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America’s Sheriffs Fight Barack Obama And Federal Government
02.03.2012

By Dr. Eowyn
February 2, 2012

Something extraordinary and historic took place mere days ago in Las Vegas, Nevada.
For three days, from January 29 and 31, 2012, in the Tuscany Hotel & Casino, more than 120 county sheriffs, from across the United States of America, met in a first annual, “Constitutional Sheriffs Convention”.
This is what Wikipedia says about U.S. sheriffs: “In the United States, a sheriff is a county official and is typically the top law enforcement officer of a county. Historically, the sheriff was also commander of the militia in that county. Distinctive to law enforcement in the United States, sheriffs are usually elected. The political election of a person to serve as a police leader is an almost uniquely American tradition.”
The first Constitutional Sheriffs Convention is the brainchild of the www.CountySheriffProject.org and the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association at www.CSPOA.org .
For a video describing the CSPOA, go to www.YouTube.com and type in: Special report: County Sheriffs Push Back Against Feds
The convention’s objective is two-fold:
1. To increase the understanding and awareness for all sheriffs and peace officers regarding the true power of our constitutional authority and duty to serve and protect the people for whom we work.
2. To unite in a concerted effort to uphold and defend the United States Constitution.
Given the importance of the convention, it is curious to say the least that the media have chosen to totally ignore it. Curious, too, is the fact that I scoured the Internet yesterday but could find scant news on the convention, much less a report – not even on the website of the County Sheriff Project.
But I did find an audio of a 1.5 hr Revolution Radio broadcast on the convention, an hour of which consists of phoned-in interviews with several sheriffs who attended the conference, as well as other attendees, mainly Stewart Rhodes, founder of www.OathKeepers.org To listen to the audio, Go to google and type in: Revolution Radio: Constitutional Sheriffs Conference
Stewart Rhodes said the sheriffs “are working on a series of resolutions” at the convention, among which is a “Resolution of the Sheriff Against NDAA 2012″, drafted by Rhodes and constitutional attorney Richard Fry, for the sheriffs to sign.
NDAA is the notorious National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 which effectively nullifies the Bill of Rights by making it lawful for the U.S. President and the military to arrest and detain U.S. citizens without charge or trial. From the Oath Keepers’ website, it appears the sheriffs at the convention did not sign the Resolution as a collective body. Rhodes is asking the sheriffs to sign the Resolution as individual sheriffs.
Rhodes opined that political party labels don’t mean much anymore, referring in particular to how the NDAA is “a bipartisan assault on our civil liberties,” which was spearheaded by Republican John McCain and Democrat Carl Levin.
Rhodes emphasized that a second American Revolution has already taken place under our noses and our Constitution’s been overthrown. “We have had people who are determined to destroy our Constitutional Republic to create a tyranny.” But this revolution is not fully recognized by the American people, who must be informed and educated. He calls for Americans, especially the military and the police, to emulate the “peaceful revolution of 1800″ when Thomas Jefferson and James Madison rose up against the Anti-Sedition Act to sweep federal oath-breakers out of office.
Rhodes was followed by several sheriffs, who spoke one by one. They included: Sheriff Dean Wilson of Del Norte County in Northern California, Sheriff John Cooke of Weld County, Colorado, Sheriff John Lopey from Northern California’s Siskiyou County and Sheriff Greg Hagwood of Plumas County in Northern California. An excellent video of these men explaining there problems with Federal agents and how they defeated them can be seen by going to www.YouTube.com and typing in: Constitutional sheriffs. And for a very good explanation of a Sheriff successfully opposing the Federal Government and protecting the citizens in his county, type in: Sheriff Tony DeMeo.
120 to 140 sheriffs from all across America. Many (“a great showing”) from California and the western states, but also from Texas, Florida and the eastern seaboard. Some sheriffs also brought their second-in-charge to the convention. A list of the names of the sheriffs who were at the convention will be published.
There was a Sheriffs Panel in which 8 sheriffs spoke.
There were presentations by various speakers who “spoke powerfully” on Agenda 21 and the Bill of Rights. Even though some of the sheriffs didn’t know about some of the issues, “they are listening” and “have a humility about them.” “They really want to know and are sticking their necks out by coming here.
What the sheriffs got out of the conference:
1. A renewed knowledge and understanding of the U.S. Constitution and “how it’s related to county sheriffs who are sworn to defend and protect the Constitution.
2. “A good idea and understanding of what’s been going on” in the sheriff’s own county and in other counties.
Sheriff Wilson’s county, as an example, is on the border between Northern California and Oregon. 74% of the county is federal and state land. The county’s agriculture and timber industry are under “attack” by the federal government’s Interior Department and BLM (Bureau of Land Management). Sheriff Cooke described how the federal government wanted to burn some grassland in his county which was adjacent to farmers’ and ranchers’ property. So he issued a warning to the feds not to burn, which was ignored. But the county stood firm – and the federal government backed down and decided not to burn. Sheriff Cooke also said that the federal government tells the sheriffs how to run their jails, although Washington D.C. has no authority over this.
3. The realization that many of the problems experienced by separate counties are common to all sheriffs across the nation, “all part of a larger picture.” Sheriff Cooke calls the conference “awesome”: “We sheriffs tend to live on an island, but the conference makes us realize we have common problems.” Those common problems are the federal government’s over-regulation; “overreach” of its authority on matters such as forest land in Northern California; and “infringement against the Constitutional rights of our citizens.” The sheriffs “heard absolute horror stories on what’s going on from one coast to the other – especially in Connecticut and Delaware.”
4. Not only are these problems common to the counties of all the states, these issues also “affect all the citizens of America.” “The problems we’re facing are universal.”
5. One of those issues that affect all the citizens is the NDAA. The sheriffs at the convention learned how the NDAA “blatantly strips authority from sheriffs into the hands of the military and the President” as well as stripping “the rights from citizens.”
6. Learning about the limits of the sheriffs’ own authority, even in “little things.” Sheriff Cooke gave an example of a Sheriff Akita who said he “did away with DUI checkpoints because they are unconstitutional” and sheriffs “shouldn’t tolerate it.” Why? Because “it is not right to stop people when they haven’t done anything wrong.”
What is needed: The sheriffs said an organization “like this” (i.e., the convention) is needed “on a national level” to help county sheriffs across America. “The time has come for a nationally recognized organization” of America’s county sheriffs.
In the meantime, there are already plans for Northern California’s sheriffs to meet again, scheduled for 2 p.m., Saturday, February 25, 2012. There are also plans for other events in Northern California to discuss land management, land use, water issues, the declining timber industry (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently issued yet another spotted owl protection), and threats against mining, agriculture, and recreational use. California’s State Sheriffs Association has formed a policy committee to deal with common problems, especially those in Northern California.
What most impressed the sheriffs:
1. Sheriff Hagwood: It’s an “eye opener” that the same issues are being dealt with across the country. That’s “disturbing”. At the same time, it’s “good to know that distinguished sheriffs are taking steps to safeguard our Constitution.” They are willing “to stand up, stand tall, to serve the People and stand for the Constitution.
2. They now feel emboldened: Sheriff Wilson: “Just having an organization like this and meeting sheriffs from across America who are like-minded, emboldens you to take steps that are necessary to stand up for the rights promised in the Constitution, because now you know other sheriffs have his back” and will “stand beside me.”
3. Sheriff Cooke: “There’s strength in numbers, not fighting it alone.”
What the sheriffs promise: “The U.S. Constitution was founded by devout Christian men and they got it right. Now it’s up to us – sheriffs and peace officers – to keep it.” “The problems we’re facing are universal. But sheriffs bound together have real strength to push back.” “Sheriffs all over are going to fight back.”
The number of sheriffs who will attend next year’s convention will probably be double the number as this year. Sheriffs are learning “how to fight back with an organization like this.” “The only thing I’ve ever sworn to is my oath of office and my marriage vows. When sheriffs take a leadership role, the people will also be inspired. We realize that our freedoms are being threatened” on “county, state, and national” levels. We must energize and educate citizens and officials.” “Sheriffs are beginning to recognize the responsibility they have to citizens is much larger than upholding the law. We now appreciate the gravity of the situation. We recognize our larger responsibility is to protect the liberties [that are] absolutely essential to our way of life. The 2012 election is make or break. We must realize that the enemy is within, not without. We must demand that the federal government behave.”
“It won’t be easy but we’ll do it!”
That’s when my vision got blurred by the tears streaming down my face….God bless the county sheriffs who attended this convention. May their numbers multiply. Pray for our sheriffs! Pray for America!
If you would like to follow Dr. Eowyn’s indepth reporting on critical affairs, you can visit her website at http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com or write to her at Fellowhipminds@gmail.com

