How the hell should I know?

"The best solution out of this morass, however, is not just to cut federal spending so that it equals tax revenues. Instead, the time has come for Americans to challenging the entire welfare-state paradigm and warfare-state paradigm that have brought us so many problems."

2012-02-23T15:30:00.000-05:00

Spending, not Taxation, Is the Problem

by Jacob G. Hornberger

With President Obama and various Republican presidential candidates competing to reduce corporate income taxes, it must be election time. Do you ever feel like you’re living in a Latin American country, where the presidential candidates are notorious for offering all sorts of political candy to the voters during the campaign season?

The whole notion of reducing taxes is, of course, ridiculous. Why? Because as Milton Friedman pointed out, the real level of taxation is the amount of money the government is spending. Whatever the government is spending is what the government must collect in taxes. Thus, when spending exceeds tax revenues and the government lowers taxes on one group, another group will have to make up the difference with increased taxes.

Suppose, for example, the government is spending $100,000. Suppose that there are three groups in society. Group A is paying $50,000 in taxes. Group B is paying $30,000. Group C is paying $20,000. The amount of ax revenues equals the amount of federal spending.

During campaign season, in the attempt to garner votes, presidential candidates promise to lower taxes for people in Group A by $20,000.

But that’s not all. The candidates also promise to deliver additional government welfare to all three groups, the total cost of which will be $30,000.

The mainstream media cheers! The voters are ecstatic. This is absolutely fantastic! Reduced taxes and increased benefits! Would could be better than that? We have the best presidential candidates in the whole world!

But there is obviously a big problem. With the campaign promises, government expenditures will total $130,000 (including the additional $30,000 in welfare benefits) while tax receipts (including the $30,000 reduction in taxes for Group A) now total $70,000. That’s a $60,000 deficit..

Since government gets its money through taxation, that’s obviously a problem. The government must get the additional $60,000 from someone. By lowering taxes on Group A, the government must increase taxes on Groups A or B to cover the difference.

Of course, the government could go into the capital markets and borrow the money, which is what the U.S. government, the Greek government, and many other governments have been doing for a long time. But that only delays the inevitable. When the bonds come due, taxes must be imposed on people to pay off the amount borrowed.

Another course of action, one that the U.S. government has used for decades, is simply to print the money rather than impose higher taxes on those people in Groups B and C. That’s where the Federal Reserve, or central bank, comes into play. Its job is to enable public officials to pay off government debt in money that then constantly falls in value due to its ever-increasing supply.

That’s, in fact, why the value of the U.S. dollar is worth only a fraction of what it was worth when the Fed was established. It’s also why Americans are now relegating to using coins consisting of cheap alloys rather than gold and silver. The bad money drove out the good money.

The obvious benefit to inflation is that it enables politicians to promise tax cuts and welfare increases without overt tax increases to make up the difference. Politicians know that the mainstream media and most voters will look upon them as fantastic magicians who clearly love the people. When prices begin rising in response to the debased currency, the politicians know that the mainstream media and most people will never figure out that it is the government’s doing. They’ll inevitably blame the rising prices on “big corporations,” “greed,” or “market forces.”

The real problem facing our nation is the out-of-control spending — spending that far exceeds the amount of taxes being collected. That has led and continued to lead to out-of- control debt, which inevitably leads to inflationary debasement of the money supply by the Federal Reserve.

As long as spending continues to soar, the economic problems facing the American people will continue to grow, just as they will continue to grow for the people of Greece.

The best solution out of this morass, however, is not just to cut federal spending so that it equals tax revenues. Instead, the time has come for Americans to challenging the entire welfare-state paradigm and warfare-state paradigm that have brought us so many problems.

Repealing and dismantling both the welfare state and the warfare state would mean no more socialist programs, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and no more overseas military empire or domestic military industrial complex. It would mean no more Federal Reserve. And it was mean no more income taxation, rendering moot political promises to reduce income taxes at election time.

Link:
http://www.fff.org/blog/index.asp

" How it all plays out isn’t known. Technocrats run Greece. They may cancel April elections and stay in power. Public sentiment remains the wild card. Impossible to bear pain may become uncontainable rage. More than buildings may burn."

2012-02-23T14:44:00.000-05:00

Greece: The Epicenter of Global Pillage

by Stephen Lendman

Predatory bankers make serial killers look good by comparison. Their business model creates crises to facilitate grand theft, financial terrorism, and debt entrapment.

They steal all material wealth and then some. They systematically rob investors and strip mine economies for self-enrichment.

They demand they get paid first. They hold nations hostage to assure it. They turn crises into catastrophes.

They leave mass impoverishment, high unemployment, neo-serfdom, and human wreckage in their wake.

Their Federal Reserve/ECB/IMF/World Bank/political class lackeys do their bidding.

They’re more dangerous than standing armies. They wage war by other means. They cause “demographic shrinkage, shortened life spans, emigration and capital flight,” explains Michael Hudson.

They’re a malignancy ravaging societies and humanity. Greece is the epicenter of what’s metastasizing globally. The latest bailout deal highlights out-of-control pillage.

On February 20, New York Times writer Stephen Castle headlined, “Europe Agrees on New Bailout to Help Greece Avoid Default,” saying:

On Tuesday morning, Luxembourg president/Euro Group head Jean-Claude Juncker announced:

“We have reached a far-reaching agreement on Greece’s new program and private-sector involvement. The new program provides a comprehensive blueprint for putting the public finances and the economy of Greece back on a sustainable footing.”

In fact, it assures human misery and economic destruction, not restoration. It’s a deal only bankers can love. It demands Greece reduce its debt from 160% to about 120% of GDP by 2020, but how incurring more debt achieves it wasn’t explained.

It also demands sacking 150,000 public workers by 2015, slashing private sector wages 20%, lowering monthly minimum wages from 750 to 600 euros, cutting unemployment benefits from 460 to 360 euros, and reducing pensions 15% en route to eliminating them altogether.

Media reports said bondholders agreed to a 53.5% face value haircut – the equivalent of losing 75% overall. In fact, only 30% of toxic assets are involved. Most held aren’t touched. Greece must make good on them, no matter the impossible burden.

Private lenders will swap current holdings for new lower face value/lower interest rate bonds. Representing bondholders, Institute of International Finance’s Charles Dallara and BNP Pariba’s Jean Lemierre called the deal “solid….for investors, a fair deal for all parties involved.”

In other words, raping Greece for bankers is “solid” and “fair.” Its citizens had no say. Without rights, what’s best for them wasn’t discussed.

They’re left with huge wage and benefit cuts combined with mass layoffs. Greece faces less tax revenue to cover domestic priorities. In late 2011 alone, its economy shrank 7%. January revenues fell 7% year-over-year. Value-added tax receipts decreased 18.7% from last year. Death spiral financial deterioration continues monthly.

Moreover, the nation’s $650 billion debt burden is double the reported amount. The more it increases, the harder it is to service and repay, the more future aid’s needed, and deeper the country’s economic catastrophe heads for total collapse.

The deal escrows $170 billion to assure bankers get paid. Investment advisor Patrick Young got it right telling Russia Today that dealmakers don’t trust Greece living up to terms because its track record is so bad.

“So we now have a situation,” said Young, “where Greece said we’ll do anything you want, but the problem is” too great a burden to bear. “It’s a catastrophe pushing people to the brink of starvation.”

No matter. Finance ministers will give Greece some money on dreadful terms “where like a nine year old child, every Friday it has to go to daddy, say it’s done its homework, say it’s been a good boy, can it please have next week’s pocket money to pay its civil servants. (It’s) a horrible loss of sovereignty.”

Troika power runs Greece – the IMF, ECB and EU. They’re predators saying pay up or else.

Reports say its government will change its constitution to prioritize repaying debt ahead of vital domestic obligations.

Other terms involve lenders cutting interest rates on bailout loans by 0.5% over the next five years, and 1.5% thereafter. An estimated 1.4 billion euros would be saved by 2020.

The ECB will compensate by distributing profits on its 40 billion Greek debt holdings. In addition, Eurozone countries will contribute their Greek bond income through the end of the decade.

Still to be decided is EU/IMF burden sharing. Both agreed to contribute. Not discussed or considered is leaving 11 million Greeks on their own out of luck. They have three choices – starve, leave, or rebel.

The Rot Beneath the Surface

On February 21, Financial Times contributor Peter Spiegel headlined, “Greek debt nightmare laid bare,” saying:

“A ‘strictly confidential’ report on Greece’s debt projections prepared for eurozone finance ministers reveals Athens’ rescue programme is way off track and suggests the Greek government may need another bail-out” soon after the latest one.

Even under the most optimistic scenario, imposed austerity’s punishing Greece so severely, its burden’s impossible to bear.

Agreed on terms are “self-defeating.” Forced austerity elevates debt levels, weakens the economy, and prevents Greece “from ever returning to the financial markets by scaring off future private investors.”

As a result, continued financial infusions are needed. Double or more the agreed amount’s required. Current problems increase exponentially toward total collapse, default and bankruptcy.

The report explained Greece’s impossible burden. It also “paints a troubling outlook for the debt restructuring, expected to begin this week.” Bond swapping creates “a class of privileged investors who will chase off” others when Greece tries selling fixed income securities at market. Germany, the Netherlands and Finland opposed a deal doomed to fail.

The report warned “Greek authorities may not be able to deliver structural reforms and policy adjustments at the (envisioned) pace.” Perhaps never with shrinking revenues unable to cover liabilities.

It’s “now uncertain whether market access can be restored in the immediate post-programme years.” Left unsaid was restoring it’s impossible ever. Greece faces protracted deep depression. Its life force is ebbing. Only its obituary remains to be written.

A Final Comment

Greece’s debt deal provides a model for future European sovereign restructurings. It’s one of six or more troubled countries. Portugal looks like the next domino to fall, but Spain, Italy, Ireland, and others may follow.

Moreover, implementing Greece’s deal entails problems. Reality may prevent fulfilling promises. If April elections are held, new MPs may balk. Declaring a debt moratorium, defaulting and leaving the Eurozone are options.

Moreover, private lenders may object. Legal challenges may follow. A sweetheart banker deal may unravel. Pressuring China and Japan to help isn’t working. China Investment Corporation, the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, and Chinese central bankers aren’t willing to buy troubled European sovereign debt. According to one official, “(w)e aren’t stupid.”

How it all plays out isn’t known. Technocrats run Greece. They may cancel April elections and stay in power. Public sentiment remains the wild card. Impossible to bear pain may become uncontainable rage. More than buildings may burn.

If political Greece doesn’t care, people must act on their own. Revolutionary seeds are planted. They can erupt any time. Change only comes bottom up. It’s long past time to get started.

Link:
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/02/22/greece-the-epicenter-of-global-pillage/

Protest sign of the day...

2012-02-23T14:32:00.000-05:00

"A small group of big hitters control Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, our government and our economy. Just ask members of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission or the Bilderberg Group. They know what is going on because they help make policy, and arrange to get it executed."

2012-02-23T14:31:00.000-05:00

Stop The Pillaging of America

Bob Chapman

One of the things we learned in almost 30 years in the brokerage business is that self-regulation does not work. The players are simply too abusive, greedy and prove to take the regulations to the very edge. We saw that at MF global. All markets are rigged today. Twenty-five years ago perhaps 80% were rigged. The SEC and CFTC are well aware of this and in many cases aid and abet in the crimes. The crimes are too many to mention, but among the leading problems are complicity in front running and naked shorting. There is no such thing as an efficient market hypothesis. Just another phase to led you off into the forest.

A small group of big hitters control Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, our government and our economy. Just ask members of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission or the Bilderberg Group. They know what is going on because they help make policy, and arrange to get it executed. Wall Street is one long litany of fraud, where the guilty seldom go to jail and the tables are squared via fines, usually paid by the firms and not the individuals. While the SEC and CFTC investigations go nowhere, or don’t happen at all, they relish charging small and medium sized brokerage houses to justify their existence. That is when they are not pursuing some newsletter writer, all of whom cannot afford top legal help, or any legal help at all. The whole game is crooked and has been for many years. It is government and its agencies and Wall Street and baking that controls your entire lives. Their power is immense and that is how they get away with what they get away with.

The same is true with Congress 90% of which are bought and paid for via campaign contributions and other artifices such as insider trading. That is why we have free trade and globalization, offshoring and outsourcing. Congress and those running for the office and president don’t even talk about it, yet, in 12 years it has cost 12 million jobs and 450,000 businesses. Obviously that is not a serious matter for Congress. Or should we say those who pay Congress, transnational conglomerates, want free trade just as it is. Our nation could not compete with slave labor countries in 1795 and they cannot compete now. There has to be a leveling force, a balance that stops the pillaging of America, which destroys economic independence and eventually sovereignty. We are a step away from post industrial dependency and bankrupt as well. Congressional complicity stands out like a beacon, when these asset strippers do not have to pay taxes on foreign earnings. Who has ever heard of something so unreasonable? Instead of lowering corporate taxes as other nations had done we eliminated taxation, so transnational corporations could compete. This is what we call modern colonialism.

After the debacles of the 1790s and British colonialism, the US switched to a tariff system, which worked quite well until about 25 years ago. Then came WTO, NAFTA and CAFTA, the result of which you are witnessing today. The system of tariffs allowed government to fund itself via exercise taxes funded by foreign corporations, which kept Americans from having to pay income taxes for about 100 years. Tariffs are part of what made America great and we cannot be great again without tariffs, it is as simple as that. You cannot have prosperity giving away 12 million jobs in 12 years. As we have seen you cannot have persistent and growing trade deficits year after year and not go broke. Here we are 217 years later doing the same stupid thing over again. The main reason for this is that the public is not paying attention and Congress does whatever their paymasters tell them to do.

The debt position of the US deteriorates each day and with it not only the dollar, the world’s reserve currency, deteriorates versus other currencies and gold and silver. Having the dollar as the world’s reserve currency gives many benefits to Americans and if that advantage is lost so is what is left of American prosperity. Are we to follow in the footsteps of Greece? It is wrong to say that tariffs cause depressions. They were increased six times over the past 200 years and no depression followed. If we do not get tariffs America cannot survive as a world leader.

If a written document exists outlining the deliberate default of Greece and has been in the possession of two Wall Street banks for a month then the fall of Greece has been in the works for some time. The date of March 23rd was supposedly the date for default. The rating agencies are supposed to be the trigger for the default. The 23rd is a Friday and on Saturday Greek bank accounts are to be frozen. If that is true all Greeks should have their euros and any other currencies and valuables out of all Greek banks.

Several months ago we stated that we did not know what was really going on behind the scenes in Germany. Our question was did they really want to save Greece and perhaps the euro, or were they interested as the majority of Germans are, in dumping the euro and the EU? Over the past week commentaries were all over the place, many of them off the wall. We have seen delays for 2-1/2 years, but nothing like we have seen over the past month. It is like most non-Greeks had monkey wrenches to throw into the gears of progress. The US says they do not want to get any deeper into Europe’s problems, as the IMF offers a pittance. The Germans and Schäuble these past 2 weeks had nothing but negative comments and commands trying to keep moving the goal posts, so to cast confusion among Greek negotiators. We are told on Saturday that on Thursday a deal was cut. Mrs. Merkel wants to replace the Greek government with a EU commissioner. In German it is called Gauleiter. We guess they want to have Greece as a subsidiary of Germany...

Read more:
http://theinternationalforecaster.com/International_Forecaster_Weekly/Stop_The_Pillaging_of_America

Pentagon: OK to target US citizens...

2012-02-23T14:25:00.000-05:00

Pentagon Says U.S. Citizens With Terrorism Ties Can Be Targeted in Strikes

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration’s top Pentagon lawyer on Wednesday said that American citizens who join Al Qaeda can be targeted for killing and that courts should have no role in reviewing executive branch decisions about whether someone has met such criteria.

“Belligerents who also happen to be U.S. citizens do not enjoy immunity where non-citizen belligerents are valid military objectives,” said Jeh C. Johnson, the Defense Department general counsel, in a speech at Yale Law School...

Read more:
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/pentagon-says-u-s-citizens-with-terrorism-ties-can-be-targeted-in-strikes/

War and Inflation - Ron Paul is right...

2012-02-23T10:42:00.002-05:00

War With Iran A Terrible Idea - Here's Why...

2012-02-23T08:08:00.000-05:00

"Iran Has The Third Largest Jewish Population In The World Behind Only US & Israel"

2012-02-23T08:03:00.000-05:00

Pat Buchanan on the American Empire...

2012-02-23T07:55:00.000-05:00

If the US Is Going To Survive, It Must Dismantle the Empire

And bring the troops home, says Pat Buchanan

Recently fired from MSNBC for being anti-war and politically incorrect, Pat sits down with Russia Today to discuss the US's Islamic wars over the last 20 years. The former US presidential advisor and candidate, Buchanan's most recent book is Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? and he is the subject of a new biography by Timothy Stanley, The Crusader: The Life and Tumultuous Times of Pat Buchanan.

A new war in the Middle East will be a disaster for the US and for the world economy, he says. "I opposed the Desert Storm operation in 1991 cleaning Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait because, I said, 'This would only be the first Arab-American war.'" Looking at the number of conflicts in the Islam world that America is taking part in now, one cannot but admit that Buchanan was right 20 years ago. "You cannot replicate the Middle West in the Middle East," Pat Buchanan concluded. From the time of the Cold War the US has military bases all over the world. Today, running a budget deficit of 10 per cent of its GDP, America simply cannot afford to continue "to carry this enormous burden, defending 40 or 50 countries around the world," Buchanan says, "We have to bring troops home." Getting rid of these bases essentially means dismantling the American Empire to help the US survive beyond 2025. America's crusade under the banner of ending tyranny in the world is "utterly utopian".

Link:
http://lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan218.html

"What if you are only allowed to vote because it doesn't make a difference?"

2012-02-23T07:50:00.000-05:00

What If Democracy Is Bunk?

by Andrew P. Napolitano

What if you are only allowed to vote because it doesn't make a difference? What if no matter how you vote, the elites get to have it their way? What if "one person, one vote" is just a fiction created by the government to induce your compliance? What if democracy is dangerous to personal freedom? What if democracy erodes the people's understanding of natural rights and the foundations of government, and instead turns elections into beauty contests?

What if democracy allows the government to do anything it wants, as long as more people bother to show up at the voting booth to support it than to oppose it? What if the purpose of democracy is to convince people that they could prosper not through the creation of wealth but through theft from others? What if the only moral way to acquire wealth – aside from inheritance – is through voluntary economic activity? What if the government persuaded you that you could acquire wealth through political activity? What if economic activity included all the productive and peaceful things we do? What if political activity included all the parasitical and destructive things the government does?

What if governments were originally established to protect people's freedom, but always turn into political and imperialist enterprises that seek to expand their power, increase their territory and heighten their control of the population? What if the idea that we need a government to take care of us is actually a fiction? What if our strength as individuals and durability as a culture are contingent not on the strength of the government but on the amount of freedom we have from the government?

What if we're seeing civil unrest around the world precisely because government is out of control? What if the cocktail of big government and democracy brings dependence and destruction? What if big government destroys people's motivations and democracy convinces them that the only motivation they need is to vote and go along with whatever the government does?

What if the Republican primaries we're seeing unfold aren't actually as democratic as they may appear to be? What if the results you have seen from the states that have voted thus far don't match the composition of the delegates those states send to the Tampa convention this summer because the polls aren't what counts, but what counts are the secret meetings that come after the voting? What if Joe Stalin was right when he said the most powerful person in the world is the guy who counts the votes?

What if the greatest tyrant in history lives among us? What if that tyrant always gets its way, no matter what the laws are or what the Constitution says? What if that tyrant is the majority of voters? What if the tyranny of the majority in a democracy recognizes no limits on its power?

What if the government misinforms voters so as to justify anything the government wants to do? What if the government bribes people with the money it prints? What if it gives entitlements to the poor, tax breaks to the middle class and bailouts to the rich just to keep all of us dependent upon it? What if a vibrant republic requires not just the democratic process of voting, but also informed and engaged voters who understand first principles of limited government and free-market economics, and the divine origin of natural rights?

What if we could free ourselves from the yoke of big government through a campaign of education and information and personal courage that leads to a revolutionary return to first principles? What if the establishment doesn't want this? What if the government remains the same no matter who wins elections?

What if because of Ron Paul's presidential campaign, because he isn't campaigning just for votes as his competition is, because he is educating the population and winning the hearts and minds of a once free people and inspiring them to fight for their freedom once more, freedom wins? What if we can be free again? What will it take to make that happen?

Link:
http://lewrockwell.com/napolitano/napolitano42.1.html

"...tyrants around the world have conclusively shown that they will stop at nothing to prevent the free flow of information among their subjects."

2012-02-23T07:42:00.000-05:00

Obama Quiet as UN & Dictators Push to Control Internet

Written by Alex Newman

A new effort to hand control over the Internet to the United Nations is underway as oppressive regimes such as the communist dictatorship ruling mainland China clamor for more censorship and regulation of the World Wide Web.

The Obama administration has remained silent so far, having failed to even select a leader to defend U.S. interests at upcoming talks on the subject. But critics of the global move are already striking back, warning that transferring Internet governance to the UN would be a massive blow to freedom and prosperity for the whole planet.

Today, the online world is largely governed and regulated by a decentralized network of non-profit groups, most of which are based in America where the Internet was born. And private-sector interests — companies such as Google, Facebook, and others — still dominate the web at present.

The “multi-stakeholder” approach, as it is known, has kept the Internet free in most of the world for over a decade while revolutionizing business, information, communications, and even civilization itself. But all of that could change soon, at least if despots of various varieties — from communists in Beijing to Islamists in Tehran — get their way.

Later this month in Geneva, Switzerland, governments will gather to begin negotiations on a potential treaty that could crush the free flow of information online, according to experts. The diplomatic process will help lay the foundation for the upcoming “World Conference on International Telecommunications” in Dubai at the end of the year.

Under the auspices of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a UN body, a collection of mostly dictatorial regimes is expected to push for a complete overhaul of existing Internet governance. Everything from pay structures and rates to cyber security and data protection could end up under an international regime, according to experts.

“A top-down, centralized, international regulatory overlay is antithetical to the architecture of the Net,” wrote Robert McDowell, a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), in a piece for the Wall Street Journal. “Any attempts to expand intergovernmental powers over the Internet — no matter how incremental or seemingly innocuous — should be turned back.”

According to McDowell, who stood up to the Obama administration’s FCC power grabs in 2010 when it sought control over the Internet under the guise of “net neutrality,” pro-regulation forces are far more organized and energized than supporters of a free Internet — for now at least. And they need only a simple majority of national governments to implement their schemes through the UN, he said.

“We must awake from our slumber and engage before it is too late,” McDowell warned in the piece. “Not only do these developments have the potential to affect the daily lives of all Americans, they also threaten freedom and prosperity across the globe.”

But despite the renewed push for a global Internet regime and the attention it has received in recent days, despotic regimes’ fixation with subduing online freedom is hardly a new phenomenon. The Chinese dictatorship, for example, has been censoring and monitoring the web within China since 1996.

As The New American reported in 2010, despots the world over have for years been fiendishly seeking new ways to tame the largely unregulated flow of information over the Internet. And they seem to have come to an agreement even back then: UN control is the way to go.

Led by the Brazilian government, a broad coalition including communist regimes and Islamic dictatorships ruling countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, and others was agitating to create a UN-led, government-only regulatory regime to subdue the Internet. And while a few Western governments and companies spoke out mildly against the scheme, the chorus calling for global regulation was deafening.

"The governments are located in the center of this process," Chinese “Ministry of Industry and Information” representative Tang Zicai was quoted as saying. "This process cannot be accomplished without the meaningful participation of the governments." The Islamic military dictatorship ruling the north-African nation of Mauritania even called openly for global censorship of Internet content.

And strongmen around the world have not given up yet. In a widely quoted interview from last June, for example, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin touted “establishing international control over the Internet using the monitoring and supervisory capabilities of the International Telecommunication Union.”

Like many other governments around the world, the regime ruling Russia is not happy about the current situation — especially as most of the key Internet stakeholders are based in America. And so, the “solution” — for dictators and oppressive rulers around the world, at least — is to shift that power into the hands of a global body, or at least to national governments.

“If we are going to talk about the democratization of international relations, I think a critical sphere is information exchange and global control over such exchange,” Putin said in the interview. “This is certainly a priority on the international agenda.”

ITU officials, of course, claim the UN body is not aiming to regulate the Internet. But the fact that oppressive governments around the world would like to rein in online freedom is undeniable. Many already do.

Even in the UK, the government-funded BBC recently carried a piece by Professor Alan Woodward of the University of Surrey saying the Internet was “broken” and “we need to start over.” “While not a popular view, I think that the current Internet can only survive if adequate global governance is applied and that single, secure technology is mandated,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers and the Obama administration have been working overtime to implement various regulatory schemes. This year, Congress tried to push through a dangerous lobbyist-supported censorship bill that led to a global uproar. And last year, the President signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) treaty.

“The Internet does need stewards, and the Obama administration has spectacularly demonstrated that it is unfit to carry out that stewardship," noted Cory Doctorow on the popular technology blog BoingBoing, commenting on the push for global controls. Doctorow also called for an Internet free from political interference, which he said could not be achieved under the UN or Obama. "This is the administration that gave us SOPA and the TPP, that argues that ACTA can be put into law without an act of Congress, and that has made a habit of extra-judicially seizing .com and .net domains on the sloppy say-so of its political donors from the entertainment industry," he warned.

A few analysts have claimed in recent days that the threat of UN Internet regulation is being overblown. But tyrants around the world have conclusively shown that they will stop at nothing to prevent the free flow of information among their subjects.

If the global body seems like the best way to control the web — and it does, for now at least — there can be little doubt that the planet’s largely totalitarian-minded rulers will try their best to usher in a UN-run Internet regime. And according to experts, supporters of online liberty must get involved now if they hope to win the fight.

Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/tech-mainmenu-30/computers/10953-obama-quiet-as-un-a-dictators-push-to-control-internet

"Unfortunately, another major financial crisis is rapidly approaching and economic conditions in the United States are going to get a lot worse."

2012-02-23T07:36:00.000-05:00

55 Interesting Facts About The U.S. Economy In 2012

How is the U.S. economy doing in 2012? Unfortunately, it is not doing nearly as well as the mainstream media would have you believe. Yes, things have stabilized for the moment but this bubble of false hope will not last for long. The long-term trends that are ripping our economy and our financial system to shreds continue unabated. When you step back and look at the broader picture, it is hard to deny that we are in really bad shape and that things are rapidly getting worse. Later on in this article you will find a list of interesting facts that show the true state of the U.S. economy. Hopefully many of you will find this list to be a useful tool that you can share with your family and friends. Each day the foundations of our economy crumble a little bit more, and we need to wake up as many Americans as we can to what is really going on while there is still time. We have accumulated way too much debt, we consume far more wealth than we produce, millions of our jobs are being shipped overseas, our big cities are decaying, family budgets are being squeezed more than ever, poverty is rampant and we have raised several generations of Americans that expect the government to fix all of their problems. The U.S. economy is at a crossroads, and the decisions that the American people make in 2012 are going to be incredibly important.

The statistics listed below are presented without much commentary. They pretty much speak for themselves.

After reading this list, it will be hard for anyone to argue that we are on the right track.

The following are 55 interesting facts about the U.S. economy in 2012....

#1 As you read this, there are more than 6 million mortgages in the United States that are overdue.

#2 In January, U.S. home prices were the lowest that they have been in more than a decade.

#3 In Florida right now, some drivers are paying nearly 6 dollars for a gallon of gas.

#4 On average, you could buy about 10 gallons of gas for an hour of work back in the mid-90s. Today, the average hour of work will get you less than 6 gallons of gas.

#5 Sadly, 43 percent of all American families spend more than they earn each year.

#6 According to Gallup, the unemployment rate was at 8.3% in mid-January but rose to 9.0% in mid-February.

#7 The percentage of working age Americans that have jobs is not increasing. The employment to population ratio has stayed very steady (hovering between 58% and 59%) since the beginning of 2010.

#8 If you gathered together all of the workers that are "officially" unemployed in the United States into one nation, they would constitute the 68th largest country in the entire world.

#9 When Barack Obama first took office, the number of "long-term unemployed workers" in the United States was approximately 2.6 million. Today, that number is sitting at 5.6 million.

#10 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is hovering close to an all-time record high.

#11 According to Reuters, approximately 23.7 million American workers are either unemployed or underemployed right now.

#12 There are about 88 million working age Americans that are not employed and that are not looking for employment. That is an all-time record high.

#13 According to CareerBuilder, only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012.

#14 Back in the year 2000, about 20 percent of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs. Today, about 5 percent of all jobs in America are manufacturing jobs.

#15 The United States has lost an average of approximately 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

#16 Amazingly, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been shut down since 2001.

#17 According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.

#18 During the Obama administration, worker health insurance costs have risen by 23 percent.

#19 An all-time record 49.9 million Americans do not have any health insurance at all at this point, and the percentage of Americans covered by employer-based health plans has fallen for 11 years in a row.

#20 According to the New York Times, approximately 100 million Americans are either living in poverty or in "the fretful zone just above it".

#21 In the United States today, corporate profits are at an all-time high. The percentage of Americans that are living in "extreme poverty" is also at an all-time high according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

#22 In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

#23 The poorest 50 percent of all Americans now collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

#24 The number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent since 2007.

#25 According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4% of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1% of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6% of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6% of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.

#26 Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased from 32 million to 46 million.

#27 As the economy has slowed down, so has the number of marriages. According to a Pew Research Center analysis, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.

#28 In 1984, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older was 10 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger. Today, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older is 47 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger.

#29 If you can believe it, 37 percent of all U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 35 have a net worth of zero or less than zero.

#30 After adjusting for inflation, U.S. college students are borrowing about twice as much money as they did a decade ago.

#31 According to the Student Loan Debt Clock, total student loan debt in the United States will surpass the 1 trillion dollar mark at some point in 2012. If you went out right now and starting spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.

#32 Today, 46% of all Americans carry a credit card balance from month to month.

#33 Incredibly, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.

#34 The average interest rate on a credit card that is carrying a balance is now up to 13.10 percent.

#35 Of the U.S. households that do have credit card debt, the average amount of credit card debt is an astounding $15,799.

#36 Overall, Americans are carrying a grand total of $798 billion in credit card debt. If you were alive when Jesus was born and you spent a million dollars every single day since then, you still would not have spent $798 billion by now.

#37 It may be hard to believe, but the truth is that consumer debt in America has increased by a whopping 1700% since 1971.

#38 At this point, about 70 percent of all auto purchases in the United States involve an auto loan.

