Humanity in the modern age, treat celebrities like their predecessors of the old days treated their gods. It seems that human beings have to have something to idolize, look up to, admire, wish to be like or live their lives for. Celebrities are the new age obsession of modern man, who once built altars and brought offerings to their gods, the modern day devotee (fan) now does the same, purchasing their pictures, videos, music in a frenzied state of wanting to be next to them, if only through a conduit. The Modern day Priest is the peddler of these New Age Celebrities Gods. They pose as media moguls, press agents, producers and distributors of the mania that consumes the fans. These modern day idolaters scream, dance, sweat and cry over the “gods” they chose and keep their gods amply supplied with all the modern conveniences, and sometimes so modern, their “gods” can live in full furnished multimillion dollar homes. Like any religion, the worshippers keep the Gods and their Mediators in power as the devotee depletes his resources just for one more favor or act of kindness towards them. These acts of kindness maybe inclusive of but not exclusive of, autographs, pictures, handshakes, special tokens and VIP seating at a gala affair. When the devotee sees, reads or experiences the lives of their gods, they are energized living through their imagine world, or lack there of. They are excited by the challenges, the scandals, the lies, the deceit that shrouds their gods, because in order for their god to exist in the world of Celebrities they must face these and many other obstacles of success and/or failure. The Modern day devotee(fan) takes the life of the Celebrity in full scale of it’s own life, moving and progressing along as the God would demand of them. Dare they fall in the disfavor of their Gods or other devotees find them trifling. Some devotees become so obsessed they will kill for their god, or kill their god itself, destroying its life, history and perchance its effect on any other devotee other than they. Perhaps this is a displace madness, an obsession generated by the total lack of self ownership and self power. Perhaps the Celebrities while only temporary give the devotee the moment in time where they can feel overwhelmingly powerful and completely divorced from their miserable lives or completely disconnected from the miserable lives their very Gods live. It is part of the social construct. Children see parents as gods, infallible and invincible, and as adults this lifelike onus is given to the Celebrity of their own choosing. In the realm of Celebrity worship, there are no boundaries as anything that would prove disconcerting to another can be hidden in the privacy of the devotees home, away from the scrutiny of any onlooker. Devotees can get into fierce verbal battles with other devotees of other Gods, and like the Gladiators of old, can fight to the teeth about their particular god and its “well deserved” greatness and power.Like any usurpation of power handed over freely or forcefully taken, the taker is as much a victim as the giver. The co-dependency of this relationship between the Devotee and the God, keep them inexorably bound to each other creating a life long dance of fierce passion and need to give the each other validation. The concert hall, theater, stadium or fan club is the Church of the Celebrities. The devotees attend these churches religiously and participate in the ritual celebration of their Gods. The question to me becomes, what is missing from the human psyche that such props are needed? How has humanity come to this? And what is missing inside of the human being that this type of attribution of power is needed to be given to an “Idol” or object of their devotion. How is it that the social construct supports and promotes this type of mania?
Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith divorce: Lawyer Laura Wasser reportedly retained by Jada
From Huffington Post: Despite denying divorce rumors back in August, it appears that Will and Jada Pinkett Smith may be finally going their separate ways — at least according to In Touch Weekly. The magazine is reporting that Jada Smith recently met with celebrity divorce lawyer Laura Wasser, who has represented the likes of Britney Spears, Maria Shriver, and Kim Kardashian. A source tells In Touch that Smith has “finally begun to take steps to dissolve their marriage,” even reportedly turning down a role in Keanu Reeves directorial debut to spend time with her kids during this “difficult time.”
Newtown school shooting story already being changed by the media to eliminate eyewitness reports of a second shooter
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(NaturalNews) The national media is ablaze today with coverage of the tragic elementary school shooting in Newtown, CT, where 27 people have reportedly been killed, including 18 children.
As always, when violent shootings take place, honest journalists are forced to ask the question: “Does this fit the pattern of other staged shootings?”
One of the most important red flags of a staged shooting is a second gunman, indicating the shooting was coordinated and planned. There are often mind control elements at work in many of these shootings. The Aurora “Batman” shooter James Holmes, for example, was a graduate student actually working on mind control technologies funded by the U.S. government. There were also chemical mind control elements linked to Jared Lee Loughner, the shooter of Congresswomen Giffords in Arizona in 2011.
According to multiple eyewitness reports from Aurora, Colorado, including at least one caught on camera by mainstream media news reports in Colorado, James Holmes did not operate alone. There was a second shooter involved. But the media quickly eliminated any mention of a second shooter from its coverage, resorting to the typical cover story of a “lone gunman.”
Today, the exact same thing is happening with the Newton, CT school shooting.
Eyewitness reports of a second shooter now being “scrubbed” from the news
As the story of this shooting was first breaking, the news was reporting a second gunman.
FoxNews reported that this second gunman was “led out of the woods by officers” and then questioned. The original source of this report was the Connecticut Post.
A local CBS affiliate was also reporting the existence of a second gunman and said “Police believe there may be a second gunman and are looking for a red or maroon van with its back window blown out…”
A local CT CBS affiliate was also reporting, “CBS News reports that a potential second shooter is in custody and that SWAT is now investigating the home of the suspect. A witness tells WFSB-TV that a second man was taken out of the woods in handcuffs wearing a black jacket and camouflage pants and telling parents on the scene, ‘I did not do it.'”
But the more recent stories being put out by the media are scrubbing any mention of a second gunman and going with the “lone gunman” explanation, which holds about as much water as the “lone gunman” explanation of the JFK assassination.
“A lone gunman killed 27 people at an elementary school here, including 18 children, in a terrifying early Friday morning shooting spree,” reports USA Today. It makes no mention whatsoever of a second gunman.
NBC News is also now chiming in with the “lone gunman” version of the story, eliminating any mention of a second gunman from its coverage of the tragic event.
Another story authored by NBC News carries the title, “26 dead after lone gunman assaults Connecticut elementary school.” Once again, no mention of a second gunman as reported by eyewitnesses.
When key elements of the story keeps changing, something is fishy
Journalists are trained to ask questions, and one of the questions I have right now is: Why was the second gunman suddenly dropped from media coverage after the first few hours of this story developing?
And why is there always a second gunman in these recent mass shootings that seem to be engineered to maximize emotional shock value due to the sheer horror of all the innocent deaths?
This story is continuing to develop, and we’ll keep asking questions here on Natural News. Our hearts and prayers go out to the children and families impacted by this violent tragedy. Given the terrible loss of life that has taken place here, shouldn’t we all seek to get to the bottom of WHY these shootings all seem to fit a common pattern of multiple mind-controlled shooters followed by an almost immediate media cover-up of the facts?
For the sake of those children who were killed today, I want to get to the bottom of this and expose the REAL story, for the purpose of stopping this violence from targeting yet more innocents in the future.
My long-distance interest in the Sandy Hook events is based on ongoing work with a team of anti-pedophile journalists and activists who for over a decade have tracked and exposed American pedophile rings from Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam) to Beijing, China.
In all cases so far, our team discovered that these frontline pedophiles supply children for sexual services to VIPs traveling in Asia, including diplomats from the highest levels of the White House and State Department, top executives of major corporations, and heads of universities and aid agencies. Nearly all the patrons involved in this cruel pastime have backgrounds in US intelligence the CIA, NSA or State Department intelligence. The individuals are from diverse religious backgrounds Catholic, Jewish and Orthodox – while the core facilitators are often priests with Jesuit order, and to a lesser degree Franciscans and Benedictines.
At an orphanage in Cambodia, it took three years for our multinational team against death threats from armed policemen and undisguised hostility from NGOs to realize the expulsion of a pedophile coven, which included a former US ambassador to the United Nations, the celebrated head of a new media program at an Ivy League campus and a renowned correspondent based at the Tokyo American Club. When the police shut down their strong-encryption computer center and satellite uplink, used for sweetheart messaging and exporting child-porn videos, the American pedophiles stripped out all the programs, rendering a room of Apple computers inoperable. Later, at a celebration for the “liberation” of the orphans from the grip of these abusive men and their compliant wives, the teachers told me that the average age of the boys and girls who had been invited to sleep over at weekend parties was “10 years old.”
One member of our team who resided in Cambodia suffered an “accident” in a cowardly act of retaliation by that viscous coven with all the fingers on both hands broken and bleeding from his ears as he lay unconscious along a highway. It’s taken our brave friend three years to regain his formidable intellectual powers as a former political speechwriter. I use the term “coven” because these predators work as families parents, children and grandchildren indoctrinated from infancy that inflicting trauma on helpless children is life’s greatest pleasure.
Pedophilia is a psychiatric illness that is spreading worldwide because the globalist elite, much like a deranged fraternity from hazing hell, use it to control their peers and underlings through the commission of shameful and often lethal crimes. The photos are enough to prevent defection, informing to the police or sending leaks to the media.
The American power elite’s predilection for young boys has always been a privilege as shown in past scandals involving White House pages. One of the first postwar American ambassadors to Tokyo was a voracious pursuer of teenage boys inside gay bath houses frequented by rightwing Japanese militarists, the very same war criminals who had committed unspeakable atrocities against civilians for example converting Christian boys schools into male brothels. The shared lust of the former soldiers from both sides corrupted and ultimately reversed the attempt by a victorious Allied Supreme Command to transform Japan into a peaceful democracy. Authoritarian perversion remains in command.
In recent years with the rise of Internet file-sharing, a major shift in pedophile profiles has appeared in the increasingly lower age of pedophiles. It is shocking that college-age men, who should be involved in same-age affairs (with either sex we are not being judgmental about preference) are instead eager to abduct kids who are barely out of infancy and videotape brutal rape scenes to share with their online fellows. Today, young men of college age serve as procurers, pimps and producers of child porn for their sugar daddies.
These younger pedophiles, at least while in Asia, are often studying abroad on US government fellowships, CIA grants or working for Soros-funded NGOs. In Beijing, I had a verbal sparring match with a young American video producer who was making a documentary on child abductions by Chinese adoption rings. He had no intention of saving kids from these criminals, since his stated ambition was to launch a pornography industry in China. This was the son of a leading faculty member at a Connecticut prep school, which sponsors troubled boys and prepares them for a life of male prostitution with dormitory screenings of videos showing the gang rape of preteen girls with the knowledge and sometimes approval of teachers, according to testimony submitted to court.
After first being a victim of sexual assault and then acting as a perpetrator against younger boys or girls, many of these young men develop passive-aggressive personalities. When challenged, they tend react with suppressed rage under a blank expression and then get their revenge with a strange prank against their accusers.
