One 77-year-old’s search for the truth: 9/11, election fraud, illegal wars, Wall Street criminality, a stolen nuke, the neocon wars, control of the U.S. government by global corporations, the unjustified assault on Social Security, media complicity, and the "Great Recession" about to become the second Great Depression. "The most important truths are hidden from us by the powerful few who strive to steal the American dream by keeping We the People in the dark."
Why War Is Inevitable Paul Craig Roberts Memorial Day is when we commemorate our war dead. Like the Fourth of
July, Memorial Day is being turned into a celebration of war. Those who lose family members and dear friends to war don’t want the
deaths to have been in vain. Consequently, wars become glorious deeds
performed by noble soldiers fighting for truth, justice, and the
American way. Patriotic speeches tell us how much we owe to those who
gave their lives so that America could remain free. The speeches are well-intentioned, but the speeches create a false
reality that supports ever more wars. None of America’s wars had
anything to do with keeping America free. To the contrary, the wars
swept away our civil liberties, making us unfree. President Lincoln issued an executive order for the arrest and
imprisonment of northern newspaper reporters and editors. He shut down
300 northern newspapers and held 14,000 political prisoners. Lincoln
arrested war critic US Representative Clement Vallandigham from Ohio and
exiled him to the Confederacy. President Woodrow Wilson used WWI to
suppress free speech, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt used WWII to
intern 120,000 US citizens of Japanese descent on the grounds that race
made them suspect. Professor Samuel Walker concluded that President
George W. Bush used the “war on terror” for an across the board assault
on US civil liberty, making the Bush regime the greatest danger American
liberty has ever faced. Lincoln forever destroyed states’ rights, but the suspension of
habeas corpus and free speech that went hand in hand with America’s
three largest wars was lifted at war’s end. However, President George W.
Bush’s repeal of the Constitution has been expanded by President Obama
and codified by Congress and executive orders into law. Far from
defending our liberties, our soldiers who died in “the war on terror”
died so that the president can indefinitely detain US citizens without
due process of law and murder US citizens on suspicion alone without any
accountability to law or the Constitution. The conclusion is unavoidable that America’s wars have not protected
our liberty but, instead, destroyed liberty. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn
said, “A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.” Southern secession did pose a threat to Washington’s empire, but not to the American people.
Neither the Germans of WWI vintage nor the Germans and Japanese of
WWII vintage posed any threat to the US. As historians have made
completely clear, Germany did not start WWI and did not go to war for
the purpose of territorial expansion. Japan’s ambitions were in Asia.
Hitler did not want war with England and France. Hitler’s territorial
ambitions were mainly to restore German provinces stripped from Germany
as WWI booty in violation of President Wilson’s guarantees. Any other
German ambitions were to the East. Neither country had any plans to
invade the US. Japan attacked the US fleet at Pearl Harbor hoping to
remove an obstacle to its activities in Asia, not as a precursor to an
invasion of America. Certainly the countries ravaged by Bush and Obama in the 21st
century–Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Pakistan, and Yemen
posed no military threat to the US. Indeed, these were wars used by a
tyrannical executive branch to establish the basis of the Stasi State
that now exists in the US. The truth is hard to bear, but the facts are clear. America’s wars
have been fought in order to advance Washington’s power, the profits of
bankers and armaments industries, and the fortunes of US companies.
Marine General Smedley Butler said, “ I served in all commissioned ranks
from a second Lieutenant to a Major General. And during that time, 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 for
capitalism.” It is more or less impossible to commemorate the war dead without
glorifying them, and it is impossible to glorify them without glorifying
their wars. For the entirety of the 21st century the US has been at war, not war
against massed armies or threats to American freedom, but wars against
civilians, against women, children, and village elders, and wars against
our own liberty. Elites with a vested interest in these wars tell us
that the wars will have to go on for another 20 to 30 years before we
defeat “the terrorist threat.” This, of course, is nonsense. There was no terrorist threat until
Washington began trying to create terrorists by military attacks,
justified by lies, on Muslim populations. Washington succeeded with its war lies to the point that Washington’s audacity and hubris have outgrown Washington’s judgment. By overthrowing the democratically elected government in Ukraine,
Washington has brought the United States into confrontation with Russia.
This is a confrontation that could end badly, perhaps for Washington
and perhaps for the entire world. If Gaddafi and Assad would not roll over for Washington, why does
Washington think Russia will? Russia is not Libya or Syria. Washington
is the bully who having beat up the kindergarden kid, now thinks he can
take on the college linebacker. The Bush and Obama regimes have destroyed America’s reputation with
their incessant lies and violence against other peoples. The world sees
Washington as the prime threat. Worldwide polls consistently show that people around the world regard
the US and Israel as the two countries that pose the greatest threat to
peace. http://www.ibtimes.com/gallup-poll-biggest-threat-world-peace-america-1525008 and http://www.jewishfederations.org/european-poll-israel-biggest-threat-to-world-peace.aspx The countries that Washington’s propaganda declares to be “rogue
states” and the “axis of evil,” such as Iran and North Korea, are far
down the list when the peoples in the world are consulted. It could not
be more clear that the world does not believe Washington’s self-serving
propaganda. The world sees the US and Israel as the rogue states. The US and Israel are the only two countries in the world that are in
the grip of ideologies. The US is in the grip of the Neoconservative
ideology which has declared the US to be the “exceptional, indispensable
country” chosen by history to exercise hegemony over all others. This
ideology is buttressed by the Brzezinski and Wolfowitz doctrines that
are the basis of US foreign policy. The Israeli government is in the grip of the Zionist ideology that
declares a “greater Israel” from the Nile to the Euphrates. Many
Israelis themselves do not accept this ideology, but it is the ideology
of the “settlers” and those who control the Israeli government. Ideologies are important causes of war. Just as the Hitlerian
ideology of German superiority is mirrored in the Neoconservative
ideology of US superiority, the Communist ideology that the working
class is superior to the capitalist class is mirrored in the Zionist
ideology that Israelis are superior to Palestinians. Zionists have never
heard of squatters’ rights and claim that recent Jewish immigrants into
Palestine–invaders really–have the right to land occupied by others for
millenniums. Washington’s and Israel’s doctrines of superiority over others do not
sit very well with the ”others.” When Obama declared in a speech that
Americans are the exceptional people, Russia’s President Putin
responded, “God created us all equal.” To the detriment of its population, the Israeli government has made
endless enemies. Israel has effectively isolated itself in the world.
Israel’s continued existence depends entirely on the willingness and
ability of Washington to protect Israel. This means that Israel’s power
is derivative of Washington’s power. Washington’s power is a different story. As the only economy
standing after WWII, the US dollar became the world money. This role
for the dollar has given Washington financial hegemony over the world,
the main source of Washington’s power. As other countries rise,
Washington’s hegemony is imperiled. To prevent other countries from rising, Washington invokes the
Brzezinski and Wolfowitz doctrines. To be brief, the Brzezinski doctrine
says that in order to remain the only superpower, Washington must
control the Eurasian land mass. Brzezinski is willing for this to occur
peacefully by suborning the Russian government into Washington’s empire.
