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Ron Paul
Infowars.com
December 28, 2010
Social Security does not represent an old age pension, an “insurance” program, or even a
forced savings program.
Perhaps the biggest media story of 2010 was the influence of Tea Party voters on the
congressional landscape. The new congress comes to Capitol Hill with a mandate to
end profligate spending and restore fiscal san
ity, we are told. But when the House and Senate convene in January, the newly elected
members will face tremendous pressure to maintain spending levels for entitlement
programs. Even the most modest proposals to trim Social Security or Medicare spending
will be met with howls of indignation and threats of voter revolt. Legislators who propose
any kind of means testing or increased retirement ages can expect angry visits from senior
citizen lobbyists ready to fund a candidate back home who supports the status quo.
But millions of Americans now realize that the status quo is an illusion that will not last even another 10 or 20 years. The federal government cannot continue to spend a trillion dollars more than it collects in revenue each year, because we are running out of creditors. Fiscal reality is setting in, and the consequences may be grim even if Congress finds the courage to take decisive action now.
Courage begins with a commitment to see things as they are, rather than how we wish they were. When it comes to Social Security, we must understand that the system does not represent an old age pension, an “insurance” program, or even a forced savings program. It simply represents an enormous transfer payment, with younger workers paying taxes to fund benefits. There is no Social Security trust fund, and you don’t have an “account.” Whether you win or lose the Social Security lottery is a function of when you happened to be born and how long you live to collect benefits. Of course young people today have every reason to believe they will never collect those benefits.
Notice that neither political party proposes letting people opt out of Social Security, which exposes the lie that your contributions are set aside and saved. After all, if your contributions really are put aside for your retirement, the money is there earning interest, right? If your money is in your “account,” what difference would it make if your neighbor chooses not to participate in the program? The truth, of course, is that your contributions are not put aside. Social Security is simply a tax. Like all taxes, the money collected is spent immediately as general revenue to fund the federal government. But no administration will admit that Social Security is nothing more than an accounting ledger with no money. You will collect benefits only if future tax revenues materialize as hoped; the money you paid into the system is long gone.
My hope is that at least some members of the new Congress will cut through the distortions and see Social Security as it really is. The best way to fix the impending Social Security crisis is also the simplest: allow younger individuals to opt out of the program and use their tax savings to invest privately as they see fit. This is the true private solution. Your money has never been safe in the government’s hands, and it never will be.
Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com
December 28, 2010
“Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.”
Lewis H. Lapham
The year 2011 will bring Americans a larger and more intrusive police state, more unemployment
and home foreclosures, no economic recovery, more disregard by the US government of US law,
international law, the Constitution, and truth, more suspicion and distrust from allies, more
hostility from the rest of the world, and new heights of media sycophancy.
2011 is shaping up as the terminal year for American democracy. The Republican Party has
degenerated into a party of Brownshirts, and voter frustrations with the worsening economic
crisis and military occupations gone awry are likely to bring Republicans to power in 2012. With
them would come their doctrines of executive primacy over Congress, the judiciary, law, and the
Constitution and America’s rightful hegemony over the world.
If not already obvious, 2010 has made clear that the US government does not care a whit for the
opinions of citizens. The TSA is unequivocal that it will reach no accommodation with Americans
other than the violations of their persons that it imposes by its unaccountable power. As for public opposition to war, the Associated Press reported on December 16 that “Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the U.S. can’t let public opinion sway its commitment to Afghanistan.” Gates stated bluntly what has been known for some time: the idea is passé that government in a democracy serves the will of the people. If this quaint notion is still found in civics books, it will soon be edited out.
In Gag Rule, a masterful account of the suppression of dissent and the stifling of democracy, Lewis H. Lapham writes that candor is a necessary virtue if democracies are to survive their follies and crimes. But where in America today can candor be found? Certainly not in the councils of government. Attorney General John Ashcroft complained of candor-mongers to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Americans who insist on speaking their minds, Ashcroft declared, “scare people with phantoms of lost liberty,” “aid terrorists,” “diminish our resolve,” and “give ammunition to America’s enemies.”
As the Department of Justice (sic) sees it, when the ACLU defends habeas corpus it is defending the ability of terrorists to blow up Americans, and when the ACLU defends the First Amendment it is defending exposures of the lies and deceptions that are the necessary scaffolding for the government’s pretense that it is doing God’s will while Satan speaks through the voices of dissent.
Neither is candor a trait in which the American media finds comfort. The neoconservative press functions as propaganda ministry for hegemonic American empire, and the “liberal” New York Times serves the same master. It was the New York Times that gave credence to the Bush regime’s lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and it was the New York Times that guaranteed Bush’s re-election by spiking the story that Bush was committing felonies by spying on Americans without obtaining warrants. Conservatives rant about the “liberal media” as if it were a vast subversive force, but they owe their beloved wars and coverups of the Bush regimes’ crimes to the New York Times.
With truth the declared enemy of the fantasy world in which the government, media, and public reside, the nation has turned on whistleblowers. Bradley Manning, who allegedly provided the media with the video made by US troops of their wanton, fun-filled slaughter of newsmen and civilians, has been abused in solitary confinement for six months. Murdering civilians is a war crime, and as General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the National Press Club on February 17, 2006, “It is the absolute responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey an order that is either illegal or immoral” and to make such orders known. If Manning is the source of the leak, he has been wrongfully imprisoned for meeting his military responsibility. The media have yet to make the point that the person who reported the crime, not the persons who committed it, is the one who has been imprisoned, and without a trial.
The lawlessness of the US government, which has been creeping up on us for decades, broke into a full gallop in the years of the Bush/Cheney/Obama regimes. Today the government operates above the law, yet maintains that it is a democracy bringing the same to Muslims by force of arms, only briefly being sidetracked by sponsoring a military coup against democracy in Honduras and attempting to overthrow the democratic government in Venezuela.
As 2011 dawns, public discourse in America has the country primed for a fascist dictatorship. The situation will be worse by 2012. The most uncomfortable truth that emerges from the WikiLeaks saga is that American public discourse consists of cries for revenge against those who tell us truths. The vicious mendacity of the US government knows no restraint. Whether or not international law can save Julian Assange from the clutches of the Americans or death by a government black ops unit, both executive and legislative branches are working assiduously to establish the National Security State as the highest value and truth as its greatest enemy.
America’s future is the world of Winston Smith.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously the editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.
Activist Post
December 28, 2010
As the United States edges closer to becoming a third world country;
anger, frustration, and cynicism continue to mount in the minds of the
American population. In fact, a recent Pew Research poll showed
that 80% of baby boomers are pessimistic about America’s future.
This pessimism seems warranted as authentic political solutions
appear to be in short supply in our corporate state.
“Be the change you wish to see in the world” – Gandhi.
The democratic political system is now clearly run by crony cartelism.
The multinational banks have hijacked the economy and are openly
looting the public. Mounting and impossible-to-pay off debt is
crippling local governments. The entire spectrum of our rights
continues to degrade. Crimes that would land regular citizens in jail are now openly being committed by the elite and their organizations with no justice. And perhaps most telling, the power structure is establishing a control grid to eliminate due process for the Internet and beyond to stifle any dissent.