Many women might nod in agreement that men are awful creatures, but from our experience in Southeast Asia, there are also many female predators. On an early-morning visit to a Peace Corps camp on the Laotian border, a friend in the U.S. Army was stunned to discover that every American women all graduates of elite East Coast colleges was asleep with a 12-to-14 girl tucked inside her bed. Americans are not alone in this sickness of mind and body Europeans, Australians and Japanese are among the notorious child molesters. Sexual domination of weaker individuals, especially children who cannot defend their rights, is a hallmark of imperialism.
There is one more element involved in the pedophile industry: the organized crime groups that finance the purchase or kidnapping of children. These gangsters are not just low-life elements but also include professional gangsters – “businessmen” with connections to politicians and bankers.
A point that needs mentioning is that during youth, I spent a summer at a prep school in Connecticut on a National Science Foundation program but it had nothing to do with MK-ULTRA.
Mind Control in Connecticut: Catcher in the Rye
In 1942, at the start of World War II, the Jesuit order opened Fairfield University in southern Connecticut. The new Catholic college was erected on the country estate of Brewster Jennings, then chairman of the Socony Mobil Oil Company, which after a series of mergers became ExxonMobil. After serving as a naval officer in World War I, the Hartford-born oil executive graduated from Yale and became closely associated with the OSS and CIA. He founded the Avalon Foundation, since renamed the Mellon Foundation, which has funded pacification programs inside American society. (Outed spy Valerie Plame worked under cover at the Brewster Jennings “brass plate” company, which acted as the CIA’s counter-proliferation department.) Although the information remains classified, it had to be OSS chief Bill Donovan who prompted the formation of Fairfield University as an intelligence training center for potential CIA recruits vetted from the elite preparatory schools in Connecticut.
During the war in Europe, a non-commissioned office of Russian Jewish descent assigned to U.S. Defense Intelligence worked on Operation Paperclip (the transport of Nazi scientists to U.S. laboratories) and Project Artichoke (smuggling German Jews into Palestine in support of a Zionist state). His name was J.D. “Jerry” Salinger. Later, he served in the Counter-Intelligence Corps, debriefing and reassigning Nazi officers, including those who had conducted psychiatric experiments on prisoners of war.
At war’s end, Salinger lived in Tarrytown, New York, but was soon ordered to move across the state border to Stamford, Connecticut, close to Fairfield University. He resided in a converted barn, out of public view, presumably to continue his special area of intelligence work, the field testing of the MK-ULTRA methods refined by the sadistically clinical Dr. Sidney Gottlieb (the pseudonym of Joseph Schieder), who ran the main mind-control lab at Jesuit-run Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., which is also a finishing school for diplomats in the State Department.
In the Connecticut countryside during his “lost years”, Salinger penned “The Catcher in the Rye”, which contains the command code-words for MK-ULTRA assassins. The protagonist Holden Caulfield is a study of a paranoiac passive-aggressive character, whose favorite expression is: “You’re killing me.”
CIA Partners with Organized Crime in New England
Around 1950, while Salinger was in Stamford, the CIA recruited a South Boston convict nicknamed “Whitey” Bulger to supply young runaways for mind-control experiments under the fast-expanding MK-ULTRA programs being set up at 44 universities across the United States. The centers for the New England drug experiments were probably the Whiting Forensic Facility at the Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middleford, Connecticut, and Bridgewater Hospital in Massachusetts, the region’s psychiatric facilities for the criminally insane.
With CIA backing, Bulger built up his Winter Hill Gang, composed mainly of Irishmen, who strong-armed their way to control over the Boston’s gambling scene and drug trafficking. While little is known about the political activities of the Bulger gang, its rise to crime dominance coincided with the expansion of weapons smuggling into Northern Ireland in support of the IRA. A parallel cross-Atlantic traffic in drugs (and illegal immigration in the reverse direction) began at the same time. The predominantly Irish political machine of Boston from the Prohibition Era smuggling tycoon Joseph Kennedy Sr, to House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill gave their blessings to the flourishing organized crime network and voiced support for the patriotic IRA “freedom fighters,” who returned the favor to Washington with murderous attacks on American-loathing British figures such as Lord Montbatten.
Connecticut, under control of the Patriciarca crime family, was off-limits to Bulger. The day-to-day operations of the Sicilian immigrants were run by Bill Grasso, head of the clan that later produced Connecticut’s first female governor.
Starting in the 1980s, the DOJ, FBI and CIA launched an all-out war against the Patriciarca mob in order to install their puppet Whitey Bulger as crime boss of New England. FBI agent John Connelly took credit for infiltrating and busting up the Patriarca clan, but later he was exposed as a mole for Bulger. By the early 1990s, Bulger set up his Jai Alai Associates, a betting syndicate based in Connecticut and Florida. Finally, all of New England was safe for CIA smuggling, support for terrorism, money-laundering and mind-control operations.
Whitey Bulger In 2011, Bulger made headlines with his arrest in Malibu, California, where he had lived for more than a decade “undetected” despite being on the FBI “most wanted” list – on a long vacation thanks to his relationship with the CIA. If there was one point of irritation, however, between the Irish mobster and his controllers, it was his opposition to drug use by teenagers. After seeing first-hand how MK-ULTRA had destroyed the minds of his young recruits, Bulger ordered his gang members never to sell drugs to teenagers. Even a ruthless mobster has more decency that the self-styled “patriots” who run the intelligence services.
Whatever its genteel image of colonial homes and autumnal foliage, Connecticut has a sleazy underside embedded in its servant pool, welfare households and the chronic unemployed. Bridgeport, with its low-income Puerto Rican population, is a major center for prostitution and recruitment of prostitutes for VIP clients in New York and the nation’s capital.
The pedophile rings have a social-economic hierarchy at the top are the VIP clients, then the intermediaries, often Catholic priests or social-services managers, further down the ladder the operatives losers recruited from prep schools and college campuses – and finally the supply itself – money-hungry willing parents and the unwillingly abducted children.
Newtown, like Fairfield and Stamford, is part of the Diocese of Bridgeport, which got into legal trouble in 2001 due to lawsuits by 23 victims of pedophilia committed by priests. Bishop Edward Egan, then diocese head, was a protector of sexual offender priests, sending them to other areas when parental complaints reached the ears of the police. After the plaintiffs won an out-of-court settlement, the Diocese petitioned the US Supreme Court to quash the thousands of documents detailing the beastly sex crimes. In 2009 Opus Dei honcho Justice Antonin Scalia determined that the court records should not be made public.
In this past year’s pedophile scandal at Penn State, another Opus Dei leader, former FBI director Louis Freeh, was hired as a consultant by the Nittany Lions football team. His whitewash report put most of the blame on head coach Joe Paterno, while suppressing the names and backgrounds of the wealthy and powerful boosters who were provided sexual services from the young football players.
In Connecticut, the Vatican had an interest in wiping the slate clean, and so did the CIA. The clean slate turned out to be a bloody mess.
Agency-Spawned Pedophiles
The MK-ULTRA program that reached into campuses across Connecticut quickly created a human garbage heap of wrecked minds and twisted souls. The child abuse and drugs routinely administered to young trainees led to a permanent social fixture of sadism and sexual abuse throughout New England from the gutter up to the governing class.
In 2011, a Newtown resident named Edwin Wilson was arrested for having a months-long sexual relationship with a 4-year-old girl and producing child-porn videos of their sexual encounters. The arrest was a part of a wide crackdown order the state attorney general, Richard Blumenthal which boosted his successful campaign in the U.S. Senate race. Other cases included: a 24-year-old Hispanic male in Hartford who shot videos of sex with a pre-teen girl; a DJ in Plainfield arraigned on similar charges, an older theater and film teacher accused of using Taft school’s equipment to make kiddie porn the list goes on in sickening detail. Fairfield University, where MK-ULTRA was implanted into New England, recently saw two staffers implicated in the rape of 23 Haitian boys during the earthquake relief effort.
Adam Lanza fits the profile of a pedophile-ring recruit young enough to approach children at the local schools and in the churches, possessing the computer skills to produce child-porn videos and typically passive-aggressive in personality. The Lanzas attended the Saint Rosa of Lima Church, where eight child parishioners were among the shooting victims. Santa Rosa is the very same order that sponsors the western-state hospital that employed Michael Jackson’s physician Dr. Conrad Murray. As in the case of Jackson’s Neverland, after a child-sex experiment blossoms, it must be shut down.
The Lone Gun-Boy Theory
Nancy Lanza kept an arsenal of firearms, and ordered her son to be constantly under watch by older boys. She must have had good reason for being armed to the teeth. Judging from her hoard of rifles and hand guns, she was expecting an all-out assault from a coven of pedophiles, not an attack by a single shooter. The lone gun-boy theory is sheer nonsense her son may have been an accomplice in giving the assailants access to his home but ended up murdered as a patsy.
The coven is larger and more powerful than Mrs. Lanza could ever have imagined. Sexual violation is the key to creating intelligence agents and assassins who are impervious to reason and mercy, lacking any original thoughts or moral qualms. Plus a supply of children is needed in Congress and the White House to entertain the satraps and moguls from Colombian drug lords to Israeli weapons dealers and French money launderers, not to mention America’s own homegrown pervs.
If the culprits had been Adam Lanza and his pals, then their response to grounding would have been something like posting photos and addresses of naked children. The method of the shooting point-blank execution-style gun shots indicate that the assailants were professional hit men, probably allied with the Winter Hill Gang.
The Sandy Hook assault happened probably because of a split between competing institutions and diverging policies. On one hand, the gangland figures who cooperated with CIA mind-control program that promoted child-sex as a means of ensuring obedience and secrecy were being challenged by politicians playing up parental demands to clean up the scandalous child-sex problem in Connecticut.
The dirty FBI agent John Connelly was more of a double agent and go-between for the Feds and not simply a Winter Hill mole as portraying at his sentencing. The arrest of Whitey Bulger was a pure-and-simple double-cross by the FBI and CIA, who had used him as an ally in MK-ULTRA and informant for more than a half-century. In his ambitious drive to win a U.S. senatorial seat, state attorney general and now Senator Blumenthal broke the basic rules of mob cooperation. And now that has led to a war on the streets and in the schools.
Unlike the Sicilian crime families who went down easy, the fighting Irish criminals can be counted on to put up a street battle with the same flair as in the movie “The Gangs of New York.” The gangsters have no shortage of allies in the pimps, drug dealers, pedophiles, punks and deranged freaks who have been caught up in the sudden dragnet. The police are outnumbered and easily outgunned. It’s happened before, as in Fort Apache in the South Bronx. Sandy Hook is just the first installment of a payback. If the Feds push any harder, then Bridgeport and Boston will soon be looking like Belfast during the troubles or Beirut in the bad old days.
