My days as a political analyst at MSNBC have come to an end.
After 10 enjoyable years, I am departing, after an incessant clamor from the left that to permit me continued access to the microphones of MSNBC would be an outrage against decency, and dangerous.
The calls for my firing began almost immediately with the Oct. 18 publication of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”
A group called Color of Change, whose mission statement says that it “exists to strengthen Black America’s political voice,” claimed that my book espouses a “white supremacist ideology.” Color of Change took particular umbrage at the title of Chapter 4, “The End of White America.”
Media Matters parroted the party line: He has blasphemed!
A Human Rights Campaign that bills itself as America’s leading voice for lesbians, bisexuals, gays and transgendered people said that Buchanan’s “extremist ideas are incredibly harmful to millions of LBGT people around the world.”
Their rage was triggered by a remark to NPR’s Diane Rehm — that I believe homosexual acts to be “unnatural and immoral.”
On Nov. 2, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, who has sought to have me censored for 22 years, piled on.
“Buchanan has shown himself, time and again, to be a racist and an anti-Semite,” said Foxman. Buchanan “bemoans the destruction of white Christian America” and says America’s shrinking Jewish population is due to the “collective decision of Jews themselves.”
Well, yes, I do bemoan what Newsweek’s 2009 cover called “The Decline and Fall of Christian America” and editor Jon Meacham described as “The End of Christian America.” After all, I am a Christian.
And what else explains the shrinkage of the U.S. Jewish population by 6 percent in the 1990s and its projected decline by another 50 percent by 2050, if not the “collective decision of Jews themselves”?
Let error be tolerated, said Thomas Jefferson, “so long as reason is left free to combat it.” What Foxman and ADL are about in demanding that my voice be silenced is, in the Jeffersonian sense, intrinsically un-American.
Consider what it is these people are saying.
They are saying that a respected publisher, St. Martin’s, colluded with me to produce a racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic book, and CNN, Fox News, C-SPAN, Fox Business News and the 150 radio shows on which I appeared failed to detect its evil and helped to promote a moral atrocity.
If my book is racist and anti-Semitic, how did Sean Hannity, Erin Burnett, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Megyn Kelly, Lou Dobbs and Ralph Nader miss that? How did Charles Payne, African-American host on Fox radio, who has interviewed me three times, fail to detect its racism?
How did Michael Medved miss its anti-Semitism?
In a 2009 cover story in the Atlantic, “The End of White America?” from which my chapter title was taken, professor Hua Hsu revels in the passing of America’s white majority.
At Portland State, President Clinton got a huge ovation when he told students that white Americans will be a minority in 2050.
Is this writer alone forbidden to broach the subject?
That homosexual acts are unnatural and immoral has been doctrine in the Catholic Church for 2,000 years.
Is it now hate speech to restate traditional Catholic beliefs?
Documented in the 488 pages and 1,500 footnotes of “Suicide of a Superpower” is my thesis that America is Balkanizing, breaking down along the lines of religion, race, ethnicity, culture and ideology, and that Western peoples are facing demographic death by century’s end.
Are such subjects taboo? Are they unfit for national debate?
So it would seem. MSNBC President Phil Griffin told reporters, “I don’t think the ideas that (Buchanan) put forth (in his book) are appropriate for the national dialogue, much less on MSNBC.”
In the 10 years I have been at MSNBC, the network has taken heat for what I have written, and faithfully honored our contract.
Yet my four-months’ absence from MSNBC and now my departure represent an undeniable victory for the blacklisters.
The modus operandi of these thought police at Color of Change and ADL is to brand as racists and anti-Semites any writer who dares to venture outside the narrow corral in which they seek to confine debate.
All the while prattling about their love of dissent and devotion to the First Amendment, they seek systematically to silence and censor dissent.
Without a hearing, they smear and stigmatize as racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic any who contradict what George Orwell once called their “smelly little orthodoxies.” They then demand that the heretic recant, grovel, apologize, and pledge to go forth and sin no more.
Defy them, and they will go after the network where you work, the newspapers that carry your column, the conventions that invite you to speak. If all else fails, they go after the advertisers.
I know these blacklisters. They operate behind closed doors, with phone calls, mailed threats and off-the-record meetings. They work in the dark because, as Al Smith said, nothing un-American can live in the sunlight.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
An internal FBI investigation into its counterterrorism training has purged hundreds of bureau documents of instructional material about Muslims, some of which characterized them as prone to violence or terrorism.
The bureau disclosed initial findings from its months-long review during a meeting at FBI headquarters on Wednesday with several Arab and Muslim advocacy groups, attended by Director Robert Mueller. So far, the inquiry has uncovered and purged over 700 pages of documentation from approximately 300 presentations given to agents since 9/11 — some of which were similar to briefings published by Danger Room last year describing “mainstream” Muslims as “violent.” And more disclosures may be forthcoming, as the FBI continues its inquiry and responds to Freedom of Information Act requests for the documents themselves.
FBI spokesman Christopher Allen confirms to Danger Room that the bureau found some of the documents to be objectionable because they were inaccurate or over-broad, others because they were offensive. Allen explains that the documents represent “less than 1 percent” of over 160,000 documents reviewed by the inquiry, which was prompted by a Danger Room investigation in September. The FBI purged documents according to four criteria: “factual errors”; “poor taste”; employment of “stereotypes” about Arabs or Muslims; or presenting information that “lacked precision.”
Salam al-Marayati, the executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, attended the FBI meeting. He came away worried that the volume of anti-Muslim training documents hands al-Qaida an unnecessary win.
“People will report criminal activity to the authorities, that’s been proven time and again,” Marayati tells Danger Room. “But if we are giving propaganda to al-Qaida, resuscitating this dying ideology that al-Qaida is promoting, by continually exposing anti-Muslim propaganda published by the government, that undermines our pluralism, which is the best defense against any transnational ideological threat.”
Others think that the FBI can’t stop at purging internal documents. “It’s a bit hard to avoid the conclusion there isn’t a problem of culture in the [FBI] training division,” says Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab-American Institute, whose subordinates also attended the meeting. “It’s one that appears to have some built-in biases when it comes to the Arab-American and Muslim-American communities.” Allen declined to respond.
But the FBI isn’t finished. The bureau plans to publish a “touchstone document” in the coming weeks that explains its criteria to ensure new anti-Islam documents won’t enter counterterrorism training in the future. Similarly, the Justice Department plans on March 21 to release “Cultural Competency” guidelines for dealing with Arab and Muslim communities on counterterrorism, according to Xochitl Hinojosa, a department spokeswoman.
Several civil-rights advocates said they appreciated Mueller’s personal attention. The Wednesday meeting had been scheduled by the FBI’s public-affairs arm, whose deputy assistant director, Jeff Mazanec, briefed the groups for about 40 minutes before Mueller unexpectedly joined.
“Director Mueller acknowledged the seriousness of our concerns and expressed a commitment to maintaining contact with the inter-religious community,” says Rev. C. Welton Gaddy of the Interfaith Alliance, another attendee at the meeting. Mueller “seemed to understand the hurt and pain as well as the fear, engendered by the offensive, inappropriate and insensitive materials.”
But the worst may not have passed. Allen acknowledged that the internal review, assisted by the Army’s counterterrorism specialists at West Point, hasn’t yet concluded. Several additional organizations have filed Freedom of Information Act requests for the specific offending documents; attendees came away with the impression that their disclosure will be ugly.
The White House ordered a government-wide review of counterterrorism training late last year. A Pentagon document responding to the order cited Danger Room’s series as an impetus for the effort.
Berry says she could “see the seriousness with which [the FBI] has approached this.” But she calls the problem a “systemic” one, with urgent implications for U.S. domestic counterterrorism — a concern voiced by Attorney General Eric Holder as well.