Given the current situation, it can seem impossible to affect real change. However, the exact opposite is the case. The only reason the system is maintained is because the majority still acquiesce to it. However, change won’t come by electing new establishment politicians, because no matter how noble they may be they still must play the corrupt game. Change won’t come through violent protests or offensive cyber hacktivism, as that only invites and justifies the creeping police state. We must stop accepting and supporting the system, individually, in order to change it.
Because our representative democracy has become a fraud, and the media and courts are clearly shills for the oligarchs, our only action appears to be non-violent rebellion; one person and community at a time. We can expose the crimes and immorality of the corporate state through civil disobedience and conscientious objection. We can punish multinational companies who commit flagrant fouls on humanity and the environment by boycotting them. Additionally, we can peacefully regain our liberty by becoming less dependent on the system for our basic needs.
Here are ten solutions through non-violent activism:
1. Buy Local Food: One of the most powerful cartels that has their tentacles into government is the food cartel. Their agenda has been to control the basic resources of food (corn, wheat, soy, rice). The best way to conquer this cartel is by eating local; produce your own food, join and contribute to local cooperatives, and engage your neighbors and community for more local food solutions. Local co-ops are also a great place to trade locally crafted goods and even services. Obviously, do your best to avoid GMO food and eat organically when you can. Finally, be vocal and active in your opposition to GMO foods and the cartel control of the FDA.
2. Become More Self-Sufficient: Our modern society has made us dependent on something or someone other than ourselves for most necessities such as electricity, food, water, medicine, security, and education. This dependence puts us at the direction or disposal of the cartel state. Therefore, the only entity that has the power to grant us liberty is ourselves; and we can take back our independence through self-sufficiency. Being self-sufficient means learning skills that will help you and your family survive economic downturns or other emergencies. These skills may also help you to be less dependent on your job as they’ll make you a useful independent producer. Lead your neighborhood and community toward production and away from dependence.
3. Get Healthier: The increasing pace of life seems to offer a wealth of distractions from the importance of living a truly healthy and free life. Our modern world offers easy choices like fast-food in place of fresh produce; TV in place of reading, exercise, or meditation; Internet social networks in place of meaningful personal relationships, etc. Identify the areas lacking in your own life and resolve to make the necessary changes that will increase your physical fitness, mental acuity, and your spiritual evolution. These three areas are what truly sustain us in both good times and bad — not smart phones, computer games, and the virtual world.
4. Buy Silver and Gold: America desperately needs a monetary revolution before the dollar experiment completely collapses. Like all revolutions this must start from a groundswell of rebellious action. A good place to start is to convert your devaluing dollars to physical gold and silver. This will punish the banks, especially JP Morgan and the Federal Reserve, as well as protect your assets. Furthermore, if the dollar continues to collapse, silver and gold may well become a viable currency in society once again, as it already is in some parts of Michigan. Buying junk silver is something anyone can afford to do and is highly recommended.
5. Expose the Agenda: The “agenda” is one of consolidation of wealth, power, and control in every facet imaginable. The international elite are approaching near one-world control, which they call full spectrum dominance of economies and societies. In other words; national, local, and individual sovereignty is all but gone. It is extremely important to engage your local community, especially community leaders and police, to reiterate their obligation to serve the local community under the Constitution, and not to follow illegal Federal demands. Above all, do not give in to the temptation of apathy as you begin to learn more about the systems of control. These systems first count on your ignorance, then they count on laziness. Finally, say what you stand for such as peace, liberty, and genuine justice with even more force than shouting about what you oppose.
6. Boycott: In the U.S. it has become obvious that a system has taken hold which is economically designed for one thing: consumption. This is the value that each person has been given from birth. So, one key way to assert your power and value in such a system is to vote with your wallet. Every purchase you make either contributes to, or boycotts this corporatist structure. Become aware of who the real owners are and what inhumane practices are behind the products you purchase, so that you can make intelligent choices that support your health and promote justice. Additionally, it is important to learn the true contents of the products you buy, so that you don’t fall prey to slick advertising and corporate misdirection. Join or create campaigns to educate shoppers and force better labeling of products so it is easier for others to consciously boycott them.
7. Local Politics: Forget wasting any of your energy and resources on Federal politics — they have sold out long ago to the higher authorities that fund their multi-million dollar campaigns. Instead, get involved in small town politics and community initiatives. The future will be built from the ground up, starting right in your own neighborhood. Local politics is where you can affect tangible changes. Everything from removing chemicals from public water, to throwing the TSA out of your local airport, or refusing military recruitment or fusion centers in protest of the war on terror, can be accomplished at the local level. Each minor victory will send shock waves to other small communities and the country as a whole, so be sure to document the steps you have taken to achieve victory, then share your story for others to emulate.
8. Military refusal: Do not contribute to fraudulent wars, and do not succumb to the pressure of feeling “unpatriotic.” There are countless groups of veterans who have seen through the government lies that have led to unnecessary deaths, as well as the financial destruction of the country. There is, in fact, no more patriotic action that can be taken than to demand that our military be used properly to strengthen the country, rather than to weaken it. For some, there is absolutely no excuse for war, ever, and merely the act of showing up contributes to this affliction. It is a profound resolution of courage to live by your convictions. So, if opposing the fraudulent wars is your main issue, file as a conscientious objector and contribute to peace instead of war. As Gandhi said, “There is no path to peace; peace is the path.”
9. Don’t Use Banks: The banks have proven to be some of the most immoral, dare we say “evil,” institutions on the planet. Besides their Ponzi-style Wall Street casino and mortgage/foreclosure fraud, they also profit heavily from wars, Mexican drug gangs, and fleecing the public. Some are finding their actions so horrific that they’d prefer to default on their debts rather than give them another dime. That may be extreme given the consequences; however, we can at least vow not to take on any new bank financing of any kind — mortgages, credit cards, or car loans, etc. Where possible, bank with local credit unions instead of the big banks that make up the cartel. Another powerful action is to start or support a regional competing currency. On the Federal level, we can tell our Congress reps to support Ron Paul’s effort to legalize competing currencies nationwide.
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10. Tax Resistance: Becoming a tax resister is a hardcore action of civil disobedience that comes with serious consequences — unless of course you’re Tim Geithner who gets to say “oops, my bad” in order to qualify as the head of collecting said taxes. However, when the electoral process and two-party system proves to be a farce, corporations clearly win on every issue, and the will of the people is no longer represented in the media or the courts, people are left with little choice but non-violent rebellion in all its forms. Tax rebellion is often cited by conscientious objectors who oppose how the government uses taxpayer dollars to fund immoral deeds such as war, authorizing torture, building the police state, and fraudulent bank bailouts. A second group of tax protesters refuse to file because they don’t believe income taxes to be lawful under the Constitution.
Get Off Your F--ing Butt
Get Off You F--ing
Butt
The Economic Collapse
December 28, 2010
Either we have a massive crime problem or the “control grid” that
our leaders have erected for us is wildly out of control.
