These are hard times for climate scientists who want government action on global warming. Not only has the Copenhagen summit largely produced discord, but an embarrassing public release of private e-mails exposed attempts by a group of climate scientists to hide scientific evidence that didn't conform to their beliefs or pronouncements.
As CBS News put it, the scandal, called "Climategate," is "casting doubts on the very science on which this summit is based." In a widely noted Washington Post column, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin argued, "the documents show that there was no real consensus" among climate scientists. And a new ABC News poll finds that only 29% of the public now place "a lot" of trust in what scientists say about the environment.
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The question of whether there is a scientific consensus on human-induced global warming has long inspired heated debate among both scientists and politicians. The most recent assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change describes global warming as "unequivocal" and "very likely" caused by human activity. But skeptics have argued that the IPCC, which is tasked by the United Nations with evaluating the risks of climate change, is itself influenced by political considerations and "pre-conceived agendas."
In a broader effort to measure scientific opinion, one scholar analyzed peer-reviewed journal articles on climate change and concluded that over 75% supported the notion of anthropogenic (human-induced) warming. But critics argued that the analysis was itself skewed toward finding such a consensus.
So how do you know what scientists really think about global warming? Well, you could always ask them. That's precisely what the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS), which I direct, did in 2007 when it hired Harris Interactive to survey American climate scientists.The results won't entirely please either the Climategate correspondents or their critics.
The STATS study polled nearly 500 randomly selected members of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union listed in American Men and Women of Science, the longtime "Who's Who" directory of the scientific community. This provided the best glimpse into the views of prominent American scientists with expertise relevant to climate change. We asked them not only whether they thought global warming was occurring, but how severe the effects might be, and how certain they were about making such judgments.
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JD, You are guilty of the same fallacies that the author stated of the media. You cannot collapse statistics that way and create a new interpretation. Furthermore did you even read the article? Th....
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As with all polls, the answers you get depend on the questions you ask. We found that almost all climate scientists believe that the world has been warming: 97% agree that "global average temperatures have increased" during the past century. But not everyone attributes that rise to human activity. A slight majority (52%) believe this warming was human-induced, 30% see it as the result of natural temperature fluctuations and the rest are unsure.
When it comes to current conditions, however, the consensus in favor of human warming reemerges: 84% believe "human-induced greenhouse warming" is now occurring, compared with only 5% who reject this conclusion. And 74% say the "currently available scientific evidence substantiates" its occurrence, while only 9% disagree. So global warming doubter are a genuinely small minority among American climate scientists; it is difficult to believe that any transgressions against scientific procedures or the scientific ethos uncovered by Climategate are going to change that.
Going forward, the more interesting question is how great a danger current warming trends may pose to future generations. The IPCC as well as many environmental organizations have set temperature increases of two degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) as a threshold beyond which global warming poses grave dangers to the planet.
We asked the scientists to estimate the probability that human activity will raise global temperatures that much in the next 50 to 100 years. Just over half of these climate experts (56%) believe there is at least a 50-50 chance that global warming of this magnitude will occur. About one in five (19%) see less than a 50-50 chance, and one in four (26%) are unwilling to venture an opinion. This suggests a division of opinion, combined with some uncertainty, over the likely impact of warming in the short to medium term.
To get a more general sense of how climate experts feel about the risks of global warming, we asked them to rate the likely effects of climate change during the next 50 to 100 years along a spectrum ranging from "trivial" to "catastrophic." The result was widespread concern, along with considerable debate over how great that concern should be.
Only 13% saw relatively little danger (ratings of 1 to 3 on a 10-point scale); the rest were about evenly split between the 44% who see moderate to high danger (ratings of 4 to 7) and 41% who see very high or grave danger (ratings of 8 to 10). It is also notable that only 1% answered "don't know" to this question, a reminder that many scientists respond more cautiously about making specific scientific projections than about giving their personal opinions, a distinction that is sometimes lost on politicians.
In fact, scientists are often reluctant to rush to judgment, though you wouldn't know it from the mass media, which typically caricature scientific debates as involving two clearly defined, committed and opposed sides. The scientists' actual responses reflect a certain modesty about our capacity to predict the future. For example, when asked to rate the predictability of future climate change along the same 1-to-10 scale, 32% found its effects difficult to predict (ratings of 1 to 3), 51% found them moderately predictable (4 to 7), and only 17% found them easy to predict (8 to 10).
Such reticence reflects a modest appraisal of the scientific community's current understanding of climate change. For example, only 29% express a "great deal of confidence" in science's current understanding of the size and extent of human sources of greenhouse gases, and even fewer (23%) express great confidence in scientific understanding of their natural sources.
This is hardly surprising, in light of the relatively recent origins of this debate. Speculation about global cooling wasn't decisively rejected until the 1980s, and widespread scientific concern over global warming didn't happen until the 1990s. Little wonder that only 5% of the scientists we surveyed describe the study of climate change as a fully mature science--51% call it fairly mature and 39% still see it as an emerging science.
This doesn't mean that we should do nothing about climate change until everyone agrees about the details of its causes and effects. It's time for political leaders to admit that science can inform their policies on climate change but can't dictate them. As Climategate shows, the search for certainty as political cover can backfire. The ABC poll cited above finds that 62% of the American public now see "a lot of disagreement" among scientists as to whether global warming is really happening. Scientific debate is open-ended, but at some point decision-makers must decide--and take responsibility for their decisions.
S. Robert Lichter is professor of communication at George Mason University, where he directs the Center for Media and Public Affairs and the Statistical Assessment Service.
The committee to save the world - Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, Gordon Brown and other leaders at the Copenhagen climate talks
The committee to save the world: Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, Gordon Brown and other leaders at the Copenhagen climate talks Photo: AFP/GETTY
There is scope for debate – and innumerable newspaper quizzes – about who was the most influential public figure of the year, or which the most significant event. But there can be little doubt which word won the prize for most important adjective. 2009 was the year in which "global" swept the rest of the political lexicon into obscurity. There were "global crises" and "global challenges", the only possible resolution to which lay in "global solutions" necessitating "global agreements". Gordon Brown actually suggested something called a "global alliance" in response to climate change. (Would this be an alliance against the Axis of Extra-Terrestrials?)