“They’ve never owned this problem. It’s not a problem of outside contractors,” she tells Danger Room. “They’re producing these kind of documents that inhibit our counterterrorism efforts. We need our communities engaged, and these have done nothing but alienate us.”
Money power runs America. So do lobbies representing all corporate and other interests.
The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) represents dozens of influential companies.
They include Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Bell Hellicopter Textron, Sikorsky Aircraft, Goodrich, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Booz Allen Hamilton, Hill & Knowlton, and many more promoting unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drone technology.
Against targeted countries, it’s America’s newest sport. From distant command centers, operators kill by remote control. They use computer keyboards and multiple monitors. UAVs stand ready round-the-clock for missions.
Predator drones perform sanitized killing on the cheap compared to manned aircraft. Independent experts believe militants are hit about 2% of the time. All others are noncombatants, despite official disclaimers.
In 1995, Predator drones were used for the first time in Bosnia. In 2001, the Global Hawk drone was used in Afghanistan. Throughout the Afghan and Iraq wars, the Pentagon used various type drones for combat and spying missions.
In Libya, Obama authorized Predator drones. They operated throughout the war. They’re also used in Yemen, Somalia, and wherever Washington designates targets to kill.
US citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi was assassinated this way. So can anyone anywhere on America’s hit list, including perhaps domestically before long.
Washington plans escalated drone killing, as well domestic spying on Americans. Currently, around one in three US warplanes are drones. One day perhaps they’ll all be unmanned.
EFF sued the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for information on domestic drone use. Who’s flying UAVs it asked?
Drones carry surveillance equipment, including video cameras, infrared ones, heat sensors, and radar for sophisticated virtually constant spying. Newer versions carry super high resolution “gigapixel” cameras. They enable tracking above 20,000 feet. They can monitor up to 65 enemies simultaneously, and can see targets up to 25 miles away.
Predator drones can eavesdrop on electronic transmissions. A new model’s able to penetrate Wi-Fi networks and intercept text messages and cell phone calls covertly.
Even domestically, drones may be weaponized with tasers, bean bag guns, and other devices able to harm or perhaps kill.
Currently, the US Customs and Border Protection uses UAVs for surveilling borders. State and local law enforcement agencies also use them to investigate “cattle rustling, drug dealing, and the search for missing persons.”
Flying above 400 feet requires FAA certification. Information’s unavailable on who obtained authorizations for what purposes.
FAA comes under the Department of Transportation (DOT). It failed to respond to EFF’s April 2011 FOIA request. EFF attorney Lynch said:
“Drones give the government and other (UAV) operators a powerful new surveillance tool to gather extensive and intrusive data on Americans’ movements and activities.”
“As the government begins to make policy decisions about the use of these aircraft, the public needs to know more about how and why these drones are being used to surveil United States citizens.”
Drones “could dramatically increase the physical tracking of citizens – tracking that can reveal deeply personal details about our private lives. We’re asking the DOT to follow the law and respond to our FOIA request so we can learn more about” what the public has a right to know.
The Supreme Court hasn’t been people friendly on many issues, including privacy. In United States v. Place (1983), the court held that sniffs by police dogs trained to detect illegal drugs aren’t searches under the Fourth Amendment.
They’re sui generis, intended only to reveal the presence or absence of narcotics. In other words, Fourth Amendment protections don’t apply to non-human searchers. As a result, privacy rights are on the chopping block for elimination. Already, in fact, they’re gravely compromised under institutionalized Bush administration surveillance policy.
In 2007, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) authorized spying through the National Applications Office (NOA). It was described as “the executive agent to facilitate the use of intelligence community technological assets for civil, homeland security and law enforcement purposes within the United States.”
With or without congressional authorization or oversight, the executive branch may authorize state-of-the-art technology, including military satellite imagery, to spy on Americans covertly.
Though initial plans were delayed, eye in the sky spying ahead potentially will monitor everyone everywhere once full implementation’s achieved. Included will be thousands of Big Brother drones watching.
On February 3, the FAA Reauthorization Act (HR 658) cleared both houses of Congress after differences between Senate and House versions were resolved. Expect Obama to sign it shortly.
It authorizes domestic drone spying under provisions to test and license commercial drones by 2015. Estimates of up to 30,000 UAVs could overfly America by 2020. Privacy advocates are concerned. Steven Aftergood, head of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy, said:
“There are serious policy questions on the horizon about privacy and surveillance, by both government agencies and commercial entities.”
According to Electronic Privacy Information Center’s Amie Stepanovich, “Currently, the only barrier to the routine use of drones for persistent surveillance are the procedural requirements imposed by the FAA for the issuance of certificates.”
Changing the rules changes the game. Expect it. It’s coming once Obama signs HR 658. UAV proliferation already is expanding rapidly. A July 2010 FAA Fact Sheet said in America alone, “approximately 50 companies, universities, and government organizations are developing and producing some 155 unmanned aircraft designs.”
America’s expected to account for about 70% of global growth. In 2011, Congress, DOD, state and local governments, as well as AUVSI pressured the FAA to review and expand its current “Certificate of Authorization or Waiver (COA)” program related to unmanned aircraft (UA).
The agency’s also examining its own rules for small UAs. It’s expected to authorize expanded COA use shortly.
In fact, Congress already authorized expanded domestic drones. Obama’s poised to sign HR 658 into law. Provisions in it include requiring FAA:
(1) to simplify and accelerate permission for drone operations. The agency’s already working on loosening regulations by spring 2012.
(2) to establish a pilot project within six months for six test zones to integrate drones “into the national airspace system.”
(3) create a comprehensive plan within nine months “to safely accelerate the integration of civil (privately operated) unmanned aircraft systems into the national airspace system.”
(4) after submitting a comprehensive plan, publish final rules within 18 months to allow civil operation of small (under 55 pounds) drones in America’s airspace.
They’re coming to America. Privacy may be seriously compromised. Protections are urgently needed. The report recommends that “drones should not be deployed unless there are grounds to believe that they will collect evidence on a specific crime.”
“If a drone will intrude on reasonable privacy expectations, a warrant should be required.” The report also urges “restrictions on retaining images of identifiable people, as well as an open process for developing policies on how drones will be used.”
Overflying America with drones unrestrained changes the game. A “surveillance society” will be institutionalized to monitor, track, and record “our every move.”
Given a bipartisan penchant for spying, expect the worst. Privacy, like other civil and human rights, is fast disappearing under policies in place or coming to destroy it.
Around 2400 years ago a philosophy student of the brilliant and kindly Socrates wrote his conception of the ideal State. Plato’s form of government fits our definition of fascism. His “Republic” shares shelf-space with Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince” in personal libraries of manipulators of mankind’s economic and social relationships, the aspiring fascist dictators of today’s nations and, perhaps, of tomorrow’s world.
In his “Allegory of the Cave”, Plato was able to create images. Lacking today’s technology, he devised a hypothetical light-source by means of controlled fire located behind the participants. Thomas Edison’s electric bulb was a couple of thousand years in the future. Plato’s subjects faced a wall of the cave upon which fire-light cast shadows. The “Allegory of the Cave” gives us a glimpse of Plato’s understanding of how easily his countrymen could be manipulated into substituting moving images for reality. His allegory gives us a glimpse of why Plato espoused a benevolent fascism. Along with the light-bulb, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and George Orwell’s “1984″ were in the distant future. Plato would have understood television’s enthralling illusions.
Edward Bernays, a double nephew of Sigmund Freud, is often referred to as founder of America’s public relations industry. He could not have harbored a more cynical view than Plato’s toward his own countrymen. Bankers who pulled the strings of President Woodrow Wilson employed Bernays to manipulate America’s masses in support of the first World War. Bernays was successful without television, today’s highly efficient source of enthralling and illusory imagery.