#39 In the United States today, 45 percent of all auto loans are made to subprime borrowers.

#40 Mortgage debt as a percentage of GDP has more than tripled since 1955.

#41 According to a recent study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.

#42 To get the same purchasing power that you got out of $20.00 back in 1970 you would have to have more than $116 today.

#43 When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850. Today an ounce of gold costs more than $1700 an ounce.

#44 The number of Americans that are not paying federal incomes taxes is at an all-time high.

#45 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.

#46 The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.

#47 During 2012, the U.S. government must roll over nearly 3 trillion dollars of old debt.

#48 The U.S. debt to GDP ratio has now reached 101 percent.

#49 At the moment, the U.S. national debt is sitting at a grand total of $15,419,800,222,325.15.

#50 The U.S. national debt is now more than 22 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.

#51 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

#52 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.

#53 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.

#54 Right now, the U.S. national debt is increasing by about 150 million dollars every single hour.

#55 Spending by the federal government accounted for about 2 percent of GDP back in 1800. It accounted for 23.8 percent in 2011, and according to former U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker, it will account for 36.8 percent of GDP by 2040.

Bad news, eh?

But it isn't just our economy that is decaying.

We are witnessing a tremendous amount of social decay as well. As I wrote about the other day, America is rapidly decomposing right in front of our eyes.

When the water level of a river drops far enough, it will reveal rocks that have been hidden from view for a very long time. Well, a similar thing is happening in America right now. For decades, our debt-fueled prosperity has masked a lot of the social decay that has been going on.

But now that our prosperity is evaporating, a lot of frightening stuff is being revealed.

Unfortunately, another major financial crisis is rapidly approaching and economic conditions in the United States are going to get a lot worse.

So what is our country going to look like when that happens?

That is a very good question.

Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/55-interesting-facts-about-the-u-s-economy-in-2012

All Of Ron Paul's Highlights At The GOP CNN Arizona Debate...

2012-02-23T07:17:00.003-05:00

I bet we should all be real scared now. More ninja terrorists planning to attack America...

2012-02-22T14:33:00.002-05:00

CNN: Iran Has Female NINJAS That Could Be Used As ASSASSINS! DUN! DUN! DUN!

Remember these ninjas? Be afraid my friends. Be very afraid...

LEAKED : NEW AL QAEDA VIDEO TRAINING

How government regualtions hurt business...

2012-02-22T14:27:00.000-05:00

Regulations Harm Small Business and Protects Corporations

James Hall

The prospects for conducting commerce are never an easy task. The hurdles to start a business much less stay competitive demands the greatest skill and fortitude. Innovation and inspiration often is the best course for those bold enough to become an employer.

The idea that a level playing field exists for all comers is preposterous. The entire macrocosm for business rests upon separating your enterprise from that of your rivalries. Such is a basic lesson for those brave or foolish enough to enter the arena.

Courtney Rubin cites the following in Inc. Magazine,

“Businesses with 20 employees or fewer pay 36 percent more than their larger counterparts (defined as those with 500 or more employees), says the report – called “The Impact of Regulatory Costs on Small Firms” — from the SBA’s Office of Advocacy. This is because a lot of costs are fixed — the same whether you have two employees or 2,000. Total annual cost of following the rules for a small business: $10,585 per employee, or about $2,830 more than big business. Businesses with 20 to 499 employees paid about $7,454 per employee, or about $300 less than the largest companies.

The report estimates that 89 percent of all firms in the U.S. employ fewer than 20 workers. By comparison, large firms account for only 0.3 percent of all U.S. firms.

Says the report:

“If federal regulations place a differentially large cost on small business, this potentially causes inefficiencies in the structure of American enterprises, and the relocation of production facilities to less regulated countries, and adversely affects the international competitiveness of domestically produced American products and services.”

The screams for jobs, jobs and jobs would give the hint that federal, state and local business policy would favor the productive engine of employment.

However, in the real world of political influence and favoritism only the well connected get the advantages.

Government regulations are meant to stifle competition. The legislative process graces those who are well connected, financially heeled and schooled in the art of writing the regulations. Few small businesses have a legal department or experienced lobbyists.

In Big Business and Big Government, Timothy P. Carney writes,

“As the federal government has progressively become larger over the decades, every significant introduction of government regulation, taxation, and spending has been to the benefit of some big business.”

Mr. Carney presents compelling evidence on the history of this axiom, in his article. The net result from this covert partnership of interest and rewards is the never ending campaign contribution cycle that finances every election.

The small businessman seldom has the resources or crony relationships to wage off the grand strategies of the giant corporate model.

Their advantage stems not from mastering sound and creative business practices. On the contrary, the major corporations use their brute force to buy or stamp out any contender that dares compete for market share.

Access to capital or the lack thereof, dooms most small businesses. The burden of regulations only compounds the severity of the survival rate and burns up reserved funds which often cannot be replenished. How can small business compete? – offers this insight.

“Small business can’t control mass-market designs or brands, but we are well-placed to do what big business can’t: Get inside the hearts and minds of our customers.”

As true as that advice resonates, the regulation landmines prevent small businesses from operating on a scale that can challenge all the advantages of the state sponsored conglomerates.

The hard truth is that free enterprise is dead and in its place is an administered economy designed to suppress individually owned and managed businesses.

The prospects of reestablishing a political atmosphere that favors small business as the primary mechanism of job creation is remote as long as the transnational global and corporatist culture exists.

Bigger is not better in most cases. Bigger usually means there are fewer companies in the same industry, accompanied with shrinkage in good paying jobs.

Theodore F. di Stefano suggests four steps that small businesses need to focus upon,

1. Creating a Niche

A niche is a special quality or group of qualities that sets the small business apart from its larger competitors. It has also been described as a small, specialized business market.

2. Employee Training

If a small business is going to act as though the customer is truly special, its employees must be trained accordingly. Also, they must work for managers whom they respect and who respect them. They must not be put on the “floor” to meet customers until they are thoroughly familiar with their product, be it food, auto services or any other product.

3. Management Philosophy

The owners of a small business must know the goals (mission) of their business and how they intend to achieve these goals. They should be clear about what segment of the market is their target and how they intend to appeal to that segment.

4. Good In-House Financial Management

You must be particularly aware of your current and projected cash position. And, you should certainly create a realistic annual budget for your company that serves as a financial road map for the future.

Now these common sense suggestions may assist in certain instances, but in a service economy, living wage jobs are rare at best.

The regulations that drive business offshore also destroy a viable income scale. Reinstituting an American industrial and manufacturing base is a necessary step to climb out of this deep hole.

The regulatory climate must reflect policies that will benefit American workers. Open borders, that encourage illegal immigration, are a conscious regulatory policy that displaces domestic employees.

The regulations that slant and foster corporatist preference is the new feudalism. Is it not time to put Americans back to work?

Without a political will to champion free enterprise and replace the corporate-state, only more suffering will thrive. It is up to the public to make this challenge the centerpiece for the 2012 elections.

Link:
http://theintelhub.com/2012/02/22/regulations-harm-small-business-and-protects-corporations/

Why don't we just spy on the FBI?

2012-02-22T14:24:00.000-05:00

FBI organizes almost all terror plots in the US

The Federal Bureau of Investigation employs upwards of 15,000 undercover agents today, ten times what they had on the roster back in 1975.

If you think that’s a few spies too many — spies earning as much as $100,000 per assignment — one doesn’t have to go too deep into their track record to see their accomplishments. Those agents are responsible for an overwhelming amount of terrorist stings that have stopped major domestic catastrophes in the vein of 9/11 from happening on American soil.

Another thing those agents are responsible for, however, is plotting those very schemes.

The FBI has in recent years used trained informants not just to snitch on suspected terrorists, but to set them up from the get-go. A recent report put together by Mother Jones and the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkley analyses some striking statistics about the role of FBI informants in terrorism cases that the Bureau has targeted in the decade since the September 11 attacks.

The report reveals that the FBI regularly infiltrates communities where they suspect terrorist-minded individuals to be engaging with others. Regardless of their intentions, agents are sent in to converse within the community, find suspects that could potentially carry out “lone wolf” attacks and then, more or less, encourage them to do so. By providing weaponry, funds and a plan, FBI-directed agents will encourage otherwise-unwilling participants to plot out terrorist attacks, only to bust them before any events fully materialize.

Additionally, one former high-level FBI officials speaking to Mother Jones says that, for every informant officially employed by the bureau, up to three unofficial agents are working undercover.

The FBI has used those informants to set-up and thus shut-down several of the more high profile would-be attacks in recent years. The report reveals that the Washington DC Metro bombing plot, the New York City subway plot, the attempt to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower and dozens more were all orchestrated by FBI agents. In fact, reads the report, only three of the more well-known terror plots of the last decade weren’t orchestrated by FBI-involved agents.

The report reveals that in many of the stings, important meetings between informants and the unknowing participants are left purposely unrecorded, as to avoid any entrapment charges that could cause the case to be dismissed. Perhaps the most high-profile of the FBI-proposed plots was the case of the Newburgh 4. Around an hour outside of New York City, an informant infiltrated a Muslim community and engaged four local men to carry out a series of attacks. Those men may have never actually carried out an attack, but once the informant offered them a plot and a pair of missiles, they agreed. Defense attorneys cried “entrapment,” but the men still were sentenced to 25 years apiece.

"The problem with the cases we're talking about is that defendants would not have done anything if not kicked in the ass by government agents," Martin Stolar tells Mother Jones. Stolar represented the suspect involved in a New York City bombing plot that was set-up by FBI agents. "They're creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror." For their part, the FBI says this method is a plan for "preemption," "prevention" and "disruption."

The report also reveals that, of the 500-plus prosecutions of terrorism-related cases they analyzed, nearly half of them involved the use of informants, many of whom worked for the FBI in exchange for money or to work off criminal charges. Of the 158 prosecutions carried out, 49 defendants participated in plots that agent provocateurs arranged on behalf of the FBI.

Experts note that the chance of winning a terrorism-related trial, entrapment or not, is near impossible. "The plots people are accused of being part of — attacking subway systems or trying to bomb a building — are so frightening that they can overwhelm a jury," David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor, tells Mother Jones. Since 9/11, almost two-thirds of the cases linked to terrorism have ended with guilty pleas. “They don't say, 'I've been entrapped,' or, 'I was immature,’” a retired FBI official remarks.

All of this and those guilty pleas often stem for just being in the right place at the wrong time. Farhana Khera of the group Muslim Advocate notes that agents go into mosques on “fishing expeditions” just to see where they can get interest in the community. "The FBI is now telling agents they can go into houses of worship without probable cause," says Khera. "That raises serious constitutional issues."

From the set-up to the big finish, the whole sting operation is ripe with constitutional issues such as that. A decade since 9/11, however, the FBI is reaching through whatever means it can pull together to keep terrorists — or whom they think could someday become one — from ever hurting America.

Link:
http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-terror-report-plot-365-899/

"Does government not have a duty and obligation to warn its citizens of danger? Or does government have more of a duty and obligation to protect the profit margins of global corporations at the expense, and even the lives, of law abiding, patriotic Americans?"

2012-02-22T14:18:00.000-05:00

Know Your Government: The Wartime Information Security Program

By Tony Muga

“That there should exist in America a shadow group of censors, surrounded by secrecy, that the conditions under which the unit might be activated by the President of the United States-and its mode of operation-are at best imprecisely defined, surely cannot be regarded as a comforting state of affairs in a democracy.” -David Wise

Few today have even heard of W.I.S.P., the Wartime Information Security Program. Initially, the idea came from Byron Price, a former Associated Press executive who oversaw a staff of more than two dozen during WW2; a staff that censored mail, cables and communications.

At wars end, Price contacted President Harry S. Truman via confidential memorandum and advised him that he should create a ‘Censorship Planning Commission’ that would be financed from the President’s secret funds.

During the Eisenhower administration (1958) the censorship code was developed and was last revised in 1963 during the Kennedy administration. David Wise explains the terms of the code in his book titled ‘The Politics of Lying: Government Deception, Secrecy and Power’:

“The news media would not publish information about ‘war plans, or diplomatic negotiations,’ enemy attacks, troop movements, ships, military aircraft, missiles, production data, and travel movements of the President and ‘other high-ranking civilian or military officials.’ Weather forecasts would not be published or broadcast unless cleared, and even then, they would be published or broadcast only inside one state and within a 150-mile radius.”

(Author’s note: consider the latter part of this quote when researching/studying weather modification)

To start with, there would be eight censors who would determine how to interpret the seven-page single speed censorship code.

Later, during the Eisenhower administration, the group would be expanded to thirteen and would include the position of ‘Director of Censorship’ which was filled by Theodore F. Koop (described as ‘the affable, mild-mannered director of CBS News in Washington’).

These thirteen men would censor all American news media-television, radio, newspapers, and magazines at the command of the President. They alone would decide what the public was to read, see and hear.

The original eight were all members of the federal government’s Executive Reserve, described as an elite group of civilians who would move into various key government positions in the event of a national emergency.

This particular group would report on command to secret offices in Maryland where they would begin to censor information.

Furthermore,

“thousands of other Executive Reservists would, if ordered, report to cable-heads and to other strategic locations across the country to censor all mail, cables, telephone calls, and other communications entering or leaving the country. There would be nothing voluntary about this program.”

According to David Wise, the few in Congress that actually knew about WISP assumed that it would never be activated unless Congress declared war.

Wise further states that:

“they [Congress] are wrong. The censors can be ordered into action and the code put into effect at any time the President of the United States wishes to do so. He would not necessarily have to declare a national emergency; there would not have to be a declaration of war.”

The devil is in the details. The standby Executive Order refers to the ‘present emergency situation’ (which could mean really just about anything) and the ‘Office of Censorship Basic Plan’ lists ‘contingencies’ that ‘may require imposition of censorship’ as ‘(a) general war; and (b) limited war, or conflicts of the ‘brush-fire’ type, in which U.S. Forces are involved elsewhere in the world on land, sea, or in the air.’

Also under the proposed standby law, “Whenever the President shall deem that the public safety demands it, he may cause to be intercepted, examined, and controlled communications by mail, cable, radio, television, or other means of transmission crossing the borders of the United States.”

On an interesting side note, according to the organizational chart of WISP’s Special Analysis Division or SAD, “one of its principal tasks was to prepare a ‘National Watchlist’, which Representative Moorhead charged would apparently contain the names of politically ‘questionable’ American citizens.”

With these facts in mind we can more easily understand the BP Gulf Disaster and Fukushima Meltdown media blackouts. Or at least, the legal reasoning behind it.

The sad fact is however, that corporate greed far outweighs the people’s need to be safe and healthy. I ask you, if a man fails to warn his neighbor that a bottle of poison has spilled over into his drink, and the neighbor dies as a result of drinking the poisonous cocktail, would not that man be responsible for his neighbor’s death?

Does government not have a duty and obligation to warn its citizens of danger? Or does government have more of a duty and obligation to protect the profit margins of global corporations at the expense, and even the lives, of law abiding, patriotic Americans?

Link:
http://theintelhub.com/2012/02/22/know-your-government-the-wartime-information-security-program-formerly-known-as-the-united-states-office-of-censorship/

Remember what Stalin said about voting...

2012-02-22T14:11:00.000-05:00

Ron Paul Is Being Cheated Out of the Republican Nomination

The GOP establishment has resorted to vote fraud in almost every state

Paul Joseph Watson

Despite his runaway success in terms of straw poll victories, campaign contributions and grass roots energy, a plethora of evidence strongly indicates that Ron Paul is being cheated out of winning any of the Republican caucuses, with the GOP establishment desperate to prevent the Texan Congressman from building any kind of momentum that the likes of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have been afforded.

Even the establishment media is now being forced to report that “Ron Paul Might Have Won Maine,” with evidence of potential vote fraud targeted against Ron Paul prompting the state’s GOP chairman Charles Webster to ask for a recount.

With just 84 per cent of the votes being counted, and with many towns and counties showing strong support for Ron Paul having not yet cast their votes, the media along with the Republican establishment brazenly declared Mitt Romney to be the winner, despite him having just a 194 vote lead over Ron Paul.

Erroneous reports of a snowstorm were cited as a pretext to cancel the caucus in Washington County, an area heavily dominated by Paul supporters, delaying the vote for a week. Voters in the county are still waiting to cast their ballots.

“That’s right. A prediction of 3-4 inches–that turned into nothing more than a dusting–was enough for a local GOP official to postpone the caucuses just so the results wouldn’t be reported tonight,” spokesman Gary Howard wrote in an E-mail to supporters, adding that even the local Girl Scouts’ meeting survived the weather.

Local reporters in Maine also revealed how the vote for most Waldo County towns was entered as “0”, as if no one had turned out to vote.

Rachel Maddow expanded on the reports in a feature on MSNBC, pointing out that when one town in Waldo attempted to call in its results, State officials said they already had results from the town showing Romney had won, when in reality that wasn’t the case and in fact Ron Paul had won.

The controversy in Maine follows the admitted mistake in Iowa where Mitt Romney was announced as the winner and yet a later recount found that Rick Santorum had actually beaten him. The kind of momentum Santorum was allowed to build as a result of that revision is unlikely to be afforded to Ron Paul in Maine.

The vote in Iowa was labeled by one observer as the “biggest fraud since Kennedy stole the West Virginia Primary”.

Before the vote took place, in a state where pre-primary polling showed Ron Paul in with a good chance of taking top spot, Republican strategist Dee Dee Benkie told a radio show that GOP insiders had resolved to prevent Ron Paul from winning the primary.

“They’re not going to want him to get number one, it’s very bad for Iowa, it’s terrible,” said Benkie, confirming the host’s claim that Iowa District Chairmen are organizing voting blocks to sabotage Paul’s chances by offering them sweetheart deals in return for voting against Paul.

After votes were counted at a secret undisclosed location, it was announced that Ron Paul, despite pre-primary polls showing the Congressman was in with a good chance of winning, had finished third.

The debacle in Nevada also clearly indicates that Ron Paul was cheated out of victory in the SIlver State. Despite results from every other state primary showing Ron Paul at least doubling his vote tally compared to 2008, for example climbing from 16,000 to 78,000 votes in South Carolina, In Nevada Paul received just a few hundred more votes than he achieved in 2008, leaving him with a third placed finish.

“Ron Paul who took second in Nevada in 2008 with 6,087 votes, only increased his support by 1.4% to just 6,175 in the 2012 results, despite all of the excitement, all the money spent, which was a lot more,” reports Money Trends Research. “In fact, the Paul campaign had brochures and volunteers almost knock on every door in Nevada this time around. Nevada is also very fertile ground for a candidate like Ron Paul, many people in Nevada just want to be left alone by the government, Ron Paul opposes taxing tips, seeing that they are not really income, but gifts, you would think this would go over real well in Las Vegas.”

As we documented before the Nevada primary, Paul’s campaign, after having finished second in the state behind Mitt Romney in 2008, poured huge amounts of energy and funding into the 2012 race, whereas Romney hardly had any ground campaign at all, and yet Romney ended up taking the state by a landslide.

Massive evidence of vote fraud subsequently emerged. News networks had announced Romney as the landslide winner before votes from Clark County – the largest county in Nevada representing more than 60 percent of the state’s voters – had even been counted. When CNN aired live footage of the votes being counted from one of the caucuses in Clark County, it was clear that Ron Paul had handily defeated Romney, and this in a “precinct full of Jewish and extremely Christian voters, two of Ron Paul’s worst demographics.”

“For five minutes, CNN sat in silence as the Republican precinct captain shouted out each vote while dozens of tabulators sat nearby keeping track,” wrote Mark Wachtler. Unfolding one sheet at a time, the man yelled, “Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Ron Paul.”

The final tally showed that Ron Paul had defeated Romney by 183 to 45, in a precinct dominated by a demographic that wouldn’t even be expected to support Paul. Extrapolating this result statewide would have given Paul a clear victory, and yet Mitt Romney’s “landslide” victory vote figure barely changed throughout the whole night of ballot counting and was confirmed after a “private” vote count by the GOP establishment.

“Many had watched the results being tabulated live on national TV just as this author had,” writes Wachtler. “We all saw Ron Paul’s overwhelming victory in that part of Clark County. It’s unimaginable to believe that in the same county, a candidate could win overwhelmingly when the votes were counted live on TV, but lose so badly when the votes were counted by the Party establishment behind closed doors.”

This compendium of evidence, and the information presented above is merely scratching the surface, illustrates the fact that Ron Paul’s failure to win any of the primaries despite his massive financial backing and grass roots support, is almost certainly a result of vote fraud on behalf of the GOP establishment, which has conspired in almost every state to cheat Ron Paul out of building the kind of momentum that would have provided him the opportunity to challenge Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination.

Link:
http://www.infowars.com/ron-paul-is-being-cheated-out-of-the-republican-nomination/

Quote of the day...

2012-02-22T10:14:00.002-05:00

Education news: And we here in Connecticut keep copying them...

2012-02-22T10:07:00.000-05:00

How California Educators Created an Educational Disaster

Written by Sam Blumenfeld

California has probably produced more educational failures than any other state in the union. Why? Well, let’s be blunt. They have the stupidest educators and politicians in the country. And this has been going on for a long time. Back in 1988, when Bill Honig, then-School Superintendent of California, and Francie Alexander, the state’s curriculum director, chose only whole-language reading programs for the state’s public schools, we knew that a literacy disaster was in store for the Golden State.

Indeed, we wrote in our newsletter of Sept. 1988: “Functional illiteracy will be booming in California in the years ahead if that state adopts the look-say basal reading programs it has already approved.... Because of textbook selection decisions based on ignorance, millions of California children will be condemned to lives as functional illiterates. Such state sanctioned educational malpractice will be doing more damage to more lives than one can possibly calculate.”

It was already known in 1987 that California had a serious reading problem. According to the Quincy (Mass.) Patriot Ledger of November 18, 1987:

Almost one in six adults in California is “functionally illiterate,” and most of those who can’t read are native English-speakers who went to school in the U.S. according to a new study by the State Department of Education.

The report says 3.1 million Californians can’t read well enough to understand advertising in newspapers, simple recipes or job applications. ...

The largest group of illiterates is white. More than 43 percent of the group are white, and 56 percent were U.S.-born.

Naturally, the educators saw nothing in the schools to blame for this terrible situation. To them, the reasons for all of that functional illiteracy were obviously social. So when it came to adopting new reading programs in 1988, the educators of California ignored everything that had been written about the reading problem since 1955, when Rudolf Flesch’s famous Why Johnny Can’t Read was published, and acted as if nobody knew what caused perfectly normal children in school to become reading failures. But 40 years after Flesch, in 1995, the educators began to see the light, albeit somewhat dimly. In an article entitled “Rethinking Reading,” in the August 1995 issue of Teacher magazine, we learn:

Dismal test scores and recent research that warns against a single approach to instruction have spurred California educational officials to rethink their state’s pioneering techniques for teaching young children to read.

Pioneering techniques? Obviously, none of these so-called educators knew anything about the history of reading reform in the United States. The whole-language method of teaching was described by Edmund Burke Huey in his “pioneering” book, The Pedagogy and Psychology of Reading, published in 1908. The progressives used it as a blueprint for dumbing down the American people, which was advocated by John Dewey in his 1898 essay, “The Primary-Education Fetish,” in which he outlined a plan to reduce high literacy in America by using a whole-word method of teaching reading. The article continues:

The education department currently is drafting guidelines to help schools make the shift to the new wedded approach.... ”Our goal is not to go back to one or push for the other,” says Dennis Parker, manager of language arts and foreign languages for the state education department. “Our goal is to put together a comprehensive program that will work for every child.”

The “wedded approach” was an attempt to create a balanced, middle-of-the-road system by blending whole language with phonics. Of course, it didn’t work because it completely confused the children by expecting them to develop two opposing reflexes: a whole-word reflex and a phonetic reflex. Dr. Ivan Pavlov proved in his Moscow laboratory that introducing conflicting reflexes produces behavioral neurosis. The article informs us:

California adopted the whole language framework for teaching language arts in 1987.... Diana Garchow, a veteran teacher and a member of the state’s new reading task force, says administrators in some California schools actually seized all phonics books and spellers to ensure that teachers were not ignoring the new instructional framework. In their place, she adds, “we got some beautiful pieces of literature that the children can’t read.” ...

Bill Honig, who was the state superintendent when the literature-based program was adopted, now concedes that the framework was fuzzy. “We made our mistakes because we weren’t clear enough about this being a balanced approach,” he says. ...

Still, there are those who worry that the pendulum may swing too far away from the whole language emphasis, for reasons that have little to do with best practice. Mary Ellen Vogt, a board member of the International Reading Association and a past president of the IRA’s California affiliate, is one of them. “The teaching of phonics is compatible with literature-based instruction,” Vogt says. “Keeping that in balance is the trick.”

The fact that so-called balance creates what Pavlov called behavioral neurosis does not ring any bells in the heads of our educators. Ms. Vogt is more worried about the pendulum than the well-being of the children. Their ability to become good readers has nothing to do with pendulums. It has to do with using the proper phonetic methods.

Note that Dr. Honig admits that they were the victims of “fuzzy thinking.” It wasn’t fuzzy thinking; it was stupid, ignorant thinking, made by people who should never have been given the authority to decide how to teach anybody anything in a classroom.

In case you don’t know what whole language is all about and why it has caused educational disasters not only in California but also where is has been used elsewhere, here is a definition of this teaching method given by three whole-language professors in their book, Whole Language, What’s the Difference?, published in 1991 (p.32):

Whole language represents a major shift in thinking about the reading process. Rather than viewing reading as "getting the words," whole language educators view reading as essentially a process of creating meanings ... Meaning is created through a transaction with whole, meaningful texts (i.e., texts of any length that were written with the intent to communicate meaning).

It is a transaction, not an extraction of the meaning from the print, in the sense that the reader-created meanings are a fusion of what the reader brings and what the text offers ... Although students who learn to read in whole language classrooms are, like all proficient readers, eventually able to "read" (or identify) a large inventory of words, learning words is certainly not the goal of whole language.

The purpose of all that pedagogical gobbledegook was, and still is, to convince people such as Bill Honig that whole language is worth spending millions of dollars on and that they should not worry about whether or not it will teach millions of young Californians to read. It didn’t occur to him or his colleagues to try it out on one class before saddling the entire system with it. But that’s typical of our educators. Try it out on everybody and see if it works. If not, too bad for all of those functional illiterates who will spend the rest of their lives handicapped by what was done to them in their benign public schools.

And who gets punished for this crime? Nobody. Meanwhile, in character with past ignorant practices, Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing to eliminate a second year of science from the state’s requirements for high-school graduation. High-tech companies are crying out for more science and math in the schools, but the Governor isn’t listening. He doesn’t seem to care if any of these graduates can go on to college and become eligible for the high-tech jobs that will be available. According to international testing, American students are far behind other nations in math and science. But apparently, Gov. Brown would rather use the money needed for a second year in science for something else. Or maybe nothing else.

What it all adds up to is a government education system that is turning out poorly- and wrongly-educated students, and an alarming percentage of functional illiterates. Parents who want a decent education for their children will have to seek alternatives, including homeschooling. But the Establishment Behemoth must be fed, regardless of whether or not it actually educates.

Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/opinion/sam-blumenfeld/10934-how-california-educators-created-an-educational-disaster

#11 Because we can...

2012-02-22T10:02:00.000-05:00

10 Excellent Reasons to Attack Iran

David Swanson
Activist Post

1. Iran has threatened to fight back if attacked, and that’s a war crime. War crimes must be punished.

2. My television says Iran has nukes. I’m sure it’s true this time. Just like with North Korea. I’m sure they’re next. We only bomb places that really truly have nukes and are in the Axis of Evil. Except Iraq, which was different.

3. Iraq didn’t go so badly. Considering how lousy its government is, the place is better off with so many people having left or died. Really, that one couldn’t have worked out better if we’d planned it.

4. When we threaten to cut off Iran’s oil, Iran threatens to cut off Iran’s oil, which is absolutely intolerable. What would we do without that oil? And what good is buying it if they want to sell it?

5. Iran was secretly behind 9-11. I read it online. And if it wasn’t, that’s worse. Iran hasn’t attacked another nation in centuries, which means its next attack is guaranteed to be coming very soon.

6. Iranians are religious nuts, unlike Israelis and Americans. Most Israelis don’t want to attack Iran, but the Holy Israeli government does. To oppose that decision would be to sin against God.

7. Iranians are so stupid that when we murder their scientists they try to hire a car dealer in Texas to hire a drug gang in Mexico to murder a Saudi ambassador in Washington, and then they don’t do it — just to make us look bad for catching them.

7. b. Oh, and stupid people should be bombed. They’re not civilized.

8. War is good for the U.S. economy, and the Iranian economy too. Troops stationed in Iran would buy stuff. And women who survived the war would have more rights. Like in Virginia. We owe Iranians this after that little mishap in 1953.

9. This is the only way to unite the region. Either we bomb Iran and it swears its eternal love to us. Or, if necessary, we occupy Iran to liberate it like its neighbors. Which shouldn’t take long. Look how well Afghanistan is going already.

10. They won’t give our drone back. Enough said.

Link:
http://www.activistpost.com/2012/02/10-excellent-reasons-to-attack-iran.html#more

"One candidate, however, has repeatedly argued that defense spending must join domestic spending on the chopping block if the United States is to avoid bankruptcy. In fact, said Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the country would actually be safer if our government spent less on the military."

2012-02-22T09:47:00.000-05:00

Ron Paul: Excessive Defense Spending Endangers U.S.

Written by Michael Tennant

Three of the four remaining candidates for the Republican presidential nomination have spoken out against planned reductions in future defense spending. Both former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich have urged President Barack Obama to prevent the sequestering of $600 billion from the defense budget over the next 10 years as required by last summer’s debt ceiling deal. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum stated categorically that he “would absolutely not cut one penny out of military spending.”

One candidate, however, has repeatedly argued that defense spending must join domestic spending on the chopping block if the United States is to avoid bankruptcy. In fact, said Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the country would actually be safer if our government spent less on the military.

In his February 20 Texas Straight Talk, Paul remarked on the contradiction between conservatives’ alarm over “unprecedented spending” in Obama’s 2013 budget proposal and their simultaneous warnings that the President is seeking to gut the defense budget.

“I continue to be dismayed that in spite of our economic problems, most of those who call themselves fiscal conservatives refuse to consider any reductions in military spending,” Paul wrote.

Citing an article by Doug Bandow in the February issue of the American Conservative, Paul pointed out that “the President’s budget calls for an 18% increase versus the previously planned 20% increase.” For the mathematically challenged he patiently explained: “This is not a cut, yet Pentagon hawks continue to issue dire warnings that this ‘draconian’ decrease in proposed future spending will seriously threaten our national security.”