Some of this was sheer hokum: when uttered by Gordon Brown, the word "global", as in "global economic crisis", meant: "It's not my fault". To the extent that the word had intelligible meaning, it also had political ramifications that were scarcely examined by those who bandied it about with such ponderous self-importance. The mere utterance of it was assumed to sweep away any consideration of what was once assumed to be the most basic principle of modern democracy: that elected national governments are responsible to their own people – that the right to govern derives from the consent of the electorate.
The dangerous idea that the democratic accountability of national governments should simply be dispensed with in favour of "global agreements" reached after closed negotiations between world leaders never, so far as I recall, entered into the arena of public discussion. Except in the United States, where it became a very contentious talking point, the US still holding firmly to the 18th-century idea that power should lie with the will of the people.
Nor was much consideration given to the logical conclusion of all this grandiose talk of global consensus as unquestionably desirable: if there was no popular choice about approving supranational "legally binding agreements", what would happen to dissenters who did not accept their premises (on climate change, for example) when there was no possibility of fleeing to another country in protest? Was this to be regarded as the emergence of world government? And would it have powers of policing and enforcement that would supersede the authority of elected national governments? In effect, this was the infamous "democratic deficit" of the European Union elevated on to a planetary scale. And if the EU model is anything to go by, then the agencies of global authority will involve vast tracts of power being handed to unelected officials. Forget the relatively petty irritations of Euro‑bureaucracy: welcome to the era of Earth-bureaucracy, when there will be literally nowhere to run.
But, you may say, however dire the political consequences, surely there is something in this obsession with global dilemmas. Economics is now based on a world market, and if the planet really is facing some sort of man-made climate crisis, then that too is a problem that transcends national boundaries. Surely, if our problems are universal the solutions must be as well.
Well, yes and no. Calling a problem "global" is meant to imply three different things: that it is the result of the actions of people in different countries; that those actions have impacted on the lives of everyone in the world; and that the remedy must involve pretty much identical responses or correctives to those actions. These are separate premises, any of which might be true without the rest of them necessarily being so. The banking crisis certainly had its roots in the international nature of finance, but the way it affected countries and peoples varied considerably according to the differences in their internal arrangements. Britain suffered particularly badly because of its addiction to public and private debt, whereas Australia escaped relatively unscathed.
That a problem is international in its roots does not necessarily imply that the solution must involve the hammering out of a uniform global prescription: in fact, given the differences in effects and consequences for individual countries, the attempt to do such hammering might be a huge waste of time and resources that could be put to better use devising national remedies. France and Germany seem to have pulled themselves out of recession over the past year (and the US may be about to do so) while Britain has not. These variations owe almost nothing to the pompous, overblown attempts to find global solutions: they are largely to do with individual countries, under the pressure of democratic accountability, doing what they decide is best for their own people.
This is not what Mr Brown calls "narrow self-interest", or "beggar my neighbour" ruthlessness. It is the proper business of elected national leaders to make judgments that are appropriate for the conditions of their own populations. It is also right that heads of nations refuse to sign up to "legally binding" global agreements which would disadvantage their own people. The resistance of the developing nations to a climate change pact that would deny them the kind of economic growth and mass prosperity to which advanced countries have become accustomed is not mindless selfishness: it is proper regard for the welfare of their own citizens.
The word "global" has taken on sacred connotations. Any action taken in its name must be inherently virtuous, whereas the decisions of individual countries are necessarily "narrow" and self-serving. (Never mind that a "global agreement" will almost certainly be disproportionately influenced by the most powerful nations.) Nor is our era so utterly unlike previous ones, for all its technological sophistication. We have always needed multilateral agreements, whether about trade, organised crime, border controls, or mutual defence.
If the impact of our behaviour on humanity at large is much greater or more rapid than ever before then we shall have to find ways of dealing with that which do not involve sacrificing the most enlightened form of government ever devised. There is a whiff of totalitarianism about this new theology, in which the risks are described in such cosmic terms that everything else must give way. "Globalism" is another form of the internationalism that has been a core belief of the Left: a commitment to class rather than country seemed an admirable antidote to the "blood and soil" nationalism that gave rise to fascism.
The nation-state has never quite recovered from the bad name it acquired in the last century as the progenitor of world war. But if it is to be relegated to the dustbin of history then we had better come up with new mechanisms for allowing people to have a say in how they are governed. Maybe that could be next year's global challenge.
There'll be nowhere to run from the new world government
The National Post exposes Wikipedia over climate information
Lawrence Solomon at the National Post writes about a topic that WUWT readers have known about for a long time: How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles.
We’ve known for some time that Wikipedia can’t be trusted to provide unbiased climate information. Solomon starts off by talking about Climategate emails.
The emails also describe how the band plotted to rewrite history as well as science, particularly by eliminating the Medieval Warm Period, a 400 year period that began around 1000 AD.
The Climategate Emails reveal something else, too: the enlistment of the most widely read source of information in the world — Wikipedia — in the wholesale rewriting of this history.
He then focuses on RealClimate.org co-founder William Connolley, who has “touched” 5,428 Wikipedia articles with his unique brand of RC centric editing:
All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.
The Medieval Warm Period disappeared, as did criticism of the global warming orthodoxy. With the release of the Climategate Emails, the disappearing trick has been exposed. The glorious Medieval Warm Period will remain in the history books, perhaps with an asterisk to describe how a band of zealots once tried to make it disappear.
Wikipedia suffers from the same problem that climate science in general suffers from now. A few determined zealots have influenced the vast majority of the published information.
IMHO it is time for Connolley to step aside from Wikipedia, one person should not have so much influence over so many articles. At the same time, the number two person, almost as influential, is Kim Dabelstein Peterson. Here’s a National Review article on the kind of things Petersen has been doing in similar to the work of Connolley.
Additionally, there are many Wikipedia editors and contributors that do so anonymously, and I think that is terribly wrong. There’s no accountability, no quality control, and no recourse to people who falsify information, or mold it to fit a personal agenda. Wikipedia relies upon an honor system, and as we’ve seen from the Climategate emails, there’s no honor in some circles of climate science.
