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NASA Documents Reveal “Climate Change” Caused By Covert Weather Weapons

November 5, 2013

NASA Documents Reveal “Climate Change” Caused By Covert Weather Weapons

Little Known NASA Documents Reveal Mission of Military and Federal Agencies to Modify the Climate

It’s unacceptable that the UN/IPCC continue to push CO2 as the cause for climate change but refuse to acknowledge the military has been actively engaged in Climate Warming Weapons Technologies for more than 20 years.

TITLE: “Present and Future Plans of Federal Agencies in Weather-Climate Modification”

This set of documents from 1966 reveals a network of government agencies in perpetual and secret collaboration with each other and the military to Modify the Global climate. Created by the elitist National Academy of Sciences – decades of an inter-agency culture of secrecy explains why
the issue of covert aerosol Geoengineering is a taboo topic to be degraded to the status of “conspiracy theory” by a matrix of complicit bureaucrats at every opportunity. This is why your local TV “meteorologist” will rarely make a helpful comment about an unusual sky filled with persistent jet trails.
TITLE: “The Evolution of a Weather Modification R&D program Into a Military Weapons System”. A 1986 Critique of the 1966 initiative.
This document appears as an anonymous draft intended as a critique of the US Weather Modification Program that the author characterizes as hijacked into a military weapons system…..

Category:

aerosols, atmospheric spraying, chemtrails, climate change, conspiracy, denial, global warming, haarp, interests groups, military, NASA, propaganda, tesla, UN/IPCC, weather

Memorial Day was started by former slaves on May 1, 1865 in Charleston, SC

May 26, 2013
KNOW YOUR HISTORY: Memorial Day was started by former slaves on May, 1, 1865 in Charleston, SC to honor 257 dead Union Soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp. They dug up the bodies and worked for 2 weeks to give them a proper burial as gratitude for fighting for their freedom. They then held a parade of 10,000 people led by 2,800 Black children where they marched, sang and celebrated.Thanks to Abstrakt Goldsmith for this nugget of history that most of us never learned in school.

To this, I say, why do we fight?? What is it about human nature that makes them believe that they must kill other human beings for their freedom?

The Glory of war is not glorious. Ask those who do fight. The first casualty of war is “Truth”. People are trained, brainwashed and distorted to believe that their leaders who do this to them would not lie to them, would not line their pockets with blood money and would care for them upon their return from the Battlefield.

All to often we see our fellow human beings become inhuman in their acts of warring against other human beings. And then they return home and are given ribbons, ribbons that honor how heroically they “killed” another human being for our “freedom”? The depth of the absurdity and cognitive dissonance is overwhelming. How does creating a war culture, a militarized environment, a police state, a surveillance state a cult of oppression of other human beings, give us freedom?

Our troops have their humanity removed from them as they are trained to believe that killing for freedom is tantamount to Patriotism. Patriotism is tantamount to all previously perceived values and standards. To be Patriotic means to stand by your government, even if it is found to be lying and creating scenarios in which you must risk your life and kill others, conquer others and invade others to maintain your freedom at home. The stalk reality that this aggression breeds more aggression and diminishes humanity to a banal state to me is the result of mass graves and disregard of the humanity of others.

This is not a political, racial, ethnic, national problem, it is a human problem, and it is the human being who continually takes the freedom and sovereignty of other humans in their so-called quest for “freedom” at home. An aerial view of this idiocy could cause humanity to stop and think, what is the purpose of this? Who profits? And more importantly, what is this doing to our basic humanity?  Is it really about defense or is it really about DOMINANCE?

Links and Commentary:There appears to be many variations on this theme and a bit of a debate as to who started what and when. The links below will show the differences in the history and opinions on this.  I think that this story shows the true horrors of war, something that would have been denied or ignored not because the Freedmen acknowledged the fallen soldiers but because of the way those fallen soldiers were treated on American soil.

From Dalp Pearson
Here is a tid-bit of back story on this photograph — Union Cemetery

During the closing days of the Civil War, the area was used as a prisoner-of-war camp. More than two hundred Union soldiers died in the camp and were buried in a mass grave at the site.

Union soldiers were buried behind the old racetrack’s stands near the present intersection of Tenth Ave. and Mary Murray Drive.
In an article titled “The First Decoration Day”, David W. Blight of Yale has written:[3]

“The city was largely abandoned by white residents by late February. Among the first troops to enter and march up Meeting Street singing liberation songs was the 21st U. S. Colored Infantry; their commander accepted the formal surrender of the city.

“Thousands of black Charlestonians, most former slaves, remained in the city and conducted a series of commemorations to declare their sense of the meaning of the war. The largest of these events, and unknown until some extraordinary luck in my recent research, took place on May 1, 1865. During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the planters’ horse track, the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club, into an outdoor prison. Union soldiers were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of exposure and disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. Some twenty-eight black workmen went to the site, re-buried the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, ‘Martyrs of the Race Course’.

“Then, black Charlestonians in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged an unforgettable parade of 10,000 people on the slaveholders’ race course. The symbolic power of the low-country planter aristocracy’s horse track (where they had displayed their wealth, leisure, and influence) was not lost on the freedpeople. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing ‘a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.’

“At 9 am on May 1, the procession stepped off led by three thousand black schoolchildren carrying arm loads of roses and singing ‘John Brown’s Body.’ The children were followed by several hundred black women with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantry and other black and white citizens. As many as possible gathering in the cemetery enclosure; a childrens’ choir sang ‘We’ll Rally around the Flag,’ the ‘Star-Spangled Banner,’ and several spirituals before several black ministers read from scripture. No record survives of which biblical passages rung out in the warm spring air, but the spirit of Leviticus 25 was surely present at those burial rites: ‘for it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you … in the year of this jubilee he shall return every man unto his own possession.’

“Following the solemn dedication the crowd dispersed into the infield and did what many of us do on Memorial Day: they enjoyed picnics, listened to speeches, and watched soldiers drill. Among the full brigade of Union infantry participating was the famous 54th Massachusetts and the 34th and 104th U.S. Colored Troops, who performed a special double-columned march around the gravesite. The war was over, and Decoration Day had been founded by African Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration. The war, they had boldly announced, had been all about the triumph of their emancipation over a slaveholders’ republic, and not about state rights, defense of home, nor merely soldiers’ valor and sacrifice.”

By late April 1865, a white picket fence on which was written “The Martyrs of the Race Course” had been erected.[4] On May 1, 1865, thousands of people, mainly newly freed blacks, processed to the site, and members of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry marched around the site. The graves were decorated, speeches were offered, and celebrants enjoyed picnics in the area.[5] This has been cited as the first Memorial Day celebration. By 1871, the cemetery was suffering neglect, and the soldiers were reinterred at the Beaufort[3] and Florence National Cemeteries.

http://m.video.pbs.org/video/2318014363/

Watch Memorial Day on PBS. See more from American Experience.

