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Byron York: Justice Department demolishes case against Trump order | Washington Examiner - 1 views

www.washingtonexaminer.com/...2613988 Byron-York Trump-Immigration-Order
shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 06 Feb 17
     
    "James Robart, the U.S. district judge in Washington State, offered little explanation for his decision to stop President Trump's executive order temporarily suspending non-American entry from seven terror-plagued countries. Robart simply declared his belief that Washington State, which in its lawsuit against Trump argued that the order is both illegal and unconstitutional, would likely win the case when it is tried. Now the government has answered Robart, and unlike the judge, Justice Department lawyers have produced a point-by-point demolition of Washington State's claims. Indeed, for all except the most partisan, it is likely impossible to read the Washington State lawsuit, plus Robart's brief comments and writing on the matter, plus the Justice Department's response, and not come away with the conclusion that the Trump order is on sound legal and constitutional ground. Beginning with the big picture, the Justice Department argued that Robart's restraining order violates the separation of powers, encroaches on the president's constitutional and legal authority in the areas of foreign affairs, national security, and immigration, and "second-guesses the president's national security judgment" about risks faced by the United States. Indeed, in court last week, Robart suggested that he, Robart, knows as much, or perhaps more, than the president about the current state of the terrorist threat in Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and other violence-plagued countries. In an exchange with Justice Department lawyer Michelle Bennett, Robart asked, "How many arrests have there been of foreign nationals for those seven countries since 9/11?" "Your Honor, I don't have that information," said Bennett. "Let me tell you," said Robart. "The answer to that is none, as best I can tell. So, I mean, you're here arguing on behalf of someone [President Trump] that says: We have to protect the United States from these individuals coming from these countries, and there's no support for that."
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Responding to Failure: Reorganizing U.S. Policies in the Middle East | Middle East Poli... - 0 views

mepc.org/...nizing-us-policies-middle-east war & peace Mideast Israel Arabs Shia-nations U.S.-foreign-policy recommendations
shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • I want to speak with you today about the Middle East. This is the region where Africa, Asia, and Europe come together. It is also the part of the world where we have been most compellingly reminded that some struggles cannot be won, but there are no struggles that cannot be lost. It is often said that human beings learn little useful from success but can learn a great deal from defeat. If so, the Middle East now offers a remarkably rich menu of foreign-policy failures for Americans to study. • Our four-decade-long diplomatic effort to bring peace to the Holy Land sputtered to an ignominious conclusion a year ago. • Our unconditional political, economic, and military backing of Israel has earned us the enmity of Israel’s enemies even as it has enabled egregiously contemptuous expressions of ingratitude and disrespect for us from Israel itself.
  • • Our attempts to contain the Iranian revolution have instead empowered it. • Our military campaigns to pacify the region have destabilized it, dismantled its states, and ignited ferocious wars of religion among its peoples. • Our efforts to democratize Arab societies have helped to produce anarchy, terrorism, dictatorship, or an indecisive juxtaposition of all three. • In Iraq, Libya, and Syria we have shown that war does not decide who’s right so much as determine who’s left. • Our campaign against terrorism with global reach has multiplied our enemies and continuously expanded their areas of operation. • Our opposition to nuclear proliferation did not prevent Israel from clandestinely developing nuclear weapons and related delivery systems and may not preclude Iran and others from following suit.
  • • At the global level, our policies in the Middle East have damaged our prestige, weakened our alliances, and gained us a reputation for militaristic fecklessness in the conduct of our foreign affairs. They have also distracted us from challenges elsewhere of equal or greater importance to our national interests. That’s quite a record.
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  • One can only measure success or failure by reference to what one is trying achieve. So, in practice, what have U.S. objectives been? Are these objectives still valid? If we’ve failed to advance them, what went wrong? What must we do now to have a better chance of success? Our objectives in the Middle East have not changed much over the course of the past half century or more. We have sought to 1. Gain acceptance and security for a Jewish homeland from the other states and peoples of the region; 2. Ensure the uninterrupted availability of the region’s energy supplies to sustain global and U.S. security and prosperity; 3. Preserve our ability to transit the region so as to be able to project power around the world; 4. Prevent the rise of a regional hegemon or the deployment of weapons of mass destruction that might threaten any or all of these first three objectives; 5. Maximize profitable commerce; and 6. Promote stability while enhancing respect for human rights and progress toward constitutional democracy. Let’s briefly review what’s happened with respect to each of these objectives. I will not mince words.
  • Israel has come to enjoy military supremacy but it remains excluded from most participation in its region’s political, economic, and cultural life. In the 67 years since the Jewish state was proclaimed, Israel has not made a single friend in the Middle East, where it continues to be regarded as an illegitimate legacy of Western imperialism engaged in racist removal of the indigenous population. International support for Israel is down to the United States and a few of the former colonial powers that originally imposed the Zionist project on the Arabs under Sykes-Picot and the related Balfour Declaration. The two-state solution has expired as a physical or political possibility. There is no longer any peace process to distract global attention from Israel’s maltreatment of its captive Arab populations. After years of deference to American diplomacy, the Palestinians are about to challenge the legality of Israel’s cruelties to them in the International Criminal Court and other venues in which Americans have no veto, are not present, or cannot protect the Jewish state from the consequences of its own behavior as we have always been able to do in the past. Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza are fueling a drive to boycott its products, disinvest in its companies, and sanction its political and cultural elite. These trends are the very opposite of what the United States has attempted to achieve for Israel.
  • In a stunning demonstration of his country’s most famous renewable resource — chutzpah — Israel’s Prime Minister chose this very moment to make America the main issue in his reelection campaign while simultaneously transforming Israel into a partisan issue in the United States. This is the very opposite of a sound survival strategy for Israel. Uncertainties about their country’s future are leading many Israelis to emigrate, not just to America but to Europe. This should disturb not just Israelis but Americans, if only because of the enormous investment we have made in attempts to gain a secure place for Israel in its region and the world. The Palestinians have been silent about Mr. Netanyahu’s recent political maneuvers. Evidently, they recall Napoleon’s adage that one should never interrupt an enemy when he is making a mistake. This brings me to an awkward but transcendently important issue. Israel was established as a haven from anti-Semitism — Jew hatred — in Europe, a disease of nationalism and Christian culture that culminated in the Holocaust. Israel’s creation was a relief for European Jews but a disaster for the Arabs of Palestine, who were either ethnically cleansed by European Jewish settlers or subjugated, or both.  But the birth of Israel also proved tragic for Jews throughout the Middle East — the Mizrahim. In a nasty irony, the implementation of Zionism in the Holy Land led to the introduction of European-style anti-Semitism — including its classic Christian libels on Jews — to the region, dividing Arab Jews from their Muslim neighbors as never before and compelling them to join European Jews in taking refuge in Israel amidst outrage over the dispossession of Palestinians from their homeland. Now, in a further irony, Israel’s pogroms and other injustices to the Muslim and Christian Arabs over whom it rules are leading not just to a rebirth of anti-Semitism in Europe but to its globalization.
  • The late King `Abdullah of Saudi Arabia engineered a reversal of decades of Arab rejectionism at Beirut in 2002. He brought all Arab countries and later all 57 Muslim countries to agree to normalize relations with Israel if it did a deal — any deal — with the Palestinians that the latter could accept. Israel spurned the offer. Its working assumption seems to be that it does not need peace with its neighbors as long as it can bomb and strafe them. Proceeding on this basis is not just a bad bet, it is one that is dividing Israel from the world, including Jews outside Israel. This does not look like a story with a happy ending. It’s hard to avoid the thought that Zionism is turning out to be bad for the Jews. If so, given the American investment in it, it will also have turned out to be bad for America. The political costs to America of support for Israel are steadily rising. We must find a way to divert Israel from the largely self-engineered isolation into which it is driving itself, while repairing our own increasing international ostracism on issues related to Israel.  
  • Despite Mr. Netanyahu’s recent public hysteria about Iran and his efforts to demonize it, Israel has traditionally seen Iran’s rivalry with the Arabs as a strategic asset. It had a very cooperative relationship with the Shah. Neither Israelis nor Arabs have forgotten the strategic logic that produced Israel's entente with Iran. Israel is very much on Daesh’s list of targets, as is Iran. For now, however, Israel’s main concern is the possible loss of its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. Many years ago, Israel actually did what it now accuses Iran of planning to do. It clandestinely developed nuclear weapons while denying to us and others that it was doing so. Unlike Iran, Israel has not adhered to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or subjected its nuclear facilities to international inspection. It has expressed no interest in proposals for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. It sees its ability to bring on nuclear Armageddon as the ultimate guarantee of its existence.
  • To many, Israel now seems to have acquired the obnoxious habit of biting the American hand that has fed it for so long. The Palestinians have despaired of American support for their self-determination. They are reaching out to the international community in ways that deliberately bypass the United States. Random acts of violence herald mayhem in the Holy Land. Daesh has proclaimed the objective of erasing the Sykes-Picot borders and the states within them. It has already expunged the border between Iraq and Syria. It is at work in Lebanon and has set its sights on Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. Lebanon, under Saudi influence, has turned to France rather than America for support. Hezbollah has intervened militarily in Iraq and Syria, both of whose governments are close to Iran. Egypt and Turkey have distanced themselves from the United States as well as from each other. Russia is back as a regional actor and arms supplier. The Gulf Arabs, Egypt, and Turkey now separately intervene in Libya, Syria, and Iraq without reference to American policy or views. Iran is the dominant influence in Iraq, Syria, parts of Lebanon, and now Yemen. It has boots on the ground in Iraq. And now Saudi Arabia seems to be organizing a coalition that will manage its own nuclear deterrence and military balancing of Ir
  • To describe this as out of control is hardly adequate. What are we to do about it? Perhaps we should start by recalling the first law of holes — “when stuck in one, stop digging.” It appears that “don’t just sit there, bomb something” isn’t much of a strategy. When he was asked last summer what our strategy for dealing with Daesh was, President Obama replied, “We don’t yet have one.” He was widely derided for that. He should have been praised for making the novel suggestion that before Washington acts, it should first think through what it hopes to accomplish and how best to do it. Sunzi once observed that “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." America’s noisy but strategy-free approach to the Middle East has proven him right. Again the starting point must be what we are trying to accomplish. Strategy is "the discipline of achieving desired ends through the most efficient use of available means" [John Lewis Gaddis].Our desired ends with respect to the Middle East are not in doubt. They have been and remain to gain an accepted and therefore secure place for Israel there; to keep the region's oil and gas coming at reasonable prices; to be able to pass through the area at will; to head off challenges to these interests; to do profitable business in the markets of the Middle East; and to promote stability amidst the expansion of liberty in its countries. Judging by results, we have been doing a lot wrong. Two related problems in our overall approach need correction. They are “enablement” and the creation of “moral hazard.” Both are fall-out from  relationships of codependency.
  • Enablement occurs when one party to a relationship indulges or supports and thereby enables another party’s dysfunctional behavior. A familiar example from ordinary life is giving money to a drunk or a drug addict or ignoring, explaining away, or defending their subsequent self-destructive behavior.  Moral hazard is the condition that obtains when one party is emboldened to take risks it would not otherwise take because it knows another party will shoulder the consequences and bear the costs of failure. The U.S.-Israel relationship has evolved to exemplify codependency. It now embodies both enablement and moral hazard. U.S. support for Israel is unconditional.  Israel has therefore had no need to cultivate relations with others in the Middle East, to declare its borders, or to choose peace over continued expansion into formerly Arab lands. Confidence in U.S. backing enables Israel to do whatever it likes to the Palestinians and its neighbors without having to worry about the consequences. Israel is now a rich country, but the United States continues to subsidize it with cash transfers and other fiscal privileges. The Jewish state is the most powerful country in the Middle East. It can launch attacks on its neighbors, confident that it will be resupplied by the United States. Its use of U.S. weapons in ways that violate both U.S. and international law goes unrebuked. 41 American vetoes in the United Nations Security Council have exempted Israel from censure and international law. We enable it to defy the expressed will of the international community, including, ironically, our own.
  • We Americans are facilitating Israel's indulgence in denial and avoidance of the choices it must make if it is not to jeopardize its long-term existence as a state in the Middle East. The biggest contribution we could now make to Israel's longevity would be to ration our support for it, so as to cause it to rethink and reform its often self-destructive behavior. Such peace as Israel now enjoys with Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians is the direct result of tough love of this kind by earlier American administrations. We Americans cannot save Israel from itself, but we can avoid killing it with uncritical kindness. We should support Israel when it makes sense to do so and it needs our support on specific issues, but not otherwise. Israel is placing itself and American interests in jeopardy. We need to discuss how to reverse this dynamic.
  • Moral hazard has also been a major problem in our relationship with our Arab partners. Why should they play an active role in countering the threat to them they perceive from Iran, if they can get America to do this for them? Similarly, why should any Muslim country rearrange its priorities to deal with Muslim renegades like Daesh when it can count on America to act for it? If America thinks it must lead, why not let it do so? But responsible foreign and defense policies begin with self-help, not outsourcing of military risks. The United States has the power-projection and war-fighting capabilities to back a Saudi-led coalition effort against Daesh. The Saudis have the religious and political credibility, leadership credentials, and diplomatic connections to organize such an effort. We do not. Since this century began, America has administered multiple disappointments to its allies and friends in the Middle East, while empowering their and our adversaries. Unlike the Gulf Arabs, Egypt, and Turkey, Washington does not have diplomatic relations with Tehran. Given our non-Muslim identity, solidarity with Israel, and recent history in the Fertile Crescent, the United States cannot hope to unite the region’s Muslims against Daesh.  Daesh is an insurgency that claims to exemplify Islam as well as a governing structure and an armed force. A coalition led by inhibited foreign forces, built on papered-over differences, and embodying hedged commitments will not defeat such an insurgency with or without boots on the ground.
  • When elections have yielded governments whose policies we oppose, we have not hesitated to conspire with their opponents to overthrow them. But the results of our efforts to coerce political change in the Middle East are not just failures but catastrophic failures. Our policies have nowhere produced democracy. They have instead contrived the destabilization of societies, the kindling of religious warfare, and the installation of dictatorships contemptuous of the rights of religious and ethnic minorities. Frankly, we have done a lot better at selling things, including armaments, to the region than we have at transplanting the ideals of the Atlantic Enlightenment there. The region’s autocrats cooperate with us to secure our protection, and they get it. When they are nonetheless overthrown, the result is not democracy or the rule of law but socio-political collapse and the emergence of  a Hobbesian state of nature in which religious and ethnic communities, families, and individuals are able to feel safe only when they are armed and have the drop on each other. Where we have engineered or attempted to engineer regime change, violent politics, partition, and ethno-religious cleansing have everywhere succeeded unjust but tranquil order. One result of our bungled interventions in Iraq and Syria is the rise of Daesh. This is yet another illustration that, in our efforts to do good in the Middle East, we have violated the principle that one should first do no harm.
  • Americans used to believe that we could best lead by example. We and those in the Middle East seeking nonviolent change would all be better off if America returned to that tradition and forswore ideologically motivated hectoring and intervention. No one willingly follows a wagging finger. Despite our unparalleled ability to use force against foreigners, the best way to inspire them to emulate us remains showing them that we have our act together. At the moment, we do not. In the end, to cure the dysfunction in our policies toward the Middle East, it comes down to this. We must cure the dysfunction and venality of our politics. If we cannot, we have no business trying to use an 8,000-mile-long screwdriver to fix things one-third of the way around the world. That doesn’t work well under the best of circumstances. But when the country wielding the screwdriver has very little idea what it’s doing, it really screws things up.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15
     
