December 23, 2012

Unheard Martin Luther King Jr. recording found in attic

Originally posted by Lucas L. Johnson II, Associated Press

In this 1960 file photo, Martin Luther King Jr. speaks in Atlanta. (AP File Photo)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Stephon Tull was looking through dusty old boxes in his father’s attic in Chattanooga a few months ago when he stumbled onto something startling: an audio reel labeled, “Dr. King interview, Dec. 21, 1960.”

He wasn’t sure what he had until he borrowed a friend’s reel-to-reel player and listened to the recording of his father interviewing Martin Luther King Jr. for a book project that never came to fruition. In clear audio, King discusses the importance of the civil rights movement, his definition of nonviolence and how a recent trip of his to Africa informed his views. Tull said the recording had been in the attic for years, and he wasn’t sure who other than his father may have heard it.

“No words can describe. I couldn’t believe it,” he told The Associated Press this week in a phone interview from his home in Chattanooga. “I found … a lost part of history.”

Many recordings of King are known to exist among hundreds of thousands of documents related to his life that have been catalogued and archived. But one historian said the newly discovered interview is unusual because there’s little audio of King discussing his activities in Africa, while two of King’s contemporaries said it’s exciting to hear a little-known recording of their friend for the first time.

Tull plans to offer the recording at a private sale arranged by a New York broker and collector later this month.

Tull said his father, an insurance salesman, had planned to write a book about the racism he encountered growing up in Chattanooga and later as an adult. He said his dad interviewed King when he visited the city, but never completed the book and just stored the recording with some other interviews he had done. Tull’s father is now in his early 80s and under hospice care.

During part of the interview, King defines nonviolence and justifies its practice.

“I would … say that it is a method which seeks to secure a moral end through moral means,” he said. “And it grows out of the whole concept of love, because if one is truly nonviolent that person has a loving spirit, he refuses to inflict injury upon the opponent because he loves the opponent.”

The interview was made four years before the Civil Rights Act became law, three years before King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, and eight years before his assassination. At one point in the interview, King predicts the impact of the civil rights movement.

“I am convinced that when the history books are written in future years, historians will have to record this movement as one of the greatest epics of our heritage,” he said.

King had visited Africa about a month before the interview, and he discusses with Tull’s father how leaders there viewed the racial unrest in the United States.

“I had the opportunity to talk with most of the major leaders of the new independent countries of Africa, and also leaders in countries that are moving toward independence,” he said. “And I think all of them agree that in the United States we must solve this problem of racial injustice if we expect to maintain our leadership in the world.”

Raymond Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Maryland’s Morgan State University, said the tape is significant because there are very few recordings of King detailing his activity in Africa.

“It’s clear that in this tape when he’s talking … about Africa, he saw this as a global human rights movement that would inspire other organizations, other nations, other groups around the world,” said Winbush, who is also a psychologist and historian.

“That to me is what’s remarkable about the tape.”

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Freedom Rider who organized Tennessee’s first lunch counter sit-in at age 19 in Nashville, said hearing King talk about the sit-ins took him back to the period when more than 100 restaurant counters were desegregated over several months.

“To … hear his voice and listen to his words was so moving, so powerful,” said Lewis, adding that King’s principles of nonviolence are still relevant today.

“I wish people all over America, all over the world, can hear this message over and over again,” he said.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who worked with King while a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, agreed.

“I can’t think of anything better to try,” Lowery said of nonviolence. “What we’re doing now is not working. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Matching violence with violence. We’ve got more guns than we’ve ever had, and more ammunition to go with it. And yet, the situation worsens.”

A spokeswoman for King’s daughter Bernice, head of The King Center in Atlanta, said she was traveling and couldn’t comment on the audio.

Tull is working with a New York-based collector and expert on historical artifacts to arrange a sale. The broker, Keya Morgan, said he believes that unpublished reel-to-reel audio of King is extremely rare and said he’s confident of the authenticity of the recording based on extensive interviews with Tull, his examination of the tape and his knowledge of King. He’s collected many of the civil rights icon’s letters and photos.

“I was like, wow! To hear him that crisp and clear,” Morgan said. “But beyond that, for him to speak of nonviolence, which is what he represented.”

