Zapruder film FRAME BY FRAME (HIGH QUALITY)

Uploaded by ert94464isback on Dec 29, 2011
The Zapruder film slowed down frame by frame.
Film in action http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzHKAzvO4tY&feature=related
Just the headshot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCdTkYSiVaE&feature=related

JFK Zapruder Headshot FRAME BY FRAME (HIGH QUALITY)

Uploaded by ert94464isback on Nov 26, 2011
Full zapruder film frame by frame here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1Lyv4wrJQU

Zapruder Film ** (Very Clear With Sprocket Holes Filled)**

Uploaded by EwanMcRobert on Jun 18, 2011
A very clear copy of the JFK assassination, (a.k.a. Zapruder Film).
This copy is good for studying the film frame for frame (by downloading it and using the space bar while playing)
My first YouTube upload
Enjoy

Introduction

The economic, political and social outlook for 2012 is profoundly negative. The almost universal consensus, even among mainstream orthodox economists is pessimistic regarding the world economy. Although, even here, their predictions understate the scope and depth of the crises, there are powerful reasons to believe that beginning in 2012, we are heading toward a steeper decline than what was experienced during the Great Recession of 2008 – 2009. With fewer resources, greater debt and increasing popular resistance to shouldering the burden of saving the capitalist system, the governments cannot bail out the system.

Many of the major institutions and economic relations which were cause and consequence of world and regional capitalist expansion over the past three decades are in the process of disintegration and disarray. The previous economic engines of global expansion, the US and the European Union, have exhausted their potentialities and are in open decline. The new centers of growth, China, India, Brazil, Russia, which for a ‘short decade’ provided a new impetus for world growth have run their course and are de-accelerating rapidly and will continue to do so throughout the new year.

The Collapse of the European Union

Specifically, the crises wracked European Union will break up and the de facto multi-tiered structure will turn into a series of bilateral/multi-lateral trade and investment agreements. Germany , France , the Low and Nordic countries will attempt to weather the downturn. England – namely the City of London, in splendid isolation, will sink into negative growth, its financiers scrambling to find new speculative opportunities among the Gulf petrol-states and other ‘niches’. Eastern and Central Europe, particularly Poland and the Czech Republic , will deepen their ties to Germany but will suffer the consequences of the general decline of world markets. Southern Europe ( Greece , Spain , Portugal and Italy ) will enter into a deep depression as the massive debt payments fueled by savage assaults on wages and social benefits will severely reduce consumer demand.

Depression level unemployment and under-employment running to one-third of the labor force will detonate year-long social conflicts, intensifying into popular uprisings. Eventually a break-up of the European Union is almost inevitable. The euro as a currency of choice will be replaced by or return to national issues accompanied by devaluations and protectionism. Nationalism will be the order of the day. Banks in Germany , France and Switzerland will suffer huge losses on their loans to the South. Major bailouts will become necessary, polarizing German and French societies, between the tax-paying majorities and the bankers. Trade union militancy and rightwing pseudo ‘populism’ (neo-fascism) will intensify the class and national struggles

A depressed, fragmented and polarized Europe will be less likely to join in any Zionist inspired US-Israeli military adventure against Iran (or even Syria ). Crises ridden Europe will oppose Washington ’s confrontationalist approach to Russia and China .

The US : The Recession Returns with a Vengeance

The US economy will suffer the consequences of its ballooning fiscal deficit and will not be able to spend its way out of the world recession of 2012. Nor can it count on ‘exporting’ its way out of negative growth by turning to previously dynamic Asia, as China, India and the rest of Asia are losing economic steam. China will grow far below its 9% moving average. India will decline from 8% to 5% or lower. Moreover, the Obama regime’s military policy of ‘encirclement’, its economic policy of exclusion and protectionism will preclude any new stimulus from China .

Militarism Exacerbates the Economic Downturn

The US and England will be the biggest losers from the Iraqi post war economic reconstruction. Of $186 billion dollars in infrastructure projects, US and UK corporations will gain less than 5% (Financial Times, 12/16/11, p 1 and 3). A similar outcome is likely in Libya and elsewhere. US imperial militarism destroys an adversary, plunging into debt to do so, and non-belligerents reap the lucrative post-war economic reconstruction contracts.

The US economy will fall into recession in 2012 and the “jobless recovery of 2011” will be replaced by a steep increase of unemployment in 2012. In fact, the entire labor force will shrink as people losing their unemployment benefits will fail to register.

Labor exploitation (“productivity”) will intensify as capitalists force workers to produce more, for less pay, thus widening the income gap between wages and profits.

The economic downturn and growth of unemployment will be accompanied by savage cuts in social programs to subsidize financially troubled banks and industries. The debates among the parties will be over how large the cuts to workers and retirees will be to secure the ‘confidence’ of the bondholders. Faced with equally limited political choices, the electorate will react by voting out incumbents, abstaining and via spontaneous and organized mass movements, such as the “occupy Wall Street” protest. Dissatisfaction, hostility and frustration will pervade the culture. Democratic Party demagogues will scapegoat China ; the Republican Party demagogues will blame the immigrants. Both will fulminate against “the Islamo-fascists” and especially against Iran .

New Wars in the Midst of Crises: Zionists Pull the Trigger

The ‘52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations’ and their “Israel First” followers in the US Congress, State Department, Treasury and the Pentagon will push for war with Iran . If they are successful it will result in a regional conflagration and world depression. Given the extremist Israeli regime’s success in securing blind obedience to its war policies from the US Congress and White House, any doubts about the real possibility of a major catastrophic outcome can be set aside.

China: Compensatory Mechanisms in 2012

China will face the global recession of 2012 with several possibilities of ameliorating its impact. Beijing can shift toward producing goods and services for the 700 million domestic consumers currently out of the economic loop. By increasing wages, social services and environmental safety, China can compensate for the loss of overseas markets. China ’s economic growth, which is largely dependent on real estate speculation, will be adversely affected when the bubble is burst. A sharp downturn will result, leading to job losses, municipal bankruptcies and increased social and class conflicts. This can result in either greater repression or gradual democratization. The outcome will profoundly affect China ’s market – state relations. The economic crisis will likely strengthen state control over the market.

Russia Faces the Crises

Russia ’s election of President Putin will lead to less collaboration in backing US promoted uprisings and sanctions against Russian allies and trading partners. Putin will turn toward greater ties with China and will benefit from the break-up of the EU and the weakening of NATO.

The western media backed opposition will use its financial clout to erode Putin’s image and encourage investment boycotts though they will lose the Presidential elections by a big margin. The world recession will weaken the Russian economy and will force it to choose between greater public ownership or greater dependency on state funds to bail out prominent oligarchs.

The Transition 2011 – 2012: From Regional Stagnation and Recession to World Crises

The year 2011 laid the groundwork for the breakdown of the European Union. The crises began with the demise of the Euro, stagnation in the US and the outbreak of mass protests against the obscene inequalities on a world scale. The events of 2011 were a dress rehearsal for a new year of full scale trade wars between major powers, sharpening inter-imperialist struggles and the likelihood of popular rebellions turning into revolutions. Moreover, the escalation of Zionist orchestrated war fever against Iran in 2011 promises the biggest regional war since the US-Indo-Chinese conflict. The electoral campaigns and outcomes of Presidential elections in the US , Russia and France will deepen the global conflicts and economic crises.

During 2011 the Obama regime announced a policy of military confrontation with Russia and China and policies designed to undermine and degrade China ’s rise as a world economic power. In the face of a deepening economic recession and with the decline of overseas markets, especially in Europe , a major trade war will unfold. Washington will aggressively pursue policies limiting Chinese exports and investments. The White House will escalate its efforts to disrupt China ’s trade and investments in Asia, Africa and elsewhere. We can expect greater US efforts to exploit China ’s internal ethnic and popular conflicts and to increase its military presence off China ’s coastline. A major provocation or fabricated incident in this context is not to be excluded. The result in 2012 could lead to rabid chauvinist calls for a costly new ‘Cold War’. Obama has provided the framework and justification for a large-scale, long-term confrontation with China . This will be seen as a desperate effort to prop up US influence and strategic positions in Asia . The US military “quadrangle of power” – US-Japan-Australia-South Korea – with satellite support from the Philippines , will pit China ’s market ties against Washington ’s military build-up.

Europe: Deeper Austerity and Intensified Class Struggle

The austerity programs imposed in Europe, from England to Latvia to southern Europe will really take hold in 2012. Massive public sector firings and reduced private sector salaries and job opportunities will lead to a year of permanent class warfare and regime challenges. The ‘austerity policies’ in the South, will be accompanied by debt defaults resulting in bank failures in France and Germany . England ’s financial ruling class, isolated from Europe, but dominant in England , will insist that the Conservatives ‘repress’ labor and popular unrest. A new tough neo-Thatcherite style of autocratic rule will emerge; the Labor-trade union opposition will issue empty protests and tighten the leash on the rebellious populace. In a word, the regressive socio-economic policies put in place in 2011 have set the stage for new police-state regimes and more acute and possibly bloody confrontations with workers and unemployed youth with no future.

The Coming Wars that Ends America “As We Know It”

Within the US , Obama has laid the groundwork for a new and bigger war in the Middle East by relocating troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and concentrating them against Iran . To undermine Iran , Washington is expanding clandestine military and civilian operations against Iranian allies in Syria , Pakistan , Venezuela and China . The key to the US and Israeli bellicose strategy toward Iran is a series of wars in neighboring states, world- wide economic sanctions , cyber-attacks aimed at disabling vital industries and clandestine terrorist assassinations of scientists and military officials. The entire push, planning and execution of the US policies leading up to war with Iran can be empirically and without a doubt attributed to the Zionist power configuration occupying strategic positions in the US Administration, mass media and ‘civil society’.

A systematic analysis of American policymakers designing and implementing economic sanctions policy in Congress finds prominent roles for such mega-Zionists (Israel-Firsters) as Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Howard Berman; in the White House, Dennis Ross in the White House, Jeffrey Feltman in the State Department, and Stuart Levy, and his replacement David Cohen, in the Treasury. The White House is totally beholden to Zionist fund raisers and takes its cue from the ‘52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organization. The Israeli-Zionist strategy is to encircle Iran , weaken it economically and attack its military. The Iraq invasion was the US ’s first war for Israel ; the Libyan war the second; the current proxy war against Syria is the third. These wars have destroyed Israel ’s adversaries or are in the process of doing so.

During 2011, economic sanctions, which were designed to create domestic discontent in Iran , were the principle weapon of choice. The global sanctions campaign engaged the entire energies of the major Jewish-Zionist lobbies. They have faced no opposition from the mass media, Congress or the White Office. The Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) has been virtually exempt from criticism by any of the progressive, leftist and socialist journals, movements or grouplets – with a few notable exceptions. The past year’s re-positioning of US troops from Iraq to the borders of Iran , the sanctions and the rising Big Push from Israel ’s Fifth Column in the US means expanded war in the Middle East . This likely means a “surprise” aerial and maritime missile attack by US forces. This will be based on a concocted pretext of an “imminent nuclear attack” concocted by Israeli Mossad and faithfully transmitted by the ZPC to their lackeys US Congress and White House for consumption and transmission to the world. It will be a destructive, bloody, prolonged war for Israel ; the US will bear the direct military cost by itself and the rest of the world will pay a dear economic price. The Zionist-promoted US war will convert the recession of early 2012 into a major depression by the end of the year and probably provoke mass upheavals.

Conclusion

All indications point to 2012 being a turning point year of unrelenting economic crisis spreading outward from Europe and the US to Asia and its dependencies in Africa and Latin America . The crisis will be truly global. Inter-imperial confrontations and colonial wars will undermine any efforts to ameliorate this crisis. In response, mass movements will emerge moving over time from protests and rebellions, and hopefully to social revolutions and political power.
James Petras is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by James Petras

READ FULL STORY HERE

It is amazing just how big and influential the 9/11 truth and justice movement has become. The New York Times, ABC, CNN, Time magazine, and other dinosaur media outlets cannot push back the political tsunami of truth and accountability that is heading towards Washington.

The official media organs of the totalitarian state are collapsing left and right. Newspaper circulation is declining across the West which is a highly positive development for freedom and democracy because that means less government propaganda is entering the minds of the people. And TV viewership is declining, too, as more people turn to the Internet for their news and entertainment.

Aaron Barnhart writes in The Kansas City Star that “For first time in 20 years, TV ownership declines.” Does that mean TV is dying? No. There are many great television shows and programs that teach, inspire, and entertain. As the former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Newton Minow said in his 1961 “vast wasteland” speech:

“When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines, or newspapers — nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse.”
Fifty years later, the cross-generational crusade to destroy TV as a mind control and cultural brainwashing tool continues. Reformers are aided with a more conscious and accountable tool – the Internet.

In September 2011, Minow and others participated in an event called “News and Entertainment in the Digital Age: A Vast Wasteland Revisited,” to discus the failure of the official media to serve the public interest and “to reflect upon the changed landscape of television and dramatic shifts in the broader media ecosystem, and identify lessons learned that may help to offer insight into the next 50 years of media and public discourse.” Watch the talk here. The event was covered by Katie Koch of the Harvard Gazette, who wrote:

Now, Minow acknowledged, his grandchildren don’t even own TV sets. The public has nearly limitless access to news and entertainment between cable television and the Internet. But the debate over what’s in the public’s best interest rages on, and reform is still needed, he said.

“Today’s politics are dominated by money,” Minow said. Candidates spend most of their time raising money “so they can buy radio and television ads. They’re raising money from the public to get access to something the public owns, the airwaves. That’s a crazy system.”

Compounding the problem today, said panelist Jonathan Alter, a historian and columnist for Bloomberg View, is the fact that struggling news outlets increasingly do not want to foot the costs of investigative reporting.

“Talk is cheap, and reporting is expensive,” Alter said. “The ‘vast wasteland’ now has this big ‘Tower of Babble’ on top of it.”

Other panelists were more optimistic about the new bottom-up model of news. Ethan Zuckerman, founder of the international blog network Global Voices, pointed out a recent hypothesis in the Columbia Journalism Review that says that cheaply produced, easy-to-distribute video is fast becoming “a universal human language.”

It is a great and beautiful thing that TV news is no longer trusted and watched by the vast majority of the public in North America. The cover up of 9/11 truth by television parrots and pundits has led to the unjust deaths of one million people, four trillions dollars wasted, the breakdown of the rule of law in the world, the transformation of America and other Western nations into a police state, and a world on the brink of world war III. As I wrote in the article, “The Misuse of The Power of Television In Wartime Is Itself A War Crime”:

Television has created a second dark age in Western civilization and undermined the freedom of thought, which is the basis for a free and open society.
Whereas traditional, arrogant, and obnoxious journalists have failed to challenge power-seeking traitors and psychopaths, new media journalists are serving the global public interest by telling the truth about 9/11 and raising the reality of state terrorism in the United States, Israel and the West to public consciousness.

The editors of the website the Daily Bell have popularized the idea of an “Internet Reformation,” and how it is changing power dynamics across the planet. Here is an excerpt from their larger article called “Internet Reformation”:

“The Internet Reformation is the culmination of the power and glory of Western civil society and free-market thinking. It is the apogee of all that is best in a sweep of history that began with the ancient Greeks and has culminated in the hearts and minds of millions of young men and women who industriously add to its impact every day via additional code, non-mainstream news or fundamental scientific commentary.

It is NOT an “Internet Revolution.” The Internet Revolution is a standard “pat” phrase of the powers-that-be about the so-called empowering effects of technology. The Internet Reformation is a much more deeply disruptive concept. It is truly a revolutionary one, affecting every aspect of human society and human relationships with modern elites. It is focused around the insights generated by the Internet itself.

This concept is based on what happened during the era of the Gutenberg press. Almost from the beginning, the Gutenberg press was a revolutionary technology. As soon as people used the press to print Bibles, readers began to discover that the Holy Word differed considerably from what they’d been taught by the Catholic Church.

Until then, Bibles had been fairly rare. They were printed in Latin or Greek, and copied down by hand with elaborate engravings. The Catholic Church and its important functionaries and bureaucrats possessed Bibles. Priests performed Mass with their back to the congregation. The ceremony was a highly Romanized one, as the West had come to conceive of Rome within its most corrupt and centralizing phase, and highly controlled.

But printing Bibles in moveable type changed the power relationship entirely. Now, anyone could own a Bible and they were easily reproduced and increasingly inexpensive. Almost immediately, then Bibles began to be translated into “vulgate” and eventually the King James Version (English) would become a dominant variant. But in the meantime, the damage was done. First came the Renaissance and then the Reformation and finally the Age of Enlightenment, three powerful rolling waves of free-thinking that transformed the face of human society, first in the West and then around the world.

The changes ushered in by the Gutenberg press were fundamental. The Renaissance began the reconfiguration by allowing for the rediscovery of the scientific orientation of Greece and Rome. This set in motion a series of events that has not yet ceased to reverberate.”

What the Internet has done for modern scholarship and learning cannot be fully grasped yet, as the editors of the Daily Bell point out. But we can already foresee major new works of history that will turn the conventional history of the 20th century on its head and change how we understand the political and economic developments of the last hundred years.

The positive consequences of truth-telling on the Internet for human society and global political affairs are limitless. An entire world of government psyops and corporate treason has been kept hidden from the global public. Matter of fact, entire advanced civilizations that exist beyond our planet have been shielded from public light by the U.S. shadow state, world governments and the world press.

Historian Richard Dolan, author of the widely acclaimed books, “UFOs and the National Security State: Chronology of a Coverup, 1941-1973,” and, “The Cover-Up Exposed, 1973-1991 (UFOs and the National Security State, Vol. 2)” has uncovered the secret history of the last sixty five years in American history and world history without sounding either paranoid or conspiratorial, which tends to happen to a lot of people because of the nature of the dark era in which we live.

In an article written on January 20, 2011, called, “JFK, Secrecy, and UFOs,” Dolan acknowledged the murder of President John F. Kennedy by the shadow terrorists in the CIA as a critical step towards the construction and consolidation of totalitarian power inside Washington. Dolan wrote:
“Like many people who have reviewed the life and Presidency of JFK, it’s my feeling that we lost something very important on that dark day of his assassination. What we lost was the implicit bond of trust that existed between the American people and their government.
The system that had been evolved for a century and a half, which despite all imperfections had moved in fits and starts toward greater power to the people, had made a great transformation during the Second World War. That was when the American republican system government became increasingly swallowed up by a “national security state.” It did not take new boss very long before it decided to remove the President in what became for all intents and purposes a silent coup d’etat.

Thus for good reason are we unable to look back at JFK, at the era of Camelot, and avoid that feeling in the pit of our stomachs. That feeling of loss, and the conviction that his assassination was a criminal action yet to be punished, or even acknowledged.”

In his classic speech to the American Newspaper Publishers Association on April 27, 1961, President Kennedy appealed to the better natures of journalists, and pleaded them to defend the public interest even at the cost of their careers. He called the press the keeper of mankind’s conscience, saying:

“It was early in the Seventeenth Century that Francis Bacon remarked on three recent inventions already transforming the world: the compass, gunpowder and the printing press. Now the links between the nations first forged by the compass have made us all citizens of the world, the hopes and threats of one becoming the hopes and threats of us all. In that one world’s efforts to live together, the evolution of gunpowder to its ultimate limit has warned mankind of the terrible consequences of failure.

And so it is to the printing press–to the recorder of man’s deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news–that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.”
After Kennedy’s assassination, American journalists turned mute. They not only let down their President, but their country and their readers. And this is understandable. Journalists in the United States who tell the truth about U.S. government policies like Gary Webb are killed.

A dark cloud of fear and death hangs over the journalism profession in the West. But that’s not the whole story. Most journalists just flat out don’t care about the common good, freedom, truth, or justice.

And so it is to the Internet – “to the recorder of man’s deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news–that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with” the help of conspiracy theorists, truthers, birthers, and deathers, “man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.”

The corrupt gatekeepers who bought all the printing presses and used their god-like power over the media to cover up state crimes against the American people, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the world by secret intelligence agencies cannot repress the big truths of modern history forever.

A global political reformation of shadow governments and criminal media institutions is inevitable.

“It is decentralization that the modern power elite fears most,” write the editors of the Daily Bell, “because decentralized spheres of influence are impossible to control. Unfortunately the Renaissance and Reformation were all about the decentralization of control built on the availability of real knowledge and a return to primary sources that undermined the “experts” of church and state.” They add: “The darkness is lifting as it lifted long ago during the Renaissance. An Internet Reformation is coming. It will have numerous unpredictable ramifications. In fact, its dawn is already here.”
POSTED BY SAMAN MOHAMMADI AT 10:26 PM

READ FULL STORY HERE

Professor Jones has developed a variation of the ‘Joule Thief’ circuit and has shown evidence that its output is eight times greater than the input as measured by a state-of-the-art oscilloscope. He is open sourcing his solid state design to help speed its development and implementation, as well as to answer the scientific question of where the energy is coming from.

by Sterling D. Allan
Pure Energy Systems News

Retired Physics Professor, Steven E. Jones is working on a simple overunity circuit that he has seen go as high as 20 times overunity; documented on a state-of-the-art Tektronix 3032 oscilloscope at Brigham Young University producing eight times as much energy as was required to run the solid state circuit.  One of his friends, Les Kraut, has replicated the circuit and also achieved eight times overunity.

As a second and more simple test, Steve let the circuit run overnight, powering an LED bulb; and nine hours later, the input battery was still at the same measured voltage as it has been at the beginning, it used so little power.  Normally that would drain the AA battery quite a bit.

It’s just a small amount of power we’re talking about – in the hundreds of milliwatts range (just under a Watt), but it’s a start.

What is significant about this is 1) the credibility and reputation of Dr. Jones, being something that academic types won’t be able to ignore; 2) the rigor of the testing, given the measurement equipment he has access to; 3) the simplicity of the circuit, which is actually open source; 4) the low cost of the circuit components, making it easy to be replicated.

“I don’t know where the energy is coming from, but it’s coming from somewhere,” he said.

1) Steven E. Jones’ Credibility

Dr. Jones is the BYU professor who was racing neck-and-neck with Pons and Fleishmann of the rival University of Utah to the north, with his research in Cold Fusion, as mentioned on his profile page at BYU.edu.  He is even better known for his documenting in peer-reviewed journals the replete thermite found in the several dust samples from the World Trade Centers, proving that controlled demolition was the cause that those three buildings fell at free-fall and near-free-fall speeds.  In our news, we featured a very simple solar funnel that he and his students came up with to help indigent peoples be able to cook with solar power.  Obviously, he is not a mainstream professor but is pushing the envelope.  He sees the same kind of signs of corruption and oppression in the energy sector that he does in the U.S. government (which gave rise to the attacks on 9/11).

Steve and I are friends, having several interests in common, and living in the same valley.  I’ve known he’s been working on some free energy research, but he’s been hesitant to say anything about it until we talked the other night; and I was able to convince him to let me come document what he has done so far, even though he would have liked to have more data first.  Given that he will be mentioning his findings at a presentation he’s giving next week in California at the Conspiracy Conference, I was able to convince him that he might as well disclose his results now; breaking his cover that he’s held for the last several months on the forums under such usernames as “PhysicsProf” or “JouleSeeker“.  And, it would be a good opportunity to plug the conference to our audience.

I was able to visit with Steve and Les on May 26 at Kraut’s home to videotape Steve’s demonstration of this technology, as well as videotaping Kraut’s work with several other Bedini-related systems, including a 3-foot diameter version of Bedini’s Ferris Wheel.  He also explained an Energy Crystal that Bedini has been working on lately to bring to people’s attention as yet another free energy avenue.

Alex Loseman, who has been helping with the greenhouse project on our intentional community project, was with me in our visit with Steve and Les.  He is launching a research project that will include replicating, documenting, characterizing, and enlarging on this effect Steve has produced.  Though he doesn’t have a lot of funds now, with some good results, he has a couple of sources of getting additional investment.  After our visit, he was on his way to the airport to pick up another researcher who will be working on this with him.

2) Rigor of Testing

click image for enlarged image Tektronix shot showing 8x OU.

Only a minority of researchers in the free energy community have access to and knowledge of how to run an oscilloscope.  An even smaller subset have access to university equipment such as the Tektronix 3032 (at 300MHz) oscilloscope.  Some people try for years to get some professor to take enough of an interest to validate their findings.  In Steve’s case, he is a Professor, and he’s the researcher, so he’s in a very unique position here.  So when he says he’s documented 8x overunity, it holds a lot more credence than when someone else says the same thing.

In our filming, he said:
“My feeling is that the results with the Tektronix 3032 are quite compelling.  That doesn’t mean I understand where this energy is coming from.  I don’t.  It certain shows, repeatedly, that the output power is greater than the input power.”
3,4) Simplicity of the Circuit; Inexpensive

Here is the two-part video (1 | 2) of Steve explaining his circuit and measurement results as well as ideas for scaling it up.  Note how simple the circuit is.  I’m guessing we’re looking at less than $50 in components and three hours to build this one-off proof of concept circuit.

Part I

Part II

Here is a schematic image Steve sent me, saying, “there are small but important changes in the resistors and capacitors in the few variations we are studying.”

Instructions for the toroid winding. More info here:

The circuit is a derivation of the “Joule Thief” circuit or a “blocking oscillator”.  His variation has an LC-circuit feeding into the base of the transistor (which is unusual) which regulates the resonant frequency of the device.   He calls this circuit a “boost resonator” because it resonates at a certain frequency, and since the evidence shows that it somehow boosts the input power.  “I also found a way to ‘tune’ the efficiency, n, and to reduce the net input power to nearly zero.”

He continues:
With my particular toroid (which was hand-wound), I had excellent results with these conditions:

Vin 2.5 V AA’s
Rb 2K ohms
Ro 9.8K
Rr 3.1ohm
MPS2222 transistor
C-B  151 pF
D = red LED
L-B, L-O bifilar 9turns, ferrite toroid 1″OD, 1/2″ID, 7/16″ tall;   ~90uH each

I(t) by V over 1ohm CSR’s (current-sensing resistor)
Open Source:

We’ll be posting a PESWiki feature page about this open source project soon.

If you happen to get involved in a commercial version of this open source project, selling plans, kits, components, finished systems, licensing, etc., please remit at least a 5% royalty to Steve’s team who is helping disseminate this information.

Hopefully it wont be long before practical iterations of this device are powering endless lighting fixtures, beginning with single LED bulbs; then small electronics; then appliances; then vehicles.

# # #

This story is also published at BeforeItsNews.

Links

• http://www.overunityresearch.com/index.php?board=122.0 – OU Research “bench”
• http://www.overunityresearch.com/index.php?topic=853.0 – “There you will find the schematic of my little contribution, attached are two versions (there are small but important changes in the resistors and capacitors in the few variations we are studying).”  Data also given.
• http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=10773.0 – Thread commenced May 20, 2011.

What You Can Do

1. Pass this on to your friends and favorite news sources.
2. Get involved in replicating this.
3. Get involved in commercializing this.
4. Donate to PES Network to help us keep this news and directory and networking service going.
5. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay abreast of the latest, greatest developments in the free energy sector.
6. Let professionals in the renewable energy sector know about the promise of this technology.

See also

Resources at PESWiki.com

• Directory:Electromagnetic
• Directory:Solid_State_Generators
• Directory:Les_Kraut
• More stories by Sterling D. Allan

• PESN (Pure Energy Systems News) – Feature stories on cutting-edge, clean energy technology.
• Free Energy News (.com) – Daily cutting-edge, clean energy technology news from around the world
• PESWiki Latest – Newest feature pages in the publicly-editable energy directory.
• This Week in Free Energy™ – Ten-minute recap each Sunday, 7:50 – 8:00 pm Mountain.
• Free Energy Now (.net) – in-depth interviews

READ FULL STORY HERE

“Propaganda Steers our Opinion Exactly where it is Intended to Go.”

By its own definition it is media’s job to tell us about ourselves and the world around us, to enable us to make informed decisions in a democratic society. That’s the theory.

Now, let’s look at reality:

Media has become a mirror of the disconnected state that humanity finds itself in. News, current affairs, even the dramas and reality TV shows that entertain us serve to exacerbate the religion of polarity being reflected back to us in all its forms – materialism, hatred, killing, idolization and separation. Almost all television, be it sagas and melodramas or daily news, is as addictive as any drug. This single dimensional ‘pulpit’ from which media preaches to us (often in the centre of our living rooms) actually seeds many of our negative behavior patterns in day-to-day life.