    Chas Freeman served as US ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the war to liberate Kuwait and as Assistant Secretary of Defense from 1993-94. He was the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on "diplomacy" and is the author of five books, including "America's Misadventures in the Middle East" and "Interesting Times: China, America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige."  I have largely omitted highlighting portions of the speech dealing with Muslim nations because Freeman has apparently lost touch with the actual U.S., Saudi, UAE, Kuwait, and Turish roles in creating and expanding ISIL. But his analysis of Israel's situation and recommendations for curing it seem quite valid, as well as his overall Mideast recommendation to heed the First Law of Holes: "when stuck in one, stop digging."   I recommend reading the entire speech notwithstanding his misunderstanding of ISIL. There is a lot of very important history there ably summarized.
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Newt Gingrich: 15 Things You Don't Know About Him - 1 views

www.thefiscaltimes.com/...s-You-Dont-Know-About-Him.aspx Newt-Gingrich Libertarians Ron-Paul Reagan-Constitutional-Conservative Banksters Liberty-Tryanny
shared by Gary Edwards on 17 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Dec 11
     
    Good article on Newt; covers the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Personally i don't trust Newt.  As former repubican senator Jim Talent of Missouri says, "He's not a reliable and trusted conservative leader".  Strangely, Talent supports Romney. And there is nothing conservative about Romney.   The one thing i do like about Newt is that he is a bomb thrower extraordinaire.  There isn't a Libertarian (moi), conservative, or Constitutional conservative anywhere that wouldn't love to see Newt in the ring with Obama, hammering his Marxist ass without mercy.  But i'm not so sure that that desire is enough to overcome the serious character flaws and self centered egotistical baggage Newt hauls around.  He proves time and again that he lacks the core values of a true conservative, including dedication to the upholding the Constitution and Rule of Law. Funny though that a valueless establishment repubican "we can manage big government more efficiently and make it work" guy like Romney is attacking Newt as not being a true conservative?  What does that make Romney?  At least Newt can point to the awesome Contract with America repubican take over of Congress - after 40 years in the wilderness. Even though Ron Paul has lost it on foreign policy, i continue to send money.  My switch from Reagan Constitutional Conservative to Libertarian has "nearly" everything to do with the 2008 financial collapse, and the years of research and study that followed.   I say "nearly" because i just couldn't pull the trigger until unexpectedly i found myself in a Bloomberg discussion questioning my support for Herman Cain.  Sadly, Herman supports the Federal Reserve, including full approval of both Greenspan and Bernacke policies that have destroyed the US dollar and enabled the Banksters to run off with over $29 Trillion of our money.  Of course, this is an indefensible and inexcusable position.  The Libertarian's in the discussion pointed out that the problems this country faces cann
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Dec 11
     
    disclosure: I met Cokie and Steve Roberts at an intimate house party in NH. Probably in 1991. Very nice people but they are full blown unionist-socialist-progressives iron bent on the European Socialism model. Not Constitutionalist in any way shape of form. Certainly not Constitutional Capitalist or free market types either.
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Articles by Mark Dice - 0 views

markdice.com/index.php Mark-Dice New-World-Order Illuminati Globalist Globalist-Elites
shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Jul 13
     
    Libertarian writer and researcher, Mark Dice, has provided a list of articles he has written.  Mark's literary works include: ... "The Illuminati: Facts & Fiction" ...... separates and analyzes the various claims and evidence about the Illuminati, their history, beliefs, members, organizations, and activities. This is a supplement for Mark's previous book - ..... "The Resistance Manifesto",  which focuses more on the New World Order, the 9/11 attacks, Big Brother, and how the political agendas of the elite are fulfilling Bible prophecy.   .... "The New World Order" ....   His website, markdice.com has high light summary of his work that's quite interesting: A detailed analysis of the September 11th attacks and evidence they were aided by elements within U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies to be used as a reason to jumpstart the "War on Terror" and the erosion of privacy and personal liberties outlined in the constitution. The Knights Templar, the real Holy Grail, and the role the Templars played in the formation of the Illuminati mafia. Quotes from the original writings of the Illuminati founders and how the organization drew up plans over 200 years ago to take over every major institution of power and influence in the world through deception and criminal activity. An expose on the Bohemian Grove resort including quotes from President Richard Nixon, senator John Decamp, and information from Chris Jones who worked at the club and became an informant on the activities within the compound. The secrets of Freemasonry and a history of the organization and their influence on society and quotes from the bible of Freemasonry on how the organization knowingly deceives lower level members and nonmembers as to the true secrets and goals of the fraternity. The history and meaning of the mysterious Georgia Guidestones monument and why the elite want to reduce world population to 500 million by killing billions of people through wars and plagues. A history of
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REVEALING QUOTES ON THE GOALS OF PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHOLOGY - 0 views