Furthermore, Paul observed:

Even adjusted for inflation, military spending is 17% higher now than when Obama took office. Even the worst case scenarios of Obama’s “cuts,” adjusted for inflation, still put outlays at 2007 levels, which are 40% higher than a decade ago. Our total spending on overseas adventurism and nation building equals more than the next 13 highest spending countries in the world combined. Even if we were to slash our military budget in half, we would still be the world’s dominant military power, by far.

In his article Bandow described five “liberal ploys” that the “pork hawks” use to justify ever-increasing defense spending. Paul summarized them in his brief piece, but they are worth exploring in more detail.

“First,” Bandow averred, “big spenders on the right argue that Washington must continue doing everything that it has ever done abroad.” This includes maintaining “a thousand military installations around the world”; continuing to protect prosperous nations such as Japan, South Korea, and much of Europe; and engaging in further disastrous “nation-building” efforts. (It’s worth recalling that as a candidate for President in 2000, George W. Bush opposed using the military for nation-building, to great applause from his fellow Republicans.) None of these makes the United States more physically secure; all make it less fiscally secure.

The second ploy, wrote Bandow, is “equat[ing] money with results.” Just as liberals insist that more education spending translates into better student outcomes, pork hawks buy into the notion that “bigger Pentagon budgets mean increased national security.” This, he maintained, is “not true: greater military spending is strategic waste on a grand scale” for “overcapacity actually encourages Washington to meddle in foreign conflicts that foolishly deplete our military capital.”

Third Bandow referred to the “baseline budgeting” trick: claiming that reductions in planned future increases are cuts when, of course, they are still increases, as Paul explained.

The fourth liberal tactic used by Republican hawks is “threatening to kill the most important programs (in this case, weapon systems) first” if the defense budget is cut, Bandow observed. This, he argued, is akin to liberals’ threats to cut schools, police, and fire departments — the most essential and desired of government functions — whenever state and local budgets are in danger of being reduced. It is also just as disingenuous. There is plenty of fat that could be trimmed from the Pentagon’s budget. In addition, if the hawks took Bandow’s advice, they would find much more to cut, namely many army units (since the United States is highly unlikely to find itself fighting a land war if it sticks to defending its own territory) and a smaller number of air and naval forces.

“The fifth and last resort of Washington’s big-spenders is demagoguery,” stated Bandow. “Advocates of a colossal military trash their opponents as ‘isolationists’ who want to undermine America.” Paul knows this all too well, having been subjected to the “isolationist” smear his entire political career, and especially during his presidential campaigns. But as Bandow noted, “the fundamental question is whether military spending should respond to the threat environment.” If the answer is no — as many Republicans, including Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum, would have it — then there is no limit to how much Americans should be taxed to support what Paul called “overseas adventurism.” If the answer is yes, said Bandow, with America “more secure today than at any point since before World War II,” there is no reason not to reduce “military outlays ... accordingly.”

In order to do so, Bandow concluded, “Washington’s international objectives” will have to be scaled back. “But,” he continued, “the U.S. should stop garrisoning the globe, subsidizing rich friends, and reconstructing poor enemies. Instead, it’s about time Washington focused on defending America and its people.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Paul stated after quoting those last two sentences from Bandow’s article. “Wasting money on overseas adventurism and nation building threatens our national security by massively contributing to our debt.” That debt, he added, is endangering our society because at some point the government simply isn’t going to be able to pay its bills; and then down will come both the welfare state and the warfare state.

The other Republican candidates, as well as all other political leaders of both parties, would do well to heed Paul’s warning. The United States cannot afford to go on catering to Americans’ every demand for freebies, nor does it have the wherewithal to maintain a global empire. At the end of the welfare-warfare thoroughfare, Paul said, lies Greece with its rioting citizens weaned on the welfare state that can no longer provide for them. “Is that,” he asked, “the sort of security we envision for our nation’s future?”

Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/foreign-policy/10949-ron-paul-excessive-defense-spending-endangers-us

Read the government flyers yourself if you doubt that it considers you a terrorist...

2012-02-22T09:42:00.001-05:00

FBI “Communities Against Terrorism” Suspicious Activity Reporting Flyers

The following collection of 25 flyers produced by the FBI and the Department of Justice are distributed to local businesses in a variety of industries to promote suspicious activity reporting. The flyers are not released publicly, though several have been published in the past by news media and various law enforcement agencies around the country. We have compiled this collection from a number of online sources.

Link to flyers:
http://publicintelligence.net/fbi-suspicious-activity-reporting-flyers/

The only good reason to live in New Jersey about to be eliminated?

2012-02-22T09:35:00.000-05:00

Legislators attempt to force fluoridation on New Jersey

Jonathan Benson

New Jersey is one of the few U.S. states where the vast majority of its residents are not forcefully medicated with fluoride chemicals via their water supplies. Only about 20 percent of New Jersey residents, in fact, are exposed to fluoride in water, which makes it the fourth least fluoridated state in the country. But state legislators in the Garden State are currently trying to change this by passing legislation that would mandate all public water supplies in the state to fluoridate their water.

Sponsored by Democratic State Senators Joseph F. Vitale (http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/members/BIO.asp?Leg=175) and Loretta Weinberg (http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/members/BIO.asp?Leg=260), NJ Senate Bill S-959, the New Jersey Public Water Supply Fluoridation Act, and its identical companion legislation, Assembly Bill 1811, would require “the fluoridation of all public community water systems in New Jersey.”

According to the Fluoride Action Network (FAN), a health freedom advocacy group, the New Jersey legislature has been working towards enacting these new fluoridation laws without telling the public or seeking appropriate public input. And outcry from those who oppose the legislation — the NJ League of Municipalities, the NJ Sierra Club, the NJ Business and Industry Association, the citizens’ group No Fluoride New Jersey, and even a number of local water companies and utilities across the state have all objected — appears to be going unheard.

“Since fluoride’s benefits are topical, it makes no sense to swallow fluoride and makes even less sense to put fluoride into drinking water when fluoridated toothpaste is available to everyone,” said Paul Connett, PhD, executive director of FAN and co-author of the book The Case Against Fluoride. “Not only does this unfunded mandate completely strip away all local control of fluoridation, but requires local taxpayers to fund the estimated $5 billion start-up costs and the annual $1 billion cost to maintain the practice.”

Fluoride is a toxic waste byproduct known to damage the brain, vital organs

Besides failing to make an appropriate public announcement about the bills, legislators are also withholding the fact that the toxic fluoride chemicals being proposed for water supplies is not natural, and is actually a waste byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer and aluminum production industries. As a result, those who drink it are exposed not only to fluoride’s toxic effects, which include brain, thyroid, and other organ damage, but they are also exposed to arsenic, lead, radionuclides, and various other toxic chemicals that typically contaminate it.

More than 25 published papers have shown that fluoride chemicals reduce IQ levels in children, and many people across the U.S. today have dental fluorosis, a condition where teeth become mottled and brittle, as a result of overexposure to fluoride. It is also a drug that has never been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which means its deliberate addition to public water is an illegal form of practicing medicine without a license or proper prescription.

There is also no way to properly dose consumption of fluoride when added to water, as individuals of all ages and sizes consume varying amounts of the toxic chemical. This means that individuals with compromised immune system or health problems, as well as babies, are at an extreme risk of fluoride poisoning just from routine exposure to fluoridated water in their everyday lives.

To contact the authors of these bills and express opposition, visit:
http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/bills/BillView.asp?BillNumber=S959

Link:
http://www.naturalnews.com/035028_fluoridation_New_Jersey_legislation.html

Doomed to fail...

2012-02-22T09:24:00.000-05:00

8 Reasons Why The Greek Debt Deal May Not Stop A Chaotic Greek Debt Default

The global financial system is not a game of checkers. It is a game of chess. All over the world today, news headlines are proclaiming that this new Greek debt deal has completely eliminated the possibility of a chaotic Greek debt default. Unfortunately, that is simply not the case. Rather, the truth is that this new deal actually "sets the table" for a Greek debt default. When I was studying and working in the legal arena, I learned that sometimes you make an agreement so that you can get the other side to break it. That may sound very strange to the average person on the street, but this is how the game is played at the highest levels. It is all about strategy. And in this case, the new debt deal imposes such strict conditions on Greece that it is almost inevitable that Greece will fail to meet some of them. When Greece does fail, Germany and the other northern European nations may try to claim that they "did everything that they could" but that Greece just did not "live up to its obligations". So does this mean that we will definitely see a chaotic Greek debt default? No. What this does mean is that the chess pieces are being moved into position for one.

The following are 8 reasons why the Greek debt deal may not stop a chaotic Greek debt default....

#1 Greece Is Being Set Up To Fail

The terms of this new debt deal impose some incredibly harsh austerity measures on Greece and from now on the Greek government will be subject to "permanent monitoring" by EU officials.

In other words, they will be under a microscope.

Any violation of the terms of the debt deal could be used as a pretext to bring down the hammer and cut off bailout funds. Potentially, this could even happen just a few weeks from now.

It has become obvious that there are many politicians in Europe that would very much like to kick Greece out of the euro. In a recent column, the International Business Editor of The Telegraph summed up the situation this way....

It is clear that Berlin, Helsinki, and the Hague have taken the decision to eject Greece from the euro whatever the country now does. Even if Greece complies to the letter with the impossible terms of the EU-IMF Troika, it will not make any difference. A fresh pretext will be found.

#2 The Next Greek Election Could Bring An End To The Bailout Deal Overnight

The next national Greek elections are scheduled for April. Political parties opposed to the bailout have been surging in recent polls. It is becoming increasingly likely that the next Greek government will abandon this new deal entirely.

The following is what hedge fund manager Dennis Gartman told CNBC about what is likely to happen after the next elections....

"A new government is going to come to power following elections that shall take place sometime this spring, and if anyone anywhere believes that the next Greek government shall do anything other than abrogate all the agreements made with the ‘troika,’ then we have a bridge we’d like to sell them at a very high price"

With each passing day anger and frustration inside Greece continue to rise, and those that are currently holding power in Greece are becoming very unpopular.

One current member of Greek Parliament recently talked about what he thinks will happen in the aftermath of the next election....

"If we achieve a Left-dominated government, we will politely tell the Troika to leave the country, and we may need to discuss an orderly return to the Drachma"

#3 This Bailout Deal Is Going To Make Economic Conditions In Greece Even Worse

In a previous article, I listed some of the new austerity measures that are being imposed on Greece by this new agreement....

The EU and the IMF are demanding that Greece fire 15,000 more government workers immediately and a total of 150,000 government workers by 2015.

The EU and the IMF are demanding that wages for government workers be cut by another 20 percent.

The EU and the IMF are demanding that the minimum wage be slashed by more than 20 percent.

The EU and the IMF are also demanding significant reductions in unemployment benefits and pension benefits.

The austerity measures that have already been implemented over the past few years have already pushed Greece into an economic depression.

These new austerity measures will deepen that depression.

At the moment, the Greek national debt is sitting at about 160 percent of GDP.

We are being told that these new austerity measures will reduce that ratio to 120 percent by 2020, but already there are many in the financial world that are calling such a goal "comical".

Even with this new deal, the Greek national debt is still completely and total unsustainable. A "confidential report" produced by analysts from the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund says the following about what this new debt deal is likely to accomplish....

There are notable risks. Given the high prospective level and share of senior debt, the prospects for Greece to be able to return to the market in the years following the end of the new program are uncertain and require more analysis. Prolonged financial support on appropriate terms by the official sector may be necessary. Moreover, there is a fundamental tension between the program objectives of reducing debt and improving competitiveness, in that the internal devaluation needed to restore Greece competitiveness will inevitably lead to a higher debt to GDP ratio in the near term. In this context, a scenario of particular concern involves internal devaluation through deeper recession (due to continued delays with structural reforms and with fiscal policy and privatization implementation). This would result in a much higher debt trajectory, leaving debt as high as 160 percent of GDP in 2020. Given the risks, the Greek program may thus remain accident-prone, with questions about sustainability hanging over it.

The GDP of Greece fell by 6.8 percent during 2011.

2012 was already expected to be even worse, and all of these new austerity measures certainly are not going to help things.

And every time the Greek economy contracts that makes a chaotic debt default even more likely.

#4 The Greek Parliament Must Still Vote On This Bailout Deal

It is anticipated that the Greek Parliament will vote on this new agreement on Wednesday.

It is expected to pass.

But when it comes to Greece these days, there are no guarantees.

#5 The Greek Constitution Must Still Be Modified

Under the terms of this new agreement, Greece is being required to change its constitution.

The following is how an article in The Economist describes this requirement....

Over the next two months Greece has promised to adopt legislation “ensuring that priority is granted to debt-servicing payments”, with a view to enshrining this in the constitution “as soon as possible”. These arrangements may not amount to the budget “commissar” once threatened by some creditors, but the effect may be pretty much the same.

So will this actually get done?

We will see.

Forcing a sovereign country to modify its constitution is a very serious thing. If I was a Greek citizen, I would be highly insulted by this.

#6 Several European Parliaments Still Need To Approve This Deal

The German Parliament still must approve this new agreement. This is also the case for the Netherlands and Finland as well.

Many politicians in all three nations have been highly critical of the Greek bailouts.

It is expected that all of these parliaments will approve this deal, but you just never know.

#7 Private Investors Still Have To Agree To This New Deal

Private investors are being asked to take a massive "haircut" on Greek debt. The following is how the size of the "haircut" was described by a USA Today article....

Banks, pension funds and other private investors are being asked to forgive some €107 billion ($142 billion) of the total €206 billion ($273 billion) in devalued Greek government bonds they hold.

There is absolutely no guarantee that a solid majority of private investors will agree to this.

In the end, probably the only thing that is guaranteed is that litigation regarding this "haircut" is likely to stretch on for many years to come.

#8 The Global Financial Community Still Expects Greece To Default

Almost all of the analysts that were projecting a chaotic Greek debt default are still projecting one today. Yes, many of them believe that "the can has been kicked down the road" for a few months, but most of them are still convinced that a default by Greece is inevitable.

The following comes from a Bloomberg article that was released after the Greek debt deal was announced....

“The danger of Greece saving itself into economic depression and having to default and exit the common currency zone remains substantial,” said Christian Schulz, an economist at Berenberg Bank in London. Jennifer McKeown of Capital Economics Ltd. repeated her forecast that Greece will quit the euro by the end of the year.

The odds that this agreement will survive for very long are not great.

It will be nearly impossible for Greece to meet all of the conditions being imposed upon it by this new deal. All of the politicians in northern Europe that are just itching to cut off aid to Greece will soon have the excuse that they need for doing so.

And the Greek people could decide to bring all of this to an end very quickly. If they elect a new government in April that does not support this bailout agreement, the game will be over.

So don't be fooled by all the headlines.

A chaotic Greek debt default has not been averted.

The truth is that a chaotic Greek debt default is now closer than ever.

Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/8-reasons-why-the-greek-debt-deal-may-not-stop-a-chaotic-greek-debt-default

The Google is watching you...

2012-02-22T09:19:00.000-05:00

Google Caught Violating Browser Privacy Settings to Track Users

Controversy underscores Google’s contempt for web freedom

Paul Joseph Watson

Following the revelation that Google had been tracking the surfing habits of iPhone users via a code that disables the Safari browser’s privacy settings, Microsoft has now discovered that Google is using similar methods to bypass privacy protections and spy on the browsing habits of Internet Explorer users.

“When the IE team heard that Google had bypassed user privacy settings on Safari, we asked ourselves a simple question: is Google circumventing the privacy preferences of Internet Explorer users too? We’ve discovered the answer is yes: Google is employing similar methods to get around the default privacy protections in IE and track IE users with cookies,” reports Microsoft on their IEblog.

Last week it was revealed that Google had circumvented Apple’s efforts to block third party cookies by default, allowing Google to track which ads Safari users clicked on.

The Internet giant, whose motto is “don’t be evil,” has now been caught using a similar process to disregard cookie preferences of Internet Explorer users, allowing targeted ads to be served based on browsing history.

“Google is trying to do is figure out things based on what you have looked at, figure out ways to serve you more relevant ads,” explains Henry Blodget. “Google intentionally circumvented some privacy protections that Apple put in place, now Microsoft is saying ‘hey wait a minute, they did the same thing to us.’”

While Google’s actions are not illegal, they will only serve to underscore the fact that the company has a flagrant disregard for privacy, which is no surprise given Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s creepy 2009 warning, when he stated, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Indeed, as we have documented on numerous occasions, Google’s actions are completely consistent with the charge that the company is in cahoots with the National Security Agency, America’s foremost spying operation.

Last year the Washington Post reported that Google and the NSA had formed an “alliance…to allow the two organizations to share critical information.”

After the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a FOIA request in an attempt to glean an insight into the relationship between the two, the NSA claimed it “could neither confirm nor deny” the existence of any information about its relations with Google, because “such a response would reveal information about NSA’s functions and activities.”

Charges that Google is merely the private arm of U.S. intelligence outfits stretch back years. As we reported in late 2006, ex-CIA agent Robert David Steele claimed sources told him that CIA seed money helped get the company off the ground. Speaking to the Alex Jones Show, Steele elaborated on previous revelations by making it known that the CIA helped bankroll Google at its very inception. Steele named Google’s CIA point man as Dr. Rick Steinheiser, of the Office of Research and Development.

Google’s attitude towards privacy also came under scrutiny when it was discovered that the company was spying on WiFi network data in violation of the Federal Wiretap Act as it gathered images for its Streetview program. Google insisted that the practice was a mistake, even though information published in January 2010 revealed that the data collection program was a very deliberate effort to assemble as much information as possible about U.S. residential and business WiFi networks.
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/google-caught-violating-browser-privacy-settings-to-track-users.html

I think we know the answer to this...

2012-02-22T07:11:00.000-05:00

Is The Federal Reserve Doing A Good Job?

Have you noticed that very few people in the mainstream media ever directly criticize the Federal Reserve? But why should that be the case? Criticizing top politicians from both major political parties has become a national pastime. Most Americans love to throw mud at either the Republicans or the Democrats. But we are told that the Federal Reserve is "above politics" and that it is absolutely vital that the Fed remain "independent". The reality is that the Federal Reserve has more control over the performance of the U.S. economy than the president even does, and yet most Americans never spend much time thinking about the Fed at all. It is almost as if someone has instructed us to "ignore the man behind the curtain" and most of us just blindly obey. With the economy in such a mess and with the national debt exploding so dramatically, isn't it about time that we had a national conversation about the performance of the Federal Reserve? Isn't it about time that we evaluated whether the Federal Reserve is doing a good job or not?

Today I came across a Bloomberg article that was full of endless praise for the secretive Jekyll Island conference in 1910 that developed the plan for the Federal Reserve system. The following is a very brief excerpt from that article....

Although it may seem shocking to watch the 112th Congress, there was a time when national leaders were swift and decisive in getting things done. In November 1910, in the space of less than two weeks, a group of government and business leaders fashioned a powerful new financial system that has survived a century, two world wars, a Great Depression and many recessions.

But has this "powerful new financial system" really performed well for the American people?

The Federal Reserve system has now been in place for about 100 years. That is certainly long enough to evaluate how well it has performed.

So has the Federal Reserve done a good job?

Well, one of the things that the Federal Reserve is charged with doing is to protect the value of our currency. In other words, they are supposed to keep inflation under control.

In that regard, the Federal Reserve has failed miserably. The U.S. dollar has lost 96.2 percent of its value since 1900, and almost 100 percent of that decline has come during the Federal Reserve era.

The other half of the Federal Reserve's "dual mandate" is to keep unemployment low.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the Fed has failed there too.

In the United States today, there are less jobs than there were a decade ago even though we have added more than 30 million more people to the population since then.

The average duration of unemployment in the U.S. is about 40 weeks, and if you gathered together all of the unemployed people in America in one place, they would constitute the 68th largest country in the world.

So, no, the Federal Reserve is not doing a good job of keeping us all employed.

We are also told that the era before the Federal Reserve was created was a time when great "financial panics" happened on a regular basis and that the Federal Reserve was created to stop them from happening.

So has the Federal Reserve been effective at preventing financial panics?

Well, current Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has openly admitted that the Federal Reserve helped cause the Great Depression of the 1930s.

And there have been 10 separate economic recessions since 1950.

So that is not a really great track record.

In addition, it seems very clear that the foolish low interest rate policies of the Fed fueled the massive housing bubble that plunged the U.S. economy into the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression when it finally crashed.

Shouldn't the Federal Reserve receive some criticism for that?

Of course one of the biggest problems with the Federal Reserve is that it is a perpetual debt machine.

If you do now know where our money comes from in the United States, please see this article. The Federal Reserve system was designed to perpetually expand the money supply and to perpetually expand U.S. government debt.

On both counts, it has performed brilliantly.

When the Federal Reserve was created, the U.S. national debt was less than 3 billion dollars.

Today, it is more than 5000 times larger.

What is the appropriate word to use when something is 5000 times worse than it used to be?

When you simply look at performance, the truth is that it is really hard to deny that the Federal Reserve has been a complete and total nightmare for the United States.

But instead of shutting it down, Congress has been giving the Federal Reserve even more power. The Dodd-Frank bill gave the Fed significant new powers and substantial new responsibilities, and the Fed has been exercising those new powers in almost complete secrecy.

The following comes from a recent article in the Wall Street Journal....

While many Americans may not realize it, the Fed has taken on a much larger regulatory role than at any time in history. Since the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul became law in July 2010, the Fed has held 47 separate votes on financial regulations, and scores more are coming. In the process it is reshaping the U.S. financial industry by directing banks on how much capital they must hold, what kind of trading they can engage in and what kind of fees they can charge retailers on debit-card transactions.

The Fed is making these sweeping changes—the most dramatic since the Great Depression—almost completely without public meetings.

Does that sound very "democratic" to you?

Why should the Federal Reserve have more power over the economy than anyone else in America?

Why should the Federal Reserve be "above politics" and "above criticism"?

Unfortunately, central banking is one of the few things that almost every nation on earth can agree on.

Did you know that all 187 nations that belong to the IMF have a central bank?

Sadly, the vast majority of the people out there have no idea that central banking is just a giant money making scam.

Central banks are allowed to create money out of thin air which is then lent to national governments. In turn, the citizens of those nations have to pay higher taxes in order to pay the interest on those debts.

Central banking is a way to systematically take wealth from the citizens of a nation and transfer it into the pockets of those that enjoy getting rich by lending money to governments.

When it comes to taking money out of the pockets of the American people, the Federal Reserve is definitely doing a good job.

Our entire economic system is based on debt, and such a system is inevitably going to fail eventually. We need to shut down the Federal Reserve and quit using debt-based currency.

We need to educate the American people about where money comes from and about why central banking is so destructive.

Please share this article and other articles like it with as many people as you can.

Together, we can make significant difference.

Link:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/is-the-federal-reserve-doing-a-good-job

Global Ponzi scheme entering final stages...

2012-02-22T07:06:00.000-05:00

As US Debt To GDP Passes 101%, The Global Debt Ponzi Enters Its Final Stages

Zero Hedge

Today, without much fanfare, US debt to GDP hit 101% with the latest issuance of $32 billion in 2 Year Bonds. If the moment when this ratio went from double to triple digits is still fresh in readers minds, is because it is: total debt hit and surpassed the most recently revised Q4 GDP on January 30, or just three weeks ago. Said otherwise, it has taken the US 21 days to add a full percentage point to this most critical of debt sustainability ratios: but fear not, with just under $1 trillion in new debt issuance on deck in the next 9 months, we will be at 110% in no time....

Read more:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/us-debt-gdp-passes-101-global-debt-ponzi-enters-its-final-stages

"While Treasury officials insist that the “gold is all there”, why the resistance to a public audit? Congress begs off, saying it will cost US$60 million to test the gold. Other figures bandied about suggest US$15 million. Other so-called experts contest both figures, stating that an independent audit and assay could be conducted for as little as US$15,000."

2012-02-22T06:56:00.000-05:00

Hiding the Elephant: Fort Knox’s Vanishing Act

Kal Kotecha

In one of Harry Houdini’s finest moments as a magician, he made a 6,000-pound, Asian elephant disappear – into thin air. Billed as the “world’s most incredible conjuring illusion”, Houdini swept onto the stage at the New York Hippodrome in 1918 and proclaimed “allow me to introduce Jennie, the world's only vanishing elephant.”

The elephant was then escorted into a large colored cabinet. The doors were closed. The stage was set and the drum roll began. Moments later, with a flourish, Houdini flung open the doors of the box. Six thousand pounds of elephantine flesh had vanished into thin air. The crowd went wild.

In the years that followed, Houdini presented that trick to wide-eyed audiences of a million and more. Magic historian, Jim Steinmeyer, exactingly chronicled this – and other - conjuring tricks in “Hiding the Elephant”, an exposé of stage illusions.

In 1933, with America five-years deep into The Depression, the stage was set for a magic act of unprecedented proportions. History shows a wicked warlock at work.

On March 6, 1933, Executive Order (EO) 6073 was passed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), the 32nd President of the United States in an attempt to solve the dire banking crisis. Executive orders have been around since 1789, allowing Presidents to issue legally binding orders unilaterally, without the consent of Congress. During his Presidential tenure, from 1933 to 1945, Roosevelt would issue 3,728 Executive Orders. This was his third and it was a doozy.

Just two days after Roosevelt was inaugurated as President, he proclaimed a “banking holiday”. From and including Monday, March 6, 1933 to Thursday, March 9, 1933 no bank “would pay out, export, earmark, or permit the withdrawal or transfer in any manner or by any device whatsoever of any gold or silver coin or bullion or take any other action which might facilitate the hoarding thereof…” Sold to the American people as an attempt to control speculation and regulate interest rates, he closed America’s banks, thwarting customers from withdrawing their paper money holdings or converting their holdings to gold.

With a swish of his magic wand, Roosevelt mastered “complete control over America's banking system”, expanding his Presidential powers exponentially in the process.

In his first “Fireside Speech” (which burned the backside of many Americans) on March 12, 1933 Roosevelt declared “Let me make it clear to you that the banks will take care of all needs, except, of course, the hysterical demands of hoarders, and it is my belief that hoarding during the past week has become an exceedingly unfashionable pastime in every part of our nation. It needs no prophet to tell you that when the people find that they can get their money -- that they can get it when they want it for all legitimate purposes -- the phantom of fear will soon be laid. People will again be glad to have their money where it will be safely taken care of and where they can use it conveniently at any time. I can assure you, my friends, that it is safer to keep your money in a reopened bank than it is to keep it under the mattress.”

On June 16, 1933, EO 6073 passed into legislation as the “Emergency Banking Act (EBA)”. After only 40 minutes’ debate in the House of Representatives, with an unknown author and no printed copies available for members of the House, the Bill was passed swiftly and without due process. The wand was waved again.

At the time, Congressman Lundeen, appalled at the reckless lack of due process involved in the passing of this Bill said “I want to put myself on record against procedure of this kind and against the use of such methods in passing legislation affecting millions of lives and billions of dollars. It seems to me that under this bill thousands of small banks will be crushed and wiped out of existence, and that money and credit control will be still further concentrated in the hands of those who now hold the power…. I am suspicious of this railroading of bills through our House of Representatives, and I refuse to vote for a measure unseen and unknown.”

Meanwhile, Executive Order 6073 paved the way for Executive Order 6102 on April 5, 1933.

This Executive Order (EO) made it a criminal act to possess gold coins, gold bullion and gold certificates within the continental United States and ordered that the hoarded gold be delivered to the Government on or before May 1, 1933. The official price of gold was raised from $20.67 to $35/ounce.

Although it is unknown just how much gold was confiscated by means of Executive Order 6102, numbers suggest that by January 1934, there were 195.1 million ounces and 227.9 million ounces by August 1934.

The Government had to have some place to hoard the confiscated gold. So, Executive Order 6102 paved the way to Fort Knox. The U.S. Treasury Department began construction of the United States Bullion Depository (USBD) in 1936. Completed in December of that year, at a cost of US$560,000, the Gold Vault sits in a 109,000-acre Army enclave in Fort Knox, Kentucky.

The U.S. Mint states that 147.3 million ounces of gold are now tucked into Fort Knox. Guarded by Apache helicopter gunships and tucked into a bunker with a bomb-proof roof and thick granite walls, you’d think that 147.3 million ounces of gold would be safe in the vault. While Treasury officials insist that the “gold is all there”, why the resistance to a public audit? Congress begs off, saying it will cost US$60 million to test the gold. Other figures bandied about suggest US$15 million. Other so-called experts contest both figures, stating that an independent audit and assay could be conducted for as little as US$15,000.

More nefarious are that the numbers don’t add up…and never have. In his article The Great American Disaster: How Much Gold Remains In Fort Knox?, dated August 27, 2010, Chris Weber states that, at their peak in 1949, the Fort Knox reserves reputedly numbered 701 million ounces – 69.9% of all the gold on the planet. The latest figures reported by the U.S. Mint state that 147.3 million ounces of gold are now tucked into Fort Knox. Treasury subsequently downgraded this figure from 264 million ounces of gold, a decline of 79%! Lucy, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.

Clearly, the road to – and from - Fort Knox is paved in gold and not-so-gold intentions. Tales of pillaging, profiteering and skullduggery abound at the crossroads of Bullion Boulevard and Gold Vault Road. Masked interlopers didn’t rob the USDB. Reputed to be the second most secure place in the world (as reported in The Blogington’s post of September 21, 2010), the video cams, armed guards, attack helicopters, armored personnel carriers, and 30,000 soldiers guarding Fort Knox guaranteed that.

For over 50 years, while domestically it was a crime to hold gold, there is little doubt that well-heeled Americans - and America’s enemies, operating offshore, were able to procure gold at the bargain basement price of $35/ounce.

Not surprising that Fort Knox’s 22-ton door is locked to an audit. For almost 40 years, no visitors have been allowed in the grounds of the Gold Depository. Considered one of the eight most secure places in the world, we’re not getting in for a sneak peek anytime soon. In the last recorded “audit”, in the early 50’s, a group of Congressmen and Senators were taken on a quick tour of Fort Knox and allowed to peek into a few vaults. They reported seeing “orange-hued gold bars”. Lucy, you got more ‘splainin’ to do.

In his article “The Great American Disaster: How Much Gold Remains In Fort Knox?”, Chris Weber outlines details about the one “audit” of Fort Knox, as follows:

“The only audit that has ever been done of the gold inside Ft Knox was done days after Dwight Eisenhower became President in January of 1953. After 20 years of Democratic presidents, the American public wanted to be sure that the gold confiscated from them was still there. Thus, the new President ordered an audit within hours after taking office.

