Malachi Smith's List: NEOCONIA

• Update: FBI serves search warrant against UT student in Palin case
• Becky Simmons       Updated: 9/22/2008
• The FBI is stepping up its investigation into the possibility that a University of Tennessee student hacked into the personal e-mail of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
• A person who identified himself as a witness tells 10 News that agents with the FBI served a federal search warrant at the Fort Sanders residence of David Kernell early Sunday morning. Kernell lives in the Commons apartment complex at 1115 Highland Ave.
• David Kernell is the son of Mike Kernell, a Democratic state representative from Memphis.
• A Department of Justice spokesperson confirmed there has been "investigatory activity" in Knoxville regarding the Palin case, but she said there are no publicly available search warrants, and no charges have been filed.
• A separate law enforcement source confirmed to 10 News that a search warrant was served on Kernell's apartment.
• According to the witness, several agents arrived at The Commons of Knoxville around midnight.

  They presented their badges upon entering Kernell's apartment, where several students were having a party, and took down their names.
• The witness tells us they asked him and those who did not live in the unit to go outside.
• He believes the investigators took about 1.5 to 2 hours taking pictures of everything inside the apartment.
• Witnesses say Kernell and his friends fled the apartment when the FBI agents arrived.
• Kernell's three roommates were also subpoenaed, and must testify this week in Chattanooga, according to the witness.
• Knoxville blogger and WBIR contributor Terry Frank has posted what she says are images from Kernell's Facebook page.
• Numerous web sites say someone going by the name "Rubico" has admitted to hacking Palin's email.
• According to www.wired.com, "Rubico" made the claim in an internet posting. This person said it was easy to access Palin's yahoo account by using information like her zip code and birthdate. Various people on the internet have quickly associated Rubico with David Kernell.
• Previous StoryThe son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking of personal e-mail of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, Kernell confirmed on Thursday.
• Kernell, a Memphis Democrat, said his 20-year-old son David had been contacted by authorities investigating the hacking of Palin's personal email account.
• The FBI and the Secret Service started a formal investigation on Wednesday into the hacking.
• David Kernell is a student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Mike Kernell said he spoke to his son on Thursday, as he does on a regular basis.

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• # 25 Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer
• in Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009
• Sources: 
   Truthout, February 2008 
   Title: “Predatory Lenders’ Partner in Crime”
• Global Research, March 17, 2008 
   Title: “Why the Bush Administration ‘Watergated’ Eliot Spitzer” 
   Author: F. William Engdahl
• Student Researchers: Rob Hunter, Elizabeth Rathbun, and Rebecca Newsome
• Faculty Evaluator: Mickey S. Huff, MA
• The exposure of New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer’s tryst with a luxury call girl had little to do with the Bush administration’s high moral standards for public servants.
• Author F. William Engdahl advises that, “in evaluating spectacular scandals around prominent public figures, it is important to ask what and who might want to eliminate that person.”
• Timing suggests that Spitzer was likely a target of a White House and Wall Street operation to silence one of its most dangerous and vocal critics of their handling of the current financial market crisis.
• Spitzer had become increasingly public in blaming the Bush administration for the subprime crisis. He testified in mid-February before the US House of Representatives Financial Services subcommittee and later that day, in a national CNBC interview, laid blame squarely on the administration for creating an environment ripe for predatory lenders.
• On February 14, the Washington Post published an editorial by Spitzer titled, “Predatory Lenders’ Partner in Crime: How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers,” which charged, “Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.”
• In this editorial, Spitzer explained:
• The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).
• The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks.
• For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function.
• But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.
• In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks.

  • The problem "IS" Washington
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• The federal government’s actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.
• But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.”
• The editorial appeared the day after Spitzer’s ill-fated rendezvous with the prostitute at the Mayflower Hotel. With that article, some Washington insiders believe, Spitzer signed his own political death warrant.
• On March 4, 2008, Spitzer furthermore proposed legislation that would have imposed penalties for mortgage fraud and predatory lending.1
• Curiously, Spitzer, who had been elected governor in 2006, defeating a Republican by winning nearly 70 percent of the vote, has been not charged with any crime.
• His case went into the hands of Washington and not those of New York State authorities, underscoring the clear political nature of Spitzer’s “offense.”

  • Bastards!
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• New York Assembly Republicans immediately announced plans to impeach Spitzer or put him on public trial if he were to refuse resignation.
• Although prostitution is illegal in most US states, clients of prostitutes are almost never charged, nor are their names typically released while a case is in process.
• Spitzer’s editorial concluded, “When history tells the story of the sub-prime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners, the Bush administration will not be judged favorably . . . it will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any lengths in their quest for profits.
• The administration was so willing, in fact, that it used the power of the federal government in an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers.”

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• Monday Sept. 22, 2008 07:47 EDT
• Growing right-wing opposition to the Paulson plan
• (updated below - Update II)
• On Saturday morning, I noted -- quoting Atrios -- the almost complete lack of debate over the ever-changing dictates issued by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.
• Last week, whatever Paulson said on any given day -- no bailouts; only selected bailouts; massive $700 billion bailout plan -- immediately became the unchallenged conventional wisdom.
• That has all changed. Prominent economists, who had previously been defending Paulson for the most part, began voicing serious doubts about his plan.
• As the AP put it yesterday: "Many of the same economists and opinion-makers who'd provided a bipartisan sheen of consensus to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's previous moves have quickly begun casting doubts on the wisdom of a policy that would allow Treasury to purchase without oversight hundreds of billions of dollars of difficult-to-price assets from financial institutions."
• Not only Paul Krugman, who was a skeptic from the start, but conservative economic experts have also now expressed opposition, including former Bush and Romney advisor Greg Mankiw and -
• in an excellent column on Saturday -- Sebastian Mallaby, who described the rapid move to embrace Paulson's plan as "extremely dangerous."
• And now, some of the most rabid ideologues on the Right are voicing increasingly strident opposition as well.
• At National Review last night, Newt Gingrich wrote that "watching Washington rush to throw taxpayer money at Wall Street has been sobering and a little frightening" and said he "hopes Congress will slow down and have an open debate."
• Thereafter, NR's Yuval Levin proclaimed that nobody could read through the Paulson proposal "without concluding that everyone in Washington has lost their minds."

  • Yes..the lunatics are running the institution and have been for a long time.
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• In The New York Times today, Bill Kristol said he's "doubtful that the only thing standing between us and a financial panic is for Congress to sign this week, on behalf of the American taxpayer, a $700 billion check over to the Treasury," while Michelle Malkin posted a lengthy alarmist screed warning that "Hank Paulson must be contained."
• Right-wing opposition to the Paulson plan is vital for having any meaningful chance to stop it.
• Does anyone have any confidence at all in the Democrats' willingness and/or ability to impede this bailout train if the Bush administration and the Right were vigorously behind it,
• warning the nation of impending doom unless we submit to vast, unchecked government power of the type Henry Paulson is demanding?
• The instances of complete Democratic acquiescence under those circumstances -- including when they "controlled" the Congress -- are far too numerous to allow any rational person to think Democrats, standing alone, would stop the Paulson plan. As sad as it is, meaningful right-wing opposition is critical for that to happen.
• More interesting are the reasons why these right-wing polemicists have decided they have real doubts about the wisdom of the Paulson plan.
• In opposing the plan, each of them cited -- with alarm -- the provision which vests full, unfettered and unreviewable discretion in the Treasury Secretary to determine how the $700,000,000,000 is allocated:
• Levin (plan gives "essentially unlimited power to use $700 billion to make purchases the scope of which is defined very loosely and vaguely");
• Gingrich ("We are being reassured that we can trust Secretary Paulson 'because he knows what he is doing'. Congress had better ask a lot of questions before it shifts this much burden to the taxpayer and shifts this much power to a Washington bureaucracy");
• Kristol ("There are no provisions for — or even promises of — disclosure, accountability or transparency");
• Malkin (Washington is demanding we "fork over $700 billion to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and allow him to dole it out to whomever he chooses in whatever amount he chooses -- without public input or recourse").
• Apparently, the same political faction that has cheered on every instance of unchecked, absolute executive power over the last eight years -- which demanded that the President, and he alone, decide which citizens, including Americans, can be spied on, detained, even tortured, and that no oversight or disclosure was needed for any of that -- has suddenly re-discovered their desire for checks on federal government power.
• The reason? They say it themselves: with the looming prospect of an Obama presidency, they may no longer be in charge of that Government and these "small government conservatives" have thus suddenly re-awoken to the virtues of checks and balances, oversight and other restraints.

  • True
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• In explaining his opposition to the Paulson plan, Levin warns:
• Even if Hank Paulson were the all knowing god of economics, would it make sense to give this kind of power to the treasury secretary for the next two years just forty days before an election? Shall we go through our mental list of who an Obama administration (or a McCain administration for that matter) is likely to put in that post?
• Gingrich writes:
• Imagine that the political balance of power in Washington were different.  

    If this were a Democratic administration the Republicans in the House and Senate would be demanding answers and would be organizing for a "no" vote . . . . But because this gigantic power shift to Washington and this avalanche of taxpayer money is being proposed by a Republican administration, the normal conservative voices have been silent or confused.

   

    It's time to end the silence and clear up the confusion.
• Malkin is actually worried about vesting such power in Paulson himself -- she thinks he's basically a tool of the Communist Chinese, a follower of "Gore-esque" eco-zealotry, and worst of all, someone with ties to some Democrats --
• but the point is the same: people have long predicted that the Right will do a complete reversal (once again) in their positions on vast federal power and unlimited executive authority the minute that such power is vested in someone they oppose and fear rather than in themselves.
• The remarkable spectacle of watching these right-wing authoritarians suddenly demand Congressional oversight and voice opposition to unlimited executive power -- two months before a highly possible Obama victory -- is quite obviously reflective of that shift.
• Rather hilariously, this was the very first comment from a Malkin reader after she sounded the alarm about the provision in the Paulson plan providing that his decisions are "non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency":
• So something that is unconstitutional cannot be reviewed by a Federal court? I guess, not even the Supreme Court. Well, if it is accepted, a precedent has been set, which will allow other proposals/bills to go through, regardless of legality, being "non-reviewable" by Federal court. A government running amok . . . with people cheering.

  • Where have you been, lady, for the past 8 years?!
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• This person obviously has no idea that such provisions are hardly "unprecedented," but have been appearing in several of the most controversial bills of the last eight years (as but one example, The Military Commissions Act, a right-wing favorite, essentially purported to bar courts from reviewing the President's decisions about who to detain and further barred judicial review of the Congressional scheme, and similar "court-stripping provisions" have long been a right-wing favorite in all sorts of contexts).
• And more generally, this is how our Government has worked: the President demands unlimited power and Congress gives it to him.
• It's only because visions of a Muslim, terrorist-sympathizing, socialist President Obama are haunting them in their feverish nightmares is the Right suddenly deeply fearful once again of vesting vast power in the Federal Government and the Executive.

  • Exactly
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• But no matter. The blatant hypocrisy here, while extreme, craven and obvious, is also healthy.
• Hypocrisy of this sort is actually a vital part of how checks and balances are supposed to work. It is expected that political factions, when in charge of the government, will seek to obtain greater power for themselves, and the check against that is that the "opposition party" will battle and resist -- not necessarily out of ideology or principle but due to raw power considerations and self-interest.
• That is what has been so tragically missing from our political process for the last eight years: while the GOP sought greater and greater government power, Democrats acquiesced almost completely when they weren't complicitly enabling it.
• While the Executive was off the charts in terms of the power it seized, the Congress was off the charts in its passivity and eagerness to relinquish its Constitutionally assigned powers to the Bush White House.
• That's what has caused the extreme imbalance, with a bloated Republican Party and virtually unlimited presidential power: the failure of Democrats and the Congress to serve as a check on any of that.
• As their newfound contempt for unlimited power makes conclusively clear, the executive-power-worshipping Republicans of the last eight years -- if there is an Obama presidency -- will quickly re-discover their limited government power "principles" and won't be nearly as accommodating.
• UPDATE: I should add that Congressional Democrats, while largely on board with the fundamentals of the bailout plan, have been making noises about demanding some limits and oversight on how this fund is managed, and the political climate is certainly part of what is motivating the Right to voice these doubts, as illustrated by the bizarre and deeply cynical spectacle of the GOP presidential nominee -- of all people -- joining with the Democrats to demand limits on CEO compensation.
• The point, though, is that Democrats typically make noises of this type and then capitulate at the end if they stand alone.
• This Paulson bill can be stopped only with widespread opposition that cuts across the standard ideological/partisan lines, and it shouldn't be that hard to argue why handing over $700 billion to the very people who caused this disaster, while allowing them to walk away soaked with profits, is not a good idea,
• and that vesting unlimited power in the Bush administration to manage that is a particularly bad idea. If Democrats can't win that argument, what argument can they win?
• UPDATE II: A Rasmussen Reports poll released today found that "most Americans are closely following news reports on the Bush Administration's federal bailout plan for the country’s troubled economy, but just 28% support what has been proposed so far."
• As El Zongo notes in comments, this bailout -- like the FISA gutting and telecom amnesty which preceded it -- has no real constituency beyond the Washington establishment.
• Thirty-seven percent oppose it and 35% are unsure.
• That the public is so opposed and/or primed to oppose it more doesn't mean this won't pass -- we don't exactly have a substantial connection between what Washington does and public opinion -- but it does provide an important foundation for derailing this if political leaders decide they should or must.
• -- Glenn Greenwald

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• The 'long run' arrives
• Exclusive: Vox Day cautions George Bush's socialism won't fix financial crisis
• Posted: September 22, 2008
  1:00 am Eastern
  
  <!-- end deck --> 

  By Vox Day
• I was opposed to George W. Bush's presidency from the very start.
• My very first political column here at WND warned of the likelihood that his administration would attempt to use 9/11 to destroy American liberties, and I warned voters prior to the 2004 election that voting for George W. Bush would make the Republican voter "a willing accomplice in the ongoing bipartisan destruction of your country."
• I have always known he was no conservative and that he bore no allegiance to the Constitution.
• With yesterday's announcement of the fifth and largest bailout to take place this year, the Bush administration has shown itself to be easily the most left wing since FDR was ensconced upon the Cherry Blossom Throne.
• The administration's plan to purchase $700 billion in financial assets, announced on Saturday, represents the federal acquisition of just over 5 percent of the entire U.S. economy as measured by Gross Domestic Product. This additional 5 percent is beginning to approach the 7.5 percent of GDP that was the entire amount of federal spending in 1908.
• As I pointed out in last week's column, the principle of counterpush states that to enact a controversial policy, the president pushing that policy must come from the party that is nominally opposed to it.
• Because it is the Republicans who are the supposed party of small government and free market, only a Republican president could hope to get away with spending what is supposed to be the taxpayer's money to buy private assets priced at one-twentieth of the annual national economy.
• What is particularly egregious about this action by the administration is the way in which it is primarily the bankers who caused this financial crisis who can be expected to benefit from it.
• The Telegraph reported this weekend that the very individuals who were responsible for Lehman's failure are expected to reap $2.5 billion in bonuses from the English bank that acquired Lehman's U.S. operations last week.
• It is actually a parasitical system in which the financial elite prey upon the capitalists by virtue of having purchased political approval for their predation.
• The reality is that the American financial system is not a free market, and it is not even remotely capitalist.
• Moody reported that financial services firms earned more than one-quarter of total corporate profits in 2007 – 27.4 percent, to be precise. They did not earn these profits through producing anything or from making business operations more efficient; they obtained it from behaving rather like pirates pillaging passing trade vessels.
• As the financial collapse has shown, these profits were mostly the result of a vast construction of financial con games, none of which had anything to do with providing the investment money required by individuals who are starting new businesses and growing existing ones.
• As anyone who has ever had any contact with the venture capital industry very well knows, the "vulture" capitalists only provide money to those companies that don't need it; their main purpose is to take their share of the loot when a private firm sells its shares to the public through the government-approved and licensed channels known as the stock exchanges.
• Mob-run casinos are more honest and take a smaller house cut.
• The administration's attempt to keep this shameless con game going will not work because it is based on the false Keynesian premise that controlled inflation, which slowly transfers wealth from savers to the bank owners, is sustainable over time.
• Keynes knew it wasn't; he defended his flawed economic theory by pointing out that in the long run, everyone is dead.
• But Keynes has been dead for six decades, the long run has arrived at last.
• And although the Federal Reserve has been frantically printing and distributing its magic helicopter money for the last month, it is unlikely to be able to do more than buy the bankers and politicians a little more time to prepare for the next round of crashes, bankruptcies and bailouts.
• If they actually thought it had a chance of succeeding, they wouldn't have banned short-selling.
• it's quite clear that they don't even begin to understand what is happening, much less why, to say nothing of how they should respond.
• This crisis is largely external to the current scope of American politics, so it isn't something that George Bush, John McCain or Barack Obama can even theoretically fix;
• The only presidential candidate who understood the situation – he has condemned it for decades – was the candidate that the vast majority of the American people thought was too outlandish and too out of touch to support, Dr. Ron Paul.
• So, naturally, the answer to government manipulation of the economy for the benefit of the financial elite will be to give the government even greater power to manipulate the economy for the benefit of the financial elite.
• Still, the financial system has at last been exposed for the fundamental fraud it always has been.
• Although they don't realize it yet, Americans are facing their most important nexus since the Civil War.
• The global economy concept should be the next to fall.
• They can return to the small government, free market principles of the Founding Fathers, or they can continue to trust in the paradigms and promises of the predatory charlatans who have brought them to this pass.
• Given that most of the vital limits on democracy put into place by the Founding Fathers have been methodically removed over the last 200 years, the intelligent observer can bet securely on the latter.

