Understanding the Global-warming Jihadists

“I was born with a chronic anxiety about the weather,” said John Burroughs in 1877. Today, anxiety about the weather is more common than ever, although it’s not inborn but cultivated in schoolrooms, through television sets and by lying, rapacious ex-vice presidents. And I have anxiety about the weather, too — especially when it’s being used to promote a destructive agenda.

This brings us to Climategate, the scandal everyone is talking about and that inspired British journalist James Delingpole to write “it’s [the climate con is] all unravelling now.” I only wish I could be so optimistic. Sure, we have the smoking gun of the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia, which provide evidence that we “deniers” were only denying a lie. And the erstwhile head of its Climatic Research Unit, Phil Jones — a con man with a science degree if ever there were one — had to resign in disgrace. But don’t for a moment confuse a smoking gun with a coup de grace, or being sacrificed for the team with waving the white flag. I say this because I long ago realized something about man’s nature, something that may sound like a gross exaggeration: If a person has a strong enough vested interest in believing 2+2=5, he will surely insist it is so — in the face of all evidence to the contrary. But before I talk about who the real deniers are and what is being denied, let’s discuss the ugly reality reaffirmed by Climategate.

Here is the lowdown in a nutshell: Governments have used billions of dollars of our money to fund fraudulent science, which, in turn, is used to justify policy that would steal untold billions more from us through taxation and the handicapping of the private sector. This will, of course, stifle the creation of wealth, but it will also be a transfer of it. But this would not be so much from the rich to the poor; it would be from the poor and middle class to the rich and well-connected. Carbon-credit con men such as Al Gore will add to their many millions, while subtracting from the many millions some of the latter’s few dollars. It would move us toward a situation in which we’d have two Americas, as John Edwards might say. One would be a lying, covetous ruling class of John Edwardses. The other would be the masses, who would be perpetually mired in serfdom.

Yet defeating the climate con won’t be easy, because it isn’t just money that drives the con men. In fact, many of them are so married the climate con that they have become one with their misguided notions. Call it the Zen of Being Wrong.

One reason not to do wrong is that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Obviously, Bill Clinton, John Edwards and Tiger Woods would never have felt the urge to lie about their affairs if they had never had affairs. Of course, the lying was immoral, but this is how one sin leads to another. A transgression leads to a lie, which leads to a full-blown cover-up, etc. And the deeper you dig that hole, the harder and more painful it is to climb out of it.

In the case of the climate con artists, the pain would be great and the price steep. Their creed has been likened to a religion, and in many ways it is. They aren’t global-warming theorists.

They are global-warming fundamentalists.

They have invested so much of their time, energy, emotion, ego and reputations in the climate con that to relinquish it would be to relinquish themselves; to call it a lie is to call their lives a lie. It’s just a bit like asking a Jihadist to give up Islam. These are not people who subscribe to AGW theory; they have submitted to it.

Then you have those who are using this religion to make money — and they and the true believers are often one and the same. These are the carbon-credit capitalists, the green-technology givers and greenback grabbers.

And we have to add to this the fact that all these people had become science’s Torquemadas, inquisitors bent on stifling inquisitiveness. Al Gore told us “The debate is over” as he and his co-religionists strove to root out heresy and sought to destroy the “deniers.” Thus, they have no reason to expect mercy. Surrender is simply not an option.

So forget about icebergs; the meltdown the climate con artists fear is that of their reputations, egos, finances and faith. Scientists or not, to admit error is not merely the alteration of a hypothesis to them; it is the loss of religion and meaning, the end of empire, the fall of Rome. It is complete and utter personal destruction.

Yet destruction is precisely what the climate-change con men would visit on the economies of nations in their delusional grip. Other lands, such as China and India, will never yield to such insanity. They may pay lip service to it, though, especially if doing so will encourage us to more thoroughly handicap ourselves. Then they can laugh and rise to prominence while we become the most recent great civilization to descend into backwater status.

As I write this, the climate-change con artists are meeting in Copenhagen, where useful-idiot communists are protesting in the streets while their standard bearers, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe and Bolivian President Evo Morales are railing against free markets and beating the red drum. Do you really think these folks care about the environment? The green that really concerns them is your money — and I do mean your money. Because if there is an “international” agreement to fight the phantom of climate change, you can bet your depreciating bottom dollar that we Americans will pay the freight. We are, after all, the world’s biggest energy suckers.

The question is, are we just the world’s biggest suckers?

Chavez, Mugabe and China are betting yes. And if we want to make fools out of them, we’ll cause radical climate change — to the political climate in Washington in 2010. It’s probably our last chance to prove who the fools really are.

Made in China

Importing America To Its Own Death…

During the Bolshevik Revolution that led to communist Russia, Comrade Vladimir Lenin said, “Sell the capitalists enough rope and they will hang themselves!”

Nearly 100 years later, Lenin’s predictions reveal his veracity with chilling fruition. The United States bleeds $11 trillion in debt. It suffers a $700 billion annual trade deficit, mostly with China, which by the way thrives as a communist nation selling us lots of ‘rope’, i.e., consumer goods. We import another $700 billion in oil annually from other countries. We borrow $2 billion daily to float our sinking economy. The average American’s credit card debt equals $9,425.00 according to NBC’s Brian Williams. We suffer 15 million unemployed American workers and 35 million subsisting on food stamps.

How did Lenin’s foreshadowing come to pass? How could he know that we would bring our downfall upon ourselves?

First of all, every empire in history fell to its own manifest destiny (ego), avarice and greed. Today, the U.S. empire features 572,000 military personnel on 700 bases in 120 countries around the world. Their purpose? Few Americans could tell you! The costs accelerate to unimaginable levels.

Secondly, major capitalists, the ‘gatekeepers’ or money changers, however you want to call them, ‘own’ the power to make their choices realized. Some call them the Rothchilds, Bilderbergers, etc. The fact remains, they pull all the money strings. We remain their puppets.

For instance, in the past 15 years, the second richest man in the world, Bill Gates, ‘persuaded’ our U.S. Congress to implement H-1B, H-2B and L-1 visas that brought foreign workers into this country to displace 1.0 million U.S. IT workers. How? Those visa beneficiaries arrived from third world countries and worked at a third the wage. Additionally, big manufacturing firms insourced jobs, outsourced jobs and offshored jobs. Maytag moved to Mexico. Levi Straus moved to India. Schwinn bikes moved to Taiwan, etc.

If you visit a Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Target, Sears, Penny’s, Kohl’s and hundreds of other retail outlets, you will notice 80 to 90 percent of the hard and soft goods “Made in China” ; “Made in Mexico” : “Made in Pakistan” : “Made in Bangladesh”, etc. The most popular cars sold in America originate from Japan, Korea and Germany.

Each year, China sells the United States $700 billion in goods. Unlike Clinton, we ‘inhale’ that much junk from China! The United States sells China $67 billion in goods annually as reported by Charles Gibson on ABC last week! How’s that for ‘free trade’ and you can see the communists figured out how to sell us enough ‘rope’ to kill ourselves—and we are! China holds nearly $1 trillion of our treasury bills. We feel the squeeze of our debt every year as we pay out over $540 billion in interest on our debt. Our leaders ‘keep’ us fighting at a cost to taxpayers of $12 billion a month wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for eight friggin’ years! Are you feeling incensed?

If you look inside the USA, you see Hormel, Tyson Chicken, McDonald’s, Berger Chef, Pizza Hut, Chipotle’s, Taco Bell, and many more as well as construction firms, landscaping firms, roofing firms and car washes hiring unlawful immigrants by the millions. At least 10 million unlawful immigrants work jobs at 21st century slave wages while our citizens stand in unemployment lines or live on welfare. At the same time, we lose our jobs to illegal aliens, or see our wages downgraded, or watch our schools, culture and language vanish in front of our eyes—those few corporate chiefs make horrific profits—while we pay for illegal aliens’ educations, medical care and incarceration. How did we arrive at this obscene juncture?

Because our corrupt capitalists can make many more billions of dollars! And, they can get away with it because their lobbyists “pay off” our U.S. Senators and House Reps to NOT enforce our laws against such activities. Of recent note, former U.S. House Rep. John “Duke” Cunningham serving an eight year jail sentence for taking $2.4 million in construction bribes. How about House Rep. William Jefferson hiding $100,000 in cash in his freezer?

How many scoundrel U.S. Congressional reps haven’t been caught? My estimate: dozens if not a hundred in the U.S. House and Senate.

Notice also, that AIG just awarded more annual bonuses of $6 to $10 million to their corporate bosses—after failing—and after we taxpayers bailed them out!

You cannot help but lament, “What a country!”

Not only that, we citizens fail to demand accountability. We citizens shop at Wal-Mart, Home Depot and other stores by the millions, which means we kill our own American jobs and manufacturing.

How can I say that? Just look at our economy. We’re in debt up to our nostrils! We’re dangling at the end of an economic rope bull-hooked into our wallets by 535 members of U.S. Congress and the last four presidents. And our newest president, Barack Obama, rides and talks the same bull!

As Mark Twain once said, “Suppose you were an idiot; and suppose you were a member of congress—ah, but I repeat myself.”

The greatest flaw of our founding fathers: not placing a 12 year term limit on every position in Congress. The cronyism, personal greed and outright materialism of most of them defy a sane man’s imagination.

Amazingly, the American voters stupidly re-elect such men as the late Teddy Kennedy for 44 years of incompetence, John McCain for 30 years of failing to protect our borders, Robert Byrd who can barely totter across the Senate floor, Arlen Spector with full blown cancer for 35 years and the list grows. Those men and some women bring death to this republic, but we elect them again and again to kill us and our futures.

You might think that importing 160,000 foreigners every month, in the form of legal immigrants, would stop with 14 million Americans unemployed and 35 million living on food stamps. But you would be wrong! Not only will Congress continue, but those 535 men and women will vote for an amnesty that will lead to adding 100 million people to this country in 26 years, over 70 million immigrants.

Lenin’s prophesy continues and Mark Twain remains right on the money—while the American people watch their language, culture and way of life swirl the toilet. America: made “in” and owned “by” China!

Do Not Blame Barack

Contrary to what my title indicates, I probably judge Barack Obama more harshly than most reading this page. I don’t think he is just a misguided ideologue or merely a creature of expediency. I believe, practically speaking, that he is an evil man. That is to say, while he is largely ignorant like so many others, he has developed an affinity for evil. He mistakes it for good.

Yet, to be blunt, Obama doesn’t alarm me as much as the average American. To explain why, I’ll present something Roman philosopher and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero said 2000 years ago when lamenting Julius Caesar’s rise to dictator:

Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions . . . . Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the ‘new, wonderful good society’ which shall now be Rome’s, interpreted to mean ‘more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.’ Julius was always an ambitious villain, but he is only one man.