The central problem was that it wasn't much of an audit. To sum it up:

Representatives of the audited group were allowed to make the rules governing the audit. No outside private experts were allowed.

Those government bureaucrats involved were inexperienced in their tasks, by their own admission.

The entire audit of the largest gold hoard ever concentrated in history lasted only seven days.

Only a fraction of the gold was actually tested. Later, the officials put this fraction at just 5%.

Based on that fraction, the official committee reported that, in their opinion, all the holdings would have matched their records if they'd all been tested.

If the audit was accurate, the fact remains that almost 80% of it went overseas in the coming years. If the audit was not accurate, the amount of gold lost could have been even more. “

On September 23, 1974, Mary Brooks, the Director of the United States Mint, led a tour of members of Congress and the news media through the USBD. There was no audit or inventory of the gold and no other public “inspection” has been allowed since then.

Why won’t the Mint comment about how much gold is there? Perhaps the acid test is not so much as what has happened to the gold in Fort Knox; but rather is there gold in Fort Knox? And if so, how much…..or how little?

In a feat worthy of The Great Houdini himself, the Fort Knox gold may be the World’s Greatest Vanishing Act ever.

Link:
http://www.321gold.com/editorials/kotecha/kotecha022112.html

The Ron Paul Revolution DEFINED...

2012-02-22T06:40:00.000-05:00

2012 ELECTION RIGGED-RON PAUL-MAKE IT VIRAL !

2012-02-22T06:32:00.000-05:00

Ron Paul: US is slipping into a fascist system...

2012-02-21T16:31:00.000-05:00

History stuff. WWII did not end the Depression nor did it usher in prosperity.....

2012-02-21T15:14:00.000-05:00

World War II: Still Being Touted as the Quintessential Keynesian Miracle

By Robert Higgs

Someone must have imagined that my hopes for improved economic understanding might be excessively optimistic today and thus needed to be curbed to restore my normal emotional balance, because that person undertook to smash any such hopes to dust by e-mailing me a link to a Huffington Post article by Paul Abrams, “Economically, World War II Was Stimulus on Steroids.” This screed turns out to be an ostensible macroeconomics lesson composed in equal measure of economic foolishness, historical ignorance, and ideological tendentiousness – the veritable epitome of a worse-than-worthless contribution to public enlightenment.

The opening paragraphs indicate the direction of Abrams’s argument:

The next time someone argues that the New Deal failed, and only the Second World War ended the Depression, as ‘proof’ that government spending does not work, one can respond with the details of economic growth and unemployment reduction up to 1940, or one can ignore the claim and thank them for making your case for massive government spending in a deep, broad recession.

Right wing politicians are loathe to credit the New Deal with any success in hoisting the United States out of the Great Depression, but credit World War II for that achievement, believing that that somehow disproves Keynesian economic theory.

That claim, however, undermines their entire premise.

Abrams concludes that “massive government spending at a time of severe economic downturn and dislocation can indeed get an economy humming again,” as World War II shows; the New Deal was merely too timid. He seems unaware that his argument merely restates the fallacy-ridden hodge-podge of conventional wisdom about how World War II “got the economy out of the Depression” that has dominated the thinking of economists, historians, and the public ever since the war itself.

When I began to teach U.S. economic history at the University of Washington in the late 1960s, I quickly realized that this tale of the wartime “Keynesian miracle” could not withstand critical scrutiny once one went beyond the barest account of it in terms of the elementary Keynesian model and the standard government macro measures, such as GDP, the consumer price index, and the rate of civilian unemployment. Almost immediately I saw that unemployment had disappeared during the war not because of the beautiful workings of a Keynesian multiplier, but entirely because about 20 percent of the labor force was forced, directly or indirectly, into the armed forces and a comparable number of employees set to work in factories, shipyards, and other facilities turning out war-related ”goods” the government purchased only after forcing the public to pay for them sooner (via wartime taxes and inflation) or later (via repayment of wartime borrowing). Thus, the great wartime “boom” consisted entirely of (1) some people’s mass engagement in wreaking death and destruction and (2) other people’s employment in producing supplies for these warriors after the government’s military labor drain, turning out ”goods” never valued by consumers or private producers in voluntary transactions, but rather ordered by government functionaries and priced completely arbitrarily in a command-and-control economy. In no sense was the alleged ”wartime prosperity” comparable to real, normal prosperity. The pervasive regimentation, rationing, price controls, direct government resource allocations, and forbidden forms of production (e.g., civilian automobiles) should have served as a tip-off.

After teaching my own students along these lines for many years, I eventually began to write articles and books pulling together my various studies. The most coherent of these books is my Depression, War, and Cold War, published originally by Oxford University Press in 2006. For all of the good I’ve done in correcting people’s understanding of what happened to the U.S. economy during World War and what lessons one might justifiably draw from that experience about, say, the scientific validity of the Keynesian model or its related fiscal-policy implications, I might just as well have held my breath and turned blue. Here we are in June 2011, and millions of Americans are being presented with the purest potion of economic misinformation one can imagine, an account in no way superior to those the young Keynesians were peddling so confidently in 1944, when I was born. Perhaps my mother ought to have strangled me in my crib, to spare me the bitter disappointment of seeing the research and writing I’ve carried out over more than forty years prove to have been completely in vain.

For the Paul Abrams’s of this world, of course, none of this makes the slightest difference. They are at pains not to understand how the economy actually works or to endorse policies that promote its greater productivity, but only to concoct a plausible rationale for the government’s taxing “the rich” more heavily and spending oodles of money on a laundry list of leftist idols — government “infrastructure,” green energy-conservation programs, high-speed rail, and the rest of the wasteful and economically foolish purposes that progressive politicians espouse to feather their own nests and enrich their cronies and political dependents at public expense. If they haven’t learned any sound economics by this time, chances are slim to none that they will ever learn any, but I cannot believe that they care about such learning, in any event. Politics is the name, plunder’s the game.

There’s a lesson here, besides the obvious one that public discourse consists overwhelmingly of ideological sound and fury, signifying nothing solidly connected to reality. For me, the main lesson is: mommas, don’t let your babies grow up to become economic historians. If you do, you only put them in line to have their hearts broken.

Link:
http://blog.independent.org/2011/06/28/world-war-ii-still-being-touted-as-the-quintessential-keynesian-miracle/

OWS targets private prison industry...

2012-02-21T14:45:00.000-05:00

Pat Buchanan: 300 nukes in Israel yet Iran a threat?

2012-02-21T14:38:00.000-05:00

"It is becoming increasingly obvious that Anonymous itself is either an NSA op or functioning as a useful idiot..."

2012-02-21T14:30:00.000-05:00

Scary NSA Propaganda: Anonymous Cyberattack Will Take Down Power Grid

Kurt Nimmo

An article for Wall Street Journal subscribers reveals that NSA boss Gen. Keith Alexander believes the hacktavist collective Anonymous may soon have the capability to take down the power grid in the United States through a cyberattack.

Alexander has peddled his theory at White House meetings and in other private sessions, according to people familiar with the gatherings, WSJ reports. “While he hasn’t publicly expressed his concerns about the potential for Anonymous to disrupt power supplies, he has warned publicly about an emerging ability by cyberattackers to disable or even damage computer networks,” writes Siobhan Gorman.

It’s not easy to disrupt the power grid in the United States. Most systems use proprietary operating systems and applications that are “not readily available for study by your average hacker,” writes Michael Tanj. Power grid or drinking-water systems and networks are not connected to the public internet.

In other words, it would take more than the efforts of an internet meme scattered across imageboards and forums to disrupt this complex system. It would take the concerted resources of a nation-state like China or Russia – or more likely the NSA itself.

“Even in places like the United States, where there isn’t much you cannot find online, you’re not going to be able to get the depth and detail you need to turn off the lights with a simple network connection. You’re going to have to deploy national-level resources,” writes Tanj.

The NSA knows this. It is exploiting the minimal threat poised by Anonymous as part of a propaganda campaign designed to extend the reach of its “Perfect Citizen” program. Perfect Citizen is being developed by defense contractor Raytheon and consists of sensors that would report public utility anomalies to the NSA via a partnership with Homeland Security, according to Ryan Singel. A Raytheon employee described it as a “Big Brother” system.

The NSA has over the years specialized is slurping up mega-amounts of private data in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The resultant database is the largest in the world. It only makes sense the NSA will do the same with the data it will now collect from utilities and the public infrastructure.

Anonymous is being used as an excuse by the government as it rolls out increasingly draconian surveillance programs under the aegis of “cyber security” and terror prevention.

Anonymous’ “electronic civil disobedience” – primarily consisting of denial service attacks on government and corporate websites – and sensationalistic media coverage feed into the plan to not only lockdown and eventually modify the free-wheeling character of the internet, but turn the medium into the most pervasive and effective surveillance apparatus on the planet.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that Anonymous itself is either an NSA op or functioning as a useful idiot.

“The power of this group is unprecedented,” Rob Johnson wrote on January 24. “On the day that the feds shut down MegaUpload.com, Anonymous responded by bringing down the websites of the US Department of Justice and the FBI, as well as the sites of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Warner Music Group, Universal Music and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the largest-ever cyber attack. Anonymous went on another spree Monday morning, assuming control of Senator Chuck Grassley’s Twitter account and shutting down the websites of CBS and Universal Music. Who could do all of this more effectively than the cyber special ops already in place within the government? It’s called United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM), led by General Keith B. Alexander.”

Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/scary-nsa-propaganda-anonymous-cyberattack-will-take-down-power-grid.html

CNN: Ron Paul Leads Super Tuesday...

2012-02-21T12:43:00.000-05:00

You can be assured that the powers to be will not allow this to be the actual final result. In the end Paul will finish 3rd or 4th despite the fact most people will vote for him...

The Aftershock Survival Summit...

2012-02-21T12:37:00.002-05:00

"Unfortunately, the Obama administration has exploited secrecy to an extreme which even George W. Bush couldn’t hold a candle to."

2012-02-21T12:34:00.000-05:00

Obama fights to keep unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping powers

Madison Ruppert

So much for change. The Obama administration is continuing their efforts to go back on every single campaign promise, and beyond all odds make themselves look even worse than the administration of George W. Bush.

Personally, I didn’t think such a thing was possible, but with the extrajudicial killing of Americans, refusal to explain why they think they can engage in such activities (multiple times, no less), the passing the radically un-American National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA), and so much more, Obama is doing a great job at proving me wrong.

Now to continue this trend, Barack Obama has instructed the Justice Department to defend the warrantless wiretapping policy first introduced under George W. Bush.

In response, just last week the Department of Justice filed papers with the Supreme Court seeking to overturn a decision from an appeals court which allowed a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to continue.

This suit challenged the constitutionality of a law passed in 2008 which gave the American government what had previously been an unprecedented amount of power to snoop on American citizens without any semblance of probable cause.

Of course the NDAA, signed into law by Obama, makes this look tame, as now they can just snatch you up in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again, based on nothing more than a suspicion.

The warrantless wiretapping began soon after the attacks on September 11, 2001, a time which allowed for a great deal of draconian, unconstitutional legislation to be pushed through while the American people were still cowering in fear.

At the time, many people were thoroughly frightened of the al Qaeda bogeyman who the government and media quickly blamed the attacks on, although since then things have changed considerably.

Now a great deal of the American public has come to question the official story, although there is far from a consensus on the issue as of yet. I honestly believe that it will be many years before we can approach such a point.

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Bush ordered the National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept and monitor the telephone calls of Americans without warrants, which were not only required under the Constitution of the United States, but also the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.

FISA, created in response to the Watergate scandal, was supposedly intended to limit domestic surveillance.

FISA created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), a special court intended to review all requests for domestic surveillance.

Between the years of 1978 and 1992 Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush together presented some 7,030 applications to FISC, all of which were approved.

Bill Clinton presented 6,057 in his eight-year tenure, and only two of them were not approved as-is. One was rejected and the other was modified.

Under George W. Bush, FISC bucked the previous trend somewhat, rejecting six requests and modifying another 179.

Bush was clearly infuriated by the FISC judges’ unwillingness to do whatever he wanted, thus leading to his move to completely circumvent FISC by entirely bypassing the law, instead ordering the NSA to conduct the illegal, unconstitutional wiretapping practices in secret.

Once the program was outed in 2005 by the New York Times, the Bush administration attempted to backpedal and get FISC approval.

When his attempts fell short, he instead went to Congress in an attempt to get them to permit the previously prohibited practice of warrantless wiretapping. He did this through passing the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which he signed into law on July 10 of 2008.

Less than an hour after, the ACLU jumped into action and challenged the Act, which is set to expire at the end of 2012.

In March of last year, the appeals court ruled in favor of the ACLU and reinstated their lawsuit which challenged the legality of the FISA Amendments Act.

In the decision, the court rejected the argument put forth by the Obama administration, which claimed that the court should dismiss the case simply because the ACLU’s clients could not prove that their communications would be collected under the FISA Amendments Act.

Writing for AllGov, Matt Bewig and David Wallechinsky state this argument “was true largely because the law creates great secrecy around the wiretaps in the first place – a true ‘Catch-22.’”

Indeed the American government has become increasingly reliant on pervasive secrecy in order to cover their unconstitutional, illegal and often highly immoral actions.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has exploited secrecy to an extreme which even George W. Bush couldn’t hold a candle to.

I guess that’s what America gets for being naïve enough to vote for someone approved by the political establishment promising real change. I see it somewhat like people who are ignorant enough to actually play the slots in Vegas. Sure, they promise large payouts, but if you know what you’re up against you’ll never be stupid enough to throw away your money when you’re aware of the infinitesimal chances of coming out on top.

Hopefully the Obama presidency will serve as proof that you can never, under any circumstances, no matter how charismatic and intelligent they may seem, trust a politician.

If we continue to fall for these political tricks we will only see more abuses of power and exploitation of secrecy, all working towards solidifying the American police state and the Big Brother surveillance grid to the point where it is impossible to resist.

Once the NDAA comes into effect, we very well might already be at that point – as hard as it is to accept such a thing as reality, we might not have a choice.

Link:
http://endthelie.com/2012/02/21/obama-fights-to-keep-unconstitutional-warrantless-wiretapping-powers/#axzz1mwXjpkiH

FBI Tries To Coax Muslim Into Bombing US Capitol...

2012-02-21T12:27:00.000-05:00

"Like 78 million other U.S. Baby Boomers, Symons and her husband had the misfortune of approaching retirement age at a time when stock market crashes diminished their 401(k) nest eggs, companies began eliminating defined benefit pensions in record numbers and previously unimagined technical advances all but eliminated entire job descriptions from travel agent to telephone operator."

2012-02-21T12:25:00.000-05:00

For boomers, it's a new era of 'work til you drop'

By JOHN ROGERS

When Paula Symons joined the U.S. workforce in 1972, typewriters in her office clacked nonstop, people answered the telephones and the hot new technology revolutionizing communication was the fax machine.

Symons, fresh out of college, entered this brave new world thinking she'd do pretty much what her parents' generation did: Work for just one or two companies over about 45 years before bidding farewell to co-workers at a retirement party and heading off into her sunset years with a pension.

Forty years into that run, the 60-year-old communications specialist for a Wisconsin-based insurance company has worked more than a half-dozen jobs. She's been laid off, downsized and seen the pension disappear with only a few thousand dollars accrued when it was frozen.

So, five years from the age when people once retired, she laughs when she describes her future plans.

"I'll probably just work until I drop," she says, a sentiment expressed, with varying degrees of humor, by numerous members of her age group.

Like 78 million other U.S. Baby Boomers, Symons and her husband had the misfortune of approaching retirement age at a time when stock market crashes diminished their 401(k) nest eggs, companies began eliminating defined benefit pensions in record numbers and previously unimagined technical advances all but eliminated entire job descriptions from travel agent to telephone operator.

At the same time, companies began moving other jobs overseas, to be filled by people willing to work for far less and still able to connect to the U.S. market in real time.

"The paradigm has truly shifted. Now when you're looking for a job you're competing in a world where the competition isn't just the guy down the street, but the guy sitting in a cafe in Hong Kong or Mumbai," says Bill Vick, a Dallas-based executive recruiter who started BoomersNextStep.com in an effort to help Baby Boomers who want to stay in the workforce.

Not only has the paradigm shifted, but as it has the generation whose mantra used to be, "Don't trust anyone over 30," finds itself now being looked on with distrust by younger Generation X managers who question whether boomers have the high-tech skills or even the stamina to do what needs to be done.

"I always have the feeling that I have to prove my value all the time. That I'm not some old relic who doesn't understand social media or can't learn some new technique," says Symons, who is active on Twitter and Facebook, loves every new time-saving software app that comes down the pike, and laughs at the idea of ever sending another fax.

"Ahh, that's just so archaic," she says.

Meanwhile, as companies have downsized, boomers have been hurt to some degree by their own sheer numbers, says Ed Lawler of the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business.

The oldest ones, Lawler says, aren't retiring, and more and more the youngest members of the generation ahead of them aren't either. It's no longer uncommon, he says, for people to work until 70.

"People who would have normally been out of the workforce are still there, taking jobs that would have gone to what we now call the unemployed," he said.

John Stewart of Springfield, Mo., sees himself becoming part of that new generation that never stops working.

"No, I don't see myself retiring," says Stewart, who is media director for a large church. "I think I would be bored if I just all of a sudden quit everything and did whatever it is retired people do."

Then there are the financial considerations. Like many boomers, the 60-year-old acknowledges he didn't put enough aside when he was younger.

For more than 30 years, Stewart ran his own photography business, doing everything from studio portraits to illustrating annual reports for hospitals and other large corporations to freelancing for national magazines and newspapers.

As the news media began to struggle, the magazine and newspaper work dried up. As the economy tanked, his large corporate clients began to use cheaper stock photos purchased online rather than hire him to take new ones. Eventually he took his current job, producing videos of pastors' sermons and photos for church publications. He says he is glad to be one boomer to make a late career change and keep working.

"There were times when the money was really rolling in," he says of his old business. "But somehow retirement wasn't really in the forefront of my thinking then, so saving for it wasn't an automatic thing."

Steve Wyard, of Los Angeles, says he and his wife have planned carefully for retirement.

He's worked for 30 years for a company that sells and services commercial washers and dryers, and she's been with a health maintenance organization for even longer. They've invested cautiously, lived in the same house for decades and meticulously paid down the mortgage.

Plus he's one of the few boomers who figures that, no matter what technology comes along, his job won't go away.

"Everyone has to do the laundry," he says.

Still, he and his wife have two sons, 19 and 21, to put through college, and Wyard, 61, sees that pushing back retirement for several years.

Until then he plans to keep working, which is what every physically able boomer should consider doing, says USC's Lawler.

Union membership, which has been declining for years, now includes only about 10 percent of all eligible U.S. employees, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile, the number of defined benefit retirement funds offered by private enterprise have fallen from about one in three employers in 1990 to about one in five in 2005.

With unions no longer in a strong position to fight for benefits like pensions, with jobs disappearing or going overseas, and with Gen Xers and even younger Millennial Generation members coveting their jobs, Lawler warns this is no time for boomers to quit and allow the skills they've spent a lifetime building to atrophy.

"My advice is above all don't retire," he says. "If you like your job at all, hold onto it. Because getting back in in this era is essentially impossible."

Link:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_AGING_AMERICA_CHANGING_WORKPLACE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-02-20-11-04-08

“Now we’re slipping into a fascist system where it’s a combination of government, big business and authoritarian rule, and the suppression of the individual rights of each and every American citizen.”

2012-02-21T12:09:00.000-05:00

Corporatocracy: Ron Paul Says US ‘Slipping Into Fascism’

by Katerina Azarova

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul slammed America's system of governance at a rally in Kansas City, saying businesses and government are pushing the country into twenty-first century fascism.

But before you start picturing fair-skinned, blue-eyed CEOs and bureaucrats running amok and with their right arms held high, calm down. What the outspoken Texas Republican meant was fascist corporatism – an economic model most prominently seen in Mussolini’s Italy of the 1920s to the 1940s. Fascist economic corporatism involved government and private management of full sectors of the economy – which Paul says is par for the course in today's America.

“We’ve slipped away from a true republic,” Paul told thousands of his supporters at the rally. “Now we’re slipping into a fascist system where it’s a combination of government, big business and authoritarian rule, and the suppression of the individual rights of each and every American citizen.”

His words, which a few years ago might have been dismissed by most, rang loud and clear in Kansas. Paul’s rally coincided with long-established Missouri and Kansas GOP events – from which many attendees actually slipped away to hear Paul deliver his speech. Drawn out and bled dry by ongoing and expensive overseas military campaigns, Americans are more and more receptive to a foreign policy of peace, which is what Paul promises to deliver.

The presidential hopeful echoed words already once delivered to the American people – by their president. Dwight Eisenhower said, in his farewell address to the nation, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

The disastrous rise, it seems, has happened. In 2009 alone, the United States was responsible for almost half of the world’s total military spending – 46 per cent, or 712 billion US dollars. Since then, the figures have only grown, to the point that American military spending now exceeds that of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined. The US has more than 700 military bases in 130 countries around the world.

But, one might ask, can’t the American government – which oversees the world's highest gross domestic product – afford some extra military spending?

The simple answer is: no.

The wealthiest nation also happens to have the biggest national debt in world history. With the dollar acting as a global reserve currency, the Federal Reserve leaving the printing press running around the clock, and manufacturing and production being outsourced to cheap foreign labor markets, the US economy looks more like a Ponzi scheme. And as former president George W. Bush told his Argentine counterpart Nestor Kirchner, "The best way to revitalize the economy is war, and the US has grown stronger with war."

But Americans are tired of war – and are tired of waiting for the magical day when war will magically revive the economy. Which is why Ron Paul may have found the perfect note to strike with voters as he continues to fight in the Republican primaries.

Link:
http://lewrockwell.com/rep3/corporatocracy.html

" For Graham, attacking Iran is but part of a much broader, larger and expansive global agenda in which he advocates U.S. intervention in order to remake the world’s political systems within and across states. He will go about creating and instituting western-style governments – by force and by using American resources."

2012-02-21T12:03:00.000-05:00

Senator Lindsey Graham: Interventionist, Warmonger, Man of Empire

by Michael S. Rozeff

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is a leader of the pack against Iran, as depicted in this AP news article.

At this historical juncture in which aggression against Iran on the part of Israel and/or the U.S. is openly discussed, Graham is an influential congressional interventionist and warmonger. What is he thinking and saying? What are his arguments, and what are the real reasons for attacking Iran that he is not expressing?

Graham conveyed his willingness to attack Iran in his AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) speech in 2010. This was a natural forum for Graham, who is a staunch supporter of Israel and its policies, and for Israel, which would like nothing better than to tip the U.S. into war against Iran.

Graham’s speech transcript is available. See here for the speech video. In that speech, Graham said

"We must not allow this Iranian theocracy to develop a nuclear weapon. It's not enough to be determined. We have to say without any hesitation: it will not happen.

"All options must be on the table. You know exactly what I'm talking about."

He explained that he would be willing to strike militarily in order to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon:

"My belief is a military strike stopping the Iranian government from having a nuclear weapon is more effective than trying to deal with the Iranian government after they have one."

He explained that he would strike Iran very hard:

"And if military force is ever employed, it should be done in a decisive fashion. The Iranian government's ability to wage conventional warfare against its neighbors and our troops in the region should not exist. They should not have one plane that can fly or one ship that can float."

Graham would support the destruction of Iran’s infrastructure to accomplish his goals.

He would support the destruction of Iran’s government and its replacement by a new government friendly to the U.S.:

"I want to talk very quickly about the world as we wish it to be...

"An Iran controlled by its people, not some theocracy. An Iran governed by someone other than a Holocaust denier – that's the world we wish it to be. An Iran pursuing peaceful nuclear power, not a nuclear weapon."

Graham advocates that the U.S. launch a war or join Israel in a war against Iran, if the U.S. doesn’t get its way via sanctions and diplomacy. He advocates this aggression even if Iran doesn’t attack the U.S. or Israel and even if it does not violate any of its international treaties.

Graham is perfectly willing to bully Iran and threaten Iran with attack, even though the Iranians have a right to say what they please, no matter how politically incorrect their remarks might be; and even though they have a right to develop nuclear weapons if they want to, a right that they have not exercised. It should be noted that Iran has only conventional armed forces. It has no nuclear weaponry in production or development. It has no means of delivering such weapons even if it had them.

Graham is perfectly willing to lay down his "law" to the Iranians and use force to get his way, a bad habit of the U.S. government that has gotten worse since the fall of the USSR.

Let’s look at a few of Graham’s stated reasons for his aggressive posture. We will find that none of them make any sense, even if Graham believes them. The real reasons lie hidden more deeply.

One reason that Graham threatens to aggress against Iran is to prevent the possibility of future Iranian choices, such as attacking the U.S. and Israel. This is a straw man. Such attacks are highly unlikely possibilities. These choices are in no way present realities and in no way likely future Iranian choices.

The fact is that Iran is not preparing its conventional armed forces to launch an offensive war on Israel. It has no announced intention of doing such a thing. It has no strong or urgent reason to do such a thing. Iran has no casus belli. In view of Israel’s nuclear arsenal, Iran would face enormous losses if it attacked Israel in the future. Iran’s leaders know this.

Furthermore, Iran’s armed forces cannot attack Israel. The distance between Tehran and Tel Aviv is almost 1,000 miles. The two countries are separated by Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Iran has no air force capable of flying such a distance, even one way. Its ground forces are not about to invade the intervening countries, now or in the future. That would bring the U.S. and other nations against Iran.

Any attack on Israel would surely bring the U.S. and NATO forces down against Iran.

If Iran is no serious military threat to Israel’s existence, even less is it a threat to America which is thousands of miles away and whose military forces could reduce Iran to rubble. Nevertheless, Graham continually plays up Iran as a "threat". In his AIPAC speech, he even views it as a threat to Russia and China:

"Russia and China have a chance to change the course of history; I hope they will understand that a nuclear-armed Iran is just as much a threat to them as it is to us or Israel or any other tolerant person or group."

This is an absurd claim.

A second reason for Graham’s anti-Iran belligerence is his unflinching alignment with the State of Israel combined with his belief that Iran is out to get a nuclear weapon in order to destroy the State of Israel:

"We must never allow anyone to drive a wedge between the State of Israel and the United States of America. It must be so. Israel's right to exist must be acknowledged by every group in every corner of the world. That's the way the world must be to move forward. We must not allow this Iranian theocracy to develop a nuclear weapon. It's not enough to be determined. We have to say without any hesitation: it will not happen."

Although the context here is recognition of Israel, Graham comes close to saying that Israeli and U.S. policies cannot and must not diverge. Does he actually mean such a thing? If so, it is absurd.

Although Graham is singling out Iran here and its non-recognition of Israel, there are actually many other states that do not recognize Israel. There are apparently 26 of them, and they include Pakistan and North Korea, two nuclear powers. They also include Morocco, Algeria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Chad, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, the UAE, Oman, Iraq, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Graham thinks that all these states must recognize Israel’s right to exist. That’s "the way", in his view, for the world to move forward. This too is absurd. There are many ways to move forward. In any event, these states do not think there is only one way. Perhaps they’d recognize Israel if they got something in return or if Israel did some things in return that they want.

A third reason for Graham’s antagonism toward Iran is his view of Israel as an evangelical Christian. In a long conversation at the Council of Foreign relations (CFR), there are portions in which he imagined a sub-conversation between himself and a constituent he called "Bubba". Bubba asks and Graham answers:

"What do you think about Israel? Oh, yeah, I like Israel. Most evangelical Christians do. Well, do you think Israel needs some help now? Oh, yeah. Well, if they don't need help now, when are they going to need it?"

I have been unable to find statistics on how many Christians there are who have different sets of beliefs about Israel, biblical prophecies, the second coming, the Book of Revelations, the anti-Christ, and other related matters. Thus, Graham may or may not be speaking accurately for "most evangelical Christians" when he says they like Israel; but he is surely speaking accurately for himself.

Graham’s attachment to Israel has more basis than his version of Christian belief, whatever it may be. But to the extent that certain religious beliefs of his are the reason for shaping U.S. foreign policy toward Israel, that is wholly an inappropriate reason even on Graham’s own terms, for we find next that he is against theocracy. Even if he were not against theocracy, the First Amendment contemplates the separation of church and state. Even if it did not, it is absurd to exercise political power and justify alignment with Israel or aggressive war on the basis of abstruse, controversial, ancient, prophetic or disputed biblical passages that are open to varied human interpretations.

Fourth, Graham has an antipathy to Iran’s form of government, which surfaces when he refers to it as a theocracy. This occurs three times in his AIPAC speech. Actually, Graham has it wrong for Iran is a theocratic republic, as many sources say, including the CIA.

Graham wants "An Iran controlled by its people, not some theocracy." Iran has elections, just as Americans vote. It would be nice if Graham also wanted the American system to produce an America controlled by Americans, not by government people and special interest people.

Graham refers to Iran as "a theocracy that kills its own children". This inflammatory language is a reference to capital punishment for juveniles convicted of murder. I wonder if Graham knows that 31 states in the U.S. allowed executions of juveniles until 2005 when a Supreme Court case ended the practice. I wonder if he knows that in Iran, the family of a victim can grant a pardon or sometimes give clemency in return for compensation.

On this matter of theocracy, is it not noteworthy that Graham dislikes theocracy while at the same time being pro-Israel, at least in part, because of his own religious belief?

Graham feels strongly that the U.S. is at war, and this is his fifth reason:

"This is the time to show determination and resolve in the face of extremism. We are at war as a nation. September 11, 2001, everything changed about our country. We're almost nine years down the road and some of us I think have gotten too short of a memory. We're at war and we have to fight this war within our values."

In his conversation at CFR, Graham makes clear what his view of this "war" is. In the first place, it is not a war against al-Qaida. On that score, he says

"We have strategically defeated al-Qaida.

"What's happened in the last decade has been devastating for al-Qaida."

It is for him a war against "extremism", which to him means a war against elements in a country that prevent moderates from running the State. Graham could easily be called an extremist himself. It could easily be alleged that he is preventing moderates from running the U.S.

Graham’s war is a war for state-building. Again in the CFR article, he calls it by a conventional name, a war on terror, but to him it is a war to build moderate democracies, that is, representative governments:

"Winning the war on terror to me is as follows. Where there is will to fight and defeat extremism, it begins to obtain capacity, that when we withdraw, that the military forces left behind will be de minimus and that the people in the country in question will have the capacity militarily to defeat extremism: When a politician embraces a moderate thought, they don't get killed; they win the election."

