U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, who coined the term "military-industrial complex," referred to the economic implications of a high expenditure on arms in his "Chance for Peace" speech from 1953. Don't miss this speech! It's incredibly moving and far more relevant to our times than it was to his.

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theREALnews                                                                               Permalink

Israel is an Example of an Economy Hijacked by Military-security Interests

Although the U.S has the world's largest military industrial complex, Israel has the largest ratio of its economy dedicated to the military and security industry - July 28, 13

Bio

Shir Hever is an economic researcher in the Alternative Information Center, a Palestinian-Israeli organization active in Jerusalem and Beit-Sahour. Researching the economic aspect of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, some of his research topics include international aid to the Palestinians and Israel, the effects of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories on the Israeli economy, and the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns against Israel. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of the economy of the Israeli occupation.

"Polls from all over the world consistently show that Israel and the US are regarded as the two greatest threats to peace and to life on earth. Yet, these two utterly lawless governments prance around pretending to be the 'world’s greatest democracies'.” -- Paul Craig Roberts

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The Two Faux Democracies Threaten Life On Earth–Paul Craig Roberts

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July 24, 2013 | Original Here                                                       Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

The Two Faux Democracies Threaten Life On Earth

Paul Craig Roberts

Amitai Etzioni has raised an important question: “Who authorized preparations for war with China?” http://yalejournal.org/2013/06/12/who-authorized-preparations-for-war-with-china/ Etzioni says that the war plan is not the sort of contingency plan that might be on hand for an improbable event. Etzioni also reports that the Pentagon’s war plan was not ordered by, and has not been reviewed by, US civilian authorities. We are confronted with a neoconized US military out of control endangering Americans and the rest of the world.

Etzioni is correct that this is a momentous decision made by a neoconized military. China is obviously aware that Washington is preparing for war with China. If the Yale Journal knows it, China knows it. If the Chinese government is realistic, the government is aware that Washington is planning a pre-emptive nuclear attack against China. No other kind of war makes any sense from Washington’s standpoint. The “superpower” was never able to occupy Baghdad, and after 11 years of war has been defeated in Afghanistan by a few thousand lightly armed Taliban. It would be curtains for Washington to get into a conventional war with China.

When China was a primitive third world country, it fought the US military to a stalemate in Korea. Today China has the world’s second largest economy and is rapidly overtaking the failing US economy destroyed by jobs offshoring, bankster fraud, and corporate and congressional treason.

The Pentagon’s war plan for China is called “AirSea Battle.” The plan describes itself as “interoperable air and naval forces that can execute networked, integrated attacks-in-depth to disrupt, destroy, and defeat enemy anti-access area denial capabilities.”

Yes, what does that mean? It means many billions of dollars of more profits for the military/security complex while the 99 percent are ground under the boot. It is also clear that this nonsensical jargon cannot defeat a Chinese army. But this kind of saber-rattling can lead to war, and if the Washington morons get a war going, the only way Washington can prevail is with nuclear weapons. The radiation, of course, will kill Americans as well.

Nuclear war is on Washington’s agenda. The rise of the Neocon Nazis has negated the nuclear disarmament agreements that Reagan and Gorbachev made. The extraordinary, mainly truthful 2012 book, The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, describes the post-Reagan breakout of preemptive nuclear attack as Washington’s first option.

During the Cold War nuclear weapons had a defensive purpose. The purpose was to prevent nuclear war by the US and USSR each having sufficient retaliatory power to ensure “mutually assured destruction.” MAD, as it was known, meant that nuclear weapons had no offensive advantage for either side.

The Soviet collapse and China’s focus on its economy instead of its military have resulted in Washington’s advantage in nuclear weaponry that, according to two US Dr. Strangeglove characters, Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, gives Washington first-strike capability. Lieber and Press write that the “precipitous decline of Russia’s arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China’s nuclear forces,” have created a situation in which neither Russia nor China could retaliate to Washington’s first strike.

The Pentagon’s “AirSea Battle” and Lieber and Press’ article in Foreign Affairs have informed China and Russia that Washington is contemplating pre-emptive nuclear attack on both countries. To ensure Russia’s inability to retaliate, Washington is placing anti-ballistic missiles on Russia’s borders in violation of the US-USSR agreement.

Because the American press is a corrupt government propaganda ministry, the American people have no idea that neoconized Washington is planning nuclear war. Americans are no more aware of this than they are of former President Jimmy Carter’s recent statement, reported only in Germany, that the United States no longer has a functioning democracy.
The possibility that the United States would initiate nuclear war was given reality eleven years ago when President George W. Bush, at the urging of Dick Cheney and the neocons that dominated his regime, signed off on the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review.