Barack Obama is only one man. A bad man, yes, but he is a symptom more than a cause. Without millions of fawning Americans, he would just be a community agitator, vainly preaching Alinsky principles from a soapbox. Of course, he is a symptom that exacerbates the underlying problem, and symptomatic treatment — to ease immediate pain and hardship — is certainly in order. But it is only the worst of physicians who focuses only on symptoms while ignoring the cancer eating away at the patient’s midst.

Some of us lament the presence of self-professed communists such as Van Jones — and other assorted intellectual mutants, such as Cass Sunstein and John Holdren — in government, and how we elected a man who broke bread with self-professed communists such as Bill Ayers. But why complain now? We’ve had self-professed communists such as Bill Ayers — and other assorted intellectual mutants, such as Ward Churchill, Cass Sunstein and John Holdren — in academia for many decades. And good Americans still donated money to universities and still sent their most precious possessions, their children, to them. So, should it be any surprise that millions of these children would, knowing nothing and feeling all the wrongs things, flock to the polls and cast votes for people just like their teachers and professors? You may say that their parents knew nothing of these universities’ true nature. But it was their place to find out. And Obama did not create the modern academy. He is more a creation of it.

We also criticize Obama for saying “We no longer are [just] a Christian nation” and while speaking in Turkey that “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation.” But can we really say he’s wrong? Has Christmas not become completely commercialized? How many of us say grace with our families before meals? How many of us pray every day? How many Americans subscribe to the modern perversion of the “separation of church and state” idea? How many of us say “God Bless” upon parting? Have the majority of American “Christians” not descended into moral relativism? It is here that some will call me a religious nut. All right, but I simply note that a Christian nation would actually practice Christianity and that if we are satisfied to be only nominally Christian, it lends weight to the argument that we’re not actually Christian. Of course, we certainly can condemn Obama for attending a pseudo-Christian church and being part of the problem, but he didn’t create our secular age. He is more a creation of it.

One thing Obama certainly did help create is the tea-party phenomenon. It is the largest, most impressive grassroots movement I can remember and I truly hope it grows beyond what even the most zealous reader would prefer. Yet, when I hear the protesters complain about the violation of the Constitution, I have to wonder where they’ve been. Did they miss the activist 1947 “separation of church and state ruling”? Have they learned about FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society? Don’t they realize that the federal government long ago exceeded its constitutional bounds? Where is the constitutional mandate for Uncle Scam to involve itself in and/or fund housing, food stamps, farm subsidies, Medicaid, global-warming research, mass transit, and school sports programs? The fact is that most things the federal government has its claws into are none of its affair. Thus, to only now complain about constitutional trespasses is like having finally noted the invasion of Poland when the Nazis started bombing Great Britain.

We also have to ask how serious most Americans really are about respecting the Constitution. Here’s a little test for them: Are you willing to give up your Social Security in the name of constitutional adherence?

I thought so.

The average American has his version of acceptable constitutional violation, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg has hers, and Obama has his. And Obama didn’t create the “living document” mentality. He is more a creation of it.

Then there is our putrid popular culture. Effete Hollywood types — such as the Obama sycophants in this bizarre Harpo Productions video — thuggish rappers, MTV stoner types and the rest of our decadence czars helped galvanize the youth and propel the empty vessel to victory. Yet, while entertainment is a bastion of the left, it’s not entirely a creation of it. The reality is that we, the people, empowered them. We watched their movies; laughed at their salacious jokes; were titillated by their prurience; and tolerated their mainstreaming obscenity, homosexuality and gratuitous violence. We allowed our children to dress in their ghetto styles and imbibe pure and utter filth. Like with so many other things, we helped create our entertainment — a major symptom of spiritual malaise — and then it helped induce many secondary symptoms. And one of them is Obama.

Of course, nothing is more associated with that symptom than the Shill Media, but I think you know what’s coming. Who bought the mainstream papers for all those decades, watched the nightly news and bought all the lies? “How could people know?” you ask? Well, some certainly knew — and some of those knew better than others.

Like Cicero, I’m sure I sound quite condemnatory, but I’m not here to lay a curse or consign anyone to Hell. I don’t want to be found guilty of the George Bernard Shaw mistake G.K. Chesterton criticized most colorfully when he wrote

It is not seeing things as they are to think first of a Briareus with a hundred hands, and then call every man a cripple for only having two. It is not seeing things as they are to start with a vision of Argus with his hundred eyes, and then jeer at every man with two eyes as if he had only one. And it is not seeing things as they are to imagine a demigod of infinite mental clarity, who may or may not appear in the latter days of the earth, and then to see all men as idiots.

In reality, for us to have avoided that ever-repeated pattern of civilizational decline, the common man would have to be a very uncommon man, something, in the least, like a sublime moral philosopher. And, certainly, no person will have, metaphorically speaking, a hundred industrious hands, a hundred all-seeing eyes or even come close to enjoying demigod-like mental clarity. Yet a nation doesn’t have to resign itself to being blind and crippled, either. We can usually manage one more hand and eye.

Truth be known, when we elected Obama, the nation said “Look, ma, no hands!” with its eyes closed. It required corrupted judgment to be blind to what Obama was. Note that “corrupted” is different than “corrupt.” When saying a computer file is corrupted, there is no implication that it’s evil; rather, it simply means it no longer functions as it should.

This partially explains why facts often don’t matter today. Just as correct input may not yield correct output if fed into a malfunctioning computer, all the necessary facts may not yield a correct conclusion when processed by a corrupted mind. And anyone with a properly functioning virtue file would have sensed the lack of same in Obama. After all, there were so many indications, from his radical associations to his tolerance for infanticide (that’s what you call a clue) to the fact that he once allowed his then two-year-old daughter to listen to rap to his empty sloganeering. Yes, we could’ve . . . known.

Yet my point here is not about the average person, who isn’t reading substantive commentary anyway. It’s that even most of us who oppose Obama and are political are just political, content to fight the battle with one hand and one eye. So many of us — this includes readers and commentators — are satisfied with boilerplate; it’s Alinsky this and Alinsky that, San Fran Nan, Afghanistan and the Taliban, this bill and that political shill. This isn’t to say there’s not a place for such things, as many do need a course in politics 101. But if we want to have any chance of winning the war, we must move on to graduate work and fight it on the deepest levels, the spiritual and cultural. We must scrutinize ourselves and evaluate how we have been complicit in empowering the culture that spawns Barack Obamas. We must remember that those of us who are engaged are a minority weighed against an apathetic majority. A few stones however, can be substantial enough to tip the scales against a million pebbles. But this can only happen if we so greatly increase the weight of our virtue that it outweighs the vice that is everywhere.

I once heard a man of the cloth put it perfectly, saying “Everyone is in a different stage of conversion.” Every thought we contemplate, word we utter and action we take move us closer to or further away from perfection. And it’s always time for another hand and another eye.

Anti-Empire Report

Ridding The World of the Sickness of Pacifism…

Picture the scene: Afghanistan, two hijacked tankers filled with highly inflammable fuel, surrounded by a crowd of Afghans eager to syphon off some for free … What’s the last thing you want to do? Right — drop bombs on the tankers. That’s what a German military commander signaled an American drone airplane to do September 4. Kaboom!! At least 100 human beings incinerated. This incident has led to a lot of controversy in Germany, for Article 26 of Germany’s post-war Grundgesetz (Basic Law/Constitution) states: “Acts tending to and undertaken with intent to disturb the peaceful relations between nations, especially to prepare for a war of aggression, shall be unconstitutional. They shall be made a criminal offense.”

But NATO (aka the United States) can take satisfaction in the fact that the Germans have put their silly pacifism aside and acted like real men, trained military killers; although prior to this incident the Germans had engaged in some aerial and ground combat, there hadn’t been such a dramatic and publicized taking of civilian lives. Deutschland now has more than 4,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, the third largest contingent in the country after the US and Britain, and at home they’ve just finished building a monument to fallen members of the Bundeswehr (Federal Armed Forces), founded in 1955; 38 members (so far) have surrendered their young lives in Afghanistan.

In January 2007 I wrote in this report about how the US was pushing Germany in this direction; that circumstances at that time indicated that Washington might be losing patience with the pace of Germany’s submission to the empire’s needs. Germany declined to send troops to Iraq and sent only non-combat forces to Afghanistan, not quite good enough for the Pentagon warriors and their NATO allies. Germany’s leading news magazine, Der Spiegel, reported the following:

At a meeting in Washington, Bush administration officials, speaking in the context of Afghanistan, berated Karsten Voigt, German government representative for German-American relations: “You concentrate on rebuilding and peacekeeping, but the unpleasant things you leave to us.” … “The Germans have to learn to kill.”

A German officer at NATO headquarters was told by a British officer: “Every weekend we send home two metal coffins, while you Germans distribute crayons and woollen blankets.” Bruce George, the head of the British Defence Committee, said “some drink tea and beer and others risk their lives.”

A NATO colleague from Canada remarked that it was about time that “the Germans left their sleeping quarters and learned how to kill the Taliban.”

And in Quebec, a Canadian official told a German official: “We have the dead, you drink beer.” ¹

Ironically, in many other contexts since the end of World War II the Germans have been unable to disassociate themselves from the image of Nazi murderers and monsters.

Will there come the day when the Taliban and Iraqi insurgents will be mocked by “the Free World” for living in peace?

The United States has also engaged in a decades-long effort to wean Japan away from its post-WW2 pacifist constitution and foreign policy and set it back on the righteous path of again being a military power, only this time acting in coordination with US foreign policy needs.

“Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

“In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.” — Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, 1947, words long cherished by a large majority of the Japanese people.