I recall sitting in front of a small black and white television set with “rabbit-ears” antennae on its top back in the days before hand-held pocket calculators had been invented. How many readers recall using a slide-rule when solving problems in physics class? In those days of primitive electronics I was enthralled as I watched US astronauts go to the moon and back, not once, but seven times! Thankfully, not one of those brave men was lost in space. Those who now express skepticism at how that could actually have been done, especially knowing the facts of our earth’s Van Allen Radiation Belt, are summarily tossed into today’s “conspiracy nut” bin along with 9/11 researchers.
I don’t recall when the first time was that I wondered why men, supposedly on the moon, moved so slowly in a field of gravity only one sixth that of the earth, and why they bounced no higher than they could have jumped on their own front lawns. It was too radical, at the time for me to realize that the video had been filmed in a studio and that the speed of the film had simply been slowed down. Today’s proofs including that of studio lighting and near-earth orbits are overwhelming and make the TV illusion totally obvious. If you have something of an open mind, access two online sources - http://davesweb.cnchost.com/Apollo1.html and this fine video – www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_UK0ZyQw2oA
The visual character of televised 9/11 illusions results in strong support for their validity through underlying psychological benefits, given years of crafted and TV-implanted anti-Arab propaganda. Anyone who proposed that the NY buildings had been brought down by explosives, regardless of the strength of evidence, generally met with an irrational and angry emotional response even from functionally intelligent persons. Myths and narratives acquired through audio-visual means via television are powerfully imbedded. That is what makes the medium valuable to advertisers.
One who acquires data through television keeps returning to segments of the narrative as valid working premises when attempting to research or to analyze the fundamental validity or truth of the narrative itself. Nearly everything that is supposedly known by the public about what may have happened on 9/11 has come from television and newspapers, sources that are highly censored and controlled. Such media may be reliable in some matters and unreliable in others. Because there is no way to determine which case is operative at any time it is necessary to disregard both sources of information entirely. What are we then left with?
A more scholarly form of this question becomes, “What is it that we can truly know, based upon sources acceptable to us as being reliable, of events, background, participants, and related matters involving what is being referred to as 9/11?” If we discard television, newspapers, and “official sources”, the answer is “Far less than we thought we knew”. Buildings, planes, and victims – all are lost in a haze of speculative and contradictory hypotheses. News reporting should be more reliable, don’t you think? Clues are emerging such as at Simon Shack’s SeptemberClues.info. It may be too soon to expect Americans to understand that 9/11 was also simply a huge TV and mainline-media hoax, the purpose of which was to demolish commercial real-estate in a financially profitable urban renewal project, spinning a story into a politically expedient narrative. Exposing this fact certainly ought not take as long as it did to expose the imagery of trips to the moon, media’s ongoing censorship and 9/11 victimology nonsense notwithstanding.
Since the 1945 end of WW-II a televised American myth , in the words of the bard’s MacBeth, is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The time for the truth is now and may actually be passing. Tyranny, fascism, New World government, Orwell’s image of mankind’s face with a boot on it, this is our future unless we are willing to separate TV’s illusions from facts. It is not easy. The two formidable psychological stumbling blocks are fear and denial. Not everyone is going to get a grip on the extent of the deceit. It is the responsibility of those who understand to confront corporate and banking criminals, the few who threaten us and everyone, themselves and their own children included. Their fascism, a psychopathic drive to pseudo-benevolently manipulate economic and social relationships of other human beings in order to pursue their lust for money and power, is aided and abetted by their media partners in crime, especially the criminals who support them with our enthralling televised illusions.
Yes – It’s happening in America…Our Trickle Down System in Action
To Six Year Old Girl…”How did you feel about having to eat rats?”…”Sad.”
by Jim W. Dean
Poor Early Nutrition Stunts Mental Development
No folks, I would not pull your leg about something this serious. Hungry kids are not on my satire writing list. I’m still in a bit of shock myself…me, who is not shocked by anything anymore, but I was.
Having no kids I was not up to speed on the school lunch programs. A nurse friend from North Georgia told me once that they even had breakfast programs.
This was back before the crash, in the boom times, which surprised me. And are you ready for this?
The kids were sometimes bringing relatives to eat lunch with them on the school program. The land of food and plenty was upon us. Names were not taken, as none were required…only that X-number of meals were served. Neither the kids, parents or grandparents were eating rats then. That would come later I learned yesterday.
The flip side of this was when I would treat myself to a lunch buffet during the week, taking my fifty cent senior discount, I would not only see Mexican blue collar workers by the ton, but even families going out to all you can eat buffet…on a week day.
If I looked around I would even seen Hispanic mom’s and their kids (two families), no dads, going out for lunch. I never experienced this even once growing up as a kid. Despite my dad having a lumber company and a Buick dealership at one time, I never ever KNEW a family who did such a thing.
When my mother and I both had pneumonia together when I was about six, the doctor who came to the house everyday to check on us just had to walk across the street where he came home for lunch every day.
But fast forward to the 2012 recession and here were are in Las Vegas, not the backwoods somewhere, and rats are on the menu when the cash runs out.
YouTube
There were many Mexican kids, families working in the textile mills in Dalton Georgia where the $15 to $20 an hour jobs got pulled down to $10 to $12/hr…or zero if you got replaced by someone south of the border.
It seems that because the Feds were paying for it all the schools did not mind loading up the numbers. It pumped more money into the local economy as the families had more money to spend in the stores. So that had me thinking that kids going hungry was impossible with parents only have to cover dinner.
But the British Panorama show had a segment up today called ‘We don’t have dinner at home’...and it was a heart breaker. They were shooting in Las Vegas where cafeteria managers were describing how kids were loading up on ketchup packets to take home to make tomato soup for dinner.
Our wonderful system has downloaded feeding hungry kids…onto kids.
Weekends were another tough time for them and groups have stepped in to put weekend care packages together for the kids to get them through to Monday. Unfortunately a lot of it looked like your usual unhealthy processed food.
The clip below is not long, just a few kids describing about sometimes there is nothing to eat for dinner and they go hungry till school the next day.
I had thought that everybody would have some crackers, rice with onions, or beans stashed away for ‘really’ tough times, but it seems not.
My mother grew up on a farm where they thought they were poor because they made their own clothes and went barefoot to save their shoes for school and church.
She would walk there barefoot and then wash her feet and put her shoes on before going in. But on a 120 acre farm there was always food, and a smoke house to die for.
As a little boy I got a taste of the old farm, being bathed in front of everybody on the back porch in washtub with the other little kids, the introduction to the outhouse, and getting water from the well.
But hunger never crossed my path despite never being able to catch a chicken. Egg gathering I just loved, but ran in terror when I crossed the pig pasture to go fishing with a 250 pound sow barreling after me, usually just making it to the fence in a nick of time.
The little girl at the end of the Panorama clip, the shy one, drops the bomb about the rats. Only ate them once though. A little six year old girl is not expensive to feed.
I can’t imagine a parent or parents not being able to find someone to ask for a meal for a hungry kid. Like who would say no, really? But as a bachelor I do not walk in their shoes.
What I got a look at tonight was a quick glimpse of hunger PTSD for kids.
Prices going way past the roof
Gordon and I have had many long discussions about some of our well respected political and business leaders having had not problem scamming us with things like ethanol production from corn for fuel use.
This not only pushed up food cost for the poor overseas with the spike in corn prices, but hurt our poor here. But hey, it was a good vote buyer for all those corn growing farmers in the Mid-West.
And then stage two was upon us when despite the recession and reduced demand for gas, and storage facilities all over the world filled to the brim, oil prices continued to stay way higher than any market demand could account for.
All the new big oil reserve finds may not be common knowledge to the regular folks, but all the oil biz people, economists and politicians know.
I wonder why they don’t tell us? Gosh, what could they possibly be hiding.
These rigged oil prices have now worked their way all through the food production chain which is again, giving us a hike in food prices when they should be going in the other direction.