   
” In the May 1865, the newspaper covered what Blight argues should be credited as the nation’s first memorial day observance, held on May 1, 1865. At that time, Charleston was largely in ruins and families were eager to rebuild their lives and their city. The photos on this page are Library of Congress images from the era. Two simply show scenes of wartime devastation in the city. But the photo at right here appears to show the land where the former Confederate prison camp stood (also the site of a pre-Civil War Race Course). The photo appears to show work beginning on raising the remains in April 1865 in preparation for the new cemetery that eventually would include a wall, an archway entrance and properly buried remains.
    The Daily Courier coverage of that first memorial day, May 1, 1865, was headlined …

The Martyrs of the Race Course”




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/jim-downs/who-invented-memorial-day_b_3340146.html
http://www.usmemorialday.org/backgrnd.html
http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20090524/PC1602/305249938
http://www.waterloony.com/mdayhistory.html
http://video.pbs.org/video/2318014363/
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/opinion/28mon4.html?_r=1&
http://jobs.blacknews.com/content/232372/blog.cgi?cid&reading=1

http://www.usmemorialday.org/backgrnd.html
http://www.va.gov/opa/speceven/memday/history.asp
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1900454,00.html
http://www.blackbluedog.com/2013/05/news/did-you-know-memorial-day-was-started-by-ex-slaves/
http://blackhistory.com/content/232359/the-first-memorial-day-10-000-march-in-charleston-many-former-slaves-to-celebrate-freedom

From: Navneet Gupta
“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world is my own government, I cannot be silent”

“A nation that year after year continues to spend more money on military defense than on social uplift is approaching spiritual death”

“We have guided missiles, yet misguided men.”

– Martin Luther King, Jr.(1929 – 1968)

Militarism is glorified in the west. We are asked to “remember” the fallen, yet keep fighting in these same unjust conflicts at the same time (many of which we are responsible for starting). It makes no sense?

The U.S. is one of only two countries which has not ratified the convention regarding the use of child soldiers. They are also the largest arms dealers in the world (here is our WMD).

War is all about greed, power, and exploiting the powerless. War has nothing to do with freedom, loving your country, or being a hero. War is about killing innocent people, stealing what they have and keeping power over them through violence & propaganda.

A FRACTION of the money spent on the military industrial complex could eradicate hunger (Food, Not Bombs!), and all other social and ecological problems humanity faces (saving lives instead of taking them).

‘Developed’ nations along with their corporate raiders prop up a corrupt elite at the top of poor nations through the selling of arms, funding, ‘development’, loans, etc. This has allowed for the extraction of indigenous wealth from the southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere (Often referred to as ‘Neocolonialism’)

Was gonna share this video on Facebook, but I think not. How is it that “Sept. 11, 2001 Osama bin Laden used expert CIA training to murder 3000 people?” Has this been proven? Last on this, those so-called terrorist couldn’t fly a plane straight, much less maneuver 1 into the towers 2x’s& avoid detection as it careened into the Pentagon. Michael Moore at best gives facts & at worst, throws a dis-info tidbit just to see if you are paying attention. Not cool, so what part do you believe? Dis-info discredits.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbjr_cPS9_A

Category:

compassion, global research, Huffington Post, hypocrisy, interests groups, MoveOn.org, politics, state terrorism, super power, tyranny, UN, veterans today, war, Winter Soldier

Watch Out…We’re Surrounded! by Frank Scott

Watch Out…We’re Surrounded!

legalienate.blogspot.com/2013/03/watch-outwere-surrounded.html

After the tenth anniversary of the destruction of Iraq passed with the usual historic distortion and pieties from established power about the waste and rationalizations about why we had to do it, America’s bipartisan war party has even more loudly revived the same lies and logic perversion used to get support for that slaughter. Without even a hint of embarrassment, political puppets of wealth from congress to the state department to the white house are again talking about gas and chemical weapons of mass destruction, substituting Assad of Syria for Hussein of Iraq as this season’s demonic Hitler-figure to lull Americans into accepting further military crimes to perpetuate finance capital’s empire and keep our minds off the fact that it threatens to collapse on our heads.
Media fulfills its responsibility as corporate stenographer to power by reporting these charges, without a blushing reminder that this is the same puppet-speak that was only called by its rightful name after hundreds of thousands were dead, an educated class had become refugees and a materially developed secular nation had been broken up into a scattering of underdeveloped sectarian neighborhoods. This process was repeated in Libya but without invasion and simply by using NATO servants to front for our mass bombings. That assault on morality and reason included the usual charges of genocide – when anyone dies in a foreign country our rulers don’t like, it’s called genocide – and new descent into the sewers of western consciousness with tales of mass rapes committed by monsters given Viagra by the evil dictator. Though not accepted by any but the most tortured minds – our leaders – these tales from the toilets of degeneracy helped reduce another nation developed along lines not totally in keeping with the desires of the Master-Race-Chosen-People deities of the west. Libya was transformed into a shattered place with freedom for high finance and oil companies and near chaos for almost everyone else. The latest atrocities in Syria seem to indicate that while the imperial cabal dominated by the MRCP minority of multi-billionaires and their servants flounders in deadly crisis, it’s intention is not only to maintain the diseased system but spread its affliction until the entire global population joins the terminal patients in the universal intensive care ward that is being created by global capitalism.
The banking crisis that began in the USA and spread to Europe has brought near total destruction of the social democratic policies that had previously saved capitalism. The economic cancer that gripped the world in the 1930s was placed in remission for more than a generation by the relatively enlightened – for capital – policies called Keynesianism. These created government spending to prop up anarchic markets that were collapsing under exclusive minority control. It wisely – for capital – used tax money to create jobs, food, clothing and shelter for great masses of people, so that they might not only refrain from revolting against minority power, but also consume all the goods and services they created in order to profit that minority.
The material improvement in the lives of many – though far from most – enabled a generation of relative peaceful control for great wealth in the west, even while the world was consumed by more wars that killed more millions, forgotten because unlike the Euros who perished in wars one and two, these were mostly from the darker skinned members of our race, the third world majority. They were and remain either colonized, neo-colonized or otherwise economically subjugated and thus remaining invisible to newly created middle classes subjected to mind numbing consciousness control and mind managing entertainment that often passes for news on TV. This newly affluent class – by peasant standards – consumed billions of dollars of mostly needless garbage advertised into being absolutely necessary-for-survival drugs, cosmetics, therapies, toys, pets, gadgets and processed foods, while financing with its tax dollars and plastic debt a massive version of fake democracy and a far more massive supply of real weapons of mass destruction.
Already badly overstretched and financed only by imaginary electronic funds backed by very real military power, imperial dictatorship is creating new problems to bolster its war state while simultaneously destroying a civil society hardly conceived by moral values but nonetheless preventing complete physical breakdown. While so-called “austerity” is employed to cut government spending – the only thing that has maintained MRCP capitalism for a generation – while at the same time attempting to militarily protect finance from any and all national models daring to attempt going a different way finds more warfare threatened, with these idiotic fantasy charges to make the public accepting of the need to cut back on their meals in order to buy more guns.
As this is written and the arms shipments to Syria increase along with the death toll and lies, the hallucinatory threat from North Korea gets headlines. This tiny nation once invaded and bombed by the USA and suffering death and destruction unknown to intellectually impoverished Americans, is said to be threatening the USA with bellicose statements. The fact that the USA has troops on its borders and regularly conducts what criminally infantile elements here call “war games” on Korean seas play no role at all in North Korea’s posture, of course. The only thing that may help them, and it is a big maybe, is that North Korea does possess nuclear weapons and could wreak terrible retaliatory havoc if the warhead in our half white house decides to go totally over the edge and attack them.
Meanwhile, the financial crisis has reached new lows in Europe, especially Cyprus where the bailout not only involves robbing taxpayers but stealing money from their bank accounts. Those in America who think this is a laughable situation might start removing their money from these corporate casinos and placing then under the mattress the way their grandparents did. Of course, authority may ultimately attempt confiscation of those mattresses so maybe the second amendment gun lobby fundamentalists have an argument approaching reason? No, but given present conditions, any crackpot theory will get some hearing. Unfortunately, the most crackpot of all, from capital central in the USA, is getting far too much.