This neocon document, signed off on by America’s most moronic president, resulted in consternation and condemnation from the rest of the world and launched a new arms race. Russian President Putin immediately announced that Russia would spend all necessary sums to maintain Russia’s retaliatory nuclear capability. The Chinese displayed their prowess by knocking a satellite out of space with a missile. The mayor of Hiroshima, recipient city of a vast American war crime, stated: “The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the central international agreement guiding the elimination of nuclear weapons, is on the verge of collapse. The chief cause is US nuclear policy that, by openly declaring the possibility of a pre-emptive nuclear first strike and calling for resumed research into mini-nukes and other so-called ‘useable nuclear weapons,’ appears to worship nuclear weapons as God.”

Polls from all over the world consistently show that Israel and the US are regarded as the two greatest threats to peace and to life on earth. Yet, these two utterly lawless governments prance around pretending to be the “world’s greatest democracies.” Neither government accepts any accountability whatsoever to international law, to human rights, to the Geneva Conventions, or to their own statutory law. The US and Israel are rogue governments, throwbacks to the Hitler and Stalin era.

The post World War II wars originate in Washington and Israel. No other country has imperial expansionary ambitions. The Chinese government has not seized Taiwan, which China could do at will. The Russian government has not seized former constituent parts of Russia, such as Georgia, which, provoked by Washington to launch an attack, was instantly overwhelmed by the Russian Army. Putin could have hung Washington’s Georgian puppet and reincorporated Georgia into Russia, where it resided for several centuries and where many believe it belongs.

For the past 68 years, most military aggression can be sourced to the US and Israel. Yet, these two originators of wars pretend to be the victims of aggression. It is Israel that has a nuclear arsenal that is illegal, unacknowledged, and unaccountable. It is Washington that has drafted a war plan based on nuclear first strike. The rest of the world is correct to view these two rogue unaccountable governments as direct threats to life on earth.

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Back in his university days, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts managed to be in the Soviet Union just before the iron curtain dropped. Now he sees strong parallels between the USSR of that time and America today.

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Role Reversal: How the US Became the USSR — Paul Craig Roberts

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July 23, 2013 | Original Here                                                       Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

Role Reversal: How the US Became the USSR

Paul Craig Roberts

I spent the summer of 1961 behind the Iron Curtain. I was part of the US-USSR student exchange program. It was the second year of the program that operated under auspices of the US Department of State. Our return to the West via train through East Germany was interrupted by the construction of the Berlin Wall. We were sent back to Poland. The East German rail tracks were occupied with Soviet troop and tank trains as the Red Army concentrated in East Germany to face down any Western interference.

Fortunately, in those days there were no neoconservatives. Washington had not grown the hubris it so well displays in the 21st century. The wall was built and war was avoided. The wall backfired on the Soviets. Both JFK and Ronald Reagan used it to good propaganda effect.

In those days America stood for freedom, and the Soviet Union for oppression. Much of this impression was created by Western propaganda, but there was some semblance to the truth in the image. The communists had a Julian Assange and an Edward Snowden of their own. His name was Cardinal Jozef Mindszenty, the leader of the Hungarian Catholic Church.

Mindszenty opposed tyranny. For his efforts he was imprisoned by the Nazis. Communists also regarded him as an undesirable, and he was tortured and given a life sentence in 1949.

Freed by the short-lived Hungarian Revolution in 1956, Mindszenty reached the American Embassy in Budapest and was granted political asylum by Washington. However, the communists would not give him the free passage that asylum presumes, and Mindszenty lived in the US Embassy for 15 years, 79% of his remaining life.

In the 21st century roles have reversed. Today it is Washington that is enamored of tyranny. On Washington’s orders, the UK will not permit Julian Assange free passage to Ecuador, where he has been granted asylum. Like Cardinal Mindszenty, Assange is stuck in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London.

Washington will not permit its European vassal states to allow overflights of airliners carrying Edward Snowden to any of the countries that have offered Snowden asylum. Snowden is stuck in the Moscow airport.

In Washington politicians of both parties demand that Snowden be captured and executed. Politicians demand that Russia be punished for not violating international law, seizing Snowden, and turning him over to Washington to be tortured and executed, despite the fact that Washington has no extradition treaty with Russia.

Snowden did United States citizens a great service. He told us that despite constitutional prohibition, Washington had implemented a universal spy system intercepting every communication of every American and much of the rest of the world. Special facilities are built in which to store these communications.

In other words, Snowden did what Americans are supposed to do – disclose government crimes against the Constitution and against citizens. Without a free press there is nothing but the government’s lies. In order to protect its lies from exposure, Washington intends to exterminate all truth tellers.