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• September 24, 2008
• Terrified Oligarchs
• Posted by Lew Rockwell at September 24, 2008 04:33 PM
• As an insider tells me, Congressmen are "peeing in their pants" over the proposed bailout of the plutocrats - because they are being inundated by calls, emails, and visits from their very angry constituents.
• No regular American believes Paulson and Bernanke, or thinks that their insider deal to rip us off for the government-connected rich is a good idea.
• Both Obama and McCain are wholly owned subsidiaries of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
• But congressmen are vulnerable to a change in the climate of opinion. Indeed, eventually, the whole regime is.

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• Reid: McCain to support bailout
• By Alexander Bolton         Posted: 09/23/08 06:49 PM [ET]
• Republican presidential nominee John McCain will support a proposed $700 billion bailout of the financial markets, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced Tuesday evening.
• Sen. McCain’s (Ariz.) support of the package had been uncertain as a growing number of Republicans criticized it harshly.
• Reid specifically challenged McCain on Tuesday to take a position on the bailout package.
• “I got some good news in the last hour or so … it appears that Sen. McCain is going to come out for this,” Reid announced.
• The McCain campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
• Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said earlier in the day that any lawmaker who votes for the Bush administration's bailout package would face defeat in November.
• Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, also criticized the package.
• Shelby told Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Tuesday morning that “what troubles me the most is that we have been given no credible assurances that this plan will work.”
• The crescendo of Republican complaints prompted fears among Democrats that the package may not have enough GOP support to pass.
• Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama on Tuesday said he would only support a bailout of the financial markets if it provides the necessary oversight and protects taxpayers.
• Reid also told Senate colleagues that he expects soon to take up a continuing resolution funding the government beyond the end of fiscal 2008, as well as an economic stimulus package in the next few days.

• Reid said the House would soon pass both measures and send them to the upper chamber.
  

  Reid said Congress would likely pass the defense appropriations bill as part of the continuing resolution (CR).

• “The latest word I got is the defense appropriations bill is going to be in the CR, and that is extremely important if that’s the case.”
  

  Reid also pledged to pass the defense authorization conference report before Congress adjourned.

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• McCain Supports Financial Market Bailout
• GOP Nominee Says Improvements Needed To Bush Admin's Proposal To Increase Oversight And Limit Executives Compensation

• Sept. 23, 2008
• (AP) <!-- sphereit start -->Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Tuesday that he supports a $700 billion bailout of U.S. financial markets, but suggested improvements to the Bush administration's proposal to increase oversight and limit compensation for executives.
• "Further inaction is simply not an option," McCain said in brief remarks to reporters, his first news conference in more than a month.
• "We must pass legislation to address this crisis. If we do not, credit will dry up, with devastating consequences for our economy. People will no longer be able to buy homes and their life savings will be at stake. Businesses will not have enough money to pay their employees."
• He called the proposed bailout a "staggering" figure that amounts to a $10,000 contribution for each U.S. household, money that could otherwise be used to rebuild roads and bridges in every town in the country.
• To protect taxpayers, he asked for a bipartisan board to provide oversight, a plan to recover the money, a cap on compensation for executives of firms that are helped by the bailout and a ban on earmarks on the legislation.
• McCain stopped short of saying he would vote "no" if his priorities weren't reflected.

  • Yeah..some "maverick!"
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• He said he was confident the final plan would include them.
• While members of Congress have agreed in principle on aspects of the administration's proposal, many Democrats and some Republicans, like McCain, have insisted the plan deny "golden parachute" payments to executives at failing financial firms.
• "In any solution, we must see accountability, we must see transparency and we must make sure taxpayers' dollars don't line the pockets of executives," McCain said earlier Tuesday while campaigning in Ohio.

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• September 24, 2008
    Categories: Sarah Palin
• Palin schmoozes with Murdoch
• Politico's Kenneth P. Vogel reports:
• NEW YORK, N.Y. – Sarah Palin schmoozed with controversial media tycoon Rupert Murdoch at a swanky charity gala here Wednesday night.
• Murdoch, whose New York tabloid this month editorialized about Palin being “charming, but rock-solid,” seemed quite chummy with the Republican vice presidential candidate after the two emerged together from a swanky charity gala, according to a pool report sent to the press covering Palin.
• “He gave her a pat on the back … and said to her, ‘Thank you very much’” as she slid into the back of a waiting SUV wearing “a radiant smile,” the report said.
• The dinner, held at a midtown Asian restaurant where guests are greeted by a reflecting pool stocked with Japanese carp and an enormous floating Buddha statue, was hosted by Murdoch’s wife Wendi Murdoch, as well as Jordan's Queen Rania and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s wife Sarah Brown.

  • Gala hosted by the whores of the Internationalist leaders.
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• It was to benefit a United Nations-linked initiative seeking to reduce maternal mortality worldwide.
• Rupert Murdoch – who is involved in former President Bill Clinton’s worldwide efforts to combat climate change, poverty and corruption – is known for his conservative positions, but has cultivated ties to U.S. politicians of both parties.
• He owns right-leaning media outlets like Fox News and The New York Post, the latter of which surprised some observers this month by endorsing the McCain-Palin ticket over Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
• That's because Murdoch had publicly spoke favorably of Obama, even dubbing him a "rock star."
• Not only was The Post’s endorsement early, but Murdoch had admitted  he "played a role" in the Post’s endorsement during the Democratic primary of Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton, for whom he had hosted a fundraiser.
• Last week, Murdoch talked about the editorial to Neil Cavuto, and described Obama's economic policies as "naive."
• In addition to calling Palin “charming” and “rock-solid,” The Post’s general election endorsement of McCain-Palin praised her as and said her selection as underscoring McCain’s Washington-outsider status.
   
   “Neither plays well with others,” the editorial said.

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• The time has come for a final report on the 43rd president of the US
• The man who set out to reinforce unbridled American power has weakened it in all three essential dimensions
• • Timothy Garton Ash 
   
  •   The Guardian, 
   
  • Thursday September 25 2008
• As the two men who would succeed him train like Olympic athletes for tomorrow's foreign policy debate, pause for a moment to complete your final report on the 43rd president of the United States. What would you say?
• I would sum up his two terms in four words: hubris followed by nemesis.
• Remember the mood music of eight years ago. The greatest power the world has ever seen. Rome on steroids. An international system said to be unipolar, and Washington's unabashed embrace of unilateralism.
• The US as "Prometheus unbound", according to the neoconservative commentator Charles Krauthammer. Wall Street investment bankers bestriding the financial globe as Pentagon generals did the military globe and Harvard professors the soft power one.
• Masters of the universe. Personifying that hubristic moment: George Walker Bush.
• The irony of the Bush years is that a man who came into office committed to both celebrating and reinforcing sovereign, unbridled national power has presided over the weakening of that power in all three dimensions: military, economic and soft.
• And now: nemesis.
• "I am not convinced we are winning it in Afghanistan," Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a congressional committee earlier this month.
• The massive, culpable distraction of Iraq, Bush's war of choice, leaves the US - and with it the rest of the west - on the verge of losing the war of necessity.

  • Bush has got to be the biggest lame idiot any two people ever got together to copulate for and bring into this world.
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• Many on the ground say that's an understatement.
• Here, resurgent in Afghanistan and Pakistan, are the jihadist enemies who attacked the US on September 11 2001.
• By misusing military power, Bush has weakened it.
• Economically, the Bush presidency ends with a financial meltdown on a scale not seen for 70 years.
• The proud conservative deregulators (John McCain long among them) now oversee a partial nationalisation of the American economy that would make even a French socialist blush.
• A government bailout that will total close to a trillion dollars, plus the cumulative cost of the Iraq war, will push the national debt to more than $11 trillion.
• The flagships of Wall Street either go bust or have to be salvaged, with the help of government or foreign money. Most ordinary Americans feel poorer and less secure.
• The decline in soft power - the power to attract - is also dramatic.
• The Pew Global Attitudes Survey has recorded a precipitous worldwide fall in favourable views of the US since 2001.

  • Thank you, Bush and all you "Bush Heads" who kept voting for him!
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• The map is chequered, of course, but the distaste extends beyond policies of the Bush administration to things such as "American ways of doing business", and "American ideas about democracy".
• Iraq has been central to this collapse of credibility and attractiveness.
• When Bush denounces Russia for invading a sovereign country (Georgia), as he did again at the UN on Tuesday, a cry of "humbug" goes up around the world.
• Now American-style free market capitalism is taking a further hit, while some of the alternative models are looking better.
• Last weekend, five former US secretaries of state - two Democrat, three Republican - gathered for a panel discussion on the future of foreign policy, televised by CNN.
• Asked by Christiane Amanpour what should be the biggest concern for the new president, Colin Powell replied: "To restore a sense of confidence in the United States of America."
• Madeleine Albright added that the world of 2009 would be full of issues "that can only be solved in cooperation with other countries".
• And, Republican and Democrat, they chorussed "close Guantánamo".
• Even George Bush now seems to concur with this criticism of George Bush - and I don't just mean speculation that the father is privately critical of the son. Eight years ago, president Bush the younger hardly seemed to know what the word "multilateral" meant.
• In the course of his farewell address to the UN general assembly this week, he used the word "multilateral" 10 times.
• Obviously not all this mess can be blamed on Bush: he's not responsible for the epochal rise of China, nor for jihadist terrorists' long-term hatred of the west.
• At the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, you can still see the painted glass sign that president Harry Truman placed on his desk in the oval office: The Buck Stops Here. (On the back it says: I'm From Missouri.)
• But a great deal of it can.
• The buck stops there. The contrast between the president from Missouri and the president from Texas is painful.
• Judgment, prudence, vision, patience, honesty - every quality that the 33rd president so signally possessed, as the US remade the world after 1945, has been signally lacking in the 43rd.
• Iraq, the US's greatest strategic blunder in at least 30 years, is Bush's fault.
• The buck stops there. And the more we learn about it, the clearer it becomes that it was pursued with a mixture of self-deception and lies.
• The reporter Ron Suskind has a new book out in which he recounts how, in the runup to war, British intelligence secured unique access to Saddam Hussein's head of intelligence, Tahir Jalil Habbush.
• Habbush told them what turned out subsequently to be the truth: that Saddam had ceased his programme of weapons of mass destruction, but would not admit it, because he was obsessed with keeping regional enemies such as Iran in a state of fear and uncertainty.
• That version was corroborated by Saddam's foreign minister, to whom French intelligence had originally secured access.
• The Bush-Cheney White House ignored both reports, preferring what turned out to be the fabrications of a German intelligence source codenamed Curveball. Curveball indeed.
• Some of Suskind's reporting has been questioned, but the basic story is not in doubt. The Bush-Cheney White House pressed ahead to war on a fraudulent prospectus, suppressing and distorting very important contrary evidence.

  • And how many dead American youth because of this retard and his cabal of evil henchmen?!! I say "NUREMBURG TRIALS!!"
  Add Sticky Note
• As a senior member of the administration told Suskind: "We're an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality." Hubris has rarely been better expressed.
• Something similar happened with the vertiginous unreality of hyper-leveraged Wall Street investment banking over the past decade.
• The financiers' motto, too, could have been "We create our own reality". Again, nemesis follows hubris as the night the day.
• The White House was not directly responsible for what looks like wild financial irresponsibility, but it was responsible for not supervising and regulating it - something even John McCain is now at least implicity admitting. The buck stopped there.
• As for the decline in American soft power, that is something for which George Bush was directly to blame.
• His arrogance, his unilateralism, his insensitivity, his long-time denial of the need for urgent action on climate change: all fed directly into the plummeting credit of the US around the world. It would have been a different story with a different president.
• For years now, we have seen those who hate the US abusing and burning effigies of Bush. The truth is, the anti-Americans should be building gilded monuments to him. For no one has done more to serve the cause of anti-Americanism than GW Bush.

  • Bush's legacy? Anti-Americanism
  Add Sticky Note
• It is we who like and admire the US who should, by rights, be burning effigies. But now, at last, we live in hope of a better America.

49 more annotations...

• Bush the Socialist and Destroyer
• by   Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
• Anyone who   has read a good economics book   would be quickly reduced to laughter and tears by George Bush's   ridiculous economic address to the nation.
• He put on his 9-11 suit   and tried to warn Americans about the impending disaster: that their   access to an infinite stream of paper money might be imperiled if   they don't cough up hundreds of billions immediately.
• It is very   tempting to go line by line and shout back.
• "I'm a strong   believer in free enterprise, so my natural instinct is to oppose   government intervention. I believe companies that make bad decisions   should be allowed to go out of business."
• And this is   why he nationalized airport security, created huge new bureaucracies,   spent more than any president in American history, centralized control   of education, put up more protectionist barriers than Clinton and   his father combined, bailed out airlines, presided over the Sarbanes-Oxley   reign of terror, unleashed anti-trust regulators, intensified health-care   controls, and pretty much used every headline as an excuse to demand   more money and power?

  • "Chimpy's" legacy
  Add Sticky Note
• "The FDIC   has been in existence for 75 years, and no one has ever lost a   penny on an insured deposit, and this will not change."
• But the penny   itself has lost 94% of its value in those 75 years precisely because   of institutions such as the FDIC and the Fed. Does he really think   we are that foolish?

• Here is my   favorite:

   

   

  "The problems   we're witnessing today developed over a long period of time. For   more than a decade, a massive amount of money flowed into the   United States from investors abroad because our country is an   attractive and secure place to do business."
• So   those nasty foreigners did it to us, huh? Maybe it was Bin Laden   who sneakily tried to create a credit bubble by investing in U.S.   stocks!

• And here is   his description of the grave calamity we face:

   

   

  "As uncertainty   has grown, many banks have restricted lending, credit markets   have frozen, and families and businesses have found it harder   to borrow money."
• That would actually   be a wonderful thing. Maybe a recession would last a year or 18   months, and then we would be back on solid footing again.
• Imagine that!   We might have to live within our means for a bit.
• He very   nearly admits that too much credit is what created this mess. So   he proposes more credit so that we can continue to live on too much   credit.
• And then what happens next time? Ever more credit? This   path ends in Weimar-level inflation and total destruction.

  • Followed by German Hitler's American "Minie-Me?"
  Add Sticky Note
• It is somewhere between   55 and 90 percent, depending on the way the question is worded.   Also, it is wide and deep opposition. It is made up of Democrats,   Republicans, liberals, conservatives, blacks, whites, rich, poor,   men, women – just about everyone, with no systematic bias among   the polled groups.
• What is striking   here is the level of public opposition.
• In other words, we have here a wonderful thing:   a clash of group interests, as Mises would say. It is the state   and its friends vs. the American people.

  • A long time coming; and LONG overdue!
  Add Sticky Note
• That doesn't   mean that Congress won't pass something or other. The administration   is prepared to pay off every member.
• And yet the proximity to the   election complicates matters. A lost election means no payoff, no   matter what.
• If public anger is intense enough, these guys might   balk in the end.
• This   would be a glorious result. The "credit crisis," as Bush describes   it, is nothing more than the kind of crisis a college kid faces   when his parents cut back on the deposits to his checking account.
• It means less high living, a few more nights moping in the dorm   rather than going out with his drinking friends. It does not mean   the end of the world.
• The market   is working now to make things right, to eliminate bad debt and get   us back on a sound economic footing.
• The government can help by   legalizing alternative monies, cutting regulations, cutting spending   and taxing and wars (as Ron Paul says), but otherwise by doing absolutely   nothing.
• Lehman failed on its own and yet life goes on. The same   should happen to Goldman, Morgan, Bear, GM, and all the rest.
• Free enterprise   is a profit and loss system.
• This is a time of losses, stemming   from an overinflated credit sector, one that the Austrian economists   have warned about for many years. Listen to the Austrians now and   permit the failures to occur.
• By the way,   since when has it been an article of our national religion that   the economy must never, ever, under any circumstances, be permitted   to fall into recession, even slightly? This is completely insane.
• The books you   need to get to your congressman and staff now are America's   Great Depression and The   Mystery of Banking. The first explains that it was credit   expansion and the attempt to keep prices high that prolonged the   Depression which would otherwise have ended by 1931 or 1932. On   this point Bernanke is all wet.
• The second   book explains how money and banking work in a free market, as opposed   to a subsidized, fiat-money, centralized system.
• These are the two   most essential books of our time, because they completely overthrow   the prevailing theory behind the bailout.
• Our choice   is this. We can buckle down for a year-long recession and then get   on the path to financial and economic soundness. Or we can set off   a calamity that will last a decade or more, and perhaps even wreck   civilization as we know it. That's our choice.

• September   26, 2008

   

  Llewellyn   H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him   mail] is founder and president of the Ludwig   von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of LewRockwell.com,   and author of Speaking   of Liberty.

33 more annotations...