Posted by at 12:22 PM

Category:

corporatacracy, global research, hypocricy, interests groups, middle east, Muamar Qadaffi, organized crime, terrorists, tyranny, UN, wall street, war

10 Signs We Live In a False Economy

10 Signs We Live In a False Economy

Tuesday, December 11th, 2012

 (Activist Post)
It’s time to admit that we live in a false economy. Smoke and mirrors are used to make us believe the economy is real, but it’s all an elaborate illusion.

Out of one side of the establishment’s mouth we hear excitement about “green shoots”, and out of the other side comes breathless warnings of fiscal cliffs and the urgent need for unlimited bailouts by the Fed.  We hear the people begging for jobs and the politicians promising them, but politicians can’t create jobs. We see people camped out to buy stuff on Black Friday indicating the consumer economy is seemingly thriving, only to find out everything was bought on credit.

The corporate media does their best to distract us from seeing anything real. We see the media glorify Kim Kardashian who got rich by being famous, and became famous merely by being rich. She got front page coverage on Huffington Post this week because her cat died.  Enough said.

Meanwhile the financial media makes the economy seem complicated and they ban anyone who speaks truthfully about the economy from their airwaves.

Is it any wonder why people are angry and confused about the economy?  Well, hopefully these signs that we live in a false economy will help clear up some of that confusion.

1. Fake Jobs: It’s not just that the “official” unemployment numbers are a fraud, the actual jobs are fake as well. Ask yourself how many professions actually produce something of value? 80% of jobs could disappear tomorrow and it wouldn’t affect basic human survival or happiness in the least. Yes, in our society we need money to survive – and jobs equal money – but that doesn’t mean a “job” has any actual benefit to society.  More on this in the next point…

2. Problems Create Jobs, Not Solutions: We can’t fix real problems, because it would destroy more fake jobs. We can’t end the wars and bring all of the personnel home when the jobless rate is already suffering. We can’t end the War on Drugs because where would the DEA agents, prison guards, the court system, parole officers, and the rest of their support staff work. We can’t simplify the tax code because the bookkeepers, CPAs, accounting professors, and tax attorneys would be unemployed. We cannot reduce the bureaucracy of government or streamline healthcare because paper pushers have few other notable skills. We can’t stop spying on Americans because it now employs millions of people. We can’t restrict the Wall Street casino, or hardly anyone will be left with a job. Finally, what will happen to university jobs when people either realize their product is not worth the cost or they discover they can get the same education online for nearly free? In other words, we need these manufactured problems to create phony employment.

3. Money Has No Value:  Money is the biggest illusion of all. Our money is loaned into existence with arbitrary interest rates by a private monopoly. It is an IOU. It only has value because a law says it has value, and that value fluctuates based on how much supply is in the economy which, again, is controlled by a for-profit monopoly. It’s actual value is zero since it is just a piece of paper with fancy ink on it. The only things with real value to humans are skills (labor), tools and materials, food and water, and energy.

4. The Fed Now Buys 90% of the Nation’s Debt: Speaking of money, the Federal Reserve loans money to the US government who issues bonds to cover their spending. Those bonds are sold on the open market through auctions to investors who believe in the ability of the United States to make good on those bonds. Apparently, the US has no more investors because the Fed is now buying 90% of new Treasury bonds. This is called monetizing debt, or, essentially, monetizing money. That’s what a Ponzi scheme does. This acts to keep interest rates artificially low because they’d have to raise them to attract outside “investors”.  In layman terms, our whole monetary system is a paper tiger, a house of cards, or whatever metaphor you want to use for fake.

5. What is the Value of Anything?  The price discovery mechanism, or the process to determine the value of an asset in the marketplace, has become so convoluted that determining the genuine value of anything has become nearly impossible. Between government subsidizes for things like food, fuel, education, housing, insurance and even cars; taxes, regulations and laws; the manipulation of the value of money and interest rates; Wall Street gambling on commodities; what is the real value of something? For example, why does an ounce of marijuana (a weed that can grow anywhere) cost up to $500?  Is that the real value based on labor and materials, and supply and demand? Of course not. Its value is inflated mainly due to laws and regulations.

6. Failure is Rewarded:  You know we live in a false economy when failure is rewarded and success is penalized. Citizens everywhere are being told they need to tighten their belts, work harder so we can bailout the failed government, banks, insurance companies and even car companies. And when we work harder and achieve some success, they tax it heavily to indefinitely pay for these fraudulent institutions. Yet this infinite money creation and taxation is light years from solving the root cause of the problem. The reality is that the banks’ solutions are the problem, enriching the investor class at the expense of the middle class. Global bankers are playing with taxpayer money – and the money of many future generations – in a global casino royale that is destined to fail so they can take the people’s assets. They are all-in; but their money is fake, and our assets put at risk are real.

7. Corporate entities have the same rights as humans, but not the same punishments:  When the Supreme Court ruled that corporations have free-speech rights of people, it was one of the final nails in the coffin of the republic. Monied interests can now openly finance elections and buy the legislation they need to operate with impunity. Corporations may be comprised of humans, but they are not subjected to the same standard of humanity. It was profoundly argued in the article What if BP Were a Human Being? that judged by common standards of morality, decency, and previously agreed-upon definitions of criminality, BP would be judged a psychopathic killer … and immortal. Ditto for the rest leading the predatory corporate pack; the most obvious being defense contractors.  And since these corporations are now joined at the hip with government itself, what does that make government? By changing definitions, they are attempting to change reality. But that still doesn’t make it the truth.

8. People buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have: In a type of trickle-down debt whirlpool, the government’s rampant spending without sufficient assets to back it up is mirrored in the behavior of the American consumer. Despite inflation, rising unemployment, and a continued collapse in real estate, it hasn’t stopped credit spending. The Associated Press just reported that for the month of October:
Americans swiped their credit cards more often in October and borrowed more to attend school and buy cars. The increases drove U.S. consumer debt to an all-time high.

The Federal Reserve said Friday that consumers increased their borrowing by $14.2 billion in October from September. Total borrowing rose to a record $2.75 trillion.

Borrowing in the category that covers autos and student loans increased by $10.8 billion. Borrowing on credit cards rose by $3.4 billion, only the second monthly increase in the past five months. (Source)
Most troubling is the type of borrowing highlighted. The worst possible borrowing would be these negative-return investments such as student loans, credit cards, and cars. It is magical thinking taken to the highest degree.

9. Entrepreneurs are punished: It has become nearly impossible to make a simple living on your own. America has become a land filled with bureaucratic red tape that actively thwarts small business creation and criminalizes independence. There is perhaps no better example of this than the attacks waged against the ultimate entrepreneurial endeavor of self-reliance: the family farm. Through collectivist models such as Agenda 21, long-running family farms are being shut down and supplanted with “protected zones.” In the most recent case, a family oyster farm was shut down based on provably false scientific data that aimed to demonstrate negative environmental and economic impacts. It was completely fake, ending an 80-year local business that generated 50,000 tourists per year and employed 30 full-time local residents. In many of these cases the federally stolen property winds up in the hands of developers who have no interest in a true local economy. It is an inherent part of any false economy to create dependence where none should exist at all. A five-minute video that can be seen here sums up the American economy of illusions and the death of the American Dream.