In the triumphalism of the end of the Second World War, the American occupation of Japan, in the person of General Douglas MacArthur, played a major role in the creation of this constitution. But after the communists came to power in China in 1949, the United States opted for a strong Japan safely ensconced in the anti-communist camp. It’s been all downhill since then. Step by step … MacArthur himself ordered the creation of a “national police reserve”, which became the embryo of the future Japanese military … Visiting Tokyo in 1956, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told Japanese officials: “In the past, Japan had demonstrated her superiority over the Russians and over China. It was time for Japan to think again of being and acting like a Great Power.” ²… various US-Japanese security and defense cooperation treaties, which, for example, called on Japan to integrate its military technology with that of the US and NATO … the US supplying new sophisticated military aircraft and destroyers … all manner of Japanese logistical assistance to the US in its frequent military operations in Asia … repeated US pressure on Japan to increase its military budget and the size of its armed forces … more than a hundred US military bases in Japan, protected by Japanese armed forces … US-Japanese joint military exercises and joint research on a missile defense system … the US Ambassador to Japan, 2001: “I think the reality of circumstances in the world is going to suggest to the Japanese that they reinterpret or redefine Article 9.” ³ … under pressure from Washington, Japan sent several naval vessels to the Indian Ocean to refuel US and British warships as part of the Afghanistan campaign in 2002, then sent non-combat forces to Iraq to assist the American war as well as to East Timor, another made-in-America war scenario … Secretary of State Colin Powell, 2004: “If Japan is going to play a full role on the world stage and become a full active participating member of the Security Council, and have the kind of obligations that it would pick up as a member of the Security Council, Article Nine would have to be examined in that light.” ⁴…

One outcome or symptom of all this can perhaps be seen in the 2005 case of Kimiko Nezu, a 54-year-old Japanese teacher, who was punished by being transferred from school to school, by suspensions, salary cuts, and threats of dismissal because of her refusal to stand during the playing of the national anthem, a World War II song chosen as the anthem in 1999. She opposed the song because it was the same one sung as the Imperial Army set forth from Japan calling for an “eternal reign” of the emperor. At graduation ceremonies in 2004, 198 teachers refused to stand for the song. After a series of fines and disciplinary actions, Nezu and nine other teachers were the only protesters the following year. Nezu was then allowed to teach only when another teacher was present. ⁵

Which brings us to Italy, the remaining member of the World War Two Tripartite, or Axis. Article 11 of the 1948 Italian Constitution says in part: “Italy rejects war as a means for settling international controversies and as an instrument of aggression against the freedoms of others peoples.” ⁶

But Washington laid claim early to Italy’s post-war soul. In 1948 the United States all but took over the Italian election campaign to insure the Christian Democrats (CD) defeat of the Communist-Socialist candidate. (And the US remained an electoral force in Italy for the next three decades maintaining the CD in power. The Christian Democrats, in turn, were loyal Cold-War partners.) ⁷ In 1949, the US saw to it that Italy became a founding member of NATO. This was not seen as a threat to Article 11 because NATO has always painted itself as a “defensive” organization, even in 1999 when it carried out a 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia as both Italy and Germany supplied military aircraft and a NATO air base at Aviano, Italy served as the main hub for the daily bombing runs. For decades, Italy has been the home of US military bases and airfields used by Washington in one military adventure after another from Europe to Asia.

There are now some 3,000 Italian soldiers in Afghanistan performing a variety of services which enables the United States and NATO to engage in their bloody warfare. And 15 Italian soldiers have also lost their lives in that woeful land. The pressure on Italy, as on Germany, to become full-fledged combatants in Afghanistan and elsewhere is unrelenting from their NATO comrades. ⁸

The Berlin Wall — Another Cold War Myth

Within a few weeks many of the Western media can be expected to turn on their propaganda machines to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, November 9, 1989. All the Cold War clichés about The Free World vs. Communist Tyranny will be trotted out and the simple tale of how the wall came to be will be repeated: In 1961, the East Berlin communists built a wall to keep their oppressed citizens from escaping to West Berlin and freedom. Why? Because commies don’t like people to be free, to learn the “truth”. What other reason could there have been?

First of all, before the wall went up thousands of East Germans had been commuting to the West for jobs each day and then returned to the East in the evening. So they were clearly not being held in the East against their will. The wall was built primarily for two reasons:

1. The West was bedeviling the East with a vigorous campaign of recruiting East German professionals and skilled workers, who had been educated at the expense of the Communist government. This eventually led to a serious labor and production crisis in the East. As one indication of this, the New York Times reported in 1963: “West Berlin suffered economically from the wall by the loss of about 60,000 skilled workmen who had commuted daily from their homes in East Berlin to their places of work in West Berlin.” ⁹
2. During the 1950s, American coldwarriors in West Germany instituted a crude campaign of sabotage and subversion against East Germany designed to throw that country’s economic and administrative machinery out of gear. The CIA and other US intelligence and military services recruited, equipped, trained and financed German activist groups and individuals, of West and East, to carry out actions which ran the spectrum from terrorism to juvenile delinquency; anything to make life difficult for the East German people and weaken their support of the government; anything to make the commies look bad.

It was a remarkable undertaking. The United States and its agents used explosives, arson, short circuiting, and other methods to damage power stations, shipyards, canals, docks, public buildings, gas stations, public transportation, bridges, etc; they derailed freight trains, seriously injuring workers; burned 12 cars of a freight train and destroyed air pressure hoses of others; used acids to damage vital factory machinery; put sand in the turbine of a factory, bringing it to a standstill; set fire to a tile-producing factory; promoted work slow-downs in factories; killed 7,000 cows of a co-operative dairy through poisoning; added soap to powdered milk destined for East German schools; were in possession, when arrested, of a large quantity of the poison cantharidin with which it was planned to produce poisoned cigarettes to kill leading East Germans; set off stink bombs to disrupt political meetings; attempted to disrupt the World Youth Festival in East Berlin by sending out forged invitations, false promises of free bed and board, false notices of cancellations, etc.; carried out attacks on participants with explosives, firebombs, and tire-puncturing equipment; forged and distributed large quantities of food ration cards to cause confusion, shortages and resentment; sent out forged tax notices and other government directives and documents to foster disorganization and inefficiency within industry and unions … all this and much more. ¹⁰

Throughout the 1950s, the East Germans and the Soviet Union repeatedly lodged complaints with the Soviets’ erstwhile allies in the West and with the United Nations about specific sabotage and espionage activities and called for the closure of the offices in West Germany they claimed were responsible, and for which they provided names and addresses. Their complaints fell on deaf ears. Inevitably, the East Germans began to tighten up entry into the country from the West.

Let’s not forget that Eastern Europe became communist because Hitler, with the approval of the West, used it as a highway to reach the Soviet Union and wipe out Bolshevism forever. After the war, the Soviets were determined to close down the highway.

In 1999, USA Today reported: “When the Berlin Wall crumbled, East Germans imagined a life of freedom where consumer goods were abundant and hardships would fade. Ten years later, a remarkable 51% say they were happier with communism.” ¹¹

About the same time a new Russian proverb was born: “Everything the Communists said about Communism was a lie, but everything they said about capitalism turned out to be the truth.”

Health care: ignoring the huge red elephant in the room

In the frenzied search of recent months for a better way of delivering health care to the American people, the American media has often discussed health-care systems in other countries, particularly Europe. Usually, little, if anything, is mentioned about Cuba’s system, where everyone is covered, for everything, where pre-existing conditions do not matter, and no patient pays for anything; i.e., nothing at all. The reason the Cuban system is seldom mentioned in the mass media is probably that it’s kind of embarrassing that this otherwise poor country, laboring under the awful yoke of (choke, gasp) socialism, can deliver health care that most Americans can only dream of.

Now we have a new book by T.R. Reid, former correspondent for the Washington Post and commentator for National Public Radio. It’s called “The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care”. Reid does not avoid giving some credit to the Cuban system, but he makes sure that the reader knows that he’s not taken in by any commie propaganda. He refers to the Cuban government as “a totalitarian Communist fiefdom”, and adds: “In every country (except, perhaps, a police state like Cuba) there is one group of citizens who are not bound by the unified health care system: the rich.” ¹² Thus, the fact that Cuba has an egalitarian health care system is made to seem like something negative, something one could expect to find only in a police state.

In discussing the World Health Organization’s giving Cuba high marks for fairness in its system, Reid points out: “Of course, fairness and equal treatment extend only so far; when Fidel Castro himself fell ill in 2007, medical experts were flown in from Europe to treat him.” ¹³ Aha! I knew it! Americans, and not just the right-wing crazies, would never accept a medical system where everyone got completely free care for all ailments if the president ever got any kind of special treatment. Would they? We could at least ask them.

Speaking of the right-wing crazies, there was a report in the New York Times which said: “Tomorrow night, getting right into the thick of the battle,” the president will “carry his message to the people in a nationwide television and radio speech” fighting for enactment of his health reform bill, which opponents tagged as “socialized medicine” and “an entering wedge for the takeover of private medicine by the federal government.” The president was John F. Kennedy, the program was Medicare, the Times story was published on May 20, 1962. Despite the speech, the effort failed until passage in 1964. ¹⁴

And speaking of the totalitarian communist socialist fascist Cuban police-state dictatorship, Mr. Reid and others might be interested in an article I wrote which demonstrates that during the period of its revolution, Cuba has enjoyed one of the very best human-rights records in all of Latin America.

But how to get past a lifetime of conditioning and reach the American mind with that message? At the recent convention of the AFL-CIO, the country’s leading labor organization, there was a very progressive resolution put forth calling for the right of all Americans to travel to Cuba and for an end to the US embargo against the island nation. But at the end of the resolution the authors reminded us that they’re Americans, calling upon Cuba “to release all political prisoners”. ¹⁵

To appreciate what’s wrong with that resolution one must understand the following: The United States is to the Cuban government like al Qaeda is to Washington, only much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Cuban dissidents typically have had very close, indeed intimate, political and financial connections to American government officials, particularly in Havana through the United States Interests Section. Would the US government ignore a group of Americans receiving funds from al Qaeda and/or engaging in repeated meetings with known leaders of that organization? In the past few years, the American government has arrested a great many people in the US and abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al Qaeda, with a lot less evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents’ ties to the United States, evidence gathered by Cuban double agents. Virtually all of Cuba’s “political prisoners” are such dissidents.

Notes

1. Der Spiegel (Germany), November 20, 2006, p.24 ^?
2. Los Angeles Times, September 23, 1994 ^?
3. Washington Post, July 18, 2001 ^?
4. BBC, August 14, 2004 ^?
5. Washington Post, August 30, 2005 ^?
6. Wikipedia: “Article 11 of Italian Constitution” ^?
7. William Blum, “Killing Hope”, chapters 2 and 18 ^?
8. For further discussion of US opposition to Post-WW2 Axis pacifism, see “Former Axis Nations Abandon Post-World War II Military Restrictions“ ^?
9. New York Times, June 27, 1963, p.12 ^?
10. See Killing Hope, p.400, note 8, for a list of sources for the details of the sabotage and subversion ^?
11. USA Today, October 11, 1999, p.1 ^?
12. p.234 of Reid’s book ^?
13. Ibid., p.150-1 ^?
14. Washington Post, September 9, 2009 ^?
15. PDF of resolution ?