My point today is that these food costs have hit the poor families’ kids more than anyone else. And it was all been done out of multinational greed and political corruption.
I took a flyer writing up my article on the Sicily ‘Pitchfork Revolt’ where a bunch of grass roots sections of society closed the island of five million down for over a week and a half.
The Green Left and Corporate Scamsters Hook Up
A huge gas tax increase, part of the Italian austerity adjustment was pushing the price of their already high fuel 40% higher. To my surprise it got 10,000 hits here at VT and tens of thousands more on other blogs and websites who borrowed it.
Trickle down economics…was a con job. It was a mirage. The numbers are in and we know now that we had a ‘flow upwards’, despite the real estate and stock losses.
The growth of the service industry, the shifting of our industrial base offshore…has left us with too many people trying to pick the others pocket for a living. The Greece austerity measures are going to have an average worker making about $600 to $750 a month.
What kind of economic turnaround can be built on that? And how many Greek kids are going to experience the taste of rat meat in the next year.
But maybe they will copy our method of having local folks replace what the multinationals are sucking out of our communities, their lifeblood.
Director, Center for Counter-terrorism & World Peace
Nikola Tesla was one of the greatest and most gifted men ever to have walked this Earth.
A huge amount has been written about the prodigal genius of Nikola Tesla and so there may not be a great need to say more here about his life, his brilliance, his vision, and his achievements.
But in brief, Tesla was an extraordinary, intuitive, creative genius who, among a great deal else, invented alternating current (which powers the the modern world) and radio (for which Marconi is often falsely given credit).
Contemporary biographers of Tesla have deemed him “the father of physics”, “the man who invented the twentieth century”, and “the patron saint of modern electricity”.
Much of his life’s work was about providing for the world free (i.e. zero-cost) energy, which Tesla envisaged would be broadcast wirelessly through the air or through the Earth itself with no need for powerlines – but despite years of trying, he never obtained the funding to achieve this, one of his dreams.
It has long since been rumored that he invented or developed a significant number of electrical and electronic devices which were decades ahead of their time and would have been of special interest to US military and intelligence circles. Around 300 patents were issued to Tesla in 25 countries, many of them major and far-reaching in concept.
The reality of Tesla’s murder was brought home to us after listening to this Youtube presentation. Eric Bermen tells Greg Syzmanski how he discovered his former girlfriend was the daughter of ex-Nazi SS Commando Otto Skorzeny, and thereby quite by chance met the elderly Skorzeny who had been living for years in the US, working as a carpenter with a new identity supplied by the CIA after WWII.
Bermen (who sometimes uses the pseudonym Eric Orion) heard a full confession from Skorzeny, who was nearing the end of his life, and was given a shoebox full of over a hundred photographs to substantiate his claims.
Among a number of other highly significant revelations, Bermen heard from Skorzeny that he had personally suffocated Nikola Tesla on January 6, 1943, assisted by fellow-Nazi Reinhard Gehlen. Tesla was then 86 years old.
According to Skorzeny, he and Gehlen had tricked Tesla the previous day into revealing the full details of his most important discoveries. After the murder, they stole the contents of Tesla’s safe, which were delivered to Hitler. (Note, of course, that the US military would have fully repatriated this treasure trove of innovation through Project Paperclip at the end of the war.)
Otto Skorzeny was Hitler’s bodyguard & also an assassin, one of the many Nazis who ex-filtrated to the USA after WWII, as part of Project Paperclip. Many of these Nazi scientists ended up working for NASA, the CIA, and other US secret services.
Although he supposedly died in 1975 in Spain, Skorzeny resurfaced in 1999. Otto Skorzeny described how (“contrary to the CIA-written history books”) he helped Hitler escape to Austria in a plane flown by a female pilot, Hanna Reitsch.
“Hitler did not commit suicide,” Skorzeny recounted. “His double was shot between the eyes, and the dental records proved he was not Hitler. The Americans kept it a secret, worried the truth might anger the Russians.”
A Young Tesla
Despite conflicting literary and historical accounts, Nikola Tesla, a Serb, was born on July 10, 1856, in Smiljan, Lika Serbian province, Austro-Hungarian Empire of that time, or what is now modern-day Croatia. Prior to World War I, Smiljan was on the border of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
The son of a Serbian Orthodox priest who rose to the rank of Archbishop, Tesla had the opportunity to study a variety of topics contained in his father’s personal library. As a young boy, he accompanied his father on trips to Rome, where he was able to study the lesser-known works stored in the Vatican’s vast scientific repository.
Upon completing his studies in engineering and physics at the Polytechnic Institute in Graz, Austria, Tesla attended the University at Prague. He demonstrated, early on, an innate ability to solve mechanical and scientific problems, especially in the area of electricity and its applications in power production.
After working for Edison Telephone Company subsidiaries in Budapest, Paris, and other cities throughout Europe, Nikola Tesla went to America, to meet the man whose company gave him his first job, Thomas Edison.
Tesla found it difficult to work for Edison (due to Edison’s reneging on financial promises), but soon found backers to finance his research and development projects and his new inventions.
Financiers, such as John Pierpont (J.P.) Morgan, George Westinghouse and John Jacob Astor were among those who saw the potential in Tesla’s pioneering, entrepreneurial spirit to capitalize on his technological discoveries in electricity, wireless communications, and physics.
The only official documentation of Nikola Tesla’s arrival to the United States was, again, produced at the Port of New York. [9] On April 7, 1882 a 25-year old Tesla arrived via the SS Nordland, which departed from Antwerp. He had returned, on this trip to the U.S., after lecturing in Paris.
Tesla’s destination: New York. Tesla immigrated as a “laborer,” though this label hardly befit the man who would become the most prolific inventor in history, with some 700 technological patents to his credit. Previous accounts of Tesla’s association with Thomas Edison’s projects place him in the United States in the 1870s.
Tesla in Colorado Springs Lab
His many technological discoveries were certain to have drawn the attention of those hungry for world domination and superiority.
By and large, Tesla’s inventions and his career were excluded from our history books because his inventions and patents were stolen and then weaponized.
It was never intended for us to learn about the suppression of Tesla’s advanced scientific discoveries, nor about those who profited from their theft—the orchestrators of the master plan.
Though much has been written about Tesla’s successes and failures, few have detailed the behind-the-scenes financial activities which disclose a Nazi plot to acquire his technology, while research and development costs had largely been paid (unknowingly) by U.S. taxpayers.
Many of Tesla’s patents fell into Nazi hands prior to and during World Wars I and II. As a result, Tesla continuously found himself in litigation over patent rights and other issues.
Although he had succeeded in winning the majority of his patent lawsuits, his technology had been repeatedly stolen and sold to the German Nazis and other foreign governments, so he never achieved the financial success he deserved.
The embezzlement of his capitalization went unchecked throughout Tesla’s career. At the time of his death (by murder, according to Skorzeny) on January 6, 1943, Tesla died virtually penniless.
On Good Friday, Ortodox Christmas Eve, he was found in bed, dressed in solemn black suit, arms folded on his chest. They say that a great mind felt his death is coming , he put on the solemn black suit – and then died. An incredible lie and mission impossible, even for a great mind as it was Nikola Tesla.
Tesla’s Ashes are preserved in a Gilded Sphere – His Favorite Shape
This is the ultimate proof that he was murdered and his killers dressed him in a suit and left him in the bed! His killers: Otto Skorzeny and Reinhard Gehlen. Nikola Tesla’s successes in discovering new technologies did not go unnoticed by many industrial capitalists and world governments.
In fact, many of his inventions were developed through secret government programs which began soon after his discoveries in alternating current (AC), electromagnetic energy, electric motors, generators, coils, radio transmission, energy-saving devices, and wireless transmission technologies.
Since Tesla was often buried deep in research at remote labs, many of his financial and legal affairs were supervised by his closest associate, George H. Scherff.