To Graham, the Iranian government either consists of extremists, because it has different views on Israel than he holds, or prevents the kind of representative government that suits him, or prevents what he views as "moderates" from coming to power.

For Graham, attacking Iran is but part of a much broader, larger and expansive global agenda in which he advocates U.S. intervention in order to remake the world’s political systems within and across states. He will go about creating and instituting western-style governments – by force and by using American resources. Before AIPAC, he outlines some of this vision:

"A world where moderate Muslims are celebrated, not condemned and killed. An Afghanistan where a young girl never fears the soccer stadium, but can go to school and achieve her dreams. A free and independent Iraq where Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds can settle their differences at the ballot box and through the rule of law and be an inspiration to the Mideast. A UN, a United Nations that can actually control thugs and dictators."

In his CFR talk, we find that there is no part of the world that is beyond Graham’s or the U.S.’s purview. A sample:

"If we pour it on for another 10 years – and that means different things in different places – we can change the world. If we help the Egyptian people before it's too late have a free and fair election and follow-on aid so the Muslim Brotherhood doesn't dominate, if we can take Tunisia, follow on Gadhafi with something better...

"We're 15 years away in Afghanistan.

"Whether you agree with Iraq or not, I thought we needed to win, and we're on the verge of winning."

"My view about Pakistan is you can't trust them but you can't abandon them.

"Turkey is a great hope and a great disappointment all at the same time.

"When you kick their ass in Afghanistan and Iraq, they move. Well, they're moving to the Horn of Africa.

"Stay ahead of them. Counterterrorism is one way to stay ahead of them. Another way to stay ahead of them is build capacity in those countries to the – to the will that exists to say no to extremism. So Africa Command will have, in my view, a civilian deputy. And most of the resources in Africa Command will be partly training of African militaries, but a lot of it will be helping the African people develop health care programs, rule-of-law programs, economic opportunity so we can get there before the enemy does.

We are in these passages getting closer to the real reasons for Graham’s interventionism. Why is remaking the world on Graham’s agenda, and why has it been on every administration’s agenda for a long time? Graham’s answer is wrapped up in two words that he mentions frequently: national security.

"The safety that I'm trying to achieve for our nation is to make sure that those who want to say no to these forces have the ability. And it is in our national security interest to engage at every level. Sometimes it's a USAID program. Sometimes it's a special forces guy in the middle of the night. Sometimes it's just a word said at the right time."

It is not always war and killing, Graham adds. He is not always warmongering, but he warmongers when he thinks it’s a suitable policy to enhance national security..

It takes very little thought to realize that nothing of what Graham recommends in the way of intervention and war has much at all to do with national security, since the U.S. already possesses the power to destroy any country in the world many times over and none of them are about to declare war against the U.S. if they have brains in their heads. In fact, one can build a strong case that every intrusion of the U.S. overseas weakens America, invites retaliation and creates long term enemies.

Why, for example, do other countries and nations not find it necessary for their security to remake the world in their image? They know that it is neither an achievable goal nor a necessary one in order that they have a reasonable degree of security. The behavior of other nations suggests that Graham’s "national security" answer is an insufficient basis for U.S. interventionism.

Why would the U.S., insulated by two great oceans, find it necessary to remake Afghanistan in order to assure American safety or national security? For that is precisely what Graham asserts:

"We do need to withdraw from Afghanistan in a logical, orderly way, right? How many people agree with that? I do.

"But we also need to understand that that's the center of gravity against radical Islam, and the outcome will determine our national security interests for decades. So, when he [Rick Perry] needs to – when he says ‘presence,’ hopefully what he's saying is an enduring relationship, politically, economically and militarily."

Again, the mere assertion of "national security" does not answer the question: Why is the U.S. nation-building and war-making in Afghanistan? The actual answer is that entering Afghanistan, building a new state, and maintaining control through relationships is not essential to the safety of Americans.

How is American security enhanced by destroying a country’s infrastructure, tearing down its government, destabilizing its society, killing and injuring large numbers of its people, and turning productive people into refugees? How is American security enhanced by attacking countries and creating civil wars, greater insecurity, lower living standards and fertile ground for religious and tribal rivalries and bombings? It isn’t.

How is American security enhanced by building up unpayable debts and diverting production into the military? It isn’t.

Graham’s basis for unending foreign interventions and wars, which is national security, simply does not suffice. It makes no sense as an explanation or rationale for U.S. behavior at this time or anytime since 1990 and the breakup of the USSR. National security is not why the U.S. is doing intervention and war on a continual basis.

The war on terror is not the reason for attacking Iraq and Libya and not the reason for wanting to attack Iran. Terror attacks inside the U.S. are not the motivation behind U.S. foreign policy. Most of the recent terror "incidents" have been controlled and baited by the FBI. More to the point, many countries have endured severe terror attacks without being seriously harmed overall and without venturing into a series of foreign wars.

National security is simply a convenient term to fend off a real explanation of U.S. interventionism. So is the war on terror. Graham and other American leaders are reluctant to tell the American public what the U.S. is actually up to.

The military power of the U.S. is so huge compared to other nations that its national security from a purely military standpoint is not a problem that requires overseas interventions of the kind we have been seeing in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. In addition, the deterrent power of the missiles and nuclear bombs of the U.S. deters the major powers.

If the military rationale for U.S. interventions is not the explanation, what is left? There are three: the economic, the religious or pseudo-religious, and the lust for power. All three fall under the heading of empire.

Under economic come the military-financial complex, oil, business interests, money, and a quest to control resources. Under the religious and semi-religious come ideas that the U.S. will save the world, or remake it, or end evil, or create a better world, or protect Israel, or create democracies. Political reconstruction of other nations is a utopian quest with semi-religious trappings. Under the lust for power come the intoxication of exercising power, glory, a place in history, changing the world, expansion of the empire, being above others, and ego gratification.

The lines that separate these are not fixed. America’s leaders are willing to express or repeatedly emphasize some of these motivations and downplay others according to how they play with the public.

The fall of the Russian empire changed the opportunities open to U.S. leaders. It left a power vacuum in the world. The U.S. was left standing. The game changed radically, and this also created a vacuum of foreign policy ideas in the U.S. Both the power vacuum and the policy vacuum were not long in being filled by ideas encapsulated in a few words: sole superpower.

The idea of empire is not a popular one among members of the U.S. government because it suggests the self-serving nature of those who run the empire. Its preferred proxy is the idea of sole superpower. This carries with it dual but contradictory notions that provide flexibility to those who rule. One idea is that the sole superpower must behave responsibly, which gives an ethical cast to the use of force. The other is that the sole superpower may take unilateral initiatives, which gives a pragmatic cast to the use of force. The U.S. likes to cast itself in the role of sole superpower acting for the good of the world of course.

Clinton, Bush, and Obama are the first presidents to operate in the post-USSR environment. They have fashioned and carried out interventionist doctrines based on the sole superpower theme, a theme which was nascent or hidden in the foreign policies of prior administrations. They are really powerful emperors running an empire.

The arguments made by interventionists and warmongers like Lindsey Graham have no merit. National security is no argument, and that includes worry over weapons of mass destruction, because the U.S. is so powerful already. Furthermore, such worries are all exaggerated. Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Serbia, Pakistan, Iraq and Serbia didn’t attack the U.S. Iran won’t attack the U.S. unless perhaps it is driven into a corner of desperation.

The war on terror is no argument. The U.S. wars overseas create more death and destruction of innocent people, provide more opportunities for terrorism in these lands, create more political difficulties, and incite more terrorists than any reduction in terrorists could possibly counterbalance in 100 years.

U.S. interventionism is very simply explained and understood. It is the behavior of an empire.

Senator Graham, like so many in Washington, is a man of empire through and through. A man of empire is a person who implicitly or explicitly accepts the empire, believes in it, supports it, defends it, and wants to extend it, even beyond the point of rationality. Empire organizes his thought, his world, his goals and aspirations and his political framework. The extent to which a man of empire fuses empire with values, religious beliefs, acquisition of gains and other motives varies personally. Empire is the means by which a man of empire traverses the unbridgeable moral chasm between peace and war.

Link:
http://lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff379.html

Ron Paul’s Texas Straight Talk 2/20/12: Defend America, Not the World...

2012-02-21T10:03:00.000-05:00

"As the economic decline of this nation accelerates, people are going to become much more desperate."

2012-02-21T10:01:00.000-05:00

10 Signs That America Is Decomposing Right In Front Of Our Eyes

The decay of society is so much harder to quantify than economic decline is. The government keeps lots of statistics on things like unemployment and inflation, but it really does not keep track of how sick and twisted people are becoming. Most of us recognize that the character of the American people has changed dramatically over the decades, but unlike the national debt, you can't easily point to a chart or a graph to show exactly how bad things are getting. In this article, my approach will be to point you to various "signs" of social decay. Signs tell us where we are at now and where we are headed. Some of the signs that I will use will be statistics while others will simply consist of anecdotal evidence. Yes, anecdotal evidence is not perfect, but when you put enough of it together it starts to paint a pretty clear picture of what is going on out there. America is becoming a truly frightening place. Our cities our decaying, thieves are becoming bolder, you never know who you can trust and everyone seems depressed. America is decomposing right in front of our eyes, and it is time that we all admitted it.

In the old days, if you met a stranger out on the streets you knew that you could almost certainly trust that person. But these days if you let your child wander one aisle over while you are shopping at Wal-Mart there is a chance that someone will try to abduct her.

Something has changed.

In our major cities, if you walk up to someone at random there is a decent chance that person will be a pervert or a sicko, and most Americans know that this is true at a gut level. Almost everyone is very leery of "strangers" these days. It has gotten to the point where we are all afraid of one another.

Just try this some time....

In a major U.S. city, walk right up to people on the street, look them in the eyes and try to introduce yourself.

What will happen when you do that?

In many instances, people will literally run away from you.

We are scared to death to interact with people that we do not know, and the reality is that those fears are way too often justified.

The character of the American people is decaying at a rapid pace, and the evidence of this is all around us.

The following are 10 signs that America is decomposing right in front of our eyes....

#1 As the economy crumbles, in many U.S. cities desperate people are increasingly resorting to violent acts in an attempt to survive. So far this year, violent crime in Washington D.C. has risen by 40 percent. Robberies at gunpoint have more than doubled compared to the same time period last year.

And as I wrote about recently, justifiable homicide in Detroit rose by a staggering 79 percent during 2011, and the rate of self-defense killings in Detroit is now 2200% above the national average.

#2 But it is not just in the cities where you will find crazies. A recent Daily Mail article described a very disturbing incident which took place recently in North Dakota. Two crack-fueled perverts abducted and murdered a 43-year-old math teacher named Sherry Arnold....

Spell and Waters had left Colorado days before the crime claiming they wanted work in eastern Montana and western North Dakota's oil fields.

After smoking crack cocaine over the entire trip, Waters allegedly told Spell the drug 'brought the devil out in him' and began talking about kidnapping and killing a female, AP reports.

After they spotted Arnold, Spell claims that Waters told him to 'grab the lady' and pull her into their Ford Explorer as she jogged by.

After they got Arnold into the car, they choked her to death and then buried her body in a shallow grave in North Dakota.

Why would anyone do something like that?

#3 Unfortunately, sickos will even be found working for the government. Just as so many of us feared, TSA workers are actually purposely selecting attractive women to go through the body scanners so that they can admire their naked bodies. The following are actual quotations from official TSA complaints....

-“I feel I was targeted by the TSA employee to go through the see-you-naked machine because I am a semi-attractive female.”

-“The screener appeared to enjoy the process of picking someone rather than doing true random screening. I felt this was inappropriate. A woman behind me was also “randomly selected.”

-“TSA staff ‘trolling’ the lines looking for people to pull out was unprofessional.”

-“I know he went to that room to see my naked body through the machine with the other guy.”

-“When I looked around, I saw that there were only women that were “told” to go through this machine. There were no men.”

One woman was recently forced to go through the body scanner three times because the TSA workers wanted to get a really good look at her "cute figure".

Isn't about time that we admitted that the TSA is a massive failure?

#4 The American people seem more depressed than ever. So are we the most depressed nation in the entire world? The U.S. has the highest percentage of women taking antidepressants of any country in the world, and kids in the U.S. are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants than kids in Europe are.

#5 The gang problem in the United States has never been worse. According to the FBI, the number of gang members in the United States has risen by 40 percent since 2009 and there are now a total of 1.4 million gang members living inside this country.

#6 Millions of other young people are not able to find jobs once they finish school and end up financially dependent on their parents. Today, record numbers of young adults are living at home. Many of these young people end up very disillusioned and very frustrated. Right now, more than 30 percent of all Americans in the 18 to 34 age bracket are currently living at home with their parents. That is not good news for the future of this country.

#7 All over America, criminals are becoming bolder and more desperate. The following is a report about one serial home invader from the Washington Post....

A housekeeper was tied up and sexually assaulted and a mother and teenage son were tied up during a home invasion in Bethesda early Wednesday morning that Montgomery County police say involves the same suspect as in a home invasion Tuesday in Wheaton.

As the economy gets even worse, home invasions will become even more common. You might want to learn how to defend yourself.

#8 These days thieves will steal literally anything. Each night in cities all over the nation more street lights are going out as thieves strip the copper wiring right out of them. In the San Francisco area, one very ambitious group of thieves actually swiped a copper bell that weighs 2.7 tons.

#9 One of the clearest signs that America is decomposing is the stunning decline of major cities such as Detroit. In response to my recent article about the death of Detroit, a reader identified as Bill posted the following....

Seeing what is happening to Detroit makes me want to cry AND scream.

I’m a native Detroiter myself – born in Harper Hospital on the east side & was one of those 2 million plus counted in the 1950 Census. I left Detroit in the early 70s for work reasons and had not gone back there since 1984.

When I drove through there on my way to Port Huron last September I “made a lap” around the city – got off I-75 downtown, made a loop around the downtown area (the 2 new stadiums look nice as does the RenCen) then went out Michigan Avenue to 12th and up through the 1967 Riot area to Grand River and out to the northwestern part of town where I grew up and went to school.

What a depressing trip. All my old haunts are gone, boarded up or burnt to the ground. The car dealer where I bought my first car (the old “Redford Rambler” on Grand River just west of Evergreen) is nothing but a slab. All the car dealers along the Grand River strip from Evergreen to McNicoles (6 Mile Rd.) are gone, the 16th Precinct Police Station at GR & Mc Nicholes is abandoned and the high school where my cousin graduated is all boarded up (Redford High School, across Grand River from the old police station). My old house on Lasher just north of Grand River is there but the stores in the area are all gone. One would think space aliens had come and taken all the life out of the area.

On that same article, another reader identified as "Disappointed" shared his thoughts on the decline of that once great city....

I worked in Detroit for a few years a while back. I was fascinated by the crumbling ruins, drove around to see a lot of them after work (a couple of times I drove through neighborhoods that I can tell you now I would not go near, even in the daytime). It was sad and fascinating at the same time. I would not even THINK of doing that now, it would be highly dangerous. I would not even work in Detroit now.

#10 But it isn't just Detroit that is falling apart. This kind of thing is happening all over the country. A reader identified as Golden Child recently left the following comment on my website....

Much of America is like Detroit. America is rotting from California to West Virginia to Baltimore. It’s the same song across the United States. High unemployment, falling rent and or house prices, massive police lay-offs, giant spikes in crime accompanied by a rising cost of living and fewer job opportunities. Vallejo and Oakland, California are very much like Detroit. Vallejo ranked as the ninth most miserable city in America according to Forbes. Oakland and Vallejo have laid off nearly half of their police forces. You can get an apartment in Vallejo or Oakland for $200-600 a month although the median monthly rent in California is well over a thousand dollars with Bay Area rent being generally higher. There is a reason why rent is so comparably dirt cheap in those cities. San Francisco-Oakland-Vallejo collectively make up the car-theft capital of the United States. Northern CA cities like Oakland, Richmond and Stockton are regulars on the top ten most dangerous cities in America list. Baltimore, MD is also very much like Detroit with its thousands of abandoned rowhomes, high concentration of Black poverty, drugs and violence. Camden, NJ, East St. Louis, Gary Indiana are all no different from the D. Even large sections of wealthy world class cities like DC, NYC and San Francisco are impoverished quasi-third world hellholes. Southeast DC has the highest unemployment rate of anywhere in America despite the fact that DC is the richest city and metro in America. NYC has the widest income inequality gap of any metro area. Massive swaths of NYC are dangerous towering project buildings packed with working poor minorities. SF is home to some of the most sub-standard public housing in America in neighborhoods like Hunter’s Point, Sunnydale and Potrero Hill. America has been rotting from the core since at least the 70′s.

Sadly, this is just the beginning.

As the economic decline of this nation accelerates, people are going to become much more desperate.

And desperate people do desperate things.

Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/10-signs-that-america-is-decomposing-right-in-front-of-our-eyes

Establishment Media Ignores Massive Ron Paul Veterans March...

2012-02-21T09:59:00.000-05:00

Ron Paul did not organize this, veterans and active duty men are showing their support for who they want as a commander in chief. The only candidate that has actually served in the military, the only one that wants peace, and the only one that wants to give the power back to the people!

Underwear bomber facts exposed on C-Span...

2012-02-21T09:56:00.000-05:00

Terror War Cheerleader Gets Reality Check On Underwear Bomber Facts

C-Span callers hammer home U.S. government’s role in aiding Abdulmutallab

Paul Joseph Watson

A proponent of the war on terror was left with egg on his face during a recent C-Span appearance when caller after caller hammered home the fact that the underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was allowed to board Delta flight 253 by the U.S. government.

The victim of this ‘truth bomb’ was Mickey McCarter, a prominent mouthpiece for the military-industrial complex that relies heavily on the manufactured ‘war on terror’ to the tune of billions of dollars every year. McCarter is a journalist specializing in “homeland security matters” and has also worked for government agencies like the US Navy’s Bureau of Naval Personnel and the Defense Contract Management Agency.

After discussing the recent conviction of the underwear bomber with no mention of the fact that he boarded the plane only with the aid of the U.S. government, McCarter faced a barrage of callers who set him straight. The first caller immediately drew attention to Flight 253 passenger Kurt Haskell, an attorney who witnessed a well dressed Indian man force airport officials to let Abdulmutallab board the plane despite the fact that he had no passport and was on a terror watchlist.

“Why would a CIA agent….get that guy on the plane,” the caller asked, to which McCarter responded by claiming, “I am not familiar with the story,” before erroneously claiming that Abdulmutallab “raised no alarm”.

In reality, the State Department was ordered not to revoke Abdulmutallab’s visa by “federal counterterrorism officials” even though the accused bomber had known terrorist ties, in addition to the fact that his own father had warned U.S. intelligence officials of the threat posed by Abdulmutallab a month before the attempted attack.

After initially claiming otherwise, the FBI finally had to admit that Kurt Haskell’s testimony was true. When Abdulmutallab signaled he wanted to call Haskell as a defense witness, it threatened to blow the whole case wide open. However, within 48 hours he mysteriously withdrew the call and admitted all eight counts of guilt.

The notion that McCarter, who bills himself as a terror expert, has no idea about Kurt Haskell’s testimony, FBI confirmation of the fact, in addition to media reports concerning how AbdulMutallab was helped on the plane by a well-dressed man, over two years after it was initially revealed, is dubious to say the least.

After a second caller again references Haskell’s testimony and makes the connection between the underwear bomber plot and the TSA’s invasive groping policy, he is cut off, before a third caller discusses how the event created the perfect pretext for the introduction of naked body scanners, which just happened to make a lot of money for security officials like Michael Chertoff who were heavily invested in them at the time.

The final caller again hits on the fact that Abdulmutallab was allowed to board the airplane, noting that Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy told a hearing that the bomber was let on the plane because he was being tracked by intelligence agencies who ordered the State Department “not to deny a visa”.

This episode again underscores the fact that – as Hillary Clinton bemoaned last year – we are winning the infowar. Informed Americans in growing numbers are successfully waking up their fellow citizens to the fact that the war on terror is a manufactured hoax wherein intelligence agencies recruit patsies and dupes to carry out attacks which are then used to advance the agenda of the military-industrial complex.

Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uuyYiWv4xkY

Ron Paul Ad - Rick Santorum a Conservative?

2012-02-21T09:52:00.000-05:00

It looks like the neocons have picked the fake terrorists' next target...

2012-02-20T20:41:00.000-05:00

Former CIA Boss Says Iran Will Attack Statue of Liberty

Kurt Nimmo

Former CIA boss James Woolsey told WABC Radio in New York that Iran will retaliate against the United States by taking out the Statue of Liberty.

“We will have a very serious problem from terrorism if we insist on Iran shutting down its nuclear program, but we have to do that. And so we have to get ready to deal with assaults on government facilities, on famous symbols of the country like the Statue of Liberty, on Jewish synagogues, there are a number of things Hezbollah could go after… and they probably will,” Woolsey told Aaron Klein.

Woolsey is a high ranking neocon and one of the original signers of the January 26, 1998, Project for the New American Century letter sent to then president Clinton. He is a Rhodes scholar and Council on Foreign Relations insider connected to the Scowcroft Commission, the Rumsfeld Commission, and is affiliated with a number of neocon organizations and think tanks, including the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Americans for Victory Over Terrorism.

He is the former chairman on Freedom House, a CIA front, which makes sense considering Woolsey’s pedigree. He is also the chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, another neocon operation funded by the Bronfmans and home to a number of war on Islam advocates including Newt Gingrich, Joe Lieberman, Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, Richard Perle, Frank Gafney and others. It is considered a refuge for the PNAC crowd.

During the interview with WorldNetDaily’s Klein, Woolsey did not bother to present any evidence that Iran or Hezbollah will attack.

Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/former-cia-boss-says-iran-will-attack-statue-of-liberty.html

Reality Check: Did President Obama Demand the Power to Detain U.S. Citizens Without Trial?

2012-02-20T20:36:00.000-05:00

Jacob Hornberger on civil liberties, the Constitution, and the War on Terror...

2012-02-20T20:27:00.000-05:00

History of Iran & USA in 10 min, Every American must watch this!!

2012-02-20T20:20:00.000-05:00

Education news...

2012-02-20T14:51:00.000-05:00

‘You are so smart…why did you become a teacher?’

By Valerie Strauss

This was written by Carol Corbett Burris, principal of South Side High School in New York. She was named the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. She is one of the co-authors of the principals’ letter against evaluating teachers by student test scores, which has been signed by nearly 1,400 New York principals.

By Carol Corbett Burris

The best part of my day is before the first bell rings. I get to spend time in the halls and cafeteria with our students. I have spent over two decades of my professional life among teenagers, and I must confess each year I enjoy them more. They have a perspective that is insightful and clear, and they are always on the watch for what is fair and what is not, especially when it comes to rules.

This past week, I read “the evaluation deal” between NYSUT (the New York teachers union) and the State Education Department. I was surprised, and I was angry. I was particularly struck by the lack of logic and fairness in the rules of the deal. And so to gain some perspective (and to lower my blood pressure) I went to the cafeteria at lunchtime and sat with some kids.

I bought some bags of chips and put them on the table and told them I wanted input on grading, a subject near and dear to their hearts. The first scenario I gave them was this….

“Suppose this marking period you had three tests. Each of the tests was on different topics, and you passed all three. Would it be fair for your teacher to fail you?”

The kids were outraged at the thought, with some choosing adjectives I will not repeat. One thoughtful student asked, “Well, how did I do compared to the rest of the class?”

“Average” was my reply. The adjectives got a little stronger. Everyone agreed that would be outrageous and that I should overturn the grades of such a teacher.

I gave them a second scenario:

“Suppose you have three tests, and you bomb the first one. But on the second, you do well. And by the time the third one comes around, you are pretty much at the top of the class—and that is the test that has the most points of all. But because you did so badly on the first test, the teacher fails you for the quarter. What do you think?”

I think the reader can guess how they responded. Eyes narrowed as the kids became increasingly worried that their principal had lost her mind and was designing a plot to fail them all. I decided it was a good time to take my chips and head back to the halls.

Now take a look at the chart below, which will be used in New York to evaluate teachers. It is similar to a chart I explained here.This is what was decided as part of last week’s grand bargain; it’s what NY lawmakers will be asked this spring to put into law to sort and select public school teachers, with those deemed ineffective for two years to be fired.

Regulation/Student Growth/Local Measures/Other 60/Composite

Ineffective/..........0-2........../.........0-2.........../.......0-64

Developing/.........3-8........./..........3-8........../.locally..../.......65-74

Effective/.............9-17......./..........9-17......./developed/.......75-90

Highly Effective/.18-20...../..........18-20.... /................/.......91-100

Now let’s go back to my first cafeteria scenario, applying it to the chart.

Ms. Alvarez is a second-year teacher. Her diverse third-grade class, which includes English language learners, takes the state tests. In the first category, ‘student growth,’ the teacher’s students show average growth. She is rated effective and earns 9 points. In the second column, again she is rated effective based on student work and gets 9 points again. Her principal critiques her lessons and there is room to grow, so she assigns her 46 out of the possible 60 points in category three, ‘other 60’. Although the state does not provide ranges for the ‘other 60,’ we can see that a score of 46 based on the proportions in the first two columns, would be effective. Now let’s add the numbers up and look at the final column: 9+9+46=64. Overall, Ms. Alvarez is rated ineffective. She decides that maybe teaching is not for her.

Now to cafeteria scenario #2. Ms. Smith’s students have serious learning disabilities and before NCLB they would never have been required to take the state exam. Her students are frustrated by the test and show little growth. Her score in the first category is 1.

Nevertheless, because the district has chosen a more appropriate assessment for her students for the local measure, she gets 9 points, which is in the effective range. Ms. Smith has excellent teaching skills and so she nets 54 out of the possible 60 points, which is in the district’s highly effective range. In the three categories she garners ratings of ineffective, effective and highly effective, but when the district adds up her points it will arrive at a total of 64, ineffective overall. Ms. Smith asks to teach resource room instead next year — she is a single mom and cannot lose her job. Her students lose the best teacher they ever had.

Let me add one more. Mr. Reed is a 28-year veteran whom students adore. He is the basketball coach, and he has turned around the lives of more troubled teens than his principal can count. He is a fine teacher of English who welcomes struggling students. His scores are 9, 10 and 55 — effective, effective and highly effective. That’s a total of 74 points: this 28-year veteran is labeled ‘developing’ and given a mandatory Teacher Improvement Plan. He retires in disgust.

With the above scenarios I am not creating fiction, I am describing the future — one in which children lose great teachers. The reason the above “band” system is so flawed is because of the obsession of Albany with test scores.

Our state’s rule-makers wanted to design a system in which the teachers whose students’ scores are in the lowest ten percent could under no circumstances be anything other than ineffective. It created a ludicrous system where teachers who are effective across the board can be rated ineffective overall.

This was recognized by the August 2011 decision of Justice Michael Lynch, who wisely noted that the scoring ranges for the four categories were invalid, because the ranges did not allow the 60-point category to have meaningful impact in the final score. He noted also that these ranges would rate a teacher “ineffective” solely on the basis of student achievement. The judge understood what NYSUT and the State Education Department cannot — test scores should never trump all. Yet in the agreement, NYSUT caved, condemning our schools to become joyless, test-prep factories.

The legislature, which must now approve the agreement, can bring a modicum of sanity to this awful system. With amendments such as “a teacher who is rated effective in all three categories must be rated effective overall” and, “to be rated ineffective overall, a teacher must be rated ineffective in at least two of the three categories, and be rated less than highly effective in the third,” they can infuse the wisdom of a wise judge, thus mitigating a little bit of the damage that this bizarre system will cause.

Teachers and their spouses, family and friends will be watching the votes when this legislation is introduced in the budget process this spring. And a governor with an ambitious eye on his political future is wise to remember that the road to the White House is through the primary process. Teachers vote and they will remember.

One of my finest teachers was near tears the other day. Her student had asked her, “You are so smart…why did you become a teacher?” Within the context of this teacher-bashing climate, that remark was just too much to bear, and I hugged her as she cried. Less than a mile away, her Governor had thumped on a podium at Molloy College saying “if they want the money, perform” as though she and her colleagues were trained seals.

Words will soften as elections near. Fingers will wag as politicians admonish the public to “not bash teachers.” What educators and those who love them will remember, however, are not the words, but the actions. Those who doubt that should just ask the kids in my cafeteria. They will tell you that is so.

Link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/you-are-so-smartwhy-did-you-become-a-teacher/2012/02/19/gIQA2vBNNR_blog.html

Veterans for Ron Paul...

2012-02-20T12:04:00.000-05:00

Veterans for Ron Paul Plan Presidents' Day March on White House

Written by Joe Wolverton, II

The Veterans for Ron Paul are planning a march on the White House on Monday, with the theme "Ron Paul is the Choice of the Troops."

According to a report published in the Washington Times, the march will take place on Monday, February 20 — President's Day. Participants will gather at the base of the Washington Monument at noon and then proceed on to the White House at 2 p.m.

In an interview with the co-founder of Veterans for Ron Paul published in the Washington Times, Adam Kokesh explained the impetus behind the formation of his organization. "We want a commander-in-chief who will be decisive, put America's security first, and only send troops into harm's way with a clear mission. Ron Paul is the only candidate with a pragmatic and principle foreign policy," said Kokesh.

Kokesh is also a member of another veterans' advocacy group known as the Iraq Veterans Against the War. He, along with Nathan Cox, founded the Veterans for Ron Paul in order to give a voice to the scores of veterans who back the Texas Congressman's campaign for the presidency.

According to the group's Facebook page, Veterans for Ron Paul makes its pitch for members:

If supporting the troops is important to you, Ron Paul is your candidate! For veterans and active duty who support Ron Paul and want to see him elected President in 2012. This page is also for anyone who supports veterans speaking out for freedom.

Plans for the Presidents' Day rally were announced during a New Hampshire event where Kokesh and Tom Woods spoke to a throng of Paul supporters.