America Sees Red

There is a Jewish tale, in which a man is promised that he will be granted any wish he chooses, so long as his neighbour will get twice as much. After some thought he states his wish: please put me out one of my eyes! This is a very American attitude. An American refuses to get free medical care, if the condition is that others will get it, too. This we learned from the rallies against Obama’s health reform. The slogans and ideas of the demonstrators were just too weird!

A little girl asks how she will pay the bill for the reformed health services. This little girl — or rather, her parents – did not go out and ask how she was going to pay off the bills for the Iraqi and Afghani wars, how she was going to pay for the US involvement in Palestine, how she would repay the trillions given away to the bankers. Up until now, Big Government was good. It provided billions for AIG – ok. Billions for a new fighter jets – great. Billions to Blackwater to kill more Afghanis and Pakistanis – fine. Billions to Israel – perfect. But funding for health? What a communist notion!

The US health insurance problem is something we foreigners can’t understand. All of us, whether in England or Russia or Israel or France, have a national health service; we regret only that it is not as good as it used to be. But how can normal people prefer turning their health into a commodity and making it dependent on their bank accounts? This strange attitude is rooted in America’s older ills.

The US is an experimental ‘project’ – to see what would happen when a rather empty space is colonized by people of diverse backgrounds, ethnicities and affiliations, all moved by the desire to get rich and knowing no moral inhibitions but the Smith and Wesson. At first, they destroy the natives and the neighbours, afterwards they turn to cannibalism. If the Americans do not eat each other, it is only because they have found somebody else to eat together.

America was informed by love of profit and by hatred of communism. Her anticommunism is visceral, brutal, basic, inherent. The United States was created as the supreme sheriff, as the bastion of staunch individualism, of ‘homo homini lupus est’, of rejection of the notions of solidarity and mutual help. This was the plan of project designers.

Human nature being what it is, this satanic plan was partly upset by the inherent goodness of men and women. There are many wonderful Americans, rebels against crass materialism and unbridled greed, but they are isolated in their milieu; the best American characters are living and fighting alone. Such is Thoreau in his Walden. Such is Ishmael aboard the Pequod. Such is the Old Man at the Sea. Solidarity – togetherness – is conspicuous by its absence from American literature.

Every European state, from England to Russia, has its National Health, for every nation considers self a living body, and every member of the nation is as valued as a body part. All these nations are or were Christian and solidarist. Their citizens were embraced by one church. The US is different because of the anti-solidarist and anti-Christian spirit of her founders. Her Manifest Destiny did not connect to the faith. The US founders openly denied she was a Christian nation when concluding the Tripoli treaty, and their denial was sincere, because solidarity is a basic tenet of the Christian faith.

Every part of American society – Left, Right, churches, parties – are touched by this lack of compassion magnified by envy. The US Right is obsessed with anticommunism. This goes without saying for the imperialist Right of Ronald Reagan and George Bushes Junior and Senior. What is upsetting is that even the traditional anti-imperialist, nationalist American Right (the “paleocons”) are equally anti-communist and anti-Christian. I, for one, hoped they would understand their mistakes of yesteryear and become allies of other anti-imperialist forces including China, Russia and Iran. Alas, while they do not like neocons, and this is all to the good, they are no better themselves: Instead of fighting Arabs, they would rather kill Russians.

In a recent essay, Patrick Buchanan glorifies Adolf Hitler’s Germany and vilifies Communist Russia. He is sorry that the US allied with the Russians against the Germans, and not vice versa. Though Russia is no longer Communist, he would like to fight it anyway.

Mind you, I do not need smelling salts every time Hitler’s name is mentioned. I do not think everyone has to hate Hitler. I am at peace with people who admire Hitler for sentimental reasons: they like his solidarism, or German greatness or his vegetarianism, or his treatment of banks and bankers or unification of German lands. But there is a red line: people who admire Hitler because he attacked Russia and/or massacred civilians are my enemies too. In the battle of Stalingrad, I know which side I am on. And Buchanan is on the other side.

Similar anti-communist and anti-Russian notes prevail in other far-right white-nationalist writings. Be on the look out for the telling word “hordes”. For neocons, there are Muslim hordes, for the white-nationalists, these are Russian hordes, as in Patrick Buchanan: “By May 1945, Red Army hordes occupied all the great capitals of Central Europe: Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Berlin”. He forgot to explain that this happened because the people of these great capitals had decided to try their luck in Moscow under Hitler’s banners, and it may well happen again if this lesson is forgotten.

Our erstwhile friend Tom Sunic came from his search for a New Right to the Old Hitlerism: “The last shot in the European capital of Berlin was fired by a drunken Soviet soldier, killing the young French Waffen SS volunteer.” Well, God bless the Soviet soldier, drunken or sober, for his steady mark, and to hell with the SS-man, young or middle-aged, especially if he volunteered to do that butcher job.

Buchanan writes of “the most barbarous tyranny in history: the Bolshevik regime of the greatest terrorist of them all, Joseph Stalin”. Hatred of Stalin, the man who stopped Hitler, created modern Russia and resurrected the Russian Church after the Trotskyite excesses, is the common ground of these anticommunists. If they care at all about the Russian people as they pretend they do, they can ask them and find out that despite decades of anticommunist propaganda, Stalin is much loved by Russians. In the huge recent poll run by the Russian TV, Stalin was chosen ‘the most important personality in the whole history of Russia’ next to St Alexander Nevsky. The Russians remember that Stalin became the leader of an illiterate country devastated by civil war – a country of no industry, of dying agriculture, of no money and of plenty of debts, surrounded by enemies. He created industry, built housing and roads, created full free health care and comprehensive free education for all; he made Russia the best educated country in the world.

Unprejudiced Americans may find Stalin’s simple attitude to life and business rather to their liking. He’d have solved the current financial crisis by dispatching the bankers to chop wood somewhere deep in Oregon and by canceling all debts. The automobile plants of Detroit would be saved. When Stalin discovered a Zionist Lobby in his country, he smashed it on the spot instead of surrendering to them, while ordinary Jews who were loyal to Russia retained their positions. That is why his name is besmirched by anticommunists.

This is neither the time nor the place to deal with impossible exaggerations of alleged Soviet crimes. It is enough to state that they are fantastic. Nobody, even Stalin, could have killed one hundred million people out of one hundred sixty million, won a war and yet found himself with two hundred fifty million at the end of it.

This sick hatred of communism pours out of a column by another anti-imperialist right-winger, Chuck Baldwin. This “alternative candidate” fumed against the Chinese national flag, which is red, being hoisted at the White House’s South Lawn for an anniversary of the Chinese national holiday. He speaks of “the extreme offensiveness of flying the Communist Chinese flag”. This is “unbelievable, unreal, horrific, obscene, even traitorous… for the communist leaders of Mao’s China are the Butchers of Beijing, and this proves … the communist leanings of President Barack Obama”.

Further, Baldwin spreads the heart-rending story of the Chinese people’s suffering under the cruel leadership of Mao. If Communist leadership is so bad, how come the US is indebted to China to the tune of a few trillions? Before Mao, China was an impoverished semi-colony of the West, ‘the Chinese and dogs were not allowed’ into some parts of Shanghai, famines were annual, and Anglo-American navies studiously supplied the people with opium when they weren’t busy burning Beijing Palace. Now, after so many years of Communist tyranny, the Chinese are a shining example for the rest of the world.

In any case, flying the Chinese national flag at such events is not a proclamation of Communism as state doctrine, it is just a normal sign of courtesy. Likewise, flying the Israeli flag over the same lawn was not considered by the sane as a sign of submission to the Elders of Zion, nor flying the British flag as cancellation of Declaration of Independence. It is pity that the Obama administration allegedly got cold feet and decided to cancel the event. This suppleness of Obama’s back is not a good sign, as we have already learned in the Middle East.

The US Left is afraid of communism as well. In many, many articles and responses to the anti-Obama rallies, left-wing authors invariably stress the racism of the demonstrators. William Rivers Pitt called the “white, middle-aged, overweight, pissed-off right-wingers… a Klan rally minus the bedsheets and torches.” Susie Day pretends that the rallies were formed by those whites upset by Obama’s mouthing off to a white cop.

I am not a great believer in racism. Reputation of this sin is largely overblown, to the best of my knowledge. The Russians, who are supposed to be racists, loved Stalin, a Georgian. The French and the Germans, presumably also racist, had a Jewish prime minister and a foreign minister respectively in the last century. The Americans had no problem electing the black Obama. So much for racism. The American leftists who explain everything by racism are barking up the wrong tree, and they know it – but they dare not speak about the real problems.

This sick fear of human solidarity is American society’s knee-jerk reaction. It was activated by the Lobby in order to undermine President Obama. Because he spoke against Israeli expansion, because he mentioned Palestinian rights and sorrows, they fight against him on every possible occasion – even on the issue of national health. If Obama would just do everything they want in the Middle East, his domestic initiatives would pass as easily as a steamer through the Golden Gate.

Obama is attacked at every step. Look at the Middle East: Israel wants to bomb Iran. The President refused Netanyahu’s pleas to attack Tehran, but the Lobby doesn’t take no for an answer. In the Voice of the Lobby, a.k.a. The Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens impossibly claims: Obama Is Pushing Israel Toward War. How? Obama’s refusal to attack Iran is “pushing Israel toward a pre-emptive military strike on Iran”. The Voice of the Lobby does not hide the fact that such a strike could well usher in a “price of oil at $300 a barrel, a Middle East war, and American servicemen caught in between.” For a normal reader, the conclusion is clear: that’s why Obama forbade the Israelis to attack Iran. But the Lobby’s sophist offers another solution: let Obama’s America attack Iran instead of Israel. Obama’s refusal to interfere with Iran is presented as “Obama’s pushing Israel toward war”. Begorrah!

While the enemy is active, no friends are forthcoming to help the embattled American President. Many of us received and forwarded an email claiming that Obama supported the coup d’etat in Honduras. But much less attention was paid when Obama actually cut off US aid to Honduras in response to the coup.

Sensing this loneliness of the President, Netanyahu ridicules his mild and limited demands. There is no other word for Israel’s response – that they will freeze some settlements’ construction work for a few months. Such a response is only marginally better than “shove it”. This was followed by an announcement that some five hundred new Jewish homes will be built in the teeth of Obama’s demand. Obama does not dare to push intransigent Israel any more, for Congress and the Senate are in the Jewish pocket, and these powerful Jews prefer Zionism to Communism.