Scherff often advised Tesla about pending patent litigation, contracts, proposals, demonstrations, and financial affairs.
As any trusty associate would, Scherff stood beside Tesla through all the ups and downs of his financial nightmares, sometimes arranging for extended credit at the Waldorf-Astoria, where Tesla often resided, or by obtaining a cash advance toward research he had been contracted to perform.
Near the end of his career, Tesla was evicted from the Waldorf for an outstanding bill which exceeded $20,000 — a rather large sum for those days.
As Tesla worked on secret U.S. government projects at Colorado Springs, Colorado, Scherff communicated to Tesla the status of his business affairs. Tesla spoke of hopeful, future financial successes, though Scherff repeatedly delivered the news of dwindling funds. Tesla had begun construction of a wireless power transmission tower (“Wardenclyffe,” Shoreham, Long Island) with funds invested by J.P. Morgan.
Tesla’s Tower
When Morgan discovered that the tower would transmit free electricity and radio waves, he cancelled the project and had the tower dismantled, then sold for scrap. Morgan was not about to allow Americans to receive free electricity, television and radio.
Tesla was devastated when he received the news, but continued on with his new inventions. The Rockefeller Connection Records show that 17 Battery Place is the Whitehall Building and was owned by Frank Rockefeller, who, with his brothers William and John D., also owned many of the companies with offices located there.
The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) had its world headquarters there, as well as a variety of oil, mining, and chemical companies.
Though Union Sulphur Company was run by its president, Herman Frasch, a German chemist who patented extraction methods for sulphur and petroleum, Frasch also worked for John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company (in New York, New Jersey, and Cleveland, Ohio), developing similar extraction methods.
Frank Rockefeller was also an investor of Buckeye Steel Castings in Columbus, Ohio. Buckeye manufactured automatic couplers and chassis for railroad cars owned by the Harrimans, the Rockefellers, and J.P. Morgan. Eventually, Samuel P. Bush was promoted from general manager to president of the company after producing gigantic profits.
Samuel P. Bush’s association with the Rockefellers and his subsequent position as Director of the War Industries Board afforded him the opportunity to create contracts with Remington Arms during the war, courtesy of Percy Rockefeller. Nikola Tesla’s trusted assistant (sometimes referred to as “accountant” or “secretary”) George Scherff, Sr., worked at Union Sulphur Company.
Normally, this association would not set off alarms, considering the state of Tesla’s affairs. Scherff had every right to earn a decent living in order to support his family. That was “the American Way.” But a careful examination of Union Sulphur Co. might reveal that someone was being deceived — Tesla, and Scherff was at the root of this deception.
Who was George Scherff? Who was George Scherff? Better yet, who was George H. Scherff, Sr.? There exists no legitimate record of a George H. Scherff being born in the U.S. from the late-1800s through 1925, yet, George Scherff was Nikola Tesla’s assistant/accountant.
Only one photograph in public circulation records the face of George Scherff, Sr. -at the Association of Radio Engineers banquet of 1915 (above). Tesla is seen standing tallest in the middle of the back row, while Scherff stands at the end of the same row to Tesla’s left, his hands visible at his sides.
If he was born in Germany, could his birthplace shed some light on this mystery? Probably—if they exist (it has become apparent that individuals associated with the Nazi Party commonly have all or parts of their genealogical records expunged—we will explore this further in the section of this article dealing with the “Bush” family tree).
In short, Otto Skorzeny claimed that the true identity of George H.W. Bush was “George H. Scherff, Jr., the son of Nikola Tesla’s illegal-immigrant, German-born accountant, George H. Scherff, Sr.”
Worth a thousand words: But this was not the only bombshell Otto Skorzeny delivered that day in late-1999. Skorzeny, producing a shoe box full of 60-years worth of his personal photographs, showed them to Berman, describing each one in great detail.
The collection featured a photo of a young, majestic Skorzeny in full S.S. Nazi military dress, next to his Fьhrer, Adolph Hitler. Then there were photos of Reinhard Gehlen (S.S. spy and assassin) Dr. Joseph Mengele (the “Angel of Death”) Martin Bormann (Hitler aide and S.S. assassin) .
Eric “Orion” (Berman), in a live radio interview on Republic Broadcasting Network, January 17, 2006, detailed how:
“Skorzeny died on December 31, 1999. His body was cremated, I have a copy of his death certificate, and I saw his ashes. After the war, he helped George Bush found the CIA through Operation Paperclip and ODESSA.”
Berman recounted how Skorzeny was found “not guilty” at the Nuremburg trials, and then ushered into the CIA. “Some 50,000+ S.S. Nazi war criminals, not just rocket scientists, were brought to America after the war.”
Skorzeny, about age 90 at the time, was described by Berman as “very focused and very lucid, and he was still very mobile. He was still able to walk around—he was still very impressive and he had about the biggest hands I have ever shaken. He was 6’-4”and was a giant for his day. He towered over me, and I’m 5’-8”.”
When asked why he thought Skorzeny entrusted this information to him, Berman responded,
“I was dating one of his daughters. He knew that I’m Jewish, first of all, I’m an honest guy and he thought that I would really try to do something about this and bring some justice, yeah, to these wanted Nazi war criminals.
His whole goal was…. they had screwed him over, including George Bush, they screwed him over….. and out of large sums of money over the years. This was his one last way of… you know, getting even with them.”
A biographical article about Nikola Tesla appeared in the Tesla Tech, Inc. magazine, “Extraordinary Technology,” Volume 4, Number 3, Aug., Sept., Oct., 2006. The article, written by Dustin Wallace, spoke of Tesla’s childhood, some of his inventions, and his last days. Wallace wrote (pp. 21-22), “The Yugoslav Monarchy in Exile was summoned to visit Tesla in the fall of 1942.
However, Charlotte Muzar, a secretary, paid Tesla the visit. From his condition upon her arrival she felt as though he may not live through the night. Another friend of Tesla’s, Kenneth Swezey visited him during the time and noted that he was existing on warm milk and Nabisco crackers alone.
It was apparent that Tesla was nearing the end of his time. By late December of 1942, Tesla began meeting with two U.S. government agents in order to share some of his most sensitive discoveries. These men carried away many of his documents for microfilming.”
“On January 4, 1943, Tesla’s faithful assistant, George Scherff, visited Tesla for the last time, Tesla was found deceased in his hotel room on the morning of January 8. 1943. He had passed away between those four days since Scherff’s visit.”
The article continued, “Following Tesla’s death the United States Office of Alien Property, under the instructions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, confiscated all of Tesla’s papers and property. This was an interesting maneuver considering that Tesla was a United States citizen.”
The significance of this benign description of Tesla’s inventions and his last days has a direct relationship to the previously unknown claims of Otto Skorzeny. As Skorzeny described (to Berman) in detail his involvement with George H. W. Bush (George H. Scherff, Jr.) in organizing the CIA by absorbing Nazi S.S. agents,” he intimated that it was Reinhard Gehlen and himself who murdered Nikola Tesla on January 6, 1943 by strangulation/suffocation.
Prior to the murder, Skorzeny and Gehlen “spoke in great detail to Tesla about his most-advanced technologies and then stole the blueprints of his best, most-secret inventions.”
Were these the “two U.S. government agents” about whom Dustin Wallace wrote? The timing of George Scherff’s last visit to Nikola Tesla was suspicious, as well.
Skorzeny did not stop with these soul-cleansing disclosures. He went on to describe the aliases of himself Frank Edward P_ _ _ _ _, of south Florida (according to Berman, who claims he is trying to protect Skorzeny’s daughter), Reinhard Gehlen (Hank Janowicz, Wayne, N.J.), and Dr. Joseph Mengele (Steven Rabel).