The Anti-Empire Report
February 3rd, 2012

by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

The Lord High Almighty Pooh-Bah of threats. The Grand Ayatollah of nuclear menace.
As we all know only too well, the United States and Israel would hate to see Iran possessing nuclear weapons. Being “the only nuclear power in the Middle East” is a great card for Israel to have in its hand. But — in the real, non-propaganda world — is USrael actually fearful of an attack from a nuclear-armed Iran? In case you’ve forgotten …
In 2007, in a closed discussion, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that in her opinion “Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel.” She “also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears.” 1
2009: “A senior Israeli official in Washington” asserted that “Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation.” 2
In 2010 the Sunday Times of London (January 10) reported that Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, war hero, pillar of the Israeli defense establishment, and former director-general of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, “believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons.”
Early last month, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a television audience: “Are they [Iran] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No, but we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability.” 3
A week later we could read in the New York Times (January 15) that “three leading Israeli security experts — the Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, a former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, and a former military chief of staff, Dan Halutz — all recently declared that a nuclear Iran would not pose an existential threat to Israel.”
Then, a few days afterward, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in an interview with Israeli Army Radio (January 18), had this exchange:
Question: Is it Israel’s judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?
Barak: People ask whether Iran is determined to break out from the control [inspection] regime right now … in an attempt to obtain nuclear weapons or an operable installation as quickly as possible. Apparently that is not the case.
Lastly, we have the US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, in a report to Congress: “We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons. … There are “certain things [the Iranians] have not done” that would be necessary to build a warhead. 4
Admissions like the above — and there are others — are never put into headlines by the American mass media; indeed, only very lightly reported at all; and sometimes distorted — On the Public Broadcasting System (PBS News Hour, January 9), the non-commercial network much beloved by American liberals, the Panetta quote above was reported as: “But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability, and that’s what concerns us.” Flagrantly omitted were the preceding words: “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No …” 5
One of Israel’s leading military historians, Martin van Creveld, was interviewed by Playboy magazine in June 2007:
Playboy: Can the World live with a nuclear Iran?
Van Creveld: The U.S. has lived with a nuclear Soviet Union and a nuclear China, so why not a nuclear Iran? I’ve researched how the U.S. opposed nuclear proliferation in the past, and each time a country was about to proliferate, the U.S. expressed its opposition in terms of why this other country was very dangerous and didn’t deserve to have nuclear weapons. Americans believe they’re the only people who deserve to have nuclear weapons, because they are good and democratic and they like Mother and apple pie and the flag. But Americans are the only ones who have used them. … We are in no danger at all of having an Iranian nuclear weapon dropped on us. We cannot say so too openly, however, because we have a history of using any threat in order to get weapons … thanks to the Iranian threat, we are getting weapons from the U.S. and Germany.”
And throughout these years, regularly, Israeli and American officials have been assuring us that Iran is World Nuclear Threat Number One, that we can’t relax our guard against them, that there should be no limit to the ultra-tough sanctions we impose upon the Iranian people and their government. Repeated murder and attempted murder of Iranian nuclear scientists, sabotage of Iranian nuclear equipment with computer viruses, the sale of faulty parts and raw materials, unexplained plane crashes, explosions at Iranian facilities … Who can be behind this but USrael? How do we know? It’s called “plain common sense”. Or do you think it was Costa Rica? Or perhaps South Africa? Or maybe Thailand?
Defense Secretary Panetta recently commented on one of the assassinations of an Iranian scientist. He put it succinctly: “That’s not what the United States does.” 6
Does anyone know Leon Panetta’s email address? I’d like to send him my list of United States assassination plots. More than 50 foreign leaders were targeted over the years, many successfully. 7
Not long ago, Iraq and Iran were regarded by USrael as the most significant threats to Israeli Middle-East hegemony. Thus was born the myth of Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the United States proceeded to turn Iraq into a basket case. That left Iran, and thus was born the myth of the Iranian Nuclear Threat. As it began to sink in that Iran was not really that much of a nuclear threat, or that this “threat” was becoming too difficult to sell to the rest of the world, USrael decided that, at a minimum, it wanted regime change. The next step may be to block Iran’s lifeline — oil sales using the Strait of Hormuz. Ergo, the recent US and EU naval buildup near the Persian Gulf, an act of war trying to goad Iran into firing the first shot. If Iran tries to counter this blockade it could be the signal for another US Basket Case, the fourth in a decade, with the devastated people of Libya and Afghanistan, along with Iraq, currently enjoying America’s unique gift of freedom and democracy.
On January 11, the Washington Post reported: “In addition to influencing Iranian leaders directly, [a US intelligence official] says another option here is that [sanctions] will create hate and discontent at the street level so that the Iranian leaders realize that they need to change their ways.”
How utterly charming, these tactics and goals for the 21st century by the leader of “The Free World”. (Is that expression still used?)
The neo-conservative thinking (and Barack Obama can be regarded as often being a fellow traveler of such) is even more charming than that. Listen to Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at America’s most prominent neo-con think tank, American Enterprise Institute:
The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, it’s Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they don’t do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, “See, we told you Iran is a responsible power. We told you Iran wasn’t getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately.” … And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem. 8
What are we to make of that and all the other quotations above? I think it gets back to my opening statement: Being “the only nuclear power in the Middle East” is a great card for Israel to have in its hand. Is USrael willing to go to war to hold on to that card?
Please tell me again … What is the war in Afghanistan about?
With the US war in Iraq supposedly having reached a good conclusion (or halfway decent … or better than nothing … or let’s get the hell out of here while some of us are still in one piece and there are some Iraqis we haven’t yet killed), the best and the brightest in our government and media turn their thoughts to what to do about Afghanistan. It appears that no one seems to remember, if they ever knew, that Afghanistan was not really about 9-11 or fighting terrorists (except the many the US has created by its invasion and occupation), but was about pipelines.
President Obama declared in August 2009: “But we must never forget this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.” 9
Never mind that out of the tens of thousands of people the United States and its NATO front have killed in Afghanistan not one has been identified as having had anything to do with the events of September 11, 2001.
Never mind that the “plotting to attack America” in 2001 was devised in Germany and Spain and the United States more than in Afghanistan. Why hasn’t the United States bombed those countries?
Indeed, what actually was needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? A room with some chairs? What does “an even larger safe haven” mean? A larger room with more chairs? Perhaps a blackboard? Terrorists intent upon attacking the United States can meet almost anywhere, with Afghanistan probably being one of the worst places for them, given the American occupation.
The only “necessity” that drew the United States to Afghanistan was the desire to establish a military presence in this land that is next door to the Caspian Sea region of Central Asia — which reportedly contains the second largest proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world — and build oil and gas pipelines from that region running through Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is well situated for oil and gas pipelines to serve much of south Asia, pipelines that can bypass those not-yet Washington clients, Iran and Russia. If only the Taliban would not attack the lines. Here’s Richard Boucher, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, in 2007: “One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan, so it can become a conduit and a hub between South and Central Asia so that energy can flow to the south.” 10
Since the 1980s all kinds of pipelines have been planned for the area, only to be delayed or canceled by one military, financial or political problem or another. For example, the so-called TAPI pipeline (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) had strong support from Washington, which was eager to block a competing pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India from Iran. TAPI goes back to the late 1990s, when the Taliban government held talks with the California-based oil company Unocal Corporation. These talks were conducted with the full knowledge of the Clinton administration, and were undeterred by the extreme repression of Taliban society. Taliban officials even made trips to the United States for discussions. 11 Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific on February 12, 1998, Unocal representative John Maresca discussed the importance of the pipeline project and the increasing difficulties in dealing with the Taliban:
The region’s total oil reserves may well reach more than 60 billion barrels of oil. Some estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels … From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, leaders, and our company.
When those talks stalled in July, 2001 the Bush administration threatened the Taliban with military reprisals if the government did not go along with American demands. The talks finally broke down for good the following month, a month before 9-11.
The United States has been serious indeed about the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf oil and gas areas. Through one war or another beginning with the Gulf War of 1990-1, the US has managed to establish military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.
The war against the Taliban can’t be “won” short of killing everyone in Afghanistan. The United States may well try again to negotiate some form of pipeline security with the Taliban, then get out, and declare “victory”. Barack Obama can surely deliver an eloquent victory speech from his teleprompter. It might even include the words “freedom” and “democracy”, but certainly not “pipeline”.
Love me, love me, love me, I’m a Liberal (Thank you, Phil Ochs. We miss you.)
Angela Davis, star of the 1960s, like most members of the Communist Party, was/is no more radical than the average American liberal. Here she is recently addressing Occupy Wall Street: “When I said that we need a third party, a radical party, I was projecting toward the future. We cannot allow a Republican to take office. … Don’t we remember what it was like when Bush was president?” 12
Yes, Angela, we remember that time well. How can we forget it since Bush, by all important standards, is still in the White House? Waging perpetual war, relentless surveillance of the citizenry, kissing the corporate ass, police brutality? … What’s changed? Except for the worse. Where’s our single-payer national health insurance? Nothing even close. Where’s our affordable university education? Still the most backward in the “developed” world. Where’s our legalized marijuana — I mean really legalized? If you think that’s changed, you must be stoned. Where’s our abortion on demand? What does your guy Barack think about that? Are the indispensable labor unions being rescued from oblivion? Ha! The ultra-important minimum wage? Inflation adjusted, equal to the mid-1950s.
Has the American threat to the environment and the world environmental movement ceased? Tell that to a dedicated activist-internationalist. Has the 50-year-old embargo against Cuba finally ended? It has not, and I can still not go there legally. The police-state War on Terror at home? Scarcely a month goes by without the FBI entrapping some young “terrorists”. Are more Banksters and Wall Street Society-Screwers (except for the harmless insider-traders) being imprisoned? Name one. The really tough regulations of the financial area so badly needed? Keep waiting. How about executives of the BP Oil Spill Company being arrested? Or war criminals, mass murderers, and torturers with names like … Oh, I don’t know, let’s see … maybe like Cheney or Bush or Rumsfeld or Wolfowitz or someone with a crazy name like Condoleezza? All walking completely free, all celebrated.
“A major decline of progressive America occurred during the Clinton years as many liberals and their organizations accepted the presence of a Democratic president as an adequate substitute for the things liberals once believed in. Liberalism and a social democratic spirit painfully grown over the previous 60 years withered during the Clinton administration.” — Sam Smith13
“A change of Presidents is like a change of advertising campaigns for a soft drink; the product itself still tastes the same, but it now has a new ‘image’.” — Richard K. Moore
Volunteer help needed on e-books
If you have some expertise on the putting together of an e-book, including footnotes, my publisher, Common Courage, would like to communicate with you. Contact Greg Bates at gbates@commoncouragepress.com Thanks.
Notes
1. Haaretz.com (Israel), October 25, 2007; print edition October 26 ↩
2. Washington Post, March 5, 2009↩
3. “Face the Nation”, CBS, January 8, 2012; see video ↩
4. The Guardian (London), January 31, 2012″ ↩
5. “PBS’s Dishonest Iran Edit”, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), January 10, 2012↩
6. Reuters, January 12, 2012 ↩
7. http://killinghope.org/bblum6/assass.htm ↩
8. Video of Pletka making these remarks ↩
9. Talk given by the president at Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, August 17, 2009 ↩
10. Talk at the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC, September 20, 2007 ↩
11. See, for example, the December 17, 1997 article in the British newspaper, The Telegraph, “Oil barons court Taliban in Texas”. For further discussion of the TAPI pipeline and related issues, see this article by international petroleum engineer John Foster. ↩
12. Washington Post, January 15, 2012 ↩
13. Sam Smith was a longtime publisher and journalist in Washington, DC, now living in Maine. Subscribe to his marvelous newsletter, the Progressive Review. ↩
–
William Blum is the author of:
• Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
• Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
• West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
• Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org
Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.
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Tuesday, January 31, 2012
US Intel Director Prepares Public for False Flag Event