What a pity! Once upon a time, the Jews were all for Communism and none for Zionism, and the human lot markedly improved. In a remarkable article, Winston Churchill wrote in 1920s: the Jews are choosing between Communism and Zionism, let us direct them towards Zionism so they will isolate themselves and stop bothering us. His plan was realised: Jews were seduced by the Zionist idea, parted with communism and became its enemies. The result was quite sad: the positive contribution of Israeli Jews to mankind’s welfare is next to zero, unless you count the development of new torture and surveillance techniques. Jews elsewhere waste their abilities and time on the same rotten Zionist project, instead of helping their fellow countrymen to improve their lives. Winston Churchill lit a candle, and its light attracts the butterflies who die in its flames. The daring report of Judge Richard Goldstone is a first harbinger of a weather change: despite his pro-Israel sympathies he condemned the recent Zionist atrocities in Gaza.

Now it is time for Obama to move forward fearlessly. He should listen to his fellow- Americans. If they are so upset and worried by immigration, stop immigration completely. Send away illegal aliens, or legalise those who have lived long enough in America. Show people that you care about them.

Proceed with the health care. This field is ripe for revolution. Only in a time of crisis can a great leader enact radical reforms:

• Borrow the script from Illich’s Medical Nemesis, and minimise the cost of medical care. Do it the Cuban way.
• Treat health care like fire brigades – human bodies are no less important than buildings. Nobody is amazed that the fire brigades are not private. Turn health care into a public service, and make all doctors public employees.
• Ban private medical care.
• Provide medical help for everyone, at the state’s expense.
• Stop expensive life-saving, life-supporting devices. No transplantations, no complicated infertility treatments, no reproductive technology, no heart-and-brain operations, no abortions.
• Cut down research. Let incurable diseases remain incurable.
• Allow people to get born and to die; this is normal, as opposed to this morbid fear of death.
• While he’s at it, nationalise pharmaceutical companies. Let them sell medicine to the national health service at the cost of production.

Thus the national health system will become good, simple, comprehensive and inexpensive. Communism? Yes! Good for you? Yes, unless you are a wealthy gynecologist. And Comrade Stalin would approve of it! J

Anti-Empire Report

“And on the most exalted throne in the world sits nothing but a man’s arse.” Montaigne

If there’s anyone out there who is not already thoroughly cynical about those on the board of directors of the planet, the latest chapter in the saga of the bombing of PanAm 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland might just be enough to push them over the edge.

Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person ever convicted for the December 21, 1988 bombing, was released from his Scottish imprisonment August 21 supposedly because of his terminal cancer and sent home to Libya, where he received a hero’s welcome. President Obama said that the jubilant welcome Megrahi received was “highly objectionable”. His White House spokesman Robert Gibbs added that the welcoming scenes in Libya were “outrageous and disgusting”. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was “angry and repulsed”, while his foreign secretary, David Miliband, termed the celebratory images “deeply upsetting.” Miliband warned: “How the Libyan government handles itself in the next few days will be very significant in the way the world views Libya’s reentry into the civilized community of nations.” ¹

Ah yes, “the civilized community of nations”, that place we so often hear about but so seldom get to actually see. American officials, British officials, and Scottish officials know that Megrahi is innocent. They know that Iran financed the PFLP-GC, a Palestinian group, to carry out the bombing with the cooperation of Syria, in retaliation for the American naval ship, the Vincennes, shooting down an Iranian passenger plane in July of the same year, which took the lives of more people than did the 103 bombing. And it should be pointed out that the Vincennes captain, plus the officer in command of air warfare, and the crew were all awarded medals or ribbons afterward. ² No one in the US government or media found this objectionable or outrageous, or disgusting or repulsive. The United States has always insisted that the shooting down of the Iranian plane was an “accident”. Why then give awards to those responsible?

Today’s oh-so-civilized officials have known of Megrahi’s innocence since 1989. The Scottish judges who found Megrahi guilty know he’s innocent. They admit as much in their written final opinion. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigated Megrahi’s trial, knows it. They stated in 2007 that they had uncovered six separate grounds for believing the conviction may have been a miscarriage of justice, clearing the way for him to file a new appeal of his case. ³ The evidence for all this is considerable. And most importantly, there is no evidence that Megrahi was involved in the act of terror.

The first step of the alleged crime, sine qua non — loading the bomb into a suitcase at the Malta airport — for this there was no witness, no video, no document, no fingerprints, nothing to tie Megrahi to the particular brown Samsonite suitcase, no past history of terrorism, no forensic evidence of any kind linking him to such an act.

And the court admitted it: “The absence of any explanation of the method by which the primary suitcase might have been placed on board KM180 [Air Malta to Frankfurt] is a major difficulty for the Crown case.” ⁴

The scenario implicating Iran, Syria, and the PFLP-GC was the Original Official Version, endorsed by the US, UK, Scotland, even West Germany — guaranteed, sworn to, scout’s honor, case closed — until the buildup to the Gulf War came along in 1990 and the support of Iran and Syria was needed for the broad Middle East coalition the United States was readying for the ouster of Iraq’s troops from Kuwait. Washington was also anxious to achieve the release of American hostages held in Lebanon by groups close to Iran. Thus it was that the scurrying sound of backtracking could be heard in the corridors of the White House. Suddenly, in October 1990, there was a New Official Version: it was Libya — the Arab state least supportive of the US build-up to the Gulf War and the sanctions imposed against Iraq — that was behind the bombing after all, declared Washington.

The two Libyans were formally indicted in the US and Scotland on Nov. 14, 1991. Within the next 20 days, the remaining four American hostages were released in Lebanon along with the most prominent British hostage, Terry Waite. ⁵

In order to be returned to Libya, Megrahi had to cancel his appeal. It was the appeal, not his health, that concerned the Brits and the Americans. Dr. Jim Swire of Britain, whose daughter died over Lockerbie, is a member of UK Families Flight 103, which wants a public inquiry into the crash. “If he goes back to Libya,” Swire says, “it will be a bitter pill to swallow, as an appeal would reveal the fallacies in the prosecution case. … I’ve lost faith in the Scottish criminal justice system, but if the appeal is heard, there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that the prosecution case will survive.” ⁶

And a reversal of the verdict would mean that the civilized and venerable governments of the United States and the United Kingdom would stand exposed as having lived a monumental lie for almost 20 years and imprisoned a man they knew to be innocent for eight years.

The Sunday Times (London) recently reported: “American intelligence documents [of 1989, from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)] blaming Iran for the Lockerbie bombing would have been produced in court if the Libyan convicted of Britain’s worst terrorist attack had not dropped his appeal.” Added the Times: “The DIA briefing discounted Libya’s involvement in the bombing on the basis that there was ‘no current credible intelligence’ implicating her.” ⁷

If the three governments involved really believed that Megrahi was guilty of murdering 270 of their people, it’s highly unlikely that they would have released their grip on him. Or is even that too much civilized behavior to expect.

One final note: Many people are under the impression that Libyan Leader Moammar Qaddafi has admitted on more than one occasion to Libya’s guilt in the PanAm 103 bombing. This is not so. Instead, he has stated that Libya would take “responsibility” for the crime. He has said this purely to get the heavy international sanctions against his country lifted. At various times, both he and his son have explicitly denied any Libyan role in the bombing.

Humankind shall never fly

All those angry people. Yelling at the president and members of Congress about how the proposed government health plan, and Obama himself, are “socialist”. (See the poster of Obama as the Joker character from Batman with “Socialism” in large letters, as the only word.⁸) These good folks wanna get their health care through good ol’ capitalism; better no health care at all than godless-atheist commie health care; better to see your child die than have her saved by a Marxist-Stalinist-collective doctor who works for the government. But these screaming, heckling Americans — like most of their countrymen — might be rather surprised to discover that they don’t really believe what they think they believe. I wrote an essay several years ago, which is still perfectly applicable today, entitled “The United States invades, bombs, and kills for it, but do Americans really believe in free enterprise?”

A common refrain, explicit or implicit, amongst the recent health-care hecklers is that the government can’t do anything better or cheaper than private corporations. Studies, however, have clearly indicated otherwise. In 2003, US federal agencies examined 17,595 federal jobs and found civil servants to be superior to contractors 89 percent of the time. The following year, a study to determine whether 12,573 federal jobs could be done more efficiently by private contractors found in-house workers winning 91 percent of the time, according to an Office of Management and Budget report. And in 2005, a study of tens of thousands of government positions concluded that federal workers had won the job competitions more than 80 percent of the time. All these studies, it should be kept in mind, took place under the administration of George W. Bush, who, upon taking office in 2001, declared it his top management priority that federal workers should compete with contractors for as many as 850,000 government jobs. ⁹ Thus, any pressure to influence the outcome of these studies would have been in the opposite direction — putting the outside contractors in the best light.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Boys of Capital have been chortling in their martinis about the death of socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century — without exception — was either overthrown, invaded, corrupted, perverted, subverted, destabilized, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States and its allies. Not one socialist government or movement — from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the FMLN in El Salvador — not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home.

It’s as if the Wright brothers’ first experiments with flying machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-fearing folk of the world looked upon these catastrophes, nodded their heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Humankind shall never fly.

The continual selling of the Afghanistan war

“But we must never forget,” said President Obama recently, “this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.” ¹⁰

Obama was speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the ultra-nationalist group whose members would not question such sentiments. Neither would most Americans, including many of those who express opposition to the war when polled. It’s simple — We’re fighting terrorism in Afghanistan. We’re fighting the same people who attacked New York and Washington. Never mind that out of the tens of thousands the United States and its NATO front have killed in Afghanistan not one has been identified as having had anything to do with the events of September 11, 2001. Never mind that the “plot to kill Americans” in 2001 was hatched in Germany and the United States at least as much as in Afghanistan. What is needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? A room with some chairs? What does “an even larger safe haven” mean? A larger room with more chairs? Perhaps a blackboard? Terrorists intent upon attacking the United States can meet almost anywhere, with Afghanistan probably being one of the worst places for them, given the American occupation.

As to “plotting to do so again” … there’s no reason to assume that the United States has any concrete information of this, anymore than did Bush or Cheney who tried to scare us in the same way for more than seven years to enable them to carry out their agenda.

There are many people in Afghanistan who deeply resent the US presence there and the drones that fly overhead and drop bombs on houses, wedding parties, and funerals. One doesn’t have to be a member of al Qaeda to feel this way. There doesn’t even have to be such a thing as a “member of al Qaeda”. It tells us nothing that some of them can be called “al Qaeda”. Almost every individual or group in that part of the world not in love with US foreign policy, which Washington wishes to stigmatize, is charged with being associated with, or being a member of, al Qaeda, as if there’s a precise and meaningful distinction between people retaliating against American aggression while being a member of al Qaeda and people retaliating against American aggression while NOT being a member of al Qaeda; as if al Qaeda gives out membership cards to fit in your wallet, as if there are chapters of al Qaeda that put out a weekly newsletter and hold a potluck on the first Monday of each month.