Doesn’t it seem like almost everything is becoming a crime in
America now? Americans are being arrested and charged with
crimes for doing things like leaving dog poop on the ground,
opening up Christmas presents early, not recycling properly,
farting in class and having brown lawns. But is it healthy for
our society for the police to be involved in such silly things?
Every single day the United States inches closer to becoming
a totalitarian society. While there are some that would welcome
this shift, the truth is that throughout history the societies that
have experienced the greatest economic prosperity have all
had at least a certain level of freedom. Business thrives when people feel free to live and work. When a government tightens the grip too much many people just start shutting down. Just look at places like North Korea. Even though the rest of the world is sending them huge amounts of food starvation is still quite common in that totalitarian regime. That is why it is so disturbing that it seems like almost everything has become a crime in America now. As we continue to criminalize relatively normal behavior our slide toward becoming a totalitarian state will only accelerate.
We are throwing anyone and everyone in prison these days. It is getting absolutely ridiculous. Today, the United States leads the world in the number of prisoners and in the percentage of the population in prison. The United States has 5% of the world’s population, but approximately 25% of the world’s incarcerated population.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, as of the end of 2009 a total of 7,225,800 people were either on probation, in prison or on parole in America.
That is a sign of a very, very sick society. Either we have a massive crime problem or the “control grid” that our leaders have erected for us is wildly out of control. Or both.
But how in the world are we supposed to have a healthy economy if our entire nation is being turned into one gigantic prison?
Sadly, it is not just hardcore criminals that are being rounded up and abused by authorities these days. The following are 14 of the most ridiculous things that Americans are being arrested for….
Why in the world would anyone approve of the police arresting ordinary Americans for such things?
It seems like ever since 9/11 the whole country has gotten “security fever”.
Suddenly we need to “get tough” on everyone.
Yes, crime is making a comeback, but once upon a time the police in this country were able to handle crime quite well and be courteous and helpful to ordinary citizens at the same time.
But today it seems like nearly every single encounter with police ends up being negative.
It does not have to be that way.
The rest of the world sees what is going on in this country and many of them are deciding that they simply do not want to spend their tourist dollars here anymore. That is not a good thing for our economy.
As the government continues to get even bigger and exerts even more control over our lives, many of our own people are getting sick of it and are moving abroad.
America used to be the land of the free and the home of the brave.
That is no longer true.
Now we get thrown to the floor, handcuffed, beaten and arrested for things that we did not even know were crimes.
If America continues to move in this direction it is going to ruin our economy, our reputation in the world and our national spirit.
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Unfortunately, history has shown us that once a free nation starts to lose that freedom it is hard to reverse that slide. Perhaps we will be different. Perhaps the American people will stand up and demand that we restore the principles of liberty and freedom that this country was founded on.
What a great year for Wall Street: profits up, bonuses up and,
best of all, criticism down. Somehow Wall Street has much of
America believing its lies and rationalizations.
December 29, 2010 |
What a great year for Wall Street: profits up, bonuses up and,
best of all, criticism down, especially from Washington.
Somehow Wall Street has much of America believing its lies
and rationalizations. We're even beginning to forget that Wall
Street is largely responsible for the economic mess we're in.
So before we're completely overtaken by financial Alzheimer's,
let's revisit Wall Street's greatest fabrications for 2010.
(For the full story, please see The Looting of America.)
1."Honest, we didn't do it!"
Two years ago Wall Street's colossal greed crashed our
economy. Our financial elites created and spewed highly leveraged toxic assets around the globe. These poisonous "innovations" pumped up the housing bubble and Wall Street grew insanely rich in the process. When it all burst, we learned that the big Wall Street institutions that had caused the crash were far too big to fail -- and too connected. High government officials came to their rescue with trillions in cash and guarantees -- underwritten, of course, by we taxpayers. Everyone knew this at the time. But if you asked just about anyone on "The Street" they denied all culpability and pointed the finger everywhere else: Fannie, Freddie, the Fed, the Community Reinvestment Act, tax deductions for home buying, bad regulations, not enough regulations, too many regulations, too much consumer debt, the rating agencies, the Chinese -- and on and on. Sadly, their blame-shifting strategy worked, bamboozling the media and people across the political spectrum. The GOP members of the Financial Crisis Commission are so drunk with this Kool-Aid that in their minority report, they refuse even to use the words "Wall Street" or "speculation" in assessing the causes of the crash. Hypocrites? Crooks? Morons? Take your pick.
2."The overall costs will be incredibly small in comparison to almost any experience we can look at in the United States or around the world."
Ever since Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner screwed up his tax returns we knew he was numerically challenged. But his statement to Congress on December 16, 2010, on the cost of the bailout shows a willful inability to count. Yes, Wall Street has paid back most of our bailout funds. Whoopee! Our economy is in shambles, and millions of people are suffering. With his offensive "no big deal" analysis, Geithner glosses over all this human misery, and sidesteps the hidden costs of the bailout, including the financial insurance we taxpayers provided to every giant financial company in the country via the Fed. On the open market, that insurance -- which guarantees trillions of dollars in toxic assets -- would come at a very steep price. We coughed it up for free. But that's still chump change compared to the human costs of the worst employment crisis since the Great Depression -- the lost income, the depleted savings, the ravaged neighborhoods. Then there's the capsized state and local budgets, the public service reductions, the laid off teachers, firefighters and police officers -- all resulting from a plunge in public revenues caused by Wall Street's crash. Why aren't these costs on Geithner's balance sheet? A cynic might think Tim was priming us to accept the latest round of Wall Street bonuses. Hey -- they paid us back, so why should we care how much they earn?
3. "It's a war. It's like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939."
Steven Schwarzman is supposed to be brilliant. After all, he made billions as head of the Blackstone Group, a private equity company and hedge fund. But last August, as some members of Congress mulled about eliminating a very lucrative tax loophole, he suffered a mental meltdown and saw an impending Nazi invasion. But the awful attack never happened. Schwartzman and his fellow hedge fund honchos all held onto their unbelievable tax break: Hedge fund and private equity income is still only taxed at 15 percent rather than at the top income tax rate of 35 percent. (That's because, inexplicably, it's considered "capital gains," not income.) Taxing Schwartzman's income as income would cost him hundreds of millions of dollars -- and the prospect of this apparently triggered a shock spasm that catapulted his foot into his mouth. I'm sure my IQ isn't high enough to keep up with the genius logic behind Steve's analogy. But just who is Hitler and who is Poland in his scenario? Maybe in his grandiose conceit, his firm is as big as Poland? Or it would require a Blitzkrieg to wipe out his tax loophole? In reality, even if Schwarzman had to pay a 90 percent tax rate (as he would have under Eisenhower), it would hardly have been a hardship -- let alone World War 3. He'd still have more money than he could ever spend in his lifetime. Schwarzman should be proud though: He gets 2010's Dumbest Wall Street Quote of the Year Award. Bravo! (In 2009 the honor went to Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, who claimed he was "doing God's work."
4. "The hard truth is that getting this deficit under control is going to require some broad sacrifice, and that sacrifice must be shared by employees of the federal government."