10. Engineered Slavery: Do you think slavery died in the 1800s?  Think again. Economic hitmen (lenders) have successfully enslaved-by-debt everything from nations, entire industries, state and local governments and nearly every person on the planet. And they bought your servitude with money they never had, they simply created it out of thin air. Even if an individual doesn’t have any bank financing or credit cards, they still pay the private Federal Reserve through inflation and income taxes. As author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins, would say: the time has come for the banks to collect their “pound of flesh” from average citizens by way of higher taxes, less social services, and taking your pensions — “austerity.” For an enlightening explanation of how economic hitmen work their dark magic please watch this video.  If you’re still confused, see these 10 signs you might be a slave.  Another, more obvious, form of engineered slavery is prison labor. Laws and regulations are specifically created to add to the prison population which enriches the corporations that own them, while local communities actually become poorer and more dangerous (source).

As George Carlin said, “It’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.” It would be bad enough if it were contained to only one country, but we are now experiencing a global collective dreaming that fantasizes about a government figuring things out just in the nick of time. However, in the real world, the collapse has begun in earnest. Until we are committed to counter the 10 points above, we will remain in the grip of an hallucination. However, there are encouraging signs through protests worldwide, alternative currency movements, and myriad creative solutions in the most affected countries like Iceland, Greece, and Spain that people are beginning to shake off their sleep, look in the mirror and realize that the dream economy they have been sold was designed to make them seek solutions in entirely the wrong direction.

Category:

bankers, corporatacracy, economics, employment, environment, gold, governments, Huffington Post, hypocrisy, interests groups, super power, wall street

Petraeus scandal is reported with compelled veneration of all things military | Glenn Greenwald

On the resignation of Gen Petraeus.
It’s a mess and a rabbit hole, that goes very, very deep. I find it strange that folks can go around killing innocents, drone striking, torturing, destroying infrastructures on other people’s land, dropping depleted uranium on towns and villages, messing up the water and electric infrastructure, cause all manner of birth defects, cover up rape and abuse towards military women, deal very poorly with the veterans upon their return, declassifying PSTD to other than a medical issue, have these veterans homeless and suicidal, fund and support terrorists militias, cover up and enhance the opium production, drop bombs on people in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, arm the insurgents in Syria, yet, when they pull their little dingy out and flash it around, inserting it here and there, NOW THEY MUST RETIRE?????

Something is seriously and morally wrong with American ethics. Dude done did something else other than fool around with a drama queen, and that’s for sure!!! NB

Petraeus scandal is reported with compelled veneration of all things military | Glenn Greenwald
2011: Holly Petraeus (left) holding a bible as David Petraeus is sworn in as CIA director by Vice President Joe Biden. Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
Saturday 10 November 2012 
The reverence for the former CIA Director is part of a wider religious-like worship of the national security state.
(updated below [Sun.])
A prime rule of US political culture is that nothing rivets, animates or delights the political media like a sex scandal. From Bill Clinton, Gary Hart, and Eliot Spitzer to John Edwards, Larry Craig and David Vitter, their titillation and joy is palpable as they revel in every last arousing detail. This giddy package is delivered draped in a sanctimonious wrapping: their excitement at reporting on these scandals is matched only by their self-righteous condemnations of the moral failings of the responsible person.
All of these behaviors have long been constant, inevitable features of every political sex scandal – until yesterday. Now, none of these sentiments is permitted because the newest salacious scandal features at its center Gen. David Petraeus, who resigned yesterday as CIA Director, citing an extramarital affair.
It has now been widely reported that the affair was with Paula Broadwell, the author of a truly fawning hagiography of Petraeus entitled “All In”, and someone whom Petraeus, in her own words, “mentored” when he sat on her dissertation committee. The FBI discovered the affair when it investigated whether she had attempted to gain access to his emails and other classified information. In an interview about Broadwell’s book that she gave to the Daily Show back in January, one that is incredibly fascinating and revealing to watch in retrospect, Jon Stewart identified this as the primary question raised by her biography of Petraeus: “is he awesome, or super-awesome?”
Gen. Petraeus is the single most revered man in the most venerated American institution: the National Security State and, specifically, its military. As a result, all the rules are different. Speaking ill of David Petraeus – or the military or CIA as an institution – is strictly prohibited within our adversarial watchdog press corps. Thus, even as he resigns in disgrace, leading media figures are alternatively mournful and worshipful as they discuss it.
On MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell appeared genuinely grief-stricken when she first reported Petraeus’ resignation letter. “This is very painful”, she began by announcing, as she wore a profoundly sad face. Her voice quivered with a mix of awe and distress as she read his resignation letter, savoring every word as though she were reciting from the Dead Sea Scrolls. On the Rachel Maddow Show later that night, Mitchell began her appearance by decreeing that “this is a personal tragedy” and said she was particularly sorrowful for “the men and women of the CIA, an agency that has many things to be proud about: manythings to be proud about” [emphasis in original].
Christiane Amanpour of CNN and ABC made Mitchell look constrained by comparison as she belted out this paean on Twitter:
 For good measure, she then added:
What does all that even mean? From which glorious “battlefield” is the CIA Director now absent, and how and why are we “at a time when we need them most”? But Amanpour is reciting something akin to a prayer here, and it’s thus insusceptible to rational inquiry of that sort.
Meanwhile, Michael Hastings – whose Rolling Stone cover story ended Gen. McChrystal’s career by including numerous intemperate quotes and, in doing so, revealingly prompted widespread animosity among his media colleagues for the crime of Making a General Look Bad – was on MSNBC yesterday with Martin Bashir. Hastings explained how the media has been devoted to Petraeus’ glorification and thus ignored all the substantive reasons why Petraeus should have received far more media scrutiny and criticism in the past. In response, Bashir – who has previously demonstrated his contempt for anyone who speaks ill of a US General – expressed his anger at Hastings (“That’s a fairly harsh assessment of a man who is regarded by many in the military as an outstanding four-star general”) and then quickly cut him off just over two minutes into the segment.
Then there’s the Foreign Policy Community, for which David Petraeus has long been regarded with deity status. Foreign Policy Magazine Managing Editor Blake Hounshell, under the headline “The Tragedy of David Petraeus”, gushedthat “Petraeus’s downfall is a huge loss for the United States,” as “not only was he one of the country’s top strategic thinkers, he was also one of the few public figures revered by all sides of the political spectrum for his dedication and good judgment.” He added: “He salvaged two disastrous wars, for two very different presidents.”
Also at Foreign Policy, Thomas Ricks, formerly of the Washington Post, arguedthat Obama should not have accepted his resignation: “So the surprise to me is that Obama let him go. But the administration’s loss may be Princeton’s gain.” Like most people in the media, Ricks has long been an ardent admirer of Petraeus, even turning his platform over to Paula Broadwell in the past for her to spread her hagiography far and wide.
There are several revealing lessons about this media swooning for Petraeus even as he exits from a scandal that would normally send them into tittering delight. First, military worship is the central religion of America’s political and media culture. The military is by far the most respected and beloved institution among the US population – a dangerous fact in any democracy – and, even assuming they wanted to (which they don’t), our brave denizens of establishment journalism are petrified of running afoul of that kind of popular sentiment.
Recall the intense controversy that erupted last Memorial Day when MSNBC’s Chris Hayes gently pondered whether all soldiers should be considered “heroes”. His own network, NBC, quickly assembled a panel on the Today Show to unanimously denounce him in the harshest and most personal terms (“I hope that he doesn’t get more viewers as a result of this…this guy is like a – if you’ve seen him…he looks like a weenie” – “Could you be more inappropriate on Memorial Day?”), and Hayes then subjected himself to the predictable ritual of public apology (though he notably did not retract the substance of his remarks).
Hayes was forced (either overtly or by the rising pressure) to apologize because his comments were blasphemous: of America’s true religion. At virtually every major sporting event, some uber-patriotic display of military might is featured as the crowd chants and swoons. It’s perfectly reasonable not to hold members of the military responsible for the acts of aggression ordered by US politicians, but that hardly means that the other extreme – compelled reverence – is justifiable either. 
Yet US journalists – whose ostensible role is to be adversarial to powerful and secretive political institutions (which includes, first and foremost, the National Security State) – are the most pious high priests of this national religion. John Parker, former military reporter and fellow of the University of Maryland Knight Center for Specialized Journalism-Military Reporting, wrote an extraordinarily good letter back in 2010 regarding why leading Pentagon reporters were so angry at WikiLeaks for revealing government secrets: because they identify with the military to the point of uncritical adoration:
“The career trend of too many Pentagon journalists typically arrives at the same vanishing point: Over time they are co-opted by a combination of awe – interacting so closely with the most powerfully romanticized force of violence in the history of humanity – and the admirable and seductive allure of the sharp, amazingly focused demeanor of highly trained military minds. Top military officers have their s*** together and it’s personally humbling for reporters who’ve never served to witness that kind of impeccable competence. These unspoken factors, not to mention the inner pull of reporters’ innate patriotism, have lured otherwise smart journalists to abandon – justifiably in their minds – their professional obligation to treat all sources equally and skeptically. . . .
“Pentagon journalists and informed members of the public would benefit from watching ‘The Selling of the Pentagon’, a 1971 documentary. It details how, in the height of the Vietnam War, the Pentagon sophisticatedly used taxpayer money against taxpayers in an effort to sway their opinions toward the Pentagon’s desires for unlimited war. Forty years later, the techniques of shaping public opinion via media has evolved exponentially. It has reached the point where flipping major journalists is a matter of painting in their personal numbers.”
That is what makes this media worship of All Things Military not only creepy to behold, but downright dangerous.
Second, it is truly remarkable what ends people’s careers in Washington – and what does not end them. As Hastings detailed in that interview, Petraeus has left a string of failures and even scandals behind him: a disastrous Iraqi training program, a worsening of the war in Afghanistan since he ran it, the attempt to convert the CIA into principally a para-military force, the series of misleading statements about the Benghazi attack and the revealed large CIA presence in Libya. To that one could add the constant killing of innocent people in the Muslim world without a whiff of due process, transparency or oversight.
Yet none of those issues provokes the slightest concern from our intrepid press corps. His career and reputation could never be damaged, let alone ended, by any of that. Instead, it takes a sex scandal – a revelation that he had carried on a perfectly legal extramarital affair – to force him from power. That is the warped world of Washington. Of all the heinous things the CIA does, the only one that seems to attract the notice or concern of our media is a banal sex scandal. Listening to media coverage, one would think an extramarital affair is the worst thing the CIA ever did, maybe even the only bad thing it ever did (Andrea Mitchell: “an agency that has many things to be proud about: many things to be proud about”).
Third, there is something deeply symbolic and revealing about this whole episode. Broadwell ended up spending substantial time with Petraeus when she, in essence, embedded with him and followed him around Afghanistan in order to write her biography. What ended up being produced was not only the type of propagandistic hagiography such arrangements typically produce, but also deeply personal affection as well.
This is access journalism and the embedding dynamic in its classic form, just a bit more vividly expressed. The very close and inter-dependent relationship between media figures and the political and military officials they cover often produces exactly these same sentiments even if they do not find the full-scale expression as they did in this case. In that regard, the relationship between the now-former CIA Director and his fawning hagiographer should be studied in journalism schools to see the results reliably produced by access journalism and the embedding process. Whatever Broadwell did for Petraeus is what US media figures are routinely doing for political and especially military officials with their “journalism”.
Other matters
Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith, formerly with the Bush justice department, has an excellent analysis explaining why “one important consequence of President Obama’s re-election will be the further entrenchment, and legitimation, of the basic counterterrorism policies that Obama continued, with tweaks, from the late Bush administration.” He explains why an Obama presidency will strengthen these policies far more than a Romney presidency could have (as a former Bush official, Goldsmith is understandably delighted by this fact).
In Seattle tonight, I’m delivering the keynote speech to the annual Bill of Rights dinner for the ACLU in Washington; there are still a few tickets left for the event, which begins at 7:00 pm, and they can be obtained here.
Finally, I participated, along with ABC’s Jake Tapper and Lisa Rosenberg, in a report by NPR’s “On the Media’ on Obama’s first term record on transparency. My participation is in the first four minutes or so and can be heard here. I was also interviewed yesterday by NPR’s local Seattle affiliate for about 30 minutes on Obama’s foreign policy and civil liberties record, and that segment, which was quite good as it included several adversarial calls from listeners, can be heard here.
UPDATE [Sun.]: CORRECTION
I wrote above that Petraeus “sat on [Broadwell’s] dissertation committee”. This is inaccurate. Petraeus was one of Broadwell’s “dissertation advisers”.