www.psychquotes.com psychquotes psychiatry psychiatric
shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Psychiatry's Views on Conservatives "In August 2003, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the results of their $1.2 million taxpayer-funded study. It stated, essentially, that traditionalists are mentally disturbed. Scholars from the Universities of Maryland, California at Berkeley, and Stanford had determined that social conservatives, in particular, suffer from ‘mental rigidity,’ ‘dogmatism,’ and ‘uncertainty avoidance,’ together with associated indicators for mental illness."
  • Psychiatry's Views on Education "Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well – by creating the international child of the future"
  • Teaching school children to read was a "perversion" and high literacy rate bred "the sustaining force behind individualism."
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  • You see, one of the effects of self-esteem (Values Clarification) programs is that you are no longer obliged to tell the truth if you don’t feel like it. You don’t have to tell the truth because if the truth you have to tell is about your own failure then your self-esteem will go down and that is unthinkable."
  • The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at: first, that influences of the home are 'obstructive' and verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective ..
  • When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen."
  • "…through schools of the world we shall disseminate a new conception of government – one that will embrace all of the collective activities of men; one that will postulate the need for scientific control and operation of economic activities in the interests of all people."
  • "Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know – it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave." 
  • "This is the idea where we drop subject matter and we drop Carnegie Unites (grading from A-F) and we just let students find their way, keeping them in school until they manifest the politically correct attitudes.
  • "I regard myself as one of the most dangerous enemies of religion" Sigmund Freud
  • "Education is thus a most power ally of humanism, and every public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday school, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teachings?"
  • "Despite rapid progress in the right direction, the program of the average elementary school has been primarily devoted to teaching the fundamental subjects, the three R’s, and closely related disciplines… Artificial exercises, like drills on phonetics, multiplication tables, and formal writing movements, are used to a wasteful degree. Subjects such as arithmetic, language, and history include content that is intrinsically of little value. Nearly every subject is enlarged unwisely to satisfy the academic ideal of thoroughness… Elimination of the unessential by scientific study, then, is one step in improving the curriculum."
  • "We can therefore justifiably stress our particular point of view with regard to the proper development of the human psyche, even though our knowledge be incomplete. We must aim to make it permeate every educational activity in our national life…. We have made a useful attack upon a number of professions. The two easiest of them naturally are the teaching profession and the Church: the two most difficult are law and medicine."
  • "...a student attains 'higher order thinking' when he no longer believes in right or wrong"
  • "A large part of what we call good teaching is a teacher´s ability to obtain affective objectives by challenging the student's fixed beliefs.  …a large part of what we call teaching is that the teacher should be able to use education to reorganize a child's thoughts, attitudes, and feelings."  
  • "Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished
  • Psychiatry's Views on Religion "Religion (is) a universal obsessional neurosis." Sigmund Freud, defining spiritual belief
  • "The educational system should be a sieve, through which all the children of a country are passed. It is highly desirable that no child escape inspection."
  • "The soul or consciousness, which played the leading part in the past, now is of very little importance; in any case both are deprived of their main functions and glory to such an extent that only the names remain. Behaviorism sang their funeral dirge while materialism – the smiling heir – arranges a suitable funeral for them.
  • "…humanists still believe that traditional theism, especially faith in the prayer-hearing God, assumed to love and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers, and to be able to do something about them, is an unproved and outmoded faith." "
  • "We can therefore justifiably stress our particular point of view with regard to the proper development of the human psyche, even though our knowledge be incomplete. We must aim to make it permeate every educational activity in our national life…. We have made a useful attack upon a number of professions. The two easiest of them naturally are the teaching profession and the Church: the two most difficult are law and medicine."
  • We shall not solve the problems of alcoholism and juvenile delinquency by increasing a sense of responsibility. It is the environment which is 'responsible' for the objectionable behavior, and it is the environment, not some attribute of the individual, which must be changed.
  • Psychiatry's Views on Creating a Slave Society "We can choose to use our growing knowledge to enslave people in ways never dreamed of before, depersonalizing them, controlling them by means so carefully selected that they will perhaps never be aware of their loss of personhood."
  • Teaching school children to read was a "perversion" and high literacy rate bred "the sustaining force behind individualism."
  • "It will of course, be understood that directly or indirectly, soon or late, every advance in the sciences of human nature will contribute to our success in controlling human nature and changing it to the advantage of the common wheel." Edward Thorndike, Key Psychology Theorist, member of the "Eugenics Committee of the USA"
  • "We need a program of psychosurgery for political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated.
  • The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. . . Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. . . . We must electronically control the brain. Someday armies and generals will be controlled by electronic stimulation of the brain." 
  • "Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished
  • "One of the least understood strategies of the world revolution now moving rapidly toward its goal is the use of mind control as a major means of obtaining the consent of the people who will be subjects of the New World Order."
  • "Those of us who work in this field see a developing potential for nearly a total control of human emotional status, mental functioning, and will to act. These human phenomena can be started, stopped or eliminated by the use of various types of chemical substances. What we can produce with our science now will affect the entire society." A "utopia" could be found – providing "a sense of stability and certainty, whether realistic or not."
  • "To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas..."
  • Some packages even include instructions on how to deal with parents and others who object. Stripping away psychological defenses can be done through assignments to keep diaries to be discussed in group sessions, and through role-playing assignments, both techniques used in the original brainwashing programs in China under Mao. Thomas Sowell, writing in Forbes, 1991
  • "The State is the absolute reality and the individual himself has objective existence, truth and morality only in his capacity as a member of the State." Hegel (who influenced Karl Marx)
  • Psychiatry's Views on America "America is a mistake, admittedly a gigantic mistake, but a mistake nevertheless." Sigmund Freud America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success. Sigmund Freud
  • "To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas...
  • "One of the least understood strategies of the world revolution now moving rapidly toward its goal is the use of mind control as a major means of obtaining the consent of the people who will be subjects of the New World Order."
  • Freud on Marxism "The strength of Marxism obviously does not lie in its view of history or in the prophecies about the future which it bases upon that view, but in its clear insight into the determining influence which is exerted by the economic conditions of man upon his intellectual, ethical and artistic reactions." Sigmund Freud
  • Basically, all that is necessary to revoke all the constitutional rights of any citizen is to accuse him of being mentally-ill."
  • John A. Stormer, "None Dare Call it Treason"
  • "Old conventions, customs and values… to be challenged… The aim should be to control not only nature, but human nature." He recommended two slogans for "spreading world-wide the gospel of mental hygiene": "To learn to think internationally" and "The necessity to disarm the mind." Dr. J.R. Lord, psychiatrist
  • "Public life, politics and industry should all of them be within our sphere of influence…. If we are to infiltrate the professional and social activities of other people I think we must imitate the Totalitarians and organize some kind of fifth column activity!  If better ideas on mental health are to progress and spread we, as the salesmen, must lose our identity… Let us all, therefore, very secretly be ‘fifth columnists.’"
  • The techniques of brainwashing developed in totalitarian countries are routinely used in psychological conditioning programs imposed on school children.
  • These include emotional shock and desensitization, psychological isolation from sources of support, stripping away defenses, manipulative cross-examination of the individual’s underlying moral values by psychological rather than rational means. These techniques are not confined to separate courses or programs...they are not isolated idiosyncracies of particular teachers. They are products of numerous books and other educational materials in programs packaged by organizations that sell such curricula to administrators and teach the techniques to teachers.
  • "If all else fails, punishable behavior may be made less likely by changing physiological conditions. Hormones may be used to change sexual behavior, surgery (as in lobotomy) to control violence, tranquilizers to control aggression, and appetite depressants to control overeating." Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner in "Beyond Freedom and Dignity"
  • We must learn to recognize them for what they are - possessors of no special knowledge of the human psyche, who have, nonetheless, chosen to earn their living from the dissemination of the myth that they do indeed know how the mind works". Psychiatrist Garth Wood, M.D., in "The Myth of Neurosis", 1986
  • These terms indicate only approval or disapproval of some aspect of a person's mentality (thinking, emotions, or behavior). Psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, in "The Death of Psychiatry", 1974
  • "The very term ['mental disease'] is nonsensical, a semantic mistake. The two words cannot go together except metaphorically; you can no more have a mental 'disease' than you can have a purple idea or a wise space". Similarly, there can no more be a "mental illness" than there can be a "moral illness." The words "mental" and "illness" do not go together logically. Mental "illness" does not exist, and neither does mental "health."
  • By calling the harmless 'insane', (who statistics prove to be no more violence-prone than the average citizen, unless hopelessly deranged by damaging psychiatric 'treatment'), dangerous and justifying their own existence by the 'need' to deal with that inflated 'danger', the mad-doctors themselves pose the greatest threat to liberty, property and democracy in our times."
  • Citizens for Higher Ethical Standards in Medicine
  • "Mental illness is often used as an ad homonym to discredit the individual. This has been a common use of psychiatric diagnosis in psychiatry in Russia. " ... there are two main groups [of schizophrenia patients] ... 1) people admitted to the mental hospital long before they had been political dissenters ... 2. others who ... have put forward complex social and economic theories as alternatives to orthodox Marxism..."  Wing, cited in "Pseudoscience in Psychology", by Dr. Szasz, p. 126
  • "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.." J. Krishnamurti
  • "...the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology.... The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen. As yet there is only one country which has succeeded in creating this politician’s paradise."   The Impact of Science on Society by Bertrand Russell
  • "A Trojan horse full of dangerous psycho-fantasies has been professionally prepared for us by Christian psychiatrists and psychologists...  At the base, such therapies stand upon dogma, not scientific observations, and the dogma is the odious one of Freud and his followers who were some of the century's most anti-Christ teachers.  No amount of well-intentioned refinement of deadly doctrines will make them clean for Christians." Dr. Hilton P. Terrell, M.D
  • "Contrary to the popular public conception, this happenstance is NOT a form of health care, but the result of a fraudulent system being granted police powers by the State.
  • "Psychotherapy may be known in the future as the greatest hoax of the twentieth century."
  • "Nearly half a century has passed since Watson proclaimed his manifesto. Today, apart from a few minor reservations, the vast majority of psychologists, both in this country and in America, still follow his lead. The result, as a cynical onlooker might be tempted to say, is that psychology, having first bargained away its soul and then gone out of its mind, seems now, as it faces an untimely end, to have lost all consciousness." 
  • "Advocates of psychiatric drugs often claim that the medications improve learning and the ability to benefit from psychotherapy, but the contrary is true.  There are no drugs that improve mental function, self-understanding, or human relations.  Any drug that affects mental processes does so by impairing them."
  • "In the 14-year period between 1950 and 1964, more American deaths occurred in state and county mental institutions than in all of the nation's armed conflicts beginning with the Revolutionary War and ending with the Persian Gulf War.  Between 1965 and 1990, the total number of mental-hospital inpatient deaths exceeded the number of battle deaths in the same wars by 70 percent.  Inpatient deaths topped out at 1,103,000 during this 25-year period, compared with 650,563 recorded deaths in battles."
  • Kelly Patricia O’Meara: "The Forgotten Dead of St. Elizabeth's", Insight Magazine, June 16, 2001
  • "The similarities between street drug abuse and psychotropic prescription drug use are disturbing. Both types are toxic. Both can cause psychosis, damage the brain and other organs, and even cause death. And neither type of mind-altering drugs, legal or illegal, treats disease. It's important to recognize that the only significant difference between many prescription psychotropic drugs and street drugs such as "speed" and "downers" is that prescription drugs are legal."
  • Neuro-psychiatrist Sydney Walker in "Dose of Sanity"
  • "Clearly this business of treating minds, particularly this big business of treating young minds, has not policed itself, and has no incentive to put a stop to the kinds of fraudulent and unethical practices that are going on."
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The Daily Bell - The Economist Hoists Its Battle Balloon? - 1 views

www.thedailybell.com/...mist-Hoists-Its-Battle-Balloon economist-magazine Banksters World-Wars New-World-Order
shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Dec 13
     