But not by Wall Street. President Obama words of November 29th came only days before he "compromised" with the Republicans to continue the Bush tax cuts for the super-rich and to bestow an enormous estate tax gift to the 6,600 richest families in America. Mr. President, the "hard truth" is that you're slapping around public sector workers because you don't have the nerve to take on Wall Street. If you had the guts, you could raise real money by going to war with Steven Schwartzman and eliminating the hedge fund tax loophole. By the way, closing that loophole for just the top 25 hedge fund managers would raise twice the revenue than you'll get by freezing the wages of all two million federal workers! (See "The Wall Street Tax Debate that Never Was" )
5. "25 hedge fund managers are worth 658,000 teachers."
Nearly everyone on Wall Street sincerely believes that they are "worth" the enormous sums they "earn." You see, their pay is determined by the market, and markets don't lie. They reflect the high value our skilled elites bring to the economy. So we shouldn't be shocked that the top 25 hedge fund managers together "earn" $25 billion a year, even at a moment when more than 29 million Americans can't find full-time work. The outrageous economic logic of Wall Street compensation has those 25 moguls taking home as much as 658,000 entry level teachers (they earn about $38,000 per year). How can that be justified? It can't. These obscene "earnings" are the product of 30 years of financial deregulation, as well as the tax cuts and tax loopholes that our government has just extended. The hedge fund honchos get most of their money by siphoning off wealth from the rest of us, not by creating new value. I dare Wall Street to prove otherwise.
6. "To bolster the economy we need .... an improvement in the relationship between business and government (the current antagonism, even if not the primary explanation for slow hiring and sluggish investment, does seem to be affecting hiring and other business behavior)."
In this op-ed, Peter Orszag, Obama's former budget director, parrots the Wall Street line that employers aren't hiring because of "regulatory uncertainty." Mother of God, how much more certainty do they want? The Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats aren't about to let Obama seriously regulate Wall Street, even if he wanted to, which he doesn't. The truth is that employers aren't hiring because there's insufficient consumer demand for goods and services. But at least Peter Orszag is a man of his word. He personally plans to "improve the relationship between business and government" by tapping his government contacts at his new fat job at Citigroup, the nearly failed mega-bank that he helped to save at taxpayer expense. Orszag could have landed a coveted professorship at just about any university in the world. But apparently the 42-year-old wiz kid prefers Citigroup's multi-million dollar compensation package. Any bets on how long it takes for Larry Summers to cash in?
7. "Lengthened availability of jobless benefits has raised the unemployment rate by 1.5 percentage points."
You see, the unemployed cause their own unemployment, at least if you believe this assessment from a March 17th research note from JP Morgan Chase. (Next, Wall Street will call for a return of the Poor Houses.) The theory is simple -- you give people money not to work and they won't look for jobs. Still, it takes chutzpah for JP Morgan Chase, the beneficiary of billions of dollars in taxpayer largess, to criticize the unemployed for not finding jobs that aren't there, precisely because JP Morgan Chase helped to destroy them! Dear JP Morgan research staff: Five to six workers are now competing for every available job. If that's too complicated for you quants to grasp, maybe you should try a game of musical chairs in the trading room.
8. "Private employers, led by our revitalized financial sector, will create the jobs we need -- that is, if the government would just stay out of the way."
We now need 22 million new jobs to get us back to full employment (5 percent unemployment). In addition, each month the economy must generate another 105,000 jobs just to keep up with new entrants into the workforce. To get to full employment, the private sector would have to create about 630 firms the size of Apple (35,000 employees each). These numbers don't lie. Does anyone on Wall Street really believe that the private sector alone can pull off this miracle? But really, why should they care? They've got theirs, thank you very much. The painful truth that both Wall Street and Washington refuse to face is that if the big, bad government doesn't fund or create millions of new jobs, we'll face crippling unemployment for decades to come.
9. "Tim Geithner extolled 'the benefits of financial innovation' to the American economy." (Wall Street Journal, August 4, 2010)
Sorry to beat up on Tim again, but it's sometimes hard to tell who he's working for. Whenever you hear the phrase "financial innovation" put your hand on your wallet. That's the phrase Wall Street uses to justify its casinos and its outlandish profits and bonuses. People who talk about "financial innovation" are either getting big bucks on Wall Street, want more bucks on Wall Street, or hope to get a job on Wall Street the nano-second their public service ends. My question for Tim is: If Apple creates iPhones, what does Wall Street create? Warren Buffett says it creates "financial weapons of mass destruction." Paul Volcker, Reagan's Fed Chair, said there is not a "shred of evidence" that "financial innovation" is beneficial. Volcker also believes that the economy "was quite good in the 1980s without credit-default swaps and without securitization and without CDOs." Volcker gets the Smartest Wall Street Quote of the Year Award: "The most important financial innovation I've seen in the last 25 years is the automatic teller machine." How could Tim get it so wrong?
10. "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here." Okay, okay, Claude Raines said that in Casablanca, not on Wall Street. But Wall Street and its defenders say exactly the same thing about their opaque derivatives games. Louise Story's excellent piece in The New York Times shows how a handful of banks have cornered the market clearinghouses for derivatives - entities that are supposed to make derivatives less risky. The big banks are limiting competition, according to Story, because they "want to preserve their profit margins, and they are the ones who helped write the membership rules." Meanwhile, Wall Street is quietly pushing to exempt its most profitable derivatives from even these rigged exchanges. So don't be "shocked, shocked" when Wall Street crashes again and we're asked to foot the bill. And that's when, not if.
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
December 31, 2010
Now that Republicans have a majority in Congress, they are pretending to be constitutionalists. In order to demonstrate this, they will theatrically read aloud the Constitution from the floor of the House next week. “And then they will require that every new bill contain a statement by the lawmaker who wrote it citing the constitutional authority to enact the proposed legislation,” the Washington Post reports.
Establishment Republicans, of course, have the same amount of contempt for the Constitution as establishment Democrats. As dedicated worshippers of state power over the individual, Republicans and their ideological twins the Democrats hate the founding principles of this country.
“Conservatives regard civil liberties as coddling devices for criminals and terrorists. They see the First Amendment as a foolish protection for sedition,” writes Paul Craig Roberts. “The conservative assault on the US Constitution is deeply entrenched… Today’s conservatives are so poorly informed that they cannot understand that to lose the Constitution is to lose the country.”
While so-called conservatives pay lip-service to the Constitution, so-called progressives actively trash it and cosign the founding document to irrelevance, as the above video demonstrates.
In the video, a blogger and columnist for the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post, says the Constitution has “no binding power on anything” and is confusing – for liberals and other advocates of state power over the individual – because it is over a hundred years old.
Nancy Pelosi and the formerly ruling Democrats also believe the Constitution is irrelevant. “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?” a reporter for CNN asked Speaker Pelosi as Democrats prepared to shove Obamacare down the throats of the American people. Pelosi responded: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
In August, Illinois Democrat Phil Hare told his constituents that he does not give a whit about the Constitution. “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this to be honest,” Hare said in response to a question about the constitutionality of Obamacare.
