
THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM (GWOT)
19. “The Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) is presented as a “Clash of Civilizations”, a war between competing values and religions, when in reality it is an outright war of conquest, guided by strategic and economic objectives.
20 U.S. sponsored Al Qaeda terror brigades (covertly supported by Western intelligence) have been deployed in Mali, Niger, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, Somalia and Yemen.
These various affiliated Al Qaeda entities in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are CIA sponsored “intelligence assets”. They are used by Washington to wreck havoc, create internal conflicts and destabilize sovereign countries.
21 Boko Haram in Nigeria, Al Shabab in Somalia, the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) (supported by NATO in 2011), Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Jemaah Islamiah (JI) in Indonesia, among other Al Qaeda affiliated groups are supported covertly by Western intelligence.
22. The US is also supporting Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations in the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region of China. The underlying objective is to trigger political instability in Western China.
Chinese jihadists are reported to have received “terrorist training” from the Islamic State “in order to conduct attacks in China”. The declared objective of these Chinese-based jihadist entities (which serves the interests of the US) is to establish a Islamic caliphate extending into Western China. (Michel Chossudovsky, America’s War on Terrorism, Global Research, Montreal, 2005, Chapter 2).
HOMEGROWN TERRORISTS
23 The Terrorists R Us: While the US is the unspoken architect of the Islamic State, Obama’s holy mandate is to protect America against ISIL attacks.
24 The homegrown terrorist threat is a fabrication. It is promoted by Western governments and the media with a view to repealing civil liberties and installing a police state. The terror attacks by alleged jihadists and terror warnings are invariably staged events. They are used to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.
In turn, the arrests, trials and sentences of “Islamic terrorists” sustain the legitimacy of America’s Homeland Security State and law enforcement apparatus, which has become increasingly militarized.
The ultimate objective is to instill in the minds of millions of Americans that the enemy is real and the U.S. Administration will protect the lives of its citizens.
25. The “counter-terrorism” campaign against the Islamic State has contributed to the demonization of Muslims, who in the eyes of Western public opinion are increasingly associated with the jihadists.
26 Anybody who dares to question the validity of the “Global War on Terrorism” is branded a terrorist and subjected to the anti-terrorist laws.
The ultimate objective of the “Global War on Terrorism” is to subdue the citizens, totally depoliticize social life in America, prevent people from thinking and conceptualizing, from analyzing facts and challenging the legitimacy of the inquisitorial social order which rules America.
The Obama Administration has imposed a diabolical consensus with the support of its allies, not to mention the complicit role of the United Nations Security Council. The Western media has embraced the consensus; it has described the Islamic State as an independent entity, an outside enemy which threatens the Western World.
Read the rest here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/11/no_author/26-things-they-dont-want-you-to-know%E2%80%A8/
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