Here is another example:
The Opinionator
Posted: May 03, 2008, 2:53 AM by Lawrence Solomon
Connolley is not only a big shot on Wikipedia, he’s a big shot at Wikipedia — an Administrator with unusual editorial clout. Using that clout, this 40-something scientist of minor relevance gets to tear down scientists of great accomplishment. Because Wikipedia has become the single biggest reference source in the world, and global warming is one of the most sought after subjects, the ability to control information on Wikipedia by taking down authoritative scientists is no trifling matter.
One such scientist is Fred Singer, the First Director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Service, the recipient of a White House commendation for his early design of space satellites; the recipient of a NASA commendation for research on particle clouds — in short, a scientist with dazzling achievements who is everything Connolley is not. Under Connolley’s supervision, Singer is relentlessly smeared, and has been for years, as a kook who believes in Martians and a hack in the pay of the oil industry. When a smear is inadequate, or when a fair-minded Wikipedian tries to correct a smear, Connolley and his cohorts are there to widen the smear or remove the correction, often rebuking the Wikipedian in the process.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales recently put out an appeal for donations here. He writes:
I believe in us. I believe that Wikipedia keeps getting better. That’s the whole idea. One person writes something, somebody improves it a little, and it keeps getting better, over time. If you find it useful today, imagine how much we can achieve together in 5, 10, 20 years.
In a perfect world, maybe. In a perfect world unicorns frolic in the park, free money falls from the sky, and people are honest and without bias 100% of the time. But when you have Wikibullies, such as Connolley and Peterson, your honor system goes up in smoke. Fact is Jimmy, your honor system is as corrupted as the peer review process is for climate science these days. In my view, don’t give Wikipedia another dime until they make some changes to provide for a more responsible information environment.
Making free reference information available to the public shouldn’t be a battle of wills between Wikibullies with an agenda and the rest of society.
Here’s where to write to complain to Wikipedia:
Wikimedia Foundation
Postal address
Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
149 New Montgomery Street, 3rd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
USA
Phone: +1-415-839-6885
Email: info@wikimedia.org
Fax: +1-415-882-0495 (note: we get a large number of calls; email or fax is always a better first option)
UPDATE: I’ve located Solomon’s source of information, an independent Wikipedia author tracker. Here is Connolley’s base statistics:
Obama Information Czar Calls For Banning Free Speech
Sunstein: Taxation and censorship of dissenting opinions “will have a place” under thought police program advocated in 2008 white paper
Obama Information Czar Calls For Banning Free Speech 140110top2
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, January 14, 2010
The controversy surrounding White House information czar and Harvard Professor Cass Sunstein’s blueprint for the government to infiltrate political activist groups has deepened, with the revelation that in the same 2008 dossier he also called for the government to tax or even ban outright political opinions of which it disapproved.
Sunstein was appointed by President Obama to head up the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an agency within the Executive Office of the President.
On page 14 of Sunstein’s January 2008 white paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” the man who is now Obama’s head of information technology in the White House proposed that each of the following measures “will have a place under imaginable conditions” according to the strategy detailed in the essay.
1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing.
2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.
That’s right, Obama’s information czar wants to tax or ban outright, as in make illegal, political opinions that the government doesn’t approve of. To where would this be extended? A tax or a shut down order on newspapers that print stories critical of our illustrious leaders?
And what does Sunstein define as “conspiracy theories” that should potentially be taxed or outlawed by the government? Opinions held by the majority of Americans, no less.
The notion that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in killing JFK, a view shared by the vast majority of Americans in every major poll over the last ten years, is an example of a “conspiracy theory” that the federal government should consider censoring, according to Sunstein.
A 1998 CBS poll found that just 10 per cent of Americans believed that Oswald acted alone, so apparently the other 90 per cent of Americans could be committing some form of thought crime by thinking otherwise under Sunstein’s definition.
Sunstein also cites the belief that “global warming is a deliberate fraud” as another marginal conspiracy theory to be countered by government action. In reality, the majority of Americans now believe that the man-made explanation of global warming is not true, and that global warming is natural, according to the latest polls.
But Sunstein saves his most ludicrous example until last. On page 5 he characterizes as “false and dangerous” the idea that exposure to sunlight is healthy, despite the fact that top medical experts agree prolonged exposure to sunlight reduces the risk of developing certain cancers.
To claim that encouraging people to get out in the sun is to peddle a dangerous conspiracy theory is like saying that promoting the breathing of fresh air is also a thought crime. One can only presume that Sunstein is deliberately framing the debate by going to such absurd extremes so as to make any belief whatsoever into a conspiracy theory unless it’s specifically approved by the kind of government thought police system he is pushing for.
Despite highlighting the fact that repressive societies go hand in hand with an increase in “conspiracy theories,” Sunstein’s ’solution’ to stamp out such thought crimes is to ban free speech, fulfilling the precise characteristic of the “repressive society” he warns against elsewhere in the paper.
“We could imagine circumstances in which a conspiracy theory became so pervasive, and so dangerous, that censorship would be thinkable,” he writes on page 20. Remember that Sunstein is not just talking about censoring Holocaust denial or anything that’s even debatable in the context of free speech, he’s talking about widely accepted beliefs shared by the majority of Americans but ones viewed as distasteful by the government, which would seek to either marginalize by means of taxation or outright censor such views.
No surprise therefore that Sunstein has called for re-writing the First Amendment as well as advocating Internet censorship and even proposing that Americans should celebrate tax day and be thankful that the state takes a huge chunk of their income.
The government has made it clear that growing suspicion towards authority is a direct threat to their political agenda and indeed Sunstein admits this on page 3 of his paper.
That is why they are now engaging in full on information warfare in an effort to undermine, disrupt and eventually outlaw organized peaceful resistance to their growing tyranny.
RAND/Army Report Calls For Militarized Police Force For U.S. 210110Police
Authors admit Federal “Stabilization Force” could be used domestically
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Thursday, Jan 21, 2010
A recent study commissioned by the U.S. Army and written by the RAND Corporation calls for the creation of a “hybrid” military/law enforcement unit which could be put to use in the United States to take charge of riot control and SWAT duties, according to the authors.