In a statement subsequently released on the Ron Paul Forums, Kokesh provided insight into the inspiration for the march, as well as details of the expected logistics:

In solidarity with Cpl Jesse Thorsen, we, the founders of Veterans for Ron Paul 2012, Nathan Cox and Adam Kokesh, propose a Veterans and Active Duty March for Ron Paul on President's Day, Monday, February 20th, giving us enough time to plan and promote, and in plenty of time for an impact on Super Tuesday, March 6th. We would apply for a proper permit from the Parks Department and coordinate with appropriate authorities to gather in the vicinity (at the base if possible) of the Washington Monument, have a brief chance for veterans to speak, nothing special, possibly even as little as a soapbox and a bullhorn, but we'll see. Then, at a designated time, line up in formation on 15th St NW facing North towards Constitution Ave NW, march in formation to the White House, turn our backs to the White House, then "present arms" (hold a hand salute) to a folded flag for as many seconds as service members have died since Obama took office, then march silently back to the Washington monument and fall out. This could be followed by a designated time and place for media availability, and/or a reception to take place at another location. This has the benefit of being effective even if we only have a platoon-sized element of participants, but imagine if we could have an impressive number of vets and even active duty soldiers participate in this gesture! How many would join us in demanding that Ron Paul be recognized as the choice of the troops? We could encourage individuals to wear something symbolic of their service, like a piece of uniform like a hat or a patch and carry proof of service. We could invite active duty troops to participate in full recognition of the regulations of NOT being in uniform or to come in defiance of those regulations. It is an absurd proposition to say that members of the military supporting candidates in uniform would be construed to represent official positions of the government and rules regarding free speech for members of the military have only been used to silence dissent and keep the true will of the troops from being relevant in the American political discourse. Well, NOT ANY MORE!

Kokesh is a veteran of the Iraq War, serving as a corporal in the United States Marine Corps. In 2004, he was stationed in Fallujah. He was discharged in 2007 after receiving the Combat Action Ribbon and Navy Commendation Medal as a result of combat seen in Iraq. Kokesh ran an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in New Mexico's third Congressional District.

When asked by the Washington Times what issue the organizers of the march planned to highlight, Kokesh responded:

I think it's sad that if any other candidate had this much support of the troops, we'd be talking about this race as if it was over. It's not over because it's a message that some have failed to understand despite its clarity.

It's upsetting when you hear debates about whether we should have 100,000 troops or 130,000 troops in Afghanistan instead of whether or not we should be policing the world or basing our foreign policy on the golden rule of treating others the way you want to be treated.

Kokesh informed the Washington Times that Karen Kwiatkowski, a congressional candidate from Virginia's Sixth Congressional District, will be a featured speaker at the event. Kwaitkowski is a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel. Although formerly an outspoken member of the Libertarian Party, she is running for Congress as a Republican.

It is no paradox that so many veterans are coming out against the U.S. government's ongoing prosecution of the various illegal, undeclared foreign wars. Constitutionalists recognize that only Congress is granted the power to declare war and that any armed conflict carried out in defiance of that enumeration is unconstitutional and detrimental to the safety of our nation. That is the paradox.

As a war veteran and a veteran of anti-war activism, Kokesh was asked by the Washington Times if he believed it was difficult in the current political climate to be an anti-war conservative. Kokesh replied:

I think it's getting easier and easier to be anti-war and conservative these days. It's detrimental to free-trade, and it requires vast amounts of government spending. People are beginning to realize that a big government foreign policy is not conservative.

The issue of sanctions is also something that conservatives are beginning to wake up to as well. Sanctions have always been an old weapon that stronger nations have used against weaker nations in order to get what they want.

But people are starting to realize that sanctions are contrary to the ideals of the free-market. So I think being able to be a principled anti-war conservative is getting even easier.

When asked his opinion of the National Defense Authorization Act, Kokesh said:

The scary part about the National Defense Authorization Act isn't just that it allows the military to arrest US citizens without a trial or due process, it's that it gives government employees a cover for their actions.

The government has always had the power to do this, but now they're protected by law. The Obama administration does not care about the rule of law any more than the Bush administration did.

At the conclusion of the protest, supporters and participants are invited to attend a reception featuring "libertarian musicians." The entertainment will begin at 7 p.m. with doors opening at 6.

Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/10927-veterans-for-ron-paul-plan-presidents-day-march-on-white-house

Senators call for the arming of al Qaeda...

2012-02-20T11:54:00.000-05:00

Two US Senators Call For Arming Syrian Opposition Filled With al Qaeda Terrorists

The Intel Hub
February 20, 2012

US Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, speaking at a news conference in Kabul Afghanistan, outlined their support and demands that the US openly arm Syrian opposition forces fighting to topple the Assad regime.

The demands come despite recent acknowledgements by top US counter terrorism officials that al Qaeda operatives have infiltrated the Syrian opposition and have carried out terror attacks against the Assad led Syrian government.

A recent New York Times article outlined the Syrian proposals while conveniently ignoring the Syrian opposition forces clear connection with al Qaeda. (An organization used to systematically destroy civil liberties throughout the United States)

The senators, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both Republicans, laid out a series of diplomatic, humanitarian and military aid proposals that would put the United States squarely behind the effort to topple President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

The senators, both of whom are on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that rebel fighters deserved to be armed and that helping them take on the Syrian government would aid Washington’s effort to weaken Iran.

Syria relies on Iran for financial and military support, and the governments in Damascus and Tehran have sectarian ties as well: Iran has strongly backed the Syrian Shiite minority and the offshoot Alawite sect that makes up Syria’s ruling class.

“I believe there are ways to get weapons to the opposition without direct United States involvement,” Mr. McCain said. “The Iranians and the Russians are providing Bashar Assad with weapons. People that are being massacred deserve to have the ability to defend themselves.”

“So I am not only not opposed,” he said, “but I am in favor of weapons being obtained by the opposition.”

Sadly the American people are once again being duped into supporting our supposed enemies.

This is essentially a military industrial complex psyop filled game where we first support “terrorists” then attack them, and finally go on to support them once again.

This deadly game continued in Libya and now seems set to commence in Syria as the war hawks set their eyes on an eventual attack on Iran.

Note: The US are most likely already funding the Syrian opposition through Soros fueled NGOs and “human rights” organizations which have historically been used as tools of the globalist cabal commonly referred to as the new world order. This open admission may simply be an attempt to publicly acknowledge something that has long ago begun.

Link:
http://theintelhub.com/2012/02/20/two-us-senators-call-for-arming-syrian-opposition-filled-with-al-qaeda-terrorists/

Former SEAL Team Six member speaks...

2012-02-20T11:50:00.000-05:00

Former SEAL Team Six Commander: Israel Responsible for Global Terror

By Dave Gahary

The recent raid by the U.S. Special Forces commando unit given worldwide recognition for the alleged raid and murder of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan has made headlines again, this time in Somalia, and the apparent success of both operations is paving the way for a new military strategy being promoted by the Obama White House which includes a much larger role for Special Operations (SpecOp) forces in the leaned-down U.S. military.

The United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (NSWDG), formerly named SEAL Team Six, conducted a daring early-morning raid on nine heavily armed Somali kidnappers to free the American and Dutch employees of the Danish Refugee Council, who were captured by Somali pirates in October 2011 while working on a demining program, without suffering so much as a scratch.

The SEALs, named so because they operate on the sea, air and land, are the U.S. military’s most advanced, or elite, SpecOp unit, and are usually called upon for the most complex of operations, although most of the information about the SEALs is highly classified and not commented on by the White House or the Department of Defense.

On January 23, AMERICAN FREE PRESS conducted an exclusive interview with Charles Patrick “Chuck” Pfarrer, III, author of the New York Times Best Seller, SEAL Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama bin Laden, to get a better understanding of this elite fighting unit.

Pfarrer went through Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training (BUD/S) in 1981 and spent eight years as a SEAL, and was the Assault Element Commander of SEAL Team Six. He witnessed the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut and was one of the SEAL Team leaders responsible for the apprehension of Abu Abbas and the hijackers of the cruise ship Achille Lauro. He is now a successful author and Hollywood screenwriter with several of his works adapted for the silver screen, including Navy SEALs, Red Planet and The Jackal. He also serves as a consultant to government and industry on terrorism and counter-terrorism, special operations, terrorist operational methodology, counter-proliferation and terrorist employment of weapons of mass destruction.

His time in the Middle East gave him unique insights into the root cause of the troubles and violence in that region. Recounting the Shabra and Shatilla massacres in Lebanon, where between 2,000 and 10,000 innocent “old men, women and children” were murdered “in two nights of violence” by a Christian militia group, Pfarrer said that “during the massacre the Israelis fired flares over the camps so that the Christian militias could see what they were doing.” This event, he explained, “had a galvanizing effect on Arab opinion, and on the opinion of a 26-year-old college dropout named Osama bin Laden.” Pfarrer explained that “Israeli investigations found that Ariel Sharon was not just complicit but responsible for the massacre.”

Another event that was significant in the minds of many Arabs was the October 1983 Marine barracks truck bombing in Beirut, “the largest non-nuclear explosion in the history of warfare,” where, as Pfarrer recounts, “My SEAL team, we were in a bunker about 300 yards away.” As he writes on page 82 of SEAL Target Geronimo, “It is one of the ironies of history that the most emblematic weapon of Islamic terrorism, the truck bomb, was invented not by a Muslim fundamentalist but by a radical Jew,” Menachem Begin.

AFP asked if he agreed Israel’s refusal to retreat to the agreed-upon borders that existed prior to the 1967 Israeli-Arab War is the main reason behind terrorism directed at the U.S.

“Well, I would,” said Pfarrer. “This is an ongoing problem compounded by the fact that the Zionist state has never talked seriously to the Palestinian diaspora about allowing the almost 2 million dispossessed Palestinians to return to their property.”

“The Israeli/Palestinian problem is the mainspring for the clockwork of the trouble in the Middle East,” he continued, “and it’s in the best interests of America to help solve this problem.”

This will never happen in the United States.....right?

2012-02-20T11:40:00.000-05:00

Fascism Anyone? The 14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism

by Dr. Lawrence Britt

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. He found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism – Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights – Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause – The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military – Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism – The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media – Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security – Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined – Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected – The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed – Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts – Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment – Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption – Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections – Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Any questions, America?

Link:
http://occupynewhampshire.org/2012/02/20/fascism-anyone-the-14-defining-characteristics-of-fascism-by-dr-lawrence-britt/

Bombing suspects were ANTI-IRANIAN exiles...

2012-02-20T11:36:00.000-05:00

Bomb suspects 'were anti-Iran exiles'

Four Iranians suspected of involvement in a botched bomb plot targeting Israeli diplomats in Bangkok were members of an exiled Iranian opposition group which wanted the incident to reflect badly on Teheran, Syedsulaiman Husaini, Shia leader of Thailand, said on Sunday.

He claimed the four belonged to the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organisation (also known as MEK, MKO and the People's Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran, or PMOI) which aims to overthrow the current Iranian government.

The MEK has been on the US Department of State’s list of foreign terrorist organisations since 1977.

Thai authorities and security agencies were not familiar with the group, said Mr Syedsulaima, who is also director of the Islamic studies centre at Al Mahdi Institute and former president of the Iran University Alumni Association.

The Islamic scholar said the bomb incident was unlikely to be the work of the Iranian government as speculated because Bangkok and Teheran have good bilateral relations.

A secret report by Iran’s security agency also indicated that the Iran nationals linked with Bangkok’s latest bomb plot were members of the MEK, reports said.

Formed in the 1960s, the organisation participated in Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution that replaced the country's pro-Western ruler, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, with a Shi'ite Islamist regime led by the Ayatollah Khomeini. The MEK, whose ideology mixes Marxism and Islam, was expelled from Iran two years later after trying to stage an armed uprising against Khomeini.

Link:
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/280604/bomb-suspects-were-anti-iran-exiles

Huge Ron Paul Rally In Seattle! Fantastic Speech!

2012-02-20T11:32:00.000-05:00

Hey, she's worked hard since her last vacation last month...

2012-02-20T11:31:00.000-05:00

Michelle Obama Takes Aspen Ski Vacation a Month After Hawaiian Beach Vacation

In January 2009, before the president signed his failed $787 billion stimulus bill into law, Barack Obama lectured America saying,

"Everyone must sacrifice for the greater good... Everyone must have some skin in the game."

Everyone but Barack and Michelle Obama.

A month after returning from her 17 day Hawaiian vacation, Michelle Obama is off to Aspen for a ski vacation.

W hite House Dossier reported:

Michelle Obama has embarked on a skiing vacation with her daughters in Aspen, Colorado, according to the Aspen Daily News. The first lady, who just returned last month from 17 days of relaxation in Hawaii, is skiing in Colorado on Presidents’ Day Weekend for the second year in a row.

Last year she went to Vail. Michelle’s decision to ski out West again instead of hitting slopes closer to Washington would seem an inopportune choice for a first lady who is helping her husband campaign on issues of “fairness.” The Obama campaign has set itself up as the defender of the poor and the middle class against the “One Percent,” a theme which clashes with the image a first lady who is taking frequent and exclusive vacations.

Just last August, she sojourned on Martha’s Vineyard, and the month before she travelled to southern Africa for a trip that mixed official business with tourist outings like an African safari.

In July 2010, she took an exorbitant excursion to the southern coast of Spain, flying out with friends and family on a large jet that often serves as Air Force 2 and then staying at a ritzy hotel.

Link:
http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=143671

What the hell has happened to our country?

2012-02-20T11:27:00.000-05:00

Can someone please tell me what the hell happened to OUR country while we were gone?

EDITORS NOTE: THIS WAS SENT TO ME ON FACEBOOK AND I DECIDED TO PUT IT TOGETHER INTO AN ARTICLE FOR YOU ALL TO SEE. THE SOLDIER (COMBAT VETERAN) WHO IS SPEAKING TO THE TSA GOON OBVIOUSLY KNOWS THIS IS SECURITY THEATER AND IN NO WAY MAKES ANYONE SAFER AND THE TSA GOON CAN’T COMPREHEND IT WHEN IT IS POINTED OUT TO HIM.

(Sgt. Mad Dog Tracy) I don’t know of anyone who won’t get a kick out of this one. These are the knuckleheads who are so smart, and so knowing in charge at the TSA near you!

As the Chalk Leader for my flight home from Afghanistan, I witnessed the following:

When we were on our way back from Afghanistan, We flew out of Baghram Air Field. We went through customs at BAF, full body scanners (no groping), had all of our bags searched, the whole nine yards. Our first stop was Shannon, Ireland to refuel. After that, we had to stop at Indianapolis, Indiana to drop off about 100 folks from the Indiana National Guard. That’s where the stupid started.

First, everyone was forced to get off the plane – even though the plane wasn’t refueling again. All 330 people got off that plane, rather than let the 100 people from the ING get off. We were filed from the plane to a holding area. No vending machines, no means of escape. Only a male/female latrine.

It’s probably important to mention that we were ALL carrying weapons. Everyone was carrying an M4 Carbine (rifle) and some, like me, were also carrying an M9 pistol. Oh, and our gunners had M-240B machine guns. Of course, the weapons weren’t loaded. And we had been cleared of all ammo well before we even got to customs at Baghram, then AGAIN at customs.

The TSA personnel at the airport seriously considered making us unload all of the baggage from the SECURE cargo hold to have it re-inspected. Keep in mind, this cargo had been unpacked, inspected piece by piece by U.S. Customs officials, resealed and had bomb-sniffing dogs give it a one-hour run through. After two hours of sitting in this holding area, the TSA decided not to re-inspect our cargo – just to inspect us again: Soldiers on the way home from war, who had already been inspected, re-inspected and kept in a SECURE holding area for 2 hours. Ok, whatever. So we lined up to go through security AGAIN.

This is probably another good time to remind you all that all of us were carrying actual assault rifles, and some of us were also carrying pistols

So we’re in line, going through one at a time. One of our soldiers had his Gerber multi-tool. TSA confiscated it. Kind of ridiculous, but it gets better. A few minutes later, a guy empties his pockets and has a pair of nail clippers. Nail clippers. TSA informs the soldier that they’re going to confiscate his nail clippers.

The conversation went something like this:

TSA Guy: You can’t take those on the plane.

Soldier: What? I’ve had them since we left country.

TSA Guy: You’re not suppose to have them.

Soldier: Why?

TSA Guy: They can be used as a weapon.

Soldier: [touches butt stock of the rifle] But this actually is a weapon. And I’m allowed to take it on.

TSA Guy: Yeah but you can’t use it to take over the plane. You don’t have bullets.

Soldier: And I can take over the plane with nail clippers?

TSA Guy: [awkward silence]

Me: Dude, just give him your F**K**G nail clippers so we can get the F**K out of here. I’ll buy you a new set.

Soldier: [hands nail clippers to TSA guy, makes it through security]

To top it off, the TSA demanded we all be swabbed for “explosive residue” detection. Everyone failed, [go figure, we just came home from a war zone], because we tested positive for “Gun Powder Residue”. Who the F**K is hiring these people?

This might be a good time to remind everyone that approximately 233 people re-boarded that plane with assault rifles, pistols, and machine guns – but nothing that could have been used as a weapon.

Can someone please tell me what the hell happened to OUR country while we were gone?

Link:
http://www.federaljack.com/?p=173328

"I can count on one hand the actions of presidents that actually favored the true American cause, meaning liberty. The overwhelming history of the presidency is a tale of overthrown rights and liberties, and the erection of despotism in their stead."

2012-02-20T11:21:00.000-05:00

Down With the Presidency

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

The modern institution of the presidency is the primary political evil Americans face, and the cause of nearly all our woes. It squanders the national wealth and starts unjust wars against foreign peoples that have never done us any harm. It wrecks our families, tramples on our rights, invades our communities, and spies on our bank accounts. It skews the culture toward decadence and trash. It tells lie after lie. Teachers used to tell school kids that anyone can be president. This is like saying anyone can go to Hell. It's not an inspiration; it's a threat.

The presidency – by which I mean the executive State – is the sum total of American tyranny. The other branches of government, including the presidentially appointed Supreme Court, are mere adjuncts. The presidency insists on complete devotion and humble submission to its dictates, even while it steals the products of our labor and drives us into economic ruin. It centralizes all power unto itself, and crowds out all competing centers of power in society, including the church, the family, business, charity, and the community. I'll go further. The US presidency is the world's leading evil. It is the chief mischief-maker in every part of the globe, the leading wrecker of nations, the usurer behind Third-World debt, the bailer-out of corrupt governments, the hand in many dictatorial gloves, the sponsor and sustainer of the New World Order, of wars, interstate and civil, of famine and disease. To see the evils caused by the presidency, look no further than Iraq or Serbia, where the lives of innocents were snuffed out in pointless wars, where bombing was designed to destroy civilian infrastructure and cause disease, and where women, children, and the aged have been denied essential food and medicine because of a cruel embargo. Look at the human toll taken by the presidency, from Dresden and Hiroshima to Waco and Ruby Ridge, and you see a prime practitioner of murder by government.

Today, the president is called the leader of the world's only superpower, the "world's indispensable nation," which is reason enough to have him deposed. A world with any superpower at all is a world where no freedoms are safe. But by invoking this title, the presidency attempts to keep our attention focused on foreign affairs. It is a diversionary tactic designed to keep us from noticing the oppressive rule it imposes right here in the United States.

As the presidency assumes ever more power unto itself, it becomes less and less accountable and more and more tyrannical. These days, when we say the federal government, what we really mean is the presidency. When we say, national priorities, we really mean what the presidency wants. When we say national culture, we mean what the presidency funds and imposes.

The presidency is presumed to be the embodiment of Rousseau's general will, with far more power than any monarch or head of state in pre-modern societies. The US presidency is the apex of the world's biggest and most powerful government and of the most expansive empire in world history. As such, the presidency represents the opposite of freedom. It is what stands between us and our goal of restoring our ancient rights.

And let me be clear: I'm not talking about any particular inhabitant of the White House. I'm talking about the institution itself, and the millions of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats who are its acolytes. Look through the US government manual, which breaks down the federal establishment into its three branches. What you actually see is the presidential trunk, its Supreme Court stick, and its Congressional twig. Practically everything we think of as federal – save the Library of Congress – operates under the aegis of the executive.

This is why the governing elites – and especially the foreign policy elites – are so intent on maintaining public respect for the office, and why they seek to give it the aura of holiness. For example, after Watergate, they briefly panicked and worried that they had gone too far. They might have discredited the democratic autocracy. And to some extent they did. But the elites were not stupid; they were careful to insist that the Watergate controversy was not about the presidency as such, but only about Nixon the man. That's why it became necessary to separate the two. How? By keeping the focus on Nixon, making a devil out of him, and reveling in the details of his personal life, his difficulties with his mother, his supposed pathologies, etc.

Of course, this didn't entirely work. Americans took from Watergate the lesson that presidents will lie to you. This should be the first lesson of any civics course, of course, and the first rule of thumb in understanding the affairs of government. But notice that after Nixon died, he too was elevated to godlike status. None other than Bill Clinton served as high priest of the cult of president-worship on that occasion. He did everything but sacrifice a white bull at the temple of the White House.

The presidency recovered most of its sacramental character during the Reagan years. How wonderful, for the sake of our liberties, that Clinton has revived the great American tradition of scorning tyrants. In some ways, he is the best president a freedom lover can hope for. Of course, someday, Clinton too will ascend to the clouds, and enter the pantheon of the great leaders of the free world.

The libraries are filled with shelf after shelf of treatises on the American presidency. Save yourself some time, and don't bother with them. Virtually all tell the same hagiographic story. Whether written by liberals or conservatives, they serve up the identical Whiggish pap: the history of the presidency is the story of a great and glorious institution. It was opposed early on, and viciously so, by the anti-federalists, and later, even more viciously, by Southern Confederates. But it has been heroically championed by every respectable person since the beginning of the republic.

The office of the presidency, the conventional wisdom continues, has changed not at all in substance, but has grown in stature, responsibility, and importance, to fulfill its unique mission on earth. As the duties of the office have grown, so has the greatness of the men who inhabit it. Each stands on the shoulders of his forerunners, and, inspired by their vision and decisiveness, goes on to make his own contribution to the ever-expanding magisterium of presidential laws, executive orders, and national security findings.

When there is a low ebb in the accumulation of power, it is seen as the fault of the individual and not the office. Thus the so-called postage-stamp presidents between Lincoln and Wilson are to be faulted for not following the glorious example set by Abe. They had a vast reservoir of power, but were mysteriously reluctant to use it. Fortunately that situation was resolved, by Wilson especially, and we moved onward and upward into the light of the present day. And every one of these books ends with the same conclusion: the US presidency has served us well.

The hagiographers do admit one failing of the American presidency. It is almost too big an office for one man, and too much a burden to bear. The American people have come to expect too much from the president. We are unrealistic to think that one man can do it all. But that's all the more reason to respect and worship the man who agrees to take it on, and why all enlightened people must cut him some slack.

The analogy that comes to mind is the official history of the popes. In its infancy, the papacy was less formal, but its power and position were never in question. As the years went on and doctrine developed, so too did the burdens of office. Each pope inherited the wisdom of his forbears, and led the Church into fulfilling its mission more effectively.

But let's be clear about this. The church has never claimed that the papacy was the product of human effort; its spiritual character is a consequence of a divine, not human, act. And even the official history admits the struggles with anti-popes and Borgia popes. Catholics believe the institution was founded by Christ, and is guided by the Holy Spirit, but the pope can only invoke that guidance in the most narrow and rare circumstances. Otherwise, he is all too fallible. And that is why, although allegedly an absolute monarch, he is actually bound by the rule of law.

The presidency is seemingly bound by law, but in practice it can do just about anything it pleases. It can order up troops anywhere in the world, just as Clinton bragged in his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention. It can plow up a religious community in Texas and bury its members because they got on somebody's nerves at the Justice Department. It can tap our phones, read our mail, watch our bank accounts, and tell us what we can and cannot eat, drink, and smoke.

The presidency can break up businesses, shut down airlines, void drilling leases, bribe foreign heads of state or arrest them and try them in kangaroo courts, nationalize land, engage in germ warfare, firebomb crops in Colombia, overthrow any government anywhere, erect tariffs, round up and discredit any public or private assembly it chooses, grab our guns, tax our incomes and our inheritances, steal our land, centrally plan the national and world economy, and impose embargoes on anything anytime. No prince or pope ever had this ability.

But leave all that aside and consider this nightmare. The presidency has the power to bring about a nuclear holocaust with the push of a button. On his own initiative, the president can destroy the human race. One man can wipe out life on earth. Talk about playing God. This is a grotesque evil. And the White House claims it is not a tyranny? If the power to destroy the entire world isn't tyrannical, I don't know what is. Why do we put up with this? Why do we allow it? Why isn't this power immediately stripped from him?

What prevents fundamental challenge to this monstrous power is precisely the quasi-religious trappings of the presidency, which we again had to suffer through last January. One man who saw the religious significance of the presidency, and denounced it in 1973, was – surprisingly enough – Michael Novak. His study, Choosing Our King: Powerful Symbols in Presidential Politics, is one of the few dissenting books on the subject. It was reissued last year as – not surprisingly – Choosing Our Presidents: Symbols of Political Leadership, with a new introduction repudiating the best parts of the book.

Of course, none of the conventional bilge accords with reality. The US president is the worst outgrowth of a badly flawed Constitution, imposed in a sort of coup against the Articles of Confederation. Even from the beginning, the presidency was accorded too much power. Indeed, an honest history would have to admit that the presidency has always been an instrument of oppression, from the Whisky Rebellion to the War on Tobacco.

The presidency has systematically stolen the liberty won through the secession from Britain. From Jackson and Lincoln to McKinley and Roosevelt Junior, from Wilson and FDR to Truman and Kennedy, from Nixon and Reagan to Bush and Clinton, it has been the means by which our rights to liberty, property, and self-government have been suppressed.

I can count on one hand the actions of presidents that actually favored the true American cause, meaning liberty. The overwhelming history of the presidency is a tale of overthrown rights and liberties, and the erection of despotism in their stead.

Each president has tended to be worse than the last, especially in this century. Lately, in terms of the powers they assumed and the dictates they imposed, Kennedy was worse than Eisenhower, Johnson was worse than Kennedy, Nixon was worse than Johnson, Carter was worse than Nixon, and Reagan – who doubled the national budget and permanently entrenched the warfare State – was worse than Carter. The same is true of Bush and Clinton. Every budget is bigger and the powers exercised more egregious. Each new brutal action breaks another taboo and establishes a new precedent that gives the next occupant of the White House more leeway.

Looking back through American history, we can see the few exceptions to this rule. Washington wrote an eloquent farewell address, laying out the proper American trade and foreign policy. Jefferson's revolution of 1800 was a great thing. But was it really a freer country after his term than before? That's a tough case to make. Andrew Jackson abolished the central bank, but his real legacy was democratic centralism and weakened states' rights.

Andrew Johnson loosened the military dictatorship fastened on the South after it was conquered. But it is not hard to make the country freer when it had become totalitarian under the previous president's rule. Of course, Lincoln's bloody autocracy survives as the model of presidential leadership.

James Buchanan made a great statement on behalf of the right of revolution. Grant restored the gold standard. Harding denounced US imperialism in Haiti. But overall, my favorite president is William Henry Harrison. He keeled over shortly after his inauguration.

There have been four huge surveys taken of historians' views on the presidents: in 1948, in 1962, in 1970, and in 1983. Historians were asked to rank presidents as Great, Near Great, Average, Below Average, and Failure. In every case, number one is Lincoln, the mass murderer and military dictator who is the real father of the present nation. His term was a model of every despot's dream: spending money without Congressional approval, declaring martial law, arbitrarily arresting thousands and holding them without trial, suppressing free speech and the free press, handing out lucrative war contracts to his cronies, raising taxes, inflating the currency, and killing hundreds of thousands for the crime of desiring self-government. These are just the sort of actions historians love.

The number-two winner in these competitions is FDR. Moreover, Wilson and Jackson are always in the top five. The bottom two in every case are Grant and Harding. None bothered to rate William Henry Harrison.

What does greatness in the presidency mean? It means waging war, crushing liberties, imposing socialism, issuing dictates, browbeating and ignoring Congress, appointing despotic judges, expanding the domestic and global empire, and generally trying his best to be an all-round enemy of freedom. It means saying with Lincoln, "I have a right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy."

The key to winning the respect of historians is to do these things. All aspirants to this vile office know this. It's what they seek. They long for crisis and power, to be bullies in the pulpit, to be the dictators they are in their hearts. They want, at all costs, to avoid the fate of being another "postage-stamp president." Madison said no man with power deserves to be trusted. Neither should we trust any man who seeks the power that the presidency offers.

Accordingly, it is all well and good that conservatives have worked to discredit the current occupant of the White House. Call him a cheat and a double-dealer if you want. Call him a tyrant too. But we must go further. The answer to restoring republican freedom has nothing to do with replacing Clinton with Lott or Kemp or Forbes or Buchanan. The structure of the presidency, and the religious aura that surrounds it, must be destroyed. The man is merely a passing occupant of the Holy Chair of St. Abraham. It is the chair itself that must be reduced to kindling.

It was never the intention of the majority of framers to create the mess we have, of course. After the war for independence, the Articles of Confederation had no chief executive. Its decisions were made by a five-member Confederation. The Confederation had no power to tax. All its decisions required the agreement of 9 of the 13 states. That is the way it should be.

Most of the delegates to the unfortunate Philadelphia convention hated executive power. They had severely restricted the governors of their states after their bitter experience with the colonial governors. The new governors had no veto, and no power over the legislatures. Forrest McDonald reports that one-quarter of the delegates to the convention wanted a plural executive, based loosely on the Articles model. But those who planned the convention – including Morris, Washington, and Hamilton – wanted a single, strong executive, and they out-maneuvered the various strains of anti-federalists.

But listen to how they did it. The people of the several states and their representatives were suspicious that Hamilton wanted to create a monarchy. Now, there's much mythology surrounding this point. It's not that the anti-federalists and the popular will opposed some guy strutting around in a crown. It was not monarchy as such they opposed, but the power the king exercised.

When they said they didn't want a monarch, they meant they didn't want a King George, they didn't want a tyrant, a despot, an autocrat, an executive. It was the despotic end they feared, and not the royal means.

Indeed, formally, the Constitution gives few powers to the president, and few duties, most of them subject to approval by the legislature. The most important provision regarding the presidency is that the holder of the office can be impeached. It was to be a threat constantly hanging over his head. It was, most framers thought, to be threatened often and used against any president who dared gather more power unto himself than the Constitution prescribed.

In one famous outburst, Hamilton was forced to defend himself against the charge that the new office of the presidency was a monarchy in disguise. He explained the difference between a monarch and a president. But as you listen to this, think about the present executive. Ask yourself whether he resembles the thing Hamilton claimed to have created in the office of the presidency, or whether we have the tyrant he claimed to be repudiating.

Among other points, Hamilton said in "Federalist 69":

The President of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and, upon conviction . . . removed from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law. The person of the king of Great Britain is sacred and inviolable; there is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable; no punishment to which he can be subjected. . . .

The President will have only the occasional command of such part of the militia of the nation as by legislative provision may be called into the actual service of the Union. . . .

[The power] of the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies – all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature. . . .