Stop Drugging the Kids
The mass media is under pressure to cover up the incident with sympathetic blather instead of a sustained probe. Forensic evidence is being literally buried. America is moving on where to, nobody knows. The politicians and cops are now silent and glum. Relying on arrests and wiretapping, they have forgotten that the fight against crime begins with addressing social justice, economic fairness and education and in some unfortunate cases, psychiatric care.
I am Adam Lanza’s Doctor by Rima E Laibow, MD
Was a Senate seat worth the lives of all those children and teachers? Blumenthal, who paints himself as a clone of the erstwhile New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, will have to live with that question for the remainder of his life. Is the CIA satisfied that its mind-control techniques that have created hordes of homicidal monsters from Iraq to Libya and now Connecticut?
Richard Blumenthal
The lesson of Sandy Hook is that mind-control cannot itself be controlled. Programmed killers are like robots without power-off switches. The process of transforming innocent children into robots through sexual abuse is inhumane and a crime. Whatever MK-ULTRA is called today – since we know it still exists after seeing the Abu Ghraib Prison photos – it must be shut down forever or the murderous nightmare will go on and on. And mind-altering drugs are not just for sinister purposes, since at least 60 percent of U.S. children are on a pharmaceutical dosages long before they can learn how to think. Even parents act as mind-controllers against their own kids.
Now, with the investigation terminated, comes the diversionary exercise of “gun control”, a national effort led by Joe Biden, a member of the Knights of Malta, a politician with an intelligence background who is sworn to protect the interests of the Vatican. Say it ain’t so, Joe. Leave intact the right of armed self-defense or the gangsters will take over everything, but get rid of the drugs and end the mind control and America will be a safer place, especially for its children.
Yoichi Shimatsu, a science writer based in Hong Kong, provides herbal therapy and health counseling to the victims of the Fukushima radiation crisis.
“[My staff] and I hope the people of Newtown don’t have it crash on their head later.” –Connecticut Medical Examiner D. Wayne Carver II, MD, December 15, 2012
Inconsistencies and anomalies abound when one turns an analytical eye to news of the Newtown school massacre. The public’s general acceptance of the event’s validity and faith in its resolution suggests a deepened credulousness borne from a world where almost all news and information is electronically mediated and controlled. The condition is reinforced through the corporate media’s unwillingness to push hard questions vis-à-vis Connecticut and federal authorities who together bottlenecked information while invoking prior restraint through threats of prosecutorial action against journalists and the broader citizenry seeking to interpret the event on social media.
Along these lines on December 19 the Connecticut State Police assigned individual personnel to each of the 26 families who lost a loved one at Sandy Hook Elementary. “The families have requested no press interviews,” State Police assert on their behalf, “and we are asking that this request be honored.[1] The de facto gag order will be in effect until the investigation concludes—now forecast to be “several months away” even though lone gunman Adam Lanza has been confirmed as the sole culprit.[2]
With the exception of an unusual and apparently contrived appearance by Emilie Parker’s alleged father, victims’ family members have been almost wholly absent from public scrutiny.[3] What can be gleaned from this and similar coverage raises many more questions and glaring inconsistencies than answers. While it sounds like an outrageous claim, one is left to inquire whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place—at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation’s news media have described.
The Accidental Medical Examiner An especially important yet greatly underreported feature of the Sandy Hook affair is the wholly bizarre performance of Connecticut’s top medical examiner H. Wayne Carver II at a December 15 press conference. Carver’s unusual remarks and behavior warrant close consideration because in light of his professional notoriety they appear remarkably amateurish and out of character.
H. Wayne Carver II has an extremely self-assured, almost swaggering presence in Connecticut state administration. In early 2012 Carver threatened to vacate his position because of state budget cuts and streamlining measures that threatened his professional autonomy over the projects and personnel he oversaw. Along these lines the pathologist has gone to excessive lengths to demonstrate his findings and expert opinion in court proceedings. For example, in a famous criminal case Carver “put a euthanized pig through a wood chipper so jurors could match striations on the bone fragments with the few ounces of evidence that prosecutors said were on the remains of the victim.”[4] One would therefore expect Carver to be in his element while identifying and verifying the exact ways in which Sandy Hook’s children and teachers met their violent demise.
Yet the H. Wayne Carver who showed up to the December 15 press conference is an almost entirely different man, appearing apprehensive and uncertain, as if he is at a significant remove from the postmortem operation he had overseen. The multiple gaffes, discrepancies, and hedges in response to reporters’ astute questions suggest that he is either under coercion or an imposter. While the latter sounds untenable it would go a long way in explaining his sub-pedestrian grasp of medical procedures and terminology.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE0OT5od9DA With this in mind extended excerpts from this exchange are worthy of recounting here in print. Carver is accompanied by Connecticut State Police Lieutenant H. Paul Vance and additional Connecticut State Police personnel. The reporters are off-screen and thus unidentified so I have assigned them simple numerical identification based on what can be discerned of their voices.
Reporter #1: So the rifle was the primary weapon? H. Wayne Carver: Yes. Reporter #1: [Inaudible] Carver: Uh (pause). Question was what caliber were these bullets. And I know—I probably know more about firearms than most pathologists but if I say it in court they yell at me and don’t make me answer [sic]—so [nervous laughter]. I’ll let the police do that for you. Reporter #2: Doctor can you tell us about the nature of the wounds. Were they at very close range? Were the children shot at from across the room? Carver: Uhm, I only did seven of the autopsies. The victims I had ranged from three to eleven wounds apiece and I only saw two of them with close range shooting. Uh, but that’s, uh y’know, a sample. Uh, I really don’t have detailed information on the rest of the injuries. [Given that Carver is Connecticut’s top coroner and in charge of the entire postmortem this is a startling admission.-JT] Reporter #3: But you said that the long rifle was used? Carver: Yes. Reporter #3: But the long rifle was discovered in the car. State Police Lieutenant Vance: That’s not correct, sir. Unidentified reporter #4: How many bullets or bullet fragments did you find in the autopsy. Can you tell us that? Carver: Oh. I’m lucky I can tell you how many I found. I don’t know. There were lots of them, OK? This type of weapon is not, uh … the bullets are designed in such a fashion that the energy—this is very clinical. I shouldn’t be saying this. But the energy is deposited in the tissue so the bullet stays in [the tissue]. [In fact, the Bushmaster .223 Connecticut police finally claimed was used in the shooting is designed for long range field use and utilizes high velocity bullets averaging 3,000 feet-per-second, the energy of which even at considerable distance would penetrate several bodies before finally coming to rest in tissue.] Reporter #5: How close were the injuries? Carver: Uh, all the ones (pause). I believe say, yes [sic]. Reporter #6: In what shape were the bodies when the families were brought to check [inaudible]. Carver: Uh, we did not bring the bodies and the families into contact. We took pictures of them, uhm, of their facial features. We have, uh, uh—it’s easier on the families when you do that. Un, there is, uh, a time and place for the up close and personal in the grieving process, but to accomplish this we thought it would be best to do it this way and, uh, you can sort of, uh … You can control a situation depending on the photographer, and I have very good photographers. Uh, but uh— Reporter #7: Do you know the difference of the time of death between the mother in the house and the bodies recovered [in the school]. Carver: Uh, no, I don’t. Sorry [shakes head excitedly] I don’t! [embarrassed laugh] Reporter #8: Did the gunman kill himself with the rifle? Carver: No. I—I don’t know yet. I’ll-I’ll examine him tomorrow morning. But, but I don’t think so. [Why has Carver left arguably the most important specimen for last? And why doesn’t he think Lanza didn’t commit suicide with the rifle?] Reporter #9: In terms of the children, were they all found in one classroom or— Carver: Uhm … [inaudible] [Turns to Lieutenant Vance] Paul and company will deal with that. Reporter #9: What? Carver: Paul and company will deal with that. Lieutenant Vance is going to handle that one. Reporter #10: Was there any evidence of a struggle? Any bruises? Carver: No. Reporter #11: The nature of the shooting; is there any sense that there was a lot of care taken with precision [inaudible] or randomly? Carver: [Exhales while glancing upward, as if frustrated] Both. It’s a very difficult question to answer … You’d think after thousands of people I’ve seen shot but I … It’s … If I attempted to answer it in court there’d be an objection and then they’d win—[nervous laughter]. [Who would win? Why does an expert whose routine job as a public employee is to provide impartial medical opinion concerned with winning and losing in court? Further, Carver is not in court but rather at a press conference.] Reporter #12: Doctor, can you discuss the fatal injuries to the adults? Carver: Ah, they were similar to those of the children. Reporter #13: Doctor, the children you had autopsied, where in the bodies were they hit? Carver: Uhm [pause]. All over. All over. Reporter #14: Were [the students] sitting at their desks or were they running away when this happened? Carver: I’ll let the guys who—the scene guys talk—address that issue. I, uh, obviously I was at the scene. Obviously I’m very experienced in that. But there are people who are, uh, the number one professionals in that. I’ll let them—let that [voice trails off]. Reporter [#15]: How many boys and how many girls [were killed]? Carver: [Slowly shaking his head] I don’t know.
(Added information from research about the CT Medical Examiner.
More Unanswered Questions and Inconsistencies In addition to Carver’s remarks several additional chronological and evidentiary contradictions in the official version of the Sandy Hook shooting are cause for serious consideration and leave doubt in terms of how the event transpired vis-à-vis the way authorities and major media outlets have presented it. It is now well known that early on journalists reported that Adam Lanza’s brother Ryan Lanza was reported to be the gunman, and that pistols were used in the shooting rather than a rifle. Yet these are merely the tip of the iceberg.
When Did the Gunman Arrive?
After Adam Lanza fatally shot and killed his mother at his residence, he drove himself to the elementary school campus, arriving one half hour after classes had commenced. Dressed in black, Lanza proceeds completely unnoticed through an oddly vacant parking lot with a military style rifle and shoots his way through double glass doors and a brand new yet apparently poorly engineered security system. Further, initial press accounts suggest how no school personnel or students heard gunshots and no 911 calls are made until after Lanza begins firing inside the facility. “It was a lovely day,” Sandy Hook fourth grade teacher Theodore Varga said. And then, suddenly and unfathomably, gunshots rang out. “I can’t even remember how many,” Varga said.[5] The recollection contrasts sharply with an updated version of Lanza’s arrival where at 9:30AM he
walked up to the front entrance and fired at least a half dozen rounds into the glass doors. The thunderous sound of Lanza blowing an opening big enough to walk through the locked school door caused Principal Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Scherlach to bolt from a nearby meeting room to investigate. He shot and killed them both as they ran toward him.