Category:

cult of personality, drones, elections, environment, governments, hypocricy, interests groups, middle east, Muamar Qadaffi, NDAA, Obamamania, photo opt, politics, terrorists, voters

Obama-Mania? Cult of Personality? Politics Or Theater?

Dear Crystal Lucas Perry,

First as 1 artist to another, I appreciate you &all the hard work that went into creating this. HOWEVER, what I strongly disagree with, is making the POTUS into a celebrity.Creating this mythos around a man whose job is to lead the country FORWARD. He’s not a HOLLYWOOD STAR/ACTOR. I think it’s disrespectful.Will he go down in history as a SUPERSTAR or someone who really moved the country forward? Allegiance to a man? American Idol? Exalt & Elevate integrity, peace, love & truth. Poetic License? http://youtu.be/c_d9mntKvGM  My comment on YouTube

 I wish I could find the right words to express how uncomfortable it makes me feel. It’s like some kind of cult or something. “The Cult of Obama” Obama-Mania. People are all frenzied, teary eyed, gushing like they are having orgasms over him. That last campaign with the Obama girl was really over the top. What is that? Why do people need to idolize him? How is that cool for a thinking, educated, civilized nation of people? What if they did that to Bush, whom they clearly did not like. What if the Tea Party wrote songs about John Boehner?

Okay, political parody, satire, or even cartoons, but this romanticizing of the President is a bit much for me. They are so memorized they care not to look at the true picture, the real deal and that means they are dangerous. That Obama Kool Aid is really powerful.

Is this really poetic license or is it opportunism? The number of YouTube videos that are out with people singing to him, and the number of hits these videos are getting begs to question the real motive behind this type of “free advertisement”.

I don’t  particularly agree with all that is presented in this movie, but the song does kind of say it all for me.

It just don’t sit right with me, and this is a very subjective assessment on my part. But idolizing another human being is a sure fired way to trouble. Look at the many other cult personalities that have lead people into serious trouble. Again this is subjective.

Cult of Personality Links

“A personality cult appears whenever an individual uses mass media propaganda to create idealized, quasi-heroic public personae arising from unquestioned flattery and praise.  Personality cults aim to make the leader and the state synonymous, so that it is nearly impossible to make a distinction between them.”   Read more here GeeeeeeZ! OBAMA: Cult of Personality

 

 

Cult of personality

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the political phenomenon.


For the song by Living Colour, see Cult of Personality (song).


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality

A 1950s Chinese propaganda poster showing a happy family of five enjoying life under the image of Mao Zedong. The caption above the picture reads “The happy life Chairman Mao gives us”.