The study (PDF) was released last year but has garnered fresh attention following comments made by one of its authors, Terry Kelly, in an interview with online news website World Net Daily.
“If there were a major disaster like Katrina it could be deployed in the U. S. but that’s not the purpose of the research,” Kelly said.
“It’s important to point out that the goal was to create a force that’s deployable overseas. If it’s to be used in the United States it would be a secondary thing and then only in an emergency,”.
Kelly said that the main focus of the force would be in places like Iraq, Afghanistan or Haiti, in light of the earthquake disaster, adding that it could operate as a U.S. force under U.N. authority.
However, the report itself uses language that leaves open the exact agenda of the force, and makes it clear that domestic use has been considered at length.
It states that a Federal “Stabilization Police Force” of 2–6,000 personnel would work best under a civilian federal agency or the military police.
“They (the data) suggest that the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) and the MP options are the only credible ones. The Marshals Service has sufficient baseline capabilities and a policing culture to build a competent SPF, and its location in the Department of Justice makes it well suited to achieve broader rule-of-law objectives. This finding is consistent with a significant body of academic and policy research, which strongly concludes that civilian agencies are optimal for the execution of policing functions.” (page 123)
The study concludes that the use of the Marshals Service is more favorable in order to avoid a breach of the long standing Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the domestic use of the military for law enforcement purposes.
The report also states that the force could both augment and be augmented by “additional federal, state, or local police from the United States”.
“The USMS hybrid option … provides an important nondeployed mission for the force: augmenting state and local agencies, many of which currently suffer from severe personnel shortages,” the report says.
“Furthermore, the USMS has the broadest law enforcement mandate of any U.S. law enforcement agency…. [This model] provides significant domestic policing and homeland security benefits by providing thousands of additional police officers across the United States.” (emphasis added)
It is clear then that part of the vision is to employ a Federal military police force inside the United States.
The report is even titled A Stability Police Force for the United States: Justification and Creating U.S. Capabilities.
RAND/Army Report Calls For Militarized Police Force For U.S. FOTR 340x1692
Intelligence analyst Mark Taylor described the idea of a militarized federal police force as “a Gestapo waiting to happen”.
“Once you establish a government agency or program, it does nothing but grow into a huge bureaucratic monstrosity that feeds on the taxpayer… it would amount to just another intrusion into the states’ rights to govern and intrude into the liberties of the American people,” Taylor told WND.
Retired Marine Corps officer and 2008 vice presidential nominee for the Constitution Party, Darrell Castle said the force would be used to control the population and the idea is “part of a long existing effort to mingle and combine all law enforcement, federal, state, and local with the military into one force,”
“As I see it, the goal is to do the bidding of the international cartel of central bankers and financiers in order to assist them in building a world government police state which would entail total surveillance, total control, and the absence of what we think of as constitutional rights,” Castle said.
The RAND Corporation is a notoriously powerful NGO with deep ties to the U.S. military-industrial complex as well as interlocking connections with the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations.
Current directors of RAND include Frank Charles Carlucci III, former Defense Secretary and Deputy Director of the CIA, Ronald L. Olson, Council on Foreign Relations luminary and former Secretary of Labor, and Carl Bildt, top Bilderberg member and former Swedish Prime Minister.
Carlucci was chairman of the Carlyle Group from 1989-2005 and oversaw gargantuan profits the defense contractor made in the aftermath of 9/11 following the invasion of Afghanistan. The Carlyle Group has also received investment money from the Bin Laden family.
In October 2008 we broke the story of RAND’s shocking proposal to the Pentagon in which it lobbied for a war to be started with a major foreign power, such as China, in an attempt to stimulate the American economy and prevent a recession.
Bloomberg: Maybe A Secret Banking Cabal Does Run The World After All
DUHH !!!!
AIG cover-up proof that “conspiracy theorists” aren’t so crazy, writes columnist
Bloomberg: Maybe A Secret Banking Cabal Does Run The World After All 290110top
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, January 29, 2010
In another measure of how what the establishment labels “conspiracy theory” is quickly becoming mainstream, Bloomberg News carries a story today acknowledging that those derided as “crazy” for warning that the world is run by a secret banking cabal have largely been proven right in light of the AIG cover-up.
“The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are a given among conspiracy theorists who stockpile ammo, bottled water and peanut butter. After this week’s congressional hearing into the bailout of American International Group Inc., you have to wonder if those folks are crazy after all,” writes Bloomberg’s David Reilly today.
“Wednesday’s hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials.”
Reilly goes on to describe how the New York Fed conducted a backdoor bailout (or in plainer terms a wholesale looting of the taxpayer) of banks like Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Societe Generale and Deutsche Bank AG, and then sought to keep it secret from the public.
Reilly also highlights another telling quote by Representative Marcy Kaptur during the hearing on Wednesday, when she told Geithner, “A lot of people think that the president of the New York Fed works for the U.S. government. But in fact you work for the private banks that elected you.”
Reilly savages Tim Geithner’s denial of any involvement in the scandal and concludes with stating, “When unelected and unaccountable agencies pick banking winners while trying to end-run Congress, even as taxpayers are forced to lend, spend and guarantee about $8 trillion to prop up the financial system, our collective blood should boil.”
Bloomberg: Maybe A Secret Banking Cabal Does Run The World After All 190110banner4
As we have constantly emphasized, as the global government and the financial takeover accelerates, it’s becoming harder and harder for the elite to hide the true intention of what they are doing, which is centralizing power into fewer hands, destroying sovereignty and creating a one world order run by an unelected, undemocratic authoritarian system.
So whereas “conspiracy theorists” were once sidelined as paranoid kooks, as more and more of what they warned about comes to fruition, they gain more credibility and the establishment finds it more difficult to neutralize what they are saying by means of character assassination.
The Bloomberg writer’s admission that the “conspiracy theorists” were probably right reminds us of former Clinton advisor Dick Morris’ appearance on Fox News last year, when he pointed out that people who have been sounding the alarm bells over a global government takeover for decades have also been vindicated.
“Those people who have been yelling ‘oh the UN’s gonna take over, global government’, they’ve been crazy but now – they’re right!,” stated Morris on Sean Hannity’s show.
southcarolinacapitol No joke: South Carolina now requires subversives to registerFive-dollar registration fee for persons planning to overthrow US government
Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina's Secretary of State and declare their intentions -- or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.