”A loosely confederated Russia . . . a decentralized Russia would be
less susceptible to imperial mobilization.” In other words, break up
Russia into associations of semi-autonomous states whose politicians can
be suborned by Washington’s money. Brzezinski propounded “a geo-strategy for Eurasia.” In Brzezinski’s
strategy, China and “a confederated Russia” are part of a
“transcontinental security framework,” managed by Washington in order to
perpetuate the role of the US as the world’s only superpower. I once asked my colleague, Brzezinski, that if everyone was allied
with us, who were we organized against? My question surprised him,
because I think that Brzezinski remains caught up in Cold War strategy
even after the demise of the Soviet Union. In Cold War thinking it was
important to have the upper hand or else be at risk of being eliminated
as a player. The importance of prevailing became all consuming, and this
consuming drive survived the Soviet collapse. Prevailing over others is the only foreign policy that Washington knows. The mindset that America must prevail set the stage for the
Neoconservatives and their 21st century wars, which, with Washington’s
overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine, has
resulted in a crisis that has brought Washington into direct conflict
with Russia. I know the strategic institutes that serve Washington. I was the
occupant of the William E.Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for
Strategic and International Studies, for a dozen years. The idea is
prevalent that Washington must prevail over Russia in Ukraine or
Washington will lose prestige and its superpower status. The idea of prevailing always leads to war once one power thinks it has prevailed. The path to war is reinforced by the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Paul
Wolfowitz, the neoconservative intellectual who formulated US military
and foreign policy doctrine, wrote among many similar passages: “Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival,
either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere [China],
that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet
Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional
defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile
power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated
control, be sufficient to generate global power.” In the Wolfowitz Doctrine, any other strong country is defined as a threat and a power hostile to the US regardless of how willing that country is to get along with the US for mutual benefit. The difference between Brzezinski and the Neoconservatives is that
Brzezinski wants to suborn Russia and China by including them in the
empire as important elements whose voices would be heard, If only for
diplomatic reasons, whereas the Neoconservatives are prepared to rely on
military force combined with internal subversion orchestrated with US
financed NGOs and even terrorist organizations. Neither the US nor Israel is embarrassed by their worldwide
reputations as the two countries that pose the greatest threat. In
fact, both countries are proud to be recognized as the greatest threats.
The foreign policy of both countries is devoid of any diplomacy. US
and Israeli foreign policy rests on violence alone. Washington tells
countries to do as Washington says or be “bombed into the stone age.”
Israel declares all Palestinians, even women and children, to be
“terrorists,” and proceeds to shoot them down in the streets, claiming
that Israel is merely protecting itself against terrorists. Israel,
which does not recognize the existence of Palestine as a country, covers
up its crimes with the claim that Palestinians do not accept the
existence of Israel. “We don’t need no stinking diplomacy. We got power.” This is the attitude that guarantees war, and that is where the US is
taking the world. The prime minister of Britain, the chancellor of
Germany, and the president of France are Washington’s enablers. They
provide the cover for Washington. Instead of war crimes, Washington has
“coalitions of the willing” and military invasions that bring
“democracy and women’s rights” to non-compliant countries. China gets much the same treatment. A country with four times the US
population but a smaller prison population, China is constantly
criticized by Washington as an “authoritarian state.” China is accused
of human rights abuses while US police brutalize the US population. The problem for humanity is that Russia and China are not Libya and
Iraq. These two countries possess strategic nuclear weapons. Their land
mass greatly exceeds that of the US. The US, which was unable to
successfully occupy Baghdad or Afghanistan, has no prospect of
prevailing against Russia and China in conventional warfare. Washington
will push the nuclear button. What else can we expect from a government
devoid of morality? The world has never experienced rogue states comparable to Washington
and Israel. Both governments are prepared to murder anyone and
everyone. Look at the crisis that Washington has created in Ukraine and
the dangers thereof. On May 23, 2014, Russia’s President Putin spoke to
the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, a three-day gathering
of delegations from 62 countries and CEOs from 146 of the largest
Western corporations. Putin did not speak of the billions of dollars in trade deals that
were being formalized. Instead Putin spoke of the crisis that Washington
had brought to Russia, and he criticized Europe for being Washington’s
vassals for supporting Washington’s propaganda against Russia and
Washington’s interference in vital Russian interests. Putin was diplomatic in his language, but the message that powerful
economic interests from the US and Europe received is that it will lead
to trouble if Washington and European governments continue to ignore
Russia’s concerns and continue to act as if they can interfere in
Russia’s vital interests as if Russia did not exist. The heads of these large corporations will carry this message back to
Washington and European capitals. Putin made it clear that the lack of
dialogue with Russia could lead to the West making the mistake of
putting Ukraine in NATO and establishing missile bases on Russia’s
border with Ukraine. Putin has learned that Russia cannot rely on good
will from the West, and Putin made it clear, short of issuing a threat,
that Western military bases in Ukraine are unacceptable. Washington will continue to ignore Russia. However, European capitals will have to decide whether Washington is pushing them into conflict with
Russia that is against European interests. Thus, Putin is testing
European politicians to determine if there is sufficient intelligence
and independence in Europe for a rapprochement. If Washington in its overbearing arrogance and hubris forces Putin to
write off the West, the Russian/Chinese strategic alliance, which is
forming to counteract Washington’s hostile policy of surrounding both
countries with military bases, will harden into preparation for the
inevitable war. The survivors, if any, can thank the Neoconservatives, the Wolfowitz
doctrine, and the Brzezinski strategy for the destruction of life on
earth. The American public contains a large number of misinformed people who
think they know everything. These people have been programmed by US
and Israeli propaganda to equate Islam with political ideology. They
believe that Islam, a religion, is instead a militarist doctrine that
calls for the overthrow of Western civilization, as if anything remains
of Western civilization. Many believe this propaganda even in the face of complete proof that
the Sunnis and Shi’ites hate one another far more than they hate their
Western oppressors and occupiers. The US has departed Iraq, but the
carnage today is as high or higher than during the US invasion and
occupation. The daily death tolls from the Sunni/Shi’ite conflict are
extraordinary. A religion this disunited poses no threat to anyone
except Islamists themselves. Washington successfully used Islamist
disunity to overthrow Gaddafi, and is currently using Islamist disunity
in an effort to overthrow the government of Syria. Islamists cannot even
unite to defend themselves against Western aggression. There is no
prospect of Islamists uniting in order to overthrow the West. Even if Islam could do so, it would be pointless for Islam to
overthrow the West. The West has overthrown itself. In the US the
Constitution has been murdered by the Bush and Obama regimes. Nothing
remains. As the US is the Constitution, what was once the United States no longer exists. A different entity has taken its place. Europe died with the European Union, which requires the termination
of sovereignty of all member countries. A few unaccountable bureaucrats
in Brussels have become superior to the wills of the French, German,
British, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Greek, and Portuguese peoples. Western civilization is a skeleton. It still stands, barely, but
there is no life in it. The blood of liberty has departed. Western
peoples look at their governments and see nothing but enemies. Why else
has Washington militarized local police forces, equipping them as if
they were occupying armies? Why else has Homeland Security, the
Department of Agriculture, and even the Postal Service and Social
Security Administration ordered billions of rounds of ammunition and
even submachine guns? What is this taxpayer-paid-for arsenal for if not
to suppress US citizens? As the prominent trends forecaster Gerald Celente spells out in the current Trends Journal,
“uprisings span four corners of the globe.” Throughout Europe angry,
desperate and outraged peoples march against EU financial policies that
are driving the peoples into the ground. Despite all of Washington’s
efforts with its well funded fifth columns known as NGOs to destabilize
Russia and China, both the Russian and Chinese governments have far more
support from their people than do the US and Europe. In the 20th century Russia and China learned what tyranny is, and they have rejected it. In the US tyranny has entered under the guise of the “war on terror,”
a hoax used to scare the sheeple into abandoning their civil liberties,
thus freeing Washington from accountability to law and permitting
Washington to erect a militarist police state. Ever since WWII
Washington has used its financial hegemony and the “Soviet threat,” now
converted into the “Russian threat,” to absorb Europe into Washington’s
empire. Putin is hoping that the interests of European countries will prevail
over subservience to Washington. This is Putin’s current bet. This is
the reason Putin remains unprovoked by Washington’s provocations in
Ukraine. If Europe fails Russia, Putin and China will prepare for the war that Washington’s drive for hegemony makes inevitable.