The President is to have power, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the senators present concur. The king of Great Britain is the sole and absolute representative of the nation in all foreign transactions. He can of his own accord make treaties of peace, commerce, alliance, and of every other description. . . .

The President is to nominate and, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint ambassadors and other public ministers. . . . The king of Great Britain is emphatically and truly styled the fountain of honor. He not only appoints to all offices, but can create offices. He can confer titles of nobility at pleasure . . . and . . . [even] make denizens of aliens. . . .

[The President] can prescribe no rules concerning the commerce or currency of the nation; [the king] is in several respects the arbiter of commerce, and in this capacity can establish markets and fairs, can regulate weights and measures, can lay embargoes for a limited time, can coin money. . . .

What answer shall we give to those who would persuade us that things so unlike resemble each other?

Well, we can debate all day whether Hamilton was naïve about the imperial office he was in fact creating, or whether he was a despicable liar. But the fact remains that in his writings, despite his reputation as a backer of the exalted presidency, he is by today's standards a Congressional supremacist.

For that matter, and in comparison with today's presidency, so was the British king.

Most historians agree that there would have been no presidency apart from George Washington, who was trusted by the people as a true gentleman, and was presumed to understand what the American revolution was all about. But he got off track by attempting to suppress the Whisky Rebellion, although he at least acknowledged that his actions went beyond the strict letter of the Constitution. But though the presidency quickly spun out of control, at its antebellum worst it had nothing in common with today's executive State.

In those days, you could live your life and never even notice that the presidency existed. You had no contact with it. Most people couldn't vote anyway, thank goodness, and you didn't have to, but certain rights and freedoms were guaranteed regardless of whoever took hold of this – by today's standards – largely ceremonial position. The presidency couldn't tax you, draft you, or regulate your trade. It couldn't inflate your money, steal your kids, or impose itself on your community. From the standpoint of the average American, the presidency was almost invisible.

Listen to what de Tocqueville observed in 1831:

The President is . . . the executor of the laws; but he does not really cooperate in making them, since the refusal of his assent does not prevent their passage. He is not, therefore, a part of the sovereign power, but only its agent. . . . The president is placed beside the legislature like an inferior and dependent power. . . .

The office of president of the United States is temporary, limited, and subordinate. . . . [W]hen he is at the head of government, he has but little power, little wealth, and little glory to share among his friends; and his influence in the state is too small for the success or the ruin of a faction to depend upon his elevation to power. . . . The influence which the President exercises on public business is no doubt feeble and indirect.

Thirty years later, all this would be destroyed by Lincoln, who fundamentally changed the nature of the government, as even his apologists admit. He became a Caesar, in complete contradiction to most of the framers' intentions. As Acton said, he abolished the primary contribution that America had made to the world, the principle of federalism. But that is an old story.

Less well known is how Wilson revived Lincoln's dictatorial predilections, and added to them an even more millennial cast. Moreover, this was his intention before he was elected. In 1908, while still president of Princeton, he wrote a small book entitled the President of the United States. It was a paean to the imperial presidency, and might as well have been the bible of every president who followed him. He went beyond Lincoln, who praised the exercise of power. Wilson longed for a Presidential Messiah to deliver the human race.

There can be no successful government, without leadership or without the intimate, almost instinctive, coordination of the organs of life and action. . . . We have grown more and more from generation to generation to look to the President as the unifying force in our complex system. . . . To do so is not inconsistent with the actual provisions of the Constitution; it is only inconsistent with a very mechanical theory of its meaning and intention.

The president must be a man who understands his own day and the needs of the country, and who has the personality and the initiative to enforce his views both upon the people and upon Congress.

. . . He is not so much part of its organization as its vital link of connection with the thinking nation . . . he is also the political leader of the nation. . . . The nation as a whole has chosen him. . . . Let him once win the admiration and confidence of the country, and no other single force can withstand him, no combination of forces will easily overpower him. His position takes the imagination of the country. He is the representative of no constituency, but of the whole people . . . the country never feels the zest of action so much as when its President is of such insight and caliber. Its instinct is for unified action, and it craves a single leader. . . .

The President is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can. His capacity will set the limit . . . he is the only spokesman of the whole people. [Finally, Presidents should regard] themselves as less and less executive officers and more and more directors of affairs and leaders of the nation – men of counsel and of the sort of action that makes for enlightenment.

This is not a theory of the presidency. It is the hope for a new messiah. That indeed is what the presidency has come to. But any man who accepts this view is not a free man. He is not a man who understands what constitutes civilized life. The man who accepts what Wilson calls for is an apostle of the total State and a defender of collectivism and despotism.

Conservatives used to understand this. In the last century, all the great political philosophers – men like John Randolph and John Taylor and John C. Calhoun – did. In this century, the right was born in reaction to the imperial presidency. Men like Albert Jay Nock, Garet Garrett, John T. Flynn, and Felix Morley called the FDR presidency what it was: a US version of the dictatorships that arose in Russia and Germany, and a profound evil draining away the very life of the nation. They understood that FDR had brought both the Congress and the Supreme Court under his control, for purposes of power, national socialism, and war. He shredded what was left of the Constitution, and set the stage for all the consolidation that followed. Later presidents were free to nationalize the public schools, administer the economy according to the dictates of crackpot Keynesian economists, tell us who we must and who we must not associate with, nationalize the police function, and run an egalitarian regime that extols nondiscrimination as the sole moral tenet, when it is clearly not a moral tenet at all. Later conservatives like James Burnham, Wilmoore Kendall, and Robert Nisbet, understood this point too.

Yet who do modern conservatives extol? Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR. Reagan spoke of them as gods and models, and so did Bush and Gingrich. In the 1980s, we were told that Congress was the imperial branch of government because Tip O'Neill had a few questions about Reagan's tax-and-spend military buildup, and his strategy for fostering global warfare while managing world affairs through the CIA. All this was bolstered by books by Harvey Mansfield, Terry Eastland, and dozens of other neoconservatives who pretended to provide some justification for presidential supremacy and its exercise of global rule. More recently even Pat Buchanan repeated the "Ask not . . . " admonition of John F. Kennedy, that we should live to serve the central government and its organizing principle, the presidency.

What the neocon logic comes down to is this: The US has a moral responsibility to run the world. But the citizens are too stupid to understand this. That's why we can't use democratic institutions like Congress in this ambition. We must use the executive power of the presidency. It must have total control over foreign affairs, and never bow to Congressional carping. Once this point is conceded, the game is over. The demands of a centralized and all-powerful presidency and its interventionist foreign policy are ideologically reinforcing. One needs the other. If the presidency is supreme in global affairs, it will be supreme in domestic affairs. If it is supreme at home, there will be no states' rights, no absolute property rights, no true liberty from government oppression. The continued centralization of government in the presidency represents the end of America and its civilization.

A key part of the theory of presidential supremacy in foreign affairs is the idea that politics stops at the water's edge. If you believe that, you have given up everything. It means that foreign affairs will continue to be the last refuge of an omnipotent scoundrel. If a president can count on the fact that he won't be criticized so long as he is running a war, he will run more of them. So long as he is running wars, government at home cannot be cut. As Felix Morley said, "Politics can stop at the water's edge only when policies stop at the water's edge."

Sadly, the Congress for the most part cares nothing about foreign policy. In that, it reflects the attitude of the American voter. The exception is the handful of Congressmen who do speak about foreign issues, usually at the behest of the State Department, the CIA, the Pentagon, and the increasingly global FBI. Such men are mere adjuncts of presidential power.

In fact, it is the obligation of every patriot not only to denounce a president's actions at home, but to question, harass, and seek to rein in the presidency when it has sent troops abroad. That is when the watchful eye of the citizenry is most important. If we hold our tongues under some mistaken notion of patriotism, we surrender what remains of our freedoms. Yet during the Gulf War, even those who had courageously opposed this intervention in advance mouthed the old clichés about politics and the water's edge and "supporting the troops" when the presidency started massacring Iraqis. Will the same happen when the troops are sent to China, a country without a single aircraft carrier, in retaliation for some trumped-up incident in the tradition of the Maine, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, and the Gulf of Tonkin?

If there is ever a time to get behind a president, it is when he withdraws from the world, stops wars, and brings the troops home. If there is ever a time to trip him up, question his leadership, and denounce his usurpations, it is when he does the opposite. A bipartisan foreign policy is a Napoleonic foreign policy, and the opposite of that prescribed by Washington in his farewell address.

In the midst of America's war against Britain in 1812, John Randolph wrote an open letter to his Virginia constituents, pleading with them not to support the war, and promising them he would not, for he knew where war led: to presidential dictatorship: "If you and your posterity are to become hewers of wood and drawers of water to the modern Pharaoh, it shall not be for the want of my best exertions to rescue you from cruel and abject bondage."

Sixty years ago all conservatives would have agreed with him. But the neoconservative onslaught has purged conservatives of their instinctive suspicions of presidential power.

By the time 1994 had come around, conservatives had been thoroughly indoctrinated in the theory that Congress was out of control, and that the executive branch needed more power. The leadership of the 104th Congress – dominated to a man by neocons and presidential supremacists – bamboozled the freshmen into pushing for three executive-enhancing measures.

In one of the Congress's first actions, it made itself subject to the oppressive civil rights and labor laws that the Executive enforced against the rest of the nation. This was incredibly stupid. The Congress was exempted from these for a reason. It prevented the Executive from using its own regulatory agencies to lord it over Congress. By making itself subject to these laws, Congress willingly submitted itself to implicit and explicit domination by the Department of Labor, the Department of Justice, and the EEOC. It imposed quotas and political correctness on itself, while any dissenters from the presidential line suddenly faced the threat of investigation and prosecution by those they were attempting to rein in. The imposition of these laws against Congress is a clear violation of the separation of powers. But it would not be the last time that this Congress made this mistake. It also passed the line-item veto, another violation of the separation of powers. The theory was that the president would strike out pork, pork being defined as property taken by taxation and redistributed to special interests. But since pork is the entirety of the federal government's $1.7 trillion budget, this has given the president wide latitude over Congress. It takes away from Congress the right to control the purse strings.

Also part of the Contract with America was term limits for Congress. This would represent a severe diminution of Congressional power with respect to the presidency. After all, it would not mean term limits for the permanent bureaucracy or for federal judges, but only for the one branch the people can actually control. Thank goodness the self-interest of the politicians themselves prevented it from coming into being. After that initial burst of energy, this Congress surrendered everything to the Clinton White House: control of the budget, control of foreign affairs, and control of the Federal Reserve, and the FBI. The Justice Department operates practically without oversight, as does the Treasury, HUD, Transportation, Commerce, EPA, the SEC, the FTC, and the FDA.

Congress has given in on point after point, eventually even granting the presidency most of what it demanded in health-care reform, including mandated equal coverage of the mentally ill. Chalk it up to long-term planning. They came into office pledging to curb government, but are as infatuated with the presidency as Clinton himself. After all, they hope their party will regain the office.

Then the Republicans had the audacity to ask in bewilderment: why did the president beat Dole? What did we do wrong? The real question is what have they done right? James Burnham said that the legislature is useless unless it is curbing the presidency. By that measure, this Congress has been worthless. It deserves to lose its majority. And its party deserves to lose the presidency, whose powers they are so anxious to grab for themselves.

The best moments in the 104th Congress were when a few freshmen talked quietly of impeachment. Indeed it is their responsibility to talk loudly, openly, and constantly of impeachment. Today's presidency is by definition in violation of the Constitution. Talk of impeachment ought to become routine. So should ridicule and humiliation. For if we care about liberty, the plebiscitary dictatorship must be reined in or tossed out.

John Randolph had only been a Senator for a few days when he gave an extraordinary speech denouncing John Quincy Adams. "It is my duty," said Randolph, "to leave nothing undone that I may lawfully do, to pull down this administration. . . . They who, from indifference, or with their eyes open, persist in hugging the traitor to their bosom, deserve to be insulted . . . deserve to be slaves, with no other music to soothe them but the clank of the chains which they have put on themselves and given to their offspring." John Randolph said this in 1826. This was a time, writes de Tocqueville, when the presidency was almost invisible. If we cannot say this and more today, when the presidency is dictator to the world, we are not authentic conservatives and libertarians. Indeed, we are not free men.

"...brainwashed liberals feel fine about sleeping beside a mass murdering war criminal as long as he is black and he is not from Texas."

2012-02-20T11:11:00.000-05:00

Establishment Media: Critics of Obama Are Racists And Conspiracy Theorists

Saman Mohammadi

“The President just got in there. But in four years, will we still like him? In eight years, are we gonna still hype him? What if he says we’ve gotta go into Iran and kill a million people? Will you still be down with the man? You’d better wake up and smell the coffee.

This is why the radio station don’t toss me. Me–and I’m on the microphone–I stand with people like Alex Jones. This is the truth I’m down with. I’ve never been about no fuckin’ government. I do for myself; speak for myself. Teach myself; reach for myself. Hip hop, you gotta do the same thing. Listen to me now, while I rap and sing. The New World Order just put on a black face.” - KRS-One, January 24, 2009.

Obama has a PR advantage over his Republican rivals because he is a black President. A Black President doesn’t get criticized by the left because he is black. They think that a black president can’t be an evil imperialist in the same way as a white president. I think that is one of the political codes in politically correct Washington.

In American politics, ambitious black politicians use the race card like it is a magic card. And it is. Being black in power is a good image boost, which is why Obama was handpicked to be President by the oligarchy during this time of trial and transition.

When Obama bombs Persia, Obama’s Zombies Will Say: How can Obama be evil when he’s black? Black presidents don’t start evil wars. Only white presidents do that because the white man is the devil.

When Obama bombs Persia, the Whores of the Media Will Say: You cannot call a black President evil because that makes you evil and racist. You’re only allowed to call white Presidents evil. Okay? Got that, slaves? You morons. That’s an American rule in American politics. Do not call the black man in the White House an evil scumbag, do not say he loves wars and mass death, or we’ll call you a racist.

When Obama bombs Persia, the Brainwashed Left Will Say: Bush bombed the Iraqis because he was evil and wanted oil, but Obama is bombing the Persians because he’s good and he wants to create world peace. And how do I know he’s good? Well, because he’s black. Good is written on his face. If I say he’s evil then that makes me a racist. And I may be blind supporter of a lying war criminal, but I am not a racist! I am a good liberal who loves everybody and everything. And I love my president because he is black, which means I have shed my white guilt. And those who criticize him are all racists and conspiracy theorists!

Obama is clearly exploiting his color to sell to the American people inherently evil policies. And his defenders in the press constantly use the race card to demonize Obama’s critics. Read the following articles:
Chris Matthews calls Obama critics ‘crackers’
Barack Obama critics ‘racist’, says Jimmy Carter: is he right?
Poet Maya Angelou Calls Obama Critics Racist
Olbermann Assails Obama’s Critics As Racist
Once Again, MSNBC Dismisses Obama Criticism As Thinly Veiled Racism
Every Obama Critic a Racist
Morgan Freeman Praised for Calling Obama Critics Racist

The political narrative that Obama critics are racists and conspiracy theorists has been constructed and new layers of lies are constantly added. And these lies are coming from so-called liberals like Chris Matthews and the MSNBC crew.

The leadership of the Left in America and the West is filled with traitors, deceivers, and criminals. They want the American people to bomb Iran and watch World War III on television, and say that criticizing Obama’s World War is a 21st century form of racism. And brainwashed liberals feel fine about sleeping beside a mass murdering war criminal as long as he is black and he is not from Texas.

So bombing Arabs, Afghans, Pakistanis, and Iranians = fine and good. But criticizing a black president because of his criminal policies and his wars = racism. Wow, how deep the intellectual spirit of America and the West has fallen! Political correctness combined with totalitarian propaganda and mass ignorance have caused the death of America and the West.

But America and the West can be resurrected and revived. And for that to happen, we must stop allowing politicians, journalists, pundits, and newsmakers use the terms “conspiracy theorist” and “racist” as political weapons to divide and rule, and smear their democratic critics.

Defining and clarifying the words that we use is important, especially in a time of war and crisis. If the war criminals in Washington can get away with defining any political criticism of President Obama as racist hate speech and crazy/conspiratorial, then they’ll get away with anything, including carrying out false flag attacks, starting a nuclear war, and even genocide.

Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/establishment-media-critics-of-obama-are-racists-and-conspiracy-theorists.html

"You better get ready for what is ahead, because Barack Obama is not going to save you."

2012-02-20T11:06:00.000-05:00

18 Statistics That Prove That The Economy Has Not Improved Since Barack Obama Became President

Has the economy improved since Barack Obama became the president of the United States? Of course not. Despite what you may be hearing in the mainstream media, the truth is that when you compare the U.S. economy on the day that Barack Obama was inaugurated to the U.S. economy today, there is really no comparison. The unemployment crisis is worse than it was then, home values have fallen, the cost of health insurance is up, the cost of gas is way up, the number of Americans living in poverty has soared and the size of our national debt has absolutely exploded. Anyone that believes that things are better than they were when Barack Obama was elected is simply being delusional. Yes, things have stabilized somewhat and our economy is not in free fall mode at this point. But don't be fooled. This bubble of false hope will be short-lived. The problems we are seeing develop in Europe will erupt into another full-fledged global financial crisis and economic conditions in the United States will get even worse. When that happens, what possible " economic solutions" will Barack Obama have for us? We never even came close to recovering from the last great financial crisis, and now something potentially even worse is staring us in the face. This is not a great time to have a total lack of leadership in Washington.

The following are 18 statistics that prove that the economy has not improved since Barack Obama became the president of the United States....

#1 Today there are 88 million working age Americans that are not employed and that are not looking for employment. That is an all-time record high.

#2 When Barack Obama was elected, the percentage of unemployed Americans that had been out of work for more than 52 weeks was less than 15%. Today, it is above 30%.

#3 There are 1.2 million fewer jobs in America today than there were when Barack Obama was inaugurated.

#4 When Barack Obama first took office, the number of "long-term unemployed workers" in the United States was approximately 2.6 million. Today, that number is sitting at 5.6 million.

#5 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is hovering close to an all-time record high.

#6 During the Obama administration, worker health insurance costs have risen by 23 percent.

#7 Since Barack Obama has been president, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has increased by 90 percent.

#8 Since Barack Obama has been president, home values in the United States have declined by another 13 percent.

#9 Under Barack Obama, new home sales in the U.S. set a brand new all-time record low in 2009, they set a brand new all-time record low again in 2010, and they set a brand new all-time record low once again during 2011.

#10 Since Barack Obama took office, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen by more than 6 million.

#11 Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased from 32 million to 46 million.

#12 The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.

#13 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of Americans living in "extreme poverty" is now sitting at an all-time high.

#14 When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850. Today an ounce of gold costs more than $1700 an ounce.

#15 Since Barack Obama became president, the size of the U.S. national debt has increased by 44 percent.

#16 During Barack Obama's first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.

#17 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

#18 The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration.

Oh, but Barack Obama is promising that things will be much better very soon. Barack Obama is pledging that 2 million more jobs will be added to the economy in 2012.

Do you believe him?

Congress certainly seems to think that things will be getting better. Congress has reduced the maximum amount of time that the unemployed can receive unemployment benefits to 73 weeks. That change will go into effect later this year.

But there are still millions of very talented Americans that cannot find work after years of looking.

So what are they supposed to do?

A recent Business Insider article featured the story of Helen Hatat, a woman from southern California that has been unemployed since 2009....

She lost her job in public relationships in 2009 after more than 20 years of working in the entertainment industry, the Southern California resident said.

"When you don't have a job, you don't find a job, and when you don't have a job, you don't find a home," she said.

At first she tried moving into a homeless shelter, but left because they treated her "like garbage." Eventually she found a friend she could stay with, but this arrangement won't last forever.

"I've found you lose most of your friends, you know. If you have money people love you. If you don't have any money people hate you. They treat you like you are contagious."

As government finances get tight, things are going to get really tough for women like her.

When evaluating the health of the American economy, the key is not to focus on the short-term economic numbers. Sometimes they go up and sometimes they do down.

Instead, the key is to look at the long-term balance sheet numbers. When you do that, it quickly becomes apparent how appalling our economic decline has been.

The size of federal government debt is exploding, state and local governments all over the country are drowning in debt, our collective national wealth is decreasing and our ability to produce new wealth is also being reduced as our economic infrastructure is systematically gutted.

Of course all of the blame should not go to Obama. The truth is that the Federal Reserve has much more power over the economy than Obama does. But the American people are constantly told that the Federal Reserve is "not political" and that we should not criticize the Fed.

So it is kind of ridiculous that presidents are judged by the performance of the economy. Yes, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama have all greatly contributed to the mess that we are in, but they are not solely responsible for it.

In the end, however, the outcome of the next presidential election will probably be very heavily influenced by how the U.S. economy performs during the rest of 2012.

Sadly, as our economy declines it is bringing out the worst in many Americans. For example, "sugar daddy" websites are absolutely exploding in popularity. Young women that are hungry for cash are selling their "services" to sick older men who are willing to finance the lifestyles of these desperate young women in exchange for "companionship".

The following comes from a recent article in The Independent....

In America's booming online dating market, few sectors are hotter than so-called "sugar daddy" sites, which help rich men to make "arrangements" with attractive and financially needy younger women. Between them, these specialist sites now account for 10 percent of the entire industry. That's no small beans, given that in the US the online dating business now generates profits estimated at $700m ($442m) per year and, according to the polling firm GlobeSpan, has helped just over one in five Americans to find their life partner.

As the economy gets even worse, millions upon millions of Americans are going to become extremely desperate and will do things for money that they never dreamed that they would do.

That is a very frightening thing.

America is changing, and not for the better.

You better get ready for what is ahead, because Barack Obama is not going to save you.

Link:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/18-statistics-that-prove-that-the-economy-has-not-improved-since-barack-obama-became-the-president-of-the-united-states

"The price of gas is going even higher even though energy consumption is sharply declining in the United States."

2012-02-20T10:57:00.000-05:00

The Price Of Gas Is Outrageous – And It Is Going To Go Even Higher

The Economic Collapse

Does it cost you hundreds of dollars just to get to work each month? If it does, you are certainly not alone. There are millions of other Americans in the exact same boat. In recent years, the price of gas in the United States has gotten so outrageous that it has played a major factor in where millions of American families have decided to live and in what kind of vehicles they have decided to purchase. Many Americans that have very long commutes to work end up spending thousands of dollars on gas a year. So when the price of gas starts going up to record levels, people like that really start to feel it. But the price of gas doesn't just affect those that drive a lot. The truth is that the price of gas impacts each and every one of us. Almost everything that we buy has to be transported, and when the price of gasoline goes up the cost of shipping goods also rises. The U.S. economy has been structured around cheap oil. It was assumed that we would always be able to transport massive quantities of goods over vast distances very inexpensively. Once that paradigm totally breaks down, we are going to be in a huge amount of trouble. For the moment, the big concern is the stress that higher gas prices are going to put on the budgets of ordinary American families. Unfortunately, almost everyone agrees that in the short-term the price of gas is going to go even higher.

When you are on a really tight budget and you are already spending several hundred dollars on gas each month, you certainly do not want to hear that gas prices are going to increase even more.

A lot of Americans are moving or are getting different vehicles just because of these outrageous gas prices. The following comes from a recent Mercury News article....

Katherine Zak, of South San Jose, is searching for an apartment near her new job at Facebook in Palo Alto, partly to cut down the cost of driving. Jeff Benson, of Raymond in the Sierra foothills, typically drives 60,000 to 70,000 miles a year and has traded in his 19 mpg Ford Taurus for a Fusion that gets 33 mpg. And David Thomas says his commute from San Jose to San Francisco is getting so expensive that he and his fiancee are hunting for a house near a BART station in the San Mateo-San Bruno area to shorten his commute and lower his $400-a-month gas bill.

The price of gas is going even higher even though energy consumption is sharply declining in the United States. Just check out the charts in this article by Charles Hugh Smith. Americans are using less gasoline and less energy and yet the price of gas continues to go up.

That is not a good sign.

Certainly any decrease that we are seeing in the U.S. is being more than offset by rising demand in places such as China and India. As emerging economies all over the globe continue to develop this is going to continue to put pressure on gas prices.

So just how bad are gas prices in the U.S. right now?

Just consider the following facts....

-The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States is now $3.53.

-The average price of a gallon of gasoline is already higher than $3.70 in Connecticut, Washington D.C. and New York.

-In California, the average price of a gallon of gasoline is $3.96 and there are quite a few cities where it is now above 4 dollars.

-In mid-January 2009, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States was just $1.85.

-The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has risen 25 cents since the beginning of 2012.

-Never before in U.S. history has the price of gasoline been this high so early in the year.

-The Oil Price Information Service is projecting that the price of gas could reach an average of $4.25 a gallon by the end of April.

-The price of oil just keeps going up. The price for West Texas Intermediate is about 19 percent higher than it was one year ago.

-The price of gasoline is also reaching record highs in many areas of Europe as well. For example, the price of diesel fuel in the UK recently set a brand new record.

-In 2011, U.S. households spent a whopping 8.4% of their incomes on gasoline. That percentage has approximately doubled over the past ten years.

But the price of gas is not the only thing making driving much more expensive these days.

All over the country, our politicians have been putting up toll booths. Most of the time these toll booths are going up on roads that have already been paid for.

After paying an outrageous amount for gas and after paying the outrageous tolls on many of these toll roads, many Americans wonder if it is even worth it to get up in the morning and go to work.

Unfortunately, a couple of new bills in Congress right now would reportedly allow even more highways to be made into toll roads.

It is almost as if they want to force us all to stop driving our cars.

America used to be the land of the open road, but that era is rapidly coming to an end.

Another thing that could put upward pressure on the price of gas is the situation in the Middle East.

Iran has already stopped selling oil to companies in the UK and France, and there is the potential that war could erupt in the Middle East at any time.

If war does erupt, or if commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz was interrupted for even a brief time, that would send the global price of oil through the roof.

Approximately 20 percent of all oil sold in the world passes through the Strait of Hormuz. If the flow of oil was halted, that would change the global economy almost overnight.

So is there any good news?

Well, there is one thing that would likely bring down the price of gas substantially.

A global recession.

Remember what happened back in 2008.

Just like we are seeing right now, the price of gas really spiked early in that year.

Eventually, the price of oil hit an all-time record of $147 a barrel in mid-2008.

But then the financial crisis struck and the price of oil fell like a rock as you can see from the chart below....

So could that happen again?

Certainly.

There are a ton of other parallels between 2008 and 2012.

In both years, we saw global shipping start to slow down dramatically.

In both years, the U.S. was getting ready to hold a presidential election.

In both years, many economists were warning that a great financial crisis was about to strike.

Back in 2008, the epicenter of the financial crisis was on Wall Street.

This time, the epicenter of the financial crisis will probably be in Europe.

Keep your eye on Europe. A disorderly default by Greece (and potentially even an exit from the eurozone) is looking increasingly likely.

But the problems in Europe are not going to end with Greece. The entire eurozone is going to be greatly shaken by the time this thing is over.

So yes, if we see another major global recession that will be great news for the price of gas, but it will be really bad news for the millions of people that lose their jobs and their homes.

Unfortunately, we live at a time when the world is becoming extremely unstable. The great era of peace and prosperity that we have been enjoying is coming to an end. The global financial system is going to experience a tremendous amount of chaos in the years ahead and that is something we will all need to prepare for.

For now, the price of gas is a major concern for millions upon millions of American families.

Someday, however, we will wish desperately that we could go back to these days.

"No doubt test tube hamburger makers will tout their meat as being “Cruelty Free” by saying “No animals were killed in the harvesting of this meat.” Maybe not, but how many humans will be killed in the consumption of it?"

2012-02-20T10:52:00.000-05:00

Artificial hamburger meat successfully grown in vat of bovine fetal cells; You want some fries with that?

Mike Adams

I’m not sure which is the more offensive way to create meat. There’s the current “factory farm” method where masses of hormone-jacked, antibiotics-injected cows are kept confined in what can only be called bovine concentration camps while they’re fed genetically modified corn, then slaughtered without compassion and subjected to diabolical meat-harvesting machinery that turns a cow carcass into corporate profits. On the other hand, there’s the new method being touted across the media: Test tube hamburgers made from thin strips of meat grown in a nutrient vat laced with bovine fetus stem cells. Yumm!

The test tube meat strips actually pulsate and twitch during their laboratory growth phase, by the way, and they’re ultimately ground up with strips of test tube fat grown in a similar way to produce a fatty hamburger-like substance. This has been accomplished by Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, who announced his team’s results at theAmerican Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)yesterday.

Test tube meat is here to save the world!

“In October we are going to provide a proof of concept showing out of stem cells we can make a product that looks, feels and hopefully tastes like meat,” says Mark Post at the announcement (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9091628/Test-tube-ham…). Of course, what does processed meat actually taste like anyway? MSG, sodium nitrite and processed salt, for the most part. So making lab-grown meat taste like today’s factory-processed meat only requires the injection of a few additives into the growth culture. Imagine growing meat patties with MSGinsideevery cell!

Creating one hamburger will require 3,000 strips of meat, each just half a millimeter thick and grown in laboratory vats. Unlike a cow, which requires roughly two years to grow to the point of slaughter, a test tube burger can be produced in just six weeks.

The “benefits” of test tube hamburger production are being touted as substantial, including:

• More efficient conversion of plants to meat.
• Less environmental damage.
• More humane than killing animals.
• Is the only feasible way to feed more meat to the world.

Of course, they also said that GMOs would “feed the world.” Bill Gates calls genetically modified foods “high-tech agriculture” now, with the strong implication that technology is always superior to Mother Nature (http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=1EE22C52BA26FA296CFC8A0361571555). But I’m not so sure about that. In fact, this whole thing sounds more than a little creepy to me.

Test tube meat to feed the masses? Gee, what could possibly go wrong?

I’m skeptical any time technology claims to out-perform nature. Look what they’ve done with GMOs, chemical pesticides, vaccines, or nuclear power. In almost every case where “scientific progress” is touted as the solution for humankind, it ends up creating anightmarethat’s far worse than the problem it was trying to solve.

For the record, I choose not to eat cow meat. I’m not a vegetarian, but I’ve been around lots of cows on farms, and I see cows as conscious, aware mammals who have memories, emotions, families and social structure. They are every bit as intelligent as horses, and most people would cringe at the idea of eating a horse burger.

However, in a survival situation, I would have no hesitation eating grass-fed beef if it were from a healthy farm source. In fact, my personal supply of preparedness foods consists of several bags of USDA organic grass-fed beef jerky made without MSG or sodium nitrite.