• Daily Show: Bush 'won't be satisifed until American children are eating roadkill'
• David Edwards and Muriel Kane
  Published: Wednesday September 24, 2008
• The Bush administration's proposed $700 billion bailout of troubled investment firms got the Daily Show treatment on Tuesday, and Jon Stewart was particularly incensed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's coy reluctance to accept the taxpayers' money unless his decisions on how to spend it are made "non-reviewable."
• "Before we hand this Munster-esque unelected official 700 billion no-strings-attached dollars," Stewart remarked, "there is one thing you should know -- this financial guru never saw it coming."
• "I've got great confidence in our financial market," Paulson stated last March. "Our markets are resilient, are flexible. Our institutions, our banks and investment banks, are strong."
• President Bush also came in for his share of ridicule. "It turns out there are a lot of interlinks throughout the financial system," an apparently astonished Bush recently explained, illustrating the point with appropriate hand gestures.
• "Then AIG came along and the house of cards was much bigger. ... And so when one card started to go, we worried about the whole deck going down."
• Stewart turned next to Daily Show analyst John Oliver, saying, "After Katrina, after Iraq ... I didn't think there was another area that these guys could screw up."
   
   "It wasn't easy," Oliver replied. "It was like finding a vein on a failure junkie."
• "Is this economic crisis, then, sort of the turd icing on this administration's shitcake?" Stewart wondered.
   
   "Don't count them out, Jon," Oliver cautioned. "It's a long way to January."
   
   "You think there's more out there?" Stewart asked. "What's left for them to -- decomplish, if you will."
   
   "Do you still have a home?" Oliver asked. "Did your children have breakfast this morning? ... Was it something they found in the street?"
• "You're saying the president here won't be satisfied until American children are eating roadkill?" suggested Stewart.
   
   "Until they're fighting over roadkill," Oliver emphasized. "Until roadkill is the prize for the strongest."
• When Stewart asked why Bush would possibly want this, Oliver explained that it was a matter of "legacy. ... We all know he'll never be ranked as the best president. But he could still, if he works hard enough ..."
   
   "Be the worst?"
   
   "The last."
• This video is from Comedy Central's The Daily Show, broadcast September 23, 2008.

11 more annotations...

• Bush the arrogant

  • And we "ain't" seen nothing yet
  Add Sticky Note
• President Bush's latest permutation of crisis management is the last straw. But who best to roll back the excesses?
• September 28, 2008
• As the Bush administration attempts to stabilize the nation's economy, we are witness to the final chapter of a period of perverse and dishonest leadership that has used its own crises to justify the expansion of its own power.
• This was a president who came to office on promises of modesty -- who championed a "humble nation," scorned nation building and promised a more limited role for government in the lives of its citizens.
• Then he presided over a six-year attempt to tear down and rebuild the nations of Afghanistan and Iraq, and now has embarked on the most profound expansion of the federal government's role in the private economy since the Depression.
• In both cases, the pattern is the same. Ineptitude led to crisis; crisis then became the argument for the radical expansion of executive power.

  • "Order out of Chaos"
  Add Sticky Note
• The administration insisted that it exercise its new authority with a minimum of scrutiny by Congress, the courts or the public.
• In the so-called war on terror, that has meant the abdication of our most basic American principles.
• We have forfeited privacy and honor -- the administration has monitored phones and e-mails without warrants and has secreted prisoners in foreign lands, arguing that they deserved none of our protections even while in our custody.

  • The "Fourth Reich"
  Add Sticky Note
• As a nation, we have stooped to torture (while debating the meaning of the word) and refused to recognize one of our most basic Anglo-American notions, the principle of habeas corpus (thankfully, the Supreme Court, seven of whose members are Republicans, drew the line at that abomination).
• We have held prisoners in detention without trial, without charge, without end. In so doing, we have antagonized the world and debased America's moral authority to lead.
• The same administration responsible for these catastrophes has over the last month nationalized the largest source of funding for mortgages and the largest insurance company on the planet.
• And it proposed to intervene even more dramatically in the nation's economy by having the Treasury Department -- with no court, congressional or public oversight -- relieve financial institutions of the troubled mortgages and related securities that have locked up the lending system.
• There is no doubt about the depth and range of the crisis that provokes these calls for government action. The gyrations of the stock market have been dismaying, and the threat to the country's financial institutions -- and everyone who borrows from or invests in them -- is real.
• Still, the audacity of this administration demanding expanded powers and curtailed accountability is a wonder to behold.

  • Unmitigated gall
  Add Sticky Note
• The bitter irony is that this crisis warrants dramatic intervention, but President Bush's record makes him difficult to trust even when he's right.
• These troubles are about more than a president who is unfaithful to his word. Bush has transformed the balance of power in our government.
• We are seeing the erection of an imperial presidency, immune from oversight when it fights terrorists and when it rescues banks.
• Politically, these developments raise two questions: Which candidate to succeed Bush benefits most by the events of recent weeks?

  • Obama
  Add Sticky Note
• And which candidate, if either, would have the strength to roll back these expansions of presidential power if elected?

  • Neither
  Add Sticky Note
• To the first question, the answer seems to be Barack Obama, though only modestly.
• Obama's poll numbers have inched up in recent days as voters have taken stock of a frighteningly complex economic meltdown and been left to wonder what to think of John McCain's abrupt, halting responses -- as McCain saw it, the "fundamentals" of the economy were sound one moment, at risk the next.
• Questions about McCain's judgment in recent days have only been deepened by the performances of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. She has struggled in her rare public appearances, and her selection risks appearing all the more reckless and cynical when held against the seriousness of this financial crisis.
• Even McCain's campaign "suspension" seemed like gamesmanship.
• He said he was rushing to Washington, but took his time, and the talks derailed soon after he arrived. He proclaimed that the situation was so dire he would not return to the stump until an agreement was reached, then did precisely what he said he wouldn't. It was not an impressive week for the Straight Talk Express.
• Still, Obama has hardly run away with this issue, and the economic news exposes his weaknesses as well.
• He is, after all, untested by executive crisis and a freshman senator of limited achievement in government.
• Voters may well blanch at his relative inexperience, given the gravity of these times. Indeed, it is telling that in a week when his opponent flailed, Obama made scant headway in the polls.
• On the matter of which candidate could be trusted to roll back the excessive powers that Bush has aggregated, Obama is vague and McCain is exasperating.
• McCain has properly condemned the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and said he would close it, but when the court granted detainees there the rights of habeas corpus, McCain denounced the ruling as "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country."
• He condemned torture, but then, with the campaign underway, voted against legislation to limit the CIA's use of coercive interrogation. Those oscillations do not reassure.
• Obama, meanwhile, is more consistent and encouraging but offers few specifics.
• He pledges to close Guantanamo, restore habeas corpus and end the invasions of privacy undertaken in the name of fighting terrorism. Those are welcome positions and provide some hope that he would roll back Bush's excesses.

  • Didn't he vote for or support the bill for re-affirming wire taps on American citizens and granting retro-immunity to communication/telecoms?
  Add Sticky Note
• But while he pledges allegiance to the separation of powers, Obama has said little about how to honor that pledge.
• Rare is the politician who willingly cedes authority, and we have not heard enough from Obama to be convinced he's that rare person.
• These are not abstractions. They are the legacy of this grim epoch, one that should be equally offensive to conservatives and liberals. George Bush promised humility and delivered arrogance. The next president must not.

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• Secret Bush Administration Plan to Suspend US Constitution
• "Continuity of Government" (COG) Provisions activated in 2001
• by Tom Burghardt
• Global Research, October 6, 2008
• Ten months before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved an updated version of the U.S. Army's secret operational Continuity of Government (COG) plans.
• A draft document published by the whistleblowing website Wikileaks entitled, "Army Regulation 500-3, Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources. Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program," dated 19 January 2001, spells out changes in Army doctrine.

  • "Army Regulation 500-3"
• Issued by Headquarters, Department of the Army and signed off by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Secretary of the Army, the document is affixed with a warning: "Destruction Notice: Destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document."
• The restricted document as published by Wikileaks states:
• History. This regulation is a revision of the original regulation that was effective on 10 July 1989. Since that time, no changes have been published to amend the original.
• Summary. This regulation on the Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program has been revised to update Army COOP policy and extend the requirement for all-hazards COOP planning to all Army organizations. Classified information contained in the 1989 version of this AR has been removed and placed in a classified HQDA Operations Plan (OPLAN).
• Applicability. This regulation applies to the Active Army, the U.S. Army Reserve (USAR), and when federalized to the Army National Guard (ARNG).
• In the event of conflict between this regulation and approved OSD or JCS publications, the provisions of the latter will apply. ("Army Regulation 500-3, Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources. Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program," 19 January 2001, p. 3) [emphasis added]
• "All-hazards COOP planning" is described as the means by which "the Army remains capable of continuing mission-essential operations during any situation, including military attack, terrorist activities, and natural or man-made disasters."
• While the Army stresses the updates described in AR 500-3 relate to chemical, biological, nuclear attacks, "natural disasters" and "technical or man-made disasters or accidents," current Army doctrine is also heavily weighted towards contingency planning for "civil disturbances."

  • NOTE: Activation by Northern Command, Oct 1, 2008, of the 1st BCT, 3rd ID, U.S. Army for training and deployment in American domestic contingencies.
• Two national "civil disturbance" plans, Garden Plot and Cable Splicer have been operational since the 1960s.

• Researcher Frank Morales has detailed how,

   

   

  Under the heading of "civil disturbance planning," the U.S. military is training troops and police to suppress democratic opposition in America.
• The master plan, Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, is code-named, "Operation Garden Plot". Originated in 1968, the "operational plan" has been updated over the last three decades, most recently in 1991, and was activated during the Los Angeles "riots" of 1992, and more than likely during the recent anti-WTO "Battle in Seattle." ...
• Equipped with flexible "military operations in urban terrain" and "operations other than war" doctrine, lethal and "less-than-lethal" high-tech weaponry, US "armed forces" and "elite" militarized police units are being trained to eradicate "disorder", "disturbance" and "civil disobedience" in America.
• Further, it may very well be that police/military "civil disturbance" planning is the animating force and the overarching logic behind the incredible nationwide growth of police paramilitary units, a growth which coincidentally mirrors rising levels of police violence directed at the American people, particularly "non-white" poor and working people. (Frank Morales, "U.S. Military Civil Disturbance Planning: The War at Home," in Police State America, ed. Tom Burghardt, Toronto/Montreal: Arm The Spirit/Solidarity, 2002, P. 59)
• AR 500-3 should be viewed in this context.
• Plans for Continuity of Government have been in place since the 1950s. Originally conceived during the Cold War when fears of a nuclear strike envisaged by atomic war-gamers at the RAND Corporation, believed that an immobilization of government functions and a breakdown of civilian rule would follow a nuclear attack.
• But from their inception, COG planning has been shrouded in secrecy.
• In addition to constructing nuclear-proof underground facilities where the civilian leadership could escape a decapitation strike, other COG provisions included a series of executive orders designating which officials would assume Cabinet-level posts and other Executive Branch positions. Officials so designated would constitute a "shadow government" should office holders be killed in an attack "or otherwise incapacitated."
• However, when these and other Pentagon "civil disturbance" plans surfaced in the 1980s during the Iran-Contra hearings, they were roundly criticized by members of Congress, civil liberties groups and the media before disappearing once again, down Orwell's "memory hole."
• The inherent dangers implicit in such plans are that unelected Executive Branch officers could assume the Presidency and other appointed offices subject neither to congressional scrutiny nor judicial oversight.

  • A literal coup d'tat; not just a theoretical one
• Exercising sweeping emergency powers buried within Presidential Decision Directives (PDDs), unelected officials could suspend the Constitution, declare martial law and create an Executive Branch dictatorship that rests solely on the power of the U.S. military.
• Most troubling, Executive Branch officials under secret rules of a COG regime could suppress and usurp the lawful powers of Congress and the Judicial Branch (by force of arms if deemed necessary) as a means of ensuring "cooperation" under a "unitary executive."

  • This was almost the case (minus the call out of U.S. Military) when Bush and Paulson were trying to strong arm the Congress into running a street robbery on the American people and then handing over the loot to the Wall Street pals
• As we have seen, the "unitary executive" theory has been a salient feature of Bushist rule since the December 2000 judicial coup d'état, when the Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore decision handed a contested election to George W. Bush by stopping the vote count in Florida.
• Since assuming office, the administration has ruthlessly wielded executive power in order to achieve their antidemocratic agenda: from the looting of the economy through "deregulation," massive deficit spending and tax cuts for their corporate "clients," to waging a preemptive war of conquest in Iraq, the "unitary executive" has systematically shredded America's constitutional system of checks and balances.

  • Criminals
• The Bush administration put COG plans into operation for the first time in U.S. history in the hours directly following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. They have never been rescinded.
• Their implementation involves a rotating staff of 75-150 senior government officials and others from every Cabinet department in two "secure, undisclosed locations" on the East Coast.
• However, key congressional representatives have been kept out of the loop and House and Senate leaders have said they were not informed the "shadow government" had "gone live."

  • And end run around Americans' elected officials by these cheap, two-bit, tin horn despots, who ought to clumb back inside their Skull and Bones coffins and be buried forever.
• So secretive are Bush administration plans that Peter DeFazio (D-OR), a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, was denied access in 2007 to the classified version of the COG plans contained in top secret Presidential Decision Directive annexes. This too, is unprecedented.
• While the Bush administration admitted that COG was activated in 2001, their disclosure came only after The Washington Post broke the story based on confidential administration sources troubled by the scope of the program and its secretive implementation.
• Since the late 1980s, Rumsfeld was a habitué of COG exercises along with Vice President Dick Cheney. Indeed early COG drills had been organized by the right-wing Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

• As investigative journalist Andrew Cockburn revealed in his definitive political biography of the former Defense Secretary:

   

   

  This highly secret program was known as Project 908, and among the individuals earmarked to take power when disaster struck was Donald Rumsfeld. ...
• There, for several days, he would be immured in artificial caverns, staring at electronic displays streaming data of disaster and confusion, sleeping on cots and subsisting on the most austere rations. ...
• Insofar as the COG games gave the illusion of reality, they taught Rumsfeld and his fellow players some dangerous lessons, particularly when the fall of the Soviet Union induced some changes in the usual scenarios. Although the exercises continued, still budgeted at over $200 million in the Clinton era, the vanished Soviets were now customarily replaced by terrorists. The terrorism envisaged however, was almost always state-sponsored. ...
• There were other changes, too. In earlier times the specialists selected to run the "shadow government" had been drawn from across the political spectrum, Democrats and Republicans alike. But now, down in the bunkers, Rumsfeld found himself in politically congenial company, the players' roster being filled almost exclusively with Republican hawks. (Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy, New York: Scribner, 2007, pp. 85-86, 88)

  • "Nazis"
• As researcher Peter Dale Scott revealed, in early 2006 the Department of Homeland Security awarded a $385 million contract to a Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, to provide "temporary detention and processing facilities."

• Scott wrote,

   

   

  The contract--announced Jan. 24 by the engineering and construction firm KBR--calls for preparing for "an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs" in the event of other emergencies, such as "a natural disaster." The release offered no details about where Halliburton was to build these facilities, or when. ...
• In January 2002 the Pentagon submitted a proposal for deploying troops on American streets.

  • Pentagon proposal for deploying U.S. military on American streets
• After 9/11, new martial law plans began to surface similar to those of FEMA in the 1980s.
• One month later John Brinkerhoff, the author of the 1982 FEMA memo, published an article arguing for the legality of using U.S. troops for purposes of domestic security. (Peter Dale Scott, "Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps," Pacific News Service, February 8, 2006)
• The DHS contract to KBR had been preceded by the April 2002 creation of the Pentagon's Northern Command (NORTHCOM), specifically empowered by the Bush administration for domestic U.S. military operations in direct violation of Posse Comitatus prohibitions forbidding the use of the military for domestic law enforcement.

  • The creation of "Northern Command"
• At the time, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld called NORTHCOM's launch "the most sweeping set of changes since the unified command system was set up in 1946."
• Sweeping indeed! Last month Army Times reported that the Army's "3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team [BCT] has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys. Now they're training for the same mission--with a twist--at home."

  • 1st BCT - 3rd ID, U.S. Army

• According to Army Times,

   

   

  Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks. ...

   

   

  But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities. ...
  

   

  They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack. ...
  

   

  The 1st BCT's soldiers also will learn how to use "the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded," 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.
  

   

  "It's a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they're fielding. They've been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we're undertaking we were the first to get it."

   

   

  The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets. (Gina Cavallaro, "Brigade Homeland Tours Start Oct. 1," Army Times, September 8, 2008)
• While senior Pentagon brass have downplayed the significance of deploying a BCT that has taken part in aggressive occupation duties to suppress the Iraqi people's resistance, Col. Lou Vogler, NORTHCOM's chief of future operations said in an interview that the military "will integrate with law enforcement to understand the situation and make sure we're aware of any threats."

• An article published by the Army News Service disclosed,

   

   

  During the exercise, commanders and staff of the force will train, rehearse and exercise--from academic classes to making decisions and executing orders--all to help prepare them for the mission they will assume on Oct. 1, said Vogler.
• "It's an opportunity for network building in an unprecedented assignment of forces," said [Marine Corps Lt. Col.] Shores. "DOD always had allocated contingency sourced forces--but this is precedent-setting network building with the forces that we ultimately will go out and execute with. It's an opportunity to get to know our forces, to see them in execution, to mission-orient them and be that much better--to be that much more responsive."
• One goal of the exercise is to exercise with partners from the civilian agencies they would support.
• To that end, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other interagency representatives are participating to ensure integration with civilian consequence managers who would lead a response, said Vogler.
• "The overall federal response builds on the local and state response in accordance with the incident command system and existing plans and processes that are out there," said Vogler.
• "The response force would supplement local efforts." ("Consequence Management Response Force to join Army Northern Command," Army News Service, September 15, 2008)
• Vogler and Shores were discussing an exercise code-named Vibrant Response, that took place September 8-19 at Fort Stewart in Georgia.