    "The first world war... Look back with angst ... Thanks to its military, economic and soft power, America is still indispensable, particularly in dealing with threats like climate change and terror, which cross borders. But unless America behaves as a leader and the guarantor of the world order, it will be inviting regional powers to test their strength by bullying neighbouring countries. The chances are that none of the world's present dangers will lead to anything that compares to the horrors of 1914. Madness, whether motivated by race, religion or tribe, usually gives ground to rational self-interest. But when it triumphs, it leads to carnage, so to assume that reason will prevail is to be culpably complacent. That is the lesson of a century ago. - Economist Magazine Dominant Social Theme: Beware the coming wars ... Free-Market Analysis: You can't make this stuff up. The top men in the globalist community have been hard at work building wars and potential wars, and now it's time to let 'er rip. This is one dominant social theme we saw coming miles away. We've been writing about its imminence for years, and predicting war and more war as internationalists try to blunt the effect of the Internet Reformation. After the Gutenberg press blew up the Middle Ages and the Roman Catholic Church besides, the globalists of the era used economic chaos, war and the invention of copyright to fight back. We predicted they would use the same tools this time around and have no reason to revise our predictions thus far. The only thing we've consistently pointed out that has not yet been addressed is the inability of the top men to launch a full-out world war because that would involve nuclear weapons. And lacking a full-out war, we have questioned how successful the strategy can be. Obviously, the top elites see something we don't. Or perhaps they are willing to risk an all-out war anyway - as they retreat into reported fully-stocked, underground "cities." Here's more fro
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Top-Secret Document Reveals NSA Spied On Porn Habits As Part Of Plan To Discredit 'Radi... - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...sa-porn-muslims_n_4346128.html surveillance state NSA NSA-porn COINTELPRO FBI must-read
shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • WASHINGTON -- The National Security Agency has been gathering records of online sexual activity and evidence of visits to pornographic websites as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches, according to a top-secret NSA document. The document, provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, identifies six targets, all Muslims, as “exemplars” of how “personal vulnerabilities” can be learned through electronic surveillance, and then exploited to undermine a target's credibility, reputation and authority. The NSA document, dated Oct. 3, 2012, repeatedly refers to the power of charges of hypocrisy to undermine such a messenger. “A previous SIGINT" -- or signals intelligence, the interception of communications -- "assessment report on radicalization indicated that radicalizers appear to be particularly vulnerable in the area of authority when their private and public behaviors are not consistent,” the document argues. Among the vulnerabilities listed by the NSA that can be effectively exploited are “viewing sexually explicit material online” and “using sexually explicit persuasive language when communicating with inexperienced young girls.”
  • The Director of the National Security Agency -- described as "DIRNSA" -- is listed as the "originator" of the document. Beyond the NSA itself, the listed recipients include officials with the Departments of Justice and Commerce and the Drug Enforcement Administration. "Without discussing specific individuals, it should not be surprising that the US Government uses all of the lawful tools at our disposal to impede the efforts of valid terrorist targets who seek to harm the nation and radicalize others to violence," Shawn Turner, director of public affairs for National Intelligence, told The Huffington Post in an email Tuesday. Yet Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said these revelations give rise to serious concerns about abuse. "It's important to remember that the NSA’s surveillance activities are anything but narrowly focused -- the agency is collecting massive amounts of sensitive information about virtually everyone," he said. "Wherever you are, the NSA's databases store information about your political views, your medical history, your intimate relationships and your activities online," he added. "The NSA says this personal information won't be abused, but these documents show that the NSA probably defines 'abuse' very narrowly."
  • None of the six individuals targeted by the NSA is accused in the document of being involved in terror plots. The agency believes they all currently reside outside the United States. It identifies one of them, however, as a "U.S. person," which means he is either a U.S. citizen or a permanent resident. A U.S. person is entitled to greater legal protections against NSA surveillance than foreigners are. Stewart Baker, a one-time general counsel for the NSA and a top Homeland Security official in the Bush administration, said that the idea of using potentially embarrassing information to undermine targets is a sound one. "If people are engaged in trying to recruit folks to kill Americans and we can discredit them, we ought to," said Baker. "On the whole, it's fairer and maybe more humane" than bombing a target, he said, describing the tactic as "dropping the truth on them." Any system can be abused, Baker allowed, but he said fears of the policy drifting to domestic political opponents don't justify rejecting it. "On that ground you could question almost any tactic we use in a war, and at some point you have to say we're counting on our officials to know the difference," he said.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • In addition to analyzing the content of their internet activities, the NSA also examined the targets' contact lists. The NSA accuses two of the targets of promoting al Qaeda propaganda, but states that surveillance of the three English-speakers’ communications revealed that they have "minimal terrorist contacts." In particular, “only seven (1 percent) of the contacts in the study of the three English-speaking radicalizers were characterized in SIGINT as affiliated with an extremist group or a Pakistani militant group. An earlier communications profile of [one of the targets] reveals that 3 of the 213 distinct individuals he was in contact with between 4 August and 2 November 2010 were known or suspected of being associated with terrorism," the document reads. The document contends that the three Arabic-speaking targets have more contacts with affiliates of extremist groups, but does not suggest they themselves are involved in any terror plots. Instead, the NSA believes the targeted individuals radicalize people through the expression of controversial ideas via YouTube, Facebook and other social media websites. Their audience, both English and Arabic speakers, "includes individuals who do not yet hold extremist views but who are susceptible to the extremist message,” the document states. The NSA says the speeches and writings of the six individuals resonate most in countries including the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Kenya, Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia.
  • The NSA possesses embarrassing sexually explicit information about at least two of the targets by virtue of electronic surveillance of their online activity. The report states that some of the data was gleaned through FBI surveillance programs carried out under the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act. The document adds, "Information herein is based largely on Sunni extremist communications." It further states that "the SIGINT information is from primary sources with direct access and is generally considered reliable." According to the document, the NSA believes that exploiting electronic surveillance to publicly reveal online sexual activities can make it harder for these “radicalizers” to maintain their credibility. "Focusing on access reveals potential vulnerabilities that could be even more effectively exploited when used in combination with vulnerabilities of character or credibility, or both, of the message in order to shape the perception of the messenger as well as that of his followers," the document argues. An attached appendix lists the "argument" each surveillance target has made that the NSA says constitutes radicalism, as well the personal "vulnerabilities" the agency believes would leave the targets "open to credibility challenges" if exposed.
  • One target's offending argument is that "Non-Muslims are a threat to Islam," and a vulnerability listed against him is "online promiscuity." Another target, a foreign citizen the NSA describes as a "respected academic," holds the offending view that "offensive jihad is justified," and his vulnerabilities are listed as "online promiscuity" and "publishes articles without checking facts." A third targeted radical is described as a "well-known media celebrity" based in the Middle East who argues that "the U.S perpetrated the 9/11 attack." Under vulnerabilities, he is said to lead "a glamorous lifestyle." A fourth target, who argues that "the U.S. brought the 9/11 attacks on itself" is said to be vulnerable to accusations of “deceitful use of funds." The document expresses the hope that revealing damaging information about the individuals could undermine their perceived "devotion to the jihadist cause." The Huffington Post is withholding the names and locations of the six targeted individuals; the allegations made by the NSA about their online activities in this document cannot be verified. The document does not indicate whether the NSA carried out its plan to discredit these six individuals, either by communicating with them privately about the acquired information or leaking it publicly. There is also no discussion in the document of any legal or ethical constraints on exploiting electronic surveillance in this manner.
  • While Baker and others support using surveillance to tarnish the reputation of people the NSA considers "radicalizers," U.S. officials have in the past used similar tactics against civil rights leaders, labor movement activists and others. Under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI harassed activists and compiled secret files on political leaders, most notably Martin Luther King, Jr. The extent of the FBI's surveillance of political figures is still being revealed to this day, as the bureau releases the long dossiers it compiled on certain people in response to Freedom of Information Act requests following their deaths. The information collected by the FBI often centered on sex -- homosexuality was an ongoing obsession on Hoover's watch -- and information about extramarital affairs was reportedly used to blackmail politicians into fulfilling the bureau's needs. Current FBI Director James Comey recently ordered new FBI agents to visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington to understand "the dangers in becoming untethered to oversight and accountability."
  • James Bamford, a journalist who has been covering the NSA since the early 1980s, said the use of surveillance to exploit embarrassing private behavior is precisely what led to past U.S. surveillance scandals. "The NSA's operation is eerily similar to the FBI's operations under J. Edgar Hoover in the 1960s where the bureau used wiretapping to discover vulnerabilities, such as sexual activity, to 'neutralize' their targets," he said. "Back then, the idea was developed by the longest serving FBI chief in U.S. history, today it was suggested by the longest serving NSA chief in U.S. history." That controversy, Bamford said, also involved the NSA. "And back then, the NSA was also used to do the eavesdropping on King and others through its Operation Minaret. A later review declared the NSA’s program 'disreputable if not outright illegal,'" he said. Baker said that until there is evidence the tactic is being abused, the NSA should be trusted to use its discretion. "The abuses that involved Martin Luther King occurred before Edward Snowden was born," he said. "I think we can describe them as historical rather than current scandals. Before I say, 'Yeah, we've gotta worry about that,' I'd like to see evidence of that happening, or is even contemplated today, and I don't see it."
  • Jaffer, however, warned that the lessons of history ought to compel serious concern that a "president will ask the NSA to use the fruits of surveillance to discredit a political opponent, journalist or human rights activist." "The NSA has used its power that way in the past and it would be naïve to think it couldn't use its power that way in the future," he said.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Nov 13
     
    By Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallagher, and Ryan Grim, 26 November 2013. I will annotate later. But this is by far the most important NSA disclosure from Edward Snowden's leaked documents thus far. A report originated by Gen. Alexander himself revealing COINTELPRO like activities aimed at destroying the reputations of non-terrorist "radicalizers," including one "U.S. person." This is exactly the kind of repressive activity that the civil libertarians among us warn about. 
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Nov 13
     
    By Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallagher, and Ryan Grim, 26 November 2013. I will annotate later. But this is by far the most important NSA disclosure from Edward Snowden's leaked documents thus far. A report originated by Gen. Alexander himself revealing COINTELPRO like activities aimed at destroying the reputations of non-terrorist "radicalizers," including one "U.S. person." This is exactly the kind of repressive activity that the civil libertarians among us warn about. 
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Stifling Debate With Public Funds? « Opportunity Knocks Walt Hucks - 0 views

lnxwalt.wordpress.com/...stifling-debate open-government climategate climate-change suedo-science political-science fraud
shared by Gary Edwards on 22 Jan 10 - Cached
  • As a public employee myself, I know how these things happen: a committee is appointed, not because of their expertise, but because they are tongue-in-groove buttlickers for the political appointees they report to. As such, their conclusions are unsurprisingly always exactly what the appointees wanted to hear.
  • Gary Edwards on 22 Jan 10
     
    Walt has published an excellent response to an article published by suedo-scientific fascist, Richard Somerville. Walt displays some excellent writing skills and logical level-headed thinking as he rips the idiot Somerville to shreds.  Wlat also has a great line i would like to poach, with his permission of course: "they are tongue-in-groove buttlickers for the political appointees they report to" "As a public employee myself, I know how these things happen: a committee is appointed, not because of their expertise, but because they are tongue-in-groove buttlickers for the political appointees they report to. As such, their conclusions are unsurprisingly always exactly what the appointees wanted to hear." excerpt: Is This Science? Or Religion? The Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, has published an article entitled, "A Response to Climate Change Denialism". The article is pure politics-and-religion style campaign literature. This on a site that is paid for by Californians' taxes. It is reproduced below in its entirety, both to preserve the evidence, and to facilitate commentary.
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Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly | The Whit... - 0 views