The Obama Regime is the most oppressive regime ever in its prosecution of protected whistleblowers. Whistleblowers are protected by law, but the Obama Regime insists that whistleblowers are not really whistleblowers. Instead, the Obama Regime defines whistleblowers as spies, traitors, and foreign agents. Congress, the media, and the faux judiciary echo the executive branch propaganda that whistleblowers are a threat to America. It is not the government that is violating and raping the US Constitution that is a threat. It is the whistleblowers who inform us of the rape who are the threat.

The Obama Regime has destroyed press freedom. A lackey federal appeals court has ruled that NY Times reporter James Risen must testify in the trial of a CIA officer charged with providing Risen with information about CIA plots against Iran. The ruling of this fascist court destroys confidentiality and is intended to end all leaks of the government’s crimes to media.

What Americans have learned in the 21st century is that the US government lies about everything and breaks every law. Without whistleblowers, Americans will remain in the dark as “their” government enserfs them, destroying every liberty, and impoverishes them with endless wars for Washington’s and Wall Street’s hegemony.

Snowden harmed no one except the liars and traitors in the US government. Contrast Washington’s animosity against Snowden with the pardon that Bush gave to Dick Cheney aide, Libby, who took the fall for his boss for blowing the cover, a felony, on a covert CIA operative, the spouse of a former government official who exposed the Bush/Cheney/neocon lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Whatever serves the tiny clique that rules america is legal; whatever exposes the criminals is illegal.

That’s all there is to it.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts says, "My prediction or expectation is by winter, the second downturn of the Great Recession will be in place. Unemployment will explode, more foreclosures are coming. It's going to be worse than the Great Depression."

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U.S. a Lawless State - Paul Craig Roberts

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24 JULY, 2013                                                                                                                                              Original Here


By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts says, “The country is not being run by the President.  It is being run by spy agencies and private interest groups, Wall Street and military security complex . . . They run the country.  The President is a puppet, a figurehead.”  Dr. Roberts contends, “If you are a lawless state, which the United States is, it obeys no international law.  It does not obey the Geneva Convention . . . It tortures people.  It doesn’t obey the Constitution.  It doesn’t obey anything.  It does what it wants. . . . If you are a lawless state, you disguise yourself as a democracy.”  Former President Jimmy Carter agrees.  Just last week, Carter said, “The U.S. has no functioning democracy at this moment.”  Why hasn’t the mainstream media picked up this astounding comment from a former Democratic President?  Dr. Roberts says, “Five firms now own what used to be a large dispersed independent media.  Nobody can open their mouth, they’d get fired.  They have become a propaganda ministry for government and corporations.”  Dr. Roberts goes on to say, “My prediction or expectation is by winter, the second downturn of the Great Recession will be in place.  Unemployment will explode, more foreclosures are coming.  It’s going to be worse than the Great Depression.”  Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with economist Dr. Paul Craig Roberts.   

http://youtu.be/buqJP7y115s

IS GLOBAL WARMING SERIOUS? IF SO, HOW DO WE KNOW IT, AND WHAT SHOULD WE BE DOING ABOUT IT?

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Here below I have embed two videos from a Global Climate Change Conference held in 2008. Each of these videos is an hour long, and each features two speakers who keep to their allotted half-hour slots.

If you are not a scientist, you may suppose that you will not be able to understand any of the speakers.  However, I am going to help you by providing the immediately following figure.

The "secret" is to first understand the principle of a simple x-y graph (x is the horizontal axis and y is the vertical axis) and then take note of what x and y stand for.  The graph below has the easiest to understand x axis, i.e., TIME.

In this graph, you see that the x axis runs backwards in TIME from "Today" (on the right) all the way to 400,000 years in the past (extreme left). The basic picture is a screen capture that I took from the one of first speaker's slides.  However, I've colorized and labeled some parts and added several anthropological facts in green type.

To get an idea of how long a time 400,000 years is, check out the meager length of time taken up by the entire recorded history of human civilizations (the Egyptian civilization began only about 5,500 years ago).  I've also marked the approximate time during which our common "African Eve" walked the earth (as has been determined by very exacting studies of the dna of both living and long-dead humans).

By now you have likely begun to notice that the ice ages are very long, whereas the temperate/hot periods are pretty short (meaning "only" about 15,000 years).  Obviously, all of our cave-men-and-women direct ancestors survived all of these long, grueling cold periods.  By contrast, I've noted that those homo sapiens who migrated out of Africa before about 200,000 years ago all went extinct; their dna is not found in presently living humans.

At this point you may be wondering where the 3 jiggly curves came from.  Well, they are from the Vostok Ice Core recovered prior to 1999 from the Antarctic ice sheet by a Russian expedition using a hollow drill.  Scientists have discovered means of determining both the geological age of a particular level in the ice core as well as the average global temperature at the time that ice layer first formed (black curve).