 

Source: https://www.kpic.com/news/national/Unheard-Martin-Luther-King-Jr-recording-found-in-attic-167043495.html

Iceland Was Right, We Were Wrong: The IMF

Originally posted by Jeff Neilson for thestreet.com on August 15, 2012

VANCOUVER (Silver Gold Bull) — For approximately three years, our governments, the banking cabal, and the Corporate Media have assured us that they knew the appropriate approach for fixing the economies that they had previously crippled with their own mismanagement. We were told that the key was to stomp on the Little People with “austerity” in order to continue making full interest payments to the Bond Parasites — at any/all costs.

Following three years of this continuous, uninterrupted failure, Greece has already defaulted on 75% of its debts, and its economy is totally destroyed. The UK, Spain and Italy are all plummeting downward in suicide-spirals, where the more austerity these sadistic governments inflict upon their own people the worse their debt/deficit problems get. Ireland and Portugal are nearly in the same position.

Now in what may be the greatest economic “mea culpa” in history, we have the media admitting that this government/banking/propaganda-machine troika has been wrong all along. They have been forced to acknowledge that Iceland’s approach to economic triage was the correct approach right from the beginning.

What was Iceland’s approach? To do the exact opposite of everything the bankers running our own economies told us to do. The bankers (naturally) told us that we needed to bail out the criminal Big Banks, at taxpayer expense (they were Too Big To Fail). Iceland gave the banksters nothing.

The bankers told us that no amount of suffering (for the Little People) was too great in order to make sure that the Bond Parasites got paid at 100 cents on the dollar. Iceland told the Bond Parasites they would get what was left over, after the people had been taken care of (by their own government).

The bankers told us that our governments could no longer afford the same education, health care and pension systems which our parents had taken for granted. Iceland told the bankers that what the country could no longer afford was to continue to be blood-sucked by the worst financial criminals in the history of our species. Now, after three-plus years of this absolute dichotomy in economic policymaking, a clear picture has emerged (despite the best efforts of the propaganda machine to hide the truth).

In typical fashion, the moment that the Corporate Media is forced to admit that it has been serially misinforming us for the past several years; the Revisionists are immediately deployed to rewrite history, as shown in this Bloomberg Businessweek excerpt:

…the island’s approach to its rescue led to a “surprisingly” strong recovery, the International Monetary Fund’s mission chief to the country said.

In fact, from the moment the Crash of ’08 was orchestrated and our morally bankrupt governments began executing the plans of the bankers, I have written that the only rational strategy was to put People before Parasites. While I wouldn’t expect national policymakers to take their cues from my writing, when I wrote out my economic prescriptions for our economies I didn’t base my views on compassion, or simply “doing the right thing.”

Rather, I have consistently argued that it was a matter of simple arithmetic and the most-elementary principles of economics that “the Iceland approach” was the only strategy which could possibly succeed. When Plutarch wrote 2,000 years ago “an imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all Republics,” he was not parroting socialist dogma (1,500 years before the birth of Socialism).

Plutarch was simply expressing the First Principle of economics; something on which all of the modern capitalist economists who followed in his footsteps have based their own theories. When modern economists produce their own jargon, such as the Marginal Propensity to Consume; it is squarely based on the wisdom of Plutarch: that an economy will always be healthier with its wealth in the hands of the poor and the Middle Class instead of being hoarded by rich misers (and gamblers).

So when the Bloomberg Revisionists attempt to convince us that Iceland’s strong (and real) economic recovery was a “surprise”; this could only be true if none of our governments, none of the bankers and none of the media’s precious “experts” understood the most-elementary principles of arithmetic and economics. Is this the message the media wants to convey?

What is even more disingenuous here is the congratulatory tone in this exercise in Revisionism, since nothing could be further from the truth. As I detailed in a four-part series one year ago, the campaign of “economic rape” perpetrated against the governments of Europe over the past two and half years (in particular) has been expressly designed to take away “the Iceland option” for Europe’s other governments.