www.whitehouse.gov/...nited-nations-general-assembly war & peace Obama-speech U.N. hypocrisy
shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly United Nations General Assembly Hall New York City, New York 10:13 A.M. EDT PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen:  We come together at a crossroads between war and peace; between disorder and integration; between fear and hope. Around the globe, there are signposts of progress.  The shadow of World War that existed at the founding of this institution has been lifted, and the prospect of war between major powers reduced.  The ranks of member states has more than tripled, and more people live under governments they elected. Hundreds of millions of human beings have been freed from the prison of poverty, with the proportion of those living in extreme poverty cut in half.  And the world economy continues to strengthen after the worst financial crisis of our lives. 
  • And yet there is a pervasive unease in our world -- a sense that the very forces that have brought us together have created new dangers and made it difficult for any single nation to insulate itself from global forces.  As we gather here, an outbreak of Ebola overwhelms public health systems in West Africa and threatens to move rapidly across borders.  Russian aggression in Europe recalls the days when large nations trampled small ones in pursuit of territorial ambition.  The brutality of terrorists in Syria and Iraq forces us to look into the heart of darkness.
  • First, all of us -- big nations and small -- must meet our responsibility to observe and enforce international norms.  We are here because others realized that we gain more from cooperation than conquest. 
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Recently, Russia’s actions in Ukraine challenge this post-war order.  Here are the facts.  After the people of Ukraine mobilized popular protests and calls for reform, their corrupt president fled.  Against the will of the government in Kyiv, Crimea was annexed.  Russia poured arms into eastern Ukraine, fueling violent separatists and a conflict that has killed thousands.  When a civilian airliner was shot down from areas that these proxies controlled, they refused to allow access to the crash for days.  When Ukraine started to reassert control over its territory, Russia gave up the pretense of merely supporting the separatists, and moved troops across the border. This is a vision of the world in which might makes right -- a world in which one nation’s borders can be redrawn by another, and civilized people are not allowed to recover the remains of their loved ones because of the truth that might be revealed. America stands for something different.  We believe that right makes might -- that bigger nations should not be able to bully smaller ones, and that people should be able to choose their own future.
  • nd these are simple truths, but they must be defended. America and our allies will support the people of Ukraine as they develop their democracy and economy.  We will reinforce our NATO Allies and uphold our commitment to collective self-defense.  We will impose a cost on Russia for aggression, and we will counter falsehoods with the truth.  And we call upon others to join us on the right side of history -- for while small gains can be won at the barrel of a gun, they will ultimately be turned back if enough voices support the freedom of nations and peoples to make their own decisions. Moreover, a different path is available -- the path of diplomacy and peace, and the ideals this institution is designed to uphold.  The recent cease-fire agreement in Ukraine offers an opening to achieve those objectives.  If Russia takes that path -- a path that for stretches of the post-Cold War period resulted in prosperity for the Russian people -- then we will lift our sanctions and welcome Russia’s role in addressing common challenges.  After all, that’s what the United States and Russia have been able to do in past years -- from reducing our nuclear stockpiles to meeting our obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to cooperating to remove and destroy Syria’s declared chemical weapons.  And that’s the kind of cooperation we are prepared to pursue again -- if Russia changes course. 
  • This speaks to a central question of our global age -- whether we will solve our problems together, in a spirit of mutual interest and mutual respect, or whether we descend into the destructive rivalries of the past.  When nations find common ground, not simply based on power, but on principle, then we can make enormous progress.  And I stand before you today committed to investing American strength to working with all nations to address the problems we face in the 21st century.
  • America is pursuing a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue, as part of our commitment to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and pursue the peace and security of a world without them.  And this can only take place if Iran seizes this historic opportunity.  My message to Iran’s leaders and people has been simple and consistent:  Do not let this opportunity pass.  We can reach a solution that meets your energy needs while assuring the world that your program is peaceful.  America is and will continue to be a Pacific power, promoting peace, stability, and the free flow of commerce among nations.  But we will insist that all nations abide by the rules of the road, and resolve their territorial disputes peacefully, consistent with international law. 
  • In other words, on issue after issue, we cannot rely on a rule book written for a different century.  If we lift our eyes beyond our borders -- if we think globally and if we act cooperatively -- we can shape the course of this century, as our predecessors shaped the post-World War II age.  But as we look to the future, one issue risks a cycle of conflict that could derail so much progress, and that is the cancer of violent extremism that has ravaged so many parts of the Muslim world. Of course, terrorism is not new.  Speaking before this Assembly, President Kennedy put it well:  “Terror is not a new weapon,” he said.  “Throughout history it has been used by those who could not prevail, either by persuasion or example.”  In the 20th century, terror was used by all manner of groups who failed to come to power through public support.  But in this century, we have faced a more lethal and ideological brand of terrorists who have perverted one of the world’s great religions.  With access to technology that allows small groups to do great harm, they have embraced a nightmarish vision that would divide the world into adherents and infidels -- killing as many innocent civilians as possible, employing the most brutal methods to intimidate people within their communities.
  • I have made it clear that America will not base our entire foreign policy on reacting to terrorism.  Instead, we’ve waged a focused campaign against al Qaeda and its associated forces -- taking out their leaders, denying them the safe havens they rely on.  At the same time, we have reaffirmed again and again that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.  Islam teaches peace.  Muslims the world over aspire to live with dignity and a sense of justice.  And when it comes to America and Islam, there is no us and them, there is only us -- because millions of Muslim Americans are part of the fabric of our country. So we reject any suggestion of a clash of civilizations. Belief in permanent religious war is the misguided refuge of extremists who cannot build or create anything, and therefore peddle only fanaticism and hate.  And it is no exaggeration to say that humanity’s future depends on us uniting against those who would divide us along the fault lines of tribe or sect, race or religion.
  • But this is not simply a matter of words.  Collectively, we must take concrete steps to address the danger posed by religiously motivated fanatics, and the trends that fuel their recruitment.  Moreover, this campaign against extremism goes beyond a narrow security challenge.  For while we’ve degraded methodically core al Qaeda and supported a transition to a sovereign Afghan government, extremist ideology has shifted to other places -- particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, where a quarter of young people have no job, where food and water could grow scarce, where corruption is rampant and sectarian conflicts have become increasingly hard to contain.   As an international community, we must meet this challenge with a focus on four areas.  First, the terrorist group known as ISIL must be degraded and ultimately destroyed.
  • The second:  It is time for the world -- especially Muslim communities -- to explicitly, forcefully, and consistently reject the ideology of organizations like al Qaeda and ISIL.
  • Later today, the Security Council will adopt a resolution that underscores the responsibility of states to counter violent extremism.  But resolutions must be followed by tangible commitments, so we’re accountable when we fall short.  Next year, we should all be prepared to announce the concrete steps that we have taken to counter extremist ideologies in our own countries -- by getting intolerance out of schools, stopping radicalization before it spreads, and promoting institutions and programs that build new bridges of understanding.
  • Third, we must address the cycle of conflict -- especially sectarian conflict -- that creates the conditions that terrorists prey upon.
  • The good news is we also see signs that this tide could be reversed.  We have a new, inclusive government in Baghdad; a new Iraqi Prime Minister welcomed by his neighbors; Lebanese factions rejecting those who try to provoke war.  And these steps must be followed by a broader truce.  Nowhere is this more necessary than Syria.  Together with our partners, America is training and equipping the Syrian opposition to be a counterweight to the terrorists of ISIL and the brutality of the Assad regime.  But the only lasting solution to Syria’s civil war is political -- an inclusive political transition that responds to the legitimate aspirations of all Syrian citizens, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of creed.
  • My fourth and final point is a simple one:  The countries of the Arab and Muslim world must focus on the extraordinary potential of their people -- especially the youth.
  • We recognize as well that leadership will be necessary to address the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.  As bleak as the landscape appears, America will not give up on the pursuit of peace.  Understand, the situation in Iraq and Syria and Libya should cure anybody of the illusion that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the main source of problems in the region.  For far too long, that's been used as an excuse to distract people from problems at home.  The violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace.  And that's something worthy of reflection within Israel.
  • Because let’s be clear:  The status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not sustainable.  We cannot afford to turn away from this effort -- not when rockets are fired at innocent Israelis, or the lives of so many Palestinian children are taken from us in Gaza. So long as I am President, we will stand up for the principle that Israelis, Palestinians, the region and the world will be more just and more safe with two states living side by side, in peace and security. So this is what America is prepared to do:  Taking action against immediate threats, while pursuing a world in which the need for such action is diminished.  The United States will never shy away from defending our interests, but we will also not shy away from the promise of this institution and its Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- the notion that peace is not merely the absence of war, but the presence of a better life. 
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Sep 14
     
    Epic hypocrisy. He bows to international law while waging multiple wars in direct defiance of it. And that's just in the first few paragraphs. It gets worse the farther he gets in his speech.
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Eric Cantor's Opponent Beat Him By Calling Out GOP Corruption | - 0 views

www.republicreport.org/...dave-brat-cantor U.S. banksters Brat Cantor corruption
shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • “All of the investment banks, up in New York and D.C., they should have gone to jail.” That isn’t a quote from an Occupy Wall Street protester or Senator Elizabeth Warren. That’s a common campaign slogan repeated by Dave Brat, the Virginia college professor who scored one of the biggest political upsets in over a century by defeating Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary last night. The national media is buzzing about Brat’s victory, but for all of the wrong reasons.
  • Did the Tea Party swoop in and help Brat, as many in the Democratic Party are suggesting? Actually, the Wall Street Journal reports no major Tea Party or anti-establishment GOP group spent funds to defeat Cantor. Did Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in Congress, lose because of his religion, as some have suggested? There’s no evidence so far of anti-Semitism during the campaign. Was Cantor caught flatfooted? Nope; Cantor’s campaign spent close to $1 million on the race and several outside advocacy groups, including the National Rifle Association, the National Realtors Association and the American Chemistry Council (a chemical industry lobbying association) came in and poured money into the district to defeat Brat. The New York Times claims that Brat focused his campaign primarily on immigration reform. Brat certainly made immigration a visible topic in his race, but Republic Report listened to several hours of Brat stump speeches and radio appearances, and that issue came up far less than what Brat called the main problem in government: corruption and cronyism. Brat told Internet radio host Flint Engelman that the “number one plank” in his campaign is “free markets.” Brat went on to explain, “Eric Cantor and the Republican leadership do not know what a free market is at all, and the clearest evidence of that is the financial crisis … When I say free markets, I mean no favoritism to K Street lobbyists.” Banks like Goldman Sachs were not fined for their role in the financial crisis — rather, they were rewarded with bailouts, Brat has said.
  • rat, who has identified with maverick GOP lawmakers like Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, spent much of the campaign slamming both parties for being in the pocket of “Wall Street crooks” and D.C. insiders. The folks who caused the financial crisis, Brat says, “went onto Obama’s rolodex, the Republican leadership, Eric’s rolodex.” During several campaign appearances, Brat says what upset him the most about Cantor was his role in gutting the last attempt at congressional ethics reform. “If you want to find out the smoking gun in this campaign,” Brat told Engelman, “just go Google and type the STOCK Act and CNN and Eric Cantor.” (On Twitter, Brat has praised the conservative author Peter Schweizer, whose work on congressional corruption forced lawmakers into action on the STOCK Act.) The STOCK Act, a bill to crack down on insider trading, was significantly watered down by Cantor in early 2012. The lawmaker took out provisions that would have forced Wall Street “political intelligence” firms to register as traditional lobbyists would, and removed a section of the bill to empower prosecutors to go after public officials who illegally trade on insider knowledge. And Brat may be right to charge that Cantor’s moves on the STOCK Act were motivated by self interest. Cantor played a leading role in blocking legislation to fix the foreclosure crisis while his wife and his stock portfolio were deeply invested in mortgage banks.
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  • Most self-described Tea Party Republicans, including Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, have railed against Washington in a general sense without calling out the powerful – often Republican-leaning — groups that wield the most power. Not Brat. “Eric is running on Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable principles,” Brat told a town hall audience, later clarifying that he meant the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest lobbying trade group in the country. He also called out the American Chemistry Council for funding ads in his race with Cantor, telling a radio host that his opponent had asked his “crony capitalist friends to run more ads.” Brat repeats his mantra: “I’m not against business. I’m against big business in bed with big government.” Indeed, Cantor has been a close ally to top lobbyists and the financial industry. “Many lobbyists on K Street whose clients include major financial institutions consider Cantor a go to member in leadership on policy debates, including overhauling the mortgage finance market, extending the government backstop for terrorism insurance, how Wall Street should be taxed and flood insurance,” noted Politico following Cantor’s loss last night. In 2011, Cantor was caught on video promising a group of commodity speculators that he would roll back regulations on their industry. 
  • There are many lessons to be learned from the Cantor-Brat race. For one, it’s worth reflecting on the fact that not only did Cantor easily out raise and outspend Brat by over $5 million to around $200,000 in campaign funds, but burned through a significant amount on lavish travel and entertainment instead of election advocacy. Federal Election Commission records show Cantor’s PAC spent at least $168,637 on steakhouses, $116,668 on luxury hotels (including a $17,903 charge to the Beverly Hills Hotel & Bungalows) and nearly a quarter million on airfare (with about $140,000 in chartered flights) — just in the last year and a half! But on the policy issues and political ramifications of this race, it’s not easy to box Brat into a neat caricature of an anti-immigration zealot or Tea Party demagogue, or, in TIME’s hasty reporting, a “shopworn conservative boilerplate.” If Brat ascends to Congress, which is quite likely given the Republican-leaning district that he’ll run in as the GOP nominee, he may actually continue taking on powerful elites in Washington.  
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Jun 14
     