“No legal issue arises when the United States responds to a
challenge to its power, position, and prestige.” Dean Acheson , 1962,
speaking to the American Society of International Law.
Dean Acheson declared 51 years ago that power, position, and prestige
are the ingredients of national security and that national security
trumps law. In the United States democracy takes a back seat to
“national security,” a prerogative of the executive branch of
government.
National security is where the executive branch hides its crimes
against law, both domestic and international, its crimes against the
Constitution, its crimes against innocent citizens both at home and
abroad, and its secret agendas that it knows that the American public
would never support.
“National security” is the cloak that the executive branch uses to make certain that the US government is unaccountable.
Without accountable government there is no civil liberty and no
democracy except for the sham voting that existed in the Soviet Union
and now exists in the US.
There have been periods in US history, such as President Lincoln’s
war to prevent secession, World War I, and World War II, when
accountable government was impaired. These were short episodes of the
Constitution’s violation, and the Constitution was reinstated in the
aftermath of the wars. However, since the Clinton regime, the
accountability of government has been declining for more than two
decades, longer than the three wars combined.
In law there is the concept of adverse possession, popularly known as
“squatters’ rights.” A non-owner who succeeds in occupying a piece of
property or some one else’s right for a certain time without being
evicted enjoys the ownership title conveyed to him. The reasoning is
that by not defending his rights, the owner showed his disinterest and
in effect gave his rights away.
Americans have not defended their rights conveyed by the US
Constitution for the duration of the terms of three presidents. The
Clinton regime was not held accountable for its illegal attack on
Serbia. The Bush regime was not held accountable for its illegal
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Obama regime was not held
accountable for its renewed attack on Afghanistan and its illegal
attacks on Libya, Pakistan, and Yemen, and by its proxies on Syria.
We also have other strictly illegal and unconstitutional acts of
government for which the government has not been held accountable. The
Bush regimes’ acts of torture, indefinite detention, and warrantless
spying, and the Obama regime’s acts of indefinite detention, warrantless
spying, and murder of US citizens without due process. As the Obama
regime lies through its teeth, we have no way of knowing whether torture
is still practiced.
If these numerous criminal acts of the US government spread over the
terms of three presidents pass into history as unchallenged events, the
US government will have acquired squatters’ rights in lawlessness. The
US Constitution will be, as President George W. Bush is reported to have
declared, “a scrap of paper.”
Lawlessness is the hallmark of tyranny enforced by the police state.
In a police state law is not a protector of rights but a weapon in the
hands of government. [see Roberts & Stratton, The Tyranny of Good
Intentions] The accused has no recourse to the accusation, which does
not require evidence presented to a court. The accused is guilty by
accusation alone and can be shot in the back of the head, as under
Stalin, or blown up by a drone missile, as under Obama.
As a person aware of the long struggle against the tyrannical state, I
have been amazed and disheartened by the acceptance not only by the
insouciant American public, but also by law schools, bar associations,
media, Congress and the Supreme Court of the executive branch’s claim to
be above both law and the US Constitution.
As Lawrence Stratton and I show in our book about how the law was
lost, liberals and conservatives chasing after their favorite devils,
such as child abusers and drug pushers, and prosecutors, judges, and
police devoted to conviction and not to justice, have gradually eroded
over time the concept of law as a protection of the innocent. With the
atmosphere of threat created by 9/11, the final destruction of the
protective features of law was quickly achieved in the name of making us
safe from terrorists.
The fact that we are no longer safe from our own government did not register.
This is how liberty was lost, and America with it.
Can liberty be regained? Probably not, but there is a chance if
Americans have the necessary strength of character. The chance comes
from the now known fact that the neoconservative Bush/Cheney regime took
America and its puppet states to war in Afghanistan and Iraq entirely
on the basis of lies. As all evidence proves, these wars were not the
results of mistaken intelligence. They were the products of intentional
lies.
The weapons inspectors told the Bush regime that there were no
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Despite this known fact, the Bush
regime sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN with fabricated
evidence to convince the world that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass
destruction” and was a threat to the world. Even if such weapons had
existed in Iraq, many countries have them, including the US and Israel,
and the presence of weapons does not under the Nuremberg Laws justify
unprovoked aggression against the possessor. Under the Nuremberg Laws,
unprovoked military aggression is a war crime, not the possession of
weapons that many countries have. The war crime was committed by the US
and its “coalition of the willing,” not by Saddam Hussein.
As for the invasion of Afghanistan, we know from the last video of
Osama bin Laden in October 2001, attested by experts to be the last
appearance of a man dying of renal failure and other diseases, that he
declared that he had no responsibility for 9/11 and that Americans
should look to their own government. We know as a reported fact that
the Afghan Taliban offered to turn over Osama bin Laden to Washington if
the Bush regime would provide the evidence that indicated bin Laden was
responsible. The Bush regime refused to hand over the (non-existent)
evidence and, with support of the corrupt and cowardly Congress and the
presstitute media, attacked Afghanistan without any legal justification.
Remember, the FBI has stated publicly that it has no evidence that
Osama bin Laden was responsible for 9/11 and that that is why the crimes
for which the FBI wanted bin Laden did not include responsibility for
the 9/11 attack.
The war propaganda campaign was well prepared. Yellow ribbon decals
were handed out for cars proclaiming “support the troops.” In other
words, anyone who raises the obvious questions is not supporting the
troops. Still today insouciant Americans sport these decals on their
cars unaware that what they are supporting are the murder of foreign
women, children and village elders, the death and physical and mental
maiming of American soldiers, and the worldwide destruction of the
reputation of the United States, with America’s main rival, China, now
calling for a “de-Americanized world.”
A country with a population as insouciant as Americans is a country in which the government can do as it pleases.