  • Operation Vibrant Response
• Three brigades form the core of NORTHCOM's Consequence Management Response Force: the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Army Division; the 1st Medical Brigade, Fort Hood, Texas, and the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. All three units participated in Vibrant Response.

• As researcher and analyst Michel Chossudovsky comments:

   

  The BCT is an army combat unit designed to confront an enemy within a war theater.
• With US forces overstretched in Iraq, why would the Pentagon decide to undertake this redeployment within the USA, barely one month before the presidential elections?

  • Excellent question

• The new mission of the 1st Brigade on US soil is to participate in "defense" efforts as well as provide "support to civilian authorities".

   

  What is significant in this redeployment of a US infantry unit is the presumption that North America could, in the case of a national emergency, constitute a "war theater" thereby justifying the deployment of combat units.

• The new skills to be imparted consist in training 1st BCT in repressing civil unrest, a task normally assumed by civilian law enforcement.

   

  What we are dealing with is a militarization of civilian police activities in derogation of the Posse Comitatus Act. ("Pre-election Militarization of the North American Homeland. US Combat Troops in Iraq repatriated to 'help with civil unrest'," Global Research, September 26, 2008)
• One scenario envisaged by Chossudovsky is that "civil unrest resulting from from the financial meltdown is a distinct possibility, given the broad impacts of financial collapse on lifelong savings, pension funds, homeownership, etc."

  • Exactly as I stated when the news first came out of the deployment of active combat units in America
• One might reasonably inquire, what "precedent-setting network" does the Army have in mind that would "ensure integration" with "civilian agencies" such as FEMA (a branch of Homeland Security)? 

• As the World Socialist Web Site reports:

   

   

  It is noteworthy that the deployment of US combat troops "as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters"--in the words of the Army Times--coincides with the eruption of the greatest economic emergency and financial disaster since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

  • And recall some Congressmen opposed to the bailout, spoke from the rostrum of the House, stating they had been threatened with the spectre of martial law if the vote failed to pass the official U.S. Robbery scheme on the American people.
• Justified as a response to terrorist threats, the real source of the growing preparations for the use of US military force within America's borders lies not in the events of September 11, 2001 or the danger that they will be repeated. Rather, the domestic mobilization of the armed forces is a response by the US ruling establishment to the growing threat to political stability. (Bill Van Auken, "Army deploys combat unit in U.S. for possible civil unrest," World Socialist Web Site, 25 September 2008)

  • Is it time for Madame Du Farge to get out her knitting needles?
• As the 2001 COOP planning document describes, a host of on-going Army plans and exercises have been revised by the Bush administration.
• In addition to Vibrant Response discussed above, they include: Plan EXCALIBUR, a COG Army training exercise; ADOBE, described by investigative journalist William M. Arkin as a "FEMA continuity of government special access program designation."

• Arkin describes special access programs or SAPs as,

   

   

  Classified research and development, acquisition program, operation, intelligence activity, or plan that is so sensitive or critical that the value of the information warrants enhanced protection beyond that normally provided for access to Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret information. (William M. Arkin, Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in the 9/11 World, Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2005, p. 598)

• The impetus for revising Army COOP was, according to AR 500-3 primarily because,

   

   

  The end of the Cold War and the breakup of the former Soviet Union significantly reduced the probability of a major nuclear attack on CONUS but the probability of other threats has increased. Army organizations must be prepared for any contingency with a potential for interruption of normal operations. To emphasize that Army continuity of operations planning is now focused on the full all-hazards threat spectrum, the name "ASRRS" has been replaced by the more generic title "Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program." (p. 13)

  • In other words: "we've got no foreign enemy to fight; so we will fight YOU..the American citizen.
• Towards this end, the Rumsfeld-era document states that the Army's new "mission-critical" functions will be restructured so that, "Army COOP plans must ensure that the Army remains capable of continuing mission-essential operations during any situation, including military attack, terrorist activities, and natural or man-made disasters." (p. 13)
• The Army, following various contingencies analyzed in the document will "coordinate with mission-essential external organizations and agencies." (p. 14)

• So sensitive are the political ramifications of these plans that under the heading, 3-12 Operational Security (OPSEC), the Army avers,
  

   

   

  a. The success of COOP planning relies on denying access by unauthorized parties to information on COOP plans, procedures, capabilities and facilities.
  

   

  b. Overhead imagery, signals intelligence, human sources, and exploitation of open literature during peacetime are threat capabilities used to gain knowledge of Army emergency plans, command and control systems, and facilities.

   

  c. See Appendix B, Security Classification Guide, for guidance on the level of classification of COOP-related information. (COOP, op. cit., p. 20)
  

   

  Appendix A of AR 500-3 lists relevant references for changes included in the COOP planning document.

• These include:
  

   

   

  Section I

   

  Required Publications

   

  
  

   

  HQDA Operations Plan EXCALIBUR, 30 April 1999 (Being Revised)

   

  HQDA Continuity of Operations Plan (cited in para 1-4.f)

   

  
  

   

  Section II
  

   

  Related Publications a related publication is merely a source of additional information. The user does not have to read it to understand this publication.
  

   

  Executive Order 12656

   

  National Security Emergency Preparedness (NSEP), 18 November 1988
  

   

  DoD Directive (Dodd) 2000.12

   

  DoD Antiterrorism/Force Protection (AT/FP) Program, 13 April 1999
  

   

  CJCSM 3410.01

   

  Continuity of Operations Plan for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (COOP-CJCS), 1 March 1999

   

  
  

   

  Executive Order 12787

   

  Prescribing the Order of Succession of Officers to Act as Secretary of Defense, 31 December 1991

   

  
  

   

  DoDD 3020.26

   

  Continuity of Operations (COOP) Policy and Planning, 26 May 1995

   

  
  

   

  DoD 3020.26P

   

  Continuity of Operations Plan, 21 June 2000 (Classified SECRET)

   

  
  

   

  DoDD 3020.36

   

  Assignment of National Security Emergency Preparedness (NSEP) Responsibilities to DoD Components, 2 November 1988
  

   

  DoDD 3025.15

   

  Military Support to Civil Authorities (MSCA), 18 February 1997
  

   

  The Federal Response Plan, April 1999
  

   

  Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 67, (Top Secret) Enduring Constitutional Government (ECG) and Continuity of Government (COG) Operations, Oct 21, 1998

   

  Federal Preparedness Circular 65, Federal Executive Branch Continuity of Operations, (COOP), July 26, 1999
• As Peter Dale Scott reported in CounterPunch, apparently members of Congress are considered "unauthorized parties" to be denied access "to information on COOP plans, procedures, capabilities and facilities."
• Congressman DeFazio had been denied access to the classified annexes of National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive (NSPD 51/HSPD 20

• Scott wrote,

   

   

  NSPD 51 contains "classified Continuity Annexes" which shall "be protected from unauthorized disclosure." Congressman DeFazio twice requested to see these Annexes, the second time in a letter cosigned by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Christopher Carney. It was these requests that the White House denied. ...

   

  DeFazio's inability to get access to the NSPD Annexes is less than reassuring. If members of the Homeland Security Committee cannot enforce their right to read secret plans of the Executive Branch, then the systems of checks and balances established by the U.S. Constitution would seem to be failing.
• To put it another way, if the White House is successful in frustrating DeFazio, then Continuity of Government planning has arguably already superseded the Constitution as a higher authority. (Peter Dale Scott, "The Showdown," CounterPunch, March 31, 2008)
• With the stunning revelations published by Wikileaks, it is abundantly clear that top Bush administration officials were busily revising Continuity of Government plans, including "civil disturbance" contingencies for suspending the Constitution and imposing martial law, long before the 9/11 attacks.

• Since that fatal and tragic day seven long years ago, we have been told repeatedly by the government and their media sycophants that 9/11 was the day "when everything changed."

   

  We now know thanks to Wikileaks, that as with the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the unprecedented and lawless surveillance of Americans, the illegal detention and torture of prisoners of war, that Bush administration assertions are no more than a pack of murderous lies.
• One fact is abundantly clear from the mass of conflicting evidence and assertions made by proponents of various theories surrounding the 9/11 events: AR 500-3 demonstrates that from the very first moments after being installed in office, the Bush regime was involved in a "controlled demolition" of the U.S. Constitution.

  • Traitors; thugs; despots, plutocrats and criminals of the lowest order

• Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly, Love & Rage and Antifa Forum, he is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.

    

79 more annotations...

• Glenn Beck’s Slick Propaganda Segment on the H1N1 Vaccination
• Kurt Nimmo
   Infowars
   October 9, 2009
• On his show today, Glenn Beck covered the H1N1 virus and vaccine. He said he would not take a stand on if you should submit to the vaccination.
• Beck asked his guests about the attenuated virus in the nasal spray version of the vaccine.
• Marc Siegel, M.D., who has written a book on the swine flu — and Fox naturally peddled, thus giving the audience the idea he is an expert — said the live virus in the vaccine is not capable of spreading the disease in healthy people.
• “No claws on it,” Siegel insisted, “it has been totally deactivated. It is alive and it can get you sick if you are immunally compromised or if you have asthma or you are pregnant. You can only take it if you are totally healthy. It cannot morph into the flu itself.”
• It is estimated 60 percent of the U.S. population is immunodeficient in one way or another, but doctor Siegel did not mention this.
• He also did not mention concerns on the part of other doctors and health care professionals about the attenuated virus.
• Siegel also did not say how health care providers will prevent the immunodeficient from getting the virus.
• Due to government and corporate media hype about H1N1, it is likely millions of less than healthy people will be demanding they be vaccinated.
• As a responsible doctor instead of a Fox News talking head, Mr. Siegel would have mentioned the FluMist insert.
• It states that FluMist “recipients should avoid close contact with immunocompromised individuals for at least 21 days,” in particular immunocompromised people living in the same house.
• In other words, it is inevitable millions of immunocompromised people will get sick.
• Millions of Americans suffer from eczema, allergies, cancer, HIV infection or AIDS, emphysema, Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, herniated spinal discs, acute muscular pain syndromes, and all types of rheumatoid and autoimmune diseases. As much as 60% of the entire population could be considered to be “chemically immunosuppressed,” according to experts.
• The FluMist campaign now underway will be the “most intense, direct-to-consumer marketing campaign ever waged for a vaccine,” costing an estimated $25 million over the next 2.5 months. Big Pharma plans a three-year, $100 million campaign to encourage use of the nasal flu vaccine among physicians, notes Dr. Sherri Tenpenny.
• “Apparently, the goal seems to center around frightening — or inducing enough guilt — that everyone would begin to demand the vaccine as soon as it is available,” including the immunodeficient.
• But is not merely the risks to the immunosuppressed. As Dr. Tenpenny notes, an ever greater concern about FluMist is the contents within the vaccine.
• In addition to the live, attenuated influenza virus — the average dose contains between 10 million and 100 million viral particles — the culture media the viral strain was developed in may not be free of pathogens not tested for.
• In addition, the risk that the vaccine may contain contaminant avian retroviruses is present.
• Add to this concern the fact a stabilizing buffer containing potassium phosphate, sucrose (table sugar) and nearly 0.5 mg of monosodium glutamate (MSG) is added to each dose, according to the FluMist package insert.
• “The pharmaceutical companies do not necessarily always do a reasonable job of considering the ‘down side’ when they are pushing new drugs or new vaccines,” writes Tenpenny.
• “FluMist has the potential for causing the worst, most severe flu epidemic seen in years.
• (It) contains 3 live viruses. You shoot it up your nose and your immune system gets a chance to make antibodies to three live, weakened viruses while the manufacturer hopes against hope that one of these three actually causes a disease this year…. Of course, if you are immune compromised or go near someone who is, you will get sick or infect them with the virus and they can get the flu.”
• Dr. Rima Laibow calls FluMist a “recipe for pandemic.
• “Laibow and others also warn that Flu Mist risks potential brain damage, making it an extremely hazardous drug,” writes Stephen Lendman. “The nasal passage olfactory tract is a direct pathway to the brain. Ingesting viruses through it risks encephalitis, a viral-induced acute brain inflammation.”
• None of this was brought up on the Fox News segment — and for good reason.
• The government wants a preponderant number of people to get vaccinated against a non-existent pandemic by a virus that has so far killed less people than the regular flu season.
• Fox News, just like CNN, MSNBC and the rest, function as CIA disinformation, propaganda, and brainwashing organs for a global elite who are eugenicists and believe the planet is populated with too many useless eaters.
• “As the federal government launches the most ambitious inoculation campaign in U.S. history, several surveys indicate the public is decidedly ambivalent,” the Washington Post reported last week.
• “A nationally representative poll of 1,042 adults released Friday by the Harvard School of Public Health found that only 40 percent were sure they would receive the vaccine and that about half were certain their children would. Recent research by the University of Michigan and by Consumer Reports yielded similar results.”
• Americans are not stupid. They know there is something rotten in Denmark — or the District of Criminals — when the government gives billions of their tax dollars to giant pharmaceutical companies and fills the public airwaves with PSAs featuring Elmo urging them to have their children injected with an experimental vaccination.

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• WILL   FOX NEWS DROP NEWT GINGRICH?
• By Cliff Kincaid
    October 30, 2009
    NewsWithViews.com
• On the   occasion of its 13th anniversary and dramatic success in the television   ratings, Fox News is coming under serious scrutiny.
• But there is no reason   why this scrutiny should come exclusively from those on the left who are   jealous of the cable channel’s success.
• Conservatives should not   hesitate to offer their own critique of the popular news network.
• Since   Fox News has come to symbolize in the public mind the conservative viewpoint,   conservatives should examine which personalities and issues are being   presented regularly on the cable channel.
• Inevitably, such an analysis   will focus on former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who seems   to appear every few days on “The O’Reilly Factor,” “Hannity,”   or “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.”
• However,   Gingrich’s position as a Fox News regular may be in jeopardy because   of his abandonment of the conservative candidate, Doug   Hoffman, in a special election race in New York.
• One of the White   House criticisms of Fox News is that it is an arm of the Republican Party.   The regular use of Gingrich, a knee-jerk Republican who defers to party   bosses, tends to support that thesis.
• Since   many people tune into Fox News to ascertain the conservative point of   view, the regular use of Gingrich will become disconcerting and problematic   to many members of its viewing audience.
• In a major break with some of   his on-air colleagues, independent conservative and Fox News host Glenn   Beck openly has questioned Gingrich’s embrace of the official Republican   candidate, liberal Dede Scozzafava, in the race.
• Beck noted her ties to   ACORN and interviewed her conservative opponent, Hoffman. The interview   ran under the headline, “Principles or Party?” and is now   featured on Hoffman’s website.
• While   he supports the official Republican nominee in the New York race, out   of deference to party leaders, Gingrich irritates conservatives and Republicans   alike by giving credence to causes embraced by far-left liberals in the   Democratic Party.
• He filmed a climate change ad with radical House Speaker   Nancy Pelosi and currently conducts joint appearances with racial agitator   Al Sharpton, a figure in the Democratic Party, on educational matters.
• The Gingrich-Sharpton tour was actually announced by the Obama White House   and is being sponsored by the federal Department of Education.

  • Newt has been a grade-A, royal son of'a bitch for a long time. None of this surprises those of us who've know for years what an ass hole he is.
  Add Sticky Note
• The   latter has prompted Peter Flaherty, president of the National Legal and   Policy Center, to call upon Gingrich to end his relationship with Sharpton.
• A study   issued by the NLPC notes that “Sharpton has promoted fake hate   crimes against blacks, and has inspired racial antagonism against whites   and Jews. Indeed, this long-established pattern of behavior continues   to the present.”
• A video   from a leading conservative news site, Newsmax.com, shows Flaherty denouncing   Gingrich for associating with the activist. “Newt has made a bad   decision and we believe he should end his relationship with Sharpton,”   Flaherty said.
• Even   before he decided to back a liberal Republican over a conservative in   the Congressional special election race in New York’s 23rd district,   Gingrich had been under fire for abandoning the conservative cause.
• He   co-authored an Al Gore-style book on environmental issues, A Contract   With the Earth, before he decided that this approach was unpopular   and that we had to exploit more of our own natural resources and “Drill   baby drill.” Suddenly, Gingrich’s calls for “Green conservatism”   were dropped.
• Back   in 2007, when Alan Colmes was a co-host on the Hannity show, Colmes told   Gingrich that he appreciated the fact that there was an endorsement of   A Contract With the Earth from liberal Democratic Senator John   Kerry. “You should have gone to Gore, though,” Colmes said.
• Colmes   has since been dropped by Fox News as a program host, but Gingrich still   appears with regularity.
• One of his latest projects, “Rediscovering   God in America,” which examines the monuments, memorials and documents   found in Washington, D.C., that reference God’s role in America’s   founding, is extremely worthwhile but basically duplicates what people   like David Barton of WallBuilders   have been doing for many years.
• Once known as a politician with personal   problems, Gingrich has reportedly rediscovered his own religious faith,   under the guidance of his third wife.
• But   as we have seen with environmentalism, Gingrich’s positions on political   matters are subject to change, depending on what seems popular at the   time.
• On the matter of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, Gingrich   was against it until he issued a statement in favor of it.
• Then, in an   article for Human Events, he called it “bad” and stated that   Republican presidential candidate John McCain could only win by distancing   himself from it.
• This performance led us to conclude   that the Republican Party and its leaders in Congress were morally bankrupt,   to go along with the financial bankruptcy of the nation itself.
• Earlier   this year Gingrich was calling for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to be replaced   because of her unsubstantiated allegations against the CIA about lying   over the use of interrogation techniques against terrorists. But before   that, Gingrich thought so much of Pelosi that he taped an advertisement   with her for the Alliance for Climate Protection, a group founded by Al   Gore.
• However,   it’s Gingrich’s intervention in the New York special election   race on November 3 that really has conservatives up in arms.
• Mark Mix   of the National Right to Work Committee is the latest to sound the alarm.
• He accuses Gingrich of undercutting efforts to stop Big Labor’s   “Employee Free Choice Act” or card check bill in Congress.
• The measure would make it easier for left-wing labor unions to get members   and pick their pockets to support left-wing Democratic Party candidates.
• Referring   to official Republican candidate, Scozzafava, Mix says that Gingrich “is   backing an outspoken supporter of forced unionism and the union bosses…”
• In unusually harsh language, Mix goes on to say that “Just like   the final few years when he was Speaker of the House of Representatives,   for Newt, it appears it is just about power and party over principle.”
• The   issue of “party over principle” was raised by Glenn Beck during   his interview of Hoffman.
• The outcome of this race could determine not   only the future of the conservative movement but whether Gingrich has   the credibility to continue as a “conservative” spokesman   on Fox News.
• ©   2009 Cliff Kincaid - All Rights Reserved

• Cliff Kincaid,   a veteran journalist and media critic, Cliff concentrated in journalism   and communications at the University of Toledo, where he graduated with   a Bachelor of Arts degree.