Hare also demonstrated his contemptible ignorance by saying that the Constitution guarantees each of us “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” In fact, that line is in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.
“We’ve now arrived at the point where a sitting Congressman can openly state that he doesn’t care what the Constitution says, a sentiment obviously held by a majority of Members since Congress continues to putatively enact ‘laws’ in the utter absence of express constitutional text,” Paul Galvin wrote after Hare made his harebrained comments for the camera.
For the establishment political class, the Constitution is completely irrelevant. Consider the following video where Republican Frank LoBiondo cannot answer a simple question about the document he has sworn to uphold from enemies foreign and domestic:
Even the soon to be leader of the House, John Boehner, is largely clueless about the Constitution. In the following video, he mistakenly attributes a line from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution:
Barry Obama did the same, but then he was reading from a teleprompter:
“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” his predecessor reportedly declared. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”
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Mr. Klein’s dismissive remark about the Constitution is shared by a large number of politicos and other worshippers of state power in the district of criminals. If the establishment political class is going to successfully strip us of our natural and god-given rights, they have to promulgate the idea that the Constitution is irrelevant and nothing more than a quaint piece of goddamn paper.
Saman Mohammadi
The Excavator
December 8, 2010
The United States government has repeatedly
stated that the treat from Al-Qaeda against America
is very real, and that all action is being taken to
eliminate that threat. Nobody in their right mind
would question such a serious assessment about a
sensitive national security matter from the world’s
leading democracy. But the truth is that over the
past fifty years America’s democratic institutions
like the press have been weakened, and an elitist
National Security State has risen, and taken control
over all aspects of government.
Since World War II U.S. leaders have consistently
lied to the American people about foreign threats
in order to feed the military machine’s appetite for
war. All of these wars are unjust and unwarranted
but that does not stop the self-interested criminals
who control U.S. foreign policy. A recent example of a lie they told was their assertion that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. That episode revealed to many people the true nature of the American government. Simply put, it does not care about the truth, or the American people, or the members of the military. U.S. leaders like former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, to name but a few, tell lies at will. Dishonesty means nothing to them. They deceive the American people, the American military, and the world about their motives and methods – and they lie to themselves about their own powers and abilities.
Next to the hundreds of thousands of innocent people who were slaughtered by the American war machine in its numerous criminal wars, U.S. soldiers have suffered the most – way more than the rest of the population in America. It can’t be said enough that the U.S. government’s treatment of its soldiers is scandalous and shameful. It is so out of whack that in America today dogs are treated better than military vets. Some dogs are even treated to luxurious spas while military vets are denied the proper health care that they deserve. Instead, they’re left to rot, and commit suicide. And for what? To defend America? To defeat Al-Qaeda? Or to keep the war machine and its benefactors rich and powerful? As you will see by the end of this post, it is the latter.
I. Setting The Historical Scene: The United States Government And The American Mainstream Media Are Anti-Democracy, Anti-Freedom, Anti-Peace
“All governments lie.” said American journalist I. F. Stone. You can add to that great quote “and all newspapers lie, too.”
By joining forces together, the CIA and American newspapers sold two criminal wars to the people – a manufactured and destructive “War on Terror,” and the Iraq war. Most journalists were not consciously part of the propaganda campaign, they just bought the hype, but, without a doubt, a lot of journalists who work for the CIA knowingly injected false information into their columns and helped spread nationalist fever across America to boost public support for the wars.
Government spies posing as independent journalists is one of the CIA’s least kept secrets. Former CIA director William Colby famously said “The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” Carl Bernstein revealed the relationship between the CIA and the media in his 1977 Rolling Stone article “The CIA and the Media.” An excerpt:
“Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services — from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go-betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors-without-portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested it the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles, and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements America’s leading news organizations.”
The media’s relationship with the CIA began well before the Vietnam war, but it was after that disastrous war ended when the Pentagon and the CIA took their clandestine media operations to another level. They wanted to completely gut the free press in America, which contributed to the anti-war sentiment in the late 60s and early 70s. Government officials secretly established deep ties to journalists to make sure that the American people would be less informed about America’s foreign policy, and future conflicts, and hence, less combative against the government and less anti-war.
The Pentagon has been interested in information warfare for many decades, and the fruits of their studies are applied to the American people, and to foreign enemies. “PSYOP,” shorthand for “Psychological Operations,” is a propaganda and disinformation Pentagon program that is used in the foreign battlefield to break the will of enemy forces, and make the ensuing battle a little less bloody. It worked wonderfully in the Gulf war. Retired Col. Jim Noll said that PSYOPs was a life-saving military technique. From a 2001 article called “Persian Gulf War 10 years later: Winning the war by convincing the enemy to go home” by Al Zdon:
“The psychological warfare in the end saved many lives, on both sides. “I know many American lives were saved because so many Iraqis had deserted or chose not to fight when we arrived. Many of them were holding up our leaflets to surrender with.”
The leaflets were based on the intelligence the Psyops battalion had gained from prisoners. Some showed large bombers dropping their payloads. Others showed tank units how to surrender. Others showed Americans landing from the sea (a military ploy to divert Iraqi defenses. The U.S. never did land from the sea.) Others were printed on fake Iraqi money so the soldiers could conceal them in their wallets.”
Wired magazine reported in June that the Pentagon may change the name PSYOP to Military Information Support and/to Operations (MISO). I wrote an article about the proposed name change back in July called “MISO: Making Intelligence Sound Obscure.”
The threat by PSYOPS to democracy, and freedom in America cannot be overstated. It is a fact that the Pentagon and the CIA routinely use PSYOPS against the American people to make them support illegal and unnecessary wars. Indeed, it is not a stretch to say that today the United States is a PSYOPS state, not a democratic state.
It should concern all Americans, and all citizens around the world that the CIA and Pentagon are using psychological military techniques inside the United States against the American people. The CIA was created to keep tabs on foreign enemies, not the American people. Former Governor Jesse Ventura has confirmed that the CIA is working within America’s borders a number of times in his many television interviews. He says that a cadre of CIA officials questioned him shortly after he won the election in Minnesota as an independent candidate about how he won. Ventura guesses that the CIA questioned him because they were surprised that a political maverick like him succeeded and wanted to know his political strategy in order to prevent a similar candidate from advancing to such a high political position in the future.
Former President Harry Truman criticized the CIA for intervening in domestic affairs in a Washington Post op-ed in 1963: “For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the government…. I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations.”
Philip Agee, who served in the CIA from 1957 to 1968, left the Agency because it failed to uphold the beliefs and values of the American people. He remained a leading critic of CIA policies until his death on January 7, 2008. In his 1975 book “Inside the Company: CIA Diary,” Agee warned that the murderous methods used by the CIA and the American empire in foreign lands would be used against the American people. “The killings at Kent State and Jackson State,” he wrote, “show clearly enough that sooner or later our counter-insurgency methods would be applied at home.” The rise of FEMA, TSA, and the overall police state proves that Agee’s prediction was accurate. In fact, the threat of martial law is so severe that it can be declared by the White House in the very near future.