IMF headquarters in Washington, DC

One of the reasons for Iceland being able to escape the choke-hold of the Western banking cabal is that its economy (and its people) still retained enough residual prosperity to tough it out — as the banking cabal tried to strangle Iceland’s economy as retribution for rejecting their Debt Slavery.

Thus, austerity has been nothing less than a deliberate campaign to destroy these European economies so that the Slaves would be too economically weak to be able to sever their own choke-holds. Mission accomplished!

One can only assume that neither the Corporate Media nor their Banker Masters would have allowed this clear acknowledgment that Iceland was right and we were wrong to appear within its own pages, unless it felt secure in the knowledge that all the remaining Debt Slaves had been crippled beyond their capacity to ever escape this economic oppression.

Indeed, for evidence of this we need only look to Greece: the one other European nation where there had been “rumblings” (i.e. riots) aimed at toppling the Traitor Government that served the banking cabal. After two elections, the combination of fear and propaganda bullied the long-suffering Greek people into choosing another Traitor Government — which had expressly pledged itself to reinforcing the bonds of economic slavery. When the Slaves vote for slavery, the Slave Masters can afford to gloat.

Here, the purpose of this Bloomberg propaganda was not to praise Iceland’s government (when both the bankers and Corporate Media despise Iceland with all of their considerable malice). Rather, the goal of this disinformation was to manufacture a new Big Lie.

Instead of the Truth: that from Day 1 Iceland’s approach was the only possible strategy which could have succeeded, while our own governments chose a strategy intended to fail; we get the Big Lie. Our Traitor Governments were acting honestly and honourably; and Iceland’s success and our failure was yet another “surprise which no one could have predicted.”

We saw precisely the same Revisionism following the Crash of ’08 itself, where the mainstream media trotted out all their expert-shills to tell us they had been “surprised” by this economic event; while those within the precious metals sector had been predicting precisely such a cataclysm, in ever more-assertive terms, for several years.

The real message here for readers is that when an economic strategy of People before Parasites succeeds that there is nothing the least-bit “surprising” about this. As with all the remainder of the world around us, promoting the health of Parasites is only good for the Parasites themselves.

Source: https://www.thestreet.com/story/11665082/1/iceland-was-right-we-were-wrong-the-imf.html

First Amendment: Invalid – Anaheim Protesters Rights Violated

Editor’s note: In this article I am just going to bring up one example of how our first amendment rights are being violated. The one example is this: How every protest is being oppressed by authoritarian police state measures.

Right now in our once free and open America every plank of our first amendment is being violated by our corrupt government who is very obviously controlled by the banking mafia on Wall Street and the ruling class families.

You may be asking yourself how is it that our first amendment rights are being violated by a government we vote into office consecutively in hopes that they represent us? Well, the answer is quite simple. It comes down to the fact, as I said before, that our government is controlled by the Wall Street banking mafia and ruling class families which don’t have any interest in the us, the American people. However, one obvious interest they have in us is to oppress us with authoritarian police state/martial law measures.

A perfect example of this is the protests in Anaheim against the police shootings. Here is an excerpt from www.scpr.org describing the events:

Hundreds rallied Sunday to denounce two fatal police shootings and to issue a call for community peace, obstructing traffic in Anaheim.

Some 200 vocal protesters rallied in front of police headquarters while a separate group of about 100 people marched along a two-mile stretch of a main thoroughfare, The Orange County Register reported.

We are now seeing photos surface of the police militarized and dressed in military uniforms. They are as follows:

You see, this is just one example of the oppression our first amendment rights are/have been facing. I mean seriously do these people look like a threat to society and the police? I think not. They are just Americans pissed off about police brutality and who are now advocating community peace.

My question to you is: What will it take? What will it take for people to realize that when you have police militarized and dressed like military (or it could be the military playing the role as police officers) with weapons and armor/armored vehicles for a peaceful protest that you are NOT in a free society and open society any more. You are in fact are under authoritarian control!

So, please my fellow Americans. WAKE UP!