But when it comes to growing hamburgers out of stem cells in a petri dish, the whole thing just smacks a little too much of soylent green. How are we to know what they really put in the nutrient solution? Maybe it contains growth hormones to speed production. Maybe it’s loaded with synthetic chemical vitamins instead of natural vitamins. Maybe it’s contaminated with Prozac or fluoride to make us all feel happy and oblivious while we eat synthetic meat. How are we to know what they do with it?

Artificial meat monstrosity

And then, of course, it’s only a matter of time before they start to genetically modify the test tube meat, perhaps using selected genes from the human genetic code to make the end product is more compatible with human biology while avoiding any risk of allergies. So then what do we have? Hybrid bovine / human meat.

…and a world full of cannibals who are eating something that’s partially human flesh.

See, modern science has already proven itself to be a pathetic collection of truly insane megalomaniacs who will gladly splice the genes of animals and insects into crops so that they can create vaccine crops, or vaccine-carrying mosquitoes, or goats that produce spider silk, or some other kind of monstrosity that serves the power-tripping globalists.

And the marvel of modern-day fast food has already proven that people will eat anything marketed to them as food. Case in point? Chicken McNuggets. That’s a hodge podge of industrial chemicals and so-called mechanically-separated chicken, which itself is a meat processing freak show. (http://www.naturalnews.com/032820_Chicken_McNuggets_ingredients.html)

So I guess if you set up a test tube meat lab, splice together a bunch of genes from various species (humans, cows, dogs, insects, ogres, possums and Janet Napolitano) and then grow a vat of some sort of convulsing fibrous tissue that can be made into a 99-cent hamburger, then the great masses will eat it! Who cares what the tissues are floating in, right? As long as it’s offered with a combo meal that includes French fries and an aspartame-laced Diet Coke, people will chug it straight down while watching NBA games and declaring, “We’re winning!”

No doubt test tube hamburger makers will tout their meat as being “Cruelty Free” by saying “No animals were killed in the harvesting of this meat.” Maybe not, but how many humans will be killed in the consumption of it?

A mysterious financial supporter backs the entire thing

By the way, this whole freak show of artificial meat production is being financed by an “…anonymous and extremely wealthy benefactor who Prof Post claims is a household name with a reputation for ‘turning everything into gold’.”

I wouldn’t be surprised at all to learn that Bill Gates was behind it — or someone similarly motivated by a global depopulation agenda.

Bottom line: Artificial meat may be an extraordinary idea, but given the total lack of ethics found in the scientific community today, I wouldn’t trust these people any farther than I could hurl a cow chip.

Link:
http://www.naturalnews.com/035020_artificial_meat_test_tube_hamburger.html

"Last week in one fell swoop the last two remaining critics of Washington/Tel Aviv imperialism were removed from the mainstream media. Judge Napolitano’s popular program, Freedom Watch, was cancelled by Fox TV, and Pat Buchanan was fired by MSNBC. Both pundits had wide followings and were appreciated for speaking frankly."

2012-02-20T10:46:00.001-05:00

Silencing The Critics

Paul Craig Roberts

In 2010 the FBI invaded the homes of peace activists in several states and seized personal possessions in what the FBI–the lead orchestrator of fake “terrorist plots”–called an investigation of “activities concerning the material support of terrorism.”

Subpoenas were issued to compel antiwar protestors to testify before grand juries as prosecutors set about building their case that opposing Washington’s wars of aggression constitutes giving aid and comfort to terrorists. The purpose of the raids and grand jury subpoenas was to chill the anti-war movement into inaction.

Last week in one fell swoop the last two remaining critics of Washington/Tel Aviv imperialism were removed from the mainstream media. Judge Napolitano’s popular program, Freedom Watch, was cancelled by Fox TV, and Pat Buchanan was fired by MSNBC. Both pundits had wide followings and were appreciated for speaking frankly.

Many suspect that the Israel Lobby used its clout with TV advertisers to silence critics of the Israeli government’s efforts to lead Washington to war with Iran. Regardless, the point before us is that the voice of the mainstream media is now uniform. Americans hear one voice, one message, and the message is propaganda. Dissent is tolerated only on such issues as to whether employer-paid health benefits should pay for contraceptive devices. Constitutional rights have been replaced with rights to free condoms.

The western media demonizes those at whom Washington points a finger. The lies pour forth to justify Washington’s naked aggression: the Taliban are conflated with al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, Gaddafi is a terrorist and, even worse, fortified his troops with Viagra in order to commit mass rape against Libyan women.

President Obama and members of Congress along with Tel Aviv continue to assert that Iran is making a nuclear weapon despite public contradiction by the US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate. According to news reports, Pentagon chief Leon Panetta told members of the House of Representatives on February 16 that “Tehran has not made a decision to proceed with developing a nuclear weapon.” http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_19978801?source=rss However, in Washington facts don’t count. Only the material interests of powerful interest groups matter.

At the moment the american Ministry of Truth is splitting its time between lying about Iran and lying about Syria. Recently, there were some explosions in far away Thailand, and the explosions were blamed on Iran. Last October the FBI announced that the bureau had uncovered an Iranian plot to pay a used car salesman to hire a Mexican drug gang to kill the Saudi Ambassador to the US. The White House idiot professed to believe the unbelievable plot and declared that he had “strong evidence,” but no evidence was ever released. The purpose for announcing the non-existent plot was to justify Obama’s sanctions, which amount to an embargo–an act of war–against Iran for developing nuclear energy.

As a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty, Iran has the right to develop nuclear energy. IAEA inspectors are permanently in Iran and report no diversion of nuclear material to a weapons program.

In other words, according to the reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the US National Intelligence Estimate, and the current Secretary of Defense, there is no evidence that Iran has nukes or is making nukes. Yet, Obama has placed illegal sanctions on Iran and continues to threaten Iran with military attack on the basis of an accusation that is contradicted by all known evidence.

How can such a thing happen? It can happen because there is no Helen Thomas, who also was eliminated by the Israel Lobby, to question, as a member of the White House press, President Obama why he placed war-like sanctions on Iran when his own CIA and his own Secretary of Defense, along with the IAEA, report that there is no basis for the sanctions.

The idea that the US is a democracy when it most definitely does not have a free watchdog press is laughable. But the media is not laughing. It is lying. Just like the government, every time the US mainstream media opens its mouth or writes one word, it is lying. Indeed, its corporate masters pay its employees to tell lies. That is their job. Tell the truth, and you are history like Buchanan and Napolitano and Helen Thomas.

What the Ministry of Truth calls “peaceful protesters brutalized by Assad’s military” are in fact rebels armed and financed by Washington. Washington has fomented a civil war. Washington claims its intention is to rescue the oppressed and abused Syrian people from Assad, just as Washington rescued the oppressed and abused Libyan people from Gaddafi. Today “liberated” Libya is a shell of its former self terrorized by clashing militias. Thanks to Obama, another country has been destroyed.

Reports of atrocities committed against Syrian civilians by the military could be true, but the reports come from the rebels who desire Western intervention to put them into power. Moreover, how would these civilian casualties differ from the ones inflicted on Bahraini civilians by the US supported Bahraini government, the military of which was fortified by Saudi Arabian troops? There is no outcry in the western press about Washington’s blind eye to civilian atrocities committed by its puppet states.

How do the Syrian atrocities, if they are real, differ from Washington’s atrocities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo prison, and secret CIA prison sites? Why is the american Ministry of Truth silent about these massive, unprecedented, violations of human rights?

Remember also the reports of Serbian atrocities in Kosovo that Washington and Germany used to justify NATO and US bombing of Serbian civilians, including the Chinese consulate, dismissed as another collateral damage. Now 13 years later, a prominent German TV program has revealed that the photographs that ignited the atrocity campaign were grossly misrepresented and were not photographs of atrocities committed by Serbs, but of Albanian separatists killed in a firefight between armed Albanians and Serbians. Serbian casualties were not shown. http://www.freenations.freeuk.com/news-2012-02-19.html

The problem that truth faces is that the western media continually lies. On the rare instances when the lies are corrected, it is always long after the event and, therefore, the crimes enabled by the media have been accomplished.

Washington set its puppet Arab League upon Syria in order to establish Syria’s isolation among its own kind, the better to attack Syria. Assad forestalled Washington’s set-up of Syria for destruction by calling a nationwide referendum on February 26 to establish a new constitution that would extend the prospect of rule beyond the Ba’athists (Assad’s party).

One might think that, if Washington and its Ministry of Truth really wanted democracy in Syria, Washington would get behind this gesture of good will by the ruling party and endorse the referendum. But Washington does not want a democratic Syrian government. Washington wants a puppet state. Washington’s response is that the dastardly Assad has outwitted Washington by taking steps toward Syrian democracy before Washington can obliterate Syria and install a puppet.

Here is Obama’s response to Assad’s move toward democracy: “It’s actually quite laughable–it makes a mockery of the Syrian revolution,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One.

Obama, the neoconservatives, and Tel Aviv are really pissed. If Washington and Tel Aviv can figure out how to get around Russia and China and overthrow Assad, Washington and Tel Aviv will put Assad on trial as a war criminal for proposing a democratic referendum.

Assad was an eye doctor in England until his father died, and he was called back to head the troubled government. Washington and Tel Aviv have demonized Assad for refusing to be their puppet. Another sore point is the Russian naval base at Tartus. Washington is desperate to evict the Russians from their only Mediterranean base in order to make the Mediterranean an american lake. Washington, inculcated with neocon visions of world empire, wants its own mare nostrum.

If the Soviet Union were still extant, Washington’s designs on Tartus would be suicidal. However, Russia is politically and militarily weaker than the Soviet Union. Washington has infiltrated Russia with NGOs that work against Russia’s interests and will disrupt the upcoming elections. Moreover, Washington-funded “color revolutions” have turned former constituent parts of the Soviet Union into Washington’s puppet states. Shorn of communist ideology, Washington does not expect Russia to push the nuclear button. Thus, Russia is there for the taking.

China is a more difficult problem. Washington’s plan is to cut China off from independent sources of energy. China’s oil investment in eastern Libya is the reason
Gaddafi was overthrown, and oil is one of the main reasons that Washington has targeted Iran. China has large oil investments in Iran and gets 20% of its oil from Iran. Closing down Iran, or converting it into Washington’s puppet state, closes down 20% of the Chinese economy.

Russia and China are slow learners. However, when Washington and its NATO puppets abused the “no-fly” UN resolution concerning Libya and violated the UN resolution by turning it into armed military aggression against Libya’s armed forces, which had every right to put down a CIA sponsored rebellion, Russia and China finally got the message that Washington could not be trusted.

This time Russia and China did not fall into Washington’s trap. They vetoed the UN Security Council’s set-up of Syria for military attack. Now Washington and Tel Aviv (it is not always clear which is the puppet and which is the puppet master) have to decide whether to proceed in the face of Russian and Chinese opposition.

The risks for Washington have multiplied. If Washington proceeds, the information that is conveyed to Russia and China is that they are next in line after Iran. Therefore, Russia and China, both being well-armed with nuclear weapons, are likely to put their foot down more firmly at the line drawn over Iran. If the crazed warmongers in Washington and Tel Aviv, with veins running strong with hubris and arrogance, again override Russian and Chinese opposition, the risk of a dangerous confrontation rises.

Why isn’t the american media raising questions about these risks? Is it worth blowing up the world in order to stop Iran from having a nuclear energy program or even a nuclear weapon? Does Washington think China is unaware that Washington is taking aim at its energy supply? Does Washington think Russia is unaware that it is being encircled by hostile military bases?

Whose interests are being served by Washington’s endless and multi-trillion dollar wars? Certainly not the interests of the 50 million americans with no access to health care, nor by the 1,500,000 american children who are homeless, living in cars, rundown motel rooms, tent cities, and the storm sewers under Las Vegas, while huge amounts of public funds are used to bail out banks and squandered in wars of hegemony. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suJCvkazrTc

The US has no independent print and TV media. It has presstitutes who are paid for the lies that they tell. The US government in its pursuit of its immoral aims has attained the status of the most corrupt government in human history. Yet Obama speaks as if Washington is the font of human morality.

The US government does not represent Americans. It represents a few special interests and a foreign power. US citizens simply don’t count, and certainly Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans, Somalians, Yemenis, and Pakistanis don’t count. Washington regards truth, justice, and mercy as laughable values. Money, power, hegemony are all that count for Washington, the city upon the hill, the light unto nations, the example for the world.

Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/silencing-the-critics.html

Here's another guy the media ignores...

2012-02-19T19:38:00.000-05:00

Gary Johnson decries domestic drones: ‘Big Brother is alive and well’

By Eric W. Dolan

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson on Friday blasted Congress for making the United States a “wide-open playground for government snooping.”

Congress passed and Obama signed into law legislation to fund the Federal Aviation Administration through 2015. But the legislation also included provisions that would make it easier for law enforcement agencies to use unmanned aerial vehicles within the United States.

“The threats to privacy in America – from our own government – seem to never end,” Johnson said in a statement. “Does Congress really think they can just stick an ‘oh-by-the-way’ provision in an obscure piece of legislation directing the FAA to clear the way for 30,000 drones to fly over our neighborhoods, and have no one notice?”

The new law require the FAA to speed up the process by which it authorizes government agencies to operate drones. The law also requires the FAA to allow agencies to operate any drone weighing 4.4 pounds or less as long as it is operated within line of sight, during the day and below 400 feet in altitude.

“Big Brother is alive and well, and now we’re talking about making it easier for him to fly remote control planes loaded with cameras over our neighborhoods,” Johnson added. “Based on our experience with the Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, and several other laws Congress has enacted in recent years, it is not alarmist to fear or assume that when we give the government the power to snoop, they will indeed snoop.”

There are hundreds of different models of drones, from large fixed-wing aircraft to a tiny drone called the Nano Hummingbird. The drones employ a wide range of surveillance technology as well, including high-power zoom lenses, infrared and ultraviolet imaging, see-through imaging and video analytics.

“The government, through the FAA, already has the power to permit specific uses of drones, such as in fighting forest fires, looking for lost campers, or helping deal with natural disasters,” Johnson added.

“And right now, they are being used to patrol the border. Some of those uses may be justified and legit, and the rules allow for that today. But directing the FAA to come up with a system that will allow federal, state and local law enforcement to deploy 30,000 drones is a very different proposition, and should absolutely not be allowed to proceed without a serious conversation about a very real threat to fundamental privacy.”

Link:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/19/gary-johnson-decries-domestic-drones-big-brother-is-alive-and-well/

Judge Napolitano.How to get fired in under 5 mins...

2012-02-19T17:45:00.002-05:00

" The Constitution, of course, does not delegate to the federal government the powers to take people into custody, torture and abuse them, and kill them. There is also no power to assassinate people. In fact, the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits the government from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, trial by jury, right to counsel, and other such procedures. It also protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures, especially without judicially issued warrants. It guarantees speedy trials and prohibits cruel and unusual punishments."

2012-02-19T17:39:00.000-05:00

Torture, Assassination, and the American Way of Life

by Jacob G. Hornberger

As most everyone knows, the CIA has been assassinating people practically since the time it was formed in 1947. By and large, however, the CIA kept its assassinations secret. Americans, for their part, had a feeling that such things were being done but didn’t ask any questions.

The system was almost in the nature of a secret, unannounced pact between the government and the people. As part of its job to protect “national security,” the government would have the omnipotent authority to assassinate people, but it would keep its assassinations secret from the citizenry. In that way, the citizenry would be shielded from the unsavory things that government would be doing in the name of “national security,” and citizens wouldn’t have to concern themselves with things like conscience.

The principle, of course, has been the same with respect to torture. For decades, the Pentagon was secretly teaching soldiers the principles of torture, including at its infamous School of the Americas.

Every once in a while, there would be some public disclosure regarding the assassination program or the torture program. For example, there was the infamous Phoenix program during the Vietnam War, where tens of thousands of Vietnamese people were tortured or killed. There were the CIA’s repeated assassination attempts against Cuba’s president Fidel Castro. There was the discovery of the Pentagon’s torture manuals that were being used at the School of the Americas.

When such things would become public, there would be tremendous shock within the citizenry, especially the mainstream media. Investigations would be called. Committees would be impaneled. Confessions and apologies and promises not do it again would issue. The citizenry would be satisfied. Everything would return to “normal.”

No one seemed to notice that through it all — from 1947 through the present date — the U.S. national security state was supporting and training the intelligence and military forces of foreign dictatorships that were brutalizing their own citizenry with things like arbitrary arrest, torture, and assassination. Look at Latin America, for example, where in the name of “anti-communism” and “national security,” both the CIA and the Pentagon were partnering with and training brutal dictatorships, especially military ones. Or look at the Middle East, where much of the same thing has been going on.

Why were the Pentagon and the CIA supporting, training, and partnering with such dictatorships? Because they believed in them! They honestly believed that such dictatorships were necessary to hold back the “communist threat” and to protect the “national security” of the United States. In fact, one of their models was the Pinochet military dictatorship in Chile, which they helped bring into existence, because it favored “capitalism” while, at the same time, arresting, torturing, and killing “communists” without having to deal with such judicial niceties as trials, due process, and the like.

Throughout the Cold War, the CIA and the Pentagon must have been envious of those foreign dictatorial regimes. After all, such regimes could exercise their powers openly and above board. They didn’t need to hide them. In Latin America, for example, death squads consisting of U.S.-trained soldiers and intelligence personnel were arresting people, raping them, torturing them, and killing them or simply assassinating them. And they were doing so openly to protect their “national security” from the “communists.”

Or consider the rendition/torture partnerships between the U.S. government and the dictatorships in such countries as Egypt, Syria, and Libya. There is a reason that the Pentagon and the CIA chose those countries to torture its victims — they’re good at it, and U.S. officials knew that there were good at it. This is especially true in the case of Egypt, whose military and intelligence forces have long worked closely with the U.S. national security state. Moreover, for decades the U.S. government has helped support Egypt’s military dictatorship with billions of dollars in money and armaments.

Of course, 9/11 changed all that. No longer would the Pentagon and the CIA have to keep secret their torture and assassination programs. Like their counterparts in Latin America and the Middle East, they could now be open and above board, at least with respect to wielding such powers, if not also the exercise of them.

The Constitution, of course, does not delegate to the federal government the powers to take people into custody, torture and abuse them, and kill them. There is also no power to assassinate people. In fact, the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits the government from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, trial by jury, right to counsel, and other such procedures. It also protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures, especially without judicially issued warrants. It guarantees speedy trials and prohibits cruel and unusual punishments.

So, how did the CIA and the Pentagon acquire such powers? No, there was no constitutional amendment. They simply assumed the powers, without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment. That was the secret pact between them and the American people during the Cold War. “We now wield these powers that the Constitution prohibits us from exercising,” U.S. officials effectively said, “but we must exercise them to keep you safe from the communists. Don’t worry: we will exercise them secretly and surreptitiously so that it will appear that nothing has changed in a fundamental way.”

Thus, throughout the Cold War Americans continued innocently believing that they were living in a free country, one in which the government’s powers were limited by the Constitution, even though deep down everyone knew that the government was now secretly wielding powers that were inherent to brutal dictatorships.

Then came 9/11, the critical event that enabled the secret arrangement to now be made public. The Pentagon and the CIA were now on the same level as the dictatorships that they had long supported and trained. Like their counterparts in those regimes, they could now be as open about their powers as their foreign dictatorships had been. 9/11 enabled the Pentagon and the CIA to not only openly disclose that they wielded such powers, it also enabled them to openly exercise them without any fear or concern that they might ultimately be held criminally liable.

For decades, Americans lived under the quaint notion that the national-security state would exercise such powers only against foreigners. With the arrest, torture, and assassination of Americans in the post-9/11 era, it’s finally starting to dawn on many Americans that they stand in no different position, in principle, from the citizenry in those U.S.-supported dictatorships in Latin America and the Middle East.

Link:
http://www.fff.org/blog/index.asp

"Mothers who believed that their children were born perfectly normal have complained that after an inoculation, their children became autistic."

2012-02-19T17:32:00.000-05:00

Vaccines and Your Child's Brain

Written by Sam Blumenfeld

These days, if you want to enroll your child in a public kindergarten, you have to give proof that your child has had all of his inoculations. If not, your child will not be accepted. Which, I believe, is a good reason not to put your child in a public school. But if you comply with the school’s requirements, then don’t complain when your child becomes “learning disabled,” “functionally illiterate,” or acquires Attention Deficit Disorder.

There has been a great deal of controversy over the early inoculations of infants that are given before we can possibly know what the child is allergic to. Many parents ascribe the recent soaring increase in autism as the result of these inoculations. The medical establishment is sure that these vaccines do not cause autism. In fact, many doctors will no longer serve parents who refuse these inoculations. How can they be so sure? We don’t know.

An infant’s brain at this early stage of development is extremely vulnerable to disruptive influences. For example, according to Dr. Richard Restak, author of The Secret Life of the Brain, “Most congenital (present at birth) brain defects result from disruptions of the normal progress of neural growth, development, and migration.... Deprive the baby’s brain of light and sound and human contact, and it will remain stunted.”

Mothers who believed that their children were born perfectly normal have complained that after an inoculation, their children became autistic. Indeed, David Kirby, author of the 2005 book Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic, writing in the Huffington Post, Feb. 11, 2011, made these interesting observations:

I have been speaking to young parents in my neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn lately about vaccines and autism.... These are highly educated, affluent and politically progressive people — doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, writers and other successful professionals. And like half of the American population in one poll, many of my neighbors (though certainly not all) say that there is, or may be, an association between autism and the current U.S. vaccine schedule. In one recent presentation of data, for example, mothers with masters degrees were significantly more likely to forego the Hepatitis B vaccine birth dose than mothers with an 8th grade education.

Some of these parents actually keep up with the science, including a new review of autism studies in the Journal of Immunotoxicology which concludes: "Documented causes of autism include genetic mutations and/or deletions, viral infections, and encephalitis following vaccination."

It's a fact that many children with ASD [autism spectrum disorder] regressed following normal development just as they were receiving multiple vaccines at regular doctor visits. Health officials say the timing is entirely coincidental.

Regression usually occurs between 12 and 24 months, though one study found that some children show signs of autism as early as six months, but never before that age. By six months of age, most U.S. children have received about 18 inoculations containing 24 vaccines against nine diseases. Over the next two years or so, they will receive another nine shots containing 14 vaccines against 12 diseases.

So whether a child regresses at six months, or 18 months, the tragedy happens during a period of intensive vaccination. In many cases, parents report that the child had an abnormal reaction after being vaccinated (seizures, spiking-fevers, diarrhea, lethargy, high-pitched screaming and/or other symptoms).

These parents, and grandparents, naturally share their stories with brothers, sisters, friends, coworkers and the media, and before long half the population is questioning authorities who insist that there is zero chance of any association whatsoever.

So what is the truth? The simple truth is that, as Kirby says, most children by six months of age have received about 18 inoculations containing 24 vaccines against nine diseases, and over the next two years they will receive another nine shots containing 14 vaccines against 12 diseases. You would have to be quite dense not to suspect that some children might be negatively impacted by some of these vaccines, which may even cause serious brain damage in some kids.

And that is why I am much more likely to believe the parents than the “health officials.” After all, it’s been proven that the whole-word method of teaching reading can cause dyslexia, and yet the educators keep on doing it. In other words, the health officials are not as concerned about your child’s well-being as you are, and they are not about to find out the truth about autism and vaccines. And that is why parents have to use their own judgment in deciding what is best for their children

Kirby also points out that Somali parents in Minneapolis believe that vaccines have caused the high incidence of autism among their children, about 1 in 28. These Somali refugees came here to escape the horrors of their own country only to find that in America health officials can make your children autistic and public educators can make them dyslexic.

And now there is a new report by Dr. Russell Blaylock of Newsmax Health, who claims that aluminum, which has been added to vaccines for about 90 years, is detrimental to the healthy growth of a child’s brain. He states: “Compelling research has demonstrated that aluminum is an accumulative neurotoxin, even in small concentrations. It has a tendency to concentrate in the hippocampus, an area of the brain vital to crucial functions including learning, memory, and behavior.... Of the 36 vaccines children get, 18 of them contain aluminum.”

Common vaccines that contain aluminum include:

• DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis) — 625 mcg;

• Hepatitis B — 375 mcg;

• Hepatitis A — 250 mcg;

• Hib (haemophilus influenza type B) — 225 mcg;

• PVC (pneumococcoal conjugate vaccine) — 125 mcg; and

• HPV— Gardasil — 225 mcg in each of the three required doses,

So what is a parent to do? There is now more than enough evidence that these heavy doses of vaccines may not be all that healthful. After all, every human being is born with an immune system, which may be heavily taxed in infants by huge doses of vaccines. What kind of foreign matter is in the 38 vaccines injected into the child? Is all of it benign? What is better, a vaccine, like a shot in the dark that may cause lifelong injury to your child’s brain, or getting whooping cough or the measles?

Those of us who grew up before all of these vaccines were available inevitably got the measles, chicken pox, or mumps. We got over them, and our brains were intact. We salute the medical profession and pharmaceutical companies for supplying us with all of these wonder drugs. But some of them have been proven to be harmful, like Thalidomide. That may be the price of progress, but it ought not to be paid by your child.

Then there is the problem with mercury used in vaccines. According to an article by Dawn Prate, posted on Sept. 22, 2005 on Natural News website:

Thimerosal is the preservative of choice for vaccine manufacturers. First introduced by Eli Lilly and Company in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the company began selling it as a preservative in vaccines in the 1940s. Thimerosal contains 49.6 percent mercury by weight and is metabolized or degraded into ethylmercury and thiosalicylate. Mercury, or more precisely, ethylmercury, is the principle agent that kills contaminants. Unfortunately, mercury also kills much more than that.

Studies indicate that mercury tends to accumulate in the brains of primates and other animals after they are injected with vaccines. Mercury poisoning has been linked to cardiovascular disease, autism, seizures, mental retardation, hyperactivity, dyslexia and many other nervous system conditions. That's why the FDA rigorously limits exposure to mercury in foods and drugs.
Some common sources of mercury include dental amalgam fillings, various vaccines and certain fish contaminated by polluted ocean waters.

A friend of mine had to have all his dental fillings removed because of the mercury that was causing him endless migraine headaches. Since the toxicity of mercury has been long recognized, is it not possible that many of the children who were vaccinated when mercury was still in use became autistic? However, studies show that autism is still on the rise despite the fact that mercury has been largely removed from the vaccines. An article in the website Science Based Medicine reported on January 7, 2008:

The scientific data, taken in totality, do not support a link between mercury in vaccines and autism. Today yet another important study by Robert Schechter and Judith Grether was released published in the Archives of General Psychiatry entitled Continuing Increases in Autism Reported to California’s Developmental Services System: Mercury in Retrograde that utterly failed to support the hypothesis that mercury in vaccines is an etiological factor in autism. It is yet another nail in the coffin of the medical myth that mercury in vaccines causes autism.

Well, who is right? If autism is still increasing despite the removal of mercury from the vaccines, there ought to be an easy way to find out if something in the vaccines is responsible for the increase in that dreaded condition. Do any of the children of parents who have rejected the inoculations become autistic? And how many children who’ve been inoculated become autistic? That ought to be easy enough to find out.

Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/opinion/sam-blumenfeld/10914-vaccines-and-your-childs-brain

Voting in Maine: Maintaining the illusion of democracy...

2012-02-19T17:26:00.000-05:00

Maine Caucuses Finish Closer Than Expected, Strange Recount

Written by Thomas R. Eddlem

Washington County, Maine — Texas Congressman Ron Paul won strong victories in rural Maine caucuses February 18, but the Saturday caucuses do not quite appear to have lifted Paul to victory statewide over his chief rival, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. But there are new questions about some of the vote tallies in the updated Maine GOP count, especially where the results for the Portland caucus were reversed in favor of Romney.

The official tally for Washington County — a rural Maine county that had postponed its scheduled February 11 caucuses because of snow — showed 163 votes for Paul, 80 for Romney, 57 for Santorum, and three for Gingrich. Neither Gingrich nor Santorum had an official campaign presence at the caucuses in Maine.

The two-to-one Paul victory over Romney in Washington County alone won't put Paul over the top statewide, however. According to the Paul campaign, the Texas congressman and obstetrician also picked up 39 votes in caucuses in neighboring Hancock County and a handful of other area caucuses February 18. A number of other towns were caucusing February 18 as well, but by the Paul campaign's count at 5:00 p.m. they were still 84 votes short after counting Hancock and Washington Counties. The Bangor Daily News put Romney's margin of victory at 117 votes.

Paul campaign state chairman Paul B. Madore told The New American it was "unlikely" the Paul campaign would come out of the non-binding presidential preference poll with the most votes if current GOP numbers stand. The Republican Party declared Romney the winner after the February 11 caucuses by less than 200 votes, even though Washington, much of Hancock County, and a dozen or so other towns across the state had yet to caucus. Moreover, Maine GOP Chairman Charlie Webster ran into angry Paul campaign officials after they had found out that several towns that had voted in favor of Paul, such as Belfast, did not have their results published on the official party list. Webster vowed not to update the list, but bowed to a barrage of criticism from party leaders across the state and released updated numbers February 17. The revised results released by the Maine GOP before Saturday's caucuses showed a larger 229-vote margin of victory for Romney.

When The New American asked Madore about the revision in the Portland caucus numbers, Madore became upset. "This really disturbs me, when I see numbers like this," he said. In Portland, the state GOP reported February 11 that Paul had won the caucus by a vote of 106 to 91. But in the February 17 revision, Romney had won the state's largest city, by an identical 106 to 91 vote. Moreover, the revised numbers appear not to have taken any votes away from Romney in any town, except for a single vote from Hancock's Verona Island. (In the same county, Romney lost five votes in Bar Harbor, but it's possible that in the February 17 revision those "lost" votes were moved to nearby Trenton, where Romney gained five votes.) Paul, on the other hand, not only lost 15 votes in Portland, he also lost every single one of the 20 votes he had garnered in York County's Limington according to the results the state GOP initially reported on February 11.

The mood at the Washington County caucus Saturday was symbolized by the lapel sticker "You WILL count me" that members of all the campaigns were wearing. The stickers were a clear reaction to Webster's claim a week earlier that he would not update the results. "They're hurting themselves if they don't have Washington County counted," Madore told The New American.

Both the Paul and Romney campaigns touted the turnout in Washington County, which was a significant increase over the 2008 numbers. "The story is the record number of people here," Romney staffer Greg Gallivan told The New American. "There's a good turnout, a strong turnout," Madore agreed. "That's a job well done."

Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/10921-maine-caucuses-finish-closer-than-expected-strange-recount

Magazine cover of the day...

2012-02-19T11:39:00.000-05:00