Dramas and melodramas aside, we have been led to believe that the news and current affairs programs we watch are true, unbiased, fair. Often this is anything but the case. News is provided, increasingly, by a select few. Those who have views outside what the owners of global media want us to hear and see have found themselves without a platform from which to present their knowledge and opinions.

Governments ensure that only the very powerful are able to access our living rooms by staking ownership and guardianship of the airwaves through licensing priced well outside the reach of ordinary people. As a result the news we see in all developed countries, particularly those of Anglo-Saxon ethnicity, is exactly the same, word for word, picture for picture. There is purpose behind this; it ensures that the now global corporate empires of media become bigger and more powerful, gobbling up any small players along the way. A select few controlling interests effectively distort democracy by shaping public opinion through deception on a grand scale.

The news we watch steers our attention in the direction needed to affect the outcome desired by this greedy, inhumane elite. It perpetuates polarity and provides the momentum necessary for its growth. Our feelings of vengeance and self-righteousness, seeded by lack of balance and distortion of truth reported to us in our news, is the fuel needed for us to supply ‘boy-power’ for the wars we are about to wage (or are already waging). In the few years since television made its debut into society, people who would be dictators have found the perfect uninterrupted medium through which to shape opinion every night of the week – they do it from behind the scenes by filtering the news and programming we watch. It is interesting that the first ever public television broadcast was of Adolph Hitler opening the Olympic games in Munich – he understood the immense potential of this new communication medium. Media can be the most powerful tool of freedom for a people but it can also be the most powerful instrument of propaganda.

It is considered good reporting to present a news story that shows as much violence as can be tolerated by the average family during or shortly after dinner time. Almost always this violence is aimed at promoting law and order, or steering our opinion regarding some conflict abroad. If we were shown the degree of violence which our nations have unleashed on millions of people the world over, on our behalf, we would be horrified and would quickly rise up against those governing us. But, alas, we are not shown these revealing images. Propaganda steers our opinion exactly where it is intended to go. Disturbing, angry, fear-invoking images are the norm, always biased to keep us on side.

It is our spiritual starvation, our endless wanting, that has grown media into what it has become. For many of us the most exciting dreams we have are to possess whatever product we have seen that we most want. For some of us the most exciting event of the day is the color brochure that arrives in our mail, full of dreams in the form of things we can purchase. Whole programs are presented where we watch the best ads. Whole channels exist where all programming is advertising. Media is actually supplying the information that sells and is in demand. As ego-selves in denial of the common thread linking each of us through creator-self, we do not realize the true implications of this demand. We have not yet come to understand the impact it has upon our world. Media is much more than a vehicle for supplying us with information to make decisions – it gives us the very raw materials with which we create even more misery.

One of the most basic factors determining whether or not a story is newsworthy is the level of interest the story will generate. The more interesting the story, the more people tune in, the greater the advertising revenue for the television station. Because we are raised to believe almost exclusively in competition, excitement is generated by seeing the suffering of another individual – by taking a side and watching our side win. Stories of co-operation are rare and much less popular than those showing competition. When co-operation is shown it is usually in the form of one team against another, one army against another, etc. This is not co-operation in the true sense. True co-operation would mean one team, one humanity, one earth – why would any aspect of the whole wish to attack one of its parts?

Even our nature shows teach us that co-operation in the natural world is all but non-existent and that animals are just like we should be – in a perpetual state of war, heterosexual, and in many cases mating (‘married’) for life. We have imposed our subjective evaluation on them, turning a blind eye to the reality of the animal kingdom. When we see a nature program showing animals in the wild, we are led to believe that life is war – a perpetual state of hunting and being hunted. Those who have actually experienced the real natural world, now a minority of humans, know this is clearly a deception. Film crews spend months, sometimes years waiting patiently for these exciting scenes. While on the lookout for their safety, animals generally enjoy freedom and peace the likes of which we have forgotten to even dream about. Predators only hunt what they need, usually taking out the weak or the excess. Furthermore, sexuality and its expression in the animal kingdom is anything but what we have been led to believe. It is colorful, diverse and natural. While well meaning, those who interpret animal behavior for us are often biased by their societal belief systems, subjectivity seeded by religion – all too often Christianity and Judaism.

Most media outlets are commercial ventures designed primarily for the purposes of creating wealth. They need to sell program content (product) that is desirable, their commercial interests paramount at all times. Of the few media outlets that are not constrained in this way, most are government funded. These outlets, contrary to what we would like to believe, also have to satisfy their funders. This media sector tends to attract players of a particular political bent whose self-preservation (job, financial future and retirement benefits) rely on the illusion that we need more and more governing; more controls and restrictions placed on us.

We have a politically left-leaning bias in the publicly owned media and a right-leaning bias in the privately owned media. Polarity, once again. It is not the direction of leaning that matters but the leaning itself. This leaning results in people being pitted against one another. (Needless to say, the bias of religiously sponsored media speaks for itself and we need hardly waste our time re-iterating its methods.)

Media does report on the problems and challenges of our world, but in a way that is largely superficial. All too often media actually misinforms us by providing the illusion that we are being properly informed. We hear stories about terrorism, earthquakes, floods and famines. We hear of our frailty against an ever-increasing array of attacks commissioned by the invisible world of bacteria and viruses, frailty that can be counterattacked by mega-corporations behind the medical industry. With only ego, without spiritual grounding in and through ourselves, these reports succeed in invoking even more fear.

It is all about us and them, whether they are another tribe, another religion, another country, another animal, another ‘dumb’ piece of rock crumbling into the ocean, or a disease that we should all fear. All they have to do is tell us something is bad for us and we believe them. ‘They’ have become our father-figure who we trust and look to for guidance. This is a grave error on our behalf because many of these people are completely irresponsible and utterly selfish. We have allowed ourselves to become disempowered, cowering and fearful, ready to be herded through any gate and into any trap. Nothing is our enemy if and when we decide to believe in ourselves. Believing in ourselves awakens us to the reality that our earth is alive, intelligent. As with our bodies, earth ‘speaks’ to us, not in words but in feelings – feelings we should be listening to.

Our current paradigm is primitive, patriotic, and dangerous. Our respective countries’ national sport is a case in point. It all seems like a load of fun – beer swilling, flag waving, drunken crowds, rowdy cheering in grandstands and dingy bars, fights and riots after the game.  A national sport is designed to promote patriotism; it is an extended and continuous war game in which many of us are unwitting contributors. Through competitive spectator sport we have created an activity that is the domain of a minority of physically-suited individuals. For the majority of people who are either unable to achieve such high standards of performance or simply don’t desire the activity enough to partake, participation is reduced to that of mere spectator. We are entertained just like the ancient crowds watching gladiators in the Roman coliseum; the only thing that pulls a crowd to its feet faster than a goal is a fight. The result is that the overall fitness level of our media-orientated society continues to reach new lows.

It is during commercial breaks that we are targeted on an even more personal level. The best way to sell something to an unconscious self is to tap into one of the many fears associated with that disconnection. We are promised extended youth, greater beauty, power, success – all these can be ours for the right price. The only effort required is a little shopping.  The need for more stuff is never-ending. We experience a short term high when we bag the latest product on the shelf, but the unwritten guarantee is that, if we follow the rules of this game, we will come to the same end as everyone else. That is, we will eventually become old, diseased, and finally die. Why, advertisements even allow us to pre-pay for our own funeral!

If this is not a dark enough picture, there is another side to it – one that is almost completely hidden from us. Our ever-increasing need to consume more is the fuel that feeds the global engine churning greater material imbalance and misery by the day. You may already know this, but if you are able to afford power, television, even this book, you are part of a privileged minority of humanity at this time. Most inhabitants of the earth have no such luxury; many cannot even read (not because they are stupid, but because they did not have the opportunity of learning to read). The greater percentage of humans has only one concern and that is whether they are going to be able to eat today. For many this dire situation is directly related to our imperialism, our greed, our soullessness. Each of us in the richest nations is destined to consume 15 to 150 times what one of these people consumes in a lifetime! If we in the west have just two children, it is equivalent to giving birth to a small to medium sized village in many parts of the Third World!

Our cheap luxuries more often than not come from the places where this ‘other half’ lives. To produce our cheap products, not just Nike and The Gap, but almost all our products, many people work an entire month for a wage that is less than what the average Westerner earns in a day. This is the only way they can put food on their tables. The profits for our cheap products stay in the hands of greedy Westerners and oligarchs.

Maybe, instead of merely pointing our soiled fingers at pariah companies brought to our attention by sensational programs targeting just a handful, we should look at what we really need as individuals. Instead of feeling guilty about what we buy, maybe we should look after what we own instead of throwing it out when the look changes. Maybe we should learn to maintain and fix things with our own hands, or be prepared to pay others who have taken the time to learn these valuable skills fairly and proportionately for their time. We have lost respect for some of the most important people in society and it is at our peril because young people are not being encouraged to learn practical, hands-on vocations. A kitchen full of managers cannot cook a meal. A community full of government workers, councilors and inspectors, inventing and enforcing more and more regulations, cannot make for a functional, creative, productive or self-sustaining society. Practical skills will become invaluable in a real-world sustainable situation.

As individuals we certainly have enough challenges to deal with ourselves. Most of us feel that we have little or no control over what happens on the other side, in the so-called ‘Third World.’ By stepping one by one off the treadmill we actually provide the only real opportunity for these people to begin reassessing their needs. Because we cannot know anyone else’s plight we are wise indeed to allow them to proceed without hindrance. Social revolution is beginning to take place in many significant parts of the developing world, most notably South America. It is in our best interests to allow and observe these revolutions, not judge or interfere with them.

Although we are economically better off than many in the world today, we are not in any way more independent than the poverty-stricken masses in developing nations. Most of us do not even know where our food comes from or how it is grown. If we were to lose our infrastructure for more than a few days we would be in far worse shape than many people in the Third World. Our infrastructure, contrary to what we might like to believe, is weak and fragile. It needs constant maintenance and repair to keep it running. The day will come when we will once again need to face the reality that co-operation with the natural world is the only way to put food on our tables. Cell phones, high tech devices, flashy vehicles and silk suits are quite inedible.

Time and again we become convinced of the benefits of buying some product, only to find out later that the same product invokes disease. ‘Smoke these cigarettes for vitality,’ ‘Pay for that tanning session so that you may have a younger, healthier look’ – just a few short years ago these were our mantras. Now that statistics have been gathered to tell us that smoking is bad, that tanning chambers can damage our skin, the loop of disconnection is complete – we buy into what they say.

Lack of self-esteem, desire to conform; these are the true reasons we took up our habits in the first place. The addictions mask our fears. Our creator-self tries but ego wins. Tobacco, like sun, can be medicine. It is us that have turned dis-ease into disease. Knowing our guilt, governments are now free to tax us whatever they like; smokers are reminded every time they light up how bad they are. Others, piously confronting them for their bad habits, accusing smokers of affecting their health, fly to far away places, use the same environmentally harmful products (including a plethora of pharmaceutical drugs that end up in the water system), drive their cars and generate dangerous microwave fields with their cell-phones, not to mention wobbling around with tens, sometimes hundreds of pounds of extra fat. We dare not point out the oxymoron – they have the weight of current public phobia on their side. But this is just the beginning. A new doorway into judging and mistreating others has been opened and tested. A whole sector of society has been openly branded as inconsiderate, unhealthy, stupid – a burden. Who, we should ask, might be next?

Media at our collective behest is the tool that is used to spread so many false ideologies into our culture. We have been lulled into believing exactly what media wants us to believe. Allowing media into our homes and heads is a privilege, not for us, but for them. We, once fully conscious, will filter out the polarity being channeled to us. Self-empowered, we will observe and steer ourselves on our individual journey towards full awakening. Using the most powerful tool we have, our contemplative minds, we will once again have time to think for ourselves.

Media and its message can be our ally, confirming the insights that come from assimilation with our creator-selves. It need not serve as a torturous guide into the world of fear and loss, victims and martyrs, hatred and blame, servitude and slavery. From a newly empowered position outside the pendulum of polarity, media can provide stark evidence of the intensifying circle that has been cast, one from which there is no way out except recognition of the obvious. It cannot be squashed, fought to death, protested into oblivion – no action taken from within the circle will bring it down. Taking sides will always set into motion some form of opposition, thereby granting the quandary a life of its own. One last climactic time, this time involving all humanity, history seems destined to repeat. Afterwards, the survivors will have no choice but to address the fundamental question, using logic to proceed on a sustainable path of evolution with each other and all other life – with cooperation, compassion and honesty.
Global Research Articles by Steven J. M. Jones

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Introduction

On May 29, 2011, President Obama visited Joplin, Missouri , the site of a devastating tornado that killed 140 and pronounced it a terrible “tragedy”. But were the deaths the inevitable result of ‘natural events’ beyond the human intervention?

Coincidentally the same week Afghan President Karzai condemned the killing of a family of 14 by a NATO fighter bomber, running the total to several hundred civilians killed so far this year and thousands over the decade.

The relation between the civilian deaths in Joplin and Afghanistan raises fundamental questions about the priorities, character and direction of the US Empire and the future of the American republic.

Geography of Tornados

Every year at least 20 major violent tornadoes – with winds exceeding 200 mph – hit “tornado alley” and beyond, including central Texas, northern Iowa, central Kansas, Nebraska, western Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. Each and every year at least sixty are killed and several hundred are maimed and injured. This year, through May 2011, over 519 have been killed, 25% of whom were in mobile homes, almost three times as many as those in standard houses.

In other words, these tornado-related deaths are predictable, annual, and region-specific and have a higher incidence among low income households. Government agencies and academics have compiled data banks and time series information mapping the route, frequency and impact of tornadoes.

Information about the nature of killer tornadoes is plentiful. Nevertheless deaths mount from year to year. Fear and insecurity stalks the region’s most susceptible to the violent whirlwinds, even as the Congress and White House have increased personnel and funding for ‘Homeland Security’ twenty fold over the decade .The current budget is over $180 billion. If we add the deaths caused by other ‘natural’ disasters like the flooding of New Orleans , the numbers of deaths are staggering. What explains this perverse relation between huge public funding for ‘homeland security’ and the increased insecurity of vulnerable Americans in clearly identified danger zones?

The reason is clear: ‘Homeland Security’ (HS) is an Orwellian misnomer. The agency is not concerned with domestic, civilian, American security. HS is part of a military-police response to imagined overseas threats, which have not materialized or at least have not produced deaths comparable to tornadoes and floods in the last 11 years.

HS spends billions and employs thousands to investigate, spy and harass citizens engaged in legal-constitutional activities. HS and the Pentagon spend tens of billions on overseas infrastructures – buildings, bases, camps -and over 900 billion in arms. HS and the Defense Department forcefully intervene militarily throughout the world via overt and clandestine operations.

To be precise HS intervenes offensively overseas, attacking civilian targets, while it fails to engage domestically to protect American civilians who are left defenseless in the face of predictable natural disasters.

HS and the Pentagon’s sustained violent overseas operations are rejected and regarded as a hostile imperial intervention by the civilians in those countries adversely affected. In contrast, defenseless citizens in the US would welcome large-scale intervention in the form of community shelters, which would provide survival, security, life-saving protection and financial aid for rebuilding their lives. Moreover, Pentagon and HS spending on overseas infrastructure, bases and bombs results in deficits, whereas investments in tornado and flood shelters would stimulate jobs, growth and investment in the US .

The current activity of HS destroys lives abroad and neglects survival at home: It has nothing to do with our “homeland” and even less with our “security”. Five percent of HS budget would have prevented many of Joplin ’s ‘tragedy’ (and saved us from Obama’s gaseous oratory!) and the other 400 deaths from this year’s crop of tornadoes.

Systemic Bases of Perpetual Domestic Neglect

Death from ‘natural’ events raises a fundamental POLITICAL question: Why is the budget of Homeland Security and the Pentagon directed overseas, toward destructive, offensive, military activity rather than to domestic, constructive, defensive activity to protect American lives and productive economic activity?

The problem is systemic not due to some personal flaw or political idiosyncrasy of the moment. The structures of the US economy and military institutions are oriented ‘outwardly’ to conquering foreign financial markets and building a military empire. The ideology which informs strategic policymakers is imperial-centered not republican: They do not speak of developing and deepening the economy and security of ‘ middle America ’. Every member of the political and corporate elite talks of ‘world’ or ‘global’ leadership – a thinly veiled euphemism for the drive to sustain world dominance. Within the imperial framework the entire ‘security’ budget is directed toward maintaining offensive military supremacy. No wonder there is a steep decline in all spheres of domestic security – natural, social, personal, health and employment –a phenomenon that proceeds with little public debate. The only exception is when threats to security impinge most directly and forcefully on a significant sector of the population. For example, witness the storm of protest from those directly affected when the politicians moved to privatize social security and Medicare.

Nevertheless, the entire political spectrum, the two parties, the Congress and the White House over the past 30 years, have created an artificial consensus in which overseas wars, foreign aid to patrons (Israel) and clients (Pakistan and Egypt) absorbs the greatest percentage of budgetary spending. No political or economic leadership has stepped forward to articulate the obvious connection between global expansion and domestic decay; to forcefully state that the deterioration of the republic is a direct product of the vast resources channeled into military and economic empire building. Who on New York City ’s Wall Street or Washington ’s Pentagon is going to even look at or consider a ‘security plan’ with regard to the geography of catastrophes – tornado alley covering a dozen states and the floods and deaths that overwhelm the lowlands from Montana to Louisiana ?

Listen America

Their message is loud and clear:

Small towns and trailer parks do not count! You have your 2nd amendment (the ‘right to bear arms’), you have your ‘small government’, and you have your flags: ‘Wav ‘em and weep’ as tornadoes blow down your houses and your sons and daughters return wrapped in flags to the Battle Hymn of the Empire!

Conclusion

One might argue that community storm shelters won’t break the Treasury or reverse the empire. More to the point, their absence, from the federal, state and local political agenda, is emblematic of the total subordination of domestic America to imperial Washington . The ‘cost’ of building community shelters at the strip malls and trailer parks in Joplin , Missouri is less than a regional training outpost in Kandahar , Afghanistan . It is not a question of money.

Conquering Afghanistan villages enhances the prestige of the Generals, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and NATO officials. Can saving 145 lives in Joplin , Missouri match that in terms of world politics or the politics of imperial leadership? For Afghanistan , Washington builds a thousand military shelters and bomb proof bunkers .For the Americans living in tornado alley and the flood plains of the Mississippi people must make do.

When you hear the tornado warning, it’s up to you. As a proud, free American you can find a rock to crawl under and say your prayer: the Federal government and Homeland Security have the Endless, World-wide War against Terror to fight and cannot be bothered by a Joplin , Missouri nursing home in the path of a tornado.

We exaggerate: Obama will jet in and speak before the cameras in solemn terms of the ‘tragedy’ and ‘courage’ of the people of Joplin … But will any local politician stand up and speak truth to power? Most of these deaths and (many more to come) are avoidable; under a democratic American republic, the government ‘intervenes’ to provide protection, health and employment for its people.

In the meantime, as the empire continues to grow it destroys its own people, just like the sow that devours its offspring.
James Petras is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by James Petras

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NATO’s Afrika Korps Escalates War Of Attrition Against Libya
Rick Rozoff

The relentless and intensifying Western air war against Libya will soon enter its fourth month. For the first thirteen days starting on March 19 under the control of U.S. Africa Command and Operation Odyssey Dawn and thereafter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led Operation Unified Protector, the air assaults represent the second longest armed aggression in NATO’s history, already surpassing by a week the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Only the now nearly decade-long war in Afghanistan exceeds the current campaign in length.

The U.S.-dominated military bloc not only acknowledges but fairly boasts of conducting almost 11,000 air missions and over 4,000 combat sorties since March 31. Preceding that, hundreds of air strikes and over 160 cruise missile attacks were launched by the U.S., Britain, France and other NATO powers.

Altogether, following in the North African footsteps of Napoleon Bonaparte’s France, imperial Britain, Benito Mussolini’s Italy and Adolf Hitler’s Germany, Western nations are engaged in the longest war against an African country in modern times and the most intensive armed aggression against one ever.

At the end of last month a Libyan government spokesman announced that NATO air attacks had killed 718 civilians and wounded 4,067 more between March 19 and May 26. In the interim the North Atlantic military alliance has intensified bombing of the nation’s capital and other parts of the country to an unprecedented level and introduced British and French helicopter gunship and U.S. Hellfire missile-wielding Predator unmanned aerial vehicles operations.

On June 1 NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen declared that the Alliance had authorized continuation of the war for three more months, until the end of September, and a week later he confirmed that the defense chiefs of NATO’s 28 member states, including the Pentagon’s Robert Gates, endorsed the decision to extend so-called Operation Unified Protector for another 90 days during a defense ministerial meeting at NATO Headquarters in Belgium.

In addition to the deployment of British Apache and French Gazelle and Tiger attack helicopters – the first equipped with what the Daily Mirror described as “a deadly missile dubbed ‘the mincer’” a “­gruesome anti-personnel missile containing 80 5in-long steel darts called flechettes,” the U.S. has dispatched the mammoth USS George H.W. Bush nuclear supercarrier with an accompanying strike group to the Mediterranean Sea for what portends a military endgame for the North African state of slightly over six million people.

The above-cited British newspaper recently referred to the George H.W. Bush, now on its maiden deployment and at the time engaged in war games, Exercise Saxon Warrior, with the Royal Navy’s HMS Dauntless and HMS Gloucester, as the “world’s most powerful warship,” adding that “The 97,000-ton Bush carries in excess of 70 aircraft from eight squadrons and 5,300 sailors and aircrew.”

On June 6 it anchored off the coast of the Spanish Mediterranean city of Cartagena; as the U.S. Navy disclosed, marking the first time “the nation’s newest Nimitz-class aircraft carrier has visited mainland Europe.”

The George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group is en route to the headquarters of Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet in Naples in the south of Italy, within easy striking distance of Libya.

After 85 days of constant bombardment, which constitute the longest daily bombing campaign since the Vietnam War, have left smoke clouds rising over Tripoli every night and increasingly during the day as well, the Western destruction of government assets and infrastructure, military and civilian, has only begun.

As has the war waged against the civilian population by NATO powers, including Libya’s former colonial master Italy, without pause even in the face of African Union peace proposals accepted by the Libyan government.

Almost immediately exceeding even the broadest interpretation of the mandate granted by United Nations Resolution 1973 to protect Libyan civilians, NATO is deliberately and mercilessly executing a campaign to comprehensively impair the Libyan government’s ability to function in any capacity – including providing safety and services to its citizens – in a brutal attempt to convince the population that any alternatives, even the fragmentation of the country and foreign domination and occupation, are superior to continuing to resist an endless reign of terror from the skies.

For the West, the cost of defiance, even of not outright capitulating or merely maintaining a semblance of independence, is death, destruction and the fatal wounding of the nation itself. Examples abound – the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq – with surely more to follow.

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by Dean Henderson
Global Research, June 8, 2011

Part two of a four-part series
See Part I here.

In 1789 Alexander Hamilton became the first Treasury Secretary of the United States.  Hamilton was one of many Founding Fathers who were Freemasons.  He had close relations with the Rothschild family which owns the Bank of England and leads the European Freemason movement.  George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Ethan Allen, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, John Brown and Roger Sherman were all Masons.

Andrew Hamilton

Roger Livingston helped Sherman and Franklin write the Declaration of Independence.  He gave George Washington his oaths of office while he was Grand Master of the New York Grand Lodge of Freemasons.  Washington himself was Grand Master of the Virginia Lodge.  Of the General Officers in the Revolutionary Army, thirty-three were Masons.  This was highly symbolic since 33rd Degree Masons become Illuminated. [1]

Populist founding fathers led by John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Thomas Paine- none of whom were Masons- wanted to completely severe ties with the British Crown, but were overruled by the Masonic faction led by Washington, Hamilton and Grand Master of the St. Andrews Lodge in Boston General Joseph Warren, who wanted to “defy Parliament but remain loyal to the Crown”.  St. Andrews Lodge was the hub of New World Masonry and began issuing Knights Templar Degrees in 1769. [2]

General Joseph Warren

All US Masonic lodges are to this day warranted by the British Crown, whom they serve as a global intelligence and counterrevolutionary subversion network.  Their most recent initiative is the Masonic Child Identification Program (CHIP).  According to Wikipedia, the CHIP programs allow parents the opportunity to create a kit of identifying materials for their child, free of charge. The kit contains a fingerprint card, a physical description, a video, computer disk, or DVD of the child, a dental imprint, and a DNA sample.

The First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia in 1774 under the Presidency of Peyton Randolph, who succeeded Washington as Grand Master of the Virginia Lodge.  The Second Continental Congress convened in 1775 under the Presidency of Freemason John Hancock.  Peyton’s brother William succeeded him as Virginia Lodge Grand Master and became the leading proponent of centralization and federalism at the First Constitutional Convention in 1787.  The federalism at the heart of the US Constitution is identical to the federalism laid out in the Freemason’s Anderson’s Constitutions of 1723.  William Randolph became the nation’s first Attorney General and Secretary of State under George Washington.  His family returned to England loyal to the Crown.  John Marshall, the nation’s first Supreme Court Justice, was also a Mason. [3]

When Benjamin Franklin journeyed to France to seek financial help for American revolutionaries, his meetings took place at Rothschild banks.  He brokered arms sales via German Mason Baron von Steuben.  His Committees of Correspondence operated through Freemason channels and paralleled a British spy network.  In 1776 Franklin became de facto Ambassador to France.  In 1779 he became Grand Master of the French Neuf Soeurs (Nine Sisters) Lodge, to which John Paul Jones and Voltaire belonged.  Franklin was also a member of the more secretive Royal Lodge of Commanders of the Temple West of Carcasonne, whose members included Frederick Prince of Whales.  While Franklin preached temperance in the US, he cavorted wildly with his Lodge brothers in Europe.  Franklin served as Postmaster General from the 1750’s to 1775 – a role traditionally relegated to British spies. [4]

With Rothschild financing Alexander Hamilton founded two New York banks, including Bank of New York. [5]  He died in a gun battle with Aaron Burr, who founded Bank of Manhattan with Kuhn Loeb financing.  Hamilton exemplified the contempt which the Eight Families hold towards common people, once stating, “All communities divide themselves into the few and the many.  The first are the rich and the well born, the others the mass of the people…The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge and determine right.  Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share of government.  They will check the unsteadiness of the second.”[6]

Hamilton was only the first in a series of Eight Families cronies to hold the key position of Treasury Secretary.  In recent times Kennedy Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon came from Dillon Read (now part of UBS Warburg).  Nixon Treasury Secretaries David Kennedy and William Simon came from Continental Illinois Bank (now part of Bank of America) and Salomon Brothers (now part of Citigroup), respectively.  Carter Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal came from Goldman Sachs, Reagan Treasury Secretary Donald Regan came from Merrill Lynch (now part of Bank of America), Bush Sr. Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady came from Dillon Read (UBS Warburg) and both Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Bush Jr. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson came from Goldman Sachs.  Obama Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner worked at Kissinger Associates and the New York Fed.

Thomas Jefferson argued that the United States needed a publicly-owned central bank so that European monarchs and aristocrats could not use the printing of money to control the affairs of the new nation.  Jefferson extolled, “A country which expects to remain ignorant and free…expects that which has never been and that which will never be.  There is scarcely a King in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh – get first all the people’s money, then all their lands and then make them and their children servants forever…banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.  Already they have raised up a money aristocracy.”  Jefferson watched as the Euro-banking conspiracy to control the United States unfolded, weighing in, “Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day, but a series of oppressions begun at a distinguished period, unalterable through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery”. [7[

But the Rothschild-sponsored Hamilton’s arguments for a private US central bank carried the day.  In 1791 the Bank of the United States (BUS) was founded, with the Rothschilds as main owners.  The bank’s charter was to run out in 1811.  Public opinion ran in favor of revoking the charter and replacing it with a Jeffersonian public central bank.  The debate was postponed as the nation was plunged by the Euro-bankers into the War of 1812.  Amidst a climate of fear and economic hardship, Hamilton’s bank got its charter renewed in 1816.

Old Hickory, Honest Abe & Camelot

In 1828 Andrew Jackson took a run at the US Presidency.  Throughout his campaign he railed against the international bankers who controlled the BUS.  Jackson ranted, “You are a den of vipers.  I intend to expose you and by Eternal God I will rout you out.  If the people understood the rank injustices of our money and banking system there would be a revolution before morning.”