Breaching the school’s security system in such a way would have likely triggered some automatic alert of school personnel. Further, why would the school’s administrators run toward an armed man who has just noisily blasted his way into the building? Two other staff members attending the meeting with Hocksprung and Scherlach sustained injuries “in the hail of bullets” but returned to the aforementioned meeting room and managed a call to 911.[6] This contrasted with earlier reports where the first 911 call claimed students “were trapped in a classroom with the adult shooter who had two guns.”[7] Recordings of the first police dispatch following the 911 call at 9:35:50 indicate that someone “thinks there’s someone shooting in the building.”[8] There is a clear distinction between potentially hearing shots somewhere in the building and being almost mortally caught in a “hail of bullets.”
How did the gunman fire so many shots in such little time?
According to Dr. Carver and State Police, Lanza shot each victim between 3 and 11 times during a 5 to 7 minute span. If one is to average this out to 7 bullets per individual—excluding misses—Lanza shot 182 times, or once every two seconds. Yet according to the official story Lanza was the sole assassin and armed with only one weapon. Thus if misses and changing the gun’s 30-shot magazine at least 6 times are added to the equation Lanza must have been averaging about one shot per second—extremely skilled use of a single firearm for a young man with absolutely no military training and who was on the verge of being institutionalized. Still, an accurate rendering of the event is even more difficult to arrive at because the chief medical examiner admittedly has no idea exactly how the children were shot or whether a struggle ensued.
Where is the Photo and Video Evidence?
Photographic and video evidence is at once profuse yet lacking in terms of its capacity to demonstrate that a mass shooting took place on the scale described by authorities. For example, in an era of ubiquitous video surveillance of public buildings especially no visual evidence of Lanza’s violent entry has emerged. And while studio snapshots of the Sandy Hook victims abound there is little if any eyewitness testimony of anyone who’s observed the corpses except for Carver and his staff, and they appear almost as confused about the conditions of the deceased as any layperson watching televised coverage of the event. Nor are there any routine eyewitness, photo or video evidence of the crime scene’s aftermath—broken glass, blasted security locks and doors, bullet casings and holes, bloodied walls and floors—all of which are common in such investigations and reportage.
Why Were Medical Personnel Turned Away From the Crime Scene?
Oddly enough medical personnel are forced to set up their operation not at the school where the dead and injured lay, but rather at the fire station several hundred feet away. This flies in the face of standard medical operating procedure where personnel are situated as close to the scene as possible. There is no doubt that the school had ample room to accommodate such personnel. Yet medical responders who rushed to Sandy Hill Elementary upon receiving word of the tragedy were denied entry to the school and forced to set up primary and secondary triages off school grounds and wait for the injured to be brought to them. Shortly after the shooting “as other ambulances from neighboring communities rolled up, sirens blaring, the first responders slowly realized that their training would be tragically underutilized on this horrible day. ‘You may not be able to save everybody, but you damn well try,’” 44 year old emergency medical technician James Wolff told NBC News. “’And when (we) didn’t have the opportunity to put our skills into action, it’s difficult.’”[9]
In light of this, who were the qualified medical practitioners pronounced the 20 children and 7 adults dead? Who decided that none could be revived? Carver and his staff are apparently the only medical personnel to have attended to the victims—yet this was in the postmortem conducted several hours later. Such slipshod handling of the crime scene leaves the State of Connecticut open to a potential array of hefty civil claims by families of the slain.
Did a mass evacuation of the school take place?
Sandy Hook Elementary is attended by 600 students. Yet there is no photographic or video evidence of an evacuation on this scale. Instead, limited video and photographic imagery suggest that a limited evacuation of perhaps at most several dozen students occurred.
A highky A highly circulated photo depicts students walking in a single file formation with their hands on each others’ shoulders and eyes shut. Yet this was the image of a drill that took place prior to the event itself.[10] Most other photos are portraits of individual children. Despite aerial video footage of the event documenting law enforcement scouring the scene and apprehending one or more suspects in the wooded area nearby the school,[11] there is no such evidence that a mass exodus of children from the school transpired once law enforcement pronounced Sandy Hook secure. Nor are there videos or photos of several hundred students and their parents at the oft-referenced fire station nearby where students were routed for parent pick up.
Sound Bite Prism and the Will to Believe Outside of a handful of citizen journalists and alternative media commentators Sandy Hill’s dramatically shifting factual and circumstantial terrain has escaped serious critique because it is presented through major media’s carefully constructed prism of select sound bites alongside a widespread and longstanding cultural impulse to accept the pronouncements of experts, be they bemused physicians, high ranking law enforcement officers, or political leaders demonstrating emotionally-grounded concern. Political scientist W. Lance Bennett calls this the news media’s “authority-disorder bias.” “Whether the world is returned to a safe, normal place,” Bennett writes, “or whether the very idea of a normal world is called into question, the news is preoccupied with order, along with related questions of whether authorities are capable of establishing or restoring it.”[12]
Despite Carver’s bizarre performance and law enforcement authorities’ inability to settle on and relay simple facts, media management’s impulse to assure audiences and readerships of the Newtown community’s inevitable adjustment to its trauma and loss with the aid of the government’s protective oversight—however incompetent that may be—far surpasses a willingness to undermine this now almost universal news media narrative with messy questions and suggestions of intrigue. This well-worn script is one the public has been conditioned to accept. If few people relied on such media to develop their world view this would hardly be a concern. Yet this is regrettably not the case.
The Sandy Hook tragedy was on a far larger scale than the past year’s numerous slaughters, including the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting and the Batman theater shooting in Colorado. It also included glaringly illogical exercises and pronouncements by authorities alongside remarkably unusual evidentiary fissures indistinguishable by an American political imagination cultivated to believe that the corporate, government and military’s sophisticated system of organized crime is largely confined to Hollywood-style storylines while really existing malfeasance and crises are without exception returned to normalcy.
If recent history is a prelude the likelihood of citizens collectively assessing and questioning Sandy Hook is limited even given the event’s overtly superficial trappings. While the incident is ostensibly being handled by Connecticut law enforcement, early reports indicate how federal authorities were on the scene as the 911 call was received. Regardless of where one stands on the Second Amendment and gun control, it is not unreasonable to suggest the Obama administration complicity or direct oversight of an incident that has in very short order sparked a national debate on the very topic—and not coincidentally remains a key piece of Obama’s political platform.
The move to railroad this program through with the aid of major media and an irrefutable barrage of children’s portraits, “heartfelt” platitudes and ostensible tears neutralizes a quest for genuine evidence, reasoned observation and in the case of Newtown honest and responsible law enforcement. Moreover, to suggest that Obama is not capable of deploying such techniques to achieve political ends is to similarly place ones faith in image and interpretation above substance and established fact, the exact inclination that in sum has brought America to such an impasse. Notes
[8] RadioMan911TV, “Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting Newtown Police / Fire and CT State Police,” Youtube, December 14, 2012. At several points in this recording audio is scrambled, particularly following apprehension of a second shooting suspect outside the school, suggesting a purposeful attempt to withhold vital information.
[12] W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion 9th Edition, Boston: Longman, 2012, 47. Andrew Whooley provided suggestions and research for this article.
Thursday, December 20th, 2012 | Posted by Niall Bradley
The massacre of 20 children and 7 adults at the Sandy Hook elementary school last Friday was one more in a long line of atrocious mass murders committed in the USA. By now, five days later, an official version of events has more or less solidified to explain the chain of events. The familiar ‘lone gunman’ narrative has once more stoked the hot-button issue of gun control and left the general population as clueless as ever as to why people suddenly ‘go postal’ and target the most vulnerable members of society.
On closer inspection, however, there is clearly more to many of these mass shootings than meets the eye. Very often the earliest reports present information that directly contradicts key foundations of the final ‘official’ analysis of events. Granted, confusion is natural when a story breaks, but some of the initial reports conflict so completely with the lone gunman narrative that I’m going to compile them here and then try to put this tragedy in a more objective context. In his speech at the Sandy Hook Interfaith Prayer Vigil in Newtown, Connecticut on Sunday night, President Obama quoted the following biblical passage:
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” ~ 2 Corinthians 4:18
The traumatised Newtown community deserves the facts without the spin. Everyone touched by this brutal event deserves to know what really happened, so let’s fix our eyes on what remains unseen… A 20-year-old ‘tech geek’ named Adam Lanza is supposed to have snapped early last Friday, December 14th, shot dead his mother Nancy Lanza, loaded her car up with her guns and ammo, then driven it across town to his former school, the Sandy Hook Elementary School, shot dead 27 people in two classrooms and an adjoining hallway, then turned one of his guns on himself. That’s how most will now remember the shooting, but is that actually what happened? All the child victims were first-graders between the ages of 6 and 7. If there’s any saving grace to be found in this event, it’s that it was all over within minutes. Police were reportedly on the scene “instantaneously”, according to Connecticut State Police Commander, Lt. Vance and by then the shooting had ended. Listed among the slain school teachers and administrative staff was the school principal, 47-year-old Dawn Hochsprung. Right here we encounter our first problem:
The Newtown Bee December 14, 2012 Sandy Hook School Principal Dawn Hochsprung told The Bee that a masked man entered the school with a rifle and started shooting multiple shots – more than she could count – that went “on and on.”
How could the principal have survived to give this statement to local press describing what happened … if she was one of the first to be killed? Incidentally, The Newtown Bee‘s article was taken down on Monday December 17th. Of course, a plausible explanation is that a reporter mistook another teacher for the principal.
We were initially told that two handguns – a Glock and a Sig Sauer – were found next to the body of the dead shooter, while a third weapon, a .223-caliber rifle was also recovered “in the trunk of a car” later, in the school’s parking lot. All of the weapons were allegedly legally bought and registered in Nancy Lanza’s name. The car was later identified as a black Honda, also registered in her name. More weapons have since been introduced to the story but we’ll get back to those later on.
Besides anonymous ‘law enforcement officials’ telling the media that Adam Lanza was a former pupil at the school, they also said his mother was currently a teacher there, that she was found among the dead and that her son had specifically sought out her classroom first. But when it emerged that teaching staff at the school had never heard of a Nancy Lanza, it was suggested that she was a substitute teacher whose name therefore mightn’t appear on staff lists.