“Gehlen was tipped off by the FBI about Skorzeny’s unveiling of his identity and location, and Gehlen (Janowicz) then went into hiding. Mengele (Rabel), through a series of anti-aging hormone injections, a black hairpiece, and ‘cannibalism’ has maintained a youthful appearance.”
Having investigated some of Skorzeny’s claims, Berman had contacted the U.S. Justice Department to inform them that Nazi spies were being harbored by certain factions of the U.S. intelligence agencies, in particular, the CIA. “My thoughts were that, uh, I needed to try to bring these wanted SS Nazi war criminal, holocaust killers—terrorists, basically—to justice.
I wanted to call our government and tell ‘em, ‘Hey, that they’re still alive.’ I wanted to bring ‘em to justice. That was my whole intention. I initially had contacted, or tried to contact Eli Rosenbaum, who was the Director of the United States Justice Department, Office of Special Investigations.
Basically, they, uh, thought it was a hoax and they told me that I was mistaken, and that according to the CIA, ‘all of them were all dead and I was mistaken.’ That’s what they told me. I was wrong.“
The pathetic attack on religious freedom and the sanctity of individual conscience is a shot heard round the planet. The social desecration that surrounds this immoral culture has a defamed religious czar, named Barack Hussein Obama. Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human service is a disgrace. She acts as the High Priestess of the Church for the Police State. No matter what your opinion is of the Catholic Church, one practice surely shows the wisdom of the faith. Women are not ordained as priests.
All the bluster about women’s reproductive rights misses the nature of the issue. America was created as a nation to guarantee religious freedom. According to the gospel of Obama, his bishops wear skirts and jack boots. By ordering an unconstitutional dictate, Sebelius’ heretical doctrine views the First Amendment as expendable. History repeats itself.
Mark Steyn in an article steeped in canon law irony The Church of Obama has it correct.
“The president of the United States has decided to go Henry VIII on the Church’s medieval ass. Whatever religious institutions might profess to believe in the matter of “women’s health,” their pre-eminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities, and immunities are now subordinate to a one-and-only supreme head on earth determined to repress, redress, restrain, and amend their heresies. One wouldn’t wish to overextend the analogy: For one thing, the Catholic Church in America has been pathetically accommodating of Beltway bigwigs’ ravenous appetite for marital annulments in a way that Pope Clement VII was disinclined to be vis-à-vis the English king and Catherine of Aragon. But where’d all the pandering get them? In essence President Obama has embarked on the same usurpation of church authority as Henry VIII: As his Friday morning faux-compromise confirms, the continued existence of a “faith-based institution” depends on submission to the doctrinal supremacy of the state.”
The response from Cardinal-Designate Dolan during a CBS 2 interview sums it up.
“The federal government should do what it’s traditionally done since July 4, 1776, namely back out of intruding into the internal life of a church.”
Integrated Catholic Life quotes the Archbishop Dolan further, “The Catholic Church defends religious liberty, including freedom of conscience, for everyone. The Amish do not carry health insurance. The government respects their principles. Christian Scientists want to heal by prayer alone, and the new health-care reform law respects that. Quakers and others object to killing even in wartime, and the government respects that principle for conscientious objectors. By its decision, the Obama administration has failed to show the same respect for the consciences of Catholics and others who object to treating pregnancy as a disease.”
Even the most ardent opponent of the Papacy must admit that Western Civilization is based upon the principles of Christian teaching that recognize the unique essence of every human being. That each person has an individual conscience as the focus of behavior and that a belief in God and the revealed word developed our social and legal heritage. The State may have temporal power to impose its will, but does not have legitimate moral authority that violates natural law or the inherent autonomy of each mortal soul.
The Obama gambit is a foolish attempt to wage war directly on the spiritual church doctrine of the Catholic Church. Even the Huffington Post points out in Catholics Rally Against Obama Contraception Mandate the outrage that this assault stirred.
“Dozens of priests took the rare step of reading letters from the pulpit urging parishioners to reach out to Washington and oppose the rule, enacted Jan 20.
The rule requires nearly all employers to provide their employees access to health insurance that covers artificial contraception, sterilization services and the “morning after” birth control pill.
The mandate exempts individual churches but applies to Catholic universities, Catholic-based charities and to groups affiliated with Methodists, Baptists and other denominations.”
The feeble attempt to walk back this mistake with a compromise is symptomatic of a brutal regime that wants to stamp out traditional Christianity, and substitute a state worship in a command and control belief.
The Wall Street Journal provides this account in ObamaCare’s Great Awakening.
“The Affordable Care Act itself is ambiguous about what counts as a religious organization that deserves conscience protection. Like so much else in the rushed bill, this was left to administrative discretion. What the law does cement is the principle that the government will decide for everyone what “health care” must mean. The entire thrust of ObamaCare is to standardize benefits and how they must be paid for and provided, regardless of individual choices or ethical convictions.
Mr. Obama’s allies among Catholic liberals are also professing shock—even the Catholic Health Association’s Sister Carol Keehan, who lobbied for ObamaCare, and Notre Dame’s Father John Jenkins, who invited Mr. Obama to speak on campus in 2009. But if they now claim they were taken for a ride by the secular left, the truth is that they wanted to be deceived in the name of their grander goal of government-enforced equity. The Catholic left was one of ObamaCare’s great enablers.
Speaking of scales from the eyes, we’re eager to hear from former Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak, who for a brief moment led a faction of pro-life Democrats against ObamaCare in 2010. They surrendered when Mr. Obama gave them the fig leaf of an executive order that will supposedly prevent federal funds from subsidizing abortions. Mr. Stupak is now a lobbyist at the D.C. law firm Venable LLP.”
Many political pundits claim that the social issues are no longer important to most of the public. How inept it is to accept that the basis for political decisions need not incorporate the moral issues or Bill of Right axioms. Human freedom is a natural right and is not a concession provided from some obscure government bureaucrat or administrator.
Pat Buchanan has long championed the principles and teaching of Christendom. The Death of the West is not based solely on the decline in birth rates of just European descent families. The suppression or Christian beliefs and the persecution of religious institutions under the 501 C3 extortion scheme to silence preaching and neuter political courage is the core strategy to kill faith in God.
The Business Insider confirms the wisdom in the Catholic viewpoint, Time To Admit It: The Church Has Always Been Right On Birth Control
Today’s injunctions against birth control were re-affirmed in a 1968 document by Pope Paul VI called Humanae Vitae. He warned of four results if the widespread use of contraceptives was accepted:
General lowering of moral standards
A rise in infidelity, and illegitimacy
The reduction of women to objects used to satisfy men.
Government coercion in reproductive matters.
So, just to sum up:
It’s a good idea for people to be fruitful and multiply; and
Regardless of how you feel about the Church’s stance on birth control, it’s proven pretty prophetic.
Just how can the secular humanism culture of Obama answer the questions of a young girl in the video, Dear President Obama ?
The strong response of the Catholic bishops is long overdue. The need for a full-blown crusade against the Godless elements in government is the true cause of the 21th century. The social destruction that we witness all around is no accident. The vast majority of Americans are believers in the word of God, no matter what particular faith or denomination they accept.
Liberty is the reward of being faithful to the tenants of the Sermon of the Mount. Hope lies in the expectation that justice will one day be realized. The State and especially the social engineers that reside in the Obama hierarchy seek the systematic dismantling of all constitutional restraint. Religion stands in their way of completing their goal for Totalitarian Collectivism.
What is at stake in your immortal soul, so why would you freely give an undeserved allegiance to a government that wants to eliminate your most precious beliefs and moral standards?
The POTUS is a heretic and a religious outcast. As for his devotion to civil liberties, he is an atheist, since he rejects natural law as the underpinnings of any social contact with government. Natural law comes from God. Obamacare resides in the deepest confines of Dante’s Inferno.