Related posts:

  1. Modern Warfare Three: Propaganda Exposed
  2. Supreme Court Forces U.S. To Take A Giant Step Toward A Totalitarian Socialist Government
  3. DHS emergency power extended, including control of private telecom systems
  4. Woman Convicted Of Battery For Pat Down Of TSA Worker
  5. It’s Official: Presidency Now a Dictatorship
  6. Rockefeller Foundation Predicts 13,000 Dead at London 2012 Olympics
  7. Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Obamacare
  8. Martial Law Called For By U.S. Army Chief of Staff and CFR Member

Source: https://weare1776.org/1139/us-news/1139/

The Spirit of Revolution

17-year-old Andrew Barrows invokes the spirit of the Founding Fathers to question America’s current direction.

I want to start with some quotes from past presidents of the United States Of America, as well as important activists who discussed freedom and oppression.

Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves. - Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object. - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. - Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945)

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

The law will never make men free, it is men that have to make the law free. - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. - George Washington (1732-1799)

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility — I welcome it. - John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

I think to myself, all these people — historical leaders who will be talked about for as long as American history exists, had such wonderful views on freedom, and great ideas about how the country should be run. In fact, they are so wonderful we still talk about them hundreds of years later.

Now I think to myself, all these people — historical leaders who will be talked about for as long as American history exists, had such wonderful views on freedom, and great ideas about how the country should be run. In fact, they are so wonderful we still talk about them hundreds of years later.

I think about the American Revolution, and how many people have fought and died to make America, and what the American Revolution was all about. I constantly ponder the thought of, “I really wonder how past presidents would react to the way America is now.” I can imagine Abraham Lincoln or George Washington being brought back to life to experience modern America for just a day. But I can’t begin to imagine his facial expression when I would tell him:

Yeah, since all of your wonderful truth speaking, caring about the people, and doing what is right and fair to give people extraordinary documents dedicated to freedom…America has really gone down hill…and I mean…really down hill.

Being a president today actually means who’s the best liar on the stage. It is like a highschool talent show. Each person goes on stage and tries to convince the audience to like them, and whoever lies the most wins. They are just puppets who can’t really do anything. Congressional approval is 8% and WE the people don’t actually get a say in what happens. The mega rich call the shots and huge companies actually control what the government does while the middle class and poor get robbed blind.

After I would study his confusion…I would continue…

The Patriot Act

(After explaining what a phone and the Internet is). Gives the government the power to read my emails, my text messages, track my phone, follow me, tap my phone calls, install a tracking device under my car to know my exact location. In short…violate my privacy completely.

Then I would discuss the SOPA/PROTECT IP ACT.

A bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the Net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites — they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

Next of course, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The bill grants power to the military to arrest U.S. citizens on American soil and detain them in military prisons forever without offering them the right to legal counsel or even a trial. This isn’t a totally new thing: “dirty bomb” plotter Jose Padilla spent three-and-a-half years as an “enemy combatant” until he was finally charged. But Padilla’s detention was unusual and sparked a huge outcry; the new provisions would standardize his treatment and enable us all to become Jose Padillas.

Than I would probably make him watch this video on YouTube: “A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945″ by Isao Hashimoto

 

 

Than I would explain having a gun, missing fingers, or 7 days of food at your house = YOU ARE A TERRORIST

You know, at this point he would probably be on his knees with a huge headache.

I’m sure eventually he would say something like “Why are the people allowing this to happen? And what happened to people fighting for what is right?”

Than I would explain the Anonymous Internet group and the Occupy movement and protests. I think he would be pretty happy and would get up off his knees.

BUT than I would show him videos of what is happening when people are trying to protest and spread truth. I would start probably with this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwKxZfcEj-U&feature=player_embedded

or this video:

 

It’s really hard to choose which video of police attacking innocent protesters expressing their Constitutional rights I would show because, honestly, YouTube is filled with them. So I would probably just let him browse around for a while.

Now at this point I would imagine he would pretty much scream or yell that everything that past Americans had fought for to create has been literally bashed by the people who are supposed to enforce it, and has been turned around and used against the people instead of protecting them.

Than I would get Paul Revere out of my time machine/life regeneration thing and Paul Revere would jump on his horse and ride through the city streets of Boston yelling “The British aren’t coming; they are already here!

“Would our Founding Fathers be disgraced at what America has become? Is everything they fought for now becoming useless?