But this claim too has disappeared down the memory hole because it’s now known that Nancy had no connection with the school. Adam Lanza was in fact home-schooled. Nancy Lanza has since been painted as a “survivalist” who loved firearms, taught her sons how to shoot and was “stockpiling” because she was “worried about economic collapse.”
Daily Mail, UK December 16, 2012 Last night it also emerged Nancy was a member of the Doomsday Preppers movement, which believes people should prepare for end of the world. Her former sister-in-law Marsha said she had turned her home ‘into a fortress’. She added: ‘Nancy had a survivalist philosophy which is why she was stockpiling guns. She had them for defense. ‘She was stockpiling food. She grew up on a farm in New Hampshire. She was skilled with guns. We talked about preppers and preparing for the economy collapsing.’
It’s not difficult to see that their efforts to insinuate that Nancy Lanza was somehow responsible for this massacre by being an irresponsible mother also serve to rile the large contingent of gun owners in the country, particularly the far-right who see a conspiracy on the government’s part to “take back our guns.” More on that later, but for now I just want to note that all of the Lanza family members seemed to live more or less normal middle-class lives. Yes, the parents were divorced, but it was apparently amicable and both put their own needs second to those of their children (and anyway, divorce in the US these days is decidedly ‘normal middle class’).
Despite “family insiders” claiming that he was a “deeply disturbed kid”, Adam Lanza, like so many other alleged ‘lone(r) gunmen’ before him, does not fit the profile of a mass-murdering maniac. His 24-year-old brother, Ryan Lanza, said he hadn’t seen his brother since 2010. This fact brings into question Ryan’s claim that his younger brother may have had his identity card on his person at the school shooting. Although perhaps the question that needs to be asked here is, why would a person bother to carry identification with them after going to the trouble of dressing up in a bullet-proof vest, mask and black camouflage gear and going on a killing spree …
The live emergency services audio feed from the scene reveals some interesting observations from first responders that have been completely overlooked by the mainstream media. Note that the unedited version lasts over two hours, so the abridged version I’m going to quote from has a compressed sequence of events that are not in real time. In this abridged version, we hear at 1.38′ a report that gunfire is still being heard, even though the shooting was supposed to have ended by the time police arrived. The next report at 2.35′ says that the shooting has stopped and the school is “in lockdown”. At 3.23′, the police relay a teacher’s report that she saw “two shadows running past the gym”. This is followed by another officer on the scene who says, “Yeh, we got ‘em, they’re coming at me! … [inaudible] … coming up the driveway real slowly!” That same officer at 5.40′ says he has them “proned out”, which presumably means he has apprehended them and they are laid out on the ground, before another officer comes on to say, “be aware that we do have a second [inaudible] …”
Later on, at 19.10′, an officer who sounds out of breath, like he’s just given chase, reports what I think sounds like “these guys” followed certainly by “multiple weapons, including long rifles and shotgun”. If these were found so early on, why were they not included in the initial press reports which stated that three firearms had been found – the above mentioned Glock, Sig Sauer and Bushmaster AR-15 rifle? Further conflicting, and possibly planted evidence was thrown into the mix by ‘law enforcement officials’ when they published video footage of a long weapon being retrieved from the trunk of a car. Look closely and you’ll see that it’s a shotgun, not a rifle. In addition, this ‘discovery’ was made late in the day (it’s dark outside), while the Bushmaster rifle was first reported found “in the trunk of a car” much earlier in the day. This would logically suggest that the rifle and shotgun were found in the trunks of two different cars. Besides the above two suspects “proned out” in front of the school, another suspected gunman was apprehended after he gave chase, this time in the woods next to the school:
The police are clearly chasing someone whom they appear to apprehend in the middle of the woods next to the school, a fact confirmed by several eyewitnesses:YouTube – Veterans Today –
Perhaps most astonishingly, this suspect arrested in the woods was named in an Associated Press report as 24-year-old Ryan Lanza. The original report has long since vanished of course, but you can see it referenced here. This was despite the fact that Ryan had already been named as the deceased suspect inside the school, lying next to two handguns.
Ryan Lanza was actually at work in Hoboken, New Jersey, that morning when his name and photo began circulating in the media. And so, for most of Friday, the ‘lone shooter’ was erroneously reported as “Ryan Lanza, confirmed dead.” At the same time, we were being told that Ryan’s girlfriend and a room-mate were reported missing, also from Hoboken, New Jersey.
So this isn’t just a case of mistaken identity, as later claimed when it was suggested that Adam had a piece of identification belonging to his brother on his person. Not one, but BOTH Lanza brothers were being placed by ‘law enforcement officials’ at the scene of the shooting. It could be that Ryan’s quick reflexes to leave his workplace to get on a bus to go back to his apartment while protesting innocence via his Facebook page may have saved his life.
Now remember, all of this confusion somehow resulted from a single guy going into a school and shooting children and teachers and then shooting himself, all within three to five minutes. Surely it should have been fairly easy to rapidly and concretely identify the details of such a crime and a rough layout of the scene? What it’s starting to look like is that the Lanzas were framed for this mass shooting in advance. Long before any suspects were named, and even as we were being told that Nancy Lanza was among the dead at the school, we were told that police were investigating a murder in … Hoboken, New Jersey, where a body had been found at the home of … Ryan Lanza! An older “confirmed” version of events had RYAN, not Adam, travelling to Hoboken that morning to murder his father before going to the school in Newtown, Connecticut. Other variants had Ryan OR Adam going to both their divorced parents’ homes and killing them before going to the school.
The narrative has now settled on the younger brother killing his mother in Newtown then going to the school. So what about the rest of it? Do we just put it down to ‘keen’ journalism that was having a field day last Friday as media outlets sought to bring us the latest ‘breaking news’? Confusion and ‘Chinese whispers’ undoubtedly play a part in the early stages of national media events, but I think back to those news anchors reading scripts about Osama Bin Laden within minutes of the first plane being hit on 9/11 and I think, ‘Wait a minute!’ All these misleading reports had to have been issued by someone or some people “confirming” to Associated Press and other media outlets that the Ryans’s father had been murdered [he wasn’t even aware that the shooting at the school had taken place until journalists turned up on his doorstep], or that Ryan’s girlfriend had gone missing from Hoboken, or that either Ryan or Adam were pulled out of the adjacent woods in handcuffs yelling “I DIDN’T DO IT” to assembled parents. These aren’t just ‘little details’ that can be confused for other details, these are detailed narratives. So how, or why, would any member of the press come up with such details? They strike me as a set of alternative scenarios that might have found their way into the official narrative had facts on the ground turned out differently.
Watch this snippet of State Police Lt. Paul Vance at the press conference he gave the day after the shootings. His answer is as bizarre as it is revealing. When asked whether Nancy Lanza had any connection with the school, he replied defensively about something that is both unrelated and arguably the most significant fact that completely undermines the official narrative: the arrest of a second gunman in the woods:
YouTube – Veterans Today – Most of the initial mainstream media reports have since been rewritten to fit ‘new’ facts proclaimed by ‘law enforcement officials’. Here’s an example from Business Insider. The following excerpts are the opening paragraphs from the ‘same’ article, one earlier original version, followed by the later revised version:
The massacre […] was reportedly perpetrated with a .233 caliber rifle, a Glock pistol and a Sig Sauer pistol. The Bushmaster rifle was found in the trunk of the shooter’s car. The Sig Sauer and Glock pistols were the only weapons used in the shooting, according to CBS. Now the question is what kind of magazine would allow a shooter to fire “100″ rounds in such a short period.
Indeed, I was wondering the same thing. How could two pistols do so much damage? The report was updated as follows:
The massacre in Connecticut that’s taken the lives of at least 26 people was reportedly perpetrated with a .223 caliber rifle, a Glock pistol and a Sig Sauer pistol, according to NBC: The shooter was using one Sig Sauer and one Glock pistol, according to CNN. Later details emerged that the primary weapon was the Bushmaster “assault-style” rifle. Altogether, though, it doesn’t matter what type of weapon the shooter used. The bottom line is that it was likely a magazine fed, semi-automatic, with enough rounds to shoot “100 shots” in a matter of minutes, as quoted in USA Today.
What actually happened may not matter to some, but surely a journalist’s role is to at least try to find out?
This Associated Press/Newsday article on Saturday, December 15th, reported that “Only the rifle was used on the victims“, a statement that is supported by Dr. H. Wayne Carver II, Connecticut state’s chief medical examiner. Of the seven autopsies he personally performed on Sandy Hook victims, all of them had “three to 11 wounds apiece”. He also said that the ‘gunman’ used a military-style rifle rigged to quickly reload, and that the ‘shooter’ was able to reload so quickly because he had “taped two magazines together.” Even before the State Chief Medical Examiner had given these statements, it had been stated that spent shell casings from .233-caliber (rifle) bullets were found inside the school. So all the victims’ wounds were the result of rifle-fire, specifically from “the rifle”, the one we were told in early reports was found in the trunk of a car in the parking lot! This is simply not credible.
Remember that only “the rifle” was used on all the victims. If only this rifle was used, and if we try to make this claim fit into the (admittedly fluid) official version of events, then the alleged lone gunman would have had to leave the school, place the rifle back in his trunk, then return inside the school and shoot himself. No one reported any such maneuver on the part of any gunman or gunmen. What we do have, however, is live emergency services radio feed in which we hear that two men have been apprehended and are “proned out” AND live video footage supported by eyewitness testimony showing what appears to be a THIRD man being arrested by police in the woods.
We can see how the authorities’ hands are tied because they need to fit all the facts into the usual ‘lone gunman’ narrative. For that, there can only be ONE rifle and a couple of handguns. The problem is that they have already claimed to find that solitary Bushmaster rifle in the trunk of a car in the school parking lot, so the earliest police reports of a cache of long arms being found inside the school will no longer fit with the lone gunman narrative, especially as they’re now saying that he had already opened fire as he burst into the school.
Could “scrawny” 20-year-old Adam Lanza have stormed the school, solo Rambo-style, while carrying “multiple long arms, including rifles and shotguns”? Only one person was wounded. Everyone else who was shot was killed. How could Adam Lanza achieve such deadly accuracy, in such a short length of recorded time?
Initial reports put the beginning of the shooting in the school administrators’ office, where someone, reportedly the school principal, had a confrontation with the gunman(men). We know this because someone supposedly turned on the school intercom system, alerting the teaching staff to the loud swearing and commotion in the principal’s office and probably saving many more children from being gunned down as teachers took measures to hide the children in closets.