II. Flashback: The Threat From Iraq Was Not Real
Knowing the truth matters in a democracy because without the truth citizens can’t make informed decisions about government policies that impact their lives. It is not possible to consciously answer fundamental societal questions like “should we go to war?” without a firm grasp of all the facts at hand. When independent journalists fail to provide the simple and straightforward facts to the public, they become complicit in government murder and fraud, and deserve even more ridicule than dishonest government officials and government-owned journalists.
Had the truth emerged that Saddam Hussein was not in possession of weapons of mass destruction before America invaded Iraq in March of 2003, there would not have been any public support for the war. True, hundreds of thousands of people around the world protested the invasion of Iraq before it was launched, but many people didn’t because they believed the lie that Saddam was a dangerous threat and would use WMDs against America if he wasn’t taken out. Leaders in the Bush administration used the oldest trick in the book of war to get the people to support a war that was not in their interest: they created a justification. Basically, they lied.
Since a government’s justification for war, whether real or contrived, carries weight with a significant amount of people because they accept the word of authority over science and critical thinking, it is crucial to know, especially in societies based on the consent of the people, if a justification given by the government for war is true, or false. In the case of Iraq, as we now know, it was false.
It is a tragedy that the world did not learn the fact that Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction a lot sooner. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people died in Iraq who could have lived a long and fulfilling life, and the country itself was destroyed in a deliberate and systematic fashion. Dirk Adriaensens, a member of the Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal, which is a group that was part of the World Tribunal on Iraq, describes exactly how Iraq was demolished by the sick and murderous U.S. and U.K. governments in his article “Iraq: The Age of Darkness.”
Leaders in the Bush administration knew all along that Saddam did not have WMDs and was not a threat, but they wanted to go to war so bad that they made stuff up and presented it as the truth to the whole world. Ellen Knickmeyer, a former Washington Post bureau chief in Baghdad and Cairo, said this much and more in an article she wrote in October after WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of Iraq war logs. “Recent revelations by WikiLeaks,” Knickmeyer said, “show how top American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world.”
Some defenders of the Iraq war insist that it was noble and good because a tyrant was removed from power. This is a poisonous and dangerous half-truth. Indeed, it is true that Saddam was a vicious tyrant, and a godforsaken man, but his removal from power didn’t require a huge ground invasion and subsequent military occupation since he had no real support from his people and military. But that’s beside the point because removing tyrants from power is not an objective of U.S. foreign policy. And it should not be. Tyrants are always removed from below, never from above.
If American leaders truly cared about the rule of law and democracy in Iraq they would have presented their case to the United Nations that Saddam was a war criminal for gassing the Kurds, which would have been met with agreement, and from there a variety of peaceful and legal means would have been recommended by the international community to bring Saddam to justice. If he then resisted international arrest, there would be a legal justification for using force to capture him and bring him to trial. But that course was not taken by American leaders because justice was only on their lips, not on their minds. American leaders and the CIA, unfortunately, are destroyers – not defenders – of democracy and the rule of a law. The same is true for Israeli leaders and Mossad. They are counterfeiters and war criminals who deserve to be hanged, not defended and praised.
Noam Chomsky said on Democracy Now last week that the political leadership in both the United States and Israel share a “profound hatred for democracy.” This statement gets at the truth of the current political reality in Washington and Tel Aviv, but U.S. and Israeli don’t just hate democracy, they also hate the American people, humanity, truth, honor, peace, and all that is good and righteous in the world.
Just as Iraq was destroyed by design by U.S. leaders, America is being destroyed by design by U.S. leaders. The American people are coming to this realization reluctantly, but they’re coming to it at last. They are beginning to discover that their country is in ruins not by accident but from other causes, namely, that their top leaders are traitors who desire the destruction of America and the advancement of a new world order in which their illegally acquired power and wealth grows evermore.
Both Herodotus and Socrates said “The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.” Knowledge of the cause for war brings good into the world, ignorance of the causes of war brings evil into the world. Despite what we have been taught, war is not natural. Wars occur because it is profitable for ruling elites. Orwell relayed this truth to the people before the Second World War began, and when it ended, after millions of people died, historian Howard Zinn taught it to people for decades, up to the start of the Iraq war. In 2006 he wrote, “war itself is the enemy of the human race.”
To defeat war, humanity’s collective enemy, we must learn the truth for why there is war in our time. When asked why America is at war American leaders always point to the attacks on September 11, 2001, but the official account of what happened on that day is not true. New scientific evidence gathered by a collection of physicists, scientists, architects, and engineers, among them Steven E. Jones, Niels Harrit, and Richard Gage, proves unequivocally that the towers, including the rarely mentioned building 7, collapsed due to controlled demolition using explosives.
American leaders told one of the greatest lies in human history when they said that Al-Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. That lie spawned an immediate and criminal invasion of Afghanistan, and a much larger, and more consequential global war on terrorism that is still being waged in numerous countries more than nine years after the attacks. Former President George W. Bush also used the 9/11 lie to paint Saddam Hussein as a supporter of terrorism. In his State of the Union Address on January 28, 2003, Bush said: “Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaida.” This statement later was proven to be a complete lie. Saddam had no connections to Al-Qaeda.
President Barack Obama has frequently relied on the 9/11 lie to support his administration’s war in Afghanistan. After the Christmas Day airliner bombing attempt last December, which also remains a dubious event because the bomber was boarded onto the plane with help from an unmentioned person who is presumed to be an intelligence official, Obama said: “We are at war against al Qaeda, a far-reaching network of violence and hatred that attacked us on 9/11, that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people and that is plotting to strike us again. And we will do whatever it takes to defeat them.”
Obama was blatantly lying when he said that Al-Qaeda is a “far-reaching network of violence and hatred.” Once you research the origins of Al-Qaeda, which in Arabic simply means “the base,” you can’t help but view American leaders like Bush and Obama as devilish tricksters who are trying to pull the wool over our eyes.
III. 11 Reasons Why The Threat From Al-Qaeda is Not Real
Al-Qaeda is either one of these things, or it is a combination of them: a) a completely fake threat; the organization does not exist, b) an organization that exists in small numbers but was created by the CIA to serve a corrupt U.S. foreign policy, and remains a U.S. intelligence asset in the manufactured global war on terrorism, or c) a small organization that exists independently of the U.S. government but its strength and influence in the Middle East is exaggerated by radical policymakers and officials in Washington. Out of all three statements the first and second deserve the most serious attention because they are supported by the evidence listed below.
#1. Radical American cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki, who was ordered to be assassinated by President Obama, met with top military officials at the Pentagon months after the 9/11 attacks. Were Pentagon officials sincerely interested in reaching out to members of the Muslim community, or were they recruiting radical Muslim clerics to spread the message of radical Islam in order to validate and sustain the Bush administration’s war on terror? It is not outrageous or crazy to raise the question if the U.S. government aims to inflame radical Islam, even by funding and supporting undercover intelligence agents that front as terrorists, in order to make the American people perceive that they are in danger of violent Islamic extremism, and cause them to give up their liberties for permanent security.