Desperate for war, US prepares to blame Iran for false flag attack.
by Tony Cartalucci

January 31, 2012 – “…it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.) ”

-US foreign policy makers in the Fortune 500 funded Brookings Institution’s “Which Path to Persia?” report, pages 84-85.

Considering that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a deliberate fabrication to escalate the Vietnam War, one many members in Congress are shown to have acknowledged and debated even at the time, or the more recent Iraqi WMD hoax, there is certainly a historical precedence to create such provocations when targeted nations refuse to provide them.

With this in mind, and noting an overt, ongoing series of bold acts of war carried out by the US and Israel inside of Iran, along with sanctions and planned blockades, also acts of war, the corporate-financier oligarchs have been confounded by what seems to be infinite Iranian patience to endure such provocations. US foreign policy makers have noted for years now that Iran in actuality poses no threat to US or Israeli national security and their acquiring of nuclear weapons serves more of a deterrence against future military incursions against the Islamic Republic by the West, than a means to launch unprovoked attacks against nations that each possess nuclear deterrents of apocalyptic scale.

While Iran endures an increasing torrent of unprovoked attacks, they steadily advance their defensive capabilities to ward off what seems like an inevitable invasion by the West, who has already invaded and occupied for years nations to its east and west on false pretenses, and have for the past year fueled foreign-funded revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa. Time is on the Iranians’ side, as Western attempts to destabilize and destroy Syria drag on, and an increasing number of people around the world begin to understand the true source of instability behind the so-called “Arab Spring.”

While behind closed doors US policy makers admit Iran is driven by self-preservation and protecting the influence it is steadily gaining throughout the Middle Eastern region it borders, the message they desperately seek to relate to the public is one of an irrational apocalyptic theocracy eager to usher in Armageddon.