Now that we have complete proof that the criminal Bush regime took
our country to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq solely on the basis of
intentional lies, how can the legal institutions, the courts, the
American people possibly tolerate the Obama regime’s ignoring of the
obvious crimes? How can America simply accept Obama’s statement that we
mustn’t look back, only move ahead? If the US government, which has
committed the worst crimes of our generation, cannot be held accountable
and punished, how can federal, state, and local courts fill up American
prisons with people who smoked pot and with people who did not
sufficiently grovel before the police state.
Doubtless, the Obama regime, should it obey the law and prosecute the
Bush regime’s crimes, would have to worry about being prosecuted for
its own crimes, which are just as terrible. Nevertheless, I believe that
the Obama regime could survive if it put all the blame on the Bush
regime, prosecuted the Bush criminals, and desisted from the illegal
actions that it currently supports. This would save the Constitution
and US civil liberty, but it would require the White House to take the
risk that by enforcing US law, US law might be enforced against its own
illegal and unconstitutional acts by a succeeding regime.
The Bush/Cheney/John Yoo neoconservative regime having got rid of US
law, no doubt the Obama regime thinks it is best to leave the situation
as it is, rid of law.
Without accountability, America is finished. Not only will Americans
live in a police state with no civil liberties, but the rest of the
world is already looking at America with a jaundiced eye. The US is
being reconstituted as an authoritarian state. All it takes is one
failure of accountability for the police state to become entrenched, and
we have had numerous failures of accountability. Does anyone really
believe that some future government is going to make restitution to
persecuted truth-tellers, such as Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and
Edward Snowdon, as was done for Japanese Americans?
Now that we know for a certain fact that the invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq were based on propaganda and lies, Congress and the world
media should demand to know what was the real secret agenda. What are
the real reasons for which Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded?
No truthful explanation for these wars exists.
Paul O’Neill, the Bush regime’s first Treasury Secretary, is on
public record stating that at the very first cabinet meeting, long prior
to 9/11, the agenda was a US attack on Iraq.
In other words, the Bush regime’s attack on Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11.
What was the Bush regime’s secret agenda, kept secret by the Obama
regime, that required an illegal, war criminal, attack on a sovereign
country, an action for which officials of Hitler’s government were
executed? What is the real purpose of Washington’s wars?
It is totally and completely obvious that the wars have nothing to do
with protecting Americans from terrorism. If anything, the wars stir
up and create terrorists. The wars create hatred of America that never
previously existed. Despite this, America is free of terrorists attacks
except for the ones orchestrated by the FBI. What the fabricated
“terror threat” has done is to create a thorough-going domestic police
state that is unaccountable.
Americans need to understand that they have lost their country. The
rest of the world needs to recognize that Washington is not merely the
most complete police state since Stalinism, but also a threat to the
entire world. The hubris and arrogance of Washington, combined with
Washington’s huge supply of weapons of mass destruction, make Washington
the greatest threat that has ever existed to all life on the planet.
Washington is the enemy of all humanity.
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!
Bush advisor: Hastings crash ‘consistent with a car cyberattack’ Published time: June 25, 2013 16:19 Edited time: June 26, 2013 15:59 Original here
A former cybersecurity advisor to President George W. Bush says a
sophisticated computer hack could have been the cause of the automobile
accident that claimed the life of journalist Michael Hastings last week
in Los Angeles.
Richard Clarke, a State Department official-turned-special
advisor to several United States presidents, said the early
morning auto crash last Tuesday was "consistent with a car
cyberattack,” raising new questions about the death of the
award-winning journalist.
Hastings died last week when his 2013 Mercedes C250 coupe
collided with a tree in Los Angeles, California on the morning of
June 18. He was reportedly traveling at a high rate of speed and
failed to stop at a red light moments before the single-car
crash. He was only 33.
Speaking to Huffington Post this week, Clarke said that a
cyberattack waged at the vehicle could have caused the fatal
collision.
"What has been revealed as a result of some research at
universities is that it's relatively easy to hack your way into
the control system of a car, and to do such things as cause
acceleration when the driver doesn't want acceleration, to throw
on the brakes when the driver doesn't want the brakes on, to
launch an air bag," Clarke told The Huffington Post. "You
can do some really highly destructive things now, through hacking
a car, and it's not that hard."
"So if there were a cyberattack on the car — and I'm not
saying there was," Clarke continued, "I think whoever did
it would probably get away with it."
The Los Angeles Police Department said they don’t expect foul
play was involved in the crash, but an investigation has been
opened nonetheless.
In an email reportedly sent by Hastings hours before the crash,
he told colleagues that he thought he was the target of a federal
investigation.
“Hey [redacted}, the Feds are interviewing my ‘close friends
and associates,’” Hastings wrote 15 hours before the crash.
“Also: I’m onto a big story, and need to go off the rada[r]
for a bit,” he added. “All the best, and hope to see you
all soon.”
The email was supplied to KTLA News in Los Angeles by Staff Sgt.
Joseph Biggs, who says he met Hastings while the journalist was
embedded in Afghanistan in 2008. It was reportedly send to a
handful of Hastings’ associates and was blind-copied to Biggs.
“I just said it doesn’t seem like him. I don’t know, I just
had this gut feeling and it just really bothered me,” Biggs
told KTLA.
Reporters at Buzzfeed where Hastings worked say they received an
email from their colleague, but the Federal Bureau of
Investigation issued a statement two days after Hastings’ death
to quash rumors that they had been looking into the reporter.
“At no time was Michael Hastings under investigation by the
FBI,” FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said.
According to the Associated Press, however, Hastings’
fingerprints were on file with the FBI and were used by the
bureau to identify his body after flames consumed much the auto
wreckage last week.
"I believe the FBI when they say they weren't investigating
him," Clarke told the Huffington Post. "That was very
unusual, and I'm sure they checked very carefully before they
said that."
"I'm not a conspiracy guy. In fact, I've spent most of my life
knocking down conspiracy theories," he said. "But my rule
has always been you don't knock down a conspiracy theory until
you can prove it [wrong]. And in the case of Michael Hastings,
what evidence is available publicly is consistent with a car
cyberattack. And the problem with that is you can't prove
it."
Clarke, 62, spent nearly two decades at the Pentagon before
relocating to the White House where he served under President
Ronald Reagan and both Presidents Bush. He served as special
advisor to President George W. Bush on cybersecurity until
leaving the administration in 2003 and is currently the chairman
and CEO of Good Harbor Security Risk Management, LLC.
If there is hope, you are it. You are motivated to find truth. You
can think outside the box. You can see through propaganda. You are the
remnant with the common sense that once was a common American virtue.
You come to this site, because you get explanations that are not
agenda-driven, that are not BS, that are not right-wing or left-wing,
conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat. You get explanations
based on my lifetime of unique education and experience. Some of you are
young enough to be equipped with the energy and courage to organize
whatever resistance there may be to the Gestapo State that is descending
on the United States of America. This is your site. Support it.