Jackson won the election and revoked the bank’s charter stating, “The Act seems to be predicated on an erroneous idea that the present shareholders have a prescriptive right to not only the favor, but the bounty of the government...for their benefit does this Act exclude the whole American people from competition in the purchase of this monopoly.  Present stockholders and those inheriting their rights as successors be established a privileged order, clothed both with great political power and enjoying immense pecuniary advantages from their connection with government.  Should its influence be concentrated under the operation of such an Act as this, in the hands of a self-elected directory whose interests are identified with those of the foreign stockholders, will there not be cause to tremble for the independence of our country in war...controlling our currency, receiving our public monies and holding thousands of our citizens independence, it would be more formidable and dangerous than the naval and military power of the enemy.  It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government for selfish purposes...to make the rich richer and more powerful.  Many of our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by acts of Congress.  I have done my duty to this country.”[8]

Populism prevailed and Jackson was re-elected.  In 1835 he was the target of an assassination attempt.  The gunman was Richard Lawrence, who confessed that he was, “in touch with the powers in Europe”. [9]

Still, in 1836 Jackson refused to renew the BUS charter.  Under his watch the US national debt went to zero for the first and last time in our nation’s history.  This angered the international bankers, whose primary income is derived from interest payments on debt.  BUS President Nicholas Biddle cut off funding to the US government in 1842, plunging the US into a depression.  Biddle was an agent for the Paris-based Jacob Rothschild. [10]

The Mexican War was simultaneously sprung on Jackson.  A few years later the Civil War was unleashed, with London bankers backing the Union and French bankers backing the South. The Lehman family made a fortune smuggling arms to the south and cotton to the north.  By 1861 the US was $100 million in debt.  New President Abraham Lincoln snubbed the Euro-bankers again, issuing Lincoln Greenbacks to pay Union Army bills.

The Rothschild-controlled Times of London wrote, “If that mischievous policy, which had its origins in the North American Republic, should become indurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost.  It will pay off its debts and be without debt.  It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce.  It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized governments of the world.  The brains and the wealth of all countries will go to North America.  That government must be destroyed, or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe.” [11]

The Euro-banker-written Hazard Circular was exposed and circulated throughout the country by angry populists.  It stated, “The great debt that capitalists will see is made out of the war and must be used to control the valve of money.  To accomplish this government bonds must be used as a banking basis.  We are now awaiting Secretary of Treasury Salmon Chase to make that recommendation.  It will not allow Greenbacks to circulate as money as we cannot control that.  We control bonds and through them banking issues”.

The 1863 National Banking Act reinstated a private US central bank and Chase’s war bonds were issued.  Lincoln was re-elected the next year, vowing to repeal the act after he took his January 1865 oaths of office.  Before he could act, he was assassinated at the Ford Theatre by John Wilkes Booth.  Booth had major connections to the international bankers.  His granddaughter wrote This One Mad Act, which details Booth’s contact with “mysterious Europeans” just before the Lincoln assassination.

Following the Lincoln hit, Booth was whisked away by members of a secret society known as Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC).  KGC had close ties to the French Society of Seasons, which produced Karl Marx.  KGC had fomented much of the tension that caused the Civil War and President Lincoln had specifically targeted the group.  Booth was a KGC member and was connected through Confederate Secretary of State Judah Benjamin to the House of Rothschild.  Benjamin fled to England after the Civil War. [12]

Nearly a century after Lincoln was assassinated for issuing Greenbacks, President John F. Kennedy found himself in the Eight Families’ crosshairs.  Kennedy had announced a crackdown on off-shore tax havens and proposed increases in tax rates on large oil and mining companies.  He supported eliminating tax loopholes which benefit the super-rich.  His economic policies were publicly attacked by Fortune magazine, the Wall Street Journal and both David and Nelson Rockefeller.  Even Kennedy’s own Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, who came from the UBS Warburg-controlled Dillon Read investment bank, voiced opposition to the JFK proposals. [13]

Kennedy’s fate was sealed in June 1963 when he authorized the issuance of more than $4 billion in United States Notes by his Treasury Department in an attempt to circumvent the high interest rate usury of the private Federal Reserve international banker crowd.  The wife of Lee Harvey Oswald, who was conveniently gunned down by Jack Ruby before Ruby himself was shot, told author A. J. Weberman in 1994, “The answer to the Kennedy assassination is with the Federal Reserve Bank.  Don’t underestimate that.  It’s wrong to blame it on Angleton and the CIA per se only.  This is only one finger on the same hand.  The people who supply the money are above the CIA”. [14]

Fueled by incoming President Lyndon Johnson’s immediate escalation of the Vietnam War, the US sank further into debt.  Its citizens were terrorized into silence.  If they could kill the President they could kill anyone.

The House of Rothschild

The Dutch House of Orange founded the Bank of Amsterdam in 1609 as the world’s first central bank.  Prince William of Orange married into the English House of Windsor, taking King James II’s daughter Mary as his bride.  The Orange Order Brotherhood, which recently fomented Northern Ireland Protestant violence, put William III on the English throne where he ruled both Holland and Britain.  In 1694 William III teamed up with the UK aristocracy to launch the private Bank of England.

The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street- as the Bank of England is known- is surrounded by thirty foot walls.  Three floors beneath it the third largest stock of gold bullion in the world is stored. [15]

The Rothschilds and their inbred Eight Families partners gradually came to control the Bank of England.  The daily London gold “fixing” occurred at the N. M. Rothschild Bank until 2004.  As Bank of England Deputy Governor George Blunden put it, “Fear is what makes the bank’s powers so acceptable.  The bank is able to exert its influence when people are dependent on us and fear losing their privileges or when they are frightened.”[16]

Mayer Amschel Rothschild sold the British government German Hessian mercenaries to fight against American Revolutionaries, diverting the proceeds to his brother Nathan in London, where N.M. (Nathan and Mayer) Rothschild & Sons was established.  Mayer was a serious student of Cabala and launched his fortune on money embezzled from William IX- royal administrator of the Hesse-Kassel region and a prominent Freemason.

Rothschild-controlled Barings bankrolled the Chinese opium and African slave trades.  It financed the Louisiana Purchase.  When several states defaulted on its loans, Barings bribed Daniel Webster to make speeches stressing the virtues of loan repayment.  The states held their ground, so the House of Rothschild cut off the money spigot in 1842, plunging the US into a deep depression.  It was often said that the wealth of the Rothschilds depended on the bankruptcy of nations.  Mayer Amschel Rothschild once said, “I care not who controls a nation’s political affairs, so long as I control her currency”.

War didn’t hurt the family fortune either.  The House of Rothschild financed the Prussian War, the Crimean War and the British attempt to seize the Suez Canal from the French.  Nathan Rothschild made a huge financial bet on Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, while also funding the Duke of Wellington’s peninsular campaign against Napoleon.  Both the Mexican War and the Civil War were goldmines for the family.

Nathan Rothschild

One Rothschild family biography mentions a London meeting where an “International Banking Syndicate” decided to pit the American North against the South as part of a “divide and conquer” strategy.  German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck once stated, “The division of the United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War.  These bankers were afraid that the United States…would upset their financial domination over the world.  The voice of the Rothschilds prevailed.”  Rothschild biographer Derek Wilson says the family was the official European banker to the US government and strong supporters of the Bank of the United States. [17]

Family biographer Niall Ferguson notes a “substantial and unexplained gap” in private Rothschild correspondence between 1854-1860.  He says all copies of outgoing letters written by the London Rothschilds during this Civil War period “were destroyed at the orders of successive partners”. [18]

French and British troops had, at the height of the Civil War, encircled the US.  The British sent 11,000 troops to Crown-controlled Canada, which gave safe harbor to Confederate agents.  France’s Napoleon III installed Austrian Hapsburg family member Archduke Maximilian as his puppet emperor in Mexico, where French troops massed on the Texas border.  Only an 11th-hour deployment of two Russian warship fleets by US ally Czar Alexander II in 1863 saved the United States from re-colonization. [19]

That same year the Chicago Tribune blasted, “Belmont (August Belmont was a US Rothschild agent and had a Triple Crown horse race named in his honor) and the Rothschilds…who have been buying up Confederate war bonds.”

Salmon Rothschild said of a deceased President Lincoln, “He rejects all forms of compromise.  He has the appearance of a peasant and can only tell barroom stories.”  Baron Jacob Rothschild was equally flattering towards the US citizenry.  He once commented to US Minister to Belgium Henry Sanford on the over half a million Americans who died during the Civil War, “When your patient is desperately sick, you try desperate measures, even to bloodletting.”  Salmon and Jacob were merely carrying forth a family tradition.  A few generations earlier Mayer Amschel Rothschild bragged of his investment strategy, “When the streets of Paris are running in blood, I buy”. [20]

Mayer Rothschild’s sons were known as the Frankfurt Five.  The eldest – Amschel – ran the family’s Frankfurt bank with his father, while Nathan ran London operations.  Youngest son Jacob set up shop in Paris, while Salomon ran the Vienna branch and Karl was off to Naples.  Author Frederick Morton estimates that by 1850 the Rothschilds were worth over $10 billion. [21]  Some researchers believe that their fortune today exceeds $100 trillion.

The Warburgs, Kuhn Loebs, Goldman Sachs, Schiffs and Rothschilds have intermarried into one big happy banking family.  The Warburg family- which controls Deutsche Bank and BNP- tied up with the Rothschilds in 1814 in Hamburg, while Kuhn Loeb powerhouse Jacob Schiff shared quarters with Rothschilds in 1785.  Schiff immigrated to America in 1865.  He joined forces with Abraham Kuhn and married Solomon Loeb’s daughter.  Loeb and Kuhn married each others sisters and the Kuhn Loeb dynasty was consummated.  Felix Warburg married Jacob Schiff’s daughter.  Two Goldman daughters married two sons of the Sachs family, creating Goldman Sachs.  In 1806 Nathan Rothschild married the oldest daughter of Levi Barent Cohen, a leading financier in London. [22]  Thus, Merrill Lynch super-bull Abby Joseph Cohen and Clinton Secretary of Defense William Cohen are likely descended from Rothschilds.

Today the Rothschild’s control a far-flung financial empire, which includes majority stakes in most world central banks.  The Edmond de Rothschild clan owns the Banque Privee SA in Lugano, Switzerland and the Rothschild Bank AG of Zurich.  The family of Jacob Lord Rothschild owns the powerful Rothschild Italia in Milan.  They are founding members of the exclusive $10 trillion Club of the Isles – which controls corporate giants Royal Dutch Shell, Imperial Chemical Industries, Lloyds of London, Unilever, Barclays, Lonrho, Rio Tinto Zinc, BHP Billiton and Anglo American DeBeers. It dominates the world supply of petroleum, gold, diamonds, and many other vital raw materials. [23]

The Club of the Isles provides capital for George Soros’ Quantum Fund NV – which made substantial financial gains in 1998-99 following the collapse of currencies of Thailand, Indonesia and Russia.  Soros was a major shareholder at George W. Bush’s Harken Energy.  The Club of Isles is led by the Rothschilds and includes Queen Elizabeth II and other wealthy European aristocrats and Nobility.[24]

Perhaps the largest repository for Rothschild wealth today is Rothschilds Continuation Holdings AG – a secretive Swiss-based bank holding company.  By the late 1990s scions of the Rothschild global empire were Barons Guy and Elie de Rothschild in France and Lord Jacob and Sir Evelyn Rothschild in Britain. [25]

Evelyn was chairman of the Economist and a director at DeBeers and IBM UK.

Jacob backed Arnold Schwarzenegger’s California gubernatorial campaign.  He took control of Khodorkovsky’s YUKOS oil shares just before the Russian government arrested him.  In 2010 Jacob joined Rupert Murdoch in a shale oil extraction partnership in Israel through Genie Energy – a subsidiary of IDT Corporation. [26]

Within months, Sarah Palin had hired former IDT executive Michael Glassner as her chief of staff. [27]  Is Palin the Rothschild choice in 2012?

Next Week: Part III: Knights of the Roundtable and The Illuminati

Notes

[1] The Temple & the Lodge. Michael Bagent & Richard Leigh. Arcade Publishing. New York. 1989. p.259

[2] Ibid. p.219

[3] Ibid. p.253

[4] Ibid. p.233

[5] The Robot’s Rebellion: The Story of the Spiritual Renaissance. David Icke. Gateway Books. Bath, UK. 1994. p.156

[6] Democracy for the Few. Michael Parenti. St. Martin’s Press. New York. 1977. p.51

[7] Fourth Reich of the Rich. Des Griffin. Emissary Publications. Pasadena, CA. 1978. p.171

[8] Ibid. p.173

[9] Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History that Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons and the Great Pyramids. Jim Marrs. HarperCollins Publishers. New York. 2000. p.68

[10] The Secrets of the Federal Reserve. Eustace Mullins. Bankers Research Institute. Staunton, VA. 1983. p.179

[11] Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More. David Icke. David Icke Books Ltd. Isle of Wight. UK. 2010. p.92

[12] Marrs. p.212

[13] Idid. p.139

[14] Ibid p.141

[15] Icke. The Robot’s Rebellion. p.114

[16] Ibid. p.181

[17] Rothschild: The Wealth and Power of a Dynasty. Derek Wilson. Charles Schribner’s Sons. New York. 1988. p.178

[18] The House of Rothschild. Niall Ferguson. Viking Press New York 1998 p.28

[19] Marrs. p.215

[20] Ibid

[21] “What You Didn’t Know about Taxes and the Crown”. Mark Owen. Paranoia. #41. Spring 2006. p.66

[22] Marrs. p.63

[23] “The Coming Fall of the House of Windsor”. The New Federalist. 1994

[24] “The Secret Financial Network Behind ‘Wizard’ George Soros”. William Engdahl. Executive Intelligence Review. 11-1-96

[25] Marrs. p.86

[26] “Murdoch, Rothschild Invest in Israeli Oil Shale”. Jerusalem Post. November 22, 2010

[27] “Sarah Palin hires chief of staff for PAC”, Huffington Post. February 2011

Dean Henderson is the author of Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network and The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries. His Left Hook blog is at www.deanhenderson.wordpress.com

READ FULL STORY HERE

READ FULL STORY HERE

Iraq: Let us not forget what “humanitarian intervention” looks like.

Libya: Let us not be confused as to why Libya alone has been singled out for “humanitarian intervention”.

On April 9, Condoleezza Rice delivered a talk in San Francisco. Or tried to. The former Secretary of State was interrupted repeatedly by cries from the audience of “war criminal” and “torturer”. (For which we can thank our comrades in Code Pink and World Can’t Wait.) As one of the protesters was being taken away by security guards, Rice made the kind of statement that has now become standard for high American officials under such circumstances: “Aren’t you glad this lady lives in a democracy where she can express her opinion?” She also threw in another line that’s become de rigueur since the US overthrew Saddam Hussein, an argument that’s used when all other arguments fail: “The children of Iraq are actually not living under Saddam Hussein, thank God.” ¹

My response to such a line is this: If you went into surgery to correct a knee problem and the surgeon mistakenly amputated your entire leg, what would you think if someone then remarked to you how nice it was that “you actually no longer have a knee problem, thank God.” … The people of Iraq no longer have a Saddam problem.

Unfortunately, they’ve lost just about everything else as well. Twenty years of American bombing, invasion, occupation and torture have led to the people of that unhappy land losing their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives … more than half the population either dead, disabled, in prison, or in foreign exile … the air, soil, water, blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium … the most awful birth defects … unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children … a river of blood runs alongside the Euphrates and Tigris … through a country that may never be put back together again.

In 2006, the UN special investigator on torture declared that reports from Iraq indicated that torture “is totally out of hand. The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein.” Another UN report of the same time disclosed a rise in “honor killings” of women. ²

“It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003,” reported the Washington Post on May 5, 2007.

“I am not a political person, but I know that under Saddam Hussein, we had electricity, clean drinking water, a healthcare system that was the envy of the Arab world and free education through college,” Iraqi pharmacist Dr. Entisar Al-Arabi told American peace activist Medea Benjamin in 2010. “I have five children and every time I had a baby, I was entitled to a year of paid maternity leave. I owned a pharmacy and I could close up shop as late as I chose because the streets were safe. Today there is no security and Iraqis have terrible shortages of everything — electricity, food, water, medicines, even gasoline. Most of the educated people have fled the country, and those who remain look back longingly to the days of Saddam Hussein.” ³

And this from two months ago:

“Protesters, human rights workers and security officials say the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has responded to Iraq’s demonstrations in much the same way as many of its more authoritarian neighbors: with force. Witnesses in Baghdad and as far north as Kirkuk described watching last week as security forces in black uniforms, tracksuits and T-shirts roared up in trucks and Humvees, attacked protesters, rounded up others from cafes and homes and hauled them off, blindfolded, to army detention centers. Entire neighborhoods … were blockaded to prevent residents from joining the demonstrations. Journalists were beaten.” ⁴

So … can we expect the United States and its fellow thugs in NATO to intervene militarily in Iraq as they’re doing in Libya? To protect the protesters in Iraq as they tell us they’re doing in Libya? To effect regime change in Iraq as they’re conspiring, but not admitting, in Libya?

Similarly Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria … all have been bursting with protest and vicious government crackdown in recent months, even to a degree in Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive societies in the world. Not one of these governments has been assaulted by the United States, the UK, or France as Libya has been assaulted; not one of these countries’ opposition is receiving military, financial, legal and moral support from the Western powers as the Libyan rebels are — despite the Libyan rebels’ brutal behavior, racist murders, and the clear jihadist ties of some of them. ⁵ The Libyan rebels are reminiscent of the Kosovo rebels — mafiosos famous for their trafficking in body parts and women, also unquestioningly supported by the Western powers against an Officially Designated Enemy, Serbia.

So why is only Libya the target for US/NATO missiles? Is there some principled or moral reason? Are the Libyans the worst abusers of their people in the region? In actuality, Libya offers its citizens a higher standard of living. (The 2010 UN Human Development Index, a composite measure of health, education and income ranked Libya first in Africa.) None of the other countries has a more secular government than Libya. (In contrast some of the Libyan rebels are in the habit of chanting that phrase we all know only too well: “Allah Akbar”.) None of the others has a human-rights record better than that of Libya, however imperfect that may be — in Egypt a government fact-finding mission has announced that during the recent uprising at least 846 protesters were killed as police forces shot them in the head and chest with live ammunition. ⁶ Similar horror stories have been reported in Syria, Yemen and other countries of the region during this period.

It should be noted that the ultra-conservative Fox News reported on February 28: “As the United Nations works feverishly to condemn Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi for cracking down on protesters, the body’s Human Rights Council is poised to adopt a report chock-full of praise for Libya’s human rights record. The review commends Libya for improving educational opportunities, for making human rights a “priority” and for bettering its “constitutional” framework. Several countries, including Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia but also Canada, give Libya positive marks for the legal protections afforded to its citizens — who are now revolting against the regime and facing bloody reprisal.”

Of all the accusations made against Gaddafi perhaps the most meaningless is the oft-repeated “He’s killing his own people.” It’s true, but that’s what happens in civil wars. Abraham Lincoln also killed his own people.

Muammar Gaddafi has been an Officially Designated Enemy of the US longer than any living world leader except Fidel Castro. The animosity began in 1970, one year after Gaddafi took power in a coup, when he closed down a US air force base. He then embarked on a career of supporting what he regarded as revolutionary groups. During the 1970s and ’80s, Gaddafi was accused of using his large oil revenues to support — with funds, arms, training, havens, diplomacy, etc — a wide array of radical/insurgent/terrorist organizations, particularly certain Palestinian factions and Muslim dissident and minority movements in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia; the IRA and Basque and Corsican separatists in Europe; several groups engaged in struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa; various opposition groups and politicians in Latin America; the Japanese Red Army, the Italian Red Brigades, and Germany’s Baader-Meinhof gang.

It was claimed as well that Libya was behind, or at least somehow linked to, an attempt to blow up the US Embassy in Cairo, various plane hijackings, a bomb explosion on an American airliner over Greece, the blowing up of a French airliner over Africa, blowing up a synagogue in Istanbul, and blowing up a disco in Berlin which killed some American soldiers. ⁷

In 1990, when the United States needed a country to (falsely) blame for the bombing of PanAm flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, Libya was the easy choice.

Gaddafi’s principal crime in the eyes of US President Ronald Reagan (1981-89) was not that he supported terrorist groups, but that he supported the wrong terrorist groups; i.e., Gaddafi was not supporting the same terrorists that Washington was, such as the Nicaraguan Contras, UNITA in Angola, Cuban exiles in Miami, the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala, and the US military in Grenada. The one band of terrorists the two men supported in common was the Moujahedeen in Afghanistan.

And if all this wasn’t enough to make Gaddafi Public Enemy Number One in Washington (Reagan referred to him as the “mad dog of the Middle East”), Gaddafi has been a frequent critic of US foreign policy, a serious anti-Zionist, pan-Africanist, and pan-Arabist (until the hypocrisy and conservatism of Arab governments proved a barrier). He also calls his government socialist. How much tolerance and patience can The Empire be expected to have? When widespread protests broke out in Tunisia and Egypt, could Washington have resisted instigating the same in the country sandwiched between those two? The CIA has been very busy supplying the rebels with arms, bombing support, money, and personnel.

It may well happen that the Western allies will succeed in forcing Gaddafi out of power. Then the world will look on innocently as the new Libyan government gives Washington what it has long sought: a host-country site for Africom, the US Africa Command, one of six regional commands the Pentagon has divided the world into. Many African countries approached to be the host have declined, at times in relatively strong terms. Africom at present is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. According to a State Department official: “We’ve got a big image problem down there. … Public opinion is really against getting into bed with the US. They just don’t trust the US.” ⁸ Another thing scarcely any African country would tolerate is an American military base. There’s only one such base in Africa, in Djibouti. Watch for one in Libya sometime after the dust has settled. It’ll be situated close to the American oil wells. Or perhaps the people of Libya will be given a choice — an American base or a NATO base.

And remember — in the context of recent history concerning Iraq, North Korea, and Iran — if Libya had nuclear weapons the United States would not be attacking it.

Or the United States could realize that Gaddafi is no radical threat simply because of his love for Condoleezza Rice. Here is the Libyan leader in a March 27, 2007 interview on al-Jazeera TV: “Leezza, Leezza, Leezza … I love her very much. I admire her, and I’m proud of her, because she’s a black woman of African origin.”

Over the years, the American government and media have fed us all a constant diet of scandalous Gaddafi stories: He took various drugs, was an extreme womanizer, was bisexual, dressed in women’s clothing, wore makeup, carried a teddy bear, had epileptic fits, and much more; some part of it may have been true. And now we have the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, telling us that Gaddafi’s forces are increasingly engaging in sexual violence and that they have been issued the impotency drug Viagra, presumably to enhance their ability to rape. ⁹ Remarkable. Who would have believed that the Libyan Army had so many men in their 60s and 70s?

As I write this, US/NATO missiles have slammed into a Libyan home killing a son and three young grandchildren of Gaddafi, this after repeated rejections of Gaddafi’s call for negotiations — another heartwarming milestone in the glorious history of humanitarian intervention, as well as a reminder of the US bombing of Libya in 1986 which killed a young daughter of Gaddafi.

Two more examples, if needed, of why capitalism can not be reformed

Transocean, the owner of the drilling rig that exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico a year ago, killing 11 workers and sending two hundred (200) million gallons of oil cascading over the shoreline of six American states, has announced that (through using some kind of arcane statistical method) it had “recorded the best year in safety performance in our Company’s history.” Accordingly, the company awarded obscene bonuses on top of obscene salaries to its top executives. ¹⁰

In Japan, even as it struggles to contain one of history’s worst nuclear disasters, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has proposed building two new nuclear reactors at its radiation-spewing power plant. The plan had taken shape before the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and TEPCO officials see no reason to change it. The Japanese government agency in charge of approving such a project has reacted in shocked horror. “It was just unbelievable,” said the director of the agency. ¹¹

Which leads us to A.W. Clausen, president of Bank of America, speaking to the Greater Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, in 1970:

“It may sound heretical to some in this room to say that business enterprise is not an absolute necessity to human culture … Ancient Egypt functioned more than 3000 years without anything resembling what we today understand by the term ‘corporate enterprise’ or even ‘money’. Within our span of years, we have witnessed the rise of the Soviet Socialist empire. It survives without anything you or I would call a private corporation and little that approaches our own monetary mechanism. It survives and is far stronger than anyone might have expected from watching its turbulent beginnings in 1917 … It is easy to mislead ourselves into thinking that there is something preordained about our profit-motivated, free-market, private-enterprise system — that is, as they used to say of gold, universal and immutable.”

Items of interest from a journal I’ve kept for 40 years, part III

• Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez memoir, Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story, pages 349-350: April 6, 2004. Sanchez was in Iraq in video teleconference with President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. One major American offensive was in operation, another about to be launched. According to Sanchez, Powell was talking tough that day: “We’ve got to smash somebody’s ass quickly, “Powell said. “There has to be a total victory somewhere. We must have a brute demonstration of power.” Then Bush spoke: “At the end of this campaign al-Sadr must be gone. At a minimum, he will be arrested. It is essential he be wiped out. Kick ass! If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can’t send that message. It’s an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal. … There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!”
• Noam Chomsky: “If there is really authentic popular participation in the decision-making and the free association of communities, yeah, that could be tremendously important. In fact that’s essentially the traditional anarchist ideal. That’s what was realized the only time for about a year in Spain in 1936 before it was crushed by outside forces, in fact all outside forces, Stalinist Russia, Hitler in Germany, Mussolini’s fascism and the Western democracies cooperated in crushing it. They were all afraid of it.”
• To Hitler, America was both the enemy and a role model, inspiring in its imperial seizure of great territories by force, its use of slave labor, its eradication of native populations.
• NATO’s secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, made clear in a speech to the Brookings Institution in Washington in 2008 that western interests in Afghanistan went well beyond good governance to the strategic interest in having a permanent military presence in a state that borders central Asia, China, Iran and Pakistan.
• CIA Special Collections of documents; “Instances Of the Use of US Armed Forces Abroad, 1798 – 2010“
• Michael Collon: “Let’s replace the word ‘democratic’ by ‘with us’, and the word ‘terrorist’ by ‘against us’.”
• Ron Paul: “Those who caution that leaving Iraq would be a disaster are the same ones who promised the conflict would be a ‘cake-walk’.”
• Spc. Alex Horton, 22, writing in a blog while a marine in Iraq in 2007: “In the future, I want my children to grow up with the belief that what I did here was wrong, in a society that doesn’t deem that idea unpatriotic.”
• Henry Kissinger in a 1970 memo to Nixon: “The example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely have an impact on –– and even precedent value for –– other parts of the world, especially in Italy; the imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it.”
• Paul Craig Roberts: “International polls show that the rest of the world regard the US and Israel as the greatest dangers to world peace. Americans claim that they are fighting wars against terrorism, but it is US and Israeli terrorism that worries everyone else.”
• Chris Hedges: “If you are a young Muslim American and head off to the Middle East for a spell in a fundamentalist ‘madrassa,’ or religious school, Homeland Security will probably greet you at the airport when you return. But if you are an American Jew and you join hundreds of teenagers from Europe and Mexico for an eight-week training course run by the Israel Defense Forces, you can post your picture wearing an Israeli army uniform and holding an automatic weapon on MySpace.”
• “The US has never had a ‘foreign policy’ but a fanatical domestic policy which, once it had bled through to the Pacific, sought new hosts on which to feed.” Patrick Wilkinson
• C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (1956): “The only seriously accepted plan for ‘peace’ is a fully loaded pistol. In short, war or a high state of war preparedness is felt to be the normal and seemingly permanent condition of the United States.”
• The United States goes around the world sprinkling democracy dust.
• Iran, the latest threat to life as we know it.
• “Iran hit back at US allegations that it has failed to crack down on fugitive al-Qaeda members, calling on Washington to apologize to the world for its own past support of the network. ‘The Americans should present a full apology to the international community for the support they gave to al-Qaeda,’ said the foreign ministry, referring to a period in the 1980s when millions of dollars of covert US aid was channeled — through the Pakistani secret service — to Islamist groups battling the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.” (Agence France Presse, June 2, 2003)
• Tom Hayden: They believe that the exposure of the generals to a civilian academic atmosphere may humanize the process of war-making, not worrying that the actual danger may be the militarizing of the university.
• Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, in his 2007 book, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World”: “I’m saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil.”After an avalanche of commentary, Greenspan backpedaled and obfuscated in his comments. He insisted he was talking about “oil security” and “the global economy”. But this was just proving his own point that mentioning oil as a motivation for war is “politically inconvenient”. It’s no way to get young men to kill other young men who’ve never done them any harm.
• The American people have no more authentic control over their government than do people in countries that we call dictatorships, particularly on issues of foreign policy.