However, reports out of the RAND corporation note that Iran has had chemical weapons in its inventory for decades, and other reports from RAND describe the strict control elite military units exercise over these weapons, making it unlikely they would end up in the hands of “terrorists.” The fact that Iran’s extensive chemical weapon stockpile has yet to be disseminated into the hands of non-state actors, along with the fact that these same elite units would in turn handle any Iranian nuclear weapons, lends further evidence to the conclusion that Iran is indeed driven by self-preservation.

Brookings notes on pages 24 and 25 of their “Which Path to Persia?” report, that the real threat is not the deployment of these weapons, but rather the deterrence they present, allowing Iran to counter US influence in the region without the fear of an American invasion.

Latest “Warning” of “Impending Iranian Terrorist Attack”

Despite this documented evidence, the Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. made a startling statement recently, citing an already discredited alleged “Iranian plot” involving an assassination attempt of a Saudi ambassador on US soil, that Iran is “now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.” What Clapper describes is not in fact an impending Iranian attack, but a false flag event to be blamed on Iran to fit the criteria for a suitable justification for war, clearly defined by the Brookings Institution’s report.

What is more troubling is that the Washington Post, which reported Clapper’s comments, acknowledges that “a covert campaign is already underway to thwart Iran’s alleged ambition to develop a nuclear weapon.” And while the US has officially denied carrying out any act of violence inside of Iran, it is a matter of public record that the US State Department in conjunction with the UN is harboring a US State Dapartment listed “foreign terrorist organization,” the Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) in Iraq, who has for decades carried out such violent attacks within Iran. In fact, the same Brookings Institution report cited above, also proposed the use of MEK as a suitable US proxy in provoking Iran. It would turn out that the alleged “Iranian-Saudi assassination plot” cited by Clapper, was more plausibly the work of MEK, than the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

And as Al Qaeda is re-purposed for overthrowing America’s enemies in Libya and Syria, with LIFG terrorist leader Abdul Belhaj (aka Abdul Hasadi) literally leading NATO-armed legionaries into battle in now two nations, the “terrorists threat” has been shifted onto Iran – the sort of conveniently timed plot twist to be expected for a “War on Terror” that is a verifiable fraud.

The Bottom Line

Iran has nothing to gain and everything to lose by attacking the United States. US policy makers have expressed a documented desire to provoke the Iranians into a war the Islamic Republic is clearly trying to avoid. The United States government is on record funding, arming, and training terrorist organizations (LIFG & MEK) on it’s own “foreign terrorist organization” list, a violation of their own anti-terrorism laws. They have failed categorically to provide convincing evidence regarding the alleged “Iranian-Saudi assassination plot,” more over, the evidence suggests it is instead, the latest in a long string of contrived federal entrapment cases. If an attack occurs on US soil or against US allies in the near future under these circumstances, it is most likely Clapper, General Petraeus at the CIA, and Israel’s Mossad that will be to blame.

As was the case in Vietnam, and more recently the fraudulent casus belli against Iraq, the West is being led into another infinitely destructive war, jeopardizing the lives of millions, and further bankrupting already destitute nations reeling from 10 years of unending war. It is essential to raise awareness of US policy makers and their desire to provoke war with an unwilling adversary and the documented history the United States government has in manufacturing provocations when none can be goaded.

It is also important to remember that no matter how detestable our political leaders may be, there is a corporate-financier oligarchy above them pulling the strings. It is important to vote warmongers out of office, but just as important to identify the strength of the corporate-financier oligarchs that drive them and undermine them at all costs.

Sent: Fri, January 27, 2012 9:34:18 AM
Subject: obama court case
judge rule Obama be put on the ineligibility list for 2012 election for now, link here http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=142802
Date: 1/26/2012 2:13:10 PM
Subject: Georgia Court Case – IMPORTANT

This is an actual court case that took place in GA today….it had a live stream to it…Please keep it clean and remove all email addresses before forwarding and use BCC please.
Thursday, January 26, 2012

OBAMA ELIGIBILITY COURT CASE…BLOW BY BLOW
By Craig Andresen on January 26, 2012 at 9:25 am

Given the testimony from today’s court case in Georgia, Obama has a lot of explaining to do. His attorney, Jablonski, was a NO SHOW as of course, was Obama.

The following is a nutshell account of the proceedings.

Promptly at 9am EST, all attorneys involved in the Obama Georgia eligibility case were called to the Judge’s chambers. This was indeed a very interesting beginning to this long awaited and important case.

The case revolved around the Natural Born clause of the Constitution and whether or not Obama qualifies under it to serve. More to the point, if found ineligible, Obama’s name would not appear on the 2012 ballot in Georgia.

With the small courtroom crowded, several in attendance could be seen fanning themselves with pamphlets as they waited for the return of the attorneys and the appearance of the judge.

Obama himself, who had been subpoenaed to appear, of course was nowhere near Georgia. Instead, Obama was on a campaign swing appearing in Las Vegas and in Colorado ignoring the court in Georgia.

Over the last several weeks, Obama’s attorney, Michael Jablonski, had attempted several tactics to keep this case from moving forward. He first tried to have it dismissed, then argued that it was irrelevant to Obama. After that, Jablonski argued that a state could not, under the law, determine who would or would not be on a ballot and later, that Obama was simply too busy with the duties of office to appear.

After all these arguments were dispatched by the Georgia Court, Jablonski, in desperation, wrote to the Georgia Secretary of State attempting to place Obama above the law and declared that the case was not to he heard and neither he nor his client would participate.

Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, fired back a letter hours later telling Jablonski he was free to abandon the case and not participate but that he would do so at his and his clients peril.

Game on.

5 minutes.

10 minutes.

15 minutes with the attorneys in the judge’s chambers.

20 minutes.

It appears Jablonski is not in attendance as the attorneys return, all go to the plaintiff table 24 minutes after meeting in the judge’s chambers.

Has Obama’s attorney made good on his stated threat not to participate? Is he directly ignoring the court’s subpoena? Is he placing Obama above the law? It seems so. Were you or I subpoenaed to appear in court, would we or our attorney be allowed such action or, non action?

Certainly not.

Court is called to order.

Obama’s birth certificate is entered into evidence.

Obama’s father’s place of birth, Kenya East Africa is entered into evidence.

Pages 214 and 215 from Obama’s book, “Dreams from My Father” entered into evidence. Highlighted. This is where Obama indicates that, in 1966 or 1967 that his father’s history is mentioned. It states that his father’s passport had been revoked and he was unable to leave Kenya.

Immigration Services documents entered into evidence regarding Obama Sr.

June 27th, 1962, is the date on those documents. Obama’s father’s status shown as a non citizen of the United States. Documents were gotten through the Freedom of Information Act.

Testimony regarding the definition of Natural Born Citizen is given citing Minor vs Happersett opinion from a Supreme Court written opinion from 1875. The attorney points out the difference between “citizen” and “Natural Born Citizen” using charts and copies of the Minor vs Happersett opinion.

It is also pointed out that the 14th Amendment does not alter the definition or supersede the meaning of Natural Born. It is pointed out that lower court rulings do not conflict with the Supreme Court opinion nor do they over rule the Supreme Court Minor vs Happersett opinion.

The point is, to be a natural born citizen, one must have 2 parents who, at the time of the birth in question, be citizens of the United States. As Obama’s father was not a citizen, the argument is that Obama, constitutionally, is ineligible to serve as President.