    The Cantor defeat was not a Tea Party upset victory as claimed by MSM, according to this article. Instead, Brat's stump speeches were about crony capitalism, bankster corruption of Congress, and libertarian principles. So if this article is correct, then MSM would rather claim that Cantor was a victim of the Tea Party than acknowledge the issues that Brat actually raised, Congressional corruption and big government/big corporation cronyism.  Very interesting food for thought.
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Here's What a Man Who Studied Every Suicide Attack in the World Says About ISIS' Motive... - 0 views

www.thenation.com/...world-says-about-isiss-motives war & peace suicide-attacks causation stats
shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • espite the existence of a good deal of research about terrorism, there’s a gap between the common understanding of what leads terrorists to kill and what many experts believe to be true. Ad Policy Terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda are widely seen as being motivated by their radical theology. But according to Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and founder of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, this view is too simplistic. Pape knows his subject; he and his colleagues have studied every suicide attack in the world since 1980, evaluating over 4,600 in all. He says that religious fervor is not a motive unto itself. Rather, it serves as a tool for recruitment and a potent means of getting people to overcome their fear of death and natural aversion to killing innocents. “Very often, suicide attackers realize they have instincts for self-preservation that they have to overcome,” and religious beliefs are often part of that process, said Pape in an appearance on my radio show, Politics and Reality Radio, last week. But, Pape adds, there have been “many hundreds of secular suicide attackers,” which suggests that radical theology alone doesn’t explain terrorist attacks. From 1980 until about 2003, the “world leader” in suicide attacks was the Tamil Tigers, a secular Marxist group of Hindu nationalists in Sri Lanka.
  • espite the existence of a good deal of research about terrorism, there’s a gap between the common understanding of what leads terrorists to kill and what many experts believe to be true. Ad Policy Terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda are widely seen as being motivated by their radical theology. But according to Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and founder of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, this view is too simplistic. Pape knows his subject; he and his colleagues have studied every suicide attack in the world since 1980, evaluating over 4,600 in all. He says that religious fervor is not a motive unto itself. Rather, it serves as a tool for recruitment and a potent means of getting people to overcome their fear of death and natural aversion to killing innocents. “Very often, suicide attackers realize they have instincts for self-preservation that they have to overcome,” and religious beliefs are often part of that process, said Pape in an appearance on my radio show, Politics and Reality Radio, last week. But, Pape adds, there have been “many hundreds of secular suicide attackers,” which suggests that radical theology alone doesn’t explain terrorist attacks. From 1980 until about 2003, the “world leader” in suicide attacks was the Tamil Tigers, a secular Marxist group of Hindu nationalists in Sri Lanka.
  • According to Pape’s research, underlying the outward expressions of religious fervor, ISIS’s goals, like those of most terrorist groups, are distinctly earthly: What 95 percent of all suicide attacks have in common, since 1980, is not religion, but a specific strategic motivation to respond to a military intervention, often specifically a military occupation, of territory that the terrorists view as their homeland or prize greatly. From Lebanon and the West Bank in the 80s and 90s, to Iraq and Afghanistan, and up through the Paris suicide attacks we’ve just experienced in the last days, military intervention—and specifically when the military intervention is occupying territory—that’s what prompts suicide terrorism more than anything else.
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  • Pape’s analysis is consistent with what Lydia Wilson found when she interviewed captured ISIS fighters in Iraq. “They are woefully ignorant about Islam and have difficulty answering questions about Sharia law, militant jihad, and the caliphate,” she recently wrote in The Nation. “But a detailed, or even superficial, knowledge of Islam isn’t necessarily relevant to the ideal of fighting for an Islamic State, as we have seen from the Amazon order of Islam for Dummies by one British fighter bound for ISIS.”
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Jan 16
     
    Note that this article's unquoted portions in large part stem from the unproved and dubious hypothesis -- claimed as undisputed fact -- that the motives of "terrorist groups" like ISIL stem from within those organizations rather than from the governments that maintain and control them.
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Israel losing Democrats, 'can't claim bipartisan US support,' top pollster warns | The ... - 0 views

www.timesofisrael.com/-us-support-top-pollster-warns war & peace Israel Democrats polls
shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • hree quarters of highly educated, high income, publicly active US Democrats — the so-called “opinion elites” — believe Israel has too much influence on US foreign policy, almost half of them consider Israel to be a racist country, and fewer than half of them believe that Israel wants peace with its neighbors. These are among the findings of a new survey carried out by US political consultant Frank Luntz
  • Detailing the survey results to The Times of Israel on Sunday, Luntz called the findings “a disaster” for Israel. He summed them up by saying that the Democratic opinion elites are converting to the Palestinians, and “Israel can no longer claim to have the bipartisan support of America.” He said he “knew there was a shift” in attitudes to Israel among US Democrats “and I have been seeing it get worse” in his ongoing polls. But the new findings surprised and shocked him, nonetheless. “I didn’t expect it to become this blatant and this deep.” A prominent US political consultant known best for his work with Republicans, Luntz is meeting with a series of high-level Israeli officials this week to discuss the survey and consult on how to grapple with the trends it exposes.
  • “Israel has won the hearts and minds of Republicans in America, while at the same time it is losing the Democrats,” he said. On US politics, “I’m right of center,” he added. “But the Israeli government and US Jews have to focus on repairing relations with the Democrats.” Luntz put a series of largely Israel-related questions to 802 members of the opinion elites and his findings have a 3.5% margin of error. The survey, sponsored by the Jewish National Fund, was conducted last week. Among the key findings: • Asked about Israeli influence on US foreign policy, an overwhelming 76% of Democrats, as compared to 20% of Republicans, said Israel has “too much influence.” • Asked whether Israel is a racist country, 47% of Democrats agreed it is, as opposed to 13% of Republicans. Another 21% of Democrats didn’t know or were neutral (as opposed to 12% of Republicans), and only 32% of Democrats disagreed when asked if Israel is a racist country, as opposed to 76% of Republicans. (Overall 32% of those polled said Israel is a racist country.)
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  • • Asked whether Israel wants peace with its neighbors, while an overwhelming 88% of Republicans said it does, a far lower 48% of Democrats agreed. Another 21% of Democrats didn’t know or were neutral (as compared to 7% of Republicans). And 31% of Democrats did not think Israel wants peace (as compared to 5% of Republicans). • Asked whether they would be more likely to vote for a local politician who supported Israel and its right to defend itself, an overwhelming 76% of Republicans said yes, but only 18% of Democrats said yes. Meanwhile, only 7% of Republicans — but 32% of Democrats — said they would be less likely to support a local politician who backed Israel. • Asked whether they would be more likely to vote for a local politician who criticized Israeli occupation and mistreatment of Palestinians, 45% of Democrats said yes, compared to just 6% of Republicans. Asked whether they would be less likely to vote for a local politician who criticized Israeli occupation and mistreatment of Palestinians, a whopping 75% of Republicans said yes, compared to just 23% of Democrats.
  • • Asked whether the US should support Israel or the Palestinians, a vast 90% of Republicans and a far lower 51% of Democrats said Israel. Another 8% of Republicans and 31% of Democrats were neutral. And 18% of Democrats said the Palestinians, compared to 2% of Republicans. Overall, 68% of those polled said the US should support Israel, and 10% said the US should support the Palestinians. • Asked about which side they themselves support, 88% of Republicans and 46% of Democrats said they were “pro-Israeli” while 4% of Republicans and 27% of Democrats said they were “pro-Palestinian.” • Asked if settlements are an impediment to peace, 75% of Democrats and 25% of Republicans agreed.
  • A specialist in finding and testing the language that can impact public opinion, Luntz was vehement that Israel’s “messaging” has to be different if support for Israel among US Democrats is to be revived. “Obviously, policy has something to do with it, but the messaging is critical,” he said. “And the Republicans have to realize that their rhetoric is part of the problem: It’s not security that needs to be highlighted, but [Israel’s] social justice and human rights.” Underlining Israel’s role in protecting human rights and promoting equality could be particularly resonant, he said. The “words that work best” among Republicans, he said, are those along the lines of, “Israel is our strongest ally in the Middle East, and attempts to destroy the country economically and politically could do direct harm to the United States.” By contrast, the “words that work best” among Democrats are those to the effect that, “We should be encouraging more communication and cooperation, not less. We should be encouraging more diplomacy and discussion, not less.”
  • More specifically, when it comes to the most effective messaging, Luntz found that the statement “Women in Israel have exactly the same rights as men. No other Middle Eastern country offers women fully equal rights” was particularly well received among Democrats, as was the declaration, “Everyone in Israel is free to practice their religion and worship their God. No other Middle Eastern country offers similar religious protections.” By contrast, responses were markedly less positive to statements about the need for a Jewish homeland after the Holocaust, Israeli claims to the Holy Land, and Israel’s start-up technology prowess. Widely resonant among all those polled, he found, was the statement that “Despite the ongoing conflict with Gaza, Israel still donates tens of millions in humanitarian aid to Palestinians and opens its hospitals to treat them.”
  • “They don’t care about the ‘Start-Up Nation,'” he said flatly of American opinion elites in general. “It’s tragic that so much effort has been devoted to selling an image of Israel that many aren’t interested in buying.” Still more drastically, Luntz said the word “Zionism” could play no part in messaging designed to repair relations with US Democrats. There has to be an “end to the [use of the] word Zionism,” he said. “You can’t make the case if you use that word. If you are at Berkeley or Brown and start outlining a Zionist vision, you don’t get to make a case for Israel because they’ve already switched off.” He also predicted that Israel is in for “a lot more trouble” from the BDS (Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions) campaign. Once they had been informed about the BDS campaign, 19% of respondents supported it — 31% of Democrats and 3% of Republicans. And, stressed Luntz, 60% of America’s opinion elites said they were not familiar with BDS. “Israel is already having trouble with BDS, and Americans don’t even know what it means. Can you imagine how bad it will get?”
  • He also foresaw a looming battle in the US over foreign aid to Israel. Some 33% of Democrats and 22% of Republicans, his poll found, were upset that “Israel gets billions and billions of dollars in funding from the US government that should be going to the American people.” Luntz also asked whether respondents see anti-Semitism as a problem in the US. Overall, 58% agreed with the idea that anti-Semitism is a problem in America (57% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats), compared to 28% who disagreed. “Non-Jews recognize the problem, even if some Israelis want to minimize it,” he said. Ironically, the poll also found, 50% of Democrats and 18% of Republicans (and 36% of all respondents) agreed with the proposition that “Jewish people are too hyper-sensitive and too often label legitimate criticisms of Israel as an anti-Semitic attack.”
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Jul 15
     
    So the cure is supposedly "better messaging" rather than substantive reforms in Israel. Anything but behave as a civilized nation. 
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Does Trump Trump? Angelo Codevilla on Our Present Moment | Power Line - 1 views

www.powerlineblog.com/...illa-on-our-present-moment.php Angelo-Codevilla Trump ruling-class-elites
shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • Angelo Codevilla is a former staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University, and the author of more than a dozen fine books on politics, arms control, and intelligence (if I had to pick a favorite it might be The Character of Nations), including a fine translation of Machiavelli’s Prince published by Yale University Press. Most recently his essay-turned-book The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It caught the attention of Rush Limbaugh and many others. It argues that our fundamental political problem is not “big government,” but the creation of a ruling class, inhabiting both parties, that is steadily increasing its authoritarian control over the nation. In a conversation a few months ago Angelo remarked, “The 2016 election is simple; the person who runs on the platform ‘Who do they think they are?’ will win.”
  • Donald Trump leapt atop other contenders for the Republican presidential nomination when he acted on the primordial fact in American public life today, from which most of the others hide their eyes, namely: most Americans distrust, fear, are sick and tired of, the elected, appointed, and bureaucratic officials who rule over us, as well as their cronies in the corporate, media, and academic world.
  • Trump’s attraction lies less in his words’ grace or even precision than in the extent to which Americans are searching for someone, anyone, to lead against this ruling class, that is making America less prosperous, less free, and more dangerous.
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  • three fifths of Democratic voters approve the conduct of their officials, only about one fifth of Republican voters approve what theirs do.
  • Moreover, Americans are becoming increasingly skeptical about their celebrities’ integrity. With good reason. McCain is just a minor example of a phenomenon that characterizes our ruling class: reputations built on lies and cover-ups, lives of myth protected by mutual forbearance, by complicitous journalists, or by records deep-sixed, including in in government archives.
  • As they lord it over us, they live lives that cannot stand scrutiny.
  • The point here is simple: our ruling class has succeeded in ruling not by reason or persuasion, never mind integrity, but by occupying society’s commanding heights, by imposing itself and its ever-changing appetites on the rest of us. It has coopted or intimidated potential opponents by denying the legitimacy of opposition. Donald Trump, haplessness and clownishness notwithstanding, has shown how easily this regime may be threatened just by refusing to be intimidated.
  • At increasing speed, our ruling class has created “protected classes” of Americans defined by race, sex, age, disability, origin, religion, and now homosexuality, whose members have privileges that outsider do not. By so doing, they have shattered the principle of equality – the bedrock of the rule of law. Ruling class insiders use these officious classifications to harass their socio-political opponents. An unintimidated statesman would ask: Why should not all “classes” be equally protected? Does the rule of law even admit of “classes”? Does not the 14th amendment promise “the equal protection of the laws” to all alike? He would note that when the government sets aside written law in favor of what the powerful want, it thereby absolves citizens any obligation to obey government.
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Jul 15
     