Until the George W. Bush Regime, I never thought that it could happen
here. I could not imagine law professors and Department of Justice
(sic) officials writing legal memos justifying, in the name of a hyped
“war on terror,” the termination of civil rights for United States
Citizens. We were the land of the free. The Constitution was our
bedrock. Yet, the Constitution and Bill of Rights were easily taken away
from the inattentive American people.
The Constitution did not protect native inhabitants and slaves who
were not considered part of the American population, but the universal
suppression in the US of non-whites’ rights produced in the end the
civil rights movement that brought moral awareness of the wrongs and
successfully hitched its cause to the founding documents of the country.
Where today is moral awareness as Washington bombs civilian
populations around the globe? Where is the moral conscience of the the
civil rights movement as the First Black President, the first member of
the oppressed class to sit in the Oval Office, validates the Bush
Regime’s assertion of the right of the unaccountable executive to ignore
habeas corpus and due process? Not satisfied with this crime, Obama
asserted the right of the executive branch to murder any citizen
suspected, without proof being offered to a court, of undefined “support
of terrorism.” Today all Americans have fewer rights than blacks had
prior to the Civil Rights Act.
Anything, including a column critical of war and the police state,
can be declared to be “in support of terrorism.” As the tyrant Bush put
it: “You are with us, or you are against us.”
The print and TV media and many Internet sites got the message: Serve
Washington’s agenda, and will you will prosper. Advertisers and the CIA
will pump money into your coffers. Challenge us and you will be
demonized and could face a military tribunal, indefinite detention, or
assassination. Bradley Manning and Julian Assange are being persecuted
for telling the truth.
So far, Washington has convinced the public that Washington’s terror
is mainly limited to Muslims, who are obligingly demonized by print, TV,
and much of the Internet media. However, if Muslim American citizens
lack civil liberty, so do all other American citizens. Those who are
safe are those who ally with the tyrant and remain subservient.
To ally with the tyrant, a United States citizen must have no moral
conscience, no sense of justice, no compassion for the innocent and
dispossessed. These are the worst kind of Americans; yet, they are the
only ones who can succeed in the present environment.
Every time I write a column that is the truth or the truth as I am
able to discover it, instead of hawking the propaganda line, I move up
on the list of those who are persona non grata in the Empire.
A writer can find himself demonized and declared a kook simply by
reporting findings from distinguished scientists, high-rise architects,
structural engineers, first responders, and an international collection
of high government officials. Not too long ago a writer or reporter for
the Huffington Post discovered to his surprise that Pat Buchanan and I
disagreed with all the wars that had been launched to protect us from
terrorism. He asked me for an interview, and I agreed.
An hour or so after the interview was posted on the Huffington Post, I
received an emergency call or email. He had been criticized for
interviewing me, “for giving you a forum when you are a 9/11 sceptic.”
He was unsure that it was possible for a Reagan presidential appointee
to be a 9/11 sceptic and asked if I was.
I replied that I had reported the findings of scientists, architects,
engineers, and the public testimony of first responders, because I
thought these were qualified people whose opinions at least ranked
equally with the politicians on the 9/11 Commission and the talking
heads on Fox “News” and CNN, none of whom could pass a high school test
in the laws of physics, much less high-rise architecture and structural
engineering.
The Huffington Post writer panicked. Instead of taking down the
interview, he felt impelled to assure readers and his boss that he had
been deceived. He wrote at the beginning and ending of the interview
that he did not know he was interviewing someone about the Iraq War who
had given ink to those conspiracy theorists who raised questions about
the truthfulness of the US government. He wrote that my views on the
wars should be disregarded, because I wrote that scientists, architects,
engineers, and first responders provided evidence contrary to the
government’s claims.
And there you have it.
The Huffington Post has far more readers than I do, and far more
money. There is no limit on the ability of the Huffington Post to tell
and sell the lies of the Agenda.
I can remember when I was a Wall Street Journal editor and columnist,
a Business Week columnist, a Scripps Howard News Service columnist and
appeared regularly in the major mainstream print media and even from
time to time on TV talking head programs. Today, the editor or producer
who gave me a forum would be fired instantly, and they all know it.
It is discouraging that after so many transparent lies and
orchestrations–weapons of mass destruction, al-Qaeda connections,
Iranian nukes–the majority of Americans still believe the government.
Americans are even buying into the line that Syria is ruled by a brutal
dictator whose overthrow justifies Washington’s alliance with its 9/11
enemy, al-Qaeda, in order to overthrow a secular ruler who constrains
al-Qaeda.
Washington has come full circle. Its enemy is now its ally.
Washington wasted trillions of dollars and countless lives in eleven
years of war and constructed a domestic police state all in order to
combat al Qaeda with whom Washington is now allied against the Syrian
government.
The public’s response to the Boston Marathon Bombing is even more
discouraging. Not even King George and his Redcoats could achieve what
Homeland Security just pulled off–locking down 100 square miles of
Boston and its suburbs with heavily armed troops tramping through
citizens’ homes barking harsh orders, all justified by a hunt for one
19-year old suspect. It was the Third Reich’s Gestapo in operation right
here in “freedom and democracy” America. Ron Paul is correct that the
suspension of civil liberty is a greater threat than the bombing. Note
the government’s euphemism for martial law–”shelter-in-place.”
Two brothers have been convicted in the media and by the Obama
Regime, including the president’s own words, of a bombing without the
public ever being presented with any evidence except anonymous
unattributed reports and a film of the alleged brothers walking with
backpacks, which were ubiquitous.
I am old enough to remember when it was impermissible for government
and media to convict a person prior to the jury’s verdict. Americans
once lived in a free country governed by the rule of law in which a
person was innocent until proven guilty.
What was the reason or evidence for naming the brothers suspects? Was
any reason given, or was the film of the two walking with backpacks
simply shown over and over, hour after hour, day after day, with the
media reporting that these are the suspects. In other words, was it beat
into your brain that they were suspects because there they are in the
film? If not, why was the same film shown repeatedly? Fox “News” was
still showing the film on April 26, eleven days after the bombing and
might still be showing it. Did you experience: “Here are the suspects.
See them. They have backpacks. See. We know that they are suspects,
because, see, there they are.”
When is the last time the media investigated anything? A good
candidate for investigation is the post-bombing rampage the brothers
allegedly went on, robbing a 7/11 store (later contradicted by local
police), killing a campus policeman, shooting a transit cop,
high-jacking a SUV and releasing the owner.
Why would terrorists seeking to escape in order to strike again call
attention to themselves in such outlandish ways and release a car-jacked
owner to alert the police of the tag number? If the brothers were
willing to kill police with gunfire and innocents with bombs, why
release the guy whose vehicle they stole so he could inform the police
of the license plate and make the brothers’ capture easier? What is the
evidence, other than “reports from authorities,” that these events
occurred or had any more connection to the brothers than the falsely
reported 7/11 robbery that local police disavowed? Why does the US media
simply accept whatever government authorities say?
Where is the evidence of a first shoot-out and a second shoot-out?
The second shoot- out consisted of the authorities bombarding a
motionless youth bleeding from wounds in a boat with multiple volleys of
stun grenades and then multiple gunshots. The unconscious 19 year old
was unarmed and unable to respond to the boat owner who discovered him.