Notes

1. Video of Rice talk ^?
2. Associated Press, September 21, 2006 ^?
3. Common Dreams, August 20, 2010 ^?
4. Washington Post, March 4, 2011^?
5. Washington Times, February 24, 2011; The Telegraph (London), March 25, 2011; Alexander Cockburn, “Libya, Oh What a Stupid War; Fukushima, Cover-Up Amid Catastrophe”; “Al Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq” (PDF), Combating Terrorism Center, US Military Academy, West Point, NY, December 2007 ^?
6. Associated Press, April 20, 2011 ^?
7. Gaddafi’s history of supporting terrorism, real and alleged: William Blum, Killing Hope, chapter 48 ^?
8. The Guardian (London), June 25, 2007 ^?
9. Reuters news agency, April 29, 2011 ^?
10. Washington Post, April 1, 2011 ^?
11. Washington Post, April 6, 2011 ^?

–

William Blum is the author of:

• Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
• Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
• West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
• Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6 [at] aol.com with “add” in the subject line. I’d like your name and city in the message, but that’s optional. I ask for your city only in case I’ll be speaking in your area.

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The idea that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attacks has been an article of faith for public officials and the mainstream media. Calling it an “article of faith” points to two features of this idea. On the one hand, no one in these circles publicly challenges this idea. On the other hand, as I pointed out at length in two of my books – 9/11 Contradictions1 and The New Pearl Harbor Revisited,2 no good evidence has ever been publicly presented to support it. Colin Powell’s Withdrawn Promise Two weeks after 9/11, Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking to Tim Russert on Meet the Press, said that he expected “in the near future . . . to put out . . . a document that will describe quite clearly the evidence that we have linking [bin Laden] to this attack.”3 Powell reversed himself, however, at a press conference with President Bush in the White House Rose Garden the next morning, saying that, although the government had information that left no question of bin Laden’s responsibility, “most of it is classified.”4 According to Seymour Hersh, citing officials from both the CIA and the Department of Justice, the real reason for the reversal was a “lack of solid information.”5 This was the week that Bush, after demanding that the Taliban turn over bin Laden, refused their request for evidence that bin Laden had been behind the attacks.6 A senior Taliban official, after the US attack on Afghanistan had begun, said: “We have asked for proof of Osama’s involvement, but they have refused. Why?”7 Hersh’s answer was that they had no proof. Tony Blair’s Weak Document The task of providing such proof was taken up by Bush’s chief ally in the “war on terror,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair. On October 4, 2001, Blair made public a document entitled: “Responsibility for the Terrorist Atrocities in the United States.” Listing “clear conclusions reached by the government,” it stated: “Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the terrorist network which he heads, planned and carried out the atrocities on 11 September 2001.” Blair’s report, however, began by saying: “This document does not purport to provide a prosecutable case against Osama Bin Laden in a court of law.”8 Although the case was not good enough to go to court, Blair seemed to be saying, it was good enough to go to war. The weakness in Blair’s report, in any event, was noted the next day by the BBC, which said: “There is no direct evidence in the public domain linking Osama Bin Laden to the 11 September attacks. At best the evidence is circumstantial.”9 The FBI’s Surprising Statement What does our own FBI say? Here is a surprising but little-known fact, because it has scarcely been reported in the mainstream media: The FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorist” webpage on “Usama bin Laden” does not list the 9/11 attacks as one of the crimes for which he is wanted. It does list bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi as terrorist acts for which he is wanted. But it makes no mention of 9/11.10 In 2006, Rex Tomb, then the FBI’s chief of investigative publicity, was asked why not. He replied: “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”11 After this story started flying around the Internet and was even covered by a TV station in Louisiana,12 Dan Eggen tried to downplay its significance in an August 2006 Washington Post article entitled “Bin Laden, Most Wanted For Embassy Bombings?”13 Complaining about “conspiracy theorists” who claimed that “the lack of a Sept. 11 reference [on the FBI's "Most Wanted" webpage for bin Laden] suggests that the connection to al-Qaeda is uncertain,” Eggen quoted the explanation offered by a former US attorney, who said that the FBI could not appropriately “put up a wanted picture where no formal charges had been filed.” But that explanation, while true, simply pushes the issue back a step to this question: Why have such charges not been filed? Rex Tomb’s fuller statement, which Eggen failed to mention, had answered this question the previous June, saying: The FBI gathers evidence. Once evidence is gathered, it is turned over to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice then decides whether it has enough evidence to present to a federal grand jury. In the case of the 1998 United States Embassies being bombed, Bin Laden has been formally indicted and charged by a grand jury. He has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.14 The 9/11 Commission What about the 9/11 Commission? Its report gave the impression that it was in possession of solid evidence of bin Laden’s guilt. But the Commission’s co-chairs, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, undermined this impression in their follow-up book, which they subtitled: “The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission.”15 (I discussed this book at length in Chapter 2 of my 2007 book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking.16) As the endnotes for The 9/11 Commission Report reveal, whenever the Commission referred to evidence of bin Ladin’s responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, the Commission was always referring to CIA-provided information, which had (presumably) been elicited during interrogations of al-Qaeda operatives. By far the most important of these operatives was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, generally called simply “KSM,” who has been called the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. The Commission, for example, wrote: Bin Ladin . . . finally decided to give the green light for the 9/11 operation sometime in late 1998 or early 1999. . . . Bin Ladin also soon selected four individuals to serve as suicide operatives. . . . Atta – whom Bin Ladin chose to lead the group – met with Bin Ladin several times to receive additional instructions, including a preliminary list of approved targets: the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the U.S. Capitol.17 The note for each of these statements says: “interrogation of KSM.”18 Kean and Hamilton, however, reported that they had no success in “obtaining access to star witnesses in custody . . . , most notably Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.”19 Besides not being allowed to interview these witnesses, Commission members were not even permitted to observe the interrogations through one-way glass or to talk to the interrogators.20 Therefore, Kean and Hamilton complained: “We . . . had no way of evaluating the credibility of detainee information. How could we tell if someone such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed . . . was telling us the truth?”21 An NBC “deep background” report in 2008 pointed out an additional problem: KSM and the other al-Qaeda leaders had been subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” i.e., torture, and it is now widely acknowledged that statements elicited by torture lack credibility. “At least four of the operatives whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report,” NBC pointed out, “have claimed that they told interrogators critical information as a way to stop being ‘tortured.’” NBC then quoted Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, as saying: “Most people look at the 9/11 Commission Report as a trusted historical document. If their conclusions were supported by information gained from torture, . . . their conclusions are suspect.”22 The “Bin Laden Confession Tapes” As we have seen, neither the 9/11 Commission, the Bush-Cheney White House, the FBI, the British government, nor the 9/11 Commission provided good evidence that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Many people, however, have assumed that the question of his responsibility was settled by the existence of videotapes and audiotapes in which he himself confessed to the attacks. There are, however, good reasons to believe that these so-called confession tapes are fakes. I will illustrate this point in terms of the two best-known videotapes of this nature. The “Jalalabad Video” Released December 13, 2001: The first and most famous of the “Osama bin Laden confession video tapes” was released by the Pentagon on December 13, 2001. It had purportedly been made on November 9, 2001, after which it was allegedly found by US forces in a private home in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. In this video, an Osama bin Laden figure is seen talking about the 9/11 attacks with a visiting sheikh. During the course of the conversation, the bin Laden figure boasts about the success of the attacks, saying that he had planned them.23 Both US and British officials claimed that this tape left no doubt about bin Laden’s guilt.24 Stories in both the Canadian and British media, however, raised questions about the tape’s authenticity. These stories, besides pointing out the existence of the technical ability to create fake video tapes, also mentioned the suspicion of some people that the bin Laden figure was not Osama bin Laden himself. A BBC News report said: “Washington calls it the ‘smoking gun’ that puts Bin Laden’s guilt beyond doubt, but many in the Arab world believe the home video of the al-Qaeda chief is a fake.”25 This report was, in fact, entitled, “Could the Bin Laden Video Be a Fake?” This question was also raised in Canada by CBC News, which pointed out that some people had “suggested the Americans hired someone to pretend to be the exiled Saudi.”26 This question was raised even more insistently in a Guardian story with the title, “US Urged to Detail Origin of Tape.” Reporting “growing doubt in the Muslim world about the authenticity of the film,” writer Steven Morris said: The White House yesterday came under pressure to give more details of the video which purports to show Osama bin Laden admitting his part in the September 11 attacks.27 Morris, pointing out that the White House had provided no details about how the Pentagon came to be in possession of the tape, added: According to US officials the tape was found in a house in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan, and handed to the Pentagon by an unnamed person or group. . . . But for many the explanation is too convenient. Some opponents of the war theorise that the Bin Laden in the film was a look-alike. Morris then quoted one such opponent in Pakistan, who said: “This videotape is not authentic. The Americans made it up after failing to get any evidence against Osama.” Morris also cited Bob Crabtree, the editor of Computer Video magazine, who explained that it was impossible to determine whether the video was authentic without more details of its source, adding: “The US seems simply to have asked the world to trust them that it is genuine.”28 This skepticism about the authenticity of this “Jalalabad video” was based on sound reasons. For one thing, this video’s bin Laden figure appeared too heavy and healthy, compared with the bin Laden who made the last of the undoubtedly authentic bin Laden videos, which was made sometime in 2001 between November 16 (on which occurred an event mentioned on the tape) and December 27 (the date on which the tape was released). In this post-November 16 video, bin Laden’s beard was white, he had a “gaunt, frail appearance,” and his “left arm hung limply by his side while he gesticulated with his right.”29 This immobile left arm, Dr. Sanjay Gupta observed on CNN, suggested that bin Laden had suffered a stroke, adding that this plus a “frosting of the appearance” suggested that bin Laden was in the final stages of kidney failure.30 But in the “Jalalabad video,” which was reportedly made at about the same time (being dated November 9 and released December 13), the bin Laden figure was heavier and also darker, in both skin and beard color; his nose had a different shape;31 and his hands were shorter and heavier than those of Osama bin Laden as seen in undoubtedly authentic videos.32 Still another problem is that, whereas bin Laden was left-handed, the man in the “Jalalabad video” wrote with his right hand. Although it might be thought that this was because his left arm was immobile, the bin Laden figure in this video was easily able to lift his left arm above his head.33 If this video was made on November 9, as claimed, then it would have been made at most only a few weeks before the post-November 16 video. It is very hard to believe that the heavy, dark-skinned, healthy-looking man with a dark beard could have, within two or three weeks, turned into the pale, gaunt, white-bearded, man seen in the post-November 16 video. If one accepts the Jalalabad video as authentic, one not only has to accept these radical changes in bin Laden’s physical appearance; one must also accept a complete change in his statements about 9/11. In the previous weeks, he had repeatedly – on September 12, 16, 17, and 28 – stated that he had had nothing to do with the attacks.34 In the September 28 statement, he had even declared: I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of a battle. . . . [W]e are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed.35 Is it likely that he would have made such statements if he himself had authorized the attacks and thereby the killing of innocents? Whatever be one’s opinion about that, the bin Laden figure in the “Jalalabad video” made other statements that Osama bin Laden himself would surely not have made. For example, he said: [W]e calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy who would be killed based on the position of the tower. . . . [D]ue to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for.36 But in light of the real bin Laden’s “experience in the field” as a building contractor, he would have known that high-rise buildings are framed with steel, not iron. Even more important, he would have known that the buildings’ support columns – whether made of steel or iron – would not have been melted by the “fire from the gas in the plane.” Why? Because he would have known, on the one hand, that a building fire, even if fed by jet-fuel (which is essentially kerosene), could not, even under the most ideal conditions, have risen above 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius). And he would have known, on the other hand, that iron and steel do not begin to melt until they are heated to a temperature far higher than that: to almost 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,540 degrees Celsius). The real bin Laden, therefore, would not have expected any iron or steel to melt. A final reason to consider the “Jalalabad video” a fake is that bin Laden experts have declared it to such. When Dr. Bruce Lawrence, a Duke University history professor widely considered the country’s leading academic bin Laden expert,37 was asked what he thought about this video, he said, bluntly: “It’s bogus.” Some friends of his in the US Department of Homeland Security assigned to work “on the 24/7 bin Laden clock,” he added, “also know it’s bogus.”38 General Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistan’s ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), suggested that the man in the video was an “Osama bin Laden lookalike.”39 Former Foreign Service officer Angelo Codevilla, after saying “[t]he guy just does not look like Osama,” added: “The fact that the video had been made for no self-evident purpose except perhaps to be found by the Americans should have raised suspicion.”40 A fourth expert opinion has been issued implicitly, it would seem, by the Department of Justice and its FBI. If they considered this “confession video” authentic, would they not consider it “hard evidence” of bin Laden’s responsibility for 9/11? They say, however, that they have no such evidence, so they must not consider this video authentic. The “October Surprise Video of 2004: The other most famous of the “bin Laden confession tapes” is the video tape that was released on October 29, 2004, just before the presidential election between George W. Bush and John Kerry, leading to its being called “the October Surprise video.” In this one, for the first time, a bin Laden figure directly addressed the American people. The Associated Press, focusing on the most important aspect of the speaker’s message, entitled its story: “Bin Laden, in Statement to U.S. People, Says He Ordered Sept. 11 Attacks.”41 However, although the AP accepted the authenticity of the tape, there are serious reasons to doubt it. A reason to be at least suspicious is the very fact that it appeared just four days before the presidential election and seemed designed to help Bush’s reelection – an assessment that was made even by CIA analysts.42 The video, moreover, evidently did help: Bush’s lead over Kerry in national polls increased right after it appeared,43 and both Bush and Kerry said that this tape was significantly responsible for Bush’s victory.44 Given the fact that this video would quite predictably help Bush win reelection, it would seem to have been issued by his friends, not his enemies. There are also substantive reasons to doubt this tape’s authenticity, one of which is the speaker’s language. The clearly authentic bin Laden messages were filled with religious language. A bin Laden video released October 7, 2001, for example, began thus: Praise be to God and we beseech Him for help and forgiveness. We seek refuge with the Lord of our bad and evildoing. He whom God guides is rightly guided . . . . I witness that there is no God but God and Mohammed is His slave and Prophet.45 Even though this talk as a whole had only 725 words, bin Laden referred to God (Allah) 20 times and to the prophet Mohammed 3 times. Likewise, his message of November 3, 2001, which contained 2,333 words, referred to God 35 times and to the prophet Mohammed 8 times.46 By contrast, the 2004 October Surprise video, which had almost the same number of words as the November 3 video, referred to God only 12 times. The only “Mohammad” mentioned, moreover, was Mohamed Atta. Another substantive difference involved the type of causal analysis provided. Bin Laden’s clearly authentic messages had portrayed historical events as occurring only because they were caused, or at least allowed, by God. In his message of October 7, 2001, for example, he said: “God Almighty hit the United States. . . . He destroyed its greatest buildings.” Human agents were involved, to be sure, but they were successful only because “Almighty God . . . allowed them to destroy the United States.”47 In his message of November 3, likewise, bin Laden said that, if people are helped or harmed, it is always by “something that God has already preordained for [them].”48 The message on the 2004 confession video, however, reflected a worldview in which events can be understood through a causal analysis based on secular rationalism. “One of the most important things rational people do when calamities occur,” the lecturer asserted, “is to look for their causes so as to avoid them.” He himself, in analyzing “the [Iraq] war, its causes and consequences,” provided a causal analysis involving purely human actors: Bush, al-Qaeda, and the American people. Far from suggesting that everything is finally in the hands of God, he said to the American people: “Your security is in your own hands” – a statement that a devout Wahabi Muslim such as Osama bin Laden would surely have considered blasphemous. Still another reason to doubt the authenticity of this 2004 video is that, although the speaker was addressing the American public, he spoke Arabic rather than English. This is strange, because Osama bin Laden was reportedly fluent in English, which he had started studying when he was 11 years old.49 A British journalist reported that, when he and bin Laden met in 1989, they conversed in English for 45 minutes.50 General Hamid Gul, speaking to United Press International in 2001, said: “I know bin Laden and his associates. They are graduates of the best universities and . . . speak impeccable English.51 If bin Laden spoke impeccable English, would he not have used it when speaking directly to the American people?52 Accordingly, this video does not, any more than the “Jalalabad video,” provide evidence that Osama bin Laden himself confessed to planning the 9/11 attacks. Conclusion I showed in a previous essay that, according to the best evidence presently available, Osama bin Laden has been dead for many years.53 In the present essay, I have shown that there is not even any good evidence for the claim that bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Accordingly, insofar as the justification for the continuation of the AfPak war is based on the fact that bin Laden in the region both before and after the 9/11 attacks, that justification would seem to be doubly baseless. David Ray Griffin is the author of 36 books, nine of which are about 9/11. His most recent book is The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 Is Unscientific and False (Olive Branch, 2009). In 2008, he put out two books: The New Pearl Harbor: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé (which was named a “Pick of the Week” by Publishers Weekly) and Osama bin Laden: Dead Or Alive? (which has generated considerable media coverage in England). David Ray Griffin is professor emeritus at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University. He is the author of The New Pearl Harbor – Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 ,  The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions — A Critique of the Kean-Zelikow Report as well as Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive? Notes 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2008), Chap. 18, “Does the Government Have Hard Evidence of Bin Laden’s Responsibility?” The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2008). This book was named Publishers Weekly’s “Pick of the Week” on November 24, 2008 (http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6617001.html?industryid=47159). “Meet the Press,” NBC, September 23, 2001 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/nbctext092301.html). “Remarks by the President, Secretary of the Treasury O’Neill and Secretary of State Powell on Executive Order,” White House, September 24, 2001 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010924-4.html). Seymour M. Hersh, “What Went Wrong: The C.I.A. and the Failure of American Intelligence,” New Yorker, October 1, 2001 (http://cicentre.com/Documents/DOC_Hersch_OCT_01.htm). “White House Warns Taliban: ‘We Will Defeat You,’” CNN, September 21, 2001 (http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central/09/21/ret.afghan.taliban). Kathy Gannon, “Taliban Willing to Talk, But Wants U.S. Respect,” Associated Press, November 1, 2001 (http://nucnews.net/nucnews/2001nn/0111nn/011101nn.htm#300). Office of the Prime Minister, “Responsibility for the Terrorist Atrocities in the United States,” BBC News, October 4, 2001 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/1579043.stm). “The Investigation and the Evidence,” BBC News, October 5, 2001 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1581063.stm). Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Most Wanted Terrorists: Usama bin Laden” (http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm). Ed Haas, “FBI says, ‘No Hard Evidence Connecting Bin Laden to 9/11′” Muckraker Report, June 6, 2006 (http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html). “Bin Laden’s FBI Poster Omits Any 9/11 Connection,” KSLA 12 in Shreveport, Louisiana (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6443576002087829136). “Bin Laden, Most Wanted For Embassy Bombings?” Washington Post, August 28, 2006 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/27/AR2006082700687.html) Haas, “FBI says, ‘No Hard Evidence Connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.’” Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, with Benjamin Rhodes, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006). David Ray Griffin, Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory, revised and updated edition (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2007). This book won a bronze medal in the 2008 Independent Publishers Book Awards. The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, authorized edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 149, 155, 166; henceforth 9/11CR. See 9/11CR Ch. 5, notes 16, 41, and 92. Kean and Hamilton, Without Precedent, 118. Ibid., 122-24. Ibid., 119. I have discussed this issue at greater length in Ch. 8, “9/11 Commission Falsehoods about Bin Laden, al-Qaeda, Pakistanis, and Saudis,” of The New Pearl Harbor Revisited. Robert Windrem and Victor Limjoco, “The 9/11 Commission Controversy,” Deep Background: NBC News Investigations, January 30, 2008 http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/01/30/624314.aspx). “U.S. Releases Videotape of Osama bin Laden,” Department of Defense, December 13, 2001 (http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=3184); “Pentagon Releases Bin Laden Videotape: U.S. Officials Say Tape Links Him to Sept. 11 Attacks,” National Public Radio, December 13, 2001 http://www.npr.org/news/specials/response/investigation/011213.binladen.tape.html). The entire video can be viewed at this NPR Web page. See my book Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? (Northampton: Olive Branch [Interlink Books], 2009), 23-26. “Could the Bin Laden Video Be a Fake?” BBC News, December 14, 2001 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1711288.stm). “‘Feeble’ to Claim Bin Laden Tape Fake: Bush,” CBC, December 14, 2001 (http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2001/12/14/bush_osama011214.html). Steven Morris, “US Urged to Detail Origin of Tape,” Guardian, December 15, 2001 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/dec/15/september11.afghanistan). Ibid. Toby Harnden, “US Casts Doubt on Bin Laden’s Latest Message,” Telegraph, December 27, 2001 “Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Bin Laden Would Need Help if on Dialysis,” CNN, January 21, 2002 (http://www.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/01/21/gupta.otsc/index.html). For the tape, see “”Osama Bin Laden Tape Dezember [sic] 2001″ (http://www.myvideo.de/watch/3760193/Osama_Bin_Laden_Tape_Dezember_2001). For a nose comparison, see “Osama bin Laden Gets a Nose Job” (http://www.awitness.org/news/december_2001/osama_nose_job.html), or “Bruce Lawrence,” Radio Du Jour (http://www.radiodujour.com/people/lawrence_bruce). Compare his hands with bin Laden’s hand as shown in the post-November 16 video (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1729882.stm). This can be seen in a portion of the Jalalabad video placed on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0FVeqCX6z8). For documentation and discussion, see Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? 27-29. “Interview with Usama bin Laden,” Ummat (Karachi), September 28, 2001 http://www.robert-fisk.com/usama_interview_ummat.htm). Bin Laden’s statement about innocents repeated what he had said in an interview with John Miller of ABC News in 1998: “Our religion forbids us from killing innocent people such as women and children” “Transcript of Usama bin Laden Video Tape,” Department of Defense, December 13, 2001 (http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Dec2001/d20011213ubl.pdf). Bruce Lawrence is the editor of Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden (London and New York: Verso, 2005). Lawrence made these statements on February 16, 2007, during a radio interview conducted by Kevin Barrett of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. It can be heard at Radio Du Jour (http://www.radiodujour.com/people/lawrence_bruce). BBC News, “Tape ‘Proves Bin Laden’s Guilt,’” December 14, 2001 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1708091.stm). Angelo M. Codevilla, “Osama bin Elvis,” American Spectator, March 2009 (http://spectator.org/archives/2009/03/13/osama-bin-elvis/print). Maggie Michael, “Bin Laden, in Statement to U.S. People, Says He Ordered Sept. 11 Attacks,” Associated Press, October 29, 2004 (http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/terror/20041029-1423-binladentape.html). Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 336. Philip Sherwell, “Bush Takes a Six-Point Lead After New Bin Laden Tape,” Telegraph, November 1, 2004 (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1475515/Bush-takes-a-six-point-lead-after-new-bin-Laden-tape.html). “Kerry Blames Defeat on Bin Laden,” BBC News, January 31, 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4222647.stm); “Bush Says Bin Laden Tape Aided Re-Election: Report,” Reuters, February 28, 2006 http://www.redorbit.com/news/politics/408991/bush_says_bin_laden_tape_aided_reelection_report/). “Bin Laden’s Warning: Full Text,” BBC News, October 7, 2001 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1585636.stm). “BBC Transcript Of Osama Bin Laden Statement,” November 7, 2001 (http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0111/S00049.htm). “Bin Laden’s Warning: Full Text.” “BBC Transcript Of Osama Bin Laden Statement.” See “In the Footsteps of Bin Laden,” CNN, August 23, 2006 http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0608/23/cp.01.html), and Steve Coll, “Young Osama,” New Yorker, December 12, 2005 http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/12/051212fa_fact). “In the Footsteps of Bin Laden.” “Arnaud de Borchgrave Interviews Hameed Gul, Former Chief of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence,” UPI, September 26, 2001 (http://www.strategypage.com/militaryforums/594-499.aspx; also available at(http://www.robert-fisk.com/hamid_gul_interview_sept26_2001.htm). I have given a more thorough analysis of the problems in these two “confession videos” in my book Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? (Northampton: Olive Branch [Interlink Books, 2009). “Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive?” Veterans Today, October 22, 2009 (http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=9079).

David Ray Griffin is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by David Ray Griffin

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Sunday 27 March 2011 02.25 BST

Turnout for generally good-natured rally exceeds organisers’ expectations, but mood marred by violent minority

Read entire article here

Short film about the translation of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

Source www.youtube.com

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FOR SOURCE AND MORE RELATED DOCUMENTS CLICK HERE
(source: www.usconstitution.net)

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a nuclear bomb goes off in your city??

Insert your city in the search box and press Search.
Then slide the weapons selector to choose your type of nuclear weapon.
You also can change the wind direction which will affect fallout radius.
Then press the Nuke It Button.

source

By Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.
December 14, 2010

NewsWithViews.com

Recently, one of the General Government’s District Court Judges dismissed a lawsuit that challenged the purported authority of the President to order the assassination overseas of American citizens whom someone in the Executive Branch has categorized as a dangerous “terrorist”. The Judge ruled that the plaintiff, being only the father of the threatened victim, rather than the victim himself, lacked “standing” to prosecute the suit, and that in any event the issue involved a “political question” that could not be adjudicated in court. So the underlying claim was not decided, one way or the other.

The judicial dodge of denying “standing” to people who raise contentions that are extremely embarrassing to rogue officials in the General Government has become all-too-familiar these days—particularly in lawsuits and other proceedings that raise challenges to the qualifications of Barak Obama for the office of President. But in this case, not merely usurpation, but nothing less than murder is the ultimate issue. Which, one might have imagined, should have given even the most legally dim-witted and morally obtuse judge serious cause for concern that perhaps the matter was not just a “political question”.

Rather than analyzing the some eighty-three pages of this particular Judge’s opinion, though, I shall simply lay out some of the principles on which any honest and competent jurist would not only find “standing” in a case such as this, but also declare the claims of the Executive Branch to be unconstitutional.

1. The basic assertion from the Executive Branch is that the President, in his capacity as “Commander in Chief” during “the war on terror”, enjoys the inherent power, by himself or through his subordinates, to identify certain American citizens as extremely dangerous “terrorists”, and on the basis of that determination to order operatives of the General Government to assassinate those Americans wherever they may be found in foreign venues. Furthermore, the exercise of this purported power: (i) is not dependent upon any prior judicial determination that an individual targeted for execution is guilty of any crime punishable by death, or that the individual could not be apprehended and made to stand trial in some court; and (ii) is not subject to any other kind of judicial review, either before or after the execution takes place. Indeed, because many of the supposed facts on which a determination of an individual’s status as a “terrorist” certainly will be claimed to be “state secrets”, meaningful judicial review either ex ante or ex post would routinely be impossible as a matter of practice. In addition, inasmuch as the Constitution does not limit the exercise of the powers of the “Commander in Chief” (whatever they may be) to foreign venues only, no reason can be found why the supposed authority to execute certain Americans outside of any judicial process, if it does exist at all, cannot be exercised within the United States proper, even on the lawn of the White House itself. After all, if an American “terrorist” who might be apprehended in Afghanistan may nonetheless simply be assassinated there, because some bureaucrat in the Executive Branch considers the latter course of action more efficient than the former, then why should not an American “terrorist” operating within the United States also simply be executed out of hand, for the same eminently practical reason? So, in its fullest statement, the President’s contention is that he enjoys judicially unreviewable discretion—acting either by his own hand or by the hands of his minions—to assassinate, anywhere in the world and presumably by whatever means may prove effective, any American citizen whom someone in the Executive Branch, whose identity may never be disclosed, has identified as a dangerous “terrorist” by some process and on the basis of some purported evidence that in its most important particulars may forever remain secret.

2. This stark statement of the issue settles the question of “standing”. For, on this statement, any American—and certainly every American who, for whatever reason, may run politically afoul of the Executive Branch or of some subversive private organization with malign influence over the Executive Branch—is potentially the victim of an “official” assassination, the real reason for which can easily be disguised behind some fictional, or perhaps merely erroneous, assertion that the victim is a “terrorist”. Because the process and criteria for selection of an individual for “official” assassination are largely secret, one cannot predict who these victims will be, until they are killed and someone from the Executive Branch admits to complicity in the deed. But, self-evidently, once a victim has been executed, an injury irreparable by judicial process will have occurred. So, if the courts are to enforce the constitutional mandate of the Fifth Amendment that “[n]o person shall * * * be deprived of life * * * without due process of law”—with proper emphasis on the word “[n]o”—then they must entertain at least one suit by one American to determine the legality of the power the President claims, before that individual—or anyone else—is actually assassinated. Which means that the very first lawsuit meeting the standard requirements for personal jurisdiction and venue should be heard on the merits. (Of course, this would not guarantee that the issue would be decided correctly, the Bench being overrun by one Judge Flapdoodle after another in every jurisdiction throughout the federal system. But at least it would move the process of inquiry ahead under public scrutiny.)