Religious wars may seem passé in an era of thermonuclear annihilation, but the only salvation from the insanity of the global tyrants is to engage in spiritual and political combat with the objective of removing all fascists from bogus power and illegitimate authority. The stage is set for a true Armageddon. It is time to send the arrogant Obama administration straight to hell.
Rick Santorum featured in Time magazine’s 25 most influential evangelists list in 2005
Rick Santorum is certainly representative of a politically active part of the U.S. population–a dangerous, intolerant, noisy, in-your-face part. If we let him and his followers get their way, the result will be ever greater divisiveness and decline at home, and war abroad. That is a choice for the rest of us.
Former Pennsylvania Senator, Rick Santorum, is a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination who is fast coming to the fore. He won the Republican primary in Iowa (albeit by only 34 votes) in early January and in February won the primaries in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota. So, as the question goes, who is this guy?
Santorum is a self-styled “true conservative,” right-wing, Christian fundamentalist of Catholic background. In 2005 Time Magazine called him “one of America’s 25 most influential evangelicals.” That is still certainly true today. Santorum believes that religious values (at least his religious values) should play a large role in shaping government policies. For those not sure what this means, Santorum has a list of examples:
Part I – Rick Santorum the Moralist
1. Santorum wants “ablanket ban on abortions.” The fact that the U.S. had this very same prohibition up until 1973, and the result was black market abortions that killed not only fetuses by also lots of pregnant women, seems to have escaped the former senator.
2. Santorum wants a ban on gay marriages. He would likely bring back antiquated anti-sodomy laws as well. “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have a right to bigamy, you have a right to polygamy, you have a right to incest, you have a right to adultery. You have a right to anything.” When Santorum gets on the subject of homosexuality, one can’t help noting a tinge of hysteria, along with a generous helping of illogic and exaggeration.
Santorum would probably try to ban other related activities, such as the use of contraceptives to prevent pregnancy. He certainly wants to get rid of Planned Parenthood.
What this adds up to is that when Santorum says religious values should play a greater role in government policy, he means that there should be lots of laws regulating your personal life, particularly your sex life. This is pretty typical of religious fundamentalists, particularly American Christian ones. They just can’t leave other people’s bedrooms alone.
Part II – Rick Santorum the Economist
On the economic side of the ledger, Rick Santorum takes a slash and burn approach.
1. There should be a $5 trillion cut in the federal budget (but defense spending would be held at present levels). In order to realize this Santorum would do away with, greatly reduce or freeze the Environmental Protection Agency, healthcare reform and medicaid, subsidies for housing, food stamps, job training, energy and education. He would “reform” medicare and social security in draconian fashion and pass a balanced budget amendment. One might agree that the present U.S. federal deficit verges on the insane and still find Santorum’s cure equally crazy. For instance, just about holding exempt defense and “security” spending when combined they make up 20% of the budget and are notorious for waste, redundancy and corruption, makes no sense.
2. There should be an elimination of financial and other regulatory laws. This is true insanity. Regulation is the only thing that makes capitalism an enduring system. Eliminate it and you have financial crashes, dangerous sweatshop working conditions, falling wages and benefits, runaway corruption and theft and, ultimately, depression. That Santorum cannot understand this suggests that he has substituted a discredited free market ideology for history.
3. As a nation Americans should “live within our means” and if we do so “future generations will have a brighter future unburdened by oppressive debt and high taxation.” These are fine slogans, but in practice they probably spell eventual revolution in the streets. If you reduce the debt by slashing expenditures Santorum-style while refusing to increase taxes, you will eliminate almost all of society’s safety nets. That means increasing poverty and all its attendant miseries. You will also make infrastructure maintenance much more difficult.
Someone should tell Mr. Santorum that the U.S. population is not over-taxed. Out of sixty two industrialized countries, the U.S. ranks 28thin terms of its income tax rates. It is, of course, possible to over-tax a people to ruination. It is also possible to under-tax a people to ruination– to tax so low that you can’t assist the less fortunate or fix the pot holes and keep the bridges from collapsing. If Santorum was to get his way the nation would not have his predicted “brighter future.” More likely it would be a future of more poor and more pot holes. That might well lead to disillusionment with the capitalist system among both the lower and middle classes. Personally, I have no objection to such growing disillusionment. I would, however, like to minimize the suffering and violence that surely goes along with it.
Part III – Rick Santorum and Foreign Policy
When it comes to foreign policy, Santorum is a warmonger plain and simple.
1. As to Iran, Santorum would “work with Israel to determine the proper military response needed” to put a end to that country’s nuclear weapons program. It seems not to matter to the former Senator that every U.S. intelligence agency that has ever investigated this issue has determined that there is no evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
2. As to Syria, Santorum would go after the strongman (Bashar al-Assad) “covertly or otherwise.” Does that mean that Santorum act-alikes at the helm of other nations could use the same logic to go after a U.S. president?
3. As to Iraq, Santorum would “continue to stabilize Iraq” presumably by re-invading the country. This belies the fact that it was the American policy of draconian sanctions and ultimate invasion that destabilized Iraq in the first place.
4. As to Afghanistan, Santorum would set no time lines or limit resources “in the war effort.” Yet, if al-Qaeda is as weakened as Washington claims, there seems to be little point in more war. If a stable and competent Taliban government reappears in Afghanistan, it is unlikely to invite future attacks by providing a haven for terrorist organizations. On the other hand, this on-going war is almost certainly providing a breeding ground for more terrorists.
5. As to Islam, Santorum believes it is a religion that is “stuck in the seventh century.” With rare exception, such as Saudi Wahhabism, this is untrue. Actually, it is Rick Santorum who is stuck in the past. It is he who, like some political ecclesiastic, wants to regulate everyone else’s lives. If Mr. Santorum simply changed hats, he could be a Saudi cleric. Compared to people like him, most Muslims are much more tolerant and contemporary.
6. As to Israel, Santorum takes an uncritically approving position on the Zionist state. This makes sense when you realize that Israel is essentially a religious state–a nation on the brink of becoming a theocracy.
Part IV – Conclusion
Rick Santorum speaks during a visit to the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Coralville, Iowa on Dec. 11, 2011., Charlie Neibergall / AP Photo
Rick Santorum is a religious ideologue. He wants to turn the U.S. into a “faith based” Christian country through the imposition of those “family values” he personally has decided are God given. He believes that America’s founding fathers would agree because they were, supposedly, men of faith just like him.Quoting the Declaration of Independence to prove this point, Santorum reminds us that it says that people “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” From this he concludes that rights come from God and not from government. Government’s role is simply to implement and protect those divine rights.
The truth is that the man who penned the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, was nothing like Rick Santorum. He wasn’t even a Christian. He was a Deist. Jefferson’s phrasing was meant to impress a wider world in an age when religion was interpreted in a more literal fashion than it is in today’s United States. Jefferson certainly did not mean for Americans to take the notion of God given inalienable rights literally. After all, he was a slave holder.
The number of Americans who respond positively to Rick Santorum’s message is probably in the range of 20%. In terms of the Republican Party, they probably represent about one-third of the membership. Being ideologically driven, these people are motivated to vote. And, that is significant in a nation where voting turnout is traditionally low. So, Rick Santorum is certainly representative of a politically active part of the U.S. population–a dangerous, intolerant, noisy, in-your-face part. If we let him and his followers get their way, the result will be ever greater divisiveness and decline at home, and war abroad. That is a choice for the rest of us.
In case you missed it – The Atlanta Jewish Times publisher Andrew Adler, in an editorial on Jan. 13, committed treason when he suggested that Israel’s Mossad should consider assassinating President Barack Obama.
Author, Michael Collins Piper correctly predicted that western media would stop reporting the story that Obama’s life could be in mortal danger from Mossad terrorists inside the United States.