As he lies there, he is shot many times, including through the throat,
and is on life support. But the very next day, according to the
presstitute media, he is providing hand-written confessions.
Was the purpose of the reports of a murderous rampage to create fear
among the population so that they would accept martial law and home
invasions by armed troops ordering American citizens out of their homes
with hands over their heads on the pretext that they might be harboring
the Boston Marathon Bomber?
The videos of the street celebration in which Bostonians thank the
police and of the two Boston families, if not scripted by actors, shows
Americans who far from opposing the police state welcome it. A father
says that he with his daughter in his arms was forced out of his home by
troops pointing automatic rifles at their heads, but that he was
thankful for the safety the police provided him by violating every civil
right that the Constitution gave him. A woman says it was scary but
that “the police are just doing their jobs.” Are Americans now so
brainwashed that they attribute their safety to the presence of a
Gestapo Police State?
Why have detention facilities been built? Why did Homeland Security
purchase a billion or more rounds of ammunition? Why does Homeland
Security have 2,700 tanks and a para-military force? Why aren’t these
questions being investigated?
The US Constitution is the product of 900 years of human efforts to
restrain brutal government and to make government subject to law. It
only took Bush and Obama eleven years to get rid of it.
This is my quarterly appeal for your support. If you want this site to continue, donate. Unless it brings you more enlightenment than it brings grief to me, there is no reason for it to exist.
Iraq After Ten Years — Paul Craig Roberts March 18, 2013 | Original Here
March 19, 2013. Ten years ago today the Bush regime invaded Iraq.
It is known that the justification for the invasion was a packet of lies
orchestrated by the neoconservative Bush regime in order to deceive the
United Nations and the American people.
The US Secretary of State at that time, General Colin Powell, has
expressed his regrets that he was used by the Bush regime to deceive the
United Nations with fake intelligence that the Bush and Blair regimes
knew to be fake. But the despicable presstitute media has not
apologized to the American people for serving the corrupt Bush regime as
its Ministry of Propaganda and Lies.
It is difficult to discern which is the most despicable, the corrupt
Bush regime, the presstitutes that enabled it, or the corrupt Obama
regime that refuses to prosecute the Bush regime for its unambiguous war
crimes, crimes against the US Constitution, crimes against US statutory
law, and crimes against humanity.
In his book, Cultures Of War,
the distinguished historian John W. Dower observes that the concrete
acts of war unleashed by the Japanese in the 20th century and the Bush
imperial presidency in the 21st century “invite comparative analysis of
outright war crimes like torture and other transgressions. Imperial
Japan’s black deeds have left an indelible stain on the nation’s honor
and good name, and it remains to be seen how lasting the damage to
America’s reputation will be. In this regard, the Bush administration’s
war planners are fortunate in having been able to evade formal and
serious investigation remotely comparable to what the Allied powers
pursued vis-a-vis Japan and Germany after World War II.”
Dower quotes Arthur Schlesinger Jr.: “The president [Bush] has
adopted a policy of ‘anticipatory self-defense’ that is alarmingly
similar to the policy that imperial Japan employed at Pearl Harbor on a
date which, as an earlier American president said it would, lives in
infamy. Franklin D. Roosevelt was right, but today it is we Americans
who live in infamy.”
Americans paid an enormous sum of money for the shame of living in
infamy. Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes calculated that the Iraq war
cost US taxpayers $3,000 billion dollars. This estimate might turn out
to be optimistic. The latest study concludes that the war could end up
costing US taxpayers twice as much. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/14/iraq-war-anniversary-idUSL1N0C5FBN20130314
In order to pay for the profits that have flowed into the pockets of
the US military-security complex and from there into political
contributions, Americans are in danger of losing Social Security,
Medicare, and the social cohesiveness that the social welfare system
provides.
The human cost to Iraq of America’s infamy is extraordinary: 4.5
million displaced Iraqis, as many as 1 million dead civilians leaving
widows and orphans, a professional class that has departed the country,
an infrastructure in ruins, and social cohesion destroyed by the
Sunni-Shia conflict that was ignited by Washington’s destruction of the
Saddam Hussein government.
It is a sick joke that the United States government brought freedom
and democracy to Iraq. What the Washington war criminals brought was
death and the destruction of a country.
The US population, for the most part, seems quite at ease with the
gratuitous destruction of Iraq and all that it entails: children without
parents, wives without husbands, birth defects from “depleted” uranium,
unsafe water, a country without hope mired in sectarian violence.
Washington’s puppet state governments in the UK, Europe, the Middle
East and Japan seem equally pleased with the victory–over what? What
threat did the victory defeat? There was no threat. Weapons of mass
destruction was a propaganda hoax. Mushroom clouds over American cities
was fantasy propaganda. How ignorant do populations have to be to fall
for such totally transparent propaganda? Is there no intelligence
anywhere in the Western world?
At a recent conference the neoconservatives responsible for the
deaths and ruined lives of millions and for the trillions of dollars
that their wars piled on US national debt were unrepentant and full of
self-justification. While Washington looks abroad for evil to slay,
evil is concentrated in Washington itself. http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/still-peddling-iraq-war-myths-ten-years-later-8227
The American war criminals walk about unmolested. They are paid large
sums of money to make speeches about how Americans are bringing freedom
and democracy to the world by invading, bombing and murdering people.
The War Crimes Tribunal has not issued arrest warrants. The US
Department of State, which is still hunting for Nazi war criminals, has
not kidnapped the American ones and sent them to be tried at the Hague.
The Americans who suffered are the 4,801 troops who lost their lives,
the thousands of troops who lost limbs and suffer from other permanent
wounds, the tens of thousands who suffer from post-traumatic stress and
from the remorse of killing innocent people, the families and friends of
the American troops, and the broken marriages and single-parent
children from the war stress.
Other Americans have suffered on the home front. Those whose moral
conscience propelled them to protest the war were beaten and abused by
police, investigated and harassed by the FBI, and put on no-fly lists.
Some might actually be prosecuted. The Unites States has reached the
point where any citizen who has a moral conscience is an enemy of the
state. The persecution of Bradley Manning demonstrates this truth.
A case could be made that the historians’ comparison of the Bush
regime with Japanese war criminals doesn’t go far enough. By this
October 7, Washington will have been killing people, mainly women,
children, and village elders, in Afghanistan for 12 years. No one knows
why America has brought such destruction to the Afghan people. First
the Soviets; then the Americans. What is the difference? When Obama
came into the presidency, he admitted that no one knew what the US
military mission was in Afghanistan. We still don’t know. The best
guess is profits for the US armaments industry, power for the Homeland
Security industry, and a police state for the insouciant US population.
Washington has left Libya in ruins and internal conflict. There is no government, but it is not libertarian nirvana.
The incessant illegal drone attacks on Pakistani civilians is
radicalizing elements of Pakistan and provoking civil war against the
Pakistani government, which is owned by Washington and permits
Washington’s murder of its citizens in exchange for Washington’s money
payments to the political elites who have sold out their country to
Washington.