   

  Cliff has written or co-authored   nine books on media and cultural affairs and foreign policy issues. One   of Cliff's books, "Global   Bondage: The UN Plan to Rule the World" is still awailable.

   

  Cliff has appeared on Hannity &   Colmes, The O’Reilly Factor, Crossfire and has been published in the Washington   Post, Washington Times, Chronicles, Human Events and Insight.  

   

  Web Site: www.AIM.org
   
    E-Mail: cliff.kincaid@aim.org

37 more annotations...

• MORE   REPUBLICAN DECEPTION
• By   Kelleigh Nelson
    October 25, 2009
    NewsWithViews.com
• As my   husband is fond of saying, we have Socialist Party A and Socialist Party   B, there is little difference.
• It seems quite obvious to even the least   politically involved that both parties are melding into one and both are   far too liberal for the conservative, small government voters who favor   our founding fathers’ beliefs and desires for America.
• In 1965,   I remember a close friend telling me that the Soviet Union and America   would meld into one combining both communism and capitalism. I’ve   thought of that statement many times over the years.
• Countless   phone calls from the Republican National Committee, the College Republican   National Committee, and every other form of Republican National group   out there has phoned me for a donation.
• If that isn’t enough, the   RNC and various other Republican groups continue to send me snail mail   which includes two and three page questionnaires and surveys, and at the   end of same, an area to mark for the amount of your donation.
• With the   disgust I’ve felt for so long regarding the Republican choices for   office, I mostly pitched these costly forms in the trash. However, after   the 2008 election, I decided to change my strategy.
• Every   questionnaire seems to ask the questions with answers they KNOW we want   them to follow…
• a case in point is, “Do you believe the stimulus   is working for America?” Or this, “Do you approve of the healthcare   reform by President Obama?”
• You know the type of questions, as I’m   sure many of you have received these forms and these phone calls soliciting   for funds as well.
• I fill   out the questionnaires, then I add my own short letter stating that I   am much more inclined to do my own research on where my money will go   and to whom I will support for office than they have been in the past   or even now.
• The same goes for the phone solicitations…I tell them   I no longer trust their decisions and will never be funding them again   and then I tell them why.
• Do conservatives   want the likes of John McCain nominated for the highest office in the   land?
• I highly doubt McCain would have garnered even half the votes he   got had it not been for his vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, who   he quite obviously threw under the bus.
• Sarah’s biggest mistake   was accepting that nomination, but that’s another story.
• A case   in point is the choice of the Republican party of Michael Steele as the   head of the RNC, which was quite disturbing for many reasons.
• One has   to wonder if Steele was chosen for the color of his skin rather than the   content of his character and especially his failure to uphold the former   Republican platform of pro-life, pro-family, small government, etc.
• In   a March, 2009 interview with GQ Magazine, he was asked to elaborate on   his beliefs. Here is what he said when asked about pro-life,
• "The   choice issue cuts two ways. You can choose life, or you can choose abortion.   You know, my mother chose life. So, you know, I think the power of the   argument of choice boils down to stating a case for one or the other."
• "Are   you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?" the   interviewer asked.
    Steele responded, "Yeah. I mean, again, I think that's an individual   choice."

• GQ:   "You do?"

   

  Steele:   "Yeah. Absolutely."
• Then   when he was asked about marriage, he stated he believed it was between   a man and a woman, but when asked if homosexuality was a choice, he stated,   "Oh, no. I don't think I've ever really subscribed to that view,   that you can turn it on and off like a water tap. ... You just can't simply   say, oh, like, 'Tomorrow morning I'm gonna stop being gay.' It's like   saying, 'Tomorrow morning I'm gonna stop being black.'"
• Several   conservative Republicans were not assuaged when Steele tried to clarify   that his beliefs were those of the Republican platform. However, nothing   was done.
• The   crowning piece that told me Michael Steele was another neo-conservative   was the fact that he is a five-year member of the globalist, one-world   (Christian excluding) Aspen Institute.
• Please see NWV’s article   by my friend, Betty Freauf, JUST WHO IS MICHAEL STEELE? In the March 18,   2009 issue.
• Also see Dr. Dennis Cuddy’s excellent article in NWV’s,   THE POWER ELITE EXPOSED from March 16, 2004.

• The   former head of the Aspen Institute, new age environmentalist Maurice Strong,   has membership in the following organizations, but this does not include   the entire list:

   

  •   Senior Advisor to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
    • Senior Advisor to World Bank President James   Wolfensohn
    • Chairman of the Earth Council
    • Chairman of the World Resources Institute
    • Co-Chairman of the Council of the World Economic   Forum
    • member of Toyota’s International Advisory   Board
• He is   also a long time member of the Futurist Society (which Newt Gingrich also   belongs to as well as Newt’s long time friends Alvin and Heidi Toffler).
• (See Toffler’s book, THE THIRD WAVE)
• To digress, remember Newt recently   came out for the republican nominee in New York’s 23rd congressional   district, Dede Scozzafava, who represents the Democratic party with her   entire platform but is running on the Republican ticket against a constitutionalist   running on the conservative party by the name of Doug Hoffman.
• The   following is from the website, THE   ASPEN INSTITUTE AND THE CLUB OF ROME
• “The   Aspen Institute was founded in 1949, by Aldous Huxley, and John Maynard   Hutchins, in commemoration of the 200th birthday of German philosopher   and author of Faust, and a member of the Illuminati,   Goethe.
• Robert O. Anderson also contributed significant funds to a project   initiated by the Rockefeller family, together with Aurelio Peccei   and Alexander King, at the Rockefeller’s estate   at Bellagio, Italy, called the Club of Rome.
• In 1972, this Club of Rome, and the US Association of the Club of Rome,   gave widespread publicity to their publication of the notorious “Limits   to Growth.”
• Supported by research done at MIT, this report concluded   that industrialization had to be halted to save the planet from ecological   catastrophe.
• These   organizations were exploiting the panic induced, when Paul Ehrlich, a   biologist at Stanford, and admirer of Bertrand Russell, in 1968, wrote   his Malthusian projections in a best-selling book called The Population   Bomb. “
• Quite   obviously, our Republican party has joined with the enemy.
• Weak kneed,   spineless men like former Tennessee Senator Dr. Bill Frist,
• Senators from   Maine, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins,
• Minority leader Boehner and Newt   Gingrich who is backing Dede Scozzafava, and countless others too numerous   to name, who do not represent conservative Republicans or ideals, do not   deserve to have our cash to continue their happy allegiance with the Marxist   ideologues of the left.
• I’ve   sent donations to the Republican running against Arlen Specter who would   have been elected 5 years ago had President Bush not interceded for Specter.
• There are two Republicans running in the primary against Harry Reid, one   is a constitutionalist.
• From   my friend and author Charlotte Iserbyt, comes this notice:
• “Those   researchers out there who worked SO hard to kill Outcomes Based Education   in the eighties/nineties will recognize the name "Cherilyn Gulbrandtsen"   whose name is now Cherilyn Eagar. Cherilyn was one of our brightest, effective,   attractive, and talented (what a singing voice!) activists. I know her   well and am thrilled she is running for the U.S. Senate from Utah. Please   spread the word and give her support in her race for that important position.”   Check her out   here.
• There   are countless good conservative folks running that need our support.
• We   should NOT trust the RNC or any of their sister organizations to send   our monies to the true conservatives.
• Remember, all of the congress is   up for re-election in 2010 and a third of the senate is up for re-election.
• You   can find out which senators are up for election.
• All senators run   for a 6 year term. The two exceptions are Obama and Biden’s senate   seats which also need to be filled, bringing the amount of senators running   this year to a total of 36.
• When   you receive phone calls and snail mail from the RNC, I urge you to tell   them you feel highly qualified to do your own research on where you’ll   send your monies, and that they are wasting their time calling you for   cash that they’ll distribute to the likes of Scozzafava (500,000   from the RNC), Snowe, Collins and others who are simply Republicans in   name only.
• For   more information see these wonderful books.
   
    1- THE GLOBALIST by Dr. Dennis Cuddy
    2- THE   ROAD TO SOCIALISM AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER by Dr. Dennis Cuddy
    3- THE   DELIBERATE DUMBING DOWN OF AMERICA by Charlotte Iserbyt
• © 2009 Kelleigh Nelson - All Rights   Reserved

• Kelleigh Nelson has been researching the Christian   right and their connections to the left, the new age, and cults since   1975. Formerly an executive producer for three different national radio   talk show hosts, she was adept at finding and scheduling a variety of   wonderful guests for her radio hosts. She and her husband live in Knoxville,   TN, and she has owned her own wholesale commercial bakery since 1990.   Prior to moving to Tennessee, Kelleigh was marketing communications and   advertising manager for a fortune 100 company in Ohio. Born and raised   in Chicago, Illinois, she was a Goldwater girl with high school classmate,   Hillary Rodham, in Park Ridge, Illinois. Kelleigh is well acquainted with   Chicago politics and was working in downtown Chicago during the 1968 Democratic   convention riots.

   

  E-Mail: proverbs133@bellsouth.net

52 more annotations...

• LewRockwell.com Podcast #28 - What is Neoconservatism?
• Nielsio
    August 27, 2008
• Lew Rockwell on the origin of Neoconservatism
  
  http://www.lewrockwell.com/...

2 more annotations...

• ABC   Series 'V': Invading, Fascist Lizards Arrive With 'Universal Health Care'   and 'Message of Hope' --ABC Network Portrays Aliens, Hell-bent on Destroying   Planet Earth, as the Obama Administration
• By Lori Price, www.legitgov.org   04 Nov 2009
• A bit of background:   V (or V:   The Original Miniseries) is a two-part science fiction television   miniseries, written and directed by Kenneth Johnson. First shown in 1983,   it initiated the science fiction franchise concerning aliens known as   the 'Visitors' trying to gain control of Earth.
• The ABC   television network has brought back the science fiction series, V,   in a remake of the 1980's classic by the same name.
• The   1980's version was about as 'left-leaning' as you get, with writer-director   Johnson actually dedicating the series to 'resistance fighters   everywhere.' (Johnson opens showing rebels/film crew avoiding an invading   [US?] helicopter attack in El   Salvador.)
• In the remake pilot   of V, which aired on November 3, 2009, the leader of the aliens   grants an exclusive interview to a conciliating, Fox News-style reporter,   Chad Decker, who consents to the alien leader's constriction: 'We   can't be seen in a negative light.' in   order to get the interview and get other exclusive announcements from   the Visitor's leadership. (Think Fox News-Bush regime.)
• During the interview,   interspersed with scenes from a meeting of a nascent resistance movement,   Anna, the Visitor's leader, announces that the Visitors are going to open   medical clinics all over the country, as a gift to humanity.
• The interviewer   actually asks, 'Oh, do you mean like universal health care?' And   Anna, the scourge of mankind, replies, 'Yes, I believe that is what your   people call it.'
• The implication by the ABC producers of 'V': An   alien lizard fascist, trying to take control of earth and who must be   destroyed at any cost, will provide universal health care as a cover to   control all earthlings and to take over the planet.
• Moreover,   the alien Visitors frequently talk about the importance of *hope* and   how change does not come easy.
• There   are numerous analogies of the Visitors to the Obama Administration, peppered   throughout the pilot.
• The ABC remake is comparing the Visitors -- alien terrorists, with sleeper-cells   laden with Visitor supporters -- to the Obama Administration.

• In   reality, the Visitors and the mercenary firm share the same goals --stealing   resources by any means necessary while killing as many detractors as possible.  

   

  The world   would rejoice if an actual resistance movement responded to both the fictional   invaders... and the real ones.
• A better   comparison is the alien terrorists to Blackwater   aka Xe   aka U.S.   Training Center.

• Lori   Price is Managing Editor of Citizens For Legitimate Government.

   

   

  

13 more annotations...

• Barack Obama Continues Bush Administration Policy Regarding Posse Comitatus
• Barack Obama Continues Bush Administration Policy Regarding Posse Comitatus
• Written by Joe Wolverton, II            Friday, 30 October 2009
• It has been just over one year since the U.S. Army announced that the 3^rd Infantry Division’s 1^st Brigade Combat Team was being placed under the direct control of the US Army Northern Command (NORTHCOM),
• and was being indefinitely reassigned as an “on-call federal response force” for emergencies of all sorts, natural and man-made, including terrorist attacks, within NORTHCOM's area of responsibility — the United States, Mexico, and Canada.
• Although the assignation went mostly unheralded at the time, it marked the first time in the history of the United States that an active unit of the regular Army was placed under the immediate and exclusive command of NORTHCOM. 
• The number of uniformed soldiers assigned to this duty continues to increase annually and the force is estimated to reach a strength of 20,000 by the year 2011.
• This massive force will all be trained and equipped to “subdue unruly or dangerous individuals” and “help with civil unrest and crowd control.”
• As usual, these directives are vague and could be applied to any number of scenarios.
• Furthermore, the critical question to be asked in light of such an arrangement is who will decide who is unruly or dangerous?
• Whoever is appointed the arbiter of such things will of necessity be feared as he will have 20,000 troops on alert and ready to quell these civil disturbances.
• This unconstitutional use of American military forces within the United States is back in the news as reports have recently been released reviewing the progress the team has made in training with other federal, state, and local peace officers and agencies.
• Constitutionalists will find these maneuvers worrisome as they are gross violations of the black letter and the spirit of the Posse Comitatus Act.
• Posse Comitatus (18 USC § 1385) was a law passed in 1878 in response to the abuse of citizens by federal troops occupying the states of the former Confederacy during the period known as Reconstruction.
• In exchange for their votes in favor of the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes, Southern Senators received the support of Republican Senators for the Posse Comitatus Act requiring federal troops to withdraw from southern garrisons, thus ending Reconstruction.
• President Barack Obama marches on headlong, bent on disregarding this act and the applicable provisions of the Constitution in order to continue training the United States military to participate in purposefully undefined “emergency” situations within the borders of the United States.
• Recently he and Congress received an analysis of how well this unlawful cooperation between state and national government is progressing.
• By all accounts, NORTHCOM is withholding some critical information regarding the activities of this force. When it does release the required information, it does so slowly and clumsily.
• In its defense, NORTHCOM commanders claim that the inconsistencies, mistakes, and delays are due to the difficulty they face in coordinating these exercises with the various states.
• In typical governmental “give them an inch and they’ll take a mile” fashion, NORTHCOM is complaining that unless they are given greater and tighter control over the state agencies and the armed forces with whom they are tasked with training that they will be unable to guarantee operational success, and it may in fact detrimentally impact the team’s ability to provide the services they have been ordered to provide.
• To date, more than 19 federal agencies and 17 states have participated in one or more of the seven “homeland security” exercises that NORTHCOM has conducted since 2005. 
• Unfortunately, NORTHCOM is training with numerous state and local forces.
• Not surprisingly, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has examined NORTHCOM’s reports and agrees with the command’s assessment of the provenance of the difficulties they are encountering in the present arrangement,
• and they have accordingly suggested that states relinquish administration of their forces and agencies and cede management and command to NORTHCOM.
• There is fear among those zealous of the Constitution's prohibition of commingling of federal and state forces that Democratic governors and legislators may tamely acquiesce to President Obama's desires and thereby further debilitate the strength and sanctity of state sovereignty, the foundational principle of federalism, and the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution that protects it.
• Reassuringly, there are those raising the warning voice regarding the training and quartering of federal troops on American soil for the purpose of law enforcement and controlling potential civil unrest, especially given the wide berth extant in such vague terms in the legislation that ostensibly restricts the sphere of the army’s power.
• Some opponents of the Obama administration’s ongoing and little-publicized violation of the Posse Comitatus Act see the entire set up as a behind-the-scenes deal between President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who curiously retained his post after his previous employer left office.
• “While Obama and his team are making it sound as if they will use the military in a non-combative roll, part of the training being conducted is in urban warfare,” warned Mike Baker, a political strategist.
• He continued, “Obama appears oblivious to Posse Comitatus and to the US Constitution when it comes to using the military against civilians within US Borders.”
• Heroically, there are local police officers who feel threatened by being placed on a short leash placed by the President in the hand of the U.S. Army.
• Former NYPD detective and U.S. Marine intelligence officer, Sid Frances has called upon the state houses and Governors to assert their constitutionally guaranteed sovereignty and outright refuse to place their state forces under the command of federal officers.
• “I cannot understand why the federal government is so intent on using such military force within our borders. It reminds me of the Branch Dividian massacre in Waco, Texas, when the feds used that deadly physical force based on false information.”
• Admonitions and fears such as these from legitimate sources with personal experience should be a clarion call to all Americans wary of their constitutional protections from government encroachment
• and weary of the daily usurpation of power by one presidential administration after another (of both parties, mind you).
• In this case the conglomeration of power is being reinforced with the magnificent might of the United States Armed Forces.