Similarly heavily armed men wearing black combat gear from head to toe… their job is to kill ‘terrorists’ to keep us safe, which they do by terrorising us all
One brave teacher, Kaitlin Roig, bundled a bunch of children into a bathroom and locked the door. What’s interesting about her testimony to ABC News is that when police arrived and asked her to open the door, she refused, saying that “if they were really cops, they’d know where to find keys to open the door.” In addition, she requested that they slide their badges under the door.
Now, this is generally a smart thing to do in any and all interactions with the police, especially in the U.S. But to have the wherewithal to do so under such traumatic circumstances strongly suggests that Ms. Roig had logically deduced by that point that multiple perpetrators were involved, and that they were either impersonating police officers or were indistinguishable from SWAT team police commandos, either in the way they dressed or the way they behaved upon entering the building. It also reminds us just how narrow the time window of the actual shooting was. The shooting appears to have barely ended when men knocked on that bathroom door and told Ms. Roig they were police.
There are also conflicting reports about how the gunmen entered the building. We were told initially that they came in through the main front entrance and proceeded straight to the administrators’/principal’s offices. But Sandy Hook elementary school has a security system with a video monitor, which allows staff to screen visitors before buzzing them in. A “masked gunman dressed in black tactical combat gear” from head to toe would kinda raise red flags, don’t you think?
Another possible anomaly is that Victoria Soto, one of the teachers killed at the school, appears to have had an ‘in memoriam’ Facebook page created in her name four days before the shooting.
Regarding this alleged ‘LIBOR scandal’ connection between this shooting and the Aurora theater shooting, there is as yet zero evidence to support the claim that either father of Lanza or Holmes were going to testify to anyone about anything, so for now this must remain just another rumor. I rather think that this is being spread to create the impression of a direct link that can be easily refuted, as in a straw man argument. The obvious and direct link staring everyone in the face is that the official accounts of these events are hocus-pocus. The glaring connection between these two shootings, the Sikh Temple shooting and the Fort Hood shooting is that multiple gunmen were reported at the time by eyewitnesses, but they are now all officially claimed to have been carried out by ‘lone gunmen’. This logically tells us that the real perpetrators are being protected with cover stories of what really happened because if the truth were known, some section of the U.S. government would be implicated.
Wade Michael Page, the ‘lone gunman’ in the Sikh Temple shooting in Wisconsin in August this year, was a highly decorated U.S. army psychological operations specialist, according to the Pentagon. But what happened to the three other gunmen seen by witnesses? It can’t surely be coincidence that Wade was (former?) military psy-ops. The thought has crossed my mind more than once during the aftermath of the Connecticut shooting. Others too have suggested this was a ‘false-flag’ event, or that Lanza was some sort of Manchurian Candidate.
But maybe there’s a simpler explanation (albeit more outrageous) than that? Was that really Adam Lanza they found inside the school? Do we even know for a fact that one of the gunmen was found dead inside the school? What we have instead are reports of two or three masked gunmen, apparently all dressed similarly in black tactical gear from head to toe, being wilfully forgotten about at best, or protected by the Federal Government at worst. Based on the authorities’ persistent but futile efforts to connect the Lanzas to this school, the multiple eyewitness reports of two shooters, the Connecticut State Medical Examiner’s report that all the victims were riddled with bullets from a rifle that we’re simultaneously being asked to believe was in the trunk of a car the whole time, similar reports of multiple shooters in previous mass shootings in recent years and the media focusing the emotional outcry onto the hot-button topic of gun control … I’m left wondering if this was actually the work of some highly trained professional hit team?
Was the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, a psy-op, using what amounts to a ‘death squad’ and a carefully planned mission to terrorise people on behalf of the government, in combination with perception management to shape the narrative and vector the emotional fallout?
Gun control isn’t really the issue here. Control – period – is the issue. The U.S. government would long since have taken measures, quietly, to limit the supply of weapons, the 2nd Amendment of the constitution be damned (it’s “just a goddamned piece of paper“, remember?), if it was really concerned with limiting civilian access to weapons. That we’ve seen gun sales increase in the last few days to the point where Wal-Mart is all out of assault rifles is wholly unsurprising.
The psychopaths in power have absolutely no compunction about using state terrorism, in this case organising the deliberate massacre of innocent children, to control people. In effect, this is little different from what the U.S. government calls counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism in foreign countries, where it attacks innocent civilians to create the impression that they were killed by ‘communists’, ‘terrorists’, ‘insurgents’ or ‘militants’, with the aim of generating public support for the illusion that the common people need a strong, ruthless government to protect them from the ‘evil-doers’. When the common people buy into this manipulation, the end result, as history shows repeatedly, is an overt and brutal police state.
Newtown school shooting story already being changed by the media to eliminate eyewitness reports of a second shooter by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(NaturalNews) The national media is ablaze today with coverage of the tragic elementary school shooting in Newtown, CT, where 27 people have reportedly been killed, including 18 children.
As always, when violent shootings take place, honest journalists are forced to ask the question: “Does this fit the pattern of other staged shootings?”
One of the most important red flags of a staged shooting is a second gunman, indicating the shooting was coordinated and planned. There are often mind control elements at work in many of these shootings. The Aurora “Batman” shooter James Holmes, for example, was a graduate student actually working on mind control technologies funded by the U.S. government. There were also chemical mind control elements linked to Jared Lee Loughner, the shooter of Congresswomen Giffords in Arizona in 2011.
According to multiple eyewitness reports from Aurora, Colorado, including at least one caught on camera by mainstream media news reports in Colorado, James Holmes did not operate alone. There was a second shooter involved. But the media quickly eliminated any mention of a second shooter from its coverage, resorting to the typical cover story of a “lone gunman.”
Today, the exact same thing is happening with the Newton, CT school shooting.
Eyewitness reports of a second shooter now being “scrubbed” from the news
As the story of this shooting was first breaking, the news was reporting a second gunman.
FoxNews reported that this second gunman was “led out of the woods by officers” and then questioned. The original source of this report was the Connecticut Post.
A local CBS affiliate was also reporting the existence of a second gunman and said “Police believe there may be a second gunman and are looking for a red or maroon van with its back window blown out…”
A local CT CBS affiliate was also reporting, “CBS News reports that a potential second shooter is in custody and that SWAT is now investigating the home of the suspect. A witness tells WFSB-TV that a second man was taken out of the woods in handcuffs wearing a black jacket and camouflage pants and telling parents on the scene, ‘I did not do it.'”
But the more recent stories being put out by the media are scrubbing any mention of a second gunman and going with the “lone gunman” explanation, which holds about as much water as the “lone gunman” explanation of the JFK assassination.
“A lone gunman killed 27 people at an elementary school here, including 18 children, in a terrifying early Friday morning shooting spree,” reports USA Today. It makes no mention whatsoever of a second gunman.
NBC News is also now chiming in with the “lone gunman” version of the story, eliminating any mention of a second gunman from its coverage of the tragic event.
Another story authored by NBC News carries the title, “26 dead after lone gunman assaults Connecticut elementary school.” Once again, no mention of a second gunman as reported by eyewitnesses.
When key elements of the story keeps changing, something is fishy
Journalists are trained to ask questions, and one of the questions I have right now is: Why was the second gunman suddenly dropped from media coverage after the first few hours of this story developing?
And why is there always a second gunman in these recent mass shootings that seem to be engineered to maximize emotional shock value due to the sheer horror of all the innocent deaths?
This story is continuing to develop, and we’ll keep asking questions here on Natural News. Our hearts and prayers go out to the children and families impacted by this violent tragedy. Given the terrible loss of life that has taken place here, shouldn’t we all seek to get to the bottom of WHY these shootings all seem to fit a common pattern of multiple mind-controlled shooters followed by an almost immediate media cover-up of the facts?
For the sake of those children who were killed today, I want to get to the bottom of this and expose the REAL story, for the purpose of stopping this violence from targeting yet more innocents in the future.
(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.
Obama’s warmaking appetite exceeds all his predecessors and then some. He’s already waging
multiple direct and proxy wars.
His rhetoric about winding them down rings hollow. He wants to make the most of the next four years.
No targeted country left behind reflects his agenda. He’s ravaging the world multiple countries at a time. He’s out-of-control. He governs like a serial killer.
He plans more war on Iran, perhaps Lebanon, and full-scale intervention against Syria. He has other targets in mind. He’s insatiable. Africa dreaming explains what’s on his mind.
On December 15, 2006, the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) was authorized. On February 6, 2007, it was announced. On October 1, 2007, it was established, and on October 1, 2008, it became operational.
It’s based in Stuttgart, Germany, not Africa. It’s responsible for warmaking and military relations throughout the continent. It’s comprised of 53 countries. Many potential targets are represented.
Washington wants the entire continent colonized and controlled. It’s resource rich. It has large amounts of oil, gas, water, gold, silver, diamonds, iron, cobalt, uranium, copper, bauxite, manganese, other valued minerals, and rich agricultural land.
In early July 2009, Obama visited sub-Saharan Africa. He signaled his intentions. In Accra, Ghana, he said:
“We have a responsibility to support those who act responsibly and to isolate those who don’t, and that is exactly what America will do.” He said Ghana and other African governments must achieve “good governance.”
His message was clear. Open the continent to Western investment and development. Privatize, privatize, privatize. Forget about providing healthcare, education, and other vital services.
Give US and other Western corporate predators free reign. Play the game the way Washington demands or suffer the consequences. Ghana got the message. Why else would Obama show up.
Libya didn’t. Gaddafi paid with his life. The country became another NATO trophy. Africa’s most developed country became a charnel house.
Egypt’s on the boil. Morsi is Washington’s man in Cairo. Street protests strongly contest his dictatorial governance. As long as he maintains US support, he can rule any way he wishes.
On December 7, the Wall Street Journal headlined “Terror Fight Shifts to Africa,” saying:
Obama may ask Congress to wage America’s war on terror against Mali, Nigeria, Libya, “and possibly other countries where militants have loose or nonexistent ties to al Qaeda’s Pakistan headquarters.”
Washington’s war on Libya created out-of-control violence and instability. Tribes, rebel gangs, and green resistance fighters battle for dominance. Puppet leaders America installed have little or no authority. No end of conflict looms.
Mali’s late March military coup appears fallout from Libya. It may be replicated elsewhere in North Africa and other areas. Niger’s endangered.
There’s more involved than meets the eye, including controlling regional resources. Besides oil, Libya, Mali, and Niger have valuable uranium deposits. Washington seeks control.
In October, EU Foreign Affairs and Security Policy head, Catherine Ashton, was involved in developing a Mali mission within 30 days. According to EU diplomats, it involves deploying 150 European military experts to train Malian and other African forces over a four to six month period.