Washington has destabilized Syria and destroyed the peace that the
Assad family had imposed on the Islamic sects. Syria seems fated to be
reduced to ruins and permanent violence like Libya and Iraq.
Washington is at work killing people in Yemen.
As the video released to WikiLeaks by Bradley Manning shows, some US
troops don’t care who they kill–journalists and civilians walking
peacefully along a street, a father and his children who stop to help
the wounded. As long as someone is killed, it doesn’t matter who. Killing is winning.
The US invaded Somalia, has its French puppets militarily involved in
Mali, and perhaps has Sudan in its crosshairs for drones and missiles.
Iran and Lebanon are designated as the next victims of Washington’s aggression.
Washington protects Israeli aggression against the West Bank, Gaza,
and Lebanon from UN censure and from embargoes. Washington has arrested
and imprisoned people who have sent aid to the Palestinian children.
Gaza, declares Washington which regards itself as the only fount of
truth, is ruled by Hamas, a terrorist organization according to
Washington. Thus any aid to Gaza is aid to terrorism. Aide to starving
and ill Palestinian children is support of terrorism. This is the logic
of an inhumane war criminal state.
What is this aggression against Muslims about?
The Soviet Union collapsed and Washington needed a new enemy to keep
the US military/security complex in power and profits. The
neoconservatives, who totally dominated the Bush regime and might yet
dominate the Obama regime declared Muslims in the Middle East to be the
enemy. Against this make-believe “enemy,” the US launched wars of
aggression that are war crimes under the US imposed Nuremberg standard
that was applied to the defeated WWII Germans.
Although the British and French started World War II by declaring war
on Germany, it was Germans, defeated by the Red Army, who were tried by
Washington as war criminals for starting a war. A number of serious
historians have reached the conclusion that America’s war crimes, with
the fire-bombings of the civilian populations of Dresden and Tokyo and
the gratuitous nuclear attacks on the civilian populations of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, are of the same cloth as the war crimes of Hitler and the
Japanese.
The difference is that the winners paint the defeated in the blackest
tones and themselves in high moral tones. Honest historians know that
there is not much difference between US WWII war crimes and those of the
Japanese and Germans. But the US was on the winning side.
By its gratuitous murder of Muslims in seven or eight countries,
Washington has ignited a Muslim response: bitter hatred of the United
States. This response is termed “terrorism” by Washington and the war
against terrorism serves as a source of endless profits for the military
complex and for a police state to “protect” Americans from terrorism,
but not from the terrorism of their own government.
The bulk of the American population is too misinformed to catch on, and the few who do
understand and are attempting to warn others will be silenced. The 21st
century will be one of the worst centuries in human history. All over
the Western world, liberty is dying.
The legacy of “the war on terror” is the death of liberty.
It Has Happened Here–Paul Craig Roberts
February 7, 2013 | Original Here the police state is real The Bush regime’s response to 9/11 and the Obama regime’s validation of this response have destroyed accountable democratic government in the United States. So much unaccountable power has been concentrated in the executive branch that the
US Constitution is no longer an operable document. Whether a person believes the official story of 9/11 which rests on unproven government assertions or believes the documented evidence provided by a large number of scientists, first responders, and structural engineers and architects, the result is the same. 9/11 was used to create an open-ended “war on terror” and a police state. It is extraordinary that so many Americans believe that “it can’t happen here” when it already has. We have had a decade of highly visible evidence of the construction of a police state:
the PATRIOT Act, illegal spying on Americans in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the initiation of wars of aggression–war crimes under the Nuremberg Standard–based on intentional lies, the Justice Department’s concocted legal memos justifying the executive branch’s violation of domestic and international laws against torture, the indefinite detention of US citizens in violation of the constitutionally protected rights of habeas corpus and due process, the use of secret evidence and secret “expert witnesses” who cannot be cross-examined against defendants in trials, the creation of military tribunals in order to evade federal courts, secret legal memos giving the president authority to launch preemptive cyber attacks on any country without providing evidence that the country constitutes a threat, and the Obama regime’s murder of US citizens without evidence or due process. As if this were not enough, the Obama regime now creates new presidential powers by crafting secret laws, refusing to disclose the legal reasoning on which the asserted power rests. In other words, laws now originate in secret executive branch memos and not in acts of Congress. Congress? We don’t need no stinking Congress. Despite laws protecting whistleblowers and the media and the US Military Code which requires soldiers to report war crimes, whistleblowers such as CIA agent John Kiriakou, media such as Julian Assange, and soldiers such as Bradley Manning are persecuted and prosecuted for revealing US government crimes. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33804.htm The criminals go free, and those who report the crimes are punished. The justification for the American police state is the “war on terror,” a hoax kept alive by the FBI’s “sting operations.” Normally speaking, a sting operation is when a policewoman poses as a prostitute in order to ensnare a “John,” or a police officer poses as a drug dealer or user in order to ensnare drug users or dealers. The FBI’s “sting operation” goes beyond these victimless crimes that fill up US prisons. The FBI’s sting operations are different. They are just as victimless as no plot ever happens, but the FBI doesn’t pose as bomb makers for terrorists who have a plot but lack the weapon. Instead, the FBI has the plot and looks for a hapless or demented person or group, or for a Muslim enraged over the latest Washington insult to him and/or his religion. When the FBI locates its victim, its agents approach the selected perpetrator pretending to be Al-Qaeda or some such and ply the selected perpetrator with money, the promise of fame, or threats until the victim signs on to the FBI’s plot and is arrested. Trevor Aaronson in his book, The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s War on Terrorism, documents that the FBI has so far concocted 150 “terrorist plots” and that almost all of the other “terrorist cases” are cases unrelated to terrorism, such as immigration, with a terror charge tacked on. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LpTOrNQ3G9Q#! The presstitute American media doesn’t ask why, if there is so much real terrorism requiring an American war against it, the FBI has to invent and solicit terrorist plots.
Blogger's Note: Below is embedded the video linked to above.