The blue and red curves in the figure above are measures of the changes in the amounts of of methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere as functions of time from today all the way backward to 400,000 years before present.  Note that both of these curves follow the temperature curve quite closely.  So cause and effect can be assumed.  But which is the cause and which the effect?  Well, note that in the three central warm periods, the CO2 spikes precede the temperature spikes -- strong evidence that this greenhouse gas determines when the earth warms up and to what degree!  With this in mind, I call your attention to the facts that original graph was published in 1999, whereas I have taken the liberty to add the CO2 concentration as of 2008 (above the "Today" arrow).  As the speaker will tell you, top climatologists are now convinced that the CO2 in the atmosphere must be forced back down to 350 ppm or lower to avoid catastrophic melting of ice sheets, which would result in many of the world's coastal cities becoming inundated by consequent rise in sea level.

Once you are comfortable with all aspects of the figure above, it will be time to test your new abilities by listening to the first speaker on the video below. (You may skip the second speaker because she does not show such slides.)

Global Climate Change Conference - Part 1
http://youtu.be/i2d8SCEnu8Q


I am providing the next video from the same conference with a different motive, that is, make you aware of the stupendous amounts of toxic chemicals being put into the atmosphere that we breath.  To learn about this you should listen this time to the second speaker, Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri.  (So this time you may skip the first speaker by clicking and dragging the time marker directly to 30 minutes.)

Global Climate Change Conference - Part 2
http://youtu.be/eXub7aVfjN4


If, after watching Dr. Perlingieri's discussion of chemtrails (beginning at 46 minutes), you would like more information, I highly recommend going to one of her articles on the subject: http://wakeup-world.com/2013/03/25/chemtrails-do-you-have-heavy-metals-poisoning/


The YouTube particulars for the second video are as follows:

Uploaded on Jan 20, 2010

http://www.mslaw.edu

"Threats to Biological Diversity & Human Health" The Massachusetts School of Law's Educational Forum presents part 2 of a Conference on Global Climate Change. The segment is hosted by Assistant Professor of law Kurt Olson with Patrick A. Parenteau, J.D., Professor of Law from the Vermont School of Law and Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri, author, educator and environmental writer.

The Massachusetts School of Law also presents information on important current affairs to the general public in television and radio broadcasts, an intellectual journal, conferences, author appearances, blogs and books. For more information visit mslaw.edu.

MSLAW podcasts are available on itunes (just search for mslaw) and at http://mslaw.libsyn.com/rss.

Jimmy Carter gets it right! The mainstream media remains mum.

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Thursday, Jul 18, 2013 02:03 PM -0700

Jimmy Carter: US “has no functioning democracy”

The former president weighs in on NSA and the future of Internet platforms like Google and Facebook

By Alberto Riva

Jimmy Carter (Credit: AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

This article originally appeared on International Business Times. 

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter is so concerned about the NSA spying scandal that he thinks it has essentially resulted in a suspension of American democracy.

“America does not at the moment have a functioning democracy,” he said at an event in Atlanta on Tuesday sponsored by the Atlantik Bruecke, a private nonprofit association working to further the German-U.S. relationship. The association’s name is German for “Atlantic bridge.”

Carter’s remarks didn’t appear in the American mainstream press but were reported from Atlanta by the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, whose Washington correspondent Gregor Peter Schmitz said on Twitter he was present at the event. The story doesn’t appear in the English-language section of the Spiegel website and is only available in German.

The 39th U.S. president also said he was pessimistic about the current state of global affairs, wrote Der Spiegel, because there was “no reason for him to be optimistic at this time.” Among the developments that make him uneasy, Carter cited the “falling of Egypt under a military dictatorship.” As president, Carter managed to get then-Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to sign the Camp David peace agreements in 1979.

Carter said a bright spot was “the triumph of modern technology,” which enabled the democratic uprisings of the Arab Spring; however, the NSA spying scandal, Carter said, according to Der Spiegel, endangers precisely those developments, “as major U.S. Internet platforms such as Google or Facebook lose credibility worldwide.”

More Alberto Riva.

Edward Snowden: Traitor or Hero? Ask Judge Andrew Napolitano.

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http://youtu.be/Zr9Iubvv93E


Judge Napolitano: I Still Think Snowden's An American Hero

Don't allow the center of our country to be irretrievably polluted in order to further enrich the already filty rich.

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Please watch this video by Julia Louis-Dreyfus about the dangers of the Keystone XL pipeline, and then take action to stop it. President Obama has vowed not to approve this tar sands pipeline if it significantly increases global warming pollution. Send a message telling him that the Keystone XL fails his climate test and he needs to keep his promise by rejecting it.

http://youtu.be/DSeurl2vo80



To add your name to the appeal, go here.

Elizabeth Warren (D Massachusetts) gets my vote as the finest U.S. Senator of our time. And Arizona's maveric Republican Senator John McCain has returned to his senses. They both advocate the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act. Find out why, and then sign on!