A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized, heroic, and, at times god-like public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Sociologist Max Weber developed a tripartite classification of authority; the cult of personality holds parallels with what Weber defined as “charismatic authority“. A cult of personality is similar to hero worship, except that it is established by mass media and propaganda.

Etymology

The term Cult of personality or Personality Cult first appeared in Nikita Khrushchev‘s Secret Speech in 1956[1]. Cult of the individual is a more accurate translation[2].

Background

Throughout history, monarchs and heads of state were almost always held in enormous reverence. Through the principle of the divine right of kings, for example, rulers were said to hold office by the will of God. Imperial China (see Mandate of Heaven), ancient Egypt, Japan, the Inca, the Aztecs, Tibet, Thailand, and the Roman Empire (see imperial cult) are especially noted for redefining monarchs as god-kings.
The spread of democratic and secular ideas in Europe and North America in the 18th and 19th centuries made it increasingly difficult for monarchs to preserve this aura. However, the subsequent development of photography, sound recording, film, and mass production, as well as public education and techniques used in commercial advertising, enabled political leaders to project a positive image like never before. It was from these circumstances in the 20th century that the best-known personality cults arose. Often these cults are a form of political religion.

Purpose

See also: Secular religion

Personality cults were first described in relation to totalitarian regimes that sought to alter or transform society according to radical ideas.[3] Often, a single leader became associated with this revolutionary transformation, and came to be treated as a benevolent “guide” for the nation without whom the transformation to a better future couldn’t occur. This has been generally the justification for personality cults that arose in totalitarian societies of the 20th century, such as those of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
Not all dictatorships foster personality cults, not all personality cults are dictatorships (some are nominally democratic), and some leaders may actively seek to minimize their own public adulation. For example, during the Cambodian Khmer Rouge regime, images of dictator Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) were rarely seen in public, and his identity was under dispute abroad until after his fall from power. The same applied to numerous Eastern European Communist regimes following World War II (although not those of Enver Hoxha and Nicolae Ceaușescu, mentioned below).

http://jayreding.com/archives/2008/06/30/barack-obama-of-the-brain-slug-party/ 

Che Obama: the new cult of personality
“It is doubtful that anyone ever thought to wear a t-shirt with George Bush’s image splashed across it, except to deride him. Now, wearing the image of the president is not only popular, it has become almost obligatory in some circles.

An Obama T-Shirt

Obama’s image is not just appearing on t-shirts. There are Obama hats, Obama pencil cases, Obama hoodies, Obama screen savers, Obama jewellery, Obama coffee cups and Obama street murals. And Obamamania has gone mainstream. Today in DC we can buy metro tickets sporting Obama’s image. Numerous buildings are decorated with huge banners welcoming the new president. Even the National Portrait Galley has got in on the act, snapping up Shepard Fairey’s original collage for the gallery walls long before the new president’s official portrait will be commissioned.

Such is the strength of the cult surrounding Obama’s image that vendors at the inauguration were hard pushed to find new ways to commemorate the day. Many tried, of course. On my own walk into the city I saw Ben’s Chili Bowl on U Street, a local landmark, displaying a huge red, white and blue ice sculpture of the letters OBAMA. A church on 16th Street offered hot cocoa and a chance to be photographed with a life-sized Obama cut-out. On the Mall itself everything from Obama special inauguration bandanas to Obama dollar bills (with President Lincoln’s image replaced with President Obama’s) to my own personal favourite, Obama water, was on offer.”

The media’s new Messiah is a mania and fad like the hula hoop  
 “Obama’s finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don’t even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair.”
…Barack Obama just seems to get cooler and cooler. He’s the most popular topic on the New York Times topics page…Internet widgets allow you to see what great thing Barack Obama has done for you…on the New York subway Friday morning, one of our copy editors…heard one woman joke to another: “Obama, will you pick me up after my noninvasive minor surgical procedure?” To which the other replied: “Obama, will you hold my hair back when I puke?”…
Many spiritually advanced people I know…identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul…
John Lewis, the venerable civil rights hero and congressman, put words to this feeling recently. “In recent days, there is a sense of movement and a sense of spirit,” he said, suggesting that he might switch his superdelegate vote from Hillary Clinton to Obama. “Something is happening in America and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap.”…On Facebook, people write about dreams featuring Obama. There is only one correct reaction to the will.i.am “Yes We Can” video and that is to start chanting along…
There was the woman in New Hampshire who compared him with Christ. There was Maria Shriver’s comparison of the candidate with the state of California, with the rhetorical fervor usually seen only after a preacher shouts, “You are healed!”…
“Be not afraid; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day in the city of Chicago a Savior, who is Barack the Democrat.”

The Obama cult
“Recently I have noticed an interesting but disturbing phenomenon in New York City. On the streets, subways and buses, you can see people still wearing Barack Obama buttons even though the election is long over. I wonder to myself whether these buttons express an inchoate political/psychological yearning. In some ways it reminds me of how people wore pictures of the fifteen year old guru Maharaj-ji, who counted former 60s radical Rennie Davis as one of his main followers.
When I spoke to a fellow radical in my department at Columbia University about my concerns, his eyes lit up and he said:

I know exactly what you mean. There’s this guy in my health club who wears an ‘Obama Knows’ t-shirt. The other day I went up to him and asked him, “Knows what?” He really couldn’t answer me.

At some point I will ask one of these Obama button wearers the same kind of question. What’s up with the Obama button? What are you trying to say? I once asked someone wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt the same kind of question. Trust me; they did not decide to wear the t-shirt after reading “Socialism and Man in Cuba”.

 Obamamania Hits Ottawa!
“Obama’s popularity is clear evidence of a brand strategy that has succeeded beyond any strategists wildest dream and further proof that once you build a compelling saga and unleash it to the world, there is no telling how far and wide it will go. From a branding perspective, Obama may have become too hot too fast and now one of his biggest challenges might be dealing with the inevitable backlash created by the frenzied admiration from the millions of kool-aid drinking Barackolytes:”
 More from Dorothy:“I honestly don’t know whether to put this in religion or politics. I honestly feel the passion for Senator Obama expressed by most of his followers has equal elements of both – even if they deny it. But I suspect the moderators would move it here to politics if I put it in religion, so here it is in politics. I know this will make many people angry (primarily Obama followers), but I am not looking to debate. I just wanted to display some of the images of Obama because I find the whole media’s marketing – in this case, just the visual elements- behind the man so fascinating.
“CNN’s Carol Costello said that audience response at a Barack Obama rally is “a scene some increasingly find not inspirational, but ‘creepy,’ ” quoting columnists who have likened Obama supporters to members of a cult or described their enthusiasm as “creepy.” On-screen text during Costello’s report read: “OBAMA-MANIA BACKLASH” and “PASSION ‘CULT-LIKE’ TO SOME.” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer similarly cited other writers to make the same assertion: “ABC’s Jake Tapper notes the ‘Helter-Skelter cult-ish qualities’ of ‘Obama worshipers,’ what Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times calls ‘the Cult of Obama.’ ”

Category:

cult of personality, drones, elections, governments, interests groups, Muamar Qadaffi, NDAA, Obamamania, palestine, politics, Super Storm Sandy 2012, terrorists, voters, wall street

US Elections: The Empty Politics of Duopoly

Friday, November 9, 2012
US Elections: The Empty Politics of Duopoly
Nile Bowie, Contributor
Activist Post

After months of rhetoric and political campaigning, the smoke has finally cleared on the media frenzy that is the US Presidential Election. Once the winner of the race was announced, supporters at the Obama Campaign headquarters in Chicago jubilantly celebrated.