The state's "Subversive Activities Registration Act," passed last year and now officially on the books, states that "every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States ... shall register with the Secretary of State."
There's even a $5 filing fee.
By "subversive organization," the law means "every corporation, society, association, camp, group, bund, political party, assembly, body or organization, composed of two or more persons, which directly or indirectly advocates, advises, teaches or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States [or] of this State."
Story continues below...
A PDF of the registration form can be found here, courtesy of FitsNews.
The law also gives subversive organizations "subject to foreign control" 30 days to register with the state after setting up shop in South Carolina.
While the intention of the law is apparently aimed at Islamic terrorists, it's unclear in the law's wording whether it can be applied to right-wing militias, some of whom have reputedly called for the overthrow of the US government. The law states that "fraternal" and "patriotic" groups are exempt from the law, but only if they don't "contemplate the overthrow of the government."
While the law is clearly redundant -- there are plenty of statutes at the state and federal level through which terrorists can be prosecuted -- it reflects a not-uncommon pattern in some states of "doubling down" against particular crimes.
For instance, South Carolina is among those states which require drug dealers to declare their illegal income, or face additional criminal penalties on top of the already established penalties for buying, possessing and selling drugs.
The South Carolina blog FitsNews describes the new law as "bureaucracy for terrorists."
"In the long and storied history of utterly retarded legislation in South Carolina, we may have finally found the legal statute that takes the cake for sheer stupidity, which we think you’ll agree is saying something," the unsigned blog posting scathingly commented.
Cass Sunstein’s white paper, entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” is an exclamation point in the latest chapter of a long history of government tyranny against citizens who organize in opposition to the government. Sunstein argues that individuals and groups deviating from the official government narrative on a number of political issues and events are a national security threat. The administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs formulates “a plan for the government to infiltrate conspiracy groups in order to undermine them via postings on chat rooms and social networks, as well as real meetings, according to a recently uncovered article Sunstein wrote for the Journal of Political Philosophy,” writes Paul Joseph Watson.
featured stories Sunsteins Paper Provides More Evidence COLINTELPRO Still Operational
featured stories Sunsteins Paper Provides More Evidence COLINTELPRO Still Operational
FDR, an icon for many liberals, sent the FBI after citizens who opposed his war policies.
Sunstein’s plan is a reformulation of a long-standing effort to subvert the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights. Concerted government attacks against organized political opposition began soon after the founding of the republic — specifically with the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 by the Federalists — but have gained critical momentum in the modern era.
During the First World War, the government created the Bureau of Investigation, predecessor to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and appointed J. Edgar Hoover as its head. Hoover’s Bureau of Investigation, with the assistance of police and the military — described as a “citizens auxiliary” — conducted mass raids against the anti-war movement of the time, according to documents released by the Church Committee in the 1970s. The Bureau, specifically designed as a national political police force, “rounded up some 50,000 men without warrants of sufficient probable cause for arrest” for the crime of opposing the First World War.
In 1920, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer conducted a massive program in 33 cities and rounded up over 10,000 people. The Church Committee report (p.384) talks of “the abuses of due process of law incident to the raids.” According to Robert Preston (Aliens And Dissenters), the Palmer Raids involved “indiscriminate arrests of the innocent with the guilty, unlawful seizures by federal detectives” and other violations of constitutional rights. The Church Committee (p.385) “found federal agents guilty of using third-degree tortures, making illegal searches and arrests, using agents provocateurs.” Palmer and Hoover found no evidence of a proposed Bolshevik revolution as they claimed but a large number of the rounded up suspects continued to be held without trial.
The Second World War brought a new wave of government terrorism against political opponents. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a 1940 issued a memorandum giving the FBI the power to use warrantless wiretaps against suspected subversives, that is to say activists opposed to U.S. involvement in the war. FDR not only unleashed the FBI on activists, but concerned citizens as well. After giving a speech on national defense in 1940, FDR had his press secretary, Stephen Early, send Hoover the names of 128 people who had sent telegrams to the White House criticizing the address. “The President thought you might like to look them over,” Early’s note instructed Hoover.
Following the Second World War, the government engineered the immensely profitable (for the military-industrial complex) Cold War and the attendant Red Scare. In 1956, the FBI established COINTELPRO, short for Counter Intelligence Program. COINTELPRO was ostensibly manufactured to counter communist subversion, but as a numerous documents reveal the program focused almost exclusively on domestic opposition to government policies.
The Church Committee explains that COINTELPRO “had no conceivable rational relationship to either national security or violent activity. The unexpressed major premise of much of COINTELPRO is that the Bureau has a role in maintaining the existing social order, and that its efforts should be aimed toward combating those who threaten that order.”
“This is a rough, tough, dirty business, and dangerous,” former Assistant to Director Hoover, William C. Sullivan, told the Church Committee. “No holds were barred.”
This “rough, tough, dirty business” included infiltration of political groups, psychological warfare, legal harassment, and extralegal force and violence. “The FBI and police threatened, instigated and conducted break-ins, vandalism, assaults, and beatings. The object was to frighten dissidents and disrupt their movements,” write Mike Cassidy and Will Miller. “They used secret and systematic methods of fraud and force, far beyond mere surveillance, to sabotage constitutionally protected political activity. The purpose of the program was, in FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s own words, to ‘expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise neutralize’ specific groups and individuals.”
After the Church Committee exposed COINTELPRO, the government claimed it had dismantled the program. However, in the 1980s, the Reagan administration legalized the tactics by signing Executive Order 12333.
“There is every reason to believe that even what was not legalized is still going on as well. Lest we forget, Lt. Col. Oliver North funded and orchestrated from the White House basement break-ins and other ‘dirty tricks’ to defeat congressional critics of U.S. policy in Central America and to neutralize grassroots protest. Special Prosecutor Walsh found evidence that North and Richard Secord (architect of the 1960s covert actions in Cambodia) used Iran-Contra funds to harass the Christic Institute, a church-funded public interest group specializing in exposing government misconduct,” Cassidy and Miller continue.