Neither does the media inquire how the Taliban, which resists the US invasion and attempted occupation of Afghanistan, fighting the US superpower to a standstill after 11 years, came to be designated as terrorists. Nor does the US presstitute media want to know how tribesmen in remote regions of Pakistan came to be designated as “terrorists” deserving of US drone attacks on the citizens, schools and medical clinics of a country with which the US is not at war. Instead the media protects and perpetrates the hoax that has given America the police state. The American media has become Leni Riefenstahl, as has Hollywood with the anti-Muslim propaganda film, Zero Dark Thirty. This propaganda film is a hate crime that spreads Islamophobia. Nevertheless, the film is likely to win awards and to sink Americans into both tyranny and a hundred-year war in the name of fighting the Muslim threat. What I learned many years ago as a professor is that movies are important molders of Americans‘ attitudes. Once, after giving a thorough explanation of the Russian Revolution that led to communist rule, a student raised his hand and said: “That’s not the way it happened in the movie.” At first I thought he was making a witty joke, but then I realized that he thought that the truth resided in the movie, not in the professor who was well versed in the subject. Ever since I have been puzzled how the US has survived for so long, considering the ignorance of its population. Americans have lived in the power of the US economy. Now that this power is waning, sooner or later Americans will have to come to terms with reality. It is a reality that will be unfamiliar to them. Some Americans claim that we have had police states during other wartimes and that once the war on terror is won, the police state will be dismantled. Others claim that government will be judicious in its use of the power and that if you are doing nothing wrong you have nothing to fear. These are reassurances from the deluded. The Bush/Obama police state is far more comprehensive than Lincoln’s, Wilson’s, or Roosevelt’s, and the war on terror is open-ended and is already three times longer than World War II. The Police State is acquiring “squatter’s rights.” Moreover, the government needs the police state in order to protect itself from accountability for its crimes, lies, and squandering of taxpayers‘ money. New precedents for executive power have been created in conjunction with the Federalist Society which, independent of the war on terror, advocates the “unitary executive” theory, which claims the president has powers not subject to check by Congress and the Judiciary. In other words, the president is a dictator if he prefers to be. The Obama regime is taking advantage of this Republican theory. The regime has used the Republican desire for a strong executive outside the traditional checks and balances together with the fear factor to complete the creation of the Bush/Cheney police state. As Lawrence M. Stratton and I documented in our book, The Tyranny Of Good Intentions, prior to 9/11 law as a shield of the people was already losing ground to law as a weapon in the hands of the government. If the government wanted to get you, there were few if any barriers to a defendant being framed and convicted, least of all a brainwashed jury fearful of crime. I cannot say whether the US justice system has ever served justice better than it has served the ambition of prosecutors. Already in the 1930s and 1940s US Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland and US Attorney General Robert Jackson were warning against prosecutors who sacrifice “fair dealing to build up statistics of success.” Certainly it is difficult to find in the ranks of federal prosecutors today Jackson’s “prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.” Just consider the wrongful conviction of Alabama’s Democratic governor, Don Siegelman by what apparently was a Karl Rove plot to rid the South of Democratic governors. The “Democratic” Obama regime has not investigated this false prosecution or given clemency to its innocent own. Remember how quickly Bush removed the prison sentence of Cheney’s operative who revealed the name of a CIA undercover agent? The Democrats are a cowed and cowardly political party, fearful of justice, and as much a part of the corrupt police state as the Republicans. Today the purpose of a prosecution is to serve the prosecutor’s career and that of the party that appoints him or her. A prosecutor’s career is served by high conviction rates, which require plea bargains in which the evidence against a defendant is never tested in court or before a jury, and by high profile cases, which can launch a prosecutor into a political career, as Rudy Giuliana achieved with his frame-up of Michael Milken. Glenn Greenwald explained how Internet freedom advocate Aaron Swartz was driven to his death by the ambition of two federal prosecutors, US Attorney Carmen Ortiz and Assistant US Attorney Stephen Heymann, who had no aversion to destroying an innocent person with ridiculous and trumped-up charges in order to advance their careers. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/ortiz-heymann-swartz-accountability-abuse It is rare for a prosecutor to suffer any consequence for bringing false charges, for consciously using and even paying for false evidence, and for lying to judge and jury.
As prosecutors are rarely held accountable, they employ illegal and unethical methods and routinely abuse their power. As judges are mainly concerned with clearing their court dockets, justice is rarely served in America, which explains why the US has not only a larger percentage of its citizens in prison than any other country on earth, but also the largest absolute number of prisoners. The US actually has more of its citizens in prison than “authoritarian” China which has a population four times larger than the US. The US, possibly the greatest human rights abuser in history, is constantly bringing human rights charges against China. Where are the human rights charges against Washington? In America the collapse of law has gone beyond corrupt prosecutors and their concocted false prosecutions. Unless it needs or desires a show trial, a police state does not need prosecutors and courts. By producing legal memos that the president can both throw people into prison without a trial and execute them without a trial simply by stating that some official in the executive branch thinks the person has a possible or potential connection to terrorism, tyranny’s friends in the Justice (sic) Department have dispensed with the need for courts, prosecutors and trials.The Bush/Obama regime has made the executive branch judge, juror, and executioner. All that is needed is an unproven assertion by some executive branch official. Here we have the epitome of evil. Evidence is no longer required for the president of the US to imprison people for life or to deprive them of their life. A secret Justice Department memo has been leaked to NBC News that reveals the tyrannical reasoning that authorizes the executive branch to execute American citizens on the basis of belief alone without the requirement of evidence that they are terrorists or associated with terrorists. http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/04/16843014-exclusive-justice-department-memo-reveals-legal-case-for-drone-strikes-on-americans?lite
Blogger's Note: Below is the video included in the link above.
In “freedom and democracy” America, innocent until proven guilty is no longer the operative legal principle. If the government says you are guilty, you are. Period. No evidence required for your termination. Even Stalin pretended to have evidence. The United States government is working its way step by step toward the determination that any and every critic of the government is guilty of providing “aid and comfort” to Washington’s “terrorist enemies,” which includes the elected Hamas government in Gaza. The only critics exempted from this rule-in-the-making are the neoconservatives who criticize the US government for being too slow to throttle both its critics and “anti-semites,” such as former US President Jimmy Carter, who criticize the Israeli government’s illegal appropriation of Palestinian lands. Most of Palestine has been stolen by Israel with Washington acquiesce and aid. Therefore, nothing is left for a “two-state solution.” There is no doubt whatsoever that the Israeli government’s theft of Palestine is illegal; yet, Washington, on which Israel is totally dependent, does nothing about law. Law, we don’t need no stinking law.” Washington has might. Might is right. Get used to it. Not only for Palestinians has law ceased to exist, but also for Americans, and for Washington’s NATO puppets in the UK and Europe, pitiful remnants of once great nations now complicit in Washington’s crimes against humanity. The Open Society Justice Initiative, a NGO based in New York, has issued a report that documents that 54 governments are involved in Washington’s rendition and torture program. Twenty-five of the governments that help Washington to kidnap, disappear, and torture people are European. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/05/cia-rendition-report-uk-court The opening decade of the 21st century has seen the destruction of all the law that was devised to protect the innocent and the vulnerable since the rise of the now defunct moral conscience of the West. The West’s moral conscience never applied outside of itself. What happened to people in Europe’s colonies and to native inhabitants of the US and Australia is a very different story. Nevertheless, despite its lack of coverage to the powerless, the principle of the rule of law was a promising principle. Now America under Bush and Obama, two peas of the same pod, has abandoned the principle itself. The Obama police state will be worse than the Bush/Cheney police state. Unlike
conservatives who in times past were suspicious of government power, Obamabots believe that government power is a force for good if it is in the right hands. As Obama’s supporters see him as a member of an oppressed minority, they are confident that Obama will not misuse his power. This belief is akin to the belief that, as Jews suffered so much at the hands of Hitler, Israel would be fair to the Palestinians. Glenn Greenwald writes that “the most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice.” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33847.htm This is the power of a dictator. That Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were said to have this power was part of their demonization as “brutal dictators,” a justification for overthrowing their governments and murdering the dictators and their supporters. Ironic, isn’t it, that the president of the United States now murders his political opponents just as Saddam Hussein murdered his. How long before critics move from the no-fly list to the extermination list?