• American Service Member  said:   

   

   

   

       

  I will not fight.   I swore to protect and defend the CONSTITUTION from all enemies foreign AND DOMESTIC. Order me to "quell" a riot/rebellion/protest made of Americans and you will find a highly trained riotor/rebel/protestor.

• Inactive Marine  said:   

   

   

   

       

  Oath Keeper   This is why Oath Keepers is so important. http://oathkeepers.ning.com/

35 more annotations...

• THE EVIL IN OUR MIDST
• ["We have met the enemy, and he is us."]
• By: S.R. Shearer
    April 12, 2009

• "The wicked are wicked no doubt, and they go astray   and they fall and they come to their own deserts; but   who can tell the mischief the virtuous do?"

     

  - William Thackery

• DICK CHENEY AS THE "BLOODY MONK"  

   

  "Killing for the joy of it is   wrong, but killing because it is necessary to fight   against an anti-Christ system ... is not only right,   but the duty of every Christian."

   

  The words of one Death Squad Member   in Honduras
• INTRODUCTION
• The great conceit of liberalism - of the Left - is its refusal   to concede reality to powers that are greater than man. The   effort by the Left to discount these powers is so absurd that   it borders on the moronic.
• At best, it's innocence masquerading   as "worldliness;" at worst, it's folly pretending to be wisdom   (Romans 1:22).
• The fact of the matter is, however, powers far   greater than man control his destiny - and though unseen and   little suspected by the rulers of the earth, there are "principalities,"   "powers," and "world-rulers of darkness" who are really in charge   of this world and who direct the affairs of man - and with whom,   as Paul tells us, we have to wage a fearful warfare:
• "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against   principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the   darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high   (i.e., heavenly) places." (Ephesians 6:12)
• THE LEFT BATTLES AGAINST PHANTOMS
    IT CANNOT BY ANY MEANS SEE
• The Left, which fails to recognize this fact, but which - nonetheless   - fancies itself an exposer of the "flesh and blood" wickedness   in others, wields little more than a wooden sword against what   are really only shadows.
• The Left can speak only of "good"   and "evil," but not of the dragons beyond those comfortable   conceits.
• It battles against phantoms it cannot by any means   see, and exposes nothing more than the secondhand sins of its   flesh and blood adversaries, while never coming to grips with   the real powers which stand behind that flesh and blood.
• The words, "JURIS PRAECEPTA SUNT HAEC: HONESTE VIVERE   ALTERUM NON LAEDERE SUM CUIQUE TRIBURE" (These are the   precepts of law: to live honestly, to harm no one, and to give   each his due) are the watchwords by which these left-wing agnostics   attempt to order their lives and the lives of other men.
• They   were written by the third-century Roman jurist Ulpian - like   them, an agnostic - and their presence above the entrances of   countless court buildings throughout the Western World attests   to the attempt by such men to believe that they are in charge   - that they control their own destiny; that they rule over the   forces of "good" and "evil" in this world.
• But the fate of Ulpian, who gave these words to Rome, speaks   more to the reality: Ulpian was ultimately slain in the imperial   palace beneath the light of day by the very unseen forces of   evil he had denied in life - forces which proved far more evil,   far more malignant, far more powerful, and much more deeply   set in stone than his words could ever be.
• WHO CAN TELL THE MISCHIEF
    THE VIRTUOUS DO
• But while the Left holds to its conceits, the conceits of the   Right are far more malignant and much more dangerous.
• Unlike   the Left, the Right does not deny the reality of the supernatural;   what it does is much worse: it believes that it can manipulate   these forces - that they are on its side, like "little angels."

• Speaking of this monumental conceit, William Thackery said:

   

   

  "The wicked [which the Right supposes is the Left] are wicked   no doubt, and they go astray and they fall and they come to   their own deserts; but who can tell the mischief the virtuous   [i.e., those on the Right] do?"
• And nowhere is this more true than in America.
• The American   Right has a messianic image of itself and America, and the extent   to which it portrays America's history to the world as a succession   of righteous acts is a clear testimony to this fact.
• GOD   AND AMERICA! CHURCH AND STATE! - these are the watchwords   of the Right.

• Speaking concerning this supposed link between   the Almighty and the United States, Senator Beveridge (1862   - 1927) once said,

   

   

  "We will not repudiate our duty ... WE WILL NOT RENOUNCE   OUR PART IN THE MISSION OF OUR ... [PEOPLE] AS THE TRUSTEE   UNDER GOD, OF THE CIVILIZATION OF THE WORLD; we will move   forward to our work ... with gratitude ... and thanksgiving   to Almighty God that HE HAS MARKED US AS HIS CHOSEN PEOPLE   HENCEFORTH TO LEAD IN THE REGENERATION OF THE WORLD ..."
• Beveridge's belief that America was, in its origins, institutions,   history, and international conduct, God's "Chosen Nation" is   something few in the Right doubt;

• to which we would reply with   Robert Burns,

   

   

  "Would that some power the gift to give us, to see ourselves   as others see us."
• And how do others see us? Maybe Simon Bolivar, the great liberator   of South America - reacting to the arrogance of the Monroe Doctrine   -

• said it best when he wrote:

   

   

  "The United States appears to be destined by Providence to   PLAGUE us with misery In the name of liberty."
• AMERICANS SEE PROOF OF THEIR "DIVINE"
    CALLING IN THE MILITARY POWER THEY WIELD
• Michael Parenti has written,
• "A nation which has spent the better portion of its history   captivated by its own Chosen People mythology will have little   difficulty in believing it is preeminently qualified to uplift   mankind. The salvation impulse is compounded when national   virtue is wedded to national power, for Americans begin to   see proof of their divine calling in the very power which   enables them to thrust themselves upon others."
• Is it God's or does it belong   to some other supernatural agency? That's the question -
• But what exactly is this "divine power" to which America and the   Right feel themselves connected?

• question,   however, that should not be all that difficult to answer in light   of John 18:36:

   

   

  "Jesus answered, My kingdom is NOT of this   world ..."
• But if Christ's kingdom is not of this world, then to whose   supernatural kingdom and power is America (and the Religious   Right) really attached? That's the question!
• And, make no mistake about it! - It is a question full of import   insofar as American Christians are concerned.

• Well did Jesus   say of the this kind of people:

   

   

  "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

   

  "And changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness   of an image ... [they made themselves]

   

  "Wherefore God has given them up ...

   

  "For that they exchanged the truth of God for a lie ..."   (Romans 1:22-25)
• And that is exactly what American Christians have done: Made   God over in their own image; made Him to appear as they in their   titanic arrogance think He ought to appear.
• EVERY TREE IS KNOWN
    BY ITS OWN FRUIT

• Jesus said:

   

   

  "A good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; NEITHER   DOTH A CORRUPT TREE BRING FORTH GOOD FRUIT.

   

  "Every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men   do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes.

   

  "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth   forth that which is good; and AN EVIL MAN OUT OF THE EVIL   TREASURE OF HIS HEART BRINGETH FORTH THAT WHICH IS EVIL:   for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh." (Luke   6:43-45)

• And again He said:

   

   

  "By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather   grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

   

  "Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but THE   CORRUPT TREE BRINGETH FORTH EVIL FRUIT.

   

  "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, NEITHER CAN   A CORRUPT TREE BRING FORTH GOOD FRUIT.

   

  "Every   tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and   cast into the fire.

   

  "THEREFORE BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM." (Matthew   7:16-20)
• IF THAT'S THE CASE ...
• If that's the case, then what Seymour Hersh discovered about   the "goings-on" of Dick Cheney in the White House over the last   eight years should send shivers down the spines of all those   American Christians who have tied themselves to the machinations   of those who are connected to America's right-wing - which is   about every evangelical Christian in the country.
• Hersh reports that Cheney had his own SS-style political assassination   unit that reported directly to him -
• AND WHEN ONE LOOKS CLOSELY   AT THIS PARTICULAR UNIT, ONE CANNOT HELP BUT BE SHOCKED BY THE   PERVASIVE PRESENCE OF CHRISTIANS IN IT
• (and we speak here   of Task Force 121 and General Boykin, which is precisely the   unit Hersh pointed at in his report of March 11, 2009).
• Of course it is if one takes seriously the   words of Christ (see above - Matthew 7:16-20 and Luke 6:43-45),
• unless one is prepared to say that God sanctions the BRUTALITY   and BLOOD-LETTING in which Task Force 121 is involved.   Yes, "A tree is known by its fruit.")
• ONE IS REMINDED   OF
    THE WORDS OF HITLER
• And make no mistake about it, the presence of so many Christians   in this BLOODY business is shocking.
• Sadly, however, it is not the first time that Christians have   become involved in such activity;
• this is precisely what happened   in Germany more than seventy years ago when Hitler seized power   there - promising to "clean things up" in the interest of the   "Prince of Peace."

• To that end, in a speech in Stuttgart on   February 16, 1933, Hitler said:

   

   

  "Today Christians ... stand at the head of Germany ...   I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want   to destroy Christianity ... We want to fill our culture again   with the Christian spirit ... We want to burn out all the   recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater,   and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the poison   of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture   as a result of liberal excess during the past ... [few] years."
• Then - in his first radio address to the German people after coming   to power - he promised:
• "The national government ... will maintain and defend   the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It   will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis   of our collective morality."
• CONCERNING THIS POLITICAL
    ASSASSINATION UNIT ...

• Speaking concerning America's new political assassination unit   (Cheney's equivalent to Hitler's Gestapo), Hersh told a University   of Minnesota audience last month,

   

   

  "After 9/11, I haven't written about this yet, but the Central   Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities   against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without   any legal authority for it. They haven't been called on it   yet."
• Hersh then went on to describe how the Joint Special Operations   Command was (is) America's "Murder Inc." charged with carrying   out political assassinations.

• He went on to say:

   

   

   

         

  Hersh

    "It [i.e., the Joint Special Operations Command] is a special   wing of our 'special operations community' that is set up independently.   They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days,   they reported directly to the Cheney office ... Congress has   no oversight of it."
• NOTE: Seymour (Sy) Myron Hersh (born April   8, 1937) is an American Pulitzer Prize winning investigative   journalist and author based in Washington, D.C. He is a   regular contributor to The New Yorker Magazine on   military and security matters. His work first gained worldwide   recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and   its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received   the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. His   2004 reports on the U.S. military's mistreatment of detainees   at Abu Ghraib prison gained much attention.
• The revelation that Cheney had his own private   assassination unit - one that is not too far removed in kind   from Hitler's notorious SA (Sturmabteilung), the much   feared para-military wing of the Nazi party which was used to   beat, torture and kill political opponents of the Nazis in 1930's   Germany, and the Waffen SS (Schutzstaffel), which was   later used in the war to carry out executions and war crimes   - is shocking.
• SWEEPING   ASIDE ALL
    LEGAL PROHIBITIONS
• Tellingly, like America is doing today, German courts quickly   swept aside centuries of legal prohibition against extra-judicial   killings to demonstrate their loyalty to Hitler.
• The Waffen   SS was deemed beyond prosecution despite the fact that it was   blatantly involved in egregious and ongoing war crimes, as well   as domestic assassinations.
• This is exactly the "legal territory"   that the Joint Special Operations Command is described as "inhabiting."

•   Hersh said:

   

   

  "It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's   been going on and on and on. Under President Bush's authority,   they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador   or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and   executing them and leaving. That's been going on in the name   of all of us."
• THE "SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND"
    DID NOT APPEAR OUT OF THIN AIR
• The "Special Operation's Command," however, did not appear out   of thin air.
• There is a history that stands behind its "sudden   appearance" - A HISTORY THAT DEEPLY INVOLVES THE AMERICAN CHRISTIAN   COMMUNITY AND ITS FILTHY ENTANGLEMENT WITH AMERICA'S INTELLIGENCE   AGENCIES and the ghastly deeds with which these agencies are   entwined.
• [Please see our article, "The   American Empire: The Corporate   / Pentagon / CIA / Missionary Archipelago."]
• We   say "ghastly" because this relationship originated out   of the same devilish milieu of squalid forces that swirled and   spun around the assassination of President John F. Kennedy;
• the same aloof, clandestine forces from which the 1976 House   and Senate Select Committee - after uncovering the fact that   there had indeed been a "CONSPIRACY" surrounding the   murder of JFK - drew back in fear, refusing to press the matter   farther out of DREAD concerning what they might discover.
• [Please see our article, "The Men   Who Gathered Themselves Together at Clint Murchison's Dallas   Home Forty-Five Years Ago."]
• Most members of the Committee suspected the CIA was responsible,   as evidenced by the words of Democratic Representative Don Edwards   of California -
• a man not much given to conspiracy theories   and who actually chaired the 1976 House committee hearings on   the veracity of the Warren Commission Report, and a former FBI   agent himself - who said:
• "There's not much question (anymore) that ... the CIA   is somewhere behind this cover-up. I hate to think what it   is they are covering up - or who they are covering up for."
• NOTE: And, as if to confirm everyone's worst   fears, J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI at the time   of the assassination, was reported to have said many years   later to a close colleague:
• "If I told you what I really know [about the JFK   assassination], it would be very dangerous to this country.   Our whole political system could be disrupted."
• As a result of all this, there was a growing fear by many   committee members that the investigation, if left to find its   own end, would lead to a very "bad" result:
• The committee members   began to sense that should JFK's killers be revealed for whom   they actually were and what they had really done, the rage that   such revelations would produce against America's foreign policy,   intelligence and political establishments among the "masses"   would spell disaster for the American political (and even the   American economic) system.
• [Please see our article, "Conspiracy   Theories."]
• The truth was, the committee had begun to accumulate a good   deal of evidence that seemed to suggest who the real ringleaders   (the killers on the ground) had been;
• specifically, David Atlee   Phillips and a cabal of "agents" consisting of some of the CIA's   most lethal operatives whose careers were profoundly entwined   with the history of agency assassination plots -
• from top echelon   officers such as Richard Helms to E. Howard Hunt, and from Ted   Schackley to the Agency's Mob liaison William Harvey.
• All these   men - everyone of them - had ice in their veins for blood; and   they were UTTERLY convinced of the righteousness of their   cause.
• From ghoules   and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that   go "bump in the night" - GOOD LORD PRESERVE US!
•                    

  The CIA's Special Operations Cabal   that was probably responsible for the assassination   of JFK: From left to right starting at the top: Richard   Helms, E. Howard Hunt, William Harvey, Ted Schackley,   David Atlee Phillips (AKA Maurice Bishop) Thomas Davis,   Christian David and Lucian Sarti.
• Please see the following   video on
    Phillips (AKA Bishop)
• And not only that, evidence was beginning to surface which   indicated to whom these ringleaders actually answered, and to   whom they were connected in the larger society; specifically,   to various high-ranking elements in right-wing political and   industrial circles -
• ELEMENTS WHICH WERE DRAGGED OUT OF THE   SHADOWS AND "EXPOSED" FOR THE FIRST TIME DURING THE IRAN   / CONTRA HEARINGS
• (i.e., those business and political   figures connected to Oliver North's efforts to circumvent Congressional   restrictions on providing military assistance to the Contra   War effort during the Reagan years - the same elements which   supported out of their own not inconsiderable largesse the continuation   of the war despite those restrictions).
• Please see the following   video on the shadowy forces behind the Iran / Contra
• The IRAN / CONTRA   hearings were important because they revealed for the   first time the existence of a "government within a government"
    in the United States.
• Finally - and what is worst of all - the Iran / Contra hearings   exposed the presence of two hitherto unknown entities that were   attached to America's "government within a government" that   no one had suspected prior to the hearings:

• The presence of   -

   
   
  1.  

     The Evangelical Christian Community and the conservative   wing of the Catholic Church (together with the Moonies   and the Mormon religious communities) and,

      
   
  2.  

     The Conservative Jewish Community - both in the   United States and Israel.

  • Hmmm..sounds like some of Twitter's "TCOT" members
  Add Sticky Note
• THE PRESENCE OF THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT IN
    AMERICA'S GOVERNMENT WITHIN A GOVERNMENT
• Regarding the American Christian community, what the Iran   / Contra hearings did was to reveal for the first time the presence   - on a truly MASSIVE scale - of the American Christian   community in America's "government within a government."
• This   revelation became clear when Joseph Coors was called as a witness   at the hearing.
• Coors was one of the founders of the CNP (the Council on National   Policy), an elite coordinating agency put together by Tim LaHaye,   Pat Robertson, Joseph Coors and Nelson Bunker Hunt as a means   of synchronizing the activities of the Economic Right and the   Religious Right with America's "government within a government."
•    

  Joseph Coors
• PAT ROBERTSON AND
    THE DEATH SQUADS

• Some of the many religious-right   leaders associated with the CNP.