    "Does Trump trump? By Angelo M. Codevilla "In the land of the blind," so goes the saying, "the one-eyed man is king." Donald Trump leapt atop other contenders for the Republican presidential nomination when he acted on the primordial fact in American public life today, from which most of the others hide their eyes, namely: most Americans distrust, fear, are sick and tired of, the elected, appointed, and bureaucratic officials who rule over us, as well as their cronies in the corporate, media, and academic world. Trump's attraction lies less in his words' grace or even precision than in the extent to which Americans are searching for someone, anyone, to lead against this ruling class, that is making America less prosperous, less free, and more dangerous. Trump's rise reminds this class's members that they sit atop a rumbling volcano of rejection. Republicans and Democrats hope to exorcise its explosion by telling the public that Trump's remarks on immigration and on the character of fellow member John McCain (without bothering to try showing that he errs on substance), place him outside the boundaries of their polite society. Thus do they throw Br'er Rabbit into the proverbial briar patch. Now what? The continued rise in Trump's poll numbers reminds all that Ross Perot - in an era that was far more tolerant of the Establishment than is ours - outdistanced both Bush 41 and Bill Clinton before self-destructing, just by speaking ill of both parties before he self destructed. Republicans brahmins have the greater reason to fear. Whereas some three fifths of Democratic voters approve the conduct of their officials, only about one fifth of Republican voters approve what theirs do. If Americans in general are primed for revolt, Republican (and independent) voters fairly thirst for it. Trump's barest hints about what he opposes (never mind proposes) regarding just a few items on the public agenda have had such effect because they accord with
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57 Years Ago: U.S. and Britain Approved Use of Islamic Extremists to Topple Syrian Gove... - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...mists-topple-syrian-government war & peace Syria U.S.-foreign-policy UK Israel destabilization terrorists™
shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • BBC reports that – in 1957 – the British and American leaders approved the use of Islamic extremists and false flag attacks to topple the Syrian government: Nearly 50 years before the war in Iraq, Britain and America sought a secretive “regime change” in another Arab country… by planning the invasion of Syria and the assassination of leading figures.   Newly discovered documents show how in 1957 [former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom] Harold Macmillan and President Dwight Eisenhower approved a CIA-MI6 plan to stage fake border incidents as an excuse for an invasion by Syria’s pro-western neighbours, and then to “eliminate” the most influential triumvirate in Damascus.   ***   Although historians know that intelligence services had sought to topple the Syrian regime in the autumn of 1957, this is the first time any document has been found showing that the assassination of three leading figures was at the heart of the scheme. In the document drawn up by a top secret and high-level working group that met in Washington in September 1957, Mr Macmillan and President Eisenhower were left in no doubt about the need to assassinate the top men in Damascus.
  • Kermit Roosevelt had a proven track record in this sort of thing.  According to the New York Times, he was the leader of the CIA’s coup in Iran in 1953, which – as subsequently admitted by the CIA - used false flag terror to topple the democratically elected leader or Iran. BBC continues: More importantly, Syria also had control of one of the main oil arteries of the Middle East, the pipeline which connected pro-western Iraq’s oilfields to Turkey.   ***   The report said that once the necessary degree of fear had been created, frontier incidents and border clashes would be staged to provide a pretext for Iraqi and Jordanian military intervention. Syria had to be “made to appear as the sponsor of plots, sabotage and violence directed against neighbouring governments,” the report says. “CIA and SIS should use their capabilities in both the psychological and action fields to augment tension.”   ***   The plan called for funding of a “Free Syria Committee” [hmmm ... sounds vaguely familiar], and the arming of “political factions with paramilitary or other actionist capabilities” within Syria. The CIA and MI6 would instigate internal uprisings, for instance by the Druze [a Shia Muslim sect] in the south, help to free political prisoners held in the Mezze prison, and stir up the Muslim Brotherhood in Damascus.
  • In 1982, a prominent Israeli journalist formerly attached to the Israeli Foreign Ministry allegedly wrote a book expressly calling for the break up of Syria: All the Arab states should be broken down, by Israel, into small units ….   Dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run. In any event, it is well-documented that – in 1996 – U.S. and Israeli Neocons advocated: Weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria ….
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  • [Background:  Governments from Around the World – Including Western, Islamic, Asian and African Nations – ADMIT They Carry Out False Flag Terror] Is it purely coincidence that the U.S. has heavily armed Al Qaeda Muslim extremists in Syria (and see this), and trained the jihadis who later became ISIS? Regime change in Syria was not a once-off plan.   Neoconservatives also planned regime change in Syria more than 20 years ago … in 1991. The West Has Been Arbitrarily Breaking Up Middle Eastern Countries for 100 Years The Western powers agreed 100 years ago to arbitrarily divvy up the Middle East, without regard for historical boundries. Neooconservatives in the U.S. and Israel have long advocated for the balkanization of Syria into smaller regions based on ethnicity and religion. The goal was to break up the country, and to do away with the sovereignty of Syria as a separate nation. (The same goal has long applied to Iraq and other Arab states as well.)
  • In summary, we don’t have conclusive proof that the U.S., Israeli or their allies have intentionally broken up Syria. But in light of such claims – and the 57-year old American-British plan to stir up Muslim Brotherhood and other religious extremists  in Syria – maps showing the Islamic jihadi group ISIS’ carving up of Syria (and Iraq) into “the Islamic State” are interesting, indeed:
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Obama Rejects GOP's Islamophobic Statements « LobeLog - 0 views

lobelog.com/s-gops-islamophobic-statements Auction 2016 Republicans Islamaphobia Obama
shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • It didn’t take long for Republican presidential candidates to stake out strikingly anti-Muslim immigration positions following the terrorist attacks in Paris that left at least 129 people dead and over 300 injured. French flags were flown and moments of silence observed across the U.S. and around the world, but Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Marco (R-FL), Ben Carson, and Donald Trump decided it was an opportunity to stoke anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim fears. The anti-immigrant and Islamophobic comments led President Obama, speaking from the G20 summit in Turkey, to denounce the statements as “shameful.” Cruz claimed that “there is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror” so the U.S. should focus on admitting displaced Christians, but it was “lunacy” to allow Muslim refugees into the country. Rubio outright rejected accepting any Syrian refugees into the U.S. because “there’s no way to background check” them. Ben Carson said that accepting Syrian refugees into the U.S. would require “a suspension of intellect.” Donald Trump, doubling down on his anti-immigrant campaign platform, warned that Syrian refugees could be “one of the great Trojan horses.” Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal called for sealing the U.S. border, and Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) started a petition to stop Syrian refugees from entering Louisiana.
  • The comments from Republicans led Obama, speaking to the press at the close of the G-20 Summit today in Antalya, Turkey, to hit back against the growing sentiment on the right to only allow Christian refugees into the country. Obama pointed to the hypocrisy of politicians who “themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political prosecution,” a jab at Rubio and Cruz, both of whom are the children of Cuban immigrants to the U.S. “We don’t have religious tests to our compassion,” said Obama, adding that “while I had a lot of disagreements with President George W. Bush on policy, but I was very proud after 9/11 when he was adamant and clear about the fact that this is not a war on Islam.” Watch Obama’s comments here:
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 15
     
    Under international law, all nations are required to grant asylum to refugees, regardless of their religion or race. 
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How the FBI Created a Terrorist - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...howthefbicreatedaterrorist war & peace war on terror™ FBI entrapment leaked-docs litigation surveillance state Feinstein
shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Informant-led sting operations are central to the FBI’s counterterrorism program. Of 508 defendants prosecuted in federal terrorism-related cases in the decade after 9/11, 243 were involved with an FBI informant, while 158 were the targets of sting operations. Of those cases, an informant or FBI undercover operative led 49 defendants in their terrorism plots, similar to the way Osmakac was led in his. In these cases, the FBI says paid informants and undercover agents are foiling attacks before they occur. But the evidence suggests — and a recent Human Rights Watch report on the subject illustrates — that the FBI isn’t always nabbing would-be terrorists so much as setting up mentally ill or economically desperate people to commit crimes they could never have accomplished on their own.
  • At least in Osmakac’s case, FBI agents seem to agree with that criticism, though they never intended for that admission to become public. In the Osmakac sting, the undercover FBI agent went by the pseudonym “Amir Jones.” He’s the guy behind the camera in Osmakac’s martyrdom video. Amir, posing as a dealer who could provide weapons, wore a hidden recording device throughout the sting. The device picked up conversations, including, apparently, back at the FBI’s Tampa Field Office, a gated compound beneath the flight path of Tampa International Airport, among agents and employees who assumed their words were private and protected. These unintentional recordings offer an exclusive look inside an FBI counterterrorism sting, and suggest that, even in the eyes of the FBI agents involved, these sting targets aren’t always the threatening figures they are made out to be.
  • OW OSMAKAC CAME to the attention of law enforcement in the first place is still unclear. In a December 2012 Senate floor speech, Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, cited Osmakac’s case as one of nine that demonstrated the effectiveness of surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act. Senate legal counsel later walked back those comments, saying they were misconstrued. Osmakac is among terrorism defendants who were subjected to some sort of FISA surveillance, according to court records, but whether he was under individual surveillance or identified through bulk collection is unknown. Discovery material referenced in a defense motion included a surveillance log coversheet with the description, “CT-GLOBAL EXTREMIST INSPIRED.” If he first came onto the FBI’s radar as a result of eavesdropping, then it’s plausible that as part of the sting, the FBI manufactured another explanation for his targeting. This is a long-running, if controversial process known as “parallel construction,” which has also been used by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration when drug offenders are identified through bulk collection and then prosecuted for drug crimes. In court records, the FBI maintained that Osmakac came to agents’ attention through Dabus. The informant reached out to the FBI after meeting Osmakac, and soon offered him a job at Java Village.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15
     