In any event, as in Iraq, the American “war on terrorism” in Afghanistan regularly and routinely creates new anti-American terrorists. This is scarcely in dispute even at the Pentagon.

The only “necessity” that draws the United States to Afghanistan is the need for oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea area, the establishment of military bases in this country that is surrounded by the oil-rich Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf regions, and making it easier to watch and pressure next-door Iran. What more could any respectable imperialist nation desire?

But the war against the Taliban can’t be won. Except by killing everyone in Afghanistan. The United States should negotiate the pipelines with the Taliban, as the Clinton administration unsuccessfully tried to do, and then get out.

The revolution was televised

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag [heroin] and skip out for beer during commercials.
Because the revolution will not be televised. …

There will be no highlights on the eleven o’clock news
The revolution will not be right back after a message
The revolution will not go better with Coke
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath
The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised

These are some of the lines of Gil Scott-Heron’s song that told people in the 1970s (which, I maintain, were just as ’60ish as the fabled 1960s) that a revolution was coming, that they would no longer be able to live their normal daily life, that they should no longer want to live their normal daily life, that they would have to learn to be more serious about this thing they were always prattling about, this thing they called “revolution”.

Fast Forward to 2009 … Gil Scott-Heron, now a ripe old 60, was recently interviewed by the Washington Post:

WP: In the early 1970s, you came out with “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” about the erosion of democracy in America. You all but predicted that there would be a revolution in which a brainwashed nation would come to its senses. What do you think now? Did we have a revolution?

GS-H: Yes, the election of President Obama was the revolution. ¹¹

Oh? So that’s it? That’s what we took clubs over our heads for? Tear gas, jail cells, and permanent police and FBI files? Published a million issues of the underground press? To get a president who doesn’t have a revolutionary bone in his body? Not a muscle or nerve or tissue or organ that seriously questions cherished establishment beliefs concerning terrorism, permanent war, Israel, torture, marijuana, health care, and the primacy of profit over the environment and all else? Karl Marx is surely turning over in his London grave. If the modern counter-revolutionary United States had existed at the time of the American revolution, it would have crushed that revolution. And a colonial (white) Barack Obama would have worked diligently to achieve some sort of bi-partisan compromise with the King of England, telling him we need to look forward, not backward.

Yugoslavia

During 1998-1999, the United States used the Kosovo conflict to reaffirm its hegemonic role in Europe. US officials deliberately undercut a potential diplomatic solution to the Kosovo war; instead of using diplomacy to resolve the conflict, the United States sought a military solution in which NATO power could once again be demonstrated. The resulting air war, in 1999, succeeded in fully establishing the continued relevance of NATO, thus affirming US hegemony in Europe and undercutting European proclivities for foreign policy independence.

– David Gibbs, “First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia“

There’s no issue of the recent past that has caused more friction internationally amongst those on the left than the question of what really took place in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Gibbs’ new book explores many of the myths surrounding this very complicated and controversial slice of history, particularly those dealing with the supposed humanitarian motivation behind the Western powers intervention and the many alleged Serbian atrocities.

Notes

1. Washington Post, August 22 and August 26, 2009 ^↩
2. Newsweek magazine, July 13, 1992 ^↩
3. Sunday Herald (Scotland), August 17, 2009 ^↩
4. “Opinion of the Court”, Par. 39, issued following the trial in the Hague in 2001 ^↩
5. Read many further details about the case at http://killinghope.org/bblum6/panam.htm ^↩
6. The Independent (London daily), April 26, 2009 ^↩
7. Sunday Times (London), August 16, 2009 ^↩
8. Washington Post, August 6, 2009, p.C2 ^↩
9. Washington Post, June 8, 2005 and March 23, 2006 for this citation plus the three studies mentioned ^↩
10. Talk given at VFW convention in Phoenix, Arizona, August 17, 2009 ^↩
11. Washington Post, August 26, 2009 ^↩

Money-Lender Bernanke Should Be Fired

“GET AHOLD OF FIFTY OF THE WEALTHIEST JEWISH FINANCIERS,” urged Henry Ford in his Dearborn Independent “and you will put an end to all wars.”

Ford’s warning was presaged by Rabbi Reichorn speaking at the funeral of Grand Rabbi Simeon Ben-Judah in 1869: “Thanks to the power of our International Banks we have forced Christians into countless wars. Our banks grow fat on Christian wars. Millions of Christians have been swept off the face of the earth by wars – and the end is not yet.”

And from the 20th Century German economist, Werner Sombert: “In the TALMUD you will find that the Jews made an art of lending money. They fathomed all the secrets that lay hidden in money. They became Lords of Money and Lords of the World.”

If any should ignore these quotes as being ‘Anti-Semitic,’ President Bill Clinton’s mentor, Professor Carroll Quigley, affirmed all of the above in his 1966 book Tragedy and Hope:

“A network of international financiers exists who have no aversion to cooperating with the Communists or any other groups to reach their aims. I know of the operations of this financial network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted in the early 1960s to examine its papers and secret records.” View All Quotes Here.

And now with Ben Shalom Bernanke, the chief Jewish money-lender (WITH INTEREST) of the Fed, appointed by Obama for a second term, the necks of Christian Americans are being squeezed into further deadly servitude by war-funding (WITH INTEREST) Jews.

WHY BERNANKE SHOULD BE FIRED

“THE VERY PEOPLE WHO DEVISED THE POLICIES THAT PRODUCED THE MESS WE ARE NOW IN,” writes Thomas Woods in his best-seller, Meltdown, “are now posing as the wise public servants who will show us the way out.”

Any idiot will tell you that Ben Shalom Bernanke, the chief Jewish money-lender of the United States of America, is at the top of the list of high-finance Jews who got America into the current economic malaise in the first place.

Succeeding Alan Greenspan in 2006 after serving on the Board of Governors since 2002, Bernanke was in a position to know that a pending housing bubble explosion due to the Fed’s easy credit was about to burst upon America – as it indeed did in August of 2008.

When the “wise public servants,” that is, the world’s central bankers met last week in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, held August 20-21, Bernanke delivered to his fellow Jewish international bankers the opening address: Reflections On A Year Of Crisis.

Bernanke reflected in his speech that he had presided over a similar gathering a year ago at a time when the financial crisis was thought—at least by the international Jewish money lenders—to be relatively under control. “While there were signs of a slowdown,” Bernanke said, “there was little to suggest that the financial situation was about to take a sharp turn for the worse.” (Did Bernanke say this with a straight face?)

Yet for all of his education in monetary policy, Bernanke ignored the mainstream media’s warnings, reported as early as April of 2006, of rising housing prices conjoined with falling housing sales. A tell-tale sign that the housing bubble was about to burst was that rental properties did not follow the trend with its own rising prices, but remained stable.

If we were to grade Bernanke’s perfomance on a curve along with the performance of his fellow Jewish banksters, then Ben Shalom Bernanke would get at least a passing grade.

But if ordinary journalists warned us of a pending economic crisis as early as 2006, then by comparison, Bernanke flunked. Why should a flunkee be given another chance? (Because Obama is ruled by Jews, that’s why.)

WHERE’S THE $2 TRILLION BEN?

THE DUNCE BERNANKE ALSO APPEARS to be a lying thief. He has refused to provide the public, or even the relevant congressional committees, with information on the trillions of dollars in loans that were made through the Fed’s special lending facilities.

As Dean Baker of The Guardian points out, the information we do have, is not encouraging. At the peak of the financial crisis in October of 2008, the Jewish bank, Goldman Sachs, converted itself from an investment bank into a bank holding company so that it could tap an FDIC loan guarantee programme.

Remarkably, Bernanke allowed Goldman Sachs to continue to act as an investment bank, taking highly speculative positions even after it had borrowed $28bn with the FDIC’s guarantee. View Dean Baker’s Article Here & Here.

How is it that only after six months since Goldman Sachs received a bailout from US taxpayers, Goldman’s CEO, the Jew, Lloyd Blankfein, announced a profit of $2 billion on April 14, 2008, one day before enslaved Gentiles paid their taxes? Does this not give us a hint where Bernanke’s secret $2 trillion went? (Synagogue buddies always take care of their own.)

If Ben Shalom Bernanke was in any other line of work, he would never be re-appointed. This would be like the captain of the Titanic asking for another command based on how quickly he swam to shore while everyone else drowned.

But in spite of the low standards upon which Jewish money-lenders base their actions before the ‘dumb goys,’ Bernanke and his fellow Jewish banksters always get their way…

http://www.realzionistnews.com/?p=431

Seizing Power and Property

Governments, local, county, state or federal, are artificial entities created by the people. Governments, collective organizations, were created to protect the life, liberty and property of each and every person.

Frederic Bastiat said: “If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.” [1]

Individuals cannot transfer rights or powers they do not inherently possess to an artificial government entity. One cannot bestow a right or privilege that one does not possess – those powers that each and every person possessed prior to the establishment of said government. Individuals may not legally plunder the property or resources of others, kill people, impose moral sanctions, or a plethora of other regulations, public and private extortions that governments regularly engage in.

Bastiat said: “Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?” [2]

The government, constitutionally, is limited only to those functions in which an individual citizen has a right to act. The government has derived its powers from the governed. People cannot delegate powers it does not possess to its creation. John Locke explained the concept: “For nobody can transfer to another more power than he has in himself and nobody has an absolute arbitrary power over himself, or over any other, to destroy his own life, or take away the life of property of another.” [3]

For instance, if Citizen A has a vehicle and Citizen B doesn’t, Citizen B cannot arbitrarily seize citizen A’s vehicle. That would be stealing! Citizen B, despite the fact that he may lust after Citizen A’s vehicle, cannot legally delegate a government entity to take Citizen A’s vehicle in his behalf. If the government usurps such authority, that would constitute public plundering – the road to tyranny. America is obviously well down that road, given the current pandemic public plundering sanctioned and facilitated by the government.