An alarming piece of news that follows an undeniable pattern of government-induced terrorist activity is of an FBI informant, Craig Monteilh, who infiltrated a Mosque in California, and shouted violent rhetoric with the intention to entrap potential terrorists, and then sell it to the public that “Hey, the FBI arrested someone at a Mosque who wanted to blow a building up,” without mentioning the fact that the FBI agent was the one who got the ball rolling in the first place. In this case, however, the government’s plan to attract and create terrorists didn’t work. The Washington Post reported: “In the Irvine case, Monteilh’s mission as an informant backfired. Muslims were so alarmed by his talk of violent jihad that they obtained a restraining order against him.”
#2. CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed in June 2010 on ABC’s This Week that there are less than 100 Al-Qaeda members in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. “I think the estimate on the number of Al Qaeda,” said Panetta, “is actually relatively small. At most, we’re looking at 50 to 100, maybe less. It’s in that vicinity.” By contrast, there are more than 100,000 American soldiers and military contractors in the region. You can’t call it a fair fight. You can’t even say “it’s not a fair fight,” because, in reality, it is not a fight at all. It is not a fight. 50,000 Al-Qaeda members would make it a fight. It still wouldn’t be a fair fight, but it would be a fight.
#3. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), one of the world’s leading security think tanks, published a report this year which said that the threat of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban is exaggerated by Western policymakers. The report warned that the war in Afghanistan will become a “long, drawn-out disaster” if troops are not withdrawn. Nigel Inkster, a former deputy chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service who is a member of the think tank, also said that the threat from Al-Qaeda in Pakistan is minimal, and almost absent in Yemen, and Somalia.
Commenting on the report by the IISS, journalist and author Eric Margolis said:
“The IISS’s findings are a direct challenge to Obama, Britain’s new prime minister, David Cameron, and other US allies with troops in Afghanistan. This report undermines their rational used to sustain the increasingly unpopular conflict. It will certainly convince sceptics that the real reason for occupation of Afghanistan has to do with oil, excluding China from the region, and keeping watch on nuclear-armed Pakistan.”
#4. Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview to the Los Angeles Times’s Patt Morrison in October 2010 that Al-Qaeda doesn’t exist. “The organization that did 9/11 — that Al Qaeda — I don’t think really exists,” said Rice. The statement is shocking, to say the least, and contradicts the official 9/11 story which is built on the premise that Al-Qaeda, regarded as an Islamic terrorist group by the United States, England, Canada, Israel, Saudi Arabia and many other governments, was large and sophisticated enough to plan and execute the biggest terrorist attack in the United States. Apparently, Rice doesn’t agree with President Obama that Al-Qaeda is a “far-reaching network of violence.”
#5. The U.S. government created, and funded Islamic fundamentalism in the 1980s to be used to draw the Soviet Union into Afghanistan, and bleed it to death in a costly and unwinnable war. This was no doubt a smart move when you have a strategic hat on, when you are sitting comfortably on the seat of power, but when you are confronting issues of peace and war, life and death, coexistence and annihilation, on a very small planet, it was a very cynical and dangerous error. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is considered a realist in foreign policy circles and a critic of Israel, was one of the leaders behind the operation as President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor. In an interview he gave to a weekly French magazine called “Le Nouvel Observateur” in January 1998 he discussed how and why the U.S. funded Muslim terrorists (or freedom fighters, depending on your outlook). Excerpt from the interview:
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the break-up of the Soviet empire.
The fact that America trained and funded a terrorist network in Central Asia less than two decades before the September 11, 2001 attacks is a relevant historical fact. It raises the strong possibility that after the Soviet Union collapsed the CIA used their terrorist network to promote U.S. foreign policy by covert means, including in the United States on September 11, 2001.
#6. Robin Cook, who served as a British MP for 22 years and as Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2001, wrote an article for the Guardian in July 2005, a month before his death, called “The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means.” Throughout the article Cook makes many devastating critiques of the West’s war on terror, but here is a quote that requires our greatest attention:
“Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.”
Cook’s analysis is dead on in certain respects, but, like others, including author Chalmers Johnson (RIP), he made the mistake of contextualizing terrorism against the West as the result of a blowback against American foreign policy that is orchestrated chiefly by a mad and independent Osama Bin Laden and his hardcore followers. In reality, the problem of terrorism originates directly from within Western governments, mainly the United States, England, and Israel – governments that are not democratic, but authoritarian, and rely on secrecy, misinformation, and deception to promote policies that enrich a few well-connected individuals who are powerful and immoral enough to negatively influence government legislation and government policy.
#7. A BBC article from July 2004 called “Al-Qaeda’s origins and links” reveals that Osama Bin Laden was a CIA agent in the 1980s. The article states: “During the anti-Soviet jihad Bin Laden and his fighters received American and Saudi funding. Some analysts believe Bin Laden himself had security training from the CIA.” It is highly possible that Osama Bin Laden was still an agent of the CIA on September 11, 2001. As they say of the CIA, once a member, always a member.
#8. J. Michael Springmann, a 20 year foreign service official, and a former Consulate officer in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has publicly stated for many years that the CIA brought over Muslim radicals to the United States for secret terrorist training. Most of these radicals were brought through Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where Springman was stationed from 1987 to 1989 before he was let go by the State Department because he raised questions about the weakly enforced VISA qualification process.
In an interview with Alex Jones in May 2002 Springmann pointed out that 15 of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attacks entered the United States after CIA officials in Jeddah approved their visas. “According to the Los Angeles Times,” said Springmann, “fifteen of the nineteen people, the Saudis who were allegedly responsible for flying planes into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, they got their visas from the Consulate at Jeddah.”
In an article written in February of 2003 called “Policing the Borders: Old Fears, New Realities” Springmann wrote about how U.S. foreign policy works, and to what ends:
“What very few Americans understand is the pathological Cold War mindset of those who have shaped U.S. foreign policy since the middle of the last century. It is a worldview with little interest in “security” per se. For those who exercise ultimate power, success is measured by the bottom lines on certain corporate quarterly reports. These numbers represent transcendent ends which have justified and continue to justify any and every means imaginable, from rubber-stamping illegitimate visa applications to full scale massacre.”
Click here to read the transcript of Alex Jones’s interview with Springmann in May 2002; click here to listen to Alex Jones’s interview with Springmann in February 2010. Both interviews are very revealing, and should be required listening/reading for everyone.
#9. Germany’s Der Spiegel’s published an article by Siegesmund von Ilsemann called “Arming the Middle East: The Checkered History of American Weapons Deals” in June 2007. The article backed up the reporting done by the BBC, and elsewhere that the United States government “supplied Afghan freedom fighters in the 1980s with money and arms for their struggle against occupying Soviet troops. One of the best customers for the CIA back then was Saudi millionaire Osama Bin Laden.” This account is only half-true. The CIA funded and trained a network of Muslim fighters not to liberate Afghanistan from corrupt Soviet influence, but to create havoc and instigate a Soviet invasion so that it would drain itself of blood and treasure. Once the objective of bringing down the Soviet Union was achieved, the stage was set for the United States and the West to invade Afghanistan and take advantage of the country’s vast resources, from oil to heroin.