In addition, North worked with FEMA to develop contingency plans for suspending the Constitution, establishing martial law, and holding political dissidents in concentration camps. Since the false flag attacks of September 11, 2001, the government has worked incessantly to fine tune plans to impose martial law. It has also worked to federalize and militarized law enforcement around the country.
Brian Glick (War at Home) argues that COINTELPRO is a permanent feature of the government. “The record of the past 50 years reveals a pattern of continuous domestic covert action,” Glick wrote in the 1990s. “Its use has been documented in each of the last nine administrations, Democratic as well as Republican. FBI testimony shows ‘COINTELPRO tactics’ already in full swing during the presidencies of Democrats Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman. COINTELPRO itself, while initiated under Eisenhower, grew from one program to six under the Democratic administrations of Kennedy and Johnson… After COINTELPRO was exposed [by the Church Committee], similar programs continued under other names during the Carter years as well as under Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. They have outlived J. Edgar Hoover and remained in place under all of his successors.”
Sunstein’s call for authoritarian action against government critics — including outright censorship in addition to the established tactics mentioned above — reveals that COINTELPRO has indeed outlived Hoover.
“Some conspiracy theories create serious risks. They do not merely undermine democratic debate; in extreme cases, they create or fuel violence,” writes Sunstein. “Even if only a small fraction of adherents to a particular conspiracy theory act on the basis of their beliefs, that small fraction may be enough to cause serious harms.”
Sunstein’s analysis dovetails with that of the Department of Homeland Security. In its now infamous report on “rightwing extremism,” the DHS insists members of the constitutionalist movement (including Libertarians and advocates of the Second Amendment) are not only violent but also virulent racists (a conclusion provided pre-packaged by the ADL and the SPLC).
If realized, Cass Sunstein’s call for outright censorship and the absurd proposal to impose fines and taxes on people who hold political views contrary to those of our rulers will naturally result in a redoubling of political activity on the part of the truth movement (specifically mentioned as “kooks” by Sunstein) and Libertarians and Constitutionalists.
As history repeatedly demonstrates, when faced with a strong and determined political opposition government invariably turns to more brutal and violent methods to enforce its will. Our rulers understand this and that is why they are hurriedly finishing their high-tech police and surveillance grid.
Don’t trust Glen Beck, he is bought and paid for By controlled opposition
Its not Conspiracy Theory
Saturday, February 13th, 2010
I used to be a big fan of Glen Beck. I thought here is a guy, first on CNN/Headline News and then FOX News, as well as his massive mainstream radio show, telling it like it really is without most of the Politically Correct spin and party politics pandering that we are all so used to.
He seemed to champion the growing awakening known to a significant percentage of the American people and felt by many many more who know that something is very wrong with the two political dinosaurs known as the Republicans and the Democrats.
This awakening is what started so many different Liberty movements, such as all the separate & diverse Tea Party groups that started popping up all over the nation. So called liberals & conservatives both woke up to the false Left-Right Paradigm and left the 2 party system behind.
They understood that the elites from the 2 party system and the mainstream media have scientifically designed this system to control us by keeping us, the masses so busy bickering over relatively petty differences between left and right that most of us didn’t realize that both the 2 parties and mainstream media (MSM) all play for the same team in reality.
They know this and it has been terrifying them since at least 2007 when they all started talking about the Great Banker Bailouts. And as the MSM and 2 party elites seemed to put aside their so-called differences just long enough to agree that $780 billion of the Americans money was needed to stop a collapse of the economy so bad it was depression level.
Dont trust Glen Beck, he is bought and paid for controlled opposition 190110banner4
But as a nation, we collectively did not take the bait and screamed out NO to our elected representative’s via letters to the editor, emails, mail, and even better in person at townhall meetings and they heard us the first time and did not pass the bailout bill…until after the November elections.
And this is where the charlatan Glen Beck comes in. As I was saying before, it seemed like he had his fingers on the pulse of this movement and would repeat what the people in the awakened Liberty movement were saying, that the 2 party system is corrupt and that the bankers were greedy risk takers that lost to many gambles and that they should suck it up.
He had our ears and then some of our hearts and millions thought that this is our guy who speaks for us. And so many of us let him captain our Liberty ship because he repeats what he hears the people say on his shows until… his true masters tell him to turn the ship sideways at the last moment into the iceberg. He was against the bailouts before he was for the bailouts http://clips.mediamatters.org/mmtv/200909210037 .
He betrayed us because thats his job. He is an agent of disinformation and he is also what is called Controlled Opposition.
Controlled Opposition is when the elites know there is a growing legitimate mass movement that threaten their agenda, so what they do is start a similar movement or group with their hand picked puppet leaders with charisma, who then parrots the original movements message until its time to a.) turn the movement in another direction like Beck and the Bailouts, or b.) do something so awful so it turns public opinion against it so as to discredit the entire movement entirely.
He has also hi-jacked the small independent anti-2 party Tea Party movement into a single be-mouth known as Tea-Party Nation alla Sarah Palin, that will be absorbed into the Republican Party, thus defeating the very purpose of the original Tea Partys. Keep your eyes open for these type of dirty tricks. There all over the place.
Former Minnesota governor and one-time professional wrestler Jesse Ventura has run afoul of the Huffington Post’s no-conspiracy-theory policy, and he’s not happy about it.
“I can’t believe the Huffington Post today will practice censorship,” Ventura says in astonishment. “I’ve got news for them. … I won’t ever write for ‘em again.”
Ventura had posted an item on Tuesday which took note of a recent conference at which “more than one thousand architects and engineers signed a petition demanding that Congress begin a new investigation into the destruction of the World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11.” He also quoted a few paragraphs from his new book, American Conspiracies, to explain why some of those experts see signs of controlled demolition.
The item was featured on the front page of Huffington Post when it first went up, but after a few hours it vanished. All that appears now at its original location is an editor’s note saying, “The Huffington Post’s editorial policy, laid out in our blogger guidelines, prohibits the promotion and promulgation of conspiracy theories — including those about 9/11. As such, we have removed this post.”
The note is followed by three pages of comments, enthusiastically arguing the pros and cons of controlled demolition and other 9/11 theories, that were posted during the couple of hours before the entry was deleted and comments were closed.