Judge notes that as Obama nor his attorney is present, action will be taken accordingly.

Carl Swinson takes the stand.

Testimony is presented that the SOS has agreed to hear this case, laws applicable, and that the DNC of Georgia will be on the ballot and the challenge to it by Swinson.

2nd witness, a Mr. Powell, takes the stand and presents testimony regarding documents of challenge to Obama’s appearance on the Georgia ballot and his candidacy.

Court records of Obama’s mother and father entered into evidence.

Official certificate of nomination of Obama entered into evidence.

RNC certificate of nomination entered into evidence.

DNC language does NOT include language stating Obama is Qualified while the RNC document DOES. This shows a direct difference trying to establish that the DNC MAY possibly have known that Obama was not qualified.

Jablonski letter to Kemp yesterday entered into evidence showing their desire that these proceedings not take place and that they would not participate.

Dreams From My Father entered.

Mr. Allen from Tuscon AZ sworn in.

Disc received from Immigration and Naturalization Service entered into evidence. This disc contains information regarding the status of Obama’s father received through the Freedom of Information Act.

This information states clearly that Obama’s father was NEVER a U.S. Citizen.

At this point, the judge takes a recess.

The judge returns.

David Farrar takes the stand.

Evidence showing Obama’s book of records listing his nationality as Indoneasan. Deemed not relevant by the judge.

Orly Taitz calls 2nd witness. Mr. Strump.

Enters into evidence a portion of letter received from attorney showing a renewal form from Obama’s mother for her passport listing Obama’s last name something other than Obama.

State Licensed PI takes the stand.

She was hired to look into Obama’s background and found a Social Security number for him from 1979. Professional opinion given that this number was fraudulent. The number used or attached to Obama in 1979, shows that Obama was born in the 1890. This shows that the number was originally assigned to someone else who was indeed born in 1890 and should never have been used by Obama.

Same SS number came up with addresses in IL, D.C. and MA.

Next witness takes the stand.

This witness is an expert in information technology and photo shop. He testifies that the birth certificate Obama provided to the public is layered, multiple layered. This, he testifies, indicates that different parts of the certificate have been lifted from more than one original document.

Linda Jordan takes the stand.

Document entered regarding SS number assigned to Obama. SS number is not verified under E Verify. It comes back as suspected fraudulent. This is the system by which the Government verifies ones citizenship.

Next witness.

Mr. Gogt.

Expert in document imaging and scanners for 18 years.

Mr. Gogt testifies that the birth certificate, posted online by Obama, is suspicious. States white lines around all the type face is caused by “unsharp mask” in Photoshop. Testifies that any document showing this, is considered to be a fraud.

States this is a product of layering.

Mr. Gogt testifies that a straight scan of an original document would not show such layering.

Also testifies that the date stamps shown on Obama documents should not be in exact same place on various documents as they are hand stamped. Obama’s documents are all even, straight and exactly the same indicating they were NOT hand stamped by layered into the document by computer.

Next witness, Mr. Sampson a former police officer and former immigration officer specializing in immigration fraud.

Ran Obama’s SS number through database and found that the number was issued to Obama in 1977 in the state of MA. Obama never resided in MA. At the time of issue, Obama was living in Hawaii.

Serial number on birth certificate is out of sequence with others issued at that hospital. Also certification is different than others and different than twins born 24 hours ahead of Obama.

Mr. Sampson also states that portion of documents regarding Mr. Sotoroe, who adopted Obama have been redacted which is highly unusual with regards to immigration records.

Suggests all records from Social Security, Immigration, Hawaii birth records be made available to see if there are criminal charges to be filed or not. Without them, nothing can be ruled out.

Mr. Sampson indicates if Obama is shown not to be a citizen, he should be arrested and deported and until all records are released nobody can know for sure if he is or is not a U.S. Citizen.

Taitz shows records for Barry Sotoro aka Barack Obama, showing he resides in Hawaii and in Indonesia at the same time.

Taitz takes the stand herself.

Testifies that records indicate Obama records have been altered and he is hiding his identity and citizenship.

Taitz leave the stand to make her closing arguments.

Taitz states that Obama should be found, because of the evidence presented, ineligible to serve as President.

And with that, the judge closes the hearing.

What can we take away from this?

It’s interesting.

Now, all of this has finally been entered OFFICIALLY into court records.

One huge question is now more than ever before, unanswered.

WHO THE HELL IS THIS GUY?

Without his attorney present, Obama’s identity, his Social Security number, his citizenship status, and his past are all OFFICIALLY in question.

One thing to which there seems no doubt. He does NOT qualify, under the definition of Natural Born Citizen” provided by SCOTUS opinions, to be eligible to serve as President.

What will the judge decide? That is yet to be known, but it seems nearly impossible to believe, without counter testimony or evidence, because Obama and his attorney chose not to participate, that Obama will be allowed on the Georgia ballot.

It also opens the door for such cases pending or to be brought in other states as well.

Obama is in it deep and the DNC has some…a LOT…of explaining to do unless they start looking for a new candidate for 2012.

Was Obama “Propped Up” By Congress?

Barack Hussein Obama’s election campaign met a snag when he tried to be placed as a candidate on the November election ballot in the State of Georgia.

Obama has been summoned, with a subpoena, issued by a judge in Georgia, that requires Obama to personally appear today, Thursday, January 26, 2012, before that judge, to prove that he meets the legitimate state requirements to be placed as a candidate on the election ballots in Georgia, next November.

It should be easy for Obama to do this
Take a look at this video and see:

» The Next War on Washington’s Agenda

By: Paul Craig Roberts| January 11, 2012

| Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: Iran Iraq Israel: Michel Chossudovsky nato Ron Paul saddam hussein Washington Agenda

Only the blind do not see that the US government is preparing to attack Iran. According to Professor Michel Chossudovsky, “Active war preparations directed against Iran (with the involvement of Israel and NATO) were initiated in May 2003.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28542

Washington has deployed missiles directed at Iran in its oil emirate puppet states, Oman and the UAE, and little doubt in the other US puppet states in the Middle East. Washington has beefed up Saudi Arabia’s jet fighter force. Most recently, Washington has deployed 9,000 US troops to Israel to participate in “war games” designed to test the US/Israeli air defense system. As Iran represents no threat unless attacked, Washington’s war preparations signal Washington’s intention to attack Iran.

Another signal that Washington has a new war on its agenda is the raised level of Washington’s rhetoric and demonization of Iran. Judging by polls Washington’s propaganda that Iran is threatening the US by developing a nuclear weapon has met with success. Half of the American public support a military attack on Iran in order to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear capability. Those of us who are trying to awaken our fellow citizens start from a deficit that the minds of half of the US population are under Big Brother’s control.

As the International Atomic Energy Agency’s reports from its inspectors on the ground in Iran have made clear for years, there is no evidence that Iran has diverted any enriched uranium from its nuclear energy program. The shrill hype coming from Washington and from the neoconservative media is groundless. it is the same level of lie as Washington’s claim that Saddam Hussein in Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Every US soldier who died in that war died in behalf of a lie.

It could not be more obvious that Washington’s war preparations against Iran have nothing to do with deterring Iran from a nuclear weapon. So, what are the war preparations about?

In my judgment, the US government’s war preparations are driven by three factors.
One is the neoconservative ideology, adopted by the US government, that calls for the US to use its superior military and economic position to achieve world hegemony. This goal appeals to American hubris and to the power and profit that it serves.