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Sign on to the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act

http://youtu.be/ONEcoq9pjac

To be a Citizen Co-Sponsor go here (it will take you all of 30 seconds).

The American people have suffered a coup d’etat, but they are hesitant to acknowledge it. The regime ruling in Washington today lacks constitutional and legal legitimacy. Americans are ruled by usurpers who claim that the executive branch is above the law and that the US Constitution is a mere “scrap of paper.” -- Paul Craig Roberts

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Coup d’etat — Paul Craig Roberts

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July 13, 2013 | Original Here                                                       Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

Coup d’etat

Paul Craig Roberts

The American people have suffered a coup d’etat, but they are hesitant to acknowledge it. The regime ruling in Washington today lacks constitutional and legal legitimacy. Americans are ruled by usurpers who claim that the executive branch is above the law and that the US Constitution is a mere “scrap of paper.”

An unconstitutional government is an illegitimate government. The oath of allegiance requires defense of the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” As the Founding Fathers made clear, the main enemy of the Constitution is the government itself. Power does not like to be bound and tied down and constantly works to free itself from constraints.

The basis of the regime in Washington is nothing but usurped power. The Obama Regime, like the Bush/Cheney Regime, has no legitimacy. Americans are oppressed by an illegitimate government ruling, not by law and the Constitution, but by lies and naked force. Those in government see the US Constitution as a “chain that binds our hands.”

The South African apartheid regime was more legitimate than the regime in Washington. The apartheid Israeli regime in Palestine is more legitimate. The Taliban are more legitimate. Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein were more legitimate.

The only constitutional protection that the Bush/Obama regime has left standing is the Second Amendment, a meaningless amendment considering the disparity in arms between Washington and what is permitted to the citizenry. No citizen standing with a rifle can protect himself and his family from one of the Department of Homeland Security’s 2,700 tanks, or from a drone, or from a heavily armed SWAT force in body armor.

Like serfs in the dark ages, American citizens can be picked up on the authority of some unknown person in the executive branch and thrown in a dungeon, subject to torture, without any evidence ever being presented to a court or any information to the person’s relatives of his/her whereabouts. Or they can be placed on a list without explanation that curtails their right to travel by air. Every communication of every American, except face-to-face conversation in non-bugged environments, is intercepted and recorded by the National Stasi Agency from which phrases can be strung together to produce a “domestic extremist.”

If throwing an American citizen in a dungeon is too much trouble, the citizen can simply be blown up with a hellfire missile launched from a drone. No explanation is necessary.

For the Obama tyrant, the exterminated human being was just a name on a list.

The president of the united states has declared that he possesses these constitutionally forbidden rights, and his regime has used them to oppress and murder US citizens. The president’s claim that his will is higher than law and the Constitution is public knowledge. Yet, there is no demand for the usurper’s impeachment. Congress is supine. The serfs are obedient.

The people who helped transform a democratically accountable president into a Caesar include John Yoo, who was rewarded for his treason by being accepted as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt school of law. Yoo’s colleague in treason, Jay Scott Bybee was rewarded by being appointed a federal judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. We now have a Berkeley law professor teaching, and a federal circuit judge ruling, that the executive branch is above the law.

The executive branch coup against America has succeeded. The question is: will it stand? Today, the executive branch consists of liars, criminals, and traitors. The evil on earth seems concentrated in Washington.

Washington’s response to Edward Snowden’s evidence that Washington, in total contravention of law both domestic and international, is spying on the entire world has demonstrated to every country that Washington places the pleasure of revenge above law and human rights.

On Washington’s orders, its European puppet states refused overflight permission to the Bolivian presidential airliner carrying President Morales and forced the airliner to land in Austria and be searched. Washington thought that Edward Snowden might be aboard the airliner. Capturing Snowden was more important to Washington than respect for international law and diplomatic immunity.

How long before Washington orders its UK puppet to send in a SWAT team to drag Julian Assange from the Ecuadoran embassy in London and hand him over to the CIA for waterboarding?

On July 12 Snowden met in the Moscow airport with human rights organizations from around the world. He stated that the illegal exercise of power by Washington prevents him from traveling to any of the three Latin American countries who have offered him asylum. Therefore, Snowden said that he accepted Russian President Putin’s conditions and requested asylum in Russia.

Insouciant americans and the young unaware of the past don’t know what this means. During my professional life it was Soviet Russia that persecuted truth tellers, while America gave them asylum and tried to protect them. Today it is Washington that persecutes those who speak the truth, and it is Russia that protects them.

The American public has not, this time, fallen for Washington’s lie that Snowden is a traitor. The polls show that a majority of Americans see Snowden as a whistleblower.