Prudential considerations compel the same result. The doctrine of “standing” is mostly the bastard contrivance of individual judges, in the formulation and application of which the personality on the Bench rather than any fixed and certain legal principle usually decides the outcome. As such, the doctrine of “standing” is wholly nonscientific—being both unverifiable and unfalsifiable. Yet, in this case, that is no demerit. Rather, it is an advantage. Because, here, a clever judicial wordsmith could easily concoct out of bits and snippets extracted from hundreds of other judicial opinions his own decision in favor of “standing”. And although other jurists and lawyers might disagree with his conclusion, who could declare him to be wrong in any objective sense? No one. He would, as well, be quite right morally. Because, having found “standing”, he could at least temporarily enjoin the continuation of the program of “official” assassinations, until the Judiciary could pass on the question after plenary consideration, thereby preventing who could predict how many irretrievable violations of the Fifth Amendment. Eventually, higher courts might overrule him, licensing the assassins to proceed. But then the blood would encarnadine those judges’ hands, not his.

If they were honest in their claim of constitutional authority, the President and his agents in the General Government, too, would themselves encourage this result, so as to find out exactly where they stand legally. For if “official” assassinations committed anywhere within the United States are unconstitutional, then both the assassins and their principals are criminals for whose transgressions the penalty may be death. For just one example, Title 18 of the United States Code provides as follows:

Moreover, the victims of attempted unconstitutional “official” assassinations would, in the exercise of their natural right of self-defense, be entitled to resist their assailants with deadly force. Which means that, in an environment in which any agent of the General Government might secretly be engaged in an “official” assassination on American soil, against which the Judiciary refused to protect the citizenry, any American—and certainly any political dissident—could reasonably and justifiably resist any government agent with deadly force at any time, because the victim would have no way of knowing whether that particular agent’s assault was actually a “hit” disguised as some kind of supposedly valid “law enforcement”. Too many contemporary Americans may be sheep willing to be shorn; but it is unlikely that more than a few of them are sheep willing to be slaughtered after they finally realize that such is the shepherd’s intention, and are exposed to some examples of his bloody handiwork. And having publicly espoused the position that they may with impunity kill any American for secret (and judicially unreviewable) reasons at any time, agents of the General Government could hardly complain if every American took them at their word, and defended himself accordingly.

Obviously, to allow a situation of this kind to degenerate into widespread violence would verge on madness. So, any judge’s invocation of the “standing” ruse to derail timely litigation of this issue is more than merely intellectually indefensible and morally irresponsible. Unless the judge can successfully invoke the defense of insanity on his own behalf, his misuse of the “standing” doctrine amounts as well to his complicity in—and at least equal culpability for—whatever crimes may be perpetrated in the course of any attempted “official” assassinations.

3. And crimes they will be. For “official” assassinations are blatantly unconstitutional. That being so, the matter cannot possibly raise a “political question”. As everyone knows, the doctrine of “political question” derives from Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 170 (1803), in which he wrote:

Of course, though, if the Constitution withholds some power from the President, then he cannot possibly make any claim under color of such a power to “perform duties in which [he has] a discretion”. The President has no “discretion” to violate the Constitution. So a judge cannot decide that a “political question” exists until he has first determined that the Constitution and laws do in fact rightfully empower the President to act in a certain manner.

Now, the theory of the Executive Branch in this case is that, as “Commander in Chief” engaged in fighting a supposed “war on terror”, the President may authorize assassinations of specifically identified “terrorists”. Yet, as the Constitution makes as plain as day, the President is not a “Commander in Chief” in general, ruling over every one and every thing imaginable within the United States, in the manner of a German Führer or an Italian Duce. Neither is he a “Commander in Chief” specifically with respect to “death squads”, in the manner of a Caudillo of some Central American banana republic. Rather, the powers of the President as “Commander in Chief” are narrowly defined, and therefore limited: to wit,

Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 (emphasis supplied). The President is “Commander in Chief” of nothing else, and for no other purposes.

“[T]he Army and Navy of the United States” are entirely constructs of Congress, which alone exercises the powers “[t]o raise and support Armies” and “[t]o provide and maintain a Navy”. Article I, Section 8, Clauses 12 and 13. Absent Congressional legislation, no “Army and Navy of the United States” exist as to which the President can function as “Commander in Chief”. Furthermore, “the Army and Navy of the United States” that do exist are always subject to—indeed, are uniquely defined in their organization and operations by—the power of Congress “[t]o make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces”. Article I, Section 8, Clause 14. The President can exercise no control over “the Army and Navy of the United States” that ventures even one Angstrom Unit beyond the bounds of these “Rules”, because “the Army and Navy of the United States” do not exist outside of these “Rules”.

Similarly for “the Militia of the several States”. Except that, with respect to the Militia, the President’s authority is even narrower, because he enjoys the status of “Commander in Chief” of the Militia only when the Militia are “called into the actual Service of the United States”. And that can be for three purposes alone: namely, “to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions”. Article I, Section 8, Clause 15. Furthermore, even then, the President cannot exercise untrammeled command, but must abide by whatever rules Congress has “provide[d] * * * for governing such Part of the[ Militia] as may be employed in the Service of the United States”. Article I, Section 8, Clause 16. When the Militia have not been “called into the actual Service of the United States”, they remain State institutions, governed by State officers, and are not subject to the orders of the President at all. See Article I, Section 8, Clause 16.

So, if as “Commander in Chief” the President dares to claim any power to order “official” assassinations, that power must be proven to derive from some exercise of Congress’s powers to “make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces” and to “provide * * * for governing * * * Part” of the Militia. Where, though, does any legislation, purportedly enacted by Congress under color of those powers, and authorizing anyone to order or to commit “official” assassinations of anyone, appear in the Statutes at Large? Nowhere of which I am aware.

And what if it did? A purported “law” of Congress, identifying a specific individual and condemning that individual to death, would be a “Bill of Attainder”. As Justice Joseph Story explained,

Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown, and Company, 5th Edition, 1891), Volume II, § 1344, at 216-217 (footnotes omitted).

For these reasons, the Constitution explicitly, unequivocally, and without exception outlaws all “Bills of Attainder”, both for Congress—“[n]o Bill of Attainder * * * shall be passed”; and for the States—“[n]o State shall * * * pass any Bill of Attainder”. Article I, Section 9, Clause 3 and Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 (emphases supplied). These prohibitions of “Bills of Attainder”, it should be noted, reach all statutes or regulations, “no matter what their form, that apply either to named individuals or to easily ascertained members of a group in such a way as to inflict punishment on them without a judicial trial”. United States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303, 315 (1946). See also United States v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437 (1965).

So Congress constitutionally cannot, in the guise of promulgating rules for the governance of the Army, the Navy, or the Militia, authorize the “official” assassination of anyone, whether directly by name or indirectly by reference to membership in some particular group. Thus, to draw a picture that should be familiar to all, in prosecution of “the war on crime” (which has been going on far longer than “the war on terror”), Congress is absolutely powerless to enact a statute providing for the assassination of “Don Corleone” by name, or of “any member of the Corleone Family” by general attribution.

And if Congress cannot constitutionally promulgate rules for the governance of the Army, Navy, and Militia that amount to “Bills of Attainder”, then the President cannot constitutionally purport to enforce such rules in the guise of the “Commander in Chief”.

Neither can Congress delegate a nonexistent power to put out “Bills of Attainder” to the President, for him to employ at his discretion. Nor can the States license their Militia to exercise such a forbidden power, or command their Militia to obey a Presidential order to do so. And inasmuch as the substance of the President’s authority as “Commander in Chief” depends in the first instance upon Congressional legislation, and ultimately upon the existence of the Militia as permanent State institutions, he cannot possibly even claim, let alone put into practice, such a power by himself alone.

And, of course, the President cannot invoke any supposed authority as “Commander in Chief” to require or allow various civilian agencies of the General Government—such as the Department of Homeland Security and the Central Intelligence Agency—to engage in “official” assassinations, because the President is not in any way a “Commander in Chief” with respect those agencies, by constitutional definition. What those agencies are allowed to do, Congress alone determines—except, interestingly enough, that even Congress cannot constitutionally subordinate them to the President as “Commander in Chief”, because the Constitution itself extends that status only to the Army, Navy, and Militia. And Congress cannot constitutionally promulgate any rules for those civilian agencies that amount to, or require or allow them to execute, “Bills of Attainder”. So, inasmuch as agencies such as the DHS and the CIA constitutionally can have nothing whatsoever to do with “Bills of Attainder”, then in and through his administration of them neither can the President.

Finally, the President labors under an explicit constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”. Article II, Section 3. Other than the Declaration of Independence, the most important of these “Laws” is the Constitution itself. The Constitution prohibits any and every “Bill of Attainder”. Therefore, the President can take no action that purports to create, enforce, or countenance in any way a “Bill of Attainder”. Rather, he must bend every effort to stop any “Bill of Attainder” from being prepared, passed, or enforced. In particular, he must prevent everyone in the Army, the Navy, the Militia, the Department of Homeland Security, civilian intelligence agencies such as the CIA, law-enforcement agencies such as the FBI, and all other agencies in the Executive Branch from even proposing, let alone preparing and putting into effect, plans for “official” assassinations. And he must take effective steps swiftly, surely, and severely to punish everyone in any way involved in such schemes. Indeed, if he fails to do so, while aware that “official” assassinations are being plotted within (and perhaps actually being carried out by) the Armed Forces, the Militia, or agencies in the Executive Branch, the President should be impeached, convicted, and removed from office for a “high Crime[ ]” sine die. Article II, Section 4.

So much the Constitution commands on its face, in explicit, unmistakable language. Well, “unmistakable” to anyone who reads it intelligently and in good faith. Apparently, though, no one in high office in the General Government today is able or willing to do so—or “death squads” would not be in the works in the Executive Branch, and their operations would not be excused as a “political question” by the Judiciary. (I leave aside the failure of Congress to impeach and convict Mr. Obama on this ground, because it is arguable that, not being qualified for the office of President at all, he cannot constitutionally be removed by that method from a position he can not, does not, and never did hold.)

Subsc

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February 4, 2011

The tragedy at the World Trade Center (WTC) on September 11^th, 2001 continues to affect many thousands of first responders who sacrificed their own health while restoring lower Manhattan and attempting to recover survivors and victims’ remains.  Recently, H.R. 847, otherwise known as the James Zadroga Bill, was signed by President Obama in an effort to provide services and compensation for those whose health was compromised through exposure to the toxic dust and gases at Ground Zero.  However, these first responders also need help to understand how their illnesses originated so that improvements in treatment can be made.  In response to this need, concerned citizens should consider the possible correlation between evidence for energetic materials at the WTC and the environmental exposures which appear to have caused so many illnesses in the first responders.

The 9/11 first responders suffer from a range of different illnesses, some of which are rare in the general population.  Some of the illnesses can be attributed to the high pH of the WTC dust.  We know the extent of the pH problem thanks to EPA whistleblower, Dr. Cate Jenkins.[1] The very high pH of the dust inhaled by 9/11 first responders is a probable cause for the general deterioration of lungs and their function, due to the dust’s corrosive state.  As Dr. Jenkins wrote, “Corrosivity would have acted directly to cause respiratory chemical burns, and also would have increased the toxic properties of other pollutants from the WTC by facilitating their entry into the body through the respiratory system.”

Commonly observed conditions among first responders include reactive airways dysfunction syndrome (RADS), caused by exposure to high concentrations of irritants such as caustic and metallic dusts; upper respiratory illnesses such as sinusitis and laryngitis; and lower respiratory disorders such as asthma and what is known as World Trade Center cough.

Less understood, and requiring further study, are unusual illnesses of the immune system commonly observed in the WTC first responders.  These include various types of interstitial lung disease, such as eosinophilic pneumonia, granulomatous pneumonitis, and bronchial obliterans.  Environmental triggers for these illnesses include aluminum silicates, which have been found in the lungs of WTC first responders at high levels in “unusual platy configurations.” [2]

Other common WTC lung ailments include sarcoidosis, which is known to be caused by aluminum dust[3], and pulmonary fibrosis, which can be caused by aluminum oxide.[4]

These findings have, until now, lacked an adequate scientific explanation.  But recent research suggests a correlation with the causes of the destruction of WTC buildings 1, 2 and 7.  Aluminum oxide – a potential cause of the observed pulmonary fibrosis – is a product of the thermite reaction, and there is now considerable evidence for the use of thermite in the destruction of WTC buildings 1, 2 and 7.[5] Additionally, aluminum and silicates – potential causes of the observed illnesses of the immune system – are components of nanothermite formulations.

Thermite is a mixture of aluminum powder and a metal oxide that, when ignited, exhibits an extremely exothermic reaction producing aluminum oxide and the metal in molten form.  The thermite reaction has been utilized for welding railroads ties and for cutting metal as with anti-tank grenades.  Thermite has also been used to develop patented devices for the demolition of structures.  One such device allows for demolition of a concrete structure “at a high efficiency, while preventing a secondary problem due to noise, flying dust and chips, and the like.”[6] A recent experiment shows that thermite can cut structural steel efficiently.[7]

Sulfur is often added to thermite mixtures to improve the burn qualities and it is then called thermate.  Nanothermite, or superthermite, is a more recently developed variation on thermite in which the aluminum and metal oxide are mixed on the nanometer scale, allowing for more rapid energy release.  Nanothermite can be a simple mixture of nanometer-scale powders or it can be made in a silicon matrix, through a solution-based technique, resulting in “sol-gel” nanothermite.  The sol-gel process allows for the use of organic materials which expand during the reaction, providing more explosive power.

In 2009, an international team of researchers discovered what appear to be sol-gel nanothermite formulations in every WTC dust sample tested.[8] Additionally, similar to the findings of aluminum silicates in the lungs of first responders, the aluminum found in the nanothermite of WTC dust samples was present, along with silicon, in plate-like (platy) configurations.[9] Whether or not the platy configurations of aluminum silicates in the lungs of WTC workers are related to the platy configurations of aluminum and silicon in WTC dust samples is a question that should be answered through further investigation.

Environmental factors

A review of WTC environmental testing results produced by EPA and the University of California was published in 2008.[10] That review showed that air and aerosol emissions of sulfur and silicon compounds at Ground Zero provided evidence that energetic materials such as thermite and nanothermite were present.  The silicon compounds (i.e. silicates) were indicative of the sol-gel variety of nanothermites, and the sulfur compounds suggested the presence of thermate, a sulfur containing derivative of thermite.

EPA also found very high levels of volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) that, like the aluminum, sulfur and silicon compounds, were discovered to be present in unusual spiking patterns.  These spiking patterns suggest that extremely violent, explosive or incendiary events were occurring within the pile at Ground Zero over a period of months.  If fires were the cause of these events, they would have had to have been fires that were driven by an agent that contained its own oxidant, as a thermite or nanothermite mixture does.  This is because extensive efforts were made to put out the fires at the WTC site, including the use of millions of gallons of water and chemical fire suppressants, with little or no effect.  In addition to the tons of dust from the buildings’ destruction and the rainfall events that occurred, these firefighting efforts ensured that normal fires would not have continued.

The presence of thermitic materials explains why the fires lasted for so many months, deep within the oxygen-poor pile, and why the fires were resistant to the extensive, but ineffective, efforts to extinguish them.  In this scenario, the extreme levels of VOCs would be the result of the complete thermal degradation of all plastic materials in the thermitic (incendiary) fires.  In normal structural fires with limited ventilation, plastic materials often burn incompletely.

The pattern of energetic events at Ground Zero, indicated by the spikes in emissions, was different than the expected trend of emissions from a typical structure fire.  As was the case for other structure fires, particulate matter (PM) emissions at Ground Zero were high at first and then died down completely.  However, PM emissions occurred for a longer duration, and the extreme, spiking emissions of VOCs, and components typical of thermitic mixtures, continued for many months after the particulate matter had died down.

Other unusual results from EPA monitoring included a compound called 1,3-diphenylpropane (1,3-DPP), which had never been seen before in any EPA studies yet was said to be abundant and pervasive at the WTC.  Further investigation is called for due to the fact that 1,3-DPP is used to functionalize nanostructured silicas that are similar to nanothermite materials.[11]

Related to these environmental findings is the fact that first responders have been getting cancers at elevated rates.  Many types of cancers have been reported including leukemia and the rare disease called multiple myeloma.  The most prominent environmental cause of leukemia is benzene, which is one of the VOCs seen prominently in energetic spikes of emissions at Ground Zero.  Benzene was detected at the WTC at levels that were dramatically higher than ever seen before in structure fires; even higher than what was seen at a large fire in a plastics factory.[12]

As for multiple myeloma, researchers associated with the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine examined many sick first responders.  One result was that they found eight times the expected level of multiple myeloma in people below the age of 45.[13]

Environmental factors that cause multiple myeloma include phenoxyacetic acids, which are compounds that are structurally similar to 1,3-DPP.  Another causal factor is DDT, a highly chlorinated diphenylethane.[14] Diphenylethane is structurally very similar to diphenylpropane (DPP).  This suggests that the observed presence of 1,3-DPP could be a causal factor of the multiple myeloma seen in WTC first responders, in that derivatives of 1,3-DPP might be responsible for the illnesses.

Carbon nanotubes

In 2010, researchers reported the presence of carbon nanotubes in the lungs of WTC first responders.[15] Carbon nanotubes are high-tech nanostructured materials, which exhibit unique properties like ballistic conduction.  The health effects of carbon nanotubes have been shown to be similar to the health effects produced by exposure to asbestos.[16]

Carbon nanotube formation requires three basic components: a source of carbon, a source of heat, and the presence of certain metals.  In particular, formation of the single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) found in the lungs of first responders requires that the metals be present.[17] All of these requirements were met at the WTC site on, and for months after, September 11, 2001.

The three most effective metals for the synthesis of SWCNTs are iron, nickel and cobalt.  Both iron and nickel were present in high concentrations near Ground Zero, as shown by aerosol testing done by a team from the University of California, Davis.[18] Iron oxide and nickel oxide are common oxidants in thermite mixtures.

Airborne carbon compounds were certainly present in abundance at Ground Zero in the form of particulate matter resulting from the fires.  Heat was also in abundance, as extremely high temperatures were present on 9/11 and afterward at Ground Zero.  These temperatures were at least 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than first reported by government scientists, and were far higher than temperatures seen in a normal structure fire.

The molten metal and vaporized silicates that have been reported in the WTC dust can only be explained by the presence of an exothermic reaction like the thermite reaction.[19] Large quantities of carbon nanotubes might have been formed at Ground Zero due to the high temperature environments created by the thermite reaction and the airborne metal catalysts that were also present.

A second possible explanation for the carbon nanotubes in the lung tissue of the first responders is that the carbon nanotubes were components of actual energetic materials that were used in the destruction of the buildings.  Carbon nanotubes have been used as energetic modifiers,[20] to improve stabilization of explosives,[21] and to enhance ignition properties.[22]

Conclusion

Some of the illnesses suffered by the WTC first responders might be explained by the existing evidence of energetic materials, like thermite, at Ground Zero.  For example aluminum, aluminum oxide and aluminum silicates are known causal factors for some of the common illnesses seen, such as sarcoidosis, pulmonary fibrosis, and the as-yet-unexplained immune system diseases.  Furthermore, the rare cancers found in some first responders could be the result of environmental factors such as the unusually high levels of benzene and derivatives of 1,3-DPP which suggest the presence of energetic materials like thermite and nanothermite.

Analysis of the lung tissue of first responders has also indicated that energetic materials might be involved.  The unusual platy configurations of aluminum silicates found in those lung tissue samples seem similar to the platy configurations of aluminum and silicon in the nanothermite that has been discovered in WTC dust samples.

The finding of carbon nanotubes in the lungs of first responders suggests two possible explanations.  The nanotubes might have been formed in the unusual environment at Ground Zero, where extremely high temperatures and the presence of airborne metallic species gives yet more evidence for the presence of thermitic materials.  Alternatively, the nanotubes might have been components of energetic materials.  In either case, the presence of carbon nanotubes in the lungs of WTC first responders suggests the use of energetic materials and should be studied in more depth.

These facts and research findings warrant further study of the correlation between environmental testing results, first responder health study results, and the use of energetic materials at the WTC.

Notes

[1] Jenkins C. 2007.  Complaint and Additional Evidence of pH Fraud by: USGS, OSHA, ATSDR, NYC, EPA, and EPA-funded scientists.  Journal of 9/11 Studies 12.  Available: http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/DrJenkinsRequestsSenateInvestigationOnWTCdust.pdf [accessed 19 January 2011].

[2] Wu M, Gordon RE, Herbert R, Padilla M, Moline J, Mendelson D, Litle V, Travis WD, Gil J. 2010.  Case Report: Lung disease in World Trade Center responders exposed to dust and smoke: Carbon nanotubes found in the lungs of World Trade Center patients and dust samples, Environmental Health Perspectives 118 (4).

[3] Cai H, Cao M, Meng F, Wei J. 2007.  Pulmonary sarcoid-like granulomatosis induced by aluminum dust: report of a case and literature review.  Chinese Medical Journal 120 (17) : 1556-1560.   Available: http://cmj.org/Periodical/PaperList.asp?id=LW200794512467004596 [accessed 19 January 2011].

[4] Jederlinic PJ, Abraham JL, Churg A, Himmelstein JS, Epler GR, Gaensler EA. 1990.  Pulmonary fibrosis in aluminum oxide workers. Investigation of nine workers, with pathologic examination and microanalysis in three of them.  Am Rev Respir Dis. 142(5):1179-84.

[5] Jones SE, Farrer J, Jenkins GS, Legge F, Gourley J, Ryan K, Farnsworth D, Grabbe C. 2008.  Extremely High Temperatures during the World Trade Center Destruction, Journal of 9/11 Studies 19.   Available: http://journalof911studies.com/articles/WTCHighTemp2.pdf [accessed 19 January 2011].

[6] Taku Murakami, US Patent 5532449 – Using plasma ARC and thermite to demolish concrete, http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5532449/description.html

[7] Cole, J.  2010.  9/11 Experiments: The Great Thermate Debate.  911Blogger.com. Available:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d5iIoCiI8g [accessed 19 January 2011].

[8] Harrit NH, Farrer J, Jones SE, Ryan KR, Legge FM, Farnsworth D, Roberts G, Gourley JR, Larsen BR. 2009.  Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe.  The Open Chemical Physics Journal 2:7-31;  doi: 10.2174/1874412500902010007 [Online April 2005]

[9] Ibid

[10] Ryan KR, Gourley JR, Jones SE. 2009.  Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials. The Environmentalist 29 (1):56-63; doi: 10.1007/s10669-008-9182-4 [Online 4 August 2008]

[11] Ibid

[12] Ibid

[13] Moline JM, Herbert R, Crowley L, Troy K, Hodgman E, Shukla G, Udasin I, Luft B, Wallenstein S, Landrigan P, Savitz DA.  2009.  Multiple Myeloma in World Trade Center Responders: A Case Series.  Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine 51(8): 896-902.

[14] Eriksson M, Karlsson M. 1992.  Occupational and other environmental factors and multiple myeloma: a population based case-control study. Br J Ind Med 49(2): 95–103.

[15] Maoxin Wu, et al.

[16] Van Noorden R. 2008.  Carbon nanotubes behave like asbestos. Chemistry World.  Available: http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2008/May/20050802.asp [accessed 19 January 2011].

[17] Height JH.  2003.  Flame synthesis of carbon nanotubes and metallic nanomaterials.  Dissertation submission to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering.

[18] Ryan KR, et al.

[19] Jones SE, et al.

[20] Ramaswamy AL, Kaste P.  2003.  Combustion modifiers for energetic materials.  34th International Annual Conference of ICT; Karlsruhe; Germany; 24-27 June 2003. 1-13.

[21] Patent issued to Raytheon Company, WO/2008/082724.  Improved Explosive Materials by Stabilization in Nanotubes.  World Intellectual Property organization. Available:  http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?WO=2008/082724 [accessed 19 January 2011].

[22] Manaa MR, Mitchell AR, Garza RG, Pagoria PF, Watkins BE. 2005.  Flash Ignition and Initiation of Explosives?Nanotubes Mixture.  J. Am. Chem. Soc. 127(40):13786–13787.

READ FULL STORY HERE

For the first time in human history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive… The resulting global political activism is generating a surge in the quest for personal dignity, cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world painfully scarred by memories of centuries-long alien colonial or imperial domination… The worldwide yearning for human dignity is the central challenge inherent in the phenomenon of global political awakening… That awakening is socially massive and politically radicalizing… The nearly universal access to radio, television and increasingly the Internet is creating a community of shared perceptions and envy that can be galvanized and channeled by demagogic political or religious passions. These energies transcend sovereign borders and pose a challenge both to existing states as well as to the existing global hierarchy, on top of which America still perches…

The youth of the Third World are particularly restless and resentful. The demographic revolution they embody is thus a political time-bomb, as well… Their potential revolutionary spearhead is likely to emerge from among the scores of millions of students concentrated in the often intellectually dubious “tertiary level” educational institutions of developing countries. Depending on the definition of the tertiary educational level, there are currently worldwide between 80 and 130 million “college” students. Typically originating from the socially insecure lower middle class and inflamed by a sense of social outrage, these millions of students are revolutionaries-in-waiting, already semi-mobilized in large congregations, connected by the Internet and pre-positioned for a replay on a larger scale of what transpired years earlier in Mexico City or in Tiananmen Square. Their physical energy and emotional frustration is just waiting to be triggered by a cause, or a faith, or a hatred…

[The] major world powers, new and old, also face a novel reality: while the lethality of their military might is greater than ever, their capacity to impose control over the politically awakened masses of the world is at a historic low. To put it bluntly: in earlier times, it was easier to control one million people than to physically kill one million people; today, it is infinitely easier to kill one million people than to control one million people.[1]

- Zbigniew Brzezinski

Former U.S. National Security Advisor

Co-Founder of the Trilateral Commission

Member, Board of Trustees, Center for Strategic and International Studies

An uprising in Tunisia led to the overthrow of the country’s 23-year long dictatorship of President Ben Ali. A new ‘transitional’ government was formed, but the protests continued demanding a totally new government without the relics of the previous tyranny. Protests in Algeria have continued for weeks, as rage mounts against rising food prices, corruption and state oppression. Protests in Jordan forced the King to call on the military to surround cities with tanks and set up checkpoints. Tens of thousands of protesters marched on Cairo demanding an end to the 30-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. Thousands of activists, opposition leaders and students rallied in the capitol of Yemen against the corrupt dictatorship of President Saleh, in power since 1978. Saleh has been, with U.S. military assistance, attempting to crush a rebel movement in the north and a massive secessionist movement growing in the south, called the “Southern Movement.” Protests in Bolivia against rising food prices forced the populist government of Evo Morales to backtrack on plans to cut subsidies. Chile erupted in protests as demonstrators railed against rising fuel prices. Anti-government demonstrations broke out in Albania, resulting in the deaths of several protesters.

It seems as if the world is entering the beginnings of a new revolutionary era: the era of the ‘Global Political Awakening.’ While this ‘awakening’ is materializing in different regions, different nations and under different circumstances, it is being largely influenced by global conditions. The global domination by the major Western powers, principally the United States, over the past 65 years, and more broadly, centuries, is reaching a turning point. The people of the world are restless, resentful, and enraged. Change, it seems, is in the air. As the above quotes from Brzezinski indicate, this development on the world scene is the most radical and potentially dangerous threat to global power structures and empire. It is not a threat simply to the nations in which the protests arise or seek change, but perhaps to a greater degree, it is a threat to the imperial Western powers, international institutions, multinational corporations and banks that prop up, arm, support and profit from these oppressive regimes around the world. Thus, America and the West are faced with a monumental strategic challenge: what can be done to stem the Global Political Awakening? Zbigniew Brzezinski is one of the chief architects of American foreign policy, and arguably one of the intellectual pioneers of the system of globalization. Thus, his warnings about the ‘Global Political Awakening’ are directly in reference to its nature as a threat to the prevailing global hierarchy. As such, we must view the ‘Awakening’ as the greatest hope for humanity. Certainly, there will be mainy failures, problems, and regressions; but the ‘Awakening’ has begun, it is underway, and it cannot be so easily co-opted or controlled as many might assume.