A second factor is Israel’s desire to eliminate all support for the Palestinians and for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Israel’s goal is to seize all of Palestine and the water resources of southern Lebanon. Eliminating Iran removes all obstacles to Israel’s expansion.

A third factor is to deter or slow China’s rise as a military and economic power by controlling China’s access to energy. It was China’s oil investments in eastern Libya that led to the sudden move against Libya by the US and its NATO puppets, and it is China’s oil investments elsewhere in Africa that resulted in the Bush regime’s creation of the United States Africa Command, designed to counter China’s economic influence with US military influence. China has significant energy investments in Iran, and a substantial percentage of China’s oil imports are from Iran. Depriving China of independent access to oil is Washington’s way of restraining and boxing in China.

What we are witnessing is a replay of Washington’s policy toward Japan in the 1930s that provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Japan’s bank balances in the West were seized, and Japan’s access to oil and raw materials was restricted. The purpose was to prevent or to slow Japan’s rise. The result was war.

Despite the hubris in which it wallows, Washington understands the vulnerability of its Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf and would not risk losing a fleet and 20,000 US naval personnel unless it was to gain an excuse for a nuclear attack on Iran. A nuclear attack on Iran would alert both China and Russia that they could suffer the same fate. The consequence would be that the world would face a higher risk of nuclear armageddon than existed in the mutually assured destruction of the US-Soviet standoff.

Washington is getting all of us in over our heads. Washington has declared the “Asia-Pacific” and the South China Sea to be areas of “America’s national interest.” What sense does this make? It makes the same sense as if China declared the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean Sea to be areas of China’s national interest.

Washington has deployed 2,500 Marines, promising more to come, to Australia in order to do what? Protect Australia from China or occupy Australia? Encircle China with 2,500 Marines? It would not mean anything to China if Washington deployed 25,000 Marines in Australia.

When you get right down to it, Washington’s tough talk is nothing but a silly pointless provocation of Washington’s largest creditor. What if Washington’s idiocy causes China to worry that Washington and its UK and European puppets will seize its bank balances and refuse to honor China’s holdings of $1 trillion in US Treasury bonds? Will China pull its balances from the weak US, UK, and European banks? Will China decide to strike first, not with nuclear weapons, but by selling its $1 trillion in Treasury bonds all at once?

It would be cheaper than war.

The Federal Reserve would have to quickly print another $1 trillion dollars with which to buy the bonds, or US interest rates would shoot up. What would China do with the $1 trillion in newly printed paper? In my opinion, China would dump it all at once in the currency market, because the Federal Reserve cannot print euros, UK pounds, Japanese yen, Swiss francs, Russian rubles, and Chinese yuan with which to buy up its newly printed currency.

The US dollar would take a beating. US import prices–which now include, thanks to offshoring, almost everything Americans consume–would rise. The hard-pressed 90% would take a further beating, endearing their Washington oppressors to them to an even greater extent. The rest of the world, anticipating nuclear war, would flee the dollar, as Washington would be a primary attack target.

If the missiles aren’t launched, Americans would wake up the next day a bankrupt third world country. If the missiles were launched, few Americans would wake up.

We, as Americans, need to ask ourselves what all this is about? Why is our government so provocative toward Islam, Russia, China, Iran? What purpose, whose purpose is being served? Certainly not ours.

Who benefits from our bankrupt government starting yet more wars, picking this time not on defenseless countries like Iraq and Libya, but on China and Russia? Do the idiots in Washington think the Russian government does not know why Russia is being surrounded with missile bases and radar systems? Do the Washington morons really believe that the Russian government will fall for its lie that the missiles are directed against Iran? Only American idiots who sit in front of Fox “news” could possible believe that the real issue is an Iranian nuclear weapon.

How much longer will the Russian government permit the US National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA front, to interfere in its elections by financing opposition parties led by the likes of Vladimir Kara-Murza, Boris Nemtsov, and Alexei Navalny, who organize protests of every election that Putin’s party wins, alleging without any evidence whatsoever, but providing propaganda for Washington, who no doubt pays well, that the election will be and was stolen? http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=28571

In the US, such activists would be declared to be “domestic extremists” and be subjected to rough treatment. In Amerika even anti-war activists are subjected to home invasions by the FBI and grand jury investigations.

What this means is that “the criminal state of Russia” is a more tolerant democracy than the US, or for that matter, Amerika’s puppet states in Europe and the UK.

Where do we go from here? If not to nuclear destruction, Americans must wake up. Football games, porn, and shopping malls are one thing. Survival of human life is another. Washington, that is, “representative government,” consists only of a few powerful vested interests. These private interests, not the American people, control the US government.

That is why nothing that the US government does benefits the American people.

The current crop of presidential contenders, except for Ron Paul, represent the controlling interests. War and financial fraud are the only remaining American Values.

Will Americans again give the sheen of “democracy” to rule by a few by participating in the coming rigged elections?

If you have to vote, vote for Ron Paul or for a more extreme third party candidate. Show that you do not support the lie that is the system.

Stop watching television. Stop reading newspapers. Stop spending money. When you do any of these things, you are supporting evil.

The Surprising fulfillment of … US!

By W J Anthony

Our website: todarethefuture.com offers articles that present important information about what Americans choose to do now and what effects we may cause in “the future.” Some articles are surprising and may disturb or even shock you. This article is intended to especially help American people understand, that our future as a nation will depend on what we do with our gift of life.

Take a look at this surprisingly awesome video: Thanks to Sid Roth

If you’d like to support this report …
The Anti-Empire Report

January 3rd, 2012
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

Iraq. Began with big lies. Ending with big lies. Never forget.

“Most people don’t understand what they have been part of here,” said Command Sgt. Major Ron Kelley as he and other American troops prepared to leave Iraq in mid-December. “We have done a great thing as a nation. We freed a people and gave their country back to them.”

“It is pretty exciting,” said another young American soldier in Iraq. “We are going down in the history books, you might say.” (Washington Post, December 18, 2011)

Ah yes, the history books, the multi-volume leather-bound set of “The Greatest Destructions of One Country by Another.” The newest volume can relate, with numerous graphic photos, how the modern, educated, advanced nation of Iraq was reduced to a quasi failed state; how the Americans, beginning in 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one dubious excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, tortured without inhibition, killed wantonly, … how the people of that unhappy land lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives … More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile … The air, soil, water, blood, and genes drenched with depleted uranium … the most awful birth defects … unexploded cluster bombs lying anywhere in wait for children to pick them up … a river of blood running alongside the Euphrates and Tigris … through a country that may never be put back together again.

“It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003,” reported the Washington Post on May 5, 2007.

No matter … drum roll, please … Stand tall American GI hero! And don’t even think of ever apologizing or paying any reparations. Iraq is forced by Washington to continue paying reparations to Kuwait for Iraq’s invasion in 1990 (an invasion instigated in no small measure by the United States). And — deep breath here! — Vietnam has been compensating the United States. Since 1997 Hanoi has been paying off about $145 million in debts left by the defeated South Vietnamese government for American food and infrastructure aid. Thus, Hanoi is reimbursing the United States for part of the cost of the war waged against it. (William Blum, Rogue State, p.304) How much will the United States pay the people of Iraq?