The vehicle analogy is also applicable to car dealerships, many of which are being illegally seized and transferred to other parties. The following letter appeared in a Florida newspaper in late May 2009: “My name is George C. Joseph. I am the sole owner of Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu, a family owned and operated business in Melbourne, Florida. My family bought and paid for this automobile franchise 35 years ago in 1974. I am the second generation to manage this business. We currently employ 50+ people and before the economic slowdown we employed over 70 local people. We are active in the community and the local chamber of commerce. We deal with several dozen local vendors on a day to day basis and many more during a month. All depend on our business for part of their livelihood. We are financially strong with great respect in the market place and community. We have strong local presence and stability. I work every day the store is open, nine to ten hours a day. I know most of our customers and all our employees. Sunshine Dodge is my life. On Thursday, May 14, 2009 I was notified that my Dodge franchise, that we purchased, will be taken away from my family on June 9, 2009 without compensation and given to another dealer at no cost to them. My new vehicle inventory consists of 125 vehicles with a financed balance of 3 million dollars. This inventory becomes impossible to sell with no factory incentives beyond June 9, 2009. Without the Dodge franchise we can no longer sell a new Dodge as “new,” nor will we be able to do any warranty service work. Additionally, my Dodge parts inventory, (approximately $300,000.) is virtually worthless without the ability to perform warranty service. There is no offer from Chrysler to buy back the vehicles or parts inventory. Our facility was recently totally renovated at Chrysler’s insistence, incurring a multi-million dollar debt in the form of a mortgage at Sun Trust Bank. HOW IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CAN THIS HAPPEN? THIS IS A PRIVATE BUSINESS NOT A GOVERNMENT ENTITY. This is beyond imagination! My business is being stolen from me through NO FAULT OF OUR OWN. We did NOTHING wrong. This atrocity will most likely force my family into bankruptcy. This will also cause our 50+ employees to be unemployed. How will they provide for their families? This is a total economic disaster. HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN IN A FREE MARKET ECONOMY IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?

I am certain that George Joseph is just one of many dealers whose businesses have been seized by major car manufacturers, sanctioned by the bankers directing the current administration’s spoils system of rewarding campaign contributors, friends and corporate allies. This is a blatant Communistic redistribution of property. The Elite have no loyalties – other than to each other.

Unfortunately, government power was usurped long ago by the Elite, the majority of them lawyers, who impose laws favorable to themselves and their corporate cohorts but disastrous to the common citizen. To keep us fighting among ourselves, the Elite fashioned political parties. The sincere Republican and Democrat citizens are so preoccupied blaming the specific parties that they fail to recognize that the Elite within both parties utilize the spoils system – no matter which party is in power. Politicians are like professional wrestlers with orchestrated differences who choreograph their moves and celebrate after each match. Citizens naively believe the rhetoric because we hope things will improve while government Elites of both parties plunder our lives, liberties and pockets. We have all become enslaved and ransacked by a government that was “hired” to protect us from such egregious abuse.

In the 1700s the term “slave’ was applied to all indentured servants. Both black and white servants were granted their freedom as serving a specified length of time – typically seven years. Black and white slaves worked, lived, and played together, apparently indifferent to skin color differences. Racism was absent. That mutual acceptance was artificially altered when the minority colonial Elites, concerned about possible rebellion from the majority non-voting lower classes, took firm measures to divide poor whites and blacks “both socially and economically.” The bulk of society was composed of servants, landless tenants or small yeomen who owned inconsequential land that the Elite didn’t want. The Elite established a “divide and conquer” tactic that is still very much in place in most societies. [4]

Historian Edmund S. Morgan pointed out, “For those with eyes to see, there was an obvious lesson in the rebellion. Resentment of an alien race might be more powerful than resentment of an upper class.” [5]

Edward Bernays, the grand master of propaganda stated: “We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.” [6]

The government and their compliant corporate press mold and manage our perceptions and prefer that we focus our anger and attention on numerous distractions – the illegal aliens, illusive terrorists, same-sex marriages, welfare recipients, North Korean testing, whether the CIA lied or was it Pelosi, Islamic fundamentalism, whether torture photos should be released or the current Supreme Court nominee, as if one court appointment can change the political landscape. The fact is that the government Elite set up this entire environment of contention to divert our attention from their treacherous unconstitutional, criminal activities – in both parties. This is all part of America’s drive into a One World Order, now hyper accelerated under the current administration.

You might ask – how did government Elites create the current environment. Decades ago the government abandoned the constitutional principles of non entanglement with foreign countries. Government officials are no longer public servants but private servants to deep-pocketed multinational corporations whose money keeps ego-driven politicians in power. Those same multinational corporations control the media flow of information in order to keep the people in an ignorant trance. Character-challenged politicians, mesmerized by power and money, cater to the insatiable greed of the privileged Elite under the pretext of spreading democracy, ousting cruel dictators, restricting the spread of Communism, Nazism, Fascism or terrorism.

The CIA created al Qaeda, the database and instigated Islamic fundamentalism by training 100,000 fundamentalist Muslim Mujahadeen. The CIA-friendly Zbigniew Brzezinski revealed that, unbeknownst to the American public and Congress, that Trilateralist Jimmy Carter authorized $500 million on July 3, 1979 to create an international terrorist movement that would spread Islamic fundamentalism throughout Central Asia in order to destabilize the Soviet Union, another made-in-America enemy that had served the purpose of its creation and now had to be dismantled. The CIA called this Operation Cyclone and functioned from 1979 to 1989 at a cost of $20-30 million per year beginning in 1980 which rose to $630 million per year in 1987. The U.S. poured another $4 billion into setting up Islamic training schools in Pakistan (Taliban means student). Young zealots were recruited and sent to the CIA’s spy training camp in Virginia, where future members of al Qaeda were taught sabotage skills – terrorism. Young Afghans, Egyptian and Jordanian Arabs and some African American Muslims were instructed in the latest sabotage skills.Underground Dissident [7]

Taxpayer funds financed the I-hate-America textbooks for Muslim students. Prior to 1967, Islamic fundamentalism was a relatively small movement. In the early 1980’s, the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) gave a taxpayer funded grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and it’s Center for Afghanistan Studies to develop specialized textbooks. For more than twenty years the U.S. spent millions of dollars producing fanatical Islamic schoolbooks for distribution in Afghanistan, a country now known for its terrorist training camps. The schoolbooks, used throughout the 1990s for the country’s core curriculum, included illustrations of guns, bullets, soldiers, and mines to indoctrinate young minds towards violent destruction. Who authorized this hateful instruction for young impressionable minds? [8]

For $190,000 a year, Donald Rumsfeld sat on the board and “attended nearly all of the board meetings” of the Swiss-based ABB Company between 1990 and February 2001. [9] In 2000 (based on a Clinton era contract) ABB sold $200 million worth of components to North Korea to allow construction of two nuclear reactors. Currently, there are concerns about their activities. In December 1983 and again in March 1984, Ronald Reagan sent his personal emissary, Donald Rumsfeld, a former Secretary of Defense, to meet with Saddam Hussein along with Reagan’s handwritten note. This first meeting, on December 20, 1983, was for the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Iraq and the United States, the first since the 1967 war. We formally restored diplomatic relations with Iraq in November 1984. Then, Rumsfeld and his corporate cronies secretly supplied Saddam’s military with the components to build chemical and biological weapons. Rumsfeld is just one example from dozens of Elites who repeatedly shift from boardroom to government office while stuffing their pockets from both positions.

David Rockefeller admitted in his relatively-recent book: “For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” [10] What further proof do we need of a pervasive conspiracy – just look at the mounting evidence and forget the mesmerizing, feel-good political jargon emanating from Washington.

Footnotes:

1, The Law, The Classic Blueprint for a Just Society by Frederic Bastiat, Foundation for Economic Research, New York, pp. 2-3
2, The Law, The Classic Blueprint for a Just Society by Frederic Bastiat, Foundation for Economic Research, New York, pp. 2-3
3, Locke, John, 1632-1704. Two Treatises of Government: of Civil Government Book II, p. 135
4, Divided, the South’s Inner Civil War by David Williams, The New Press, New York, 2008, p. 15
5, American Slavery, American Freedom by Edmund S. Morgan, W.W. Norton & Co., 2003, pp. 269-270
6, Propaganda by Edward Bernays, Organizing Chaos, p. 37
7, How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahadeen: Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski Le Nouvel Observateur (France), January 15-21, 1998, p. 76; The CIA’s “Operation Cyclone” – Stirring the Hornet’s Nest of Islamic Unrest, October 27, 2002,
8, From U.S., the ABC’s of Jihad; Violent Soviet-Era Textbooks Complicate Afghan Education Efforts by Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway, Washington Post, March 23, 2002
9, Rumsfeld was on ABB board during deal with North Korea
10, David Rockefeller: Memoirs by David Rockefeller, Random House, owned since 1998 by the large German private media corporation Bertelsmann, 2002, p. 405

Keeping Track of the Empire’s Crimes

If you catch the CIA with its hand in the cookie jar and the Agency admits the obvious — what your eyes can plainly see — that its hand is indeed in the cookie jar, it means one of two things: a) the CIA’s hand is in several other cookie jars at the same time which you don’t know about and they hope that by confessing to the one instance they can keep the others covered up; or b) its hand is not really in the cookie jar — it’s an illusion to throw you off the right scent — but they want you to believe it.

There have been numerous news stories in recent months about secret CIA programs, hidden from Congress, inspired by former vice-president Dick Cheney, in operation since the September 11 terrorist attacks, involving assassination of al Qaeda operatives or other non-believers-in-the-Empire abroad without the knowledge of their governments. The Agency admits to some sort of program having existed, but insists that it was canceled; and if it was an assassination program it was canceled before anyone was actually assassinated. Another report has the US military, not the CIA, putting the plan — or was it a different plan? — into operation, carrying out several assassinations including one in Kenya that proved to be a severe embarrassment and helped lead to the quashing of the program.¹

All of this can be confusing to those following the news. And rather irrelevant. We already know that the United States has been assassinating non-believers, or suspected non-believers, with regularity, and impunity, in recent years, using unmanned planes (drones) firing missiles, in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia, if not elsewhere. (Even more victims have been produced from amongst those who happened to be in the same house, car, wedding party, or funeral as the non-believer.) These murders apparently don’t qualify as “assassinations”, for somehow killing “terrorists” from 2000 feet is morally and legally superior to doing so from two feet away.

But whatever the real story is behind the current rash of speculation, we should not fall into the media’s practice of at times intimating that multiple or routine CIA assassination attempts would be something shocking or at least very unusual.

I’ve compiled a list of CIA assassination attempts, successful and unsuccessful, against prominent foreign political figures, from 1949 through 2003, which, depending on how you count it, can run into the hundreds (targeting Fidel Castro alone totals 634 according to Cuban intelligence)²; the list can be updated by adding the allegedly al Qaeda leaders among the drone attack victims of recent years. Assassination and torture are the two things governments are most loath to admit to, and try their best to cover up. It’s thus rare to find a government document or recorded statement mentioning a particular plan to assassinate someone. There is, however, an abundance of compelling circumstantial evidence to work with. The list can be found here.