The reflex action of the imperial powers is to further arm and support the oppressive regimes, as well as the potential to organize a destabilization through covert operations or open warfare (as is being done in Yemen). The alterantive is to undertake a strategy of “democratization” in which Western NGOs, aid agencies and civil society organizations establish strong contacts and relationships with the domestic civil society in these regions and nations. The objective of this strategy is to organize, fund and help direct the domestic civil society to produce a democratic system made in the image of the West, and thus maintain continuity in the international hierarchy. Essentially, the project of “democratization” implies creating the outward visible constructs of a democratic state (multi-party elections, active civil society, “independent” media, etc) and yet maintain continuity in subservience to the World Bank, IMF, multinational corporations and Western powers.
It appears that both of these strategies are being simultaneously imposed in the Arab world: enforcing and supporting state oppression and building ties with civil society organizations. The problem for the West, however, is that they have not had the ability to yet establish strong and dependent ties with civil society groups in much of the region, as ironically, the oppressive regimes they propped up were and are unsurprisingly resistant to such measures. In this sense, we must not cast aside these protests and uprisings as being instigated by the West, but rather that they emerged organically, and the West is subsequently attempting to co-opt and control the emerging movements.

Part 1 of this essay focuses on the emergence of these protest movements and uprisings, placing it in the context of the Global Political Awakening. Part 2 will examine the West’s strategy of “democratic imperialism” as a method of co-opting the ‘Awakening’ and installing “friendly” governments.

The Tunisian Spark

A July 2009 diplomatic cable from America’s Embassy in Tunisia reported that, “many Tunisians are frustrated by the lack of political freedom and angered by First Family corruption, high unemployment and regional inequities. Extremism poses a continuing threat,” and that, “the risks to the regime’s long-term stability are increasing.”[2]

On Friday, 14 January 2011, the U.S.-supported 23-year long dictatorship of Tunisian president Ben Ali ended. For several weeks prior to this, the Tunisian people had risen in protest against rising food prices, stoked on by an immense and growing dissatisfaction with the political repression, and prodded by the WikiLeaks cables confirming the popular Tunisian perception of gross corruption on the part of the ruling family. The spark, it seems, was when a 26-year old unemployed youth set himself on fire in protest on December 17.

With the wave of protests sparked by the death of the 26-year old who set himself on fire on December 17, the government of Tunisia responded by cracking down on the protesters. Estimates vary, but roughly 100 people were killed in the clashes. Half of Tunisia’s 10 million people are under the age of 25, meaning that they have never known a life in Tunisia outside of living under this one dictator. Since Independence from the French empire in 1956, Tunisia has had only two leaders: Habib Bourguiba and Ben Ali.[3] The Tunisian people were rising up against a great many things: an oppressive dictatorship which has employed extensive information and internet censorship, rising food prices and inflation, a corrupt ruling family, lack of jobs for the educated youth, and a general sense and experience of exploitation, subjugation and disrespect for human dignity.

Following the ouster of Ben Ali, Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi assumed presidential power and declared a “transitional government.” Yet, this just spurred more protests demanding his resignation and the resignation of the entire government. Significantly, the trade union movement had a large mobilizing role in the protests, with a lawyers union being particularly active during the initial protests.[4]

Protests in Tunisia

Social media and the Internet did play a large part in mobilizing people within Tunisia for the uprising, but it was ultimately the result of direct protests and action which led to the resignation of Ben Ali. Thus, referring to Tunisia as a “Twitter Revolution” is disingenuous.

Twitter, WikiLeaks, Facebook, Youtube, forums and blogs did have a part to play. They reflect the ability “to collectively transform the Arab information environment and shatter the ability of authoritarian regimes to control the flow of information, images, ideas and opinions.”[5] [Editors Note: The US based foundation Freedom House was involved in promoting and training some Middle East North Africa Facebook and Twitter bloggers (See also Freedom House), M. C.].

We must also keep in mind that social media has not only become an important source of mobilization of activism and information at the grassroots level, but it has also become an effective means for governments and various power structures to seek to manipulate the flow of information. This was evident in the 2009 protests in Iran, where social media became an important avenue through which the Western nations were able to advance their strategy of supporting the so-called ‘Green Revolution’ in destabilizing the Iranian government. Thus, social media has presented a new form of power, neither black nor white, in which it can be used to either advance the process of the ‘Awakening’ or control its direction.

Whereas America was publicly denouncing Iran for blocking (or attempting to block) social media in the summer of 2009, during the first several weeks of Tunisian protests (which were largely being ignored by Western media), America and the West were silent about censorship.[6] Steven Cook, writing for the elite U.S. think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, commented on the lack of attention being paid to the Tunisian protests in the early weeks of resistance prior to the resignation of Ben Ali. He explained that while many assume that the Arab “strongmen” regimes will simply maintain power as they always have, this could be mistaken. He stated that, “it may not be the last days of Ben Ali or Mubarak or any other Middle Eastern strongman, but there is clearly something going on in the region.” However, it was the end of Ben Ali, and indeed, “there is clearly something going on in the region.”[7]

France’s President Sarkozy has even had to admit that, “he had underestimated the anger of the Tunisian people and the protest movement that ousted President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.” During the first few weeks of protests in Tunisia, several French government officials were publicly supporting the dictatorship, with the French Foreign Minister saying that France would lend its police “knowhow” to help Ben Ali in maintaining order.[8]

Days before the ouster of Ben Ali, Hillary Clinton gave an interview in which she explained how America was worried “about the unrest and the instability,” and that, “we are not taking sides, but we are saying we hope that there can be a peaceful resolution. And I hope that the Tunisian Government can bring that about.” Clinton further lamented, “One of my biggest concerns in this entire region are the many young people without economic opportunities in their home countries.”[9] Her concern, of course, does not spur from any humanitarian considerations, but rather from inherent imperial considerations: it is simply harder to control a region of the world erupting in activism, uprisings and revolution.

The Spark Lights a Flame

Tunisia has raised the bar for the people across the Arab world to demand justice, democracy, accountability, economic stability, and freedom. Just as Tunisia’s protests were in full-swing, Algeria was experiencing mass protests, rising up largely as a result of the increasing international food prices, but also in reaction to many of the concerns of the Tunisian protesters, such as democratic accountability, corruption and freedom. A former Algerian diplomat told Al-Jazeera in early January that, “It is a revolt, and probably a revolution, of an oppressed people who have, for 50 years, been waiting for housing, employment, and a proper and decent life in a very rich country.”[10]

In mid-January, similar protests erupted in Jordan, as thousands took to the streets to protest against rising food prices and unemployment, chanting anti-government slogans. Jordan’s King Abdullah II had “set up a special task force in his palace that included military and intelligence officials to try to prevent the unrest from escalating further,” which had tanks surrounding major cities, with barriers and checkpoints established.[11]

In Yemen, the poorest nation in the Arab world, engulfed in a U.S. sponsored war against its own people, ruled by a dictator who has been in power since 1978, thousands of people protested against the government, demanding the dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down. In the capitol city of Sanaa, thousands of students, activists and opposition groups chanted slogans such as, “Get out get out, Ali. Join your friend Ben Ali.”[12] Yemen has been experiencing much turmoil in recent years, with a rebel movement in the North fighting against the government, formed in 2004; as well as a massive secessionist movement in the south, called the “Southern Movement,” fighting for liberation since 2007. As the Financial Times explained:

Many Yemen observers consider the anger and secessionist sentiment now erupting in the south to be a greater threat to the country’s stability than its better publicised struggle with al-Qaeda, and the deteriorating economy is making the tension worse.

Unemployment, particularly among the young, is soaring. Even the government statistics office in Aden puts it at nearly 40 per cent among men aged 20 to 24.[13]

Protest of the Southern Movement in Yemen

On January 21, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in Albania, mobilized by the socialist opposition, ending with violent clashes between the police and protesters, leading to the deaths of three demonstrators. The protests have been sporadic in Albania since the widely contested 2009 elections, but took on new levels inspired by Tunisia.[14]

Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom stressed concern over the revolutionary sentiments within the Arab world, saying that, “I fear that we now stand before a new and very critical phase in the Arab world.” He fears Tunisia would “set a precedent that could be repeated in other countries, possibly affecting directly the stability of our system.”[15] Israel’s leadership fears democracy in the Arab world, as they have a security alliance with the major Arab nations, who, along with Israel itself, are American proxy states in the region. Israel maintains civil – if not quiet – relationships with the Arab monarchs and dictators. While the Arab states publicly criticize Israel, behind closed doors they are forced to quietly accept Israel’s militarism and war-mongering, lest they stand up against the superpower, America. Yet, public opinion in the Arab world is extremely anti-Israel, anti-American and pro-Iran.

In July of 2010, the results of a major international poll were released regarding public opinion in the Arab world, polling from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates. Among some of the notable findings: while Obama was well received upon entering the Presidency, with 51% expressing optimism about U.S. policy in the region in the Spring of 2009, by Summer 2010, 16% were expressing optimism. In 2009, 29% of those polled said a nuclear-armed Iran would be positive for the region; in 2010, that spiked to 57%, reflecting a very different stance from that of their governments.[16]

While America, Israel and the leaders of the Arab nations claim that Iran is the greatest threat to peace and stability in the Middle East, the Arab people do not agree. In an open question asking which two countries pose the greatest threat to the region, 88% responded with Israel, 77% with America, and 10% with Iran.[17]

At the Arab economic summit shortly following the ousting of Ben Ali in Tunisia, who was for the first time absent from the meetings, the Tunisian uprising hung heavy in the air. Arab League leader Amr Moussa said in his opening remarks at the summit, “The Tunisian revolution is not far from us,” and that, “the Arab citizen entered an unprecedented state of anger and frustration,” noting that “the Arab soul is broken by poverty, unemployment and general recession.” The significance of this ‘threat’ to the Arab leaders cannot be understated. Out of roughly 352 million Arabs, 190 million are under the age of 24, with nearly three-quarters of them unemployed. Often, “the education these young people receive doesn’t do them any good because there are no jobs in the fields they trained for.”[18]

There was even an article in the Israeli intellectual newspaper, Ha’aretz, which posited that, “Israel may be on the eve of revolution.” Explaining, the author wrote that:

Israeli civil society organizations have amassed considerable power over the years; not only the so-called leftist organizations, but ones dealing with issues like poverty, workers’ rights and violence against women and children. All of them were created in order to fill the gaps left by the state, which for its part was all too happy to continue walking away from problems that someone else was there to take on. The neglect is so great that Israel’s third sector – NGOs, charities and volunteer organizations – is among the biggest in the world. As such, it has quite a bit of power.[19]

Now the Israeli Knesset and cabinet want that power back; yet, posits the author, they “have chosen to ignore the reasons these groups became powerful,” namely:

The source of their power is the vacuum, the criminal policies of Israel’s governments over the last 40 years. The source of their power is a government that is evading its duties to care for all of its citizens and to end the occupation, and a Knesset that supports the government instead of putting it in its place.[20]

The Israeli Knesset opened investigations into the funding of Israeli human rights organizations in a political maneuver against them. However, as one article in Ha’aretz by an Israeli professor explained, these groups actually – inadvertently – play a role in “entrenching the occupation.” As the author explained:

Even if the leftist groups’ intention is to ensure upholding Palestinian rights, though, the unintentional result of their activity is preserving the occupation. Moderating and restraining the army’s activity gives it a more human and legal facade. Reducing the pressure of international organizations, alongside moderating the Palestinian population’s resistance potential, enable the army to continue to maintain this control model over a prolonged period of time.[21]

Thus, if the Israeli Knesset succeeds in getting rid of these powerful NGOs, they sow the seeds for the pressure valve in the occupied territories to be removed. The potential for massive internal protests within Israel from the left, as well as the possibility of another Intifada – uprising – in the occupied territories themselves would seem dramatically increased. Israel and the West have expressed how much distaste they hold for democracy in the region. When Gaza held a democratic election in 2006 and elected Hamas, which was viewed as the ‘wrong’ choice by Israel and America, Israel imposed a ruthless blockade of Gaza. Richard Falk, the former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Inquiry Commission for the Palestinian territories, wrote an article for Al Jazeera in which he explained that the blockade:

unlawfully restricted to subsistence levels, or below, the flow of food, medicine, and fuel. This blockade continues to this day, leaving the entire Gazan population locked within the world’s largest open-air prison, and victimized by one of the cruelest forms of belligerent occupation in the history of warfare.[22]

The situation in the occupied territories is made increasingly tense with the recent leaking of the “Palestinian Papers,” which consist of two decades of secret Israeli-Palestinian accords, revealing the weak negotiating position of the Palestinian Authority. The documents consist largely of major concessions the Palestinian Authority was willing to make “on the issues of the right of return of Palestinian refugees, territorial concessions, and the recognition of Israel.” Among the leaks, Palestinian negotiators secretly agreed to concede nearly all of East Jerusalem to Israel. Further, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (favoured by Israel and America over Hamas), was personally informed by a senior Israeli official the night before Operation Cast Lead, the December 2008 and January 2009 Israeli assault on Gaza, resulting in the deaths of over 1,000 Palestinians: “Israeli and Palestinian officials reportedly discussed targeted assassinations of Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists in Gaza.”[23]

Hamas has subsequently called on Palestinian refugees to protest over the concessions regarding the ‘right of return’ for refugees, of which the negotiators conceded to allowing only 100,000 of 5 million to return to Israel.[24] A former U.S. Ambassador to Israel and Egypt lamented that, “The concern will be that this might cause further problems in moving forward.”[25] However, while being blamed for possibly preventing the “peace process” from moving forward, what the papers reveal is that the “peace process” itself is a joke. The Palestinian Authority’s power is derivative of the power Israel allows it to have, and was propped up as a method of dealing with an internal Palestinian elite, thus doing what all colonial powers have done. The papers, then, reveal how the so-called Palestinian ‘Authority’ does not truly speak or work for the interests of the Palestinian people. And while this certainly will divide the PA from Hamas, they were already deeply divided as it was. Certainly, this will pose problems for the “peace process,” but that’s assuming it is a ‘peaceful’ process in the first part.

Is Egypt on the Edge of Revolution?

Unrest is even spreading to Egypt, personal playground of U.S.-supported and armed dictator, Hosni Mubarak, in power since 1981. Egypt is the main U.S. ally in North Africa, and has for centuries been one of the most important imperial jewels first for the Ottomans, then the British, and later for the Americans. With a population of 80 million, 60% of which are under the age of 30, who make up 90% of Egypt’s unemployed, the conditions are ripe for a repeat in Egypt of what happened in Tunisia.[26]

On January 25, 2011, Egypt experienced its “day of wrath,” in which tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets to protest against rising food prices, corruption, and the oppression of living under a 30-year dictatorship. The demonstrations were organized through the use of social media such as Twitter and Facebook. When the protests emerged, the government closed access to these social media sites, just as the Tunisian government did in the early days of the protests that led to the collapse of the dictatorship. As one commentator wrote in the Guardian:

Egypt is not Tunisia. It’s much bigger. Eighty million people, compared with 10 million. Geographically, politically, strategically, it’s in a different league – the Arab world’s natural leader and its most populous nation. But many of the grievances on the street are the same. Tunis and Cairo differ only in size. If Egypt explodes, the explosion will be much bigger, too.[27]

In Egypt, “an ad hoc coalition of students, unemployed youths, industrial workers, intellectuals, football fans and women, connected by social media such as Twitter and Facebook, instigated a series of fast-moving, rapidly shifting demos across half a dozen or more Egyptian cities.” The police responded with violence, and three protesters were killed. With tens of thousands of protesters taking to the streets, Egypt saw the largest protests in decades, if not under the entire 30-year reign of President Mubarak. Is Egypt on the verge of revolution? It seems too soon to tell. Egypt, it must be remembered, is the second major recipient of U.S. military assistance in the world (following Israel), and thus, its police state and military apparatus are far more advanced and secure than Tunisia’s. Clearly, however, something is stirring. As Hilary Clinton said on the night of the protests, “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.”[28] In other words: “We continue to support tyranny and dictatorship over democracy and liberation.” So what else is new?

Egyptian Protest, 25 January 2011

According to some estimates, as many as 50,000 protesters turned out in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and other Egyptian cities.[29] The protests were met with the usual brutality: beating protesters, firing tear gas and using water cannons to attempt to disperse the protesters. As images and videos started emerging out of Egypt, “television footage showed demonstrators chasing police down side streets. One protester climbed into a fire engine and drove it away.”[30] Late on the night of the protests, rumours and unconfirmed reports were spreading that the first lady of Egypt, Suzanne Mubarak, may have fled Egypt to London, following on the heels of rumours that Mubarak’s son, and presumed successor, had also fled to London.[31]

Are We Headed for a Global Revolution?

During the first phase of the global economic crisis in December of 2008, the IMF warned governments of the prospect of “violent unrest on the streets.” The head of the IMF warned that, “violent protests could break out in countries worldwide if the financial system was not restructured to benefit everyone rather than a small elite.”[32]

In January of 2009, Obama’s then-Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the greatest threat to the National Security of the U.S. was not terrorism, but the global economic crisis:

I’d like to begin with the global economic crisis, because it already looms as the most serious one in decades, if not in centuries … Economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they are prolonged for a one- or two-year period… And instability can loosen the fragile hold that many developing countries have on law and order, which can spill out in dangerous ways into the international community.[33]

In 2007, a British Defence Ministry report was released assessing global trends in the world over the next 30 years. In assessing “Global Inequality”, the report stated that over the next 30 years:

[T]he gap between rich and poor will probably increase and absolute poverty will remain a global challenge… Disparities in wealth and advantage will therefore become more obvious, with their associated grievances and resentments, even among the growing numbers of people who are likely to be materially more prosperous than their parents and grandparents.  Absolute poverty and comparative disadvantage will fuel perceptions of injustice among those whose expectations are not met, increasing tension and instability, both within and between societies and resulting in expressions of violence such as disorder, criminality, terrorism and insurgency. They may also lead to the resurgence of not only anti-capitalist ideologies, possibly linked to religious, anarchist or nihilist movements, but also to populism and the revival of Marxism.[34]

Further, the report warned of the dangers to the established powers of a revolution emerging from the disgruntled middle classes:

The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx.  The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples’ attachment to particular states.  The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite.  Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.[35]

We have now reached the point where the global economic crisis has continued beyond the two-year mark. The social repercussions are starting to be felt – globally – as a result of the crisis and the coordinated responses to it. Since the global economic crisis hit the ‘Third World’ the hardest, the social and political ramifications will be felt there first. In the context of the current record-breaking hikes in the cost of food, food riots will spread around the world as they did in 2007 and 2008, just prior to the outbreak of the economic crisis. This time, however, things are much worse economically, much more desperate socially, and much more oppressive politically.

This rising discontent will spread from the developing world to the comfort of our own homes in the West. Once the harsh realization sets in that the economy is not in ‘recovery,’ but rather in a Depression, and once our governments in the West continue on their path of closing down the democratic façade and continue dismantling rights and freedoms, increasing surveillance and ‘control,’ while pushing increasingly militaristic and war-mongering foreign policies around the world (mostly in an effort to quell or crush the global awakening being experienced around the world), we in the West will come to realize that ‘We are all Tunisians.’

In 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr., said in his famous speech “Beyond Vietnam”:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.[36]

This was Part 1 of “North Africa and the Global Political Awakening,” focusing on the emergence of the protest movements primarily in North Africa and the Arab world, but placing it in the context of a wider ‘Global Awakening.’
Part 2 will focus on the West’s reaction to the ‘Awakening’ in this region; namely, the two-pronged strategy of supporting oppressive regimes while promoting “democratization” in a grand new project of “democratic imperialism.”

Andrew Gavin Marshall is a Research Associate with the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).  He is co-editor, with Michel Chossudovsky, of the recent book, “The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century,” available to order at Globalresearch.ca. He is currently working on a forthcoming book on ’Global Government’.

Notes

[1]        Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Global Political Awakening. The New York Times: December 16, 2008: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/opinion/16iht-YEbrzezinski.1.18730411.html; “Major Foreign Policy Challenges for the Next US President,” International Affairs, 85: 1, (2009); The Dilemma of the Last Sovereign. The American Interest Magazine, Autumn 2005: http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=56; The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership. Speech at the Carnegie Council: March 25, 2004: http://www.cceia.org/resources/transcripts/4424.html; America’s Geopolitical Dilemmas. Speech at the Canadian International Council and Montreal Council on Foreign Relations: April 23, 2010: http://www.onlinecic.org/resourcece/multimedia/americasgeopoliticaldilemmas

[2]        Embassy Tunis, TROUBLED TUNISIA:  WHAT SHOULD WE DO?, WikiLeaks Cables, 17 July 2009: http://www.wikileaks.ch/cable/2009/07/09TUNIS492.html

[3]        Mona Eltahawy, Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution, The Washington Post, 15 January 2011: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/14/AR2011011405084.html

[4]        Eileen Byrne, Protesters make the case for peaceful change, The Financial Times, 15 January 2011: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/82293e38-20ae-11e0-a877-00144feab49a.html#axzz1C08RDtxu

[5]        Marc Lynch, Tunisia and the New Arab Media Space, Foreign Policy, 15 January 2011: http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/15/tunisia_and_the_new_arab_media_space

[6]        Jillian York, Activist crackdown: Tunisia vs Iran, Al-Jazeera, 9 January 2011: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/01/20111981222719974.html

[7]        Steven Cook, The Last Days of Ben Ali? The Council on Foreign Relations, 6 January 2011: http://blogs.cfr.org/cook/2011/01/06/the-last-days-of-ben-ali/

[8]        Angelique Chrisafis, Sarkozy admits France made mistakes over Tunisia, The Guardian, 24 January 2011: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/24/nicolas-sarkozy-tunisia-protests

[9]        Hillary Rodham Clinton, Interview With Taher Barake of Al Arabiya, U.S. Department of State, 11 January 2011: http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2011/01/154295.htm

[10]      Algeria set for crisis talks, Al-Jazeera, 8 January 2011: http://aljazeera.co.uk/news/africa/2011/01/2011187476735721.html

[11]      Alexandra Sandels, JORDAN: Thousands of demonstrators protest food prices, denounce government, Los Angeles Times Blog, 15 January 2011: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2011/01/jordan-protests-food-prices-muslim-brotherhood-tunisia-strike-thousands-government.html

[12]      AP, Thousands demand ouster of Yemen’s president, Associated Press, 22 January 2011: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g3b2emEy39Bn52Z_haypKxNPGMSw?docId=d324160638a74e84b874baeada16bb4c

[13]      Abigail Fielding-Smith, North-south divide strains Yemen union, The Financial Times, 12 January 2011: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c7c59322-1e80-11e0-87d2-00144feab49a.html#axzz1C08RDtxu

[14]      EurActiv, ‘Jasmine’ revolt wave reaches Albania, 24 January 2011: http://www.euractiv.com/en/enlargement/jasmine-revolt-wave-reaches-albania-news-501529

[15]      Clemens Höges, Bernhard Zand and Helene Zuber, Arab Rulers Fear Spread of Democracy Fever, Der Spiegel, 25 January 2011: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,741545,00.html

[16]      Shibley Telhami, Results of Arab Opinion Survey Conducted June 29-July 20, 2010, 5 August 2010: http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2010/0805_arab_opinion_poll_telhami.aspx

[17]      Shibley Telhami, A shift in Arab views of Iran, Los Angeles Times, 14 August 2010: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/14/opinion/la-oe-telhami-arab-opinions-20100814

[18]      Clemens Höges, Bernhard Zand and Helene Zuber, Arab Rulers Fear Spread of Democracy Fever, Der Spiegel, 25 January 2011: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,741545,00.html

[19]      Merav Michaeli, Israel may be on the eve of revolution, Ha’aretz, 17 January 2011: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-may-be-on-the-eve-of-revolution-1.337445

[20]      Ibid.

[21]      Yagil Levy, Israeli NGOs are entrenching the occupation, Ha’aretz, 11 January 2011: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israeli-ngos-are-entrenching-the-occupation-1.336331?localLinksEnabled=false

[22]      Richard Falk, Ben Ali Tunisia was model US client, Al-Jazeera, 25 January 2011: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/01/201112314530411972.html

[23]      Jack Khoury and Haaretz Service, Two decades of secret Israeli-Palestinian accords leaked to media worldwide, Ha’arets, 23 January 2011: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/two-decades-of-secret-israeli-palestinian-accords-leaked-to-media-worldwide-1.338768

[24]      Haaretz Service and The Associated Press, Hamas urges Palestinian refugees to protest over concessions on right of return, Ha’aretz, 25 January 2011: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/hamas-urges-palestinian-refugees-to-protest-over-concessions-on-right-of-return-1.339120

[25]      Alan Greenblatt, Palestinian Papers May Be Blow To Peace Process, NPR, 24 January 2011: http://www.npr.org/2011/01/24/133181412/palestinian-papers-may-cause-blow-to-peace-process?ps=cprs

[26]      Johannes Stern, Egyptian regime fears mass protests, World Socialist Web Site, 15 January 2011: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jan2011/egyp-j15.shtml

[27]      Simon Tisdall, Egypt protests are breaking new ground, The Guardian, 25 January 2011: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/25/egypt-protests

[28]      Ibid.

[29]      MATT BRADLEY, Rioters Jolt Egyptian Regime, The Wall Street Journal, 26 January 2011: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704698004576104112320465414.html

[30]      Catrina Stewart, Violence on the streets of Cairo as unrest grows, The Independent, 26 January 2011: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/violence-on-the-streets-of-cairo-as-unrest-grows-2194484.html

[31]      IBT, Suzanne Mubarak of Egypt has fled to Heathrow airport in London: unconfirmed reports, International Business Times, 25 January 2011: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/104960/20110125/suzanne-mubarak-of-egypt-has-fled-to-heathrow-airport-in-london-unconfirmed-reports.htm

[32]      Angela Balakrishnan, IMF chief issues stark warning on economic crisis. The Guardian: December 18, 2008: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/dec/16/imf-financial-crisis

[33]      Stephen C. Webster, US intel chief: Economic crisis a greater threat than terrorism. Raw Story: February 13, 2009: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/US_intel_chief_Economic_crisis_greater_0213.html

[34]      DCDC, The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme, 2007-2036, 3rd ed. The Ministry of Defence, January 2007: page 3

[35]      Ibid, page 81.