On October 12, the Security Council approved an international military mission to Mali. Ban Ki-moon was enlisted to help develop military intervention plans. Finalizing them was planned for end of November.
France drafted the UN resolution. It was Washington’s lead attack dog on Libya. It may have the same role on Mali. In late March, monsoon season starts. Expect something early next year in advance. African troops will be involved.
Germany agreed to participate. Britain likely also. Washington remains in charge. Whatever is coming will be another Obama war. Officially it’s because Islamists seized power in northern Mali. The area replicates France in size.
Before his ouster, Gaddafi was a stabilizing force. Investments and mediation efforts prevented conflict between governing authorities and Tuareg rebels.
Things change a year ago. Heavy armed rebels mobilized. In March 2012, Long-time Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure was deposed.
Local Islamists controlled northern areas with Tauregs. Islamists with Al Qaeda ties drove them out. According to the Wall Street Journal, Obama wants congressional approval to intervene. With or without it, he’ll do what he wants.
US special forces and drone attacks may be planned. Operations may be similar to Washington’s proxy wars on Somalia and Yemen.
Progressive media claims they’ll be ‘tougher’ on Obama now | Glenn Greenwald
Barack Obama in the Oval Office. Photograph: Pete Souza/AP
Monday 3 December 2012
Given the rationale they have embraced, is there any reason to believe this will happen, or that it will matter if it does?
Last week, the Huffington Post’s media reporter, Michael Calderone, wrote a long article on the widespread perception that MSNBC isn’t so much a progressive network as it is “simply pro-Obama”. Citing a new Pew study that found that MSNBC was actually more negative toward Romney than even Fox News was against Obama “and offered mostly positive coverage about Obama” – most remarkably, during the last week of the campaign, MSNBC did not air a single story critical of Obama: not one – Calderone wrote: “post-election, the question is whether MSNBC continues cheering Obama on – or takes him on.” On Sunday, Politico’s media reporter, Dylan Byers, set out in search of an answer to that question, not regarding MSNBC specifically but “progressive media” generally. Here’s the crux of what he found:
“For the better part of four years, progressive media has had President Barack Obama’s back. “Now that he’s won re-election, it is faced with a choice: Should the left continue always to play the loyal attack dog against the GOP, blaming the opposition at all hours of the news cycle for intransigence? Or, should it redirect some of that energy on the president, holding him to his promises and encouraging him to be a more outspoken champion of liberal causes? “Already, there are rumblings of change. “In the days and weeks following Obama’s victory, progressive voices, primarily in print media, have made efforts to push the president on key parts of the unfinished liberal agenda – including climate change, drone strikes, troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, the closing of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, civil liberties and gun control. . . . “‘Liberals in the media are going to be tougher on Obama and more respectful at the same time,’ Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker’s chief political commentator and a former speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, told POLITICO. ‘He was the champion of our side, he vanquished the foe….. [but] now liberals don’t have to worry about hurting his chances for re-election, so they can be tougher in urging him to do what he should be doing.'”
[I want to focus on this claim that media progressives will now be “tougher” on Obama, but first, an aside: Hendrik Hertzberg proclaims that they will now be even “more respectful” of Obama than they have been. Short of formally beatifying him, or perhaps transferring all their worldly possessions to him, is that even physically possible? Is there a reverence ritual that has been left unperformed, swooning praise left to be lavished upon him, heinous acts by him that have not yet been acquiesced to if not affirmatively sanctioned in the name of keeping him empowered? That media progressives will try to find ways to be even “more respectful” to the president is nothing short of scary.] As for the vow that media progressives will now criticize Obama more and hold him more accountable, permit me to say that I simply do not believe this will happen. This is not because I think those who are taking this vow are being dishonest – they may very well have convinced themselves that they mean it – but because the rationalization they have explicitly adopted and vigorously advocated precludes any change in behavior. Over the past four years, they have justified their supine, obsequious posture toward the nation’s most powerful political official by appealing to the imperatives of electoral politics: namely, it’s vital to support rather than undermine Obama so as to not help Republicans win elections. Why won’t that same mindset operate now to suppress criticisms of the Democratic leader? It’s true that Obama himself will no longer run in an election. But any minute now, we’re going to be hearing that the 2014 midterm elections are right around the corner and are of Crucial Significance. Using their reasoning, won’t it be the case that those who devote their efforts to criticizing Obama and “holding accountable” the Democrats will be effectively helping the Republicans win that election? Won’t Obama critics stand accused of trying to keep the Speaker’s gavel in the hands of the Tea Party rather than returning it to Nancy Pelosi, or of trying to hand Senate control over to Mitch McConnell (or, soon enough, of trying to give the White House to Marco Rubio instead of Hillary Clinton)? Once one decides in the name of electoral expediency to abdicate their primary duty as a citizen and especially as a journalist – namely, to hold accountable those who wield the greatest political power – then this becomes a permanent abdication. That’s because US politics is essentially one permanent, never-ending election. The 2012 votes were barely counted before the politicalmediabegan chatteringabout 2016, and MSNBC is already – as one of its prime time hosts put it – “gearing up” for the 2014 midterm. I’ve described before how the permanent election cycle is the most potent weapon for keeping the citizenry (and media) distracted by reality-TV-show-type trivialities and horse-race excitement in lieu of focus on what the government is actually doing. But the other significant benefit of having all political disputes viewed through a partisan electoral prism is that it keeps partisans focused only on the evils of the other party and steadfastly loyal to their own. The desire to influence election outcomes in favor of one’s own party subsumes any sense that political officials from one’s own party should be checked in how they exercise their power. How is it rationally possible that those who have embraced this reasoning can – or should – change behavior in light of the looming Incredibly Important 2014 midterm election and then the 2016 election after that? Former MSNBC host and frequent Obama critic Cenk Uygur – who, in one of the most remarkable media events ever, was removed by MSNBC as prime-time host in favor of individual who literally vowednever to criticize the president under any circumstances – told the Huffington Post that it was hard to see how this would happen:
“‘Should MSNBC take a more aggressive stance with President Obama after the elections to make sure he follows through on his progressive promises? Of course,’ Uygur said in a follow-up email. ‘Will they? Probably not. They’ve been leaning back on their criticism of Democrats for so long, that I’m not sure they know how to, or care to, hold them accountable.'”
If sustained criticisms of the president should have been suppressed in deference to the 2012 election, then I simply don’t see why the same mindset won’t apply to the 2014 and 2016 elections. But let’s assume for the sake of argument that I’m wrong here, and that the “progressive media” really is gearing up to change behavior and unleash a torrent of demands and criticisms aimed at Obama. Here’s my primary question about that: why would that matter? Once you vow unconditional, permanent loyalty to a politician and a party – once you demonstrate that you will support them no matter what they do – why would you possibly expect that they will do anything but ignore you? A rational politician, by definition, pays attention to those whose support is conditional and uncertain, not to those who loudly proclaim that it is a solemn duty to support that politician and his party under all circumstances. That’s just the basic rules governing how power works, of negotiations and politics: those who eagerly renounce all their leverage make themselves inconsequential and impotent. What Hertzberg and his Obama-loyal media comrades mean by “getting tougher” with Obama is some version of this message:
I’d really appreciate it if you did X, Y and Z, and strongly believe you should, but even if you don’t, you should know that I’m going to be there for you and your party: cheering for you, raising money, demanding that everyone else support you, doing everything in my ability to keep you empowered.
Why would anyone believe that posture will affect anything? Once the choice is made to lock oneself into a state of permanent, unbreakable partisan loyalty, based on the lesser-evil justification, then one renders oneself completely powerless. I’m not arguing here against that choice. Whatever one thinks of the lesser-of-two-evils rationale, it’s at least cogent and rational. The debate over that choice has already been hashed out and there’s no point in repeating it here. But whatever one thinks of it, there are costs and benefits to that choice, and one should be honest about both. The benefit, which its proponents endlessly tout, is that it prevents the empowerment of the “greater evil”: the GOP. But there’s a significant cost to that choice that they almost never acknowledge: namely, to announce ahead of time that you will always lend your unlimited support to a particular party no matter what it does is to instruct politicians to ignore you, to disregard all of your beliefs and grievances and efforts to “get tough” and hold them accountable. It should be said that there are other ways to impose genuine accountability besides making one’s electoral support uncertain. One way is to engage in political protest movements outside the electoral process, of the type that forced Lyndon Johnson out of the 1968 race in protest of his Vietnam war, or even the Tea Party protests that put genuine fear in the hearts of political elites. But progressive media figures, for the most part, want nothing to do with street protests. There was, and is, a genuine, powerful movement devoted to protesting the political class on populist grounds – the Occupy movement – and most of them treated it with a mixture of condescension and scorn, largely because they couldn’t figure out how it might help Obama and the Democratic Party win elections. Nobody should hold their breath waiting for Hendrik Hertzberg and other similar progressive media figures to start supporting protest movements against the policies of the Democratic Party which they claim to find so objectionable. Another possibility is waging a battle within the Party against those perpetrating policies to which one objects by, for instance, challenging the Party’s establishment candidates in primaries. That is how the Tea Party was able to force the GOP to pay more heed to their agenda. But establishment progressives regard the Tea Party’s tactic with contempt because it was guilty of the most grievous sin – it undermined the Party’s ability to maximize its electoral success – and would never dream of posing a similar challenge to their own party’s establishment. I know from experience, having worked for several years on a project to recruit and empower primary challenges to awful Democratic incumbents, that any project that might cost the Democrats even a single seat in Congress will be met with anger and recrimination by establishment progressives. So, even if it actually happens, what Hertzberg and company are really talking about with their tough-talking vows to “be tougher” on Obama are empty gestures. “Demands” of politicians unaccompanied by a strategy to wield power are inherently inconsequential. There are truly few things I’d like to see more than progressives holding Obama accountable and trying to compel him to change behavior, but their past conduct – and especially the reasoning they offered to justify it – leaves little reason to believe that this can or will happen. Doing that requires a radical change in how one thinks about political priorities and, even more so, one’s own functions and duties as a journalist. Do you see any serious grappling with those questions in the giddy, triumphant, self-congratulatory progressive media? One final point: most of the people interviewed in the new Politico article (including from media figures who have been quite critical of Obama) all agree that the “progressive media” suppressed legitimate criticisms of Obama in order to help him and the Democrats win the election. As the Nation’s publisher, Katrina vanden Huevel, accurately put it to Politico (with a statement that is a strong contender for Understatement of the Year):
“‘MSNBC, with all due respect, has not been that strong in terms of talking about closing Guantanamo, about militarization, about this administration’s civil liberties record,’ Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor and publisher of The Nation, told POLITICO. ‘We may address alternative approaches to those issues, but they won’t be the talking points on MSNBC that night.'”