Would they call for a revolution?

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/spirit-of-revolution.html#more

Morocco: Seven People Were Burned In Protests Against Oppression In 2011.

Friday 09/12/2011, the Moroccan authorities reported the death of Muhammed Suleiman street vendor Rushd hospital in Casablanca, having burned his own body to protest the heavy police oppression.

The Arab world has been at the limit of endurance, with respect to heavy repression that you receive from your government. Execute arbitrary laws and almost no convictions that the accused has the right to defense.

The example of Tunisia in January a street vendor had their goods taken by the security forces have seen no alternative to support her four children and wife. burned his body in front of the courthouse to protest the abuse of power and lack of government investment in economic leveling of the population.

Yesterday, the Moroccan authorities reported the death of Muhammed Suleiman street vendor Rushd hospital in Casablanca, having burned his own body to protest the heavy police oppression.

According to the “February 20 Movement, which represents the popular revolution of Morocco, the boy was selling smuggled gasoline (a common activity in the country), and he was pressured by police who threatened to take his goods if they pay a small “rate”.

Another reference is the website ”lakome“ who said the boy found himself depressed and angry, threw gasoline on his body while arguing with police who threatened to confiscate petrol prohibited until fired. According to sources, the young man died on Friday 09 December because of injuries, despite receiving medical attention.

National crisis

According to the February 20th Movement, a grassroots movement of opposition to the current Moroccan regime, even after the last elections, which were also considered “a success”, this is already the 7th incident in the country. All these desperate people, their bodies incinerated after not finding any more support in law or in society, or to consider that, through the police force, no one would care to hear their problems.

The average suicide has been between 20 and 32 years. Among these, there is a young, 20. While the population seeks to draw the attention of authorities for their needs, only the rich life and improve more and more people are living without rights. A crisis worsens and the apparent efforts to alleviate the suffering of the Moroccan people has not been sufficiently implemented, is what describes the “February 20 Movement.” According to testimony from members of the movement, most of the suicides came as a result of heavy police repression and abuse of authority. There are cases like Kamal Amri, who was killed by the system, so that seemed to suicide by fire.

The list of martyrs courtesy Ratoune Mourad political activist of Moroccan popular organization “Youth Movement February 20“:

Deaths by suicide

  • Judge Emad, 18
  • Bnkaddor horse, 25
  • Salmi beauty, 24
  • Samir Albuazawa, 17
  • Fadwa Laroui, 20
  • Shayeb Karim, 21
  • Kamal Al-Amari, 30
Killings by security forces.
  1. Alknona Hamid, 26
  2. Mohammed Bodroh
  3. Kamal al-Hassani, 28

Source: https://bloghumans.blogspot.com/2011/12/marrocos-7-pessoas-se-incendiaram-em.html?spref=fb

Rioters Beware: Police Set To Deploy £25,000 James Bond-Style Laser That Temporarily Blinds

  • Shoulder-mounted device temporarily impairs the vision of anyone looking towards its laser
  • Originally invented to deter pirates from vulnerable cargo ships
  • Resembles a rifle and can hit targets 500m away with a wall of light up to four metres wide

Police may be given a laser weapon that could repel rioters with a blinding wall of light.

The shoulder-mounted device, which resembles a rifle, temporarily impairs the vision of anyone looking towards it.

Developed by a former Royal Marine commando, the £25,000 laser can dazzle and incapacitate targets up to 1,640ft away by creating a 13ft wall of light.

Government scientists have been impressed by initial trials and are preparing to ask police to test it as potential weapon in a growing armoury of equipment aimed at preventing a repeat of the August riots.

The Home Office said it had to be tested further and guidelines drawn up for its use.

Paul Kerr, of Photonic Security Systems, the UK-based firm behind it, said the effect was like looking into a low sun on a bright winter day. He added: ‘It is horrible. It makes you look away.

‘The system would give police an intimidating visual deterrent. If you can’t look at something you can’t attack it.

‘If police spot someone trying to do something untoward, painting them with this would certainly make them think twice about it.’

Developed by a former Royal Marine commando, the £25,000 laser resembles a rifle and can dazzle and incapacitate targets up to 500m away.