[36]      Rev. Martin Luther King, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html Andrew Gavin Marshall is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Andrew Gavin Marshall

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14 January 2011 From Brussels (Belgium) voltairenet.org

Jean-Claude Trichet (European Central Bank) and Ben Bernanke (US Federal Reserve): the interests of the capitalist elites align, this time to the detriment of the European people. A phrase attributed to Marx has taught us that if history does not repeat itself, it has a tendency to falter. This diagnosis illustrates perfectly the new attack on the euro. On the occasion of the Irish crisis, the financial markets have orchestrated a scenario comparable to that of the offensive against Greece [1]. Again, the same external cause is involved: the expansionist monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve. In a similar manner, the market offensive will also be endorsed by Germany. As already witnessed in April-May 2010, rather than lowering the value of the dollar, the announcement of an intended massive injection of liquidity by the Fed has had the effect of renewing the speculative assault against the euro zone. In part, Germany has also been responsible for the surge in interest rates on Irish bonds, as well as on Portugese and Spanish bonds. While purely formal, Angela Merkel’s recent declarations calling for the involvement of private creditors in the debt restructuring of certain Euro zone countries has reinforced the market’s distrust of the weakest among them. The objective of the Fed: an uninterrupted creation of financial bubbles The wisecrack made by John Connally, Secretary of the Treasury under Nixon in 1971, “The dollar is our currency, but it is your problem”, is as relevant as ever. To date, the monetisation of American debt has posed less of a problem for the US than for its satellites. The bush of Greece’s financial decay has already sufficed to hide the forest of U.S. deficits. Likewise, this year’s end [2010] has seen the Irish debt eclipse the announcement of a new programme of a massive Treasury bonds purchase by the US Fed. This manoeuvre of ‘quantitative easing’ boils down to printing money in order to lower the interest rates on government bonds. It should allow, at the rate of 75 billions per month, for an injection of $600 billion into the U.S. economy. The Fed had already introduced a sum of $1,700 billion into circulation. This latest injection of liquidity is an indication that this monetary policy has largely failed, since a new phase of bond purchases turned out to be necessary. Above all, it shows that the ‘quantitative easing’ is no longer an exceptional policy. It is in for the long term and thus becomes a normal procedure [2] Contrary to U.S. Treasury declarations, the purpose behind the money creation spawned has nothing to do with permitting the extension of bank credit to individuals and enterprises. Given the economic conjuncture, credit demand is actually weak and the financial institutions have at their disposal significant reserves. There is already an abundance of liquidity, and adding to it is not going to solve the problem which is linked to the distrust of the banks vis-à-vis the credit worthiness of potential borrowers, that is to say on the profitability of their investments. What is then the point of this permanent injection of liquidity into an already saturated market? To answer this question, suffice it to observe the effects of this policy: formation of speculative bubbles and surge in shareholder value, capital inflow in the countries experiencing strong growth, such as China or India, and speculative attacks, notably against the euro zone. The U.S. policy of public debt monetisation is actually not very inflationary because much capital leaves the United States for emergent markets and thus does not fuel internal demand. Neither does it provoke a pronounced fall of the dollar, considering that the hike in commodities purchases it generates – gold, raw materials and oil, which do influence the dollar because denominated in that currency – act to underpin its rate. U.S. speculators buy in their national currency, whereas foreign ‘investors’, encouraged to follow the upward movement induced by this policy, exchange their national currencies against dollars to buy U.S. assets. The objective of the ECB: the transfer of income from the workers to the banks Regarding the European Union, the ECB has announced the continuation of its policy of buying sovereign debt. It has also decided to prolong its bank refinancing plan, unlimited at a fixed rate, for an additional period of at least four months. Here also, one notes a change of stance: this policy is no longer presented as exceptional, but as permanent [3]. What has changed in ECB policy is the duration of its commitment. “In normal times, the ECB buys short term securities: three weeks, a month, more rarely three months, but since the crisis, the ECB has been buying 12 month securities – previously unheard of.” [4] This change overturns the role of the central bank from lender of last resort into front line lender. The central bank thus functions as a full-fledged financial lending institution. So far, the ECB has acquired government bonds for a total of €67 billion [5], essentially securities of troubled states, such as Greece and Ireland. We are thus very far from the $600 billion of repurchased securities effected by the Fed. The policy of the European central bank differs not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively, as it has chosen to sterilise its cash injection by reducing as much the loans made to the private banks. The objective of the European central bank is to defer as much as possible a restructuring of the Greek, Irish, Portugese … debt; the big European banks being heavily involved in their financing. It is above all a matter of saving the financial institutions and making wage-earners and savers foot the bill. To do this the European Union and its member states have transferred to the financial markets the key to deficit financing. The states must borrow from the financial institutions which themselves obtain liquidity at cheap rates from the European central bank. While deficits of EU member states, averaging 7%, are clearly receding by comparison with the 11% of the U.S. federal government [6], the European Union, by contrast with the U.S., is committed to a brutal reduction of public expenditure. The Commission wants to impose on countries a long diet of austerity to return to a total public debt less than 60% of GDP and has set up procedures to curb excessive deficits by the member states. By the first half of 2010, practically all the member states had submitted to it. The Commission has also called for the states to return under the bar of 3% [the yearly deficit as a percentage of GDP] before 2014 regardless of the domestic economic situation. The means proposed to realise these objectives do not consist in taxation of high incomes or of financial transactions, but rather in a reduction of wages, both direct and indirect – in other words to implement wage restriction policies, and to call into question the publicly-funded retirement and health systems. Complementarity of the Fed and ECB policies The strongly expansionary monetary policy of the U.S. consists in buying medium- and long-term sovereign debt (2 to 10 years), on the secondary market, so that the new issues of the Fed will be able to find borrowers at a low interest rate, more tolerable for American public finances. This policy not only matches the interests of American capital, but is in line with the interests of multinational capitalism. It is the principal tool for keeping interest rates very low, beneath the real level of inflation. It is a matter of allowing, not only the U.S., but also Europe and Japan, to cope with their mountain of debt while offering minimal rates. Any bond yield increase [on public debt] could lead these states to bankruptcy. Moreover, in the medium term, this lax practice will have an inflationary effect which will devalue the public debt and reduce, in real terms, the financing burden. Given the particular role of the dollar in the global economy the U.S. Federal Reserve is the only central bank that can afford to pursue such a policy, now practised on an elevated scale. Any other national currency would be attacked by the markets and heavily devalued. The Fed is the only central bank that is able to print money and to have this additional money accepted by foreign economic agents. The monetisation of the U.S. debt, in fueling financial markets, facilitates the launching of speculative operations against the euro zone at little cost. It is in line with the EU’s objectives, for it allows the market to rally and to exert pressure on European populations, to make them accept a drastic reduction in their living standards. The fiscal policies instituted by the member states will prevent any economic recovery, further undermine the public finances and lay claim for further transfers of income from wage-earners to banks and businesses. The stuttering of the Euro crisis is far from over. The heralded intention to discount anew the grading of Spanish government debt by the U.S. ratings agency Moody’s [7], owing to its heavy refinancing needs in 2011, does not contradict this diagnostic. Jean-Claude Paye Belgian sociologist and essayist. His latest published works are La Fin de l’État de droit, La Dispute 2004; and Global War on Liberty, Telos Press 2007. This author’s articles To send a message Translated by Evan Jones. [1] “The EU and the Hedge Funds: regulation or the relinquishment of European sovereignty?”, by Jean-Claude Paye, Voltaire Network, 22 November 2010. [2] “La FED va injecter 600 milliards de dollars dans l’économie américaine”, by Audrey Fournier, Le Monde, 4 November 2010. [3] “La Banque centrale européenne prolonge ses mesures exceptionnelles de soutien”, by Mathilde Farine, Le Temps, 3 December 2010. [4] “La BCE poursuit son programme de rachat d’obligations publiques”, by Audrey Fournier, Le Monde, 2 December 2010. [5] “Les Etats-Unis à l’origine des tensions au sein de la zone euro”, by Sébastien Dubas, Le Temps, 3 December 2010. [6] Manifeste des économistes atterrés. Crise et dette en Europe : 10 fausses évidences, 22 mesures en débat pour sortir de l’impasse, 14 September 2010. [7] “Moody’s envisage une nouvelle dégradation de la note de l’Espagne”, Le Monde with AFP, 15 December 2010.

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This essay was originally published in the first issue of Monthly Review (May 1949).

Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.

Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible. But in reality such methodological differences do exist. The discovery of general laws in the field of economics is made difficult by the circumstance that observed economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately. In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the so-called civilized period of human history has—as is well known—been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature. For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.

But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called “the predatory phase” of human development. The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases. Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.

Second, socialism is directed towards a social-ethical end. Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and—if these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous—are adopted and carried forward by those many human beings who, half unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society.

For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society.

Innumerable voices have been asserting for some time now that human society is passing through a crisis, that its stability has been gravely shattered. It is characteristic of such a situation that individuals feel indifferent or even hostile toward the group, small or large, to which they belong. In order to illustrate my meaning, let me record here a personal experience. I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would seriously endanger the existence of mankind, and I remarked that only a supra-national organization would offer protection from that danger. Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: “Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?”

I am sure that as little as a century ago no one would have so lightly made a statement of this kind. It is the statement of a man who has striven in vain to attain an equilibrium within himself and has more or less lost hope of succeeding. It is the expression of a painful solitude and isolation from which so many people are suffering in these days. What is the cause? Is there a way out?

It is easy to raise such questions, but difficult to answer them with any degree of assurance. I must try, however, as best I can, although I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas.

Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society. It is quite possible that the relative strength of these two drives is, in the main, fixed by inheritance. But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its appraisal of particular types of behavior. The abstract concept “society” means to the individual human being the sum total of his direct and indirect relations to his contemporaries and to all the people of earlier generations. The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society—in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence—that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is “society” which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word “society.”

It is evident, therefore, that the dependence of the individual upon society is a fact of nature which cannot be abolished—just as in the case of ants and bees. However, while the whole life process of ants and bees is fixed down to the smallest detail by rigid, hereditary instincts, the social pattern and interrelationships of human beings are very variable and susceptible to change. Memory, the capacity to make new combinations, the gift of oral communication have made possible developments among human being which are not dictated by biological necessities. Such developments manifest themselves in traditions, institutions, and organizations; in literature; in scientific and engineering accomplishments; in works of art. This explains how it happens that, in a certain sense, man can influence his life through his own conduct, and that in this process conscious thinking and wanting can play a part.

Man acquires at birth, through heredity, a biological constitution which we must consider fixed and unalterable, including the natural urges which are characteristic of the human species. In addition, during his lifetime, he acquires a cultural constitution which he adopts from society through communication and through many other types of influences. It is this cultural constitution which, with the passage of time, is subject to change and which determines to a very large extent the relationship between the individual and society. Modern anthropology has taught us, through comparative investigation of so-called primitive cultures, that the social behavior of human beings may differ greatly, depending upon prevailing cultural patterns and the types of organization which predominate in society. It is on this that those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes: human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate.

If we ask ourselves how the structure of society and the cultural attitude of man should be changed in order to make human life as satisfying as possible, we should constantly be conscious of the fact that there are certain conditions which we are unable to modify. As mentioned before, the biological nature of man is, for all practical purposes, not subject to change. Furthermore, technological and demographic developments of the last few centuries have created conditions which are here to stay. In relatively densely settled populations with the goods which are indispensable to their continued existence, an extreme division of labor and a highly-centralized productive apparatus are absolutely necessary. The time—which, looking back, seems so idyllic—is gone forever when individuals or relatively small groups could be completely self-sufficient. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that mankind constitutes even now a planetary community of production and consumption.

I have now reached the point where I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time. It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate. All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals.

For the sake of simplicity, in the discussion that follows I shall call “workers” all those who do not share in the ownership of the means of production—although this does not quite correspond to the customary use of the term. The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value. Insofar as the labor contract is “free,” what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists’ requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.

Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

The situation prevailing in an economy based on the private ownership of capital is thus characterized by two main principles: first, means of production (capital) are privately owned and the owners dispose of them as they see fit; second, the labor contract is free. Of course, there is no such thing as a pure capitalist society in this sense. In particular, it should be noted that the workers, through long and bitter political struggles, have succeeded in securing a somewhat improved form of the “free labor contract” for certain categories of workers. But taken as a whole, the present day economy does not differ much from “pure” capitalism.

Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers’ goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?

Clarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest significance in our age of transition. Since, under present circumstances, free and unhindered discussion of these problems has come under a powerful taboo, I consider the foundation of this magazine to be an important public service.
Global Research Articles by Albert Einstein

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by Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay

Global Research, January 1, 2011
TheNewAmericanEmpire.com

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790), American inventor, journalist, printer, diplomat, and statesman (1775)

“Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security.”Norman Vincent Peale (1898 –1993), American Christian preacher and author

“A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police. Even when he is alone he can never be sure that he is alone. …At the apex of the pyramid comes Big Brother. Big Brother is infallible and all-powerful. Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly from his leadership and inspiration.” George Orwell (1903-1950) (Eric Arthur Blair), (book: 1984)

“Since information gives power, access to personal files can lead to unreasonable pressures, even blackmail, especially against those with the least resources, people who depend upon public programs, for example. Big Brother isn’t a camera. Big Brother is a computer.” C.J. Howard, political novel “Cybercash”

In 2049, when the 100th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell political novel “1984” will be celebrated, it will be recalled that the immediate post September 11, 2001 period marked the beginning of a gradual decline in personal liberty and freedom, especially in the United States but also elsewhere, and the emergence of a great information-obsessed Leviathan. Freedom rarely disappears in one fell swoop. Its disappearance is rather the end result of a thousand encroachments.

Pushed to the extreme and without clear democratic oversight, it becomes the mark of a totalitarian state, when authorities feel that they never have enough information on the people. It is because information is power and state bureaucrats and politicians naturally like to be in control; on the one hand, releasing as little information about their own actions through an imposed secrecy, and on the other, accumulating as much information as possible about the citizens.

And today, modern governments have all the tools to transform their country into a creeping police state, more so now then ever before, in this electronic age. They have access to information technology that previous full-fledged “police state” governments could only have dreamed about.

Nowadays, with super computers and revolutionary new models to gather information and build databases, governments, i.e. bureaucrats and politicians, are in a position as never before to accumulate and correlate tremendous amounts of personal information on their citizens, from public (federal, state and local) as well as from a plethora of private sources. Government intelligence on each and every citizen is thus rendered much easier and, I would add, much more frightening. Indeed, the potential for abuse is enormous.

In 2002, for example, retired Vice Admiral John Poindexter proposed that the U.S. government create a tracking and monitoring system called “Total Information Awareness”, in order for the U.S. government to gather information in a preventive way about individuals from widely varied sources, including tax records, telephone calling records, credit card charges, banking transactions, airline or ship reservations, and various biometric databases, without taking into consideration civil liberties or a citizens’ right to privacy, the U.S. Privacy Act of 1974, or without having to request search warrants and without having to give prior notice to the persons involved. —The pretext was to allow the government to thwart possible terrorist activity, thus creating an unlimited appetite for information.

Well, there are clear signs that this massive data mining system on individuals is now solidly in place and is in full operation and can be expected to grow over time. George Orwell must be turning in his grave.

First, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s network of fusion centers, launched in 2003, has allowed the government to centralize a host of previously disparate information about Americans and foreigners alike, whether related to personal and business records, drivers licenses, local taxes, local infractions, police records, etc., through a host of coordinated information-sharing networks. (N.B.: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was established on November 25, 2002 and is the domestic equivalent of the Department of Defense.)

Secondly, central provisions of the USA Patriot Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001, allow the government to operate roving wire taps, search any individual’s business, personal, and even library records upon presentation of a national security letter, and spy on so-called “lone wolf” suspects, i.e., foreign nationals who have no known links to groups designated as terrorist. On this, the current Obama administration, by extending those provisions, is scarcely different than the previous Bush administration.

Thirdly, since passports and tight intelligence screening have been made a requirement for most international travel by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, since January 1, 2008, every individual traveling in and out of the United States has all his or her whereabouts and movements recorded so the government knows at all times his or her address and the places he or she has traveled to and from.

For instance, U.S. Transportation Security Administration’s recent decision to use full-body airport X-ray scanners and full body groping at airports is another example where so-called security procedures are applied blindly and indiscriminately. There is more to come, since it has been announced that such invasive intelligence screening is coming to hotels and shopping malls, as well as to trains, buses and ports, etc.

These are some of the main features of the new government apparatus to gather information on people. There are many others. —Take for instance the requirement, since 2002, that all American high schools must give Pentagon military recruiters the names and contact information of all their juniors and seniors. Failure to comply on their part may result in the loss of government funding.

The logical next step for the U.S. government would be to follow a recent Italy’s lead and outlaw outright the use of cash for most transactions, except for small ones, thus providing the government even more minute information about an individual’s income, purchases and displacements. Nothing will escape the watching eye of the government in the electronic age. People will be filed, photographed and corralled.

Indeed, the way mass government surveillance systems are growing, by year 2020, chances are good that Americans will be living in a “Brave New World”!

—CYBER BIG BROTHER would know it all and it will be watching you.

Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com. He is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics” at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/

The book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by Dr. Paul Kurtz, has just been released by Prometheus Books.

The French version of the book is also now available. See: www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/ or on Amazon Canada
Rodrigue Tremblay is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Rodrigue Tremblay

READ FULL STORY HERE

January 1st, 2011
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

Wikileaks, the United States, Sweden, and Devil’s Island

December 16 … I’m standing in the snow in front of the White House … Standing with Veterans for Peace … I’m only a veteran of standing in front of the White House; the first time was February 1965, handing out flyers against the war in Vietnam. I was working for the State Department at the time and my biggest fear was that someone from that noble institution would pass by and recognize me.

Five years later I was still protesting Vietnam, although long gone from the State Department. Then came Cambodia. And Laos. Soon, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Then Panama was the new great threat to America, to freedom and democracy and all things holy and decent, so it had to be bombed without mercy. Followed by the first war against the people of Iraq, and the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia. Then the land of Afghanistan had rained down upon it depleted uranium, napalm, phosphorous bombs, and other witches’ brews and weapons of the chemical dust; then Iraq again. And I’ve skipped a few. I think I hold the record for most times picketing the White House by a right-handed batter.

And through it all, the good, hard-working, righteous people of America have believed mightily that their country always means well; some even believe to this day that we never started a war, certainly nothing deserving of the appellation “war of aggression”.

On that same snowy day last month Julian Assange of Wikileaks was freed from prison in London and told reporters that he was more concerned that the United States might try to extradite him than he was about being extradited to Sweden, where he presumably faces “sexual” charges. ¹

That’s a fear many political and drug prisoners in various countries have expressed in recent years. The United States is the new Devil’s Island of the Western world. From the mid-19th century to the mid-20th, political prisoners were shipped to that god-forsaken strip of French land off the eastern coast of South America. One of the current residents of the new Devil’s Island is Bradley Manning, the former US intelligence analyst suspected of leaking diplomatic cables to Wikileaks. Manning has been imprisoned for seven months, first in Kuwait, then at a military base in Virginia, and faces virtual life in prison if found guilty, of something. Without being tried or convicted of anything, he is allowed only very minimal contact with the outside world; or with people, daylight, or news; among the things he is denied are a pillow, sheets, and exercise; his sleep is restricted and frequently interrupted. See Glenn Greenwald’s discussion of how Manning’s treatment constitutes torture. ²

A friend of the young soldier says that many people are reluctant to talk about Manning’s deteriorating physical and mental condition because of government harassment, including surveillance, seizure of their computer without a warrant, and even attempted bribes. “This has had such an intimidating effect that many are afraid to speak out on his behalf.” ³ A developer of the transparency software used by Wikileaks was detained for several hours last summer by federal agents at a Newark, New Jersey airport, where he was questioned about his connection to Wikileaks and Assange as well as his opinions about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. ⁴

This is but a tiny incident from the near-century buildup of the American police state, from the Red Scare of the 1920s to the McCarthyism of the 1950s to the crackdown against Central American protesters in the 1980s … elevated by the War on Drugs … now multiplied by the War on Terror. It’s not the worst police state in history; not even the worst police state in the world today; but nonetheless a police state, and certainly the most pervasive police state ever — a Washington Post study has just revealed that there are 4,058 separate federal, state and local “counterterrorism” organizations spread across the United States, each with its own responsibilities and jurisdictions. ⁵ The police of America, of many types, generally get what and who they want. If the United States gets its hands on Julian Assange, under any legal pretext, fear for him; it might be the end of his life as a free person; the actual facts of what he’s done or the actual wording of US laws will not matter; hell hath no fury like an empire scorned.

John Burns, chief foreign correspondent for The New York Times, after interviewing Assange, stated: “He is profoundly of the conviction that the United States is a force for evil in the world, that it’s destructive of democracy.” ⁶ Can anyone who believes that be entitled to a full measure of human rights on Devil’s Island?

The Wikileaks documents may not produce any world-changing revelations, but every day they are adding to the steady, gradual erosion of people’s belief in the US government’s good intentions, which is necessary to overcome a lifetime of indoctrination. Many more individuals over the years would have been standing in front of the White House if they had had access to the plethora of information that floods people today; which is not to say that we would have succeeded in stopping any of the wars; that’s a question of to what extent the United States is a democracy.

One further consequence of the release of the documents may be to put an end to the widespread belief that Sweden, or the Swedish government, is peaceful, progressive, neutral and independent. Stockholm’s behavior in this matter and others has been as American-poodle-like as London’s, as it lined itself up with an Assange-accuser who has been associated with right-wing anti-Castro Cubans, who are of course US-government-supported. This is the same Sweden that for some time in recent years was working with the CIA on its torture-rendition flights and has about 500 soldiers in Afghanistan. Sweden is the world’s largest per capita arms exporter, and for years has taken part in US/NATO military exercises, some within its own territory. The left should get themselves a new hero-nation. Try Cuba.

There’s also the old stereotype held by Americans of Scandinavians practicing a sophisticated and tolerant attitude toward sex, an image that was initiated, or enhanced, by the celebrated 1967 Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow), which had been banned for awhile in the United States. And now what do we have? Sweden sending Interpol on an international hunt for a man who apparently upset two women, perhaps for no more than sleeping with them both in the same week.

And while they’re at it, American progressives should also lose their quaint belief that the BBC is somehow a liberal broadcaster. Americans are such suckers for British accents. The BBC’s Today presenter, John Humphrys, asked Assange: “Are you a sexual predator?” Assange said the suggestion was “ridiculous”, adding: “Of course not”. Humphrys then asked Assange how many woman he had slept with. ⁷ Would even Fox News have descended to that level? I wish Assange had been raised in the streets of Brooklyn, as I was. He would then have known precisely how to reply to such a question: “You mean including your mother?”

Another group of people who should learn a lesson from all this are the knee-reflex conspiracists. Several of them have already written me snide letters informing me of my naiveté in not realizing that Israel is actually behind the release of the Wikileaks documents; which is why, they inform me, that nothing about Israel is mentioned. I had to inform them that I had already seen a few documents putting Israel in a bad light. I’ve since seen others, and Assange, in an interview with Al Jazeera on December 23, stated that only a meager number of files related to Israel had been published so far because the publications in the West that were given exclusive rights to publish the secret documents were reluctant to publish much sensitive information about Israel. (Imagine the flak Germany’s Der Spiegel would get hit with.) “There are 3,700 files related to Israel and the source of 2,700 files is Israel,” said Assange. “In the next six months we intend to publish more files.” ⁸

Naturally, several other individuals have informed me that it’s the CIA that is actually behind the document release.

The right to secrecy

Many of us are pretty tired of supporters of Israel labeling as “anti-Semitic” most any criticism of Israeli policies, which is virtually never an appropriate accusation. Consider the Webster Dictionary definition: “Anti-Semite. One who discriminates against or is hostile to or prejudiced against Jews.” Notice that the state of Israel is not mentioned, or in any way implied.

Here’s what real anti-Semitism looks like. Listen to former president Richard Nixon: “The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality. … most of our Jewish friends … they are all basically people who have a sense of inferiority and have got to compensate.” This is from a tape of a conversation at the White House, February 13, 1973, recently released. ⁹ These tapes, and there are a large number of them, are the Wikileaks of an earlier age.

Yet, as the prominent conservative Michael Medved pointed out after the release of Nixon’s remarks: “Ironically, though, no American did more to rescue the Jewish people when it counted most: after the 1973 Egyptian-Syrian surprise attack destroyed a third of Israel’s air force and killed the American equivalent of 200,000 Israelis, Nixon overruled his own Pentagon and ordered immediate re-supply. To this day, Israelis feel gratitude for this decisiveness that enabled the Jewish state to turn the tide of war.” ¹⁰ So, was Richard Nixon anti-Semitic? And should his remarks be kept secret?

In another of his recent interviews, Julian Assange was asked whether he thought that “a state has a right to have any secrets at all.” He conceded that there are circumstances when institutions have such a need, “but that is not to say that all others must obey that need. The media has an obligation to the public to get out information that the public needs to know.” ¹¹

I would add that the American people — more than any other people — have a need to know what their government is up to around the world because their government engages in aggressive actions more than any other government, continuously bombing and sending young men and women to kill and die. Americans need to know what their psychopathic leaders are really saying to each other and to foreign leaders about all this shedding of blood. Any piece of such information might be used as a weapon to prevent yet another Washington War. Michael Moore has recently written:
We were taken to war in Iraq on a lie. Hundreds of thousands are now dead. Just imagine if the men who planned this war crime back in 2002 had had a Wikileaks to deal with. They might not have been able to pull it off. The only reason they thought they could get away with it was because they had a guaranteed cloak of secrecy. That guarantee has now been ripped from them, and I hope they are never able to operate in secret again.
And, dear comrades, let us not forget: Our glorious leaders spy on us all the time; no communication of ours, from phone call to email, is secret from them; nothing in our bank accounts or our bedrooms is guaranteed any kind of privacy if they wish to know about it. Recently, the FBI raided the midwest homes of a number of persons active in solidarity work with Palestinians, Colombians, and others. The agents spent many hours going through each shelf and drawer, carting away dozens of boxes of personal belongings. So what kind of privacy and secrecy should the State Department be entitled to?

Preparing for the propaganda onslaught

February 6 will mark the centenary of the birth of Ronald Reagan, president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. The conservatives have wasted no time in starting the show. On New Years Day a 55-foot long, 26-foot high float honoring Reagan was part of the annual Rose Parade in Pasadena, California. To help you cope with, hopefully even counter, the misinformation and the omissions that are going to swamp the media for the next few months, here is some basic information about the great man’s splendid achievements, first in foreign policy:

• NicaraguaFor eight terribly long years the people of Nicaragua were under attack by Ronald Reagan’s proxy army, the Contras. It was all-out war from Washington, aiming to destroy the progressive social and economic programs of the Sandinista government — burning down schools and medical clinics, mining harbors, bombing and strafing, raping and torturing. These Contras were the charming gentlemen Reagan called “freedom fighters” and the “moral equivalent of our founding fathers”.
• El SalvadorSalvador’s dissidents tried to work within the system. But with US support, the government made that impossible, using repeated electoral fraud and murdering hundreds of protestors and strikers. When the dissidents took to the gun and civil war, the Carter administration and then even more so, the Reagan administration, responded with unlimited money, military aid, and training in support of the government and its death squads and torture, the latter with the help of CIA torture manuals. US military and CIA personnel played an active role on a continuous basis. The result was 75,000 civilian deaths; meaningful social change thwarted; a handful of the wealthy still owned the country; the poor remained as ever; dissidents still had to fear right-wing death squads; there was to be no profound social change in El Salvador while Ronnie sat in the White House with Nancy.
• GuatemalaIn 1954, a CIA-organized coup overthrew the democratically-elected and progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz, initiating 40 years of military-government death squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty, totaling more than 200,000 victims — indisputably one of the most inhumane chapters of the 20th century. For eight of those years the Reagan administration played a major role.

  Perhaps the worst of the military dictators was General Efraín Ríos Montt, who carried out a near-holocaust against the indians and peasants, for which he was widely condemned in the world. In December 1982, Reagan went to visit the Guatemalan dictator. At a press conference of the two men, Ríos Montt was asked about the Guatemalan policy of scorched earth. He replied “We do not have a policy of scorched earth. We have a policy of scorched communists.” After the meeting, referring to the allegations of extensive human-rights abuses, Reagan declared that Ríos Montt was getting “a bad deal” from the media.

• GrenadaReagan invaded this tiny country in October 1983, an invasion totally illegal and immoral, and surrounded by lies (such as “endangered” American medical students). The invasion put into power individuals more beholden to US foreign policy objectives.
• AfghanistanAfter the Carter administration provoked a Soviet invasion, Reagan came to power to support the Islamic fundamentalists in their war to eject the Soviets and the secular government, which honored women’s rights. In the end, the United States and the fundamentalists “won”, women’s rights and the rest of Afghanistan lost. More than a million dead, three million disabled, five million refugees; in total about half the population. And many thousands of anti-American Islamic fundamentalists, trained and armed by the US, on the loose to terrorize the world, to this day.

  “To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an inspiration to those who love freedom,” declared Reagan. “Their courage teaches us a great lesson — that there are things in this world worth defending. To the Afghan people, I say on behalf of all Americans that we admire your heroism, your devotion to freedom, and your relentless struggle against your oppressors.” ¹²

• The Cold WarAs to Reagan’s alleged role in ending the Cold War … pure fiction. He prolonged it. Read the story in one of my books. ¹³

Some other examples of the remarkable amorality of Ronald Wilson Reagan and the feel-good heartlessness of his administration:

Reagan, in his famous 1964 speech, “A Time for Choosing”, which lifted him to national political status: “We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.”
“Undermining health, safety and environmental regulation. Reagan decreed such rules must be subjected to regulatory impact analysis — corporate-biased cost-benefit analyses, carried out by the Office of Management and Budget. The result: countless positive regulations discarded or revised based on pseudo-scientific conclusions that the cost to corporations would be greater than the public benefit.”

“Kick-starting the era of structural adjustment. It was under Reagan administration influence that the International Monetary Fund and World Bank began widely imposing the policy package known as structural adjustment — featuring deregulation, privatization, emphasis on exports, cuts in social spending — that has plunged country after country in the developing world into economic destitution. The IMF chief at the time was honest about what was to come, saying in 1981 that, for low-income countries, ‘adjustment is particularly costly in human terms’.”

“Silence on the AIDS epidemic. Reagan didn’t mention AIDS publicly until 1987, by which point AIDS had killed 19,000 in the United States.”

– Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman ¹⁴
“Reagan’s election changed the political reality. His agenda was rolling back the welfare state, and his budgets included a wide range of cuts for social programs. He was also very strategic about the process. One of his first targets was Legal Aid. This program, which provides legal services for low-income people, was staffed largely by progressive lawyers, many of whom used it as a base to win precedent-setting legal disputes against the government. Reagan drastically cut back the program’s funding. He also explicitly prohibited the agency from taking on class-action suits against the government — law suits that had been used with considerable success to expand the rights of low- and moderate-income families.”