   

  From left to right beginning at the   top:

   

  Lou Sheldon, James Robison, Howard   Ahmanson, R.J. Rushdoony, John Whitehead, Sarah Palin,   Tim LaHaye, Phyllis Schafley, Pat Robertson, John Ankerberg,   Bob Jones III, David Breese, Chuck Missler, Sam Moore.

     
• Moreover, the extent to which the CNP managed to coordinate the   activities of these three entities (see above) is revealed in   the fact that this coordination reached far beyond the mundane   and touched upon the Contra Wars and the death squads - death   squads that were the precursors of Task Force 121.
• Take for example,   how deeply the CNP managed to involve Pat Robertson in these bloody   conflicts:
• In the Spring of 1984 Pat Robertson and CBN reporter   Norm Mintle traveled to El Salvador where they met with the late   Roberto D'Aubuisson. Following the trip, the "700 Club"   aired four 20-30 minute segments on El Salvador, the major theme   being that D'Aubuisson was a "very nice fellow"   who was being maligned by the "biased liberalism" of   Newsweek, Time and U.S. News and World Report.
• D' Aubuisson was   considered to be the most notorious torturer and Death Squad   leader in El Salvador; he was described by Robert White, former   U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador, as a "pathological killer,"   and was widely known as "Major Soplete" (i.e., "Major   Blowtorch").
• D'Aubuisson - a very nice fellow? Hardly!
• [Please see our article, "The   Death Squads: Bringing in the Kingdom of God through Terror,   Torture and Death."]
• How is it possible that Robertson could have described him   as "a very nice fellow?" - but that's the kind of   "purposeful blindness" which has become altogether   too much the hallmark of those evangelicals who have gotten   mixed up in the kind of DECEIT that marks such partnerships.

• Sir Walter Scott said it best when he wrote:

   

   

  "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to   DECEIVE!" (Marmion, Canto vi. Stanza 17).

   

           

  Robertson and D'Aubuisson
• When confronted with the facts concerning those with whom they   have allied themselves, evangelical leaders such as Robertson   don't bother confronting the plain truth of the matter, but   with a wave of their hand they simply lie and dismiss the allegations   outright.
• Truly it can be said of these Christians: "Having   ears to hear, they hear not, and eyes to see, they see not!"   (Mark 8:18)
• NOTE:   AND ONE SHOULD MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT, THE PEOPLE WITH   WHOM THE EVANGELICAL COMMUNITY HAS MADE COMMON CAUSE IN   THE CNP ARE PUTRID, SMALL-MINDED, SELFISH MEN.
• Take   Richard Shoff, for example, owner of Lincoln Log Homes in   North Carolina; Schoff is a former Ku Klux Klan leader in   Indiana.
• Then there's Jay Parker and John McGoff, both involved   in trying to prop up the extreme racial policies of the   former South African government (again, belying any avowal   that the CNP might make regarding God's love for all mankind,   not just simply the white race.)
• [Please see our article,   "Racism and Right-Wing Christianity."]
• Then there's Reed Larson of the National Right to Work   Committee (NRTWC) and Don McAlvany, a contributing editor   to the John Birch Society's weekly, New American;
• McAlvany once made a statement suggesting that someone might   want to kill Desmond Tutu; he quickly retracted the statement,   but - (?)
• That   people who call themselves Christian can tolerate ties which   so clearly connect them to fascists, anti-Semites and racists   does not say much for the brand of Christianity they represent.
• Exchanging a situation in this country that is dominated   by "secular humanists" for one that is dominated   by anti-Semites, fascists and racists is akin to jumping   from the frying pan into the fire.
• It is no accident that   these are precisely the same three groups which have historically   fostered a belief in conspiracism - specifically, the Illuminist   Myth, each for its own reasons: the business community as   a means of defense against unionism, the Religious Right   as a defense against "atheistic socialism," and   the Political Right against "one-world universalism."
• [Please see our article, "Pat   Robertson, Illuminism and the New World Order."]
• THE SAD PRESENCE OF ISRAEL AS A LACKEY IN
    AMERICA'S "GOVERNMENT WITHIN A GOVERNMENT"
• Also - as we indicated above - in addition to the presence   of the conservative Christian community in America's "government   within a government," a second hitherto little suspected entity   surfaced during the Iran / Contra Hearings: the conservative   Jewish community both in America and in Israel.
• The presence   of this community manifested itself as the Committee's investigation   began turning up evidence regarding Israel's secret involvement   in the swap of money and guns that was being manipulated between   America and Iran:
• Israel was exposed as a sleazy "go-between"   insofar as Iran and the United States were concerned;
• NOT   ONLY THAT, THEY WERE EXPOSED FOR BEING HEAVILY INVOLVED WITH   ORGANIZATIONS INTIMATELY CONNECTED TO AMERICA'S BLOODY CONTRA   WARS IN CENTRAL AMERICA. 

• Reacting to Israel's exposure as a participant in these wars,   Jewish writer Y. Karny asked the obvious question,

   

   

  "What vital interest does Israel have in this area of the   world? - She has NO vital interest there at all!"
• Nonetheless, there Israel could be found - up to her neck in   the blood of "innocents" in Central America.
• Writing   concerning Israel's involvement in these shameful wars, Karny   wrote in Yediot Aharonot with tears in his eyes (Jerusalem;   October, 1984):
• "Today, one would be hard pressed to find five countries   in the world which support the [dictatorial, blood-thirsty]   Salvadoran regime [in Central America]. The United States   under Ronald Reagan is at the head of the list of supporters.
• In this 'honorable' company, one can find Guatemala, a huge   concentration camp masquerading as a state [under the headship   of Rios Montt (a devil masquerading as a Christian)]; and   - sadly - ONE CAN ALSO FIND THE STATE OF ISRAEL."
• [Please see our article, "Mystery,   Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots."]
• It was plain to Karny: Israel had been reduced to the status   of a household slave (a "bootlicker," a "puppet") in the service   of the American New World Order System.
• A "MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING"
• And Karny wasn't the only one in Israel who took note of what   was going on.  There was also Dr. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, an Israeli   professor of psychology at Haifa University;
• he confirmed the   fact that Israel's involvement in the Contra Wars was no "happen   chance" coincidence. He traced the origins of Israel's involvement   in these unjust and blood-drenched wars back to a "MEMORANDUM   OF UNDERSTANDING" signed between the United States and   Israel "under cover of darkness" in November, 1981.
• It was an agreement that bound Israel as an American proxy "OUTSIDE   THE EAST MEDITERRANEAN ZONE;"
• one that made Israel a   "full" partner (really, a puppet) in America's gruesome   wars to extend its New World Order System into areas of the world   where Israel had no real interests other than to ingratiate herself   to her American masters;
• in the 1980s, that meant participation   in the Contra Wars in Central America.
• Beit-Hallahmi wrote   in disgust:
• "In Israel the United States has found a more than willing   PROXY. Indeed, in some cases the initiative for Israeli   involvement in third world 'troublespots' has come from Israel   and not the United States.
• This was the case in April 1983,   when the director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry,   David Kimche, arrived in Washington with a grand plan for   an Israeli 'assistance program' in Africa, Asia and Latin   America, financed by the United States.
• From Israel's point   of view such a plan makes much sense: it gains Israel contacts   in the third world, and MAKES HER A MORE INDISPENSABLE   ALLY FOR THE UNITED STATES."
• Beit-Hallahmi went on to elaborate:
• "Israel's involvement in Central America has been a   collaborative venture with the United States ... Part 1 of   this memorandum [see above] deals with military cooperation   between the United States and Israel in areas 'OUTSIDE   THE EAST MEDITERRANEAN ZONE'; the 3rd part called for   arms sales to 'third' parties."
• [Please see B. Bahbah,   "Israelis and Central America," Chicago Tribune, June   21, 1983; see also . P. Taubman, "Israel Said To Aid Latin   Aims of U.S.," The New York Times, July 21, 1983.]
• Beit-Hallahmi continues:
• "A meeting between the Israeli ambassador in Washington,   Meir Rosenne, and then Ambassador-at-Large Vernon Walters is   said to have taken place in early 1984.
• ["Israel and Latin America:   The Second Lebanon War," Smol, June 1984.]
• Walters, former   CIA deputy director and ... [then] U.S. Ambassador to the United   Nations, reportedly asked for greater Israeli involvement in   'defending the free world' on the Central American front, and   Rosenne is said to have concurred. Israel's role in Central   America ... [was] indeed crucial for the United States, which   ... [could not] offer direct and open military aid to states   like Guatemala, because of those countries' blatant human rights   violations.
• BUT ISRAEL CAN AND DOES OFFER SUCH AID, AS IT   DOES IN OTHER REGIONS OF THE WORLD WHERE THE UNITED STATES CANNOT   OPERATE DIRECTLY, e.g., IN RHODESIA [now Zimbabwe] AND   SOUTH AFRICA ..."
• [Please see our article, "The   Catholic / Evangelical Rapprochement."]
• That's pretty heavy involvement; indeed, it's what one calls   "being a good toady" - someone who not only is willing   to do America's dirty work for her, but is actually EAGER   to do it
• The United States couldn't have been more delighted,   and it soon followed up on the Israeli suggestion.
• The reality of what Beit-Hallahmi and Karny were writing about   in the early 1980s was made plain as time passed by the growing   - and, eventually - ubiquitous presence of Israeli "agents"   and "military advisors" in the death squad activity being carried   on in Central America
• under the auspices of "Christian" organizations   such as the Institution on Religion and Democracy (IRD) and   its sister organizations, the "Committee for the Free World,"   "Prodemca" and the "Friends of the Democratic   Center in Central America" -
• all of them, right-wing organizations   that didn't blink an eye in involving themselves with the death   squads associated with the CIA.
• THE INVOLVEMENT OF THE
    AMERICAN JEWISH COMMUNITY
• And we speak here not only of the presence of Israeli "agents"   and ""military advisors," but also of very prominent members   of the American Jewish community.
• For example, take the presence   of Jews in the Committee for the Free World (CFW); the CFW,   ostensibly a "Christian" organization, was (is) saturated with   Jewish members. 
• Indeed, its first executive director was an   American Jew, Midge Decter. Decter is married to Norman   Podhoretz, the "guiding light" behind the conservative Jewish   magazine, Commentary.
• The CFW began with funding from   individuals and ultra-conservative foundations, all deeply   associated with the promotion of "Christian worldviews:
• " the   Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Coors Foundation   and the Smith Richardson Foundation.
• [Please see our article,   "Richard Mellon Scaife:   The Evil that Money Can Do;"   please also see "The Rutherford   Institute and R.J. Rushdoony."]
• The CFW's leading members are: Michael Ledeen who was   involved with Col. Oliver North in the Iran-Contra affair.   Ledeen became an editor at the Center for Strategic and International   Studies in the late 1970s.
• He later joined the Reagan administration   where he served as an adviser to North on the National Security   Council and was on the planning group that led to the creation   of the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy.
• Then there   is Richard Perle who has been associated with the infamous   Committee on the Present Danger (CPD). Perle went on to join   the Reagan administration as Asst Sec of Defense for Intl Security   Policy.
• There is also Richard V. Allen who was a National   Security Adviser to President Reagan.
• Another important figure   is Richard Pipes, also a member of the CPD. He too served   on the National Security Council during the Reagan administration.
• There's also Elliott Abrams, the son-in-law of Midge   Decter; he was deeply implicated in all aspects of the Iran-Contra   Affair and was also DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN DEATH SQUAD ACTIVITY   IN CENTRAL AMERICA IN THE 1980s.
• Finally, there are the   following: Roy Godson who served as the U.S. representative   to the Intl Youth Year conference, an event funded by the National   Endowment for Democracy;
• Lewis Tambs who was a member   of the ultra-right World Anti-Communist League (a Moonie "front"   operation), he served as ambassador to Costa Rica until 1986;
• Ray Cline who was a deputy director   of the CIA from 1964 through 1967;
• William Simon who was Secretary of the Treasury under   President Richard Nixon;
• and Jeane Kirkpatrick   who served as the U.S. permanent representative to the United   Nations during the Reagan administration.
• [Please see our article,   "The Neo-Conservatives."]
• Of these thirteen members, eight were American Jews, which   gives some idea of their pervasive presence in the right-wing   matrix.

• From left to right starting at top:
    Eliot Abrams (J), Daniel Pipes (J), Richard Allen (C),   Richard Perle (J), Lewis Tambs (C), Oliver North (C),   Norman Podhoretz (J), Michael Ledeen (J), Midge Deckter   (J), the late Jeane Kirkpatrick (C), Roy Godson (C),   William Simon (J), Ray Cline (C)

     
• Very obviously, and very SADLY - and we mean   this with all our heart - the CFW was saturated with conservative   Jews, the presence of whom could not help but add to the growing   "INFAMY" in the so-called "Third World" not only of Israeli   Jews, but American Jews as well.
• After all, only a blind man   could miss their overwhelming presence in those American institutions   that were most responsible for the misery of the poor throughout   the length and breath of the American New World Order System.
• A PRECURSOR TO ISRAEL'S
    "AGREEMENT WITH HELL"
• ALL THIS - OF COURSE - MUST BE VIEWED AS A PRECURSOR TO   ISRAEL'S PEOPHESIED DEFENSE PACT WITH "BABYLON THE GREAT" (i.e.,   the United States):

• "Wherefore, hear the word of the Lord, ye ... men that   rule this people which is in Jerusalem.

   

  "Because ye have said, We have made a COVENANT WITH   DEATH, AND WITH HELL (Prophetic Babylon) are we at agreement;   when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall   not come unto us ...

   

  "(But) ... your COVENANT WITH DEATH shall be   disannulled, and your AGREEMENT WITH HELL shall not   stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then   ye shall be trodden down by it." (Isaiah 28:14-15, 18)
• [Please see Part 6 of Chapter XV of the New Antipas   Papers, "Israel's   Agreement with Hell."] 
• PRACTICING PHOENIX IN IRAQ
• Getting back to the death squads with which all these groups   were involved, investigative journalist David Cole writes that   Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, the top counterinsurgency adviser   to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq, was reported to have said that   the U.S. has been "practicing in Iraq the Phoenix Program it   developed in Vietnam."
• He was alluding to the notorious Vietnam-era   CIA operation that provoked a worldwide uproar because of the   detention, torture and execution of thousands of Vietnamese.

• From left to right: high-ranking   civilian members of Phoenix (one of whom is David Morales   - implicated in the JFK assassination). Phoenix members   questioning a prisoner hanging upside down; afterwards,   such prisoners were usually killed. Phoenix military   member directing operations.

         
• Phoenix was a totally illegal program   that violated the rules of war. It cost millions of   dollars. The estimate of those killed as a result of   the Phoenix Program is about 76,000.
• The mainstream media never reported on Kilcullen's statement,   perhaps because Kilcullen's  explosive terminology has been   scrubbed clean from all army statements since he first made   mention of "Phoenix in Iraq."
• NOTE: Cole says that Phoenix was first referred   to in connection with Iraq in a forty-eight-page strategy   paper, "Countering Global Insurgency" published   in the obscure Small Wars Journal of September-November   2004.
• In his 2004 article, Kilcullen describes the Vietnam   Phoenix program as "unfairly maligned" and "highly   effective."
• Dismissing CIA sponsorship and torture   allegations as "popular mythology," Kilcullen   calls Phoenix a misunderstood "civilian aid and development   program" that was supported by "pacification"   operations to disrupt the Vietcong, whose infrastructure   ruled vast swaths of rural South Vietnam.
• Cole reports, however, that Phoenix was far from an "aid   and development" program.
• To achieve deniability, the   CIA trained and transferred operational authority to the   South Vietnamese national police, who tortured suspects   indiscriminately.
• CIA officer William Colby, founder of   the program, told a Congressional committee in 1971 that   the Phoenix operation had killed 20,587 Vietcong suspects   in two year (most historians put the figure at around 76,000).
• An official Pentagon evaluation in 1968 found that "the   truncheon and electric shock method of interrogation was   in widespread use, with almost all [US] advisors admitting   to have witnessed instances of the use of these methods   ...
• A Naval Institute   historian later found that "the large majority of South   Vietnamese interrogators tortured some or all of the communist   prisoners in their care" as well as Vietnamese suspected   of collaboration with the Vietcong.
• Cole states that evidence continues to mount that the same   kind of torture that was practiced in Vietnam is now being   practiced in Iraq.
• One of Petraeus's top associates, Col.   Theodore Westhusing, committed suicide in June 2005, leaving   a note saying, "I cannot support a mission that leads   to corruption, human rights abuses and liars."
• The Jones   Commission reported to Congress last year that the Iraqi national   police are "highly sectarian," almost entirely Shi'a,   and should be disbanded.
• The New York Times has reported   that there are as many as ten secret prisons under the Interior   Ministry in Baghdad.
•    

  Westhusing - who committed   suicide after leaving a note saying that he had been   corrupted by his activities.
• The Los Angeles Times has described   the same ministry, funded and advised by Americans, as responsible   for torture and ethnic cleansing.
• A BBC reporter in 2006 showed   footage of tortured civilians and said "it's all happening   under the eyes of US commanders who seem unwilling or unable   to intervene."
• In a July 2007 report to Congress, even   the Bush Administration acknowledged that "target lists,"   emanating from the highest levels of the Iraqi regime, contain   the names of Iraqis that are suspected of sympathizing with   the insurgency.
• THE JOINT SERVICES SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND
• Kilcullen went on to advocate the use of a "Global Phoenix   Program" by the United States, not only in Iraq but throughout   the world; A "global Phoenix program," he wrote, would   provide a starting point for dismantling the worldwide jihadist   infrastructure today.
• IT IS, OF COURSE, PRECISELY FOR THIS PURPOSE THAT CHENEY'S   "JOINT SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND" WAS ORGANIZED.