Huffington Post’s own guidelines for its bloggers state, “We must — and do — reserve the right to remove objectionable, inaccurate, or inflammatory material and, if necessary, suspend or revoke blogging privileges. This also includes propagating conspiracy theories and blogging about behind-the-scenes housekeeping issues that are not of interest to the general public.”
Anastasia Churkina, a correspondent for RT, interviewed Ventura about the controversy. “He’s a man who doesn’t mince his words too much,” she reported on Thursday. “He was pretty blunt.”
“I can’t believe the Huffington Post today will practice censorship,” Ventura told her angrily. “They asked me to be a contributing editor and they said, ‘Write about anything you want.’ So it was the second time I did something — and they removed it?”
“Well, I’ve got news for them,” he continued. “I won’t ever write for ‘em again. … I won’t do a thing for the Huffington Post because I don’t like it when people censor what I have to say.”
“All I do is ask questions!” he exploded. “That’s what bugs me about 9/11. 9/11 is an event you’re not allowed to ask a question about. … Clearly they don’t want any questions on it.”
Ironically, Ventura had to go to RT, the English-language version of a Russian news channel, to tell his story. Although polls show that large numbers of Americans believe in a broad range of conspiracy theories, and a majority entertain doubts about the official story of 9/11, few of those questions ever appear in the mainstream media.
As Raw Story recently reported , “In November of 2007, an online article noted, ‘Nearly two-thirds of Americans think it is possible that some federal officials had specific warnings of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, but chose to ignore those warnings, according to a Scripps Howard News Service/Ohio University poll.’ A national survey of 811 adult residents of the United States conducted by Scripps and Ohio University found that more than a third believe in a broad smorgasbord of conspiracy theories including the attacks, international plots to rig oil prices, the plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the government’s knowledge of intelligent life from other worlds. The high percentage is a manifestation, some say, of an American public that increasingly distrusts the federal government.”
Even liberal websites, however, discourage questions about 9/11, to the point where BooMan of the Booman Tribune had to preface a post at Daily Kos in 2005 by writing “I know this touches on verboten conspiracy theories, but this is a front-page NYT article.”
“It’s kind of hard to tell whether or not a new investigation will be launched,” Churkina concluded. “Many people don’t think this is going to be happening any time soon, even with such public figures, like Jesse Venture and other, calling for it.”
This video from RT was posted at YouTube on March 12, 2010.Kane
Raw Story
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Former Minnesota governor and one-time professional wrestler Jesse Ventura has run afoul of the Huffington Post’s no-conspiracy-theory policy, and he’s not happy about it.
“I can’t believe the Huffington Post today will practice censorship,” Ventura says in astonishment. “I’ve got news for them. … I won’t ever write for ‘em again.”
Ventura had posted an item on Tuesday which took note of a recent conference at which “more than one thousand architects and engineers signed a petition demanding that Congress begin a new investigation into the destruction of the World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11.” He also quoted a few paragraphs from his new book, American Conspiracies, to explain why some of those experts see signs of controlled demolition.
The item was featured on the front page of Huffington Post when it first went up, but after a few hours it vanished. All that appears now at its original location is an editor’s note saying, “The Huffington Post’s editorial policy, laid out in our blogger guidelines, prohibits the promotion and promulgation of conspiracy theories — including those about 9/11. As such, we have removed this post.”
The note is followed by three pages of comments, enthusiastically arguing the pros and cons of controlled demolition and other 9/11 theories, that were posted during the couple of hours before the entry was deleted and comments were closed.
Huffington Post’s own guidelines for its bloggers state, “We must — and do — reserve the right to remove objectionable, inaccurate, or inflammatory material and, if necessary, suspend or revoke blogging privileges. This also includes propagating conspiracy theories and blogging about behind-the-scenes housekeeping issues that are not of interest to the general public.”
Anastasia Churkina, a correspondent for RT, interviewed Ventura about the controversy. “He’s a man who doesn’t mince his words too much,” she reported on Thursday. “He was pretty blunt.”
“I can’t believe the Huffington Post today will practice censorship,” Ventura told her angrily. “They asked me to be a contributing editor and they said, ‘Write about anything you want.’ So it was the second time I did something — and they removed it?”
“Well, I’ve got news for them,” he continued. “I won’t ever write for ‘em again. … I won’t do a thing for the Huffington Post because I don’t like it when people censor what I have to say.”
“All I do is ask questions!” he exploded. “That’s what bugs me about 9/11. 9/11 is an event you’re not allowed to ask a question about. … Clearly they don’t want any questions on it.”
Ironically, Ventura had to go to RT, the English-language version of a Russian news channel, to tell his story. Although polls show that large numbers of Americans believe in a broad range of conspiracy theories, and a majority entertain doubts about the official story of 9/11, few of those questions ever appear in the mainstream media.
As Raw Story recently reported , “In November of 2007, an online article noted, ‘Nearly two-thirds of Americans think it is possible that some federal officials had specific warnings of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, but chose to ignore those warnings, according to a Scripps Howard News Service/Ohio University poll.’ A national survey of 811 adult residents of the United States conducted by Scripps and Ohio University found that more than a third believe in a broad smorgasbord of conspiracy theories including the attacks, international plots to rig oil prices, the plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the government’s knowledge of intelligent life from other worlds. The high percentage is a manifestation, some say, of an American public that increasingly distrusts the federal government.”
Even liberal websites, however, discourage questions about 9/11, to the point where BooMan of the Booman Tribune had to preface a post at Daily Kos in 2005 by writing “I know this touches on verboten conspiracy theories, but this is a front-page NYT article.”
“It’s kind of hard to tell whether or not a new investigation will be launched,” Churkina concluded. “Many people don’t think this is going to be happening any time soon, even with such public figures, like Jesse Venture and other, calling for it.”
This video from RT was posted at YouTube on March 12, 2010.
Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded all civilian domestic and international incoming and outgoing flights to and from the United States, a full El Al Boeing 747 took off from JFK bound for Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport.
The two El Al employee sources are not Israeli nationals but legal immigrants from Ecuador who were working in the United States for the airline.