#10. Selig Harrison, a current member of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, a former senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and an expert on South Asia, said in March 2001 at a conference called “Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing the Challenges in Asia,” that the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI helped create the backward and tyrannical Taliban. “The CIA made a historic mistake in encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan,” said Harrison, a quote that appears in an article in the Times of India from March 2001. According to Harrison, without the CIA and ISI’s funds and guns, the Taliban wouldn’t exist as a political and religious force in Afghanistan. An excerpt from the Times of India article:
The old associations between the intelligence agencies continue, Harrison said. “The CIA still has close links with the ISI (Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence).”
Today that money and those weapons have helped build up the Taliban, Harrison said. “The Taliban are not just recruits from ‘madrassas’ (Muslim theological schools) but are on the payroll of the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence, the intelligence wing of the Pakistani government).” The Taliban are now “making a living out of terrorism.”
Harrison said the UN Security Council resolution number 1333 calls for an embargo on arms to the Taliban. “But it is a resolution without teeth because it does not provide sanctions for non-compliance,” he said. “The US is not backing the Russians who want to give more teeth to the resolution.”
Now it is Pakistan that “holds the key to the future of Afghanistan,” Harrison said. The creation of the Taliban was central to Pakistan’s “pan-Islamic vision,” Harrison said.
It came after “the CIA made the historic mistake of encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan,” he said. The creation of the Taliban had been “actively encouraged by the ISI and the CIA,” he said. “Pakistan has been building up Afghan collaborators who will sustain Pakistan,” he said.
#11. The September 11, 2001 attacks, which serve as the basis for America’s wars in the Middle East, were committed by the United States government with assistance from the government of Israel. This is an indisputable fact. Here is a list of three points that proves without a shadow of a doubt that the official 9/11 story is false, and indefensible:
* American physicist Steven E. Jones, Danish chemist Niels Harrit, and others wrote a peer-reviewed paper in 2009 called “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe,” that was published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal. The authors discovered nano-thermite in samples of the WTC dust, a highly advanced explosive that is made by a small number of companies. They wrote:
“As measured using DSC, the material ignites and reacts vigorously at a temperature of approximately 430 °C, with a rather narrow exotherm, matching fairly closely an independent observation on a known super-thermite sample. The low temperature of ignition and the presence of iron oxide grains less than 120 nm show that the material is not conventional thermite (which ignites at temperatures above 900 °C) but very likely a form of super-thermite.”
* The vertical collapse of Building Se7en, a building that was not struck by a plane. Steel buildings have never collapsed before because of fire alone. Common sense suggests that explosives were used to bring the building down, which rules out involvement by radical Muslims because officer workers would have noticed their activity in the building prior to 9/11.
* Firefighters said they witnessed and heard loud back-to-back explosions coming from the Towers. In this video clip, a couple of firefighters recount what they saw. One of them says, “It was as if they had detonated. . . as if they were planning to take down a building: boom boom boom boom boom.”
There are so many more points, and so many more smoking guns, but it does not get any more obvious, any more in-your-face than hearing firefighters say that they heard bombs going off. All honest individuals must rethink their position on the 9/11 attacks after taking a look at the collapse of building 7, and watching firefighters say that they heard explosions. You don’t have to be an expert to see the obvious. You don’t even have to be smart. You just have to be honest and unafraid.
IV. Ending The Perpetual War on Terror And The Not So Great Game
Now that we know the threat from Al-Qaeda is not real, we must pressure our Western governments to end the global war on terrorism, and bring home all the troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, and everywhere else in the Middle East. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are unjust, unnecessary, and destructive to global peace, global harmony, and global stability. The U.S. and UK governments are not waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan to establish free and open democracies but to fulfill criminal goals, and emerge victorious in the 21st century’s “Great Game.”
The West’s war on terror is all about the Great Game, not defeating “Al-Qaeda” or Islamic extremists. A small proof that this is true comes from Prince Andrew’s own words. In one of the diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks, Andrew says:
Addressing the Ambassador directly, Prince Andrew then turned to regional politics. He stated baldly that “the United Kingdom, Western Europe (and by extension you Americans too”) were now back in the thick of playing the Great Game. More animated than ever, he stated cockily: “And this time we aim to win!”
Such arrogance reflects anti-human and anti-freedom beliefs, which are shared by many members of the elite in the United States, England, and Europe, who desire war and conflict over peace and brotherhood. Members of the Western political elite have the hearts of monsters. They are more interested in winning a geopolitical game that causes death and mass destruction than in uplifting humanity, and making the world a better place for all people.
U.S. and U.K. policymakers cynically fund and assist radical Muslims, and sometimes stage terrorist attacks that are blamed on radical Muslims, to maintain the public perception in the Western world that there are thousands of nasty terrorists who wish them harm. But this is not true. And it is a dangerous perception that must be erased. As Professor Michel Chossudovsky writes in his 2008 article “Al Qaeda and the “War on Terrorism”:
“U.S. foreign policy is not geared towards curbing the tide of Islamic fundamentalism. In fact, it is quite the opposite. The significant development of “radical Islam”, in the wake of the Cold War in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East is consistent with Washington’s hidden agenda. The latter consists in sustaining rather than combating international terrorism, with a view to destabilizing national societies and preventing the articulation of genuine secular social movements directed against the American Empire.
Washington continues to support — through CIA covert operations — the development of Islamic fundamentalism, throughout the Middle East, in the former Soviet Union as well in China and India.
Throughout the developing world, the growth of sectarian, fundamentalist and other such organizations tends to serve U.S. interests. These various organizations and armed insurgents have been developed, particularly in countries where state institutions have collapsed under the brunt of the IMF-sponsored economic reforms.
These fundamentalist organizations contribute by destroying and displacing secular institutions.
Islamic fundamentalism creates social and ethnic divisions. It undermines the capacity of people to organize against the American Empire. These organizations or movements, such as the Taliban, often foment “opposition to Uncle Sam” in a way which does not constitute any real threat to America’s broader geopolitical and economic interests.”
We must speak the full truth about the origins of the war on terror if we want to end it. Journalists need to publicize the historical facts about U.S. support for terrorism, and report the truth about the September 11, 2001 attacks. We can’t let the truth about government-staged terrorism be trapped in the black hole of history. There will be change once we speak the full truth passionately and demand justice. The old tyrants will vanish under a new sun.
A different world is possible. A world with universal and permanent peace on Earth is not a Utopian dream. There are no reasons for conflict in the world today. The threat of “terrorism” is a manufactured threat. Al-Qaeda doesn’t exist. And 9/11 is a big lie. In sum, the War on Terror is totally illegitimate and criminal. The governments of United States, England, Canada, Australia, and Israel represent the only obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Their leaders have committed crimes against humanity, and must be brought to justice.
“A war on world poverty may well do more for the security of the west than a war on terror,” said U.K. MP Robin Cook in 2005. He was right, and then some. But it is not enough to be right. We must win. We must put an end to the War on Terror and the Great Game. We must restart the global anti-war movement, and this time we must expose the lie about 9/11 because victory against the war criminals is impossible without a firm foothold on the ground of truth.