The outrageous silence by a criminally complicit mainstream media is coupled with open acknowledgement that Obama is deeply resentedwithin the Jewish community. Many speak with vitriol that the President presents a serious danger to Jews and to Israel when he holds Netenyahu’s regime to account.
Mossad is prolific at assassination. Six Iranian nuclear scientists have been murdered in the past few years. Then consider the documented role of Mossad in the terrorist events ofSeptember 11, 2001as more than sufficient reason to warrant extreme caution for Obama at the Whitehouse and particularly when flying in Air Force One.
Finding Zionist connections to terrorists inside the United States is not difficult. Rahm Emanuel’s father - a former member of the Irgun terrorist group, is one example:
“Benjamin Emanuel, a Jew from Russia whose real name was Ezekiel Auerbach, was arrested by British police for terrorist activities in the months prior to Israeli independence. Many of the British policemen killed by Emanuel and his Irgun colleagues between 1947 and 1948 had been transferred to Palestine upon Indian and Pakistani independence in 1947. Irgun saw the increase of British policemen from the Indian subcontinent as a major threat.”
Zionists are not enough satisfied that American troops have been bleeding and dying all over the middle east for decades.
And what does it mean when western media is united in suppressing the screeming news of Adler’s advocacy of Obama’s assassination?
Just who is in control of Mainstream media, anyway?
Reporting it doesn’t make it so. In fact, it’s more illusion than fact, but that doesn’t surprise half of US households impoverished or bordering on it, according to recent US Census data.
Nor are independent analysts and economists fooled. Last summer, economistRichard Wolffcalled “so-called economic ‘recovery’ since mid-2009….chiefly hype, a veneer of good news (benefitting corporations and elitists) to disguise and minimize the awful underlying economic realities.”
Since crisis conditions began in fall 2007, most people experienced pain without gain. For them, current conditions are worse, not better, with no policies proposed to help them. That’s today’s grim reality, especially across America and Europe.
In his most recent co-written February 2 article, titled “Manifesto for Economic Recovery and Ecological Sanity,” Wolff said:
“Capitalism today abuses the people, environment, politics and culture in equal measures. It has fostered new extremes of wealth and poverty inside most countries, and such extremes always undermine or prevent democratic politics.”
It’s also “plunged the world into the second massive global economic crisis in the last 75 years.” Yet in America and Europe, policies adopted assure harder than ever times ahead. Elections don’t matter as no major parties offer better choices. Whatever their name, they’re all involved in benefitting the few at the expense of the many.
Progressive Radio New Hour regular economist Jack Rasmus discussed the latest February 3 jobs report. He said it belies economic reality. Real unemployment’s at 22.5%. Most jobs created since 2009 have been low pay temp or part-time ones with few or no benefits. Higher-paying full-time manufacturing, construction, high-tech, and others keep declining.
For example, since the downturn’s mid-2009 low-point, 79,000 fewer manufacturing jobs exist, 680,000 aren’t replaced in construction, and other data show similar declines.
Unlike all previous post-WW II recessions, “the government sector has not created jobs to offset private sector losses.” In fact, federal, state and local governments destroyed almost 650,000 jobs since mid-2009. Nearly, 250,000 were teachers. Moreover, around 20,000 public workers on average are laid off monthly.
If Obama maintains this trend in 2012, over one million public sector jobs will be lost with hundreds of thousands more coming after November 2012, whoever’s elected.
In addition, long-term unemployed numbers rose from 24% in mid-2009 to over 40% now. Rasmus said “the Employment to Population Ratio that measures how well the economy (creates) jobs” shows the it’s creating increasingly fewer numbers as population totals rise.
In late 2007, 63% of Americans were employed. Today it’s 58.5%. The JOLT ratio (Job Opening to Labor Turnover) shows 4.2 workers for every job opening, over double the pre-recession 1.8 to 1 ratio.
Obama’s so-called job creation program is illusory. In January 2009, he promised six million jobs. Instead, over 40% of his $787 stimulus bill went for tax cuts, largely to America’s rich and corporate favorites. In June 2009, 25 million were unemployed. A year later it was unchanged.
Another $802 billion in tax cuts followed plus extending the Bush-era tax cuts. GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt and Wall Street banker Bill Daley were then enlisted to run Obama’s new jobs council.
Their solutions included job destructive “free trade” agreements, corporate tax cuts, offshoring more jobs, hoarding profits in foreign subsidiaries to avoid tax obligations, patent law reform for greater profits, raiding Social Security, cutting Medicare and Medicaid benefits, and other ways to enhance bottom line priorities without creating jobs.
Moreover, monthly Labor Department figures are rigged. So-called job creation is illusory. Seasonal adjustments alone distort data. So does the birth/death ratio producing 48,000 monthly jobs in downturns when they’re lost.
As a result, nearly 600,000 annual fake jobs are created in recessions. In addition, millions of discouraged workers aren’t counted. Doing so masks the depths of today’s jobs crisis. Yet major media scoundrels suppress it like a non-issue.
Obama’s economic program serves Wall Street, other corporate favorites, and America’s super-rich at the expense of ordinary households. “What was once a trickle down approach to job creation (became) a drip-drip policy.”
Neither party offers credible fixes. Long-discredited programs are featured. Greater harm ahead is assured. Protracted Depression years will follow. Unemployment and poverty ranks will swell. So will human need. Hard times will get harder.
Social benefits will face more cuts. Defense spending and corporate handouts will increase. Jobs will be destroyed, not created. That’s today’s dismal reality because America’s aristocracy doesn’t care.
On January 31, economistPaul Craig Roberts called America’s economy “dead,” saying:
Reports of GDP growth are greatly exaggerated. For example, the alleged Q IV 2011 2.8% annualized growth was, in fact, “eight-tenths of one percent” net of unsold goods. In other words, “involuntary inventory build-up” produced more goods than sold.
Moreover deflating real inflation masks “no recovery (and an economy) in deep recession for four years despite” NBER (the National Bureau of Economic Research) claiming otherwise “based on rigged official numbers.”
By understating real inflation, Washington created an “illusion of economic growth….” Main Street pain explains otherwise.
On February 2, Roberts repeated, “There is No Recovery,” saying:
Virtually all key economic data show decline, not improvement. They include average weekly earnings, real inflation, unemployment, consumer confidence, housing starts, real GDP, retail sales, and much more.
“A government and media that will deceive you about simple things such as inflation, unemployment, and GDP growth,” said Roberts, “will lie to you about everything.”
Indeed so from lowly bureaucrats to congressional leaders, to presidents, to top officials representing them, and major media scoundrels regurgitating their lies.
A Final Comment
Roman philospher/stateman/political theoristMarcus Tullius Cicero once said “A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable” because he’s known. But covert traitors rot “the soul of a nation…A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague.”
America’s infested with them top to bottom in government and corporate board rooms. They serve elitist interests while popular needs go begging. They wage wars on false pretenses. They specialize in deception and fear. They profit from predation, destruction, and exploitation.
They cause human misery on an incalculable scale. They’re driving America to tyranny and ruin. They made the country unfit to live in. They’re now replicating their agenda on planet earth. It includes permanent war, banker occupation, super-wealth extremes, mass poverty, ecological destruction, and militarized control to curb opposition.
Reality’s ignored to continue mass wealth transfers to banks, other corporate favorites and super-rich elites at the expense of deepening human need. The longer this continues, the worse the eventual ending. It’s coming though timing can’t be predicted.
On arrival the bang will be felt round the world. So will greater than ever misery for billions already experiencing too much. That’s what Washington and rogue European leaders plan complicit with bankers and other corporate scoundrels.
Only mass outrage can stop them. It’s there, growing, and if crosses thresholds of no return, all bets are off.
Ordinary people have more power than they realize when used collectively for change. It takes pain to energize action.
It’s happening though only the fullness of time will determine where it’s headed with what effect. Hopefully, better times will follow. The alternative’s too unacceptable to tolerate.