    A judge denied the defense access to FBI transcripts of conversations among agents on grounds that they would provide no assistance to the defense beyond what was available to the defense by discovery. He also entered a protective order barring their disclosure. The defendant was found guilty and sentenced to 40 years in prison.  But the FBI transcripts were leaked to The Intercept, apparently by someone inside the Dept. of Justice or the judicial system, since the defense never was provided with them. The transcripts along with evidence from the case and gathered through interviews provide a chilling look into the methods the FBI uses to manufacture "terrorists" for prosecution and conviction (in this case victimizing a young Muslim American with a severe mental illness), obviously only for propaganda and to justify its counter-terrorism budget. This is an area that needs Congressional attention. The courts' protections from entrapment are far too lax, particularly when members of a particular religion are being targeted for political reasons and anti-Muslim hysteria is sweeping the land. The government should not be permitted to manufacture criminals.
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ISIS: Made in Washington, Riyadh - and Tel Aviv by Justin Raimondo -- Antiwar.com - 0 views

original.antiwar.com/...washington-riyadh-and-tel-aviv war & peace ISIL U.S.-foreign-policy who-is-ISIL Saudis Israel U.S. Benghazi must-read
shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is being touted as the newest "threat" to the American homeland: hysterics have pointed to Chicago as the locus of their interest, and we are told by everyone from the President on down that if we don’t attack them – i.e. go back into Iraq (and even venture into Syria) to root them out – they’ll soon show up on American shores.
  • If we step back from the hysteria generated by the beheading of US journalist James Foley, what’s clear is that this new bogeyman is the creation of the United States and its allies in the region. ISIS didn’t just arise out of the earth like some Islamist variation on the fabled Myrmidons: they needed money, weapons, logistics, propaganda facilities, and international connections to reach the relatively high level of organization and lethality they seem to have achieved in such a short period of time. Where did they get these assets? None of this is any secret: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the rest of the oil-rich Gulf states have been backing them all the way. Prince Bandar al-Sultan, until recently the head of the Kingdom’s intelligence agency – and still the chief of its National Security Council – has been among their biggest backers. Qatar and the Gulf states have also been generous in their support for the Syrian jihadists who were too radical for the US to openly back. Although pressure from Washington – only recently exerted – has reportedly forced them to cut off the aid, ISIS is now an accomplished fact – and how can anyone say that support has entirely evaporated instead of merely going underground?
  • Washington’s responsibility for the success of ISIS is less direct, but no less damning. The US was in a de facto alliance with the groups that merged to form ISIS ever since President Barack Obama declared Syria’s Bashar al-Assad "must go" – and Washington started funding Syrian rebel groups whose composition and leadership kept changing. By funding the Free Syrian Army (FSA), our "vetted" Syrian Islamists, this administration has actively worked to defeat the only forces capable of rooting out ISIS from its Syrian nest – Assad’s Ba’athist government. Millions of dollars in overt aid – and who knows how much covertly? – were pumped into the FSA. How much of that seeped into the coffers of ISIS when constantly forming and re-forming chameleon-like rebel groups defected from the FSA? These defectors didn’t just go away: they joined up with more radical – and militarily effective – Islamist militias, some of which undoubtedly found their way to ISIS. How many ISIS cadres who started out in the FSA were trained and equipped by American "advisors" in neighboring Jordan? We’ll never know the exact answer to that question, but the number is very likely not zero – and this Mother Jones piece shows that, at least under the Clinton-Petraeus duo, the "vetting" process was a joke. Furthermore, Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) may have been on to something when he confronted Hillary with the contention that some of the arms looted from Gaddafi’s arsenals may well have reached the Syrian rebels. There was, after all, the question of where that mysterious "charity ship," the Al Entisar, carrying "humanitarian aid" to the Syrian rebels headquartered in Turkey, sailed from.
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  • In a recent public event held at the Aspen Institute, former Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren bluntly stated that in any struggle between the Sunni jihadists and their Iranian Shi’ite enemies, the former are the "lesser evil." They’re all "bad guys," says Oren, but "we always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran." Last year, Sima Shine, Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs, declared: "The alternative, whereby [Assad falls and] Jihadists flock to Syria, is not good. We have no good options in Syria. But Assad remaining along with the Iranians is worse. His ouster would exert immense pressure on Iran." None of this should come as much of a surprise to anyone who has been following Israel’s machinations in the region. It has long been known that the Israelis have been standing very close to the sidelines of the Syrian civil war, gloating and hoping for "no outcome," as this New York Times piece put it.
  • Secondly, the open backing by the US of particular Syrian rebel groups no doubt discredited them in the eyes of most Islamist types, driving them away from the FSA and into the arms of ISIS. When it became clear Washington wasn’t going to provide air support for rebel actions on the ground, these guys left the FSA in droves – and swelled the ranks of groups that eventually coalesced into ISIS. Thirdly, the one silent partner in all this has been the state of Israel. While there is no evidence of direct Israeli backing, the public statements of some top Israeli officials lead one to believe Tel Aviv has little interest in stopping the ISIS threat – except, of course, to urge Washington to step deeper into the Syrian quagmire.
  • Israel’s goal in the region has been to gin up as much conflict and chaos as possible, keeping its Islamic enemies divided, making it impossible for any credible challenge to arise among its Arab neighbors – and aiming the main blow at Tehran. As Ambassador Oren so brazenly asserted – while paying lip service to the awfulness of ISIS and al-Qaeda – their quarrel isn’t really with the Arabs, anyway – it’s with the Persians, whom they fear and loathe, and whose destruction has been their number one objective since the days of Ariel Sharon. Why anyone is shocked that our Middle Eastern allies have been building up Sunni radicals in the region is beyond me – because this has also been de facto US policy since the Bush administration, which began recruiting American assets in the Sunni region as the linchpin of the Iraqi "surge." This was part and parcel of the so-called "Sunni turn," or "redirection," in Seymour Hersh’s phrase, which, as I warned in 2006, would become Washington’s chosen strategy for dealing with what they called the "Shia crescent" – the crescent-shaped territory spanning Iran, Iraq, Syria, and parts of Lebanon under Hezbollah’s control, which the neocons began pointing to as the Big New Threat shortly after Saddam Hussein’s defeat.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 14
     
    If one were to attempt to write the most damning yet throughly referenced report on U.S. involvement with ISIL, this manuscript would make a very good first draft.  But probably unintentionally, the author gives less credit to Israel than it is due. At least twice (and I think more but would have to check), the Israeli Air Force has struck Syria, destroying Russian heavy weaponry, missiles capable of reaching Israel, being delivered to the Lebanonese Hezbollah in Syria. Hesbollah is fighting side-by-side with the Syrian government forces in Syria. So Israel has had a direct and overt hand in the Syrian war. 
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Israeli Defense Minister: We Prefer ISIS Over Iran - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...212977 war & peace Israel ISIL Iran Iranian-nukes-myth terrorism™
shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon declared on Tuesday that if he was to choose between Iran and ISIS – “I prefer ISIS.” Speaking at the Institute for National Security Studies’ (INSS) conference in Tel Aviv, Ya’alon sought to clarify that “Iran is our main enemy, after I heard voices saying different things.”
  • Tehran, he said, “is a rogue regime with designs on a regional hegemony. Hezbollah is Iran’s proxy, with the ability to declare war. Iran currently has terror infrastructure in place in five continents: Asia, Africa, Europe and both in South and North America.” Th nuclear agreement signed between the Islamic Republic and world powers, the defense minister said, “pushed back the clock from three months to one year. If Iran feels economically secure, it can breakout and produce a bomb even faster.” Ya’alon doesn’t put much stock in the Russians’ ability to retake Syria from jihadists- including ISIS – who took over large swaths of land. “The Russians thought they’d get to the Euphrates River in three months,” he said, noting the Russian army is not reaching its goals and failing to achieve much in the Golan Heights. “There are achievements in the fighting against ISIS – led by the US,” Ya’alon said. “ISIS is suffering serious defeats in Iraq and Syria.” “We believe ISIS will be eventually defeated territorially after the blows it has been suffering, and in light of the attacks on its oil reserves,” he added. The strategy in Syria, he said, should be “to strengthen local forces with ‘boots on the ground,’ like the Kurds are doing.”
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Jan 16
     
    Keep in mind that the Defense Minister in Israel is a political appointee but has little actual influence over the military in important matters. The Israeli military's recently published long-term strategy document does not identify Iran or its "nuclear weapons ambitions" as a major threat.  But Israeli foreign policy differs from the military's conservative pragmatism. Israeli right-wingers hae long had a goal of destabilizing and Balkanizing Arab and Muslim nations in the Near East, with long-term imperial ambitions that would include Israel being the major military and economic power in the Mideast and with Israel's borders expanded from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Syria and Iraq, encompassing most of the Arabian Peninsula. The "Ersatz Israel" ambition is derived from passages in the Bible in which God allegedly promised Abraham that his people would have that territory, although different passages speak of varying boundaries. Israel's treatment of native Palestinians is largely the byproduct of that religion-based goal; in the Zionnist viewpoint, Palestinians are latter-day interlopers and sub-humans who have no right to the land, which was supposedly promised by God to the Jews. Establishing Ersatz Israel is the major goal of Zionism.  
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The Roberts Jizya and the Art of War - 0 views

www.canadafreepress.com/...47757 tb2 John-Roberts-TB2 ObamaCare-TAX
shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • he is violating his oath of office in doing so, and that is the only sensible explanation because the Constitution is fairly clear; the United States Constitution expressly grants all powers not specifically enumerated in the document to the states and the People, and nowhere is this particular tax authorized.
  • this is rather like Jizya, the Muslim concept of taxation on non-Muslims.
  • The purpose of the Islamic Jizya is to compel approved behavior, and as such has been a powerful tool used by Islamic societies to compel conversion to Islam
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  • In this instance the United States government is using it to compel conversion to socialist medicine, forcing us to either buy expensive private insurance or go on the government plan.
  • In short, they are abridging our freedom of religion, a constitutionally protected category.
  • What is clear is that this is an abridgement of the Establishment clause, and of the First Amendment.
  • The argument that this saves us from a super-stretching of the Commerce Clause is immaterial; we have simply replaced it with a super-stretching of the power of taxation. In the end, dead is just as dead.
  • What is really needed is a Constitutional Amendment, and the individual states need to spearhead that.
  • We have allowed the United States to move from a representative democratic republic to an empire, a system dominated by a ruling elite, an oligarchy.
  • We must return to the Federalism that was at the core of the Republic.
  • He is a traitor to his oath, a Benedict Arnold in a black robe
  • He has placed his desire for self-aggrandizement over his duty, and so has affirmed the power of government and the ruling elite to do anything to the public they please.
  • It’s time we take this country back. That can only happen at the state level.
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Jul 12
     
    Another well written article describing in full what that treasonous backstabbing bastard chief justice John Roberts has done to shred and destroy our Constitution.  Thanks to the Canadian Free Press and Timothy Birdnow. excerpt: So, why is this so important to our discussion of the ruling by the Roberts Court? Because many on our side seem to believe that John Roberts did us a favor in his decision upholding the Affordable Healthcare Act, or as it is known colloquially, Obamacare. The argument in conservative circles for a silver lining to this dark cloud of human bodily excretions is that this ends the debate over the right to use the Commerce Clause to justify any action of Congress and that it hangs this around Osama's neck, a huge tax increase, for the November elections. While a little soothing may be in order we are making a terrible mistake here, because, A.) an eggplant could see this is unconstitutional and, B.) it simply kicks the can down the road, forcing us to fight yet another unnecessary battle. We should have declared victory here. First, this is not a mere political move on Roberts part. He is Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and as such is not going to tie his name to a partisan decision that will be read about in American textbooks. If he is to violate his oath it will be for personal reasons, such as upholding this law against all expectations. What will he gain personally from doing the right thing and striking it down? Upholding such a crazy law guarantees him a spot in the history books. But he is violating his oath of office in doing so, and that is the only sensible explanation because the Constitution is fairly clear; the United States Constitution expressly grants all powers not specifically enumerated in the document to the states and the People, and nowhere is this particular tax authorized. Furthermore, it violates the principle of equality under the law as only some of the public is actually paying a tax; the rest are buyin
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