• Cole went on to say that the U.S. has been using some of this   country's "best and brightest" in this effort.

               

  The "best and the brightest"   - students flocking to join the CIA; not only men, but   women as well. [The picture here is of Wellesley]
• He says that the history of university-based counterinsurgency   operatives stretches back to a Michigan State University Vietnam   project in the 1960s, which involved covert CIA officers training   and arming South Vietnamese police.
• Stanley Sheinbaum, for decades   a respected progressive leader and fundraiser, coordinated the   MSU project and later, in disgust, broke the story to Ramparts   Magazine (April 1966). 
• And so it is that nearly fifty   years later, Gen. Petraeus is still recruiting academic anthropologists   and systems theorists.
• Among them are professors at Harvard's   Carr Center, which formally collaborated with him in writing   the current Army and Marines' war-fighting manuals.
• According   to a 2005 New Yorker report, American psychologists and   psychiatrists are enlisted in Behavioral Science Consultation   Teams to design strategies to "exploit the physical and   mental vulnerabilities of detainees."
• Anthropologists are   recruited to study tribal cultural patterns in what Kilcullen   calls "armed social science." All this kind   of takes the "glow" off Petraeus.
• THE CONTINUING CHRISTIAN IMPRINT ON
    THE JOINT SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND

• The great Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn once wrote:

   

   

  "To do evil a human being must first of all believe   that what he's doing is good ... instead of bad in his own   and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses   but will receive praise and honors."
• It's perhaps for this reason that one finds the imprint of   "Christians" stamped so deeply into the fabric of Cheney's Joint   Special Operations Command.
• Take, for example, the ubiquitous   presence of "Christians" in "Task Force 121," the Joint Special   Operations Command's "action arm" in Iraq. 
• Journalist Seymour   Hersh (New Yorker, Dec. 15) reports that -
• "Task Force 121 is a rapid-deployment assassination unit   built out of elite Special Operations forces from the Army,   Navy and Air Force. The death squads have CIA officers officially   'attached', and come with a large accompanying 'conventional   force' to seal off areas while the killing goes down.
• The unit is patterned   on the notorious 'Operation Phoenix' where CIA death squads   murdered and tortured tens of thousands of people to 'neutralize   the infrastructure' of South Vietnam's National Liberation   Front."
• Operations   are already reported in Iraq and Syria.
• NOTE: It's interesting to note here that Hersh   also confirmed the presence of Israelis in "Task Force 121"   - indicating the continuing toady-like relationship that Israel   has with the United States;

• Hersh reported:

   

   

  "According to American and Israeli military and   intelligence officials, Israeli commandos and intelligence   units have been working closely with their American counterparts.
• Moreover, Israeli commandos are expected to serve alongside   the Americans when full-field operations begin.
• The U.S.   high command denies Israeli involvement and an Israeli   official told Hersh: 'Both governments have decided at   the highest level that it is in their interest to keep   a low profile on U.S.-Israeli cooperation'."
• GOD'S WAR WARRIOR: LT. GEN. WILLIAM BOYKIN
• Richard Cooper of the Los Angeles Times reports on the   "Christian mindset" of the Joint Special Operations Command; he   points out that it is plainly visible in its commander, Lt. Gen.   William Boykin.
• Boykin is a much-decorated and twice-wounded   veteran of covert military operations. From the bloody 1993   clash with Muslim warlords in Somalia chronicled in "Black   Hawk Down" and the hunt for Colombian drug czar Pablo Escobar   to the ill-fated attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran   in 1980, Boykin has been in the thick of things.
• Boykin, a member of the super-secret "Delta Force" (a group   that the intelligence agencies refuse to acknowledge one way   or another) is an outspoken evangelical Christian who appeared   in dress uniform and polished jump boots before a religious   group in Oregon two years ago in June to declare that radical   Islamists hated the United States -
• "... because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation   and our roots are Judeo-Christian ... and the enemy is a guy   named Satan."

• Discussing the battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia,   Boykin told another audience,

   

   

  "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God   was a real God and his was an idol."

   

   

  He went on to say:

   

   

  "We in the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom   of God have been raised for such a time as this," Boykin   said last year.
• [Now you must   understand something here; no doubt Boykin is a Christian,   and no doubt he is sincere; but how does one square   the kind of thinking and life-style that he has engaged   in with God's command in Luke 6:27-29 "But I say unto   you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which   hate you, Bless them that curse you, and pray for them   which despitefully use you. And unto him that smiteth   thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and   him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take   thy coat also." It is, of course, IMPOSSIBLE!
• THE "CHRISTIAN" ROOTS OF AMERICA'S
    INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
• Boykin's   mentor in the intelligence community was Colonel Joseph A. McChristian,   a "holy figure" in the annals of American intelligence.
• Like   Boykin, McChristian was a TRUE BELIEVER.
• As special assistant to the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group   in Greece from 1949 to 1950 (which coincided with the end of   the Greek Civil War), he had seen that Protestant Bibles were   distributed to every Greek soldier fighting the communists.
• McChristian understood the value of religion in America's war   against communism.
• McChristian believed that if soldiers could   be made to think that they were "fighting for God,"   they would be that much more imbued with a "fighting spirit,"   and that much more confident in what they were doing when called   upon to engage in the dirtier, more sordid side of counterinsurgency   activity.
• After all, not everyone is a sadist and a pathological   killer, especially insofar as conscript armies are concerned.
• It's difficult to kill, and if the killers can be convinced   that what they are doing is "KILLING DEMONS"   in the name of God rather than killing innocent human beings,   it makes the job that much easier. It eases the conscience when   one is alone at night.
• McChristian introduced this kind of thinking wherever he went.   He believed in it!
• o McChristian, spreading the Gospel was synonymous with spreading   the American "free enterprise" system and expanding   the financial interests of people like the Rockefellers, the Milbanks,   the Swifts and the Morgans.
• It's no accident or flight of fancy,   therefore, when peasants - in describing the activities of death   squads throughout Latin America - inevitably tell stories of death   squad members praising God, singing hymns, and "speaking   in tongues" as they go about their gruesome business of butchering   people.
• This is what McChristian and people like him believe!   - and this is precisely what makes it possible for death squad   members to also be "members in good standing" in countless   numbers of Protestant evangelical groups throughout Latin America.
• This is why - in following Oliver North and members of his entourage   around the Contra-training camps in the 1980s - one reporter could   describe it as if he had been following a traveling revival.
• LIMONOCHA
• When, in April 1962, McChristian arrived at Limonocha, Ecuador   (the base camp for the Wycliffe Bible Translators), to fight   the demons that were arrayed against the American imperial system,   he arrived with the silver leaf of an American Green Beret Lieutenant   Colonel.
• Actually, that was just a cover; he was in fact a major-general   working in army intelligence as chief of the Western Hemisphere   Division.
• His counterpart in the CIA was Colonel J.C. King who   was intimately associated with the Wycliffe Bible Translators.
• King had gotten Wycliffe heavily involved in the overthrow of   the Arbenz government in Guatemala, which - like Goulert's government   in Brazil - had threatened to nationalize various American business   enterprises there in the early 1950s,
• and which had cost the   lives of thousands and thousands of peasants, many of whom had   been converted to Protestant Christianity through the efforts   of Wycliffe.
• [Please see our article on "The   American Empire."]
• It seems that in instance after   instance when "push came to shove" and the interests   of the Gospel clashed with the interests of Wycliffe's business   backers, the business backers won out.

•  LIMONOCHA

   

  WYCLIFFE BIBLE TRANSLATOR'S (SIL)   BASE
    CAMP IN ECUADOR USED BY THE CIA

               
• McChristian was only forty-seven years old when he made Wycliffe's   Limonocha jungle base the unofficial headquarters for his counterinsurgency   activities in the Amazon basin; but there was no mistaking his   mastery of the techniques of counterinsurgency.
• Moreover, he   was well connected to conservative networks, being the son-in-law   of General A. Van Fleet, who had recently violated military   law by publicly challenging President Kennedy's handling of   the Bay of Pigs.
• Van Fleet was then a top counterinsurgency   consultant to Kennedy's army secretary on guerrilla warfare   -
• and there are many who believe that Van Fleet was involved   in some way in the Kennedy assassination.
• BENDING THE RULES FOR CHRIST
• So convinced of his own righteousness and the righteousness of   the cause he served, and so sure that in battling for the "American   free enterprise" system in Latin America, he was helping   to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ,
• McChristian was not above   helping things along for the "Lord's side" by bending   the rules a little in its advancement.
• For example, when the government   of President Carlos Julio Arosemena of Ecuador began making moves   which McChristian believed would lead Arosemena down the same   road Goulert had taken in Brazil and Arbenz had taken in Guatemala,   he swung CIA assets in the country against Arosemena and provoked   a rebellion at the CIA advised Cuenca garrison.
• When, in answer   to this rebellion, a group of young intellectuals in Quito associated   with the University of Ecuador began training to defend Arosemena,   McChristian sought to link the students to the local Communist   Party.
• He turned Quito upside down looking for evidence, and finding   none, he doctored interrogation reports to the Ecuadorian military   that falsely linked the students to the Communist Party.
• Most   of the students were shot, and Arosemena was so frightened by   what had happened that he quickly caved.
• In doing so, Arosemena   gave into a CIA demand that he launch a "civic action program"   (utilizing death squads) - the first of its kind in America   - which combined $1.5 million in U.S. military assistance with   another $500,000 in AID funds for public works projects.
• McChristian   took this concept to Vietnam later in the decade and turned   it into the Phoenix Program.
• In 1969, Phoenix was re-introduced   into Latin America as a fully developed counterinsurgency program   - AND THIS IS PRECISELY THE LINK BETWEEN THE DEATH SQUADS   IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE EVANGELICAL "CHRISTIAN" COMMUNITY!!
• A STAGGERING THOUGHT
• THINK ABOUT IT!! THE THOUGHT IS STAGGERING! THE CONCEPT   OF THE DEATH SQUAD WAS DEVELOPED BY A MAN WHO OPENLY PROFESSED   CHRISTIANITY THROUGHOUT HIS LIFE AND WAS CLOSELY LINKED TO THE   WYCLIFFE BIBLE TRANSLATORS.
• And people call this Christianity?   God help all of us, for if this is so, we have all surely lost   our way.
• The Wycliffe Bible Translators, however, thought otherwise.   Wycliffe's Donald Johnson said that McChristian was "...   one of the most impressive officers that I have ever met. If   all of our top commanders and diplomats were of his caliber,   we could be proud and there would not be any 'ugly Americans'."
• McChristian's approach to counterinsurgency utilizing Wycliffe   was enthusiastically embraced by everyone at Wycliffe.
• Wycliffe's   Jerry Elder even sent Cam Townsend, the head of Wycliffe, a   clipping from Lima's La Prensa that reported on a conference   between Ecuadorian and Peruvian army commanders on the border.

• Writing from Limonocha, Elder wrote:

   

   

  "The high point was the fact that they should unite   to fight the common enemy, Communism ... I think this is particularly   significant in light of the fact that one of the reasons that   Commander Melger (CIA) went out there was to give a report   to the military on the possibility of our (i.e., Wycliffe)   doing espionage along the border."
• THE IMPLICATIONS HERE ARE CLEAR ...
• The intimate, the long-lasting involvement of people like Boykin,   McChristian and innumerable Christian missionaries in America's   BLOODY effort to expand the limits of the American New   World Order System stinks to high heaven.
• indicates the casual nature   of America's resort to political assassination and murder to   silence its opponents outside the borders of the United States
• - AND FOR AMERICANS TO BELIEVE THAT THIS WICKED PROCLIVITY   TOWARDS ASSASSINATION DOES NOT EXTEND TO AMERICANS THEMSELVES   IS NAÏVE IN THE EXTREME.
• [Please see our articles, "MK-Ultra   and the Search for the Manchurian Candidate," "Conspiracy   Theories" and "The   Utility of Police Brutality in the Elite's War against the Poor."]
• Moreover, the list of "in-house" Americans who have been "killed   off" by the agents of America's "government within a government"   is not confined simply to these well-known cases.
• It extends well   beyond them to men and women of much less prominence who died   under very murky circumstances (alleged suicides, quick acting   cancers, mysterious plane crashes, automobile accidents, etc.)   - all people who opposed elite power in one way or another.
• Paul Wellstone [Please see our article, "Buy   Oil for Your Lamps While There Is Still Time."]
• Mel Carnahan [Please see our article, "Buy   Oil for Your Lamps While There Is Still Time."]
• Hale Boggs [Please see our article, "Buy   Oil for Your Lamps While There Is Still Time."]
• Nick Begich [Please see our article, "Buy   Oil for Your Lamps While There Is Still Time."]
• Gary Webb [Please see our article, "The   Death of Gary Webb."]
• Mae Brussels [Please see our article, "The   Supernatural, America's Intelligence Agencies, the Republican   Elites, Drugs, and Pedophilia."]
• William Colby [Please see our article, "Ashcroft:   Making a List of Dissenters."]
• Judy Bari [Please see our article, "Judi   Bari, Darryl Cherney and Earth First."]
•    

  Brussels
• David Ferrie - Killed to silence him with regard to the   JFK assassination.
• Rose Cheramie - Killed to silence her with regard to the   JFK assassination.
• Mary Meyer - Killed to silence her with regard to the JFK   assassination.
• Frank Olson - Killed to silence him with regard to MK-Ultra.
• Walter Reuther - Killed because he had become too powerful   as a union organizer.
• THE HORROR OF WHAT'S BEEN GOING ON IN THIS COUNTRY - THE MURDERS,   THE "DISAPPEARANCES," THE IMPRISONMENTS, ETC.  THAT NO ONE WANTS   TO ADMIT EXIST, AND THE GREATER HORROR OF ADMITTING TO THE PARTICIPATION   OF CHRISTIANS IN ALL OF THIS - IS BREATHTAKING.
• IT'S   FOR THIS REASON THAT WE DARE NOT LOOK IN A MIRROR, BECAUSE THE   MONSTER WE SEE LOOKING BACK AT US IS OURSELVES.
• In defense (so to speak) of those Christians who have involved   themselves in these crimes, it must be admitted that the COMPULSION   that propels these men to their evil deeds is exceedingly forceful.   It has to be!

• Again, it isn't without reason that Solzhenitsyn   wrote:

   

   

  "To do evil a human being must first of all believe   that what he's doing is good ... instead of bad in his own   and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses   but will receive praise and honors."
• It, therefore, has to be concluded that the DECEPTION   that is driving this COMPULSION and that has made these   men and women mad (crazy) is a powerful one - AND THAT IS   EXACTLY WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS.
• SO YOU THINK YOU CANNOT BE DECEIVED?
    MAYBE EVERYONE ELSE CAN, BUT NOT YOU!
• Jesus said that in the "Last Days" a great deception will take   hold of Christendom; specifically, he said:

• "There shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and   shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it   were possible, they shall DECEIVE the very   elect.

   

  "Behold, I have told you before." (Matthew 24:23-25)

   

   

  NOTE: The words, "if it were possible"   are not in the original Greek.
• In other words, there shall arise in the "end of days" many   "false Christs" and "false prophets" all claiming to speak for   Christ insofar as the Kingdom of God is concerned. "Follow me,"   they will say, "and together we will set up the Kingdom of God   on earth."
• That's what "Dominionism" is all about.
• That, of course, is exactly the message of today's American   Church.
• [Please see   our articles, "The God-Men of the   American New World Order System" and "Luciferic   Christianity;" please also see "The   Superman Theology behind the International Feast of Tabernacles."]
• Naturally enough, you say that you know better. That you can   resist the COMPULSION that is driving these men and women.   But, oh, I tell you, you have no idea how POWERFUL that   COMPULSION is! How demanding; how insistent and unrelenting!
• The fact is, it is so seductive and compelling that Jesus warned   us not to allow ourselves to be subjected its SIREN call.   He warned us to get away from it!

• Specifically, He said:

   

   

  "Come out of her [i.e., Babylon], my people, that ye be not   partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues."   (Revelation 18:4) [Please see our article, "The   Kingdom of God Is at Hand."]
• THAT'S GOD'S ANSWER insofar as this seduction is concerned!   - Still, very few people take God's command seriously - EVEN   MANY WHO HAVE FOR YEARS BEEN A PART OF THIS MINISTRY.
•   [Please see our book, WHAT   TO DO AS THE END APPROACHES.]
• AN EXCUSE FOR INACTION
• hence to do nothing   is "spiritual" (Christians call it "trusting   in the Lord"), and "to act" betrays a "rashness"   that is not only carnal, but "ungodly" and "untrusting."
• YES! - WE LIVE IN AN "IN-BETWEEN TIME"
• Yes, we are living in an "In-Between" time - a time that God   IN HIS GREAT MERCY has bequeathed to us. I am afraid,   however, that most people - people who should know better -   are not taking advantage of this gift from God, and have instead   fearfully drawn back from the choices before them.
• [Please see   our article, "The In-Between Time"   and "As the Days of Noah Were,   so Shall also the Coming of the Son of Man Be."]