“The Reagan administration also made weakening the power of unions a top priority. The people he appointed to the National Labor Relations Board were qualitatively more pro-management than appointees by prior Democratic or Republican presidents. This allowed companies to ignore workers’ rights with impunity. Reagan also made the firing of strikers an acceptable business practice when he fired striking air traffic controllers in 1981. Many large corporations quickly embraced the practice. … The net effect of these policies was that union membership plummeted, going from nearly 20 percent of the private sector workforce in 1980 to just over 7 percent in 2006. ”

– Dean Baker ¹⁵
Reaganomics: a tax policy based on a notion of incentives which says that “the rich aren’t working because they have too little money, while the poor aren’t working because they have too much.”

– John Kenneth Galbraith
“According to the nostrums of Reagan Age America, the current Chinese system — in equal measure capitalist and authoritarian — cannot actually exist. Capitalism spread democracy, we were told ad nauseam by a steady stream of conservative hacks, free-trade apologists, government officials and American companies doing business in China. Given enough Starbuckses and McDonald’s, provided with sufficient consumer choice, China would surely become a democracy.”

– Harold Meyerson ¹⁶
Throughout the early and mid-1980s, the Reagan administration declared that the Russians were spraying toxic chemicals over Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan — the so-called “yellow rain” — and had caused more than ten thousand deaths by 1982 alone, (including, in Afghanistan, 3,042 deaths attributed to 47 separate incidents between the summer of 1979 and the summer of 1981, so precise was the information). President Reagan himself denounced the Soviet Union thusly more than 15 times in documents and speeches. The “yellow rain”, it turned out, was pollen-laden feces dropped by huge swarms of honeybees flying far overhead. ¹⁷

Reagan’s long-drawn-out statements re: Contragate (the scandal involving the covert sale of weapons to Iran to enable Reaganites to continue financing the Contras in the war against the Nicaraguan government after the US Congress cut off funding for the Contras) can be summarized as follows:

• I didn’t know what was happening.
• If I did know, I didn’t know enough.
• If I knew enough, I didn’t know it in time.
• If I knew it in time, it wasn’t illegal.
• If it was illegal, the law didn’t apply to me.
• If the law applied to me, I didn’t know what was happening.

Notes

1. Sunday Telegraph (Australia), December 19, 2010 ^?
2. Salon.com, December 15, 2010, “The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning’s detention“. See also his attorney’s account of Manning’s typical day; and Washington Post, December 16, 2010^?
3. The Guardian (London), December 17, 2010 ^?
4. New York Times, December 19, 2010 ^?
5. Washington Post, December 20, 2010 ^?
6. Diane Rehm show, National Public Radio, Dec. 9, 2010^?
7. The Guardian (London), December 21, 2010 ^?
8. Information Clearing House, December 23 2010, “WikiLeaks to Release Israel Documents in Six Months“^?
9. Washington Post, December 12, 2010 ^?
10. From Medved’s radio show, December 14, 2010; “Nixon: The Anti-Semitic Savior of Israel” ^?
11. Al Jazeera, December 22 2010, Frost Over the World: Julian Assange interview ^?
12. March 21, 1983, in the White House ^?
13. “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II”, p.17-18. Also for the five countries listed above, see the respective chapters in this book. ^?
14. June, 2004; Mokhiber is editor of Corporate Crime Reporter; Weissman, editor of the Multinational Monitor, both in Washington, D.C. ^?
15. April, 2007; Baker is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, DC ^?
16. Washington Post columnist, June 3, 2009 ^?
17. “Killing Hope”, p.349 ^?

–

William Blum is the author of:

• Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
• Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
• West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
• Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

READ FULL STORY HERE

Note the obvious drop in velocity over the last four years on the same date in December in these photos.
December 19, 2007

Relative Gulf Stream velocity fields are derived from near-realtime data from the radar altimeters of the satellites Envisat, Jason-1, and Jason-2.

These pictographs are of velocities of the Gulf Stream in the vicinity of the East coast of North-America. Velocities are represented in meters per second. Note that the velocity as it approaches Europe has radically slowed down over the past four years. Some have said that the BP Oil Spill is finishing off the already slowing Gulf Stream.

Find Satellite Data Source Here To Do Your Own Research

On December 22 both houses of the U.S. Congress unanimously passed a bill authorizing $725 billion for next year’s Defense Department budget.

The bill, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011, was approved by all 100 senators as required and by a voice vote in the House.

The House had approved the bill, now sent to President Barack Obama to sign into law, five days earlier in a 341-48 roll call, but needed to vote on it again after the Senate altered it in the interim.

The proposed figure for the Pentagon’s 2011 war chest includes, in addition to the base budget, $158.7 billion for what are now euphemistically referred to as overseas contingency operations: The military occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.

The $725 billion figure, although $17 billion more than the White House had requested, is not the final word on the subject, however, as supplements could be demanded as early as the beginning of next year, especially in regard to the Afghan war that will then be in its eleventh calendar year.

Even as it currently is, the amount is the highest in constant dollars (pegged at any given year’s dollar and adjusted for inflation) since 1945, the final year of the Second World War. With recent U.S. census figures at 308 million, next year the Pentagon will spend $2,354 for every citizen of the country at the $725 billion price tag alone.

Last year’s Pentagon budget, by way of comparison, was $680 billion, a base budget of $533.8 billion and the remainder for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. In July of this year Congress approved the 2010 Supplemental Appropriations Act which contained an additional $37 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Next year’s defense authorization of $725 billion compares to, according to the Center for Defense Information, a Pentagon budget of $444.6 billion in 1946; $460.4 billion in 1968, the highest yearly amount during the Vietnam War; and $443.4 billion in 1988, the highest during the eight years of the Ronald Reagan administration’s massive military buildup. (Numbers in 2004 constant dollars.) [1]

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates American military spending for 2009 to have accounted for 43 percent of the world total. Carl Conetta, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives, earlier this year estimated the 2010 U.S. defense budget to constitute 47 percent of total worldwide military expenditures and to amount to 19 percent of all American federal spending.

In addition, Pentagon spending has increased by 100 percent since 1998 and “the Obama budget plans to spend more on the Pentagon over eight years than any administration has since World War II.” [2]

With 2.25 million full-time civilian and military personnel, excluding part-time National Guard and Reserve members, the Defense Department is the U.S.’s largest employer, outstripping Walmart with 1.4 million employees and the U.S Post Office with 599,000. [3]

“Add in what Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and the Energy departments spend on defense and total US military spending will reach $861 billion in fiscal 2011, exceeding that of all other nations combined,” according to Todd Harrison, senior fellow for Defense Budget Studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. [4]

In April Robert Higgs of The Independent Institute advocated that the budgets – in part or in whole – of the departments of Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, Energy, State and Treasury and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) should be calculated in the real military budget, which would in 2009 would have increased it to $901.5 billion.

“Adding [the] interest component to the previous all-agency total, the grand total comes to $1,027.8 billion, which is 61.5 percent greater than the Pentagon’s outlays alone.”

His numbers are:

National Security Outlays in Fiscal Year 2009
(billions of dollars)

Department of Defense 636.5

Department of Energy (nuclear weapons and environmental cleanup) 16.7

Department of State (plus international assistance) 36.3

Department of Veterans Affairs 95.5

Department of Homeland Security 51.7

Department of the Treasury (for the Military Retirement Fund) 54.9

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (1/2 of total) 9.6

Net interest attributable to past debt-financed defense outlays 126.3

Total 1,027.5 [5]

The above-cited Carl Conetta stated at the beginning of this year that the 2011 Pentagon budget will mark a milestone in that “the inflation-adjusted rise in spending since 1998 will probably exceed 100% in real terms by the end of the fiscal year.

“Taking the 2011 budget into account, the Defense Department has been given about $7.2 trillion since 1998, when the post-Cold War decline in defense spending ended. Approximately $2.5 trillion of this total is due to spending above the annual level set in 1998. This added amount constitutes the post-1998 spending surge.”

Based on constant 2010 dollars, Conetta further details that the Ronald Reagan administration spent $4.1 trillion on the Defense Department, the Georgia W. Bush administration spent $4.65 trillion and “Barack Obama plans to spend more than $5 trillion.”

He also compares the two previous largest post-World War Two surges in U.S. military spending to the current one:

From 1958-1968: 43 percent

From: 1975-1985 57 percent

In regards to which he said, “the 1998-2011 surge is as large as these two predecessors combined.”

His calculations also include a growth in Pentagon contract employees of 40 percent since 1989, thereby freeing up uniformed service members for more direct combat roles.

The U.S. share of global military spending grew from 28 percent during the Cold War to 41 percent by 2006 and that of NATO member states, including the U.S., from 49 percent to 70 percent in the same period.

Contrariwise, the “group of potential adversary and competitor states has gone from claiming a 42% share to just 16% in 2006.

“Had Ronald Reagan – who is generally regarded a hawkish president – wanted to achieve in the 1980s the ratio between US and adversary spending that existed in 2006, he would have had to quadruple his defense budgets.

“And, of course, since 2006, the US defense budget has not receded, but instead grown by another 20% in real terms.

“By 2011, the United States will probably account for more than half of all global military spending calculated in terms of ‘purchasing power parity’ (which corrects for differences between national economies).” [6]

The defense authorization bill passed on December 22, despite its monumental and unprecedented size, has been routinely described in the American press as stripped-down, scaled-down and pared-down because an arms manufacturer or two, their lobbyists and obedient congresspersons didn’t get every new defense contract and weapons project they desired three days before Christmas.

The December 22 vote in the House was, as Associated Press accurately described it, conducted without debate or discussion – and “without major restrictions on the conduct of operations” – particularly in regards to the $158.7 billion for the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, $75 million to train and equip the armed forces of Yemen for the counterinsurgency campaign in that country and $205 million more to fund Israel’s Iron Dome missile shield.

Regarding the first vote on December 17: “This year’s bill is mostly noteworthy for its broad bipartisan support during wartime….Unlike during the height of the Iraq War when anti-war Democrats tried to use the legislation to force troops home, the House passed the defense bill Friday with almost no debate on Afghanistan.” [7]

Aside from voting for the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy as a stand-alone measure, excising an amendment to allow abortions to be performed on military bases, and refusing reparations to victims of the World War Two Japanese occupation of the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam (apparently $100 million for the purpose was considered excessive in the $725 billion authorization), there was no meaningful dissent in either house of Congress.

Increasing the U.S. war budget to the highest level it’s been since the largest and deadliest war in history while no nation or group of nations poses a serious threat to the country, and to a degree where it effectively exceeds the defense spending of the rest of the world combined, is all in the proper order of things for the world’s sole military superpower.

1) Center for Defense Information
http://www.cdi.org/news/mrp/us-military-spending.pdf
2) Christian Science Monitor, March 29, 2010
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/David-R.-Francis/2010/0329/Defense-budget-After-Afghanistan-and-Iraq-withdrawal-a-peace-dividend
3) Christian Science Monitor, June 28, 2010
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/David-R.-Francis/2010/0628/Cuts-to-US-defense-budget-look-inevitable
4) Ibid
5) Robert Higgs, Defense Spending Is Much Greater than You Think
The Independent Institute, April 17, 2010
http://www.independent.org/blog/index.php?p=5827
6) Carl Conetta, Trillions to Burn? A Quick Guide to the Surge in Pentagon
Spending
Project on Defense Alternatives, February 5 2010
http://www.comw.org/pda/1002BudgetSurge.html
7) Associated Press, December 17, 2010

READ MORE HERE

by Barbara Honegger

The author is a Senior Military Affairs Journalist, and former

White House Policy Analyst and Special Assistant to the Assistant to the President.

Ms. Honegger is the author of the 9/11 expose “The Pentagon Attack Papers” http://www.truthjihadblogspot.com

also published as the Appendix in The Terror Conspiracy by Jim Marrs;

and October Surprise (Tudor, 1989), the first book to reveal the true origins            of the Iran side of the Iran/Contra scandal.

The below article was published in the Nov. 2008 issue of

the independent Washington, D.C. paper The Rock Creek Free Press

and as a headline article on www.OpEdNews.com.

By claiming that Bruce Ivins, a bio-warfare expert with the U.S. Army’s Ft. Detrick laboratory, was behind the anthrax attacks, the Bush Administration officially acknowledged that those attacks – WMD attacks, as bio-weapons like anthrax are a category of weapons of mass destruction — were perpetrated by a U.S. Government insider (and not by bin Laden, Iraq, or any other foreigner). (1)

Though the Bush Admin. alleged the anthrax letters were the work of a ‘lone nut’, Ivins, attorney and anthrax attack investigator Barry Kissin has shown they weren’t done by a rogue operator but by the CIA (and DIA) and its military-intelligence contractor Battelle Memorial Institute (3) institutionally — i.e. that the anthrax letter attacks were a true ‘inside job.’  Thus, any significant evidence linking the secret-but-official insider anthrax attacks to 9/11 would point toward the same government-military insiders being behind both 9/11 and the anthrax letters.  That is, showing official sanction for the anthrax attacks is a ‘back door’ way of showing official sanction for the mass murders of Sept. 11, 2001.

So what is that evidence linking anthrax to Sept. 11th?

1) The anthrax in the letters was super-weaponized, and whatever insiders sent them wanted Congress, the media and the public to believe they were directly linked to 9/11:

As is well known, the date handwritten on the letters mailed with the anthrax is Sept. 11, 2001. Though the official story — that the first letter, to Florida photo journalist Bob Stevens, wasn’t mailed until after 9/11 and so anthrax wasn’t part of the actual 9/11 plot — it’s clear that whoever wrote and dated the letters and added the super-weaponized (3) U.S. military anthrax wanted the public to jump to the conclusion that there was a direct connection, and that Islamic terrorists – the official story 9/11 attackers — were behind both.

2) Super-weaponizing anthrax was completely beyond the capability of ‘Al Qaeda’, but was one of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s top priorities.

Two days before 9/11, on Sept. 9, 2001, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) held a rare press conference at which it revealed that on his first day as Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld had ordered the DIA to take Project Jefferson, a secret and illegal anthrax weaponization program (probably using the Ames strain contained in the anthrax letters) to the next level of lethality and that it had achieved ‘success’ earlier that month in a classified field test.

The mainstream press reported this event on Sept. 10, the day before 9/11.
3)  New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) preplanned a bio/chem-terrorism exercise likely involving an anthrax scenario for which personnel were already in NYC on 9/11, and Giuliani’s just-previous OEM director urged White House personnel to go on the anti-anthrax drug Cipro on Sept. 11 itself.

Mayor Giuliani testified to the 9/11 Commission that his Office of Emergency Management (OEM) had scheduled a bio/chem-terrorism response exercise, called TRIPOD II, to begin the day after 9/11, Sept. 12.  But personnel who were to take part in the exercise were already in New York City on Sept. 10.  On the morning of Sept. 11, OEM personnel were cleared out of their WTC7 offices and moved to the exercise command center on a New York pier, and thus conveniently out of the building when it was brought down by military-grade thermate explosives later that day — controlled demolition charges that required weeks to pre-place, the very weeks that the exercise was being planned.

New Jersey’s Ft. Monmouth, an Army base just across the water from the Twin Towers, also held a ‘II’ level exercise, called TIMELY ALERT II, on 9/11 (4), almost certainly coordinated with Giuliani’s TRIPOD II, further evidence that the latter was also scheduled to begin on Sept. 11.

The then-recent director of Mayor Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management, Jerome “Jerry” Hauer –    a bio-warfare expert and one of the signers of the pre-9/11 Project for a New American Century (PNAC) manifesto calling for “a new Pearl Harbor” (like 9/11) who had been a central player in scripting the TRIPOD II bio-chem attack scenario exercise — was an expert in the response to building collapses (5) and managing director of Kroll Associates before and on 9/11, the company that also managed Giuliani’s OEM ‘bunker’ in WTC 7 and provided ‘security’ for the World Trade Center, including all three buildings brought down by controlled demolition that morning.  He thus oversaw personnel with the complete access needed to pre-place explosive charges.  It was Hauer who had advocated, despite the 1993 terrorist attack on WTC1, that Giuliani locate his OEM, from which a response to an expected follow up attack on the WTC would need to be orchestrated, next door in WTC7 (6). The new OEM opened on the 23rd floor of WTC7 in June 1999, where Hauer, its director, had his office. Hauer became a National Security Adviser to the National Institutes of Health on Sept. 10, the very day TRIPOD II personnel arrived in New York City, from which new NIH post he managed the Bush Administration’s ‘response’ to the imminent anthrax attacks, which falsely pointed the finger at Iraq and diverted attention from the true insider anthrax killers. Indeed, it was Hauer who zealously pushed the ‘bin Laden did it and just planes-and-fires brought down the Towers’ official story on CBS News on 9/11 in the immediate aftermath of the attacks before anyone not on the inside could have possibly determined the actual cause of the collapses, taking pains to insist that explosives were not involved, when they were. And according to mainstream press reports and a lawsuit     by the conservative government watchdog group Judicial Watch, it was Hauer who personally advised the White House to take anti-anthrax Cipro antibiotics on 9/11 (7). [Other reports state White House personnel were put on Cipro nearly a month before the attacks (8). Did Hauer recommend that White House personnel be put on an anti-anthrax antibiotics on 9/11 because he had reason to believe the 9/11 attacks would also involve anthrax and/or because he had advance knowledge there would be subsequent imminent anthrax attacks?

4) The FBI had been told the 9/11 attacks would involve anthrax. On Sept. 11, Janette MacKinlay lived in a fourth floor apartment overlooking what was soon to become ‘the pit’ of the World Trade Center.

Her neighbor and close friend Bruno told her later that day or early the next morning that he had been pulled off the street into a bank lobby next to the WTC towers by an FBI agent on the morning of Sept. 11 to protect them from the dust cloud from the collapsing tower, and was told by the agent that “We were told this was going to happen and that it would involve anthrax.” Another FBI agent told a woman about to enter the NBC Bldg. that she should leave immediately because “there are explosives in the building as well as in the WTC.”  Clearly, the FBI had been pre-alerted because their own offices were in the WTC -- in WTC7 -- which, like WTC1 and WTC2, was pre-wired for a controlled demolition take down that day. MacKinlay had the presence of mind to collect the dust from the cloud that poured into her apartment overlooking the ‘pit’, and it is this dust that physicist Prof. Steven Jones has analyzed and in which he found military-grade thermate as well as other high explosives, proving the presence of pre-placed charges throughout the towers to which ‘Al Qaeda’ could not have had access to set.

Though no anthrax has been reported in the dust -- though it may not have yet been tested for -- if TRIPOD II were at least in part on an anthrax attack scenario, it wouldn’t have used actual anthrax, but an anthrax simulant -- an anthrax-like powder that would disperse through the air in a way similar to the real thing. Experts should be consulted for the chemical composition of anthrax simulants and the dust from the WTC collapses tested for these simulants.

5) In the minds of the insider scriptwriters for the Sept. 2001 New York City TRIPOD II emergency response exercise, an attack on the World Trade Center was already associated with bio/chem terrorism. According to respected New York Times science writer William Broad, the plan for the 1993 attack on WTC1, for which alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheihk Mohammed’s nephew Ramzi Yousef is in prison for life, involved a plot to push cyanide into New York City. This is reported in Germs, Broad’s book co-authored with Judith Miller. Though the latter’s credibility has been compromised, Broad remains a respected journalist.

6) Rudolph Giuliani bought the Florida-building crime scene of the first anthrax attack. Anthrax was found throughout the American Media, Inc. (AMI) building in Boca Raton, Florida where the first anthrax letter victim, Robert Stevens, worked -- as confirmed by AMI employees whose desks were near Stevens’ whom I have interviewed. A ‘don’t cross’ line was put around the building by the FBI, which had been “told 9/11 was coming and that it would involve anthrax.” AMI was forced to move to another location and put the building up for sale. According to The New York Times, this first anthrax attack crime scene with evidence still in place was then bought (at an anthrax sale price) by former NYC Mayor Giuliani, overseer of the Sept. 11/12 TRIPOD II bio/chem-terrorism probable-anthrax-scenario exercise, who formed a partnership with a decontamination expert qualified to decontaminate the building. Giuliani thus controlled and oversaw the destruction of evidence at both the New York crime scene of the 9/11 attacks, the WTC, ordering the steel containing traces of controlled demolition explosives to be removed, and the crime scene of the first anthrax attack, America Media, Inc, in Florida.

The FBI had already joined the conspiracy to obstruct its own investigation of the anthrax attacks by “agreeing to the request” of Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine in Ames, Iowa to destroy its ‘library’ of over 100 vials of the Ames strain gathered since 1928 necessary for a definitive match against the anthrax in the mailed letters, which library was destroyed on Oct. 12, 2001, one week after Bob Stevens became the first victim. (9)

This Florida anthrax is critical because, according to press reports on Ivins’ alleged involvement, the anthrax in the mailed letters -- but not the ‘first’ anthrax sent to Stevens (the FBI claims no letter was found in connection with the anthrax recovered from Stevens’ computer keyboard but assumes a ‘missing’ letter) was traced back to a flask in Ivins’ laboratory. The Stevens anthrax is thus key to proving that Ivins, if he was involved at all, did not act alone, as it does not trace back to his flask, and because it’s the closest in time to 9/11 and so most likely to be directly linked to Sept. 11.

Before 9/11, one of the six official-story hijackers who lived in Boca Raton, Florida– home of American Media, Inc. where first anthrax attack victim Bob Stevens worked -- Ahmed Alhaznawi -- was treated at a Fort Lauderdale hospital for what the physician believed was cutaneous (skin) anthrax. (9a) And two other official-story hijackers, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Hamza Alghamdi, found their Boca Raton apartments with the help of  realtor Gloria Irish, whose husband Mike was the editor of The Sun tabloid produced out of AMI headquarters where Stevens worked and who (Mike Irish) flew a private plane out of the local airport where Sheehi and Alghamdi took lessons. (9b)

Based on the above, a reasonable case can be made that Giuliani’s Sept. 11/12 TRIPOD II bio/chem. terrorism response exercise was at least in part on an anthrax scenario, using an anthrax simulant; that the letters mailed slightly later with real anthrax may have been written or the text drafted for that exercise; and that Giuliani’s former Office of Emergency Management director and close friend Jerome Hauer advised White House staff to take anti-anthrax Cipro on 9/11 because he was afraid the anthrax attack exercise scenario might be about to ‘go live’ just as both the NORAD hijacked-plane ‘exercise’ and the NRO plane-crashing-into-tower ‘exercise’ had already just ‘gone live’ earlier the morning of Sept. 11 as parts of their 'game' scenarios suddenly turned horribly real.

If the Florida anthrax doesn’t link back to Ivins’ Ft. Detrick flask and Ivins, who worked on vaccines (bio-defense) and not its weaponization (bio-offense) wasn’t behind the attacks -- and neither, the government now claims, was Steven Hatfill whom the Bush Administration just agreed to pay millions of dollars to settle his case -- then who was?

The Trillion Spore Man

As detailed in the September issue of independent Washington, D.C. newspaper The Rock Creek Free Press in the lead article by Casey and Kissin, the key suspects are CIA/DIA contractor Battelle Memorial Institute (BMI); and, individually, William Patrick and Ken Alibek.

Battelle is a bio-defense (and, evidentially bio-offense) contractor located in West Jefferson,   Ohio, that has exclusive control of the Ames strain contained in the mailed anthrax letter. (10) In partnership with the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, Battelle ran Project Jefferson, the government’s covert bio-weapons program whose goal was to develop hyper-weaponized anthrax like that contained in the mailed letters (11) and which Rumsfeld ordered developed to the next level of lethality on his first day as Secretary of Defense.

William Patrick, a former top bio-scientist at Ft. Detrick and close colleague of former Giuliani OEM Director Jerry Hauer, was the mentor of initial FBI ‘person of interest’ in the anthrax attacks Steven Hatfill. Patrick holds five classified patents and trade secrets, including on how to hyper-weaponize anthrax to the 1 trillion spores per gram concentration contained in the letters mailed to Democratic Congressional leaders Senators Daschle and Leahy (12). After leaving Ft. Detrick, he was commissioned by his own protégé Hatfill, who then worked with Battelle contractual partner Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC), and probably also by Hauer who worked at SAIC with Hatfill -- to research and write a report on how mailed letters could be used as the vector for dispersing weaponized anthrax. (13)  On Sept. 9, two days before 9/11, Battelle’s contractor agency DIA announced the ‘success’ of Project Jefferson’s anthrax hyper-weaponization program. Following the Sept./Oct. 2001 letter mailings, some of which were reported to contain anthrax at 1 trillion spores per gram, a footnote in Patrick’s report stating that “We have now arrived at the point where we can purify [anthrax] to the extent of 1 trillion spores in a gram” was removed from publicly available copies. (13)

William Patrick worked with his close colleague and friend, former Soviet bio-weapons expert Ken Alibek, at Battelle, which also ran Project Clear Vision, a secret CIA program to reverse engineer dry-powder anthrax bombs produced by the former Soviet Union. Patrick and Alibek were the FBI’s first suspects in the anthrax attacks, but the initial FBI investigative team was taken off that focus and replaced by a new team that diverted attention to Hatfill. Director Mueller himself assured a Senator that the FBI “was not investigating, nor intending to investigate, anyone with, or formerly with, BMI [Battelle].” (14) Battelle is also a contractual partner with BioPort, and directs the anthrax production and experimentation program at the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, the  second ‘home’ in addition to Ft. Detrick of the Ames strain contained in the letters.

Hauer and Hatfill worked together at SAIC. (15)

Super-Military-Grade Nano Anthrax and Super-Military-Grade Nano Thermite: Calling Cards of the Real Mass Murderers of Both 9/11 and the Anthrax Attacks

It is extremely important for identifying the real mass murderers of both 9/11 and the anthrax attacks that the dual super-military-grade and nano nature of the thermite pre-placed in World Trade Center Towers 1, 2 and 7 parallels the super-military-grade and nano composition of the trillion-spores-per-gram anthrax contained in the anthrax attack letters. And, as we have seen in this white paper that 9/11 is directly, not just indirectly, linked to the anthrax attacks, it is almost certain that the real operative perpetrators of both attacks are experts in military nano technology, a fact which radically narrows the range of the search for the true criminals      to a small and manageable number of individuals.  All that is required to identify them and bring them to justice is unlimited supoena power and the authority to take under oath testimony.

The inside-job anthrax attacks were then used as the immediate pretext for the illegal secret domestic wiretap program and assault on the Constitution

A Washington Post feature story revealed the timing of the first legal justifications brought to Bush for the secret and illegal domestic wiretap program that point strongly toward the insider anthrax attacks as being what was used to justify the program. (16) Its Sept. 14, 2008 story revealed that the very first memorandum, by John Yoo, giving the purported legal rationale for Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP), was dated Oct. 4, 2001 – just after the first published reports of the first anthrax victim, Bob Stevens, going into the hospital on Oct. 2 and only one day before his death on Oct. 5, reported widely in the mainstream media.  In former President Bush’s own memoirs Decision Points, he reveals that then National Security Agency (NSA) Director Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden and “the legal team” brought the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) to Bush in the Oval Office on that same date, Oct. 4, 2001 (pg.164).  It’s now clear that that “legal team” included Yoo, as Yoo’s memo was also dated Oct. 4.

Bush then reportedly signed the first official authorization’ for the TSP on Oct. 23, 2001 – Right in the middle of the anthrax attack terror.  Senator John McCain had just gone on ABC TV, on Oct. 18, to push the lie that a nonexistent bentonite additive, purportedly marking the anthrax as having come from Iraq, meant that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks.  The Bush White House repeatedly refused to provide Congress with this Oct. 23, 2001 presidential authorization for the illegal warrantless domestic surveillance program, and for obvious reasons.  This is the alleged authorization that we now know, from a footnote referring to it in another now-released document, contains Bush’s shocking claim, probably written by Yoo, that the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures do not apply to U.S. military operations conducted inside the United States.
The fact that the Administration continued its secret and illegal domestic spying program long after its was publicly known that the anthrax attacks were the work of one of its own inside military facilities is further strong evidence the real perpetrators were one and the same as the high-level officials who used those same anthrax attacks to justify their illegal surveillance program — the White House itself.  Exposing the inside job anthrax mailings as the false pretext for the illegal warrantless domestic wiretap program is thus critical to bringing President Bush and his administration to account for its Reichtag Fire-like attack on both the Pentagon and World Trade Center but also on Congressional Democratic leaders Daschle and Leahy who were then pushing for an investigation of the 9/11 attacks and resisting the president’s railroading of the Patriot Act.  That Patriot Act