The flight departed JFK at 4:11 pm and its departure was, according to the El Al sources, authorized by the direct intervention of the U.S. Department of Defense. U.S. military officials were on the scene at JFK and were personally involved with the airport and air traffic control authorities to clear the flight for take-off.
According to the 9/11 Commission report, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta ordered all civilian flights to be grounded at 9:45 am on September 11.
Full El Al flight took off on 9/11 from JFK to Tel Aviv 040310banner1
The New York Air Traffic control center’s audio tape of recollections of air traffic controllers made an hour and a half after the 9/11 attacks were destroyed by an air traffic control manager who did not face criminal charges for destroying physical evidence on the worst terrorist attack in American history. The Transportation Department later claimed the destruction of the tape was the result of mere “poor judgment.”
The El Al flight took off two days before commercial flights were permitted to resume on September 13. Private flights were only permitted to resume on September 14. On September 13, a chartered Lear jet flew three Saudis, including a member of the Saudi royal family, from Tampa to Lexington, Kentucky. On September 14, a chartered Northstar Aviation flight flew four Saudis from Providence, Rhode Island to Paris.
On August 22, 2005, WMR reported: “Four Americans flew with ‘Air Bin Laden’ flight transporting Bin Laden family members to Saudi Arabia and Europe nine days after 911. The post-911 domestic flights of Bin Laden family members out of the United States with the sanction of the Bush White House were not the only instances where Americans have flown with the family that spawned “Al Qaeda” leader Osama Bin Laden. WMR has obtained a passenger list from a September 20, 2001, Aero Services private charter flight from Le Bourget Airport, north of Paris, to Geneva, and on to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (King Abdulaziz International Airport-OEJN). On the list are a number of Bin Ladens, as well as four Americans, including a Los Angeles Police Department officer named Jason Blum who flew to Le Bourget from Los Angeles. A previous list provided to Sen. Frank Lautenberg showed Mr. Blum departing from the Bin Laden party in Boston. The newly obtained list shows he accompanied the Bin Ladens to Paris Le Bourget. The other three Americans on the passenger list are J.P. Buonono, Joseph Allen Wyka and Ricardo V. Pascetta.”
Although much has been written about the “Bin Laden” and other Saudi flights in the days after 9/11, the El Al flight on the afternoon of September 11 is the first instance of Israelis departing the United States while commercial traffic was grounded.
There have also been reports that the FBI seized FAA records concerning the events of 9/11 from the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center in Islip, Long Island. The ARTCC has responsibility for flights out of JFK.
Fox News host interrupts Obama 16 times in testy interview.
When President Obama agreed to be interviewed by Fox
News, he surely didn't expect to be soft-balled. But he
probably didn't foresee the interviewer interrupting him
more than a dozen times, and having to
repeatedly point that out.
Host Bret Baier insisted on discussing the parliamentary
procedures Democrats are mulling in order to squeeze
the health care bill through, and a visibly frustrated Obama kept urging him to focus the substantive issues.
"The reason that I think this conversation ends up being a little frustrating is because the focus, entirely, is on Washington process," he said. "And yes, I have said that is an ugly process. It was ugly when Republicans were in charge, it is ugly when Democrats are in charge."
Interrupted at 16 different points during the exchange, Obama demanded he be allowed to fully respond to the questions. "Bret, let me finish," he repeated a number of times.
When Baier accused the president of dodging his questions, the president responded, "Well, I'm trying to answer your questions and you keep on interrupting."
Story continues below...
The Fox News host repeatedly asked Obama about the any "special deals" his party may be making with lawmakers to win their votes, to which Obama responded the bill will be posted online soon for everyone to view.
At the end of the interview, he apologized to the president for interrupting him so often, claiming he was trying to get the "most for our buck."
On MSNBC's Countdown With Keith Olbermann, guest host Lawrence O'Donnell asked The Nation's Chris Hayes if the amount of interruptions in the interview was unseemly.
Hayes didn't mind, noting that "power should be pestered a little bit." But he accused Fox of "propagandizing on behalf of this certain, very narrow viewpoint" in trying to build distrust toward the legislation and the Democrats' parliamentary maneuvers.
"The more the conversation is about process, the less people like the bill, and the more that it's on the actual substantive things that are in the bill, the more they like the bill," he added.
End the MSNBC segment was a mash-up of all the times Obama was interrupted.
This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast March 17, 2010.
On Trey Grayson’s campaign site today is a quote from former Vice President Dick Cheney:
“I’m a lifelong conservative, and I can tell the real thing when I see it. I have looked at the records of both candidates in the race, and it is clear to me that Trey Grayson is right on the issues that matter – both on fiscal responsibility and on national security.”
Indeed, Cheney– the man who helped construct the lies that sold the Iraq War, who endorses perpetual conflict and endless spending in order to maintain over 700 military bases overseas, and who still delusionally calls himself a “conservative”– came out in support of Trey Grayson, one of Rand Paul’s primary opponents.
As odd as it might seem that in modern America Dick Cheney, (or anyone from the Bush administration), might still have any credibility left to anyone after the ruinous legacy that they left behind, the Grayson campaign has proudly seized the endorsement, attempting to paint Rand Paul as weak on terrorism in the same way that the Neocon establishment tried to do to his father during the 2008 presidential election.
Dick Cheney sticks nose in KY Senate race to back Rand Paul’s NeoCon opponent
Last week Grayson’s campaign released an ad that stated:
“Paul thinks it’s not a problem if Iran has a nuclear bomb”
Nine years after 9/11, candidates are still exploiting fear for their own political gain, painting non-interventionism as isolationism and pushing the debunked myth that Iran is close to developing a nuclear bomb when our own CIA said that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program back in 2003.
During his term as Vice President, Cheney ”ordered“ the media to “sell” a war with Iran to the American people, believing it needed only 35-40 percent of public support to do so. Even under the Obama administration the drumbeat to attack Iran has continued. Afraid that the American right might realize once again that the concept of pre-emptive war is not a conservative one, Cheney has thrown himself back into the picture, attempting to steer voters towards candidates who will continue the American pursuit of empire in the Middle East and Eurasia, and create new wars for his cronies to profit from.