For those of you who collect lists about splendid US foreign policy post-World War II, here are a few more that, lacking anything better to do, I’ve put together: Attempts to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which had been democratically-elected.

After his June 4 Cairo speech, President Obama was much praised for mentioning the 1953 CIA overthrow of Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh. But in his talk in Ghana on July 11 he failed to mention the CIA coup that ousted Ghanian president Kwame Nkrumah in 1966³, referring to him only as a “giant” among African leaders. The Mossadegh coup is one of the most well-known CIA covert actions. Obama could not easily get away without mentioning it in a talk in the Middle East looking to mend fences. But the Nkrumah ouster is one of the least known; indeed, not a single print or broadcast news report in the American mainstream media saw fit to mention it at the time of the president’s talk. Like it never happened.

And the next time you hear that Africa can’t produce good leaders, people who are committed to the welfare of the masses of their people, think of Nkrumah and his fate. And think of Patrice Lumumba, overthrown in the Congo 1960-61 with the help of the United States; Agostinho Neto of Angola, against whom Washington waged war in the 1970s, making it impossible for him to institute progressive changes; Samora Machel of Mozambique against whom the CIA supported a counter-revolution in the 1970s-80s period; and Nelson Mandela of South Africa (now married to Machel’s widow), who spent 28 years in prison thanks to the CIA.⁴

• Gross interference in democratic elections in at least 30 countries⁵
• Waging war/military action, either directly or in conjunction with a proxy army, in some 30 countries
• Dropping bombs on the people of more than 30 countries
• Attempts to suppress dozens of populist/nationalist movements in every corner of the world⁶

The Myths of Afghanistan, past and present

On the Fourth of July, Senator Patrick Leahy declared he was optimistic that, unlike the Soviet forces that were driven from Afghanistan 20 years ago, US forces could succeed there. The Democrat from Vermont stated:

“The Russians were sent running as they should have been. We helped send them running. But they were there to conquer the country. We’ve made it very clear, and everybody I talk to within Afghanistan feels the same way: they know we’re there to help and we’re going to leave. We’ve made it very clear we are going to leave. And it’s going to be turned back to them. The ones that made the mistakes in the past are those that tried to conquer them.”⁷

Leahy is a long-time liberal on foreign-policy issues, a champion of withholding US counter-narcotics assistance to foreign military units guilty of serious human-rights violations, and an outspoken critic of robbing terrorist suspects of their human and legal rights. Yet he is willing to send countless young Americans to a living hell, or horrible death, or maimed survival.

And for what? Every point he made in his statement is simply wrong.

The Russians were not in Afghanistan to conquer it. The Soviet Union had existed next door to the country for more than 60 years without any kind of invasion. It was only when the United States intervened in Afghanistan to replace a government friendly to Moscow with one militantly anti-communist that the Russians invaded to do battle with the US-supported Islamic jihadists; precisely what the United States would have done to prevent a communist government in Canada or Mexico.

It’s also rather difficult for the United States to claim that it’s in Afghanistan to help the people there when it’s killed tens of thousands of them simply for resisting the American invasion and occupation or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time; not a single one of the victims has been identified as having had any kind of connection to the terrorist attack in the US of September 11, 2001, the event usually cited by Washington as justification for the military intervention. Moreover, Afghanistan is now permeated with depleted uranium, cluster bombs-cum-landmines, white phosphorous, a witch’s brew of other charming chemicals, and a population, after 30 years of almost non-stop warfare, of physically and mentally mutilated human beings, exceedingly susceptible to the promise of paradise, or at least relief, sold by the Taliban.

As to the US leaving … utterly meaningless propaganda until it happens. Ask the people of South Korea — 56 years of American occupation and still counting; ask the people of Japan — 64 years. And Iraq? Would you want to wager your life’s savings on which decade it will be that the last American soldier and military contractor leaves?

It’s not even precise to say that the Russians were sent running. That was essentially Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev’s decision, and it was more of a political decision than a military one. Gorbachev’s fondest ambition was to turn the Soviet Union into a West-European style social democracy, and he fervently wished for the approval of those European leaders, virtually all of whom were cold-war anti-communists and opposed the Soviet intervention into Afghanistan.

There has been as much of the same “causes” for wars that did not happen as for wars that did.

Henry Allingham died in Britain on July 18 at age 113, believed to have been the world’s oldest man. A veteran of World War I, he spent his final years reminding the British people about their service members killed during the war, which came to about a million: “I want everyone to know,” he said during an interview in November. “They died for us.”⁸

The whole million? Each one died for Britain? In the most useless imperialist war of the 20th century? No, let me correct that — the most useless imperialist war of any century. The British Empire, the French Empire, the Russian Empire, and the wannabe American Empire joined in battle against the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire as youthful bodies and spirits sank endlessly into the wretched mud of Belgium and Germany, the pools of blood of Russia and France. The wondrous nobility of it all is enough to make you swallow hard, fight back the tears, light a few candles, and throw up. Imagine, by the middle of this century Vietnam veterans in their 90s and 100s will be speaking of how each of their 58,000 war buddies died for America. By 2075 we’ll be hearing the same stirring message from ancient vets of Iraq and Afghanistan. How many will remember that there was a large protest movement against their glorious, holy crusades, particularly Vietnam and Iraq?

Supreme nonsense

Senate hearings to question a nominee for the Supreme Court are a supreme bore. The sine qua non for President Obama choosing Sonia Sotomayor appears to be that she’s a woman with a Hispanic background. A LATINA! How often that word was used by her supporters. She would be the first LATINA on the Supreme Court! Dios mio!

Who gives a damn? All anyone should care about are her social and political opinions. Justice Clarence Thomas is a black man. A BLACK MAN! And he’s as conservative as they come.

Supreme Court nominees, of all political stripes, typically feel obliged to pretend that their social and political leanings don’t enter into their judicial opinions. But everyone knows this is rubbish. During her Senate hearing, Sotomayor declared: “It’s not the heart that compels conclusions in cases. It’s the law.”

The former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Charles Evans Hughes, would not agree with her. “At the constitutional level where we work,” he said, “ninety percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections.”⁹

By Sotomayor’s own account, which echos news reports, she was not asked about her position on abortion by either President Obama or his staff. But what if she is actually anti-abortion? What if she turns out to be the swing vote that overturns Roe vs. Wade?

What if she’s a proud admirer of the American Empire and its perpetual wars? American dissidents, civilian and military, may depend on her vote for their freedom from imprisonment.

What does she think about the “War on Terror”? The civil liberties and freedom from torture of various Americans and foreigners may depend on her attitude. In his 2007 trial, Jose Padilla, an American citizen, was found guilty of aiding terrorists. “The jury did seem to be an oddly cohesive group,” the Washington Post reported. “On the last day of trial before the Fourth of July holiday, jurors arranged to dress in outfits so that each row in the jury box was its own patriotic color — red, white or blue.”¹⁰ No one dared to question this blatant display of patriotism in the courtroom; neither the defense attorney, nor the prosecutor, nor the judge. How can we continue to pretend that people’s legal positions exist independently of their political sentiments?

In the 2000 Supreme Court decision stopping the presidential electoral count in Florida, giving the election to George W. Bush, did the politics of the five most conservative justices play a role in the 5 to 4 decision? Of course. Judges are essentially politicians in black robes. But should we care? Don’t ask, don’t tell. Sonia Sotomayor is a LATINA!

Given the large Democratic majority in the Senate, Sotomayor was in very little danger of being rejected. She could have openly and proudly expressed her social and political positions — whatever they may be — and the Democratic senators could have done the same. How refreshing, maybe even educational if a discussion ensued. Instead it was just another political appointment by a president determined to not offend anyone if he can help it, and another tiresome ritual hearing. The Republican senators were much less shy about revealing how they actually felt about important issues.

It didn’t have to be that way. As Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun.org pointed out during the hearings: “Democratic Senators could use their time to ask questions and make statements that explain why a liberal or progressive worldview is precisely what is needed on the Supreme Court.”

NATO and Eastern Europe resource

No one chronicles the rise of the supra-government called NATO like Rick Rozoff in his “Stop NATO” mailings. NATO has become an ever-expanding behemoth, making war and interfering in political controversies all over Europe and beyond. The United States is not the world’s only superpower; NATO is another, as it surrounds Russia and the Caspian Sea oil reserves; although the distinction between the two superpowers is little more than a facade. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the NATO/US 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia. On April 23, 1999 missiles slammed into Radio Television Serbia (RTS) in downtown Belgrade, killing 16 employees. The station, NATO claimed, was a legitimate military target because it broadcast propaganda. (Certainly a novel form of censorship; not to mention the fact that NATO could simply have taken out the station’s transmitter.) What apparently bothered the Western powers was that RTS was reporting the horrendous effects of NATO’s bombing as well as passing footage of the destruction to Western media.

To mark the anniversary, Amnesty International recently issued a demand that NATO be held accountable for the 16 deaths. Amnesty asserts that the bombing was a deliberate attack on a civilian object (one of many during the 78 days) and as such constitutes a war crime, and called upon NATO to launch a war crimes probe into the attack to ensure full accountability and redress for victims and their families.

Readers might consider signing up for the “Stop NATO” mailing list. Just write to: rwrozoff [at] yahoo.com. Rozoff scours the East European press each day and comes up with numerous gems ignored by the mainstream media. But a warning: The amount of material you’ll receive is often considerable. You’ll have to learn to pick and choose. You can get an idea of this by reading previous reports at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages.

Notes

1. The Guardian (London) July 13, 2009 ^?
2. Fabian Escalante, “Executive Action: 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro” (Ocean Press, 2006) ^?
3. William Blum, Killing Hope, chapter 32^?
4. William Blum, Rogue State, chapter 23 ^?
5. Ibid., chapter 18 ^?
6. Rogue State, chapter 17, intermixed with other types of US interventions ^?
7. Vermont TV station WCAX, July 4, 2009, WCAX.com ^?
8. Washington Post, July 19, 2009 ^?
9. William O. Douglas, “The Court Years, 1939-1975″ (1980), p.8 ^?
10. Washington Post, August 17, 2007 ^?

Bin Laden Worked for US Till 9/11

By Lukery

July 31, 2009 “Daily Kos” –  Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds dropped a bombshell on the Mike Malloy radio show, guest-hosted by Brad Friedman (audio, partial transcript).

In the interview, Sibel says that the US maintained ‘intimate relations’ with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, “all the way until that day of September 11.”

These ‘intimate relations’ included using Bin Laden for ‘operations’ in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China. These ‘operations’ involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner “as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict,” that is, fighting ‘enemies’ via proxies.

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