The haze of American flags, pop music, and confetti worked wonders to mask the absence of any real political substance throughout the election process.

Cheering supporters shouted “four more years” as President Obama took to the stage to deliver his victory speech – complete with highly emotional grandiloquence, two mentions of the US military being the strongest in the world, and of course – a joke about the family dog.

After an exorbitant $6 billion spent by campaigns and outside groups in the primary, congressional and presidential races, Americans have reelected a president better suited for Hollywood than Washington. A 2010 ruling by the US Supreme Court that swept away limits on corporate contributions to political campaigns has paved the way for the most expensive election in American history, in the midst of an economic crisis nonetheless. [1]

In the nation that gave birth to the marketing concept of branding, it is to be assumed that politicians would eventually adopt the same techniques used to promote consumer products – enter Obama.

After eight years under the Bush administration, America desperately needed change. Instead of any meaningful structural reform, America ushered in a global superstar whose charm and charisma not only resuscitated American prestige, but also masked the continued dominance of deregulators, financiers, and war-profiteers.

Obama’s most valuable asset is his brand, and his ability to channel the nostalgia of transformative social movements of the past, while serving as a tabula rasa of sorts to his supporters – an icon of hope who is capable of inspiring the masses and coaxing them into action – despite the Obama administration expanding the disturbing militaristic and domestic surveillance policies so characteristic of the Bush years, and channeling never before seen authority to the executive branch.

The American public at large is captivated by Barack’s contrived media personality and the grandeur of his political poetry and performance, and is therefore reluctant to acknowledge his enthusiastic continuation of the deeply unethical policies of his predecessor. Obama is indeed a leader suited for a new age, one of post-intellectualism and televised spectacle – a time when huge demographics of voters are more influenced by Jay-Z and Katy Perry’s endorsement of Obama over anything of political substance he preaches. [2]

While the US has historically exported “democracy promotion” through institutions like the National Endowment for Democracy (trends that have accelerated under the Obama administration), so few see the American electoral process for what it is – unacceptably expensive, filled with contrived debates, and subject to the kind of meticulous controls that America’s foreign adversaries are accused of presiding over.

Patriot Game – OBAMA VS ROMNEY VIDEO GAME!

A leaked ‘Memorandum of Understanding,’ signed by both the Obama and Romney campaigns, provides unique insight into the nature of the three televised debates, and the extent to which organizers went to prevent the occurrence of any form of unplanned spontaneity. [3] The document outlines how no members of the audience would be allowed to ask follow-up questions to the candidates, how microphones will be cut off right after questions were asked, and how any opportunities for follow-up questions from the crowd would be disregarded. In what was billed as a series of town-hall style debates where members of the community can come together and ask questions that reflect their concerns – in actuality, the two candidates dished out pre-planned responses to pre-approved questions, asked by pre-selected individuals.

The political domination of the Republican and Democratic parties over the debates is nowhere more apparent than in the arrest of Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate, Cheri Honkala, as the two attempted to enter the site of the second presidential debate. [4] 

Despite the obscurity and almost non-existent media presence of third party candidates, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party received 1% of the popular vote in the general election, amounting to over 1.1 million votes, the best in the history of the Libertarian Party. [5]

In contrast to the choreographed exchanges offered by the televised debates between Obama and Romney, Moscow’s state-funded Russia Today news service offered third-party candidates an opportunity to voice their political programs in two debates aired on the channel. [6] Throughout these debates, third-party candidates spoke of repealing Obama’s authorization of indefinite detention through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the need for coherent environmental legislation, the gross misdirection of American foreign policy, the necessity of deep economic restructuring, and the illogicality of marijuana prohibition. In her closing statement at the debate, Green Party candidate Jill Stein brought up a significant point:

They’re 90 million voters who are not coming out to vote in this election, that’s one out of every two voters – that’s twice as many as those who will come out for Barack Obama, and twice the number that will come out for Mitt Romney. Those are voters who are saying ‘No’ to politics as usual, and ‘No’ to the Democratic and Republican parties. Imagine if we got out word to those 90 millions voters, that they actually have a variety of choices and voices in this election.

American presidential politics are not devoid of progressive voices; but, in reality, America doesn’t need a third-party – it needs a second party. The overwhelming lack of choice offered by this election can only be attributable to the political duopoly of the Republican and Democratic parties.

 As President Obama begins his second and final term, some feel that this could be a chance for the White House to pursue more progressive ends – an opportunity for Obama to act on his own campaign rhetoric and roll back militarism and the influence of Wall St. financiers.

Barack Obama now prepares for his second term as the President of the United States. Though the race was tight, especially in states like Florida and Virginia, Obama won by more than 2 million popular votes at last count, and had at least 303 electoral votes to Mitt Romney’s 206. (Florida was still too close to call as of midday Wednesday.)

While such optimism may prevail in the minds of many, the fact that President Obama issued a drone strike that killed three people in Yemen just hours after being reelected is a telling sign of things to come from the Obama administration. [7]

As the United States continues to project itself around the world as the definitive model of “freedom and democracy,” it is apparent that the central bankers, corporate financiers, and crony capitalists who control America’s electoral system did indeed learn and thing or two from Communism:


The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves. – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Notes:

[1] US presidential election: Obama vs the Super PACs – How the incumbent prevailed, The Economic Times, November 8, 2012

[2] Katy Perry, Beyonce and Jay-Z lead stars voting for Barack Obama, Metro, November 6, 2012

[3] Obama and Romney agree to cowardly debates, Russia Today, October 16, 2012

[4] Police arrest US presidential candidate Jill Stein at debate site, Russia Today, October 17, 2012

[5] Gary Johnson Pulls One Million Votes, One Percent, Reason Foundation, November 7, 2012

[6] RT presents third-party presidential debate, Russia Today, October 19, 2012

[7] Yemen drone strike kills ‘al-Qaeda members’, Al-Jazeera, November 09, 2012

Nile Bowie is a Kuala Lumpur-based American writer and photographer for the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal, Canada. He explores issues of terrorism, economics and geopolitics.

Category:

Activist Post, Black Agenda Report, drones, elections, governments, hypocricy, interests groups, middle east, Muamar Qadaffi, NDAA, Nile Bowie, palestine, photo opt, Super Storm Sandy 2012, voters, wall street

It’s Official: Liberals and Conservatives Becoming Zombies

Anthony Freda Art

Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post  
http://www.activistpost.com/2012/11/its-official-liberals-and-conservatives.html

In the wake of the 2012 Presidential election, the expected gloating over Obama’s victory and sulking over Romney’s defeat by their respective supporters is taking its typical turn toward the absurd, at least for those who are aware of the true lack of choice that was presented in this election.

As every other failed presidential campaign in history has done, the Romney camp will soon come to grips with their loss. The Obama camp, however, will now be presented with four more years of a President who has been and will continue to be identical to the President they claimed to have hated for so many years.

As Obama continues to execute, for another four years, the very same policies implemented by Bush (and by Romney had he been elected), individuals who call themselves “liberals” or “progressives” will be faced with the challenge of defending what they perceive to be “their candidate” irrespective of reality, facts, and common sense.

Like the first four years, self-proclaimed progressives will continue to support the wholesale slaughter of innocent people in foreign countries, indefinite detention, banker bailouts, free trade, and a gross violation of civil liberties and Constitutional rights. While these very acts were once what liberals claimed was fueling their hatred of George W. Bush, it turns out that what passes for a progressive in 2012 is a rejection of war and totalitarianism directed by Republicans – not war and totalitarianism itself.