James Bond-style: The SMU 100 temporarily impairs the vision of anyone looking towards its source with a wall of lightSet for approval: Government scientists have been impressed by initial tests and a preparing to ask one force to trial its use

It creates a wall of light up to four metres wide and comes with an infrared scope to spot looters in poor visibility.

Those behind the invention believe it has many uses, from deterring rioters to aiding high-risk hostage rescues.

The Home Office has been considering new forms of non-lethal equipment since a wave of looting and arson rocked the country.

The Metropolitan Police is considering buying three water canon at a cost of up to £4million but senior officers remain divided over how effective they would be.

The force is also increasing the number of officers trained to fire plastic bullets and has warned they could be used.

It has already deployed an imposing new portable metal fence in Whitehall during a recent anti-cuts demonstration.

The trailer-mounted fence, complete with spy-holes and police signs, was donated by the Government last year and is similar to those used in European cities.

A Home Office spokesman said the technology must be tested to ensure it does not cause any permanent ill effects and guidelines drawn up for its use.

He added: ‘Laser dazzle technology is one we have recognised as holding some merit.

‘However, prior to any police deployment a number of things need to be done to assess the technology’s suitability.’

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2072771/Police-set-deploy-25-000-James-Bond-style-laser-temporarily-blinds.html#ixzz1gJ3AMbaj

GBTV: Investor Jim Rogers Gives Dire Warning ‘That Will Lead to the End of the World as We Know It’

For those unfamiliar with Beck’s guest, Jim Rogers is a famous American investor who, along with George Soros, founded the Quantum Fund, one of the world’s first international funds.

Also, he is the creator of the Rogers International Commodities Index.

 

Top US General Worries About Euro, Potential Unrest

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Top US military officer General Martin Dempsey admitted he was “extraordinarily concerned” about the euro’s survival Friday, pointing to potential civil unrest and the breakup of the European Union.

“The eurozone is at great risk,” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters, giving the strongest indication yet about the depth of Washington’s concerns over Europe’s financial tumult.

“We are extraordinarily concerned by the health and viability of the euro because in some ways we’re exposed literally to contracts but also because of the potential of civil unrest and breakup of the union that has been forged over there,” Dempsey said.

The unusually frank comments came hours after EU leaders banded together to back tighter budget enforcement, with 26 of the 27 members signaling their willingness to join a “new fiscal compact” to resolve the crisis.

But a Franco-German drive to enshrine new budget rules in a modified EU treaty failed, when non-euro Britain refused to go along, raising the prospect of a two-speed Europe or fully fledged EU breakup.

Dempsey said it was still unclear whether measures taken so far “will be the glue that holds it together.

His remarks echo those of some economists, who have warned the collapse of the eurozone would reverberate well beyond the financial sector.

Prominent Citigroup economist and former central banker Willem Buiter warned Thursday that a fully blown breakup of the eurozone could spell a global depression and “pandemonium.”

Defaults and eurozone exits by Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain “would drag down not just the European banking system, but the north Atlantic financial system and the internationally exposed parts of the rest of the global banking system as well.”

The former Bank of England official said the result would be “a global depression that would last for years” with gross domestic product falling by more than 10 percent and unemployment in the West reaching 20 percent or more.

The case for keeping the Euro Area show on the road would seem to be a strong one: financially, economically, and politically, including geopolitically,” he concluded.

US President Barack Obama and his Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner — who returned from Europe this week — have repeatedly urged Europe to move quickly to solve the crisis.

But both the White House and Treasury Department have been careful to preface their concern with expressions of confidence in Europe’s ability to pull through in the end.

Look, Europe is wealthy enough that there’s no reason why they can’t solve this problem,” Obama said on Thursday.

Yet Dempsey’s comments are not the first time US security officials have waded into economic waters.

In 2009 Dennis Blair, then America’s top spy, warned Congress that the global economic crisis could eclipse terrorism as the greatest threat to US national security.