It is not the US that is damaged by Snowden’s revelations. It is the criminal elements in the US government that have pulled off a coup against democracy, the Constitution, and the American people who are damaged. It is the criminals who have seized power, not the American people, who are demanding Snowden’s scalp.

The Obama Regime, like the Bush/Cheney Regime, has no legitimacy. Americans are oppressed by an illegitimate government ruling, not by law and the Constitution, but by lies and naked force.

Under the Obama tyranny, it is not merely Snowden who is targeted for extermination, but every truth-telling American in the country. It was Department of Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano, recently rewarded for her service to tyranny by being appointed Chancellor of the of the University of California system, who said that Homeland Security had shifted its focus from Muslim terrorists to “domestic extremists,” an elastic and undefined term that easily includes truth-tellers like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden who embarrass the government by revealing its crimes. The criminals who have seized illegitimate power in Washington cannot survive unless truth can be suppressed or redefined as treason.

If Americans acquiesce to the coup d’etat, they will have placed themselves firmly in the grip of tyranny.

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You swear your allegiance to the Constitution, not the government ...dummy!

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http://youtu.be/wZ2kTyx2mSY

"Constitution For Dummies" by Judge Andrew Napolitano

AlternativeNews4U




 
Published on Feb 10, 2013

"Constitution For Dummies" by Judge Andrew Napolitano

Judge Andrew Napolitano on the history of the federal government's neglect, disdain, and continual erosion of the Constitution from John Adams to George W. Bush. Learn about the "Alien and Sedition Act", FISA, and the Patriot Act and what we must do to get back to Constitutional fidelity at the federal level.

Originally posted by The Reason Foundation from October 27, 2007
http://reason.org
http://reason.tv
http://youtube.com/ReasonTV

Susan Lindauer, then a high ranking CIA agent, was tasked with interrogating Iraqi diplomats regarding any knowledge they might have had regarding a possible attack on the World Trade Center. When her three superiors (Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld) ignored Iraqi evidence that someone was planning such an attack, she carried the story to Congress, a whistleblowing act that resulted in her being held in solitary confinement until well after the attacks took place.

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“Breaking the Set:” Bush & Cheney Knew About 9/11 Months Before It Happened

Original Here

YouTube -- Veterans Today

By Susan Lindauer

Abby Martin is one of the best interviewers I have ever encountered in the corporate media. Abby has guts and smarts. Our interview on “Breaking the Set” was ground-breaking for not flinching from hard questions or provocative answers!

"Imagine the aircraft of the president of France being forced down in Latin America on 'suspicion' that it was carrying a political refugee to safety..." "Imagine the response from Paris, let alone the 'international community', as the governments of the west call themselves."

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Forcing down Evo Morales's plane was an act of air piracy

Denying the Bolivian president air space was a metaphor for the gangsterism that now rules the world

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John Pilger

The Guardian, Thursday 4 July 2013 14.00 EDT
Original Here

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President Morales arrives back in La Paz, Bolivia. ‘Imagine the response from Paris if the French president's plane was forced down in Latin America.’ Photograph: Zuma/Rex Features

Imagine the aircraft of the president of France being forced down in Latin America on "suspicion" that it was carrying a political refugee to safety – and not just any refugee but someone who has provided the people of the world with proof of criminal activity on an epic scale.

Imagine the response from Paris, let alone the "international community", as the governments of the west call themselves. To a chorus of baying indignation from Whitehall to Washington, Brussels to Madrid, heroic special forces would be dispatched to rescue their leader and, as sport, smash up the source of such flagrant international gangsterism. Editorials would cheer them on, perhaps reminding readers that this kind of piracy was exhibited by the German Reich in the 1930s.

The forcing down of Bolivian President Evo Morales's plane – denied airspace by France, Spain and Portugal, followed by his 14-hour confinement while Austrian officials demanded to "inspect" his aircraft for the "fugitive" Edward Snowden – was an act of air piracy and state terrorism. It was a metaphor for the gangsterism that now rules the world and the cowardice and hypocrisy of bystanders who dare not speak its name.

In Moscow, Morales had been asked about Snowden – who remains trapped in the city's airport. "If there were a request [for political asylum]," he said, "of course, we would be willing to debate and consider the idea." That was clearly enough provocation for the Godfather. "We have been in touch with a range of countries that had a chance of having Snowden land or travel through their country," said a US state department official.

The French – having squealed about Washington spying on their every move, as revealed by Snowden – were first off the mark, followed by the Portuguese. The Spanish then did their bit by enforcing a flight ban of their airspace, giving the Godfather's Viennese hirelings enough time to find out if Snowden was indeed invoking article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."