Indeed, when asking your average Obama fan their reason for such irrational support, one can scarcely receive an answer that does not have its root in false and divisive social paradigms such as his party, his race, or his age. Simply put, Obama supporters main reason for their allegiance to Barack Obama can be boiled down to two words – “He’s Obama!”

Even so, when Obama was first elected in 2008, and in the face of his obvious support for the banker bailout, continued war, and blatant disregard for civil liberties, we critics were met with pleas to “just give him time.” After all, he can’t fix eight years of Bush in one year of his own. This was the same statement that was repeated after Obama’s second year. And then his third. Even his fourth year as President still held echoes of the argument to just “give him time.”

Nevertheless, with Obama’s re-election there now appears a small shred of potential silver lining to this dark cloud. Namely, it will eliminate the argument posed by so-called Progressives for the last four years that Obama did not have equal time to right the wrongs of Bush or that he was not given a fair shot at the Presidency which now consists of, according to party hacks, an eight-year reign.

At the end of the Obama regime, it will be apparent to every Democrat that “their” candidate was every bit as bad as the one belonging to the “other team.”

There will be no more excuses echoed from the chambers of the Obama supporters that do not highlight an already delusional perspective and unwillingness to face reality. In 2016, like Bush supporters in 2008, the defense of Obama will appear more and more to be a mental illness than a political opinion. Unfortunately, one does not have to go much further for this to be the case.

This statement is not meant to pick on Obama supporters alone of course. In fact, Republicans and so-called Conservatives showed their own true colors this election by flocking to a full representation of the candidate they claim they are so opposed to. The differences between Romney and Obama, besides ethnicity and political party, were virtually non-existent. Indeed, those differences that did appear to exist were merely propaganda pieces for public presentation.

Republicans, by no means, have a leg to stand on when it comes to the issues mentioned above, be it economics, war, civil liberties, or any other issue for that matter.

Regardless, it is a fact that Liberals and Progressives, once the majority of the anti-war, 9/11 Truth, and freedom movements, simply dissipated with the election of Obama. What is worse, however, is that they never reappeared after Obama proved that, as President, he would not only be as bad as Bush, he would be worse.

While rumblings amongst true Liberals of Obama’s treachery are indeed beginning to take place, the fact is they have remained dormant for far too long. In truth, it is a shame that they were ever silent to begin with.

Thus, with Obama firmly locked in to another four years and with no possibility of his own re-election in 2016, Progressives are now given an opportunity to return to the principles they have neglected for the last four years. With no possibility of costing Obama the election, you can now be free to oppose the killing of innocent men, women, and children. With “your team” squarely in office, you can now meekly ask for your right to privacy, to a trial, and even to life without worrying about your chosen party losing the White House. As Obama takes over in his second term, you can now acknowledge the worldwide economic depression and perhaps take some steps to avoid a total collapse and return to real American standards of living without the fear of reflecting poorly upon “your President.”

A four-year vacation from your principles was long enough. Now, however, your country and the rest of the world needs you to return to the fight.

You can only blame “those other guys” for so long. Whether you like it or not, it is an unfortunate reality that both you and those on the other side of the falsely constructed aisle are more alike than you think. Likewise, Republicans must realize that economics, war, and civil liberties are issues that effect Americans regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican is in office.

Both Conservatives and Liberals are equally responsible for the moral, intellectual, and rapidly physical wasteland we now find ourselves inhabiting. Because both groups are divided only because they have been subjected ad infinitum to scientific propaganda in order to make such an environment possible, it is high time they both become responsible for repairing it.

Read other articles by Brandon Turbeville here.

Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of three books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, and Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident. Turbeville has published over 175 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV.  He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

Category:

9/11, Bradley Manning, drones, elections, environment, governments, hypocricy, interests groups, middle east, politics, terrorists, wall street

The Special Interests Won Again

Cory Michael Skaaren Art

Wednesday, November 7, 2012
The Special Interests Won Again

Paul Craig Roberts, Contributor

The election that was supposed to be too close to call turned out not to be so close after all. In my opinion, Obama won for two reasons: (1) Obama is non-threatening and inclusive, whereas Romney exuded a “us vs. them” impression that many found threatening, and (2) the election was not close enough for the electronic voting machines to steal.

As readers know, I don’t think that either candidate is a good choice or that either offers a choice. Washington is controlled by powerful interest groups, not by elections. What the two parties fight over is not alternative political visions and different legislative agendas, but which party gets to be the whore for Wall Street, the military-security complex, Israel Lobby, agribusiness, and energy, mining, and timber interests.

Being the whore is important, because whores are rewarded for the services that they render. To win the White House or a presidential appointment is a career-making event as it makes a person sought after by rich and powerful interest groups. In Congress the majority party can provide more services and is thus more valuable than the minority party. One of our recent presidents who was not rich ended up with $36 million shortly after leaving office, as did former UK prime minister Tony Blair, who served Washington far better than he served his own country.

Wars are profitable for the military/security complex. Israel rewards its servants and punishes its enemies. Staffing environmental regulatory agencies with energy, mining, and timber executives is regarded by those interests as very friendly behavior.

Many Americans understand this and do not bother to vote as they know that whichever candidate or party wins, the interest groups prevail. Ronald Reagan was the last president who stood up to interest groups, or, rather, to some of them. Wall Street did not want his tax rate reductions, as Wall Street thought the result would be higher inflation and interest rates and the ruination of their stock and bond portfolios. The military/security complex did not want Reagan negotiating with Gorbachev to end the cold war.

What is curious is that voters don’t understand how politics really works. They get carried away with the political rhetoric and do not see the hypocrisy that is staring them in the face.

Proud patriotic macho American men voted for Romney who went to Israel and, swearing allegiance to his liege lord, groveled at the feet of Netanyahu.

Obama plays on the heart strings of his supporters by relating a story of a child with leukemia now protected by Obamacare, while he continues to murder thousands of children and their parents with drones and other military actions in seven countries.

Obama was able to elicit cheers from supporters as he described the onward and upward path of America toward greater moral accomplishments, while his actual record is that of a tyrant who codified into law the destruction of the US Constitution and the civil liberties of the American people.

The election was about nothing except who gets to serve the interest groups. The wars were not an issue in the election. Washington’s provoking of Iran, Russia, and China by surrounding them with military bases was not an issue. The unconstitutional powers asserted by the executive branch to detain citizens indefinitely without due process and to assassinate them on suspicion alone were not an issue in the election.

The sacrifice of the natural environment to timber, mining, and energy interests was not an issue, except to promise more sacrifice of the environment to short-term profits. Out of one side of the mouth came the nonsense promise of restoring the middle class while from the other side of the mouth issued defenses of the offshoring of their jobs and careers as free trade.

The inability to acknowledge and to debate real issues is a threat not only to the United States but also to the entire world. Washington’s reckless pursuit of hegemony driven by an insane neoconservative ideology is leading to military confrontation with Russia and China.

Eleven years of gratuitous wars with more on the way and an economic policy that protects financial institutions from their mistakes have burdened the US with massive budget deficits that are being monetized.

The US dollar’s loss of the reserve currency role and hyperinflation are plausible consequences of disastrous economic policy.

How is it possible that “the world’s only superpower” can hold a presidential election without any discussion of these very real and serious problems being part of it?

How can anyone be excited or made hopeful about such an outcome?

This article first appeared at Paul Craig Roberts’ new website Institute For Political Economy.  Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His Internet columns have attracted a worldwide following.

Category:

drones, elections, environment, governments, hypocricy, interests groups, middle east, NDAA, super power, terrorists, tyranny, voters, wall street