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/top-us-general-worries-about-euro.html

U.S. Says Americans Are MILITARY Targets in the War on Terror … And Says that Only the White House – and Not the Courts – Gets to Decide Who Is a Legitimate Target

American Citizens on U.S. Soil May be Indefinitely Detained, Sent to Guantanamo or Assassinated

As everyone realizes by now, Congress’ push for indefinite detention includes American citizens on American soil. As Huffington post notes:

The debate also has left many Americans scratching their heads as to whether Congress is actually attempting to authorize the indefinite detention of Americans by the military without charges. But proponents — led by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee — say that is exactly what the war on terror requires. They argued that the bill simply codifies precedents set by the Supreme Court and removes uncertainty, which they said would better protect the country.

Here is John McCain justifying sending Americans to Guantanamo:

 

(As Emptywheel and Glenn Greenwald note, the White House has believed for many years that it possessed the power to indefinitely detain Americans)

But that’s not all.

The government can also kill American citizens. For more than a year and a half, the Obama administration has said it could target American citizens for assassination without any trial or due process.

But now, as shown by the debates surrounding indefinite detention, the government is saying that America itself is a battlefield.

AP notes today:

U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets when they take up arms with al-Qaida, top national security lawyers in the Obama administration said Thursday.

***

The government lawyers, CIA counsel Stephen Preston and Pentagon counsel Jeh Johnson … said U.S. citizens do not have immunity when they are at war with the United States.

Johnson said only the executive branch, not the courts, is equipped to make military battlefield targeting decisions about who qualifies as an enemy.

The courts in habeas cases, such as those involving whether a detainee should be released from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, make the determination of who can be considered an enemy combatant.

You might assume – in a vacuum – that this might be okay (even though it trashes the Constitution, the separation of military and police actions, and the division between internal and external affairs).

But it is dangerous in a climate where you can be labeled as or suspected of being a terrorist simply for questioning war, protesting anything, asking questions about pollution or about Wall Street shenanigans, supporting Ron Paul, being a libertarian, holding gold, or stocking up on more than 7 days of food.

And it is problematic in a period in which FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, constitutional law expert professor Jonathan Turley, Time Magazine, Keith Olbermann and the Washington Post have all said that U.S. government officials “were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power”, and even former Secretary of Homeland Security – Tom Ridge –admits that he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help Bush win reelection.

And it is counter-productive in an age when the government – instead of doing the things which could actually make us safer – are doing things which increase the risk of terrorism.

And it is insane in a time of perpetual war.

And when the “War on Terror” in the Middle East and North Africa which is being used to justify the attack on Americans was planned long before 9/11.

And when Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser told the Senate in 2007 that the war on terror is “a mythical historical narrative”. And 9/11 was entirely foreseeable, but wasn’t stopped. Indeed, no one in Washington even wants to hear how 9/11 happened, even though that is necessary to stop future terrorist attacks. And the military has bombed a bunch of oil-rich countries when it could have instead taken out Bin Laden years ago.

As I noted in March:

The government’s indefinite detention policy – stripped of it’s spin – is literally insane, and based on circular reasoning. Stripped of PR, this is the actual policy:

  • If you are an enemy combatant or a threat to national security, we will detain you indefinitely until the war is over
  • But trust us, we know you are an enemy combatant and a threat to national security

See how that works?

And – given that U.S. soldiers admit that if they accidentally kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, they then “drop” automatic weapons near their body so they can pretend they were militants – it is unlikely that the government would ever admit that an American citizen it assassinated was an innocent civilian who has nothing at all to do with terrorism.

 

Source: https://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/12/americans-are-military-targets-in-the-war-on-terror.html

Obama and the War Criminals

The Republicans and Democrats play for the same team. It is all window dressing to keep us divided cheering for our ‘Red’ team or our ‘Blue’ team when in reality, they are of the same cloth. There is no change. It is the same basic message only it is now delivered with a new eloquence. If we are to put our wedge issues aside and listen to our conscience to what is just, what is right and if we are to judge a tree by the fruit it bears we can clearly see that our government is rotting on the branch. The players of each team will never enact any accountability on each other. The people of this country must demand it.

Visit: https://www.puppetgov.com

Music by: Trillion/Jody Lloyd
https://www.trillion.co.nz/