Those paid to keep the record straight have played their part with a cat-and-mouse media game that reinforces the Godfather's lie that this heroic young man is running from a system of justice, rather than preordained, vindictive incarceration that amounts to torture – ask Bradley Manning and the living ghosts in Guantánamo.

Historians seem to agree that the rise of fascism in Europe might have been averted had the liberal or left political class understood the true nature of its enemy. The parallels today are very different, but the Damocles sword over Snowden, like the casual abduction of Bolivia's president, ought to stir us into recognising the true nature of the enemy.

Snowden's revelations are not merely about privacy, or civil liberty, or even mass spying. They are about the unmentionable: that the democratic facades of the US now barely conceal a systematic gangsterism historically identified with, if not necessarily the same as, fascism. On Tuesday, a US drone killed 16 people in North Waziristan, "where many of the world's most dangerous militants live", said the few paragraphs I read. That by far the world's most dangerous militants had hurled the drones was not a consideration. President Obama personally sends them every Tuesday.

In his acceptance of the 2005 Nobel prize in literature, Harold Pinter referred to "a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed". He asked why "the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities" of the Soviet Union were well known in the west while America's crimes were "superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged". The most enduring silence of the modern era covered the extinction and dispossession of countless human beings by a rampant US and its agents. "But you wouldn't know it," said Pinter. "It never happened. Even while it was happening it never happened."

This hidden history – not really hidden, of course, but excluded from the consciousness of societies drilled in American myths and priorities – has never been more vulnerable to exposure. Snowden's whistleblowing, like that of Manning and Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, threatens to break the silence Pinter described. In revealing a vast Orwellian police state apparatus servicing history's greatest war-making machine, they illuminate the true extremism of the 21st century. Unprecedented, Germany's Der Spiegel has described the Obama administration as "soft totalitarianism". If the penny is falling, we might all look closer to home.

www.johnpilger.com

Latin America furious over U.S., France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal colluding to "kidnap" the Bolivian head of state, Evo Morales.

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theREALnews                                                                               Permalink

Bolivians Indignant at European Treatment of President Morales

South American bloc UNASUR holds emergency meeting condemning European and U.S. actions - July 5, 13

Here I repost in a slightly different format my friend Michael Collins' post on "Independence Day" reviewing the thoughts and observations of some truely great American "independents" regarding the meaning of freedom and what must be done to keep it. Unfortunately, very few such patriots of this caliber take part in today's U.S. government.

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Happy Independents Day – July 4, 2013
By Michael Collins, on July 4th, 2013                                                                Original Here

We’ve had many years of celebrating Independence so this year, let’s include a recognition of the outstanding tradition of political independents that provide so much to this country. Here are some key independents from my perspective. Suggest your own in the replies. Have a great 4th!!! 

Mark Twain

There must be two Americas: one that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive’s new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get his land. . .

True, we have crushed a deceived and confiding people; we have turned against the weak and the friendless who trusted us; we have stamped out a just and intelligent and well-ordered republic; we have stabbed an ally in the back and slapped the face of a guest; we have bought a Shadow from an enemy that hadn’t it to sell; we have robbed a trusting friend of his land and his liberty; we have invited clean young men to shoulder a discredited musket and do bandit’s work under a flag which bandits have been accustomed to fear, not to follow; we have debauched America’s honor and blackened her face before the world. . .

And as for a flag for the Philippine Province, it is easily managed. We can have a special one–our States do it: we can have just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones.  Mark Twain, 1901

Eugene V. Debs

In this country, the most favored beneath the bending skies, we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child, and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity.

I believe, Your Honor, in common with all Socialists, that this nation ought to own and control its own industries. I believe, as all Socialists do, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned, that industry, the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of a few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all. Eugene V. Debs, September, 1918

General Smedley Butler

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its “finger men” to point out enemies, its “muscle men” to destroy enemies, its “brain men” to plan war preparations, and a “Big Boss” Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.   General Smedley Butler, USMC, 1933

Malcolm X

When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won’t do to get it, or what he doesn’t believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn’t believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire . . . or preserve his freedom. Malcolm X
 

Cesar Chavez

Those who attack our union often say, ‘It’s not really a union. It’s something else: A social movement. A civil rights movement. It’s something dangerous.’

They’re half right. The United Farm Workers is first and foremost a union. A union like any other. A union that either produces for its members on the bread and butter issues or doesn’t survive.  But the UFW has always been something more than a union –although it’s never been dangerous if you believe in the Bill of Rights.

The UFW was the beginning! We attacked that historical source of shame and infamy that our people in this country lived with. We attacked that injustice, not by complaining; not by seeking hand-outs; not by becoming soldiers in the War on Poverty.  ≈

We organized!  Cesar Chavez, November 1984

Sojourner Truth, abolitionist, women’s rights activist

You have been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again.

 

Frederick Douglas, abolitionist

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.