On December 14, at the Fort Bragg, North Carolina military base, Barack Obama stood before an audience of soldiers to speak about the Iraq war. It was a moment in which the president of the United States found it within his heart and soul — as well as within his oft-praised (supposed) intellect — to proclaim:

This is an extraordinary achievement, nearly nine years in the making. And today, we remember everything that you did to make it possible. … Years from now, your legacy will endure. In the names of your fallen comrades etched on headstones at Arlington, and the quiet memorials across our country. In the whispered words of admiration as you march in parades, and in the freedom of our children and grandchildren. … So God bless you all, God bless your families, and God bless the United States of America. … You have earned your place in history because you sacrificed so much for people you have never met.

Does Mr. Obama, the Peace Laureate, believe the words that come out of his mouth?

Barack H. Obama believes only in being the President of the United States. It is the only strong belief the man holds.
Items of interest from a journal I’ve kept for 40 years, part VI

If the US really believed in 2002-3 that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction why did they send in more than 100,000 troops, who were certain to be annihilated?
In a letter released August 17, 2006, 21 former generals and high ranking national security officials called on President George W. Bush to reverse course and embrace a new area of negotiation with Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. The group told reporters Bush’s “hard line” policies had undermined national security and made America less safe.
Throughout most of the 20th century, the Catholic Church in Latin America taught its flocks of the poor that there was no need to do battle with the ruling elite because the poor would get their just rewards in the afterlife.
The US overthrew the Sandinistas in Nicaragua because the Sandinistas “intended to create a country where there was only a colony before.” — Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer
“[George W.] Bush said last week that part of the purpose of the Indonesia trip ‘is to make sure that the people who are suspicious of our country understand our motives are pure’.” (Washington Post, October 22, 2003)
“Wars may be aberrant experiences in the lives of most human individuals, but some nations are serial aggressors. American society is unique in having been formed almost wholly by processes of aggression against external and internal Others.” — The Black Commentator, June 8, 2006
President Obama should accompany the military people when they inform parents that their child has died in the latest of America’s never-ending wars. And maybe ask George W. to come along as well.
During the Vietnam War some University of Michigan students created a brouhaha when they threatened to napalm a puppy dog on the steps of a campus building. The uproar of indignation at their cruelty was heard nationwide. Of course, when the time came they didn’t do it, having successfully made the point that people cared more about napalming a dog than they did about napalming people.
“It’s a lie and an illusion that we have an inefficient government. This government is only inefficient if you think its job is, as stated in the Constitution, ‘to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.’ These objectives are beyond our government’s talents only because they are beyond its intentions.” — Michael Ventura
“Get some new lawyers” – US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook when he told her he was informed that the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 (which Albright championed) was illegal under international law.
The two countries of the world, along with the United States, which have the greatest national obsession with baseball are two of the main targets of US foreign policy: Venezuela and Cuba.
The Cuban Five case: This is the first case in American history of alleged spying and espionage without a single page from a secret document. The government never presented any evidence of a stolen official document or any attempt to steal an official document. This is the first spy case without secrets from the government. (Read more)
“If a bomb is deliberately dropped on a house or a vehicle on the grounds that a ‘suspected terrorist’ is inside, the resulting deaths of women and children may not be intentional. But neither are they accidental. The proper description is ‘inevitable’. So if an action will inevitably kill innocent people, it is as immoral as a deliberate attack on civilians.” — Howard Zinn
“The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Saturday to impose limited sanctions on North Korea for its recent missile tests, and demanded that the reclusive communist nation suspend its ballistic missile program.” (Associated Press, July 15, 2006) … Internet commentator: “Test some missiles that land harmlessly in the ocean? Unanimous condemnation. Fire some missiles at targets on land, kill hundreds of people, and destroy hundreds of civilian targets including power plants, airports, roads, bridges, TV stations, etc., all in violation of the Geneva Convention? Hey, no problem.”
For some nine years, American B-52 bombers relentlessly dropped tons of ordnance on a southeast Asian country (Vietnam) that still cultivated rice fields using draft animals.
“The messianism of American foreign policy is a remarkable thing. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks it seems like Khrushchev reporting to the party congress: ‘The whole world is marching triumphantly toward democracy but some rogue states prefer to stay aside from that road, etc. etc’.” — Natalia Narochnitskaya, vice chairman of the international affairs committee in the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament. (Washington Post, April 3, 2006)
Washington … Propagandistan
The bulldozer, driven by an Israeli army soldier on assignment to demolish a home, rolled over Rachel Corrie, who was 23 years old. She had taken a nonviolent position for human rights; she lost her life as a result. But she was rarely praised in the same US media outlets that had gone into raptures over the image of a solitary unarmed man standing in front of Chinese tanks at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre. — Norman Solomon
American sovereignty hasn’t faced a legitimate foreign threat to its existence since the British in 1812.
There are two major patterns in foreign policy: the rule of force or the rule of law. On February 8, 1819 the US decided, after a very long debate in the House, to reject the rule of law in foreign policy. The vote was 100 to 70 against requiring the Congress to approve illegal invasions of other countries or peoples. This pertained to the “Seminole War”, actually the invasion of Florida. Since then every president has had the right to “defend America”, code words for the use of force against whomever he chooses. — Kelly Gelgering

Happy New Year. Here’s what to look forward to.

JANUARY 22: Congress passes a law requiring that all persons arrested in anti-war demonstrations be sterilized. House Speaker John Boehner declares it is “God’s will”. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says she supports the law but that she has some reservation because there’s no provision for a right of appeal.

FEBRUARY 15: Ron Paul assassinated by man named Oswald Harvey.

FEBRUARY 18: Oswald Harvey, while in solitary confinement and guarded round the clock by 1200 policemen and the entire 3rd Army Brigade, is killed by man named Ruby Jackson.

FEBRUARY 26: Ruby Jackson suddenly dies in prison of a rare Asian disease heretofore unknown in the Western Hemisphere.

MARCH 6: US President Hopey Changey announces new draconian sanctions against Iran, Syria, North Korea, Pakistan, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba, declaring that they all possess weapons of mass destruction, are an imminent threat to the United States, have close ties to al Qaeda and the Taliban, are aiding Islamic terrorists in Somalia, were involved in 9-11, played a role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the attack on Pearl Harbor, do not believe in God or American Exceptionalism, and are all “really bad guys”.

APRIL 1: Military forces overthrow Evo Morales in Bolivia. US State Department decries the loss of democracy.

APRIL 2: US recognizes the new Bolivian military junta, sells it 100 jet fighters and 200 tanks.

APRIL 3: Revolution breaks out in Bolivia endangering the military junta; 40,000 American marines are sent to La Paz to quell the uprising.

APRIL 8: Dick Cheney announces from his hospital bed that the United States has finally discovered caches of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — “So all those doubters can now just go ‘F’ themselves.” The former vice-president, however, refuses to provide any details of the find because, he says, to do so might reveal intelligence sources or methods.

APRIL 10: ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, General Electric, General Motors, AT&T, Ford, and IBM merge to form “Free Enterprise, Inc.”

APRIL 16: Free Enterprise, Inc. seeks to purchase Guatemala and Haiti. Citigroup refuses to sell.

APRIL 18: Free Enterprise, Inc. purchases Citigroup.

MAY 5: The Democratic Party changes its name to the Republican Lite Party, and announces the opening of a joint bank account with the Republicans so that corporate lobbyists need make out only one check. In celebration of the change the new party calls for eliminating the sales tax on yachts.

MAY 11: China claims to have shot down an American spy plane over the center of China. State Department categorically denies the story.

MAY 12: State Department admits that an American plane may have “inadvertently” strayed 2,000 miles into China, but denies that it was a spy plane.