Henry Wallace FDR’s Sec. of Ag. and Vice President, and presidential candidate

Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion.
Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.
They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.

Bernie Sanders

In my view, the President of the United States of America needs to stand with the American people and say to the Republican leadership that enough is enough. No, we will not balance the budget on the backs of working families, the elderly, the sick, the children, and the poor, who have already sacrificed enough in terms of lost jobs, lost wages, lost homes, and lost pensions. Yes, we will demand that millionaires and billionaires and the largest corporations in America contribute to deficit reduction as a matter of shared sacrifice. Yes, we will reduce unnecessary and wasteful spending at the Pentagon. And, no we will not be blackmailed once again by the Republican leadership in Washington, who are threatening to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States government for the first time in our nation’s history unless they get everything they want – See more at: http://vtdigger.org/2011/06/28/bernie-sanders-senate/#sthash.Iwl2P6q2.dpuf. Bernie Sanders, Senate Speech, June 28, 2011

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

- See more at: http://agonist.org/happy-independents-day-july-4-2013/#sthash.w0Lgtskv.dpuf

Great idea: Bradley Manning nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize!

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Bradley Manning should win the Nobel Peace Prize
As a peace prize winner myself, I am nominating Manning for this honor for his work to help end the Iraq War and other conflicts

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Mairead Corrigan-Maguire

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 30 June 2013 08.30 EDT

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Army Pfc Bradley Manning is escorted into a courthouse at Fort Meade on the third day of his court martial. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

Peace is more than simply the absence of war; it is the active creation of something better. Alfred Nobel recognized this when he created alongside those for chemistry, literature, medicine and physics, an annual prize for outstanding contributions in peace. Nobel's foresight is a reminder to us all that peace must be created, maintained, and advanced, and it is indeed possible for one individual to have an extraordinary impact. For this year's prize, I have chosen to nominate US Army Pfc Bradley Manning, for I can think of no one more deserving. His incredible disclosure of secret documents to Wikileaks helped end the Iraq War, and may have helped prevent further conflicts elsewhere.

I recently visited Syria, where I met a few of the millions of refugees and internally displaced people whose lives have been torn apart by the ongoing conflict in that country. I learned from those I spoke to, both within the government and in opposition groups, that while there is a legitimate and long-overdue movement for peace and non-violent reform in Syria, the worst acts of violence are being perpetrated by outside groups. Extremist groups from around the world have converged upon Syria, bent on turning this conflict into one of ideological hatred.

In recent years this would have spelled an undeniable formula for United States intervention. However, the world has changed in the years since Manning's whistleblowing – the Middle East especially. In Bahrain, Tunisia, Egypt, and now Turkey, advocates of democracy have joined together to fight against their own governments' control of information, and used the free-flowing data of social media to help build enormously successful non-violent movements. Some activists of what has come to be known as the Arab Spring have even directly credited Bradley Manning, and the information he disclosed, as an inspiration for their struggles.

In a Middle East newly dedicated to democratic flow of information, those who would commit human rights violations can more easily be held accountable. If not for whistleblower Bradley Manning, the world still might not know of how US forces committed covert crimes in the name of spreading democracy in Iraq, killing innocent civilians in incidents such as the one depicted in the "Collateral Murder" video, and supporting Iraqi prisoner torture. Now, those who would support foreign intervention in the Middle East know that every action would be scrutinized under international human rights law. Clearly, this is for the best. International peacekeepers, as well as experts and civilians inside Syria, are nearly unanimous in their view that United States involvement would only worsen this conflict.

Around the world, Manning is hailed as a peacemaker and a hero. His nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize is a reflection of this. Yet at his home in America, Manning stands trial for charges of espionage and "aiding the enemy". This should not be considered a refutation of his candidacy – rather, he is in good company. Burmese politician Aung San Suu Kyi and Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo were each awarded the prize in recent years while imprisoned by their home countries.

Last week at Manning's trial, the public learned that at the time Manning released his information, WikiLeaks stated they wanted to publish "the concealed documents or recordings most sought after by a country's journalists, activists, historians, lawyers, police or human rights investigators". Manning's disclosures to Wikileaks only "aided the enemy," as his prosecutors charge, if the enemy is international cooperation and peace itself.

Manning is the only one on trial, yet what of those who committed the atrocities he revealed? The United States, the most militarized country on earth, should stand for something better than war. Its government must be open to "debates, discussions and reforms" concerning its foreign policy, to use Manning's own words. By heeding Pfc Bradley Manning's message on the importance of transparency, America's government can once again rebuild its image in the eyes of the world, and spread democracy not through foreign invasions, but through setting a strong example.

I hope American leaders will embrace the U.S. constitution, and base their national and foreign policies on ethical values, human rights and international law.