MAY 13: State Department admits that the plane may have been a spy plane but denies that it was piloted by a US government employee.

MAY 14: State Department admits that the pilot was a civilian employee of a Defense Department contractor but denies that China exists.

JUNE 11: Homeland Security announces plan to collect the DNA at birth of every child born in the United States.

JULY 1: The air in Los Angeles reaches so bad a pollution level that the rich begin to hire undocumented workers to breathe for them.

AUGUST 6: The Justice Department announces that six people have been arrested in New York in connection with a plan to bomb the United Nations, the Empire State Building, the Times Square subway station, Madison Square Garden, and Lincoln Center.

AUGUST 7: Charges are dropped against four of “The New York Six” when it is determined that they are FBI agents.

AUGUST 16: At a major demonstration in Washington, the Tea Party demands an end to all government expenditures. They also warn Congress not to touch Social Security or Medicare.

AUGUST 26: Texas executes a 16-year-old girl for having an abortion and a 12-year-old boy for possession of marijuana.

SEPTEMBER 3: The Labor Department announces that Labor Day will become a celebration of America’s gratitude to its corporations, a day dedicated to the memory of J.P. Morgan and Pinkerton strike breakers killed in the line of duty.

SEPTEMBER 12: The draft is reinstated for males and females, ages 16 to 45. Those who are missing a limb or are blind can apply for non-combat roles.

SEPTEMBER 14: Riots breaks out in 24 American cities in protest of the new draft. 200,000 American troops are brought home from Afghanistan, Iraq, and 25 other countries to put down the riots.

SEPTEMBER 28: The Tea Party calls for giving embryos the vote.

OCTOBER 19: Cops the world over form a new association, Policemen’s International Governing Society. PIGS announces that its first goal will be to mount a campaign against the notion that a person is innocent until proven guilty, in those countries where the quaint notion still dwells.

NOVEMBER 8: The turnout for the US presidential election is 9.6%. The voting ballots are all imprinted: “From one person, one vote, to one dollar, one vote.” The winner is “None of the above”.

NOVEMBER 11: US prison population reaches 2.5 million. It is determined that at least 70 percent of the prisoners would not have been incarcerated a century ago, for the acts they committed were then not criminal violations.

DECEMBER 3: Supreme Court rules that police may search anyone if they have reasonable grounds for believing that the person has pockets.

DECEMBER 16: The Occupy Movement sets up a tent on the White House lawn. An hour later a missile fired from a drone leaves but a thin wisp of smoke.

–

William Blum is the author of:

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

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Thanks to Anthony Romero and ACLU

Commit to fighting indefinite detention for as long as it take.

Sign the ACLU pledge right now.

The new year has just begun and we’ve already got our first big challenge. On New Year’s Eve, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law. It contains a sweeping worldwide indefinite detention provision. And it has no time or geographic limits. It can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.

Despite initial assurances that he would veto this outrageous bill, President Obama will now be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law.

He signed it. Now, we have to fight it wherever we can and for as long as it takes.

Make it clear you won’t rest until this outrage is reversed. Sign the ACLU’s pledge to fight worldwide indefinite detention for as long as it takes.

Under the Bush administration, similar claims of worldwide detention authority were used to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil in military custody. The ACLU believes that any military detention of American citizens or others within the United States is unconstitutional and illegal, including under the NDAA.

With your help, we will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in court, in Congress, or internationally. If you believe that no American citizen or anyone else should live in fear of this President or any future president misusing this new detention authority, now is the time to act.

Commit to fighting indefinite detention for as long as it takes. Sign the ACLU pledge right now.

Now more than ever, the defense of freedom is up to us. Let’s prove that we’re up to the task.

For freedom,

Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director, ACLU

© ACLU, 125 Broad Street, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10004

By W J Anthony

“What is the “Government?” asks a child.

Is the United States of America now in a situation like that of Humpty Dumpty in the rhyme of English children’s tales?

“Government is that which enacts laws and that which administers the powers of the laws.” replies the teacher.

When colonists in North America revolted against the English King’s tyrannical rule of the American colonies, certain leaders of the colonists published the Declaration of Independence in 1776. They said in its second paragraph:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of absolute Tyranny over these states. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

The facts of twenty-two grievances against the king were presented to the peoples in other countries of the world by this Declaration of Independence. With the confidence and trust in the words of the second paragraph, the United States was born through the Revolution efforts of the people of the colonies, because they were unable to plead their grievances with the King’s despotic rule of the English colonies in North America.

The colonial leaders realized that they had an obligation to inform people in England and other countries why the colonists could justify their revolt. They chose to do that by distributing the Declaration of Independence, a document which explains how people obtain their right to govern themselves, what should be the true purpose of Government, and when do people have the right to throw off a Government.

For centuries, the kings of Europe were considered to have a divine right to rule the people with military power. The Declaration of Independence stated that the Creator of all people gives each person an equal unalienable birthright to Life, Liberty and their pursuit of Happiness. To use their birthright, people establish Governments and grant to Governments the just powers that are necessary for Government to secure the unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness by the People.

The Declaration of Independence taught Americans that Congress and the President get their authority if the People consent to give Congress and the President the just powers that are necessary to serve the rights of People. But how might such authority be abused?

In 2012, the American People will be confronted by the dangerous powers, which President Obama obtained when two thirds of the Republican and Democratic members of the Senate and House of Representatives voted for the National Defense Authorization Act, and its attached Section 1031. It now threatens American citizens.

The danger is immediate and must be replaced by the introduction and passage of a new bill and law that will nullify the content of Section 1031. That will require the election of new members of Congress who promise to introduce or support a new bill that will remove the Section 1031 powers by a two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress.

The American people need to elect candidates for Congress this year who will remove President Barack Obama from the Presidency, because Obama insisted on stripping the exemption for American citizens from Section 1031.

The bill without the exemption that Obama demanded would have passed without Obama’s signature, but Obama signed the bill not because it needed his signature to pass, but because he wanted it to be publicly known that he arrogantly intended to use the unConstitutional power of the law against Americans who disagreed with his power.

Congress failed the American People by removing the exemption for American citizens.

Two thirds of the members of both houses of Congress failed the American People when they complied with Obama’s demand and passed the law, deleting the American exemption in Section 1031.

The President can now order members of the Military to arrest and detain indefinitely in prison any American citizen he chooses while the so-called war on terror exists. Now, no detainee is provided with the right to a jury trial by peers in a civilian court of law.

America’s Government is influenced by millions of efforts and agreements of Americans who are bonded together in a strong wall of power and opportunity, constructed with the bricks of Government duty obeyed by the consent and trust of the American people.

But now, the wall of Government can be damaged and destroyed by dissolving the consent that bonded the democratic people’s trust of the just powers of Government. While the bill was being debated, President Obama threatened Congress that he would veto the bill unless Congress removed the clause that exempted American citizens from being arbitrarily arrested by the Military and subjected to indefinite detention in prison, as Section 1031 of the NDAA law allows. Congress conceded and removed that clause, and over two thirds of the members of the Senate and two thirds of the House of Representatives passed Section 1031 of NRAA bill, and Obama signed his name in approval of the law.

The law now enables President Obama to order the US Military to capture and indefinitely detain in prison any American citizen who disagrees with Obama, whether it be on Obamacare or other issues without allowing the accused to use due process of the US Constitution. That power remains in effect as long as the war on terror continues.

“All the king’s soldiers and all the king’s men could not put Humpty together again.”