The Huffington Post article expressed the same idea:
“MSNBC’s afternoon and primetime hosts kept their sights on Romney and the Republicans during the election cycle, while spending considerably less time holding Obama accountable on issues like civilian casualties from drone strikes, use of executive power and the Afghanistan conflict, the nation’s longest-ever war, which escalated under the current White House. Instead, the network’s top partisan hosts –- with the exception of former Republican Rep. Joe Scarborough –- seemed to circle the wagons around the Democratic president during his reelection bid.”
If you think about it, this is actually an extraordinary indictment of these media outlets. What could possibly be worse for a media outlet – even one with acknowledged political leanings – than purposely to suppress and ignore criticisms of the nation’s most powerful political officials in the name of keeping one’s favorite politicians in power? Recall the controversy – and the endlessprogressive mockery – that erupted when Rush Limbaugh admitted after the 2006 midterm election that he had “carried water” for the GOP by suppressing criticisms of it because he wanted to help them win the election:
“The way I feel is this: I feel liberated, and I’m going to tell you as plainly as I can why. I no longer am going to have to carry the water for people who I don’t think deserve having their water carried. Now, you might say, ‘Well, why have you been doing it?’ Because the stakes are high! Even though the Republican Party let us down, to me they represent a far better future for my beliefs and therefore the country’s than the Democrat [sic] Party does and liberalism.”
Is this not the same confession, grounded in the same mentality, expressed in that Politico article from many stars of “progressive media”? Ultimately, it’s not actually that difficult to maintain and express these two simultaneous ideas:
(1) as a journalist, I’m now going to tell you about some truly heinous policies that President Obama, as the nation’s most powerful political official – as well as the Democratic Party, in control of the bulk of the US government – are embracing; as a citizen and an opinionist, I believe we should do everything possible to oppose these heinous policies loudly and effectively; and (2) now that an election is about to happen, I believe, as a citizen and an opinionist, that President Obama and the Democratic Party should win the election because their opponents are worse.
But so monomaniacally obsessed were many members of the progressive media that idea (1) was completely ignored and suppressed in favor of idea (2) – not in the days or weeks before the election, but for years. There is never any justification for those who work in media or hold themselves out as journalists – as opposed to, say, those who are party apparatchiks – to refrain from holding the nation’s most powerful political leaders accountable. That is the core function of journalism – and citizenship. I genuinely hope they’re serious and sincere with their vows to change this conduct, but it is very difficult to see how that can happen given the precepts to which they have so steadfastly committed themselves.
Update on AP/Iran story
Regarding the two columns I wrote last week about AP’s depicting of an absurd graph as evidence of Iran’s work toward a nuclear weapon: the AP reporter responsible for that story, George Jahn, has written a new article admitting that “a leaked diagram suggesting that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon is scientifically flawed”, but Jahn nonetheless insists that the graph somehow “still supports suspicions that Tehran is trying to build a bomb, especially when combined with other documents that remain secret.” This post says all that needs to be said about that. Meanwhile, the graph, by design, is now being touted by Fox News and John Bolton to scare people about Iran’s supposed nuclear weapons program.
By Kevin Pinner 411 days agoU.S. Foreign Policy disguises self-interest as altruism. When we see oil and humanitarian crisis, we act: Iraq, Libya, and now Uganda.
Since at least 1997 the abhorrent Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has murdered at least 2,400, kidnapped at least 3,400, and displaced at least 300,000. LRA is an ideological group, led by batshit crazy polygamist preacher and self-proclaimed “Spokesman of God” Joseph Kony, which seeks a theocratic state in Uganda based on the Ten Commandments and local traditions. Reports indicate that Kony and his dispicable cronies have been hiding for years. However, last week President Obama announced that, without consulting congress, he has authorized the deployment of some 100 ”combat-equipped U.S. forces” to the country in order to fight and hopefully kill or capture the vicious militant who has an international warrant for crimes against humanity. With regards to the nearly two decades of atrocity, Obama pointed it out. “These forces will act as advisers to partner forces that have the goal of removing from the battlefield Joseph Kony and other senior leadership of the LRA,” Obama said. “They will only be providing information, advice and assistance to partner nation forces, and they will not themselves engage LRA forces unless necessary for self-defense.”
No doubt Uganda needs help; they are one of the world’s poorest nations (17th) and have failed thus far to combat the LRA effectively enough to stop them. It’s a good thing that we’re fighting this monster, but for a humanitarian crisis that has been ongoing for almost two decades, that has been the scourge of a nation and a domestic terror threat rivaling the worst guerillas in Africa, it took us this long?
Earlier this year, at least 2.5 billion barrels of crude oil were discovered along Uganda’s border. The Economist reports that the country expects to earn $2 billion a year beginning in 2015.
A week ago today, three Ugandan government officials resigned, and President Yoweri Museveni addressed the nation concerning what the New York Times called “mounting corruption scandals, particularly in the country’s nascent oil sector.”
Speaking at a public oil debate entiled “Fighting the Oil Curse,” Jackson Wabyoona, activist and president of Bunyoro Local Oil and Gas Advocacy, said, “Well connected officials and business people who had prior information on the oil discovery took advantage of the situation to acquire land from unsuspecting peasants while some of our people become landless.” Mr. Wabyoona added the compensation rates were “insufficient” to enable the original landowners, who are now landless, to live a better life.
The fact that oil was discovered earlier this year was at best a footnote in most news outlets. I did not find any journalistic output that points out the striking coincidence that we picked the year when oil was discovered in Uganda to assist in stablization (and I apologize in advance if it exists).
Libya, along with being plagued by Muammar Gadaffi’s injustice, is also the site of massive oil reserves: the largest in Africa. And again, Gadaffi’s atrocious human rights record didn’t begin in the months or years before our invasion there. It had been happening for decades.
On a sidenote, Rush Limbaugh had some infuriating, grossly misinformed comments about the invasion. “Lord’s Resistance Army are Christians,” said Limbaugh on his radio program. ”They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan. And Obama has sent troops, United States troops to remove them from the battlefield, which means kill them.”
In other words, “Obama is a muslim and hates Christians and look at me connecting the dots like a preschooler at playtime.” It’s not that simple, obviously. LRA are Christians the same way al-Qaeda are Muslims – that is, they are among the most selective distorters of doctrines that otherwise preach peace and acceptance.
What is clear: decision-making in U.S. foreign policy, long touted by our officials as humanitarian and altruistic, is deeply entrenched in economic factors, such as energy consumption.
Comments from NB:
I don’t think folks are fooled by t his anymore. But what else can one do to stop it? It is all tied to money, access to resources for survival. If you pull the plug on this type of militarism look at the stakes. Folks are trying to keep “food on their families”.
How does a militarized culture do anything else than make all that it takes to create more and more wars?? It’s a doomed Empire built on aggression, terrorism, devastation of the planet and other human life wasted, annihilated and consider “collateral damage.” What can turn this around??
The entire economic system is based on war or war profiteering. Jobs are bought and sold in congress, a congress that would dare not to vote against war/wars/invasions/aggression/ so-called humanitarian intervention. What other road can the United States of America take. They went from a small colony, to sea to shining sea, to the world, to outer space. I mean what? What territory that is uncharted that can still be charted and claimed by the US hegemonic rulers?? It is what it is.
U.S. Foreign Policy disguises self-interest as altruism. When we see oil and humanitarian crisis, we act: Iraq, Libya, and now Uganda.
Since at least 1997 the abhorrent Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has murdered at least 2,400, kidnapped at least 3,400, and displaced at least 300,000. LRA is an ideological group, led by batshit crazy polygamist preacher and self-proclaimed “Spokesman of God” Joseph Kony, which seeks a theocratic state in Uganda based on the Ten Commandments and local traditions. Reports indicate that Kony and his dispicable cronies have been hiding for years. However, last week President Obama announced that, without consulting congress, he has authorized the deployment of some 100 ”combat-equipped U.S. forces” to the country in order to fight and hopefully kill or capture the vicious militant who has an international warrant for by DealDropDown”>crimes against humanity. With regards to the nearly two decades of atrocity, Obama pointed it out. “These forces will act as advisers to partner forces that have the goal of removing from the battlefield Joseph Kony and other senior leadership of the LRA,” Obama said. “They will only be providing information, advice and assistance to partner nation forces, and they will not themselves engage LRA forces unless necessary for self-defense.”
No doubt Uganda needs help; they are one of the world’s poorest nations (17th) and have failed thus far to combat the LRA effectively enough to stop them. It’s a good thing that we’re fighting this monster, but for a humanitarian crisis that has been ongoing for almost two decades, that has been the scourge of a nation and a domestic terror threat rivaling the worst guerillas in Africa, it took us this long?
Earlier this year, at least 2.5 billion barrels of crude oil were discovered along Uganda’s border. The Economist reports that the country expects to earn $2 billion a year beginning in 2015.
A week ago today, three Ugandan government officials resigned, and President Yoweri Museveni addressed the nation concerning what the New York Times called “mounting corruption scandals, particularly in the country’s nascent oil sector.”
Speaking at a public oil debate entiled “Fighting the Oil Curse,” Jackson Wabyoona, activist and president of Bunyoro Local Oil and Gas Advocacy, said, “Well connected officials and business people who had prior information on the oil discovery took advantage of the situation to acquire land from unsuspecting peasants while some of our people become landless.” Mr. Wabyoona added the compensation rates were “insufficient” to enable the original landowners, who are now landless, to live a better life.
The fact that oil was discovered earlier this year was at best a footnote in most news outlets. I did not find any journalistic output that points out the striking coincidence that we picked the year when oil was discovered in Uganda to assist in stablization (and I apologize in advance if it exists).
Libya, along with being plagued by Muammar Gadaffi’s injustice, is also the site of massive oil reserves: the largest in Africa. And again, Gadaffi’s atrocious human rights record didn’t begin in the months or years before our invasion there. It had been happening for decades.
On a sidenote, Rush Limbaugh had some infuriating, grossly misinformed comments about the invasion. “Lord’s Resistance Army are Christians,” said Limbaugh on his radio program. ”They are fighting the by DealDropDown”>Muslims in Sudan. And Obama has sent troops, United States troops to remove them from the battlefield, which means kill them.”
In other words, “Obama is a muslim and hates Christians and look at me by DealDropDown”>connecting the dots like a preschooler at playtime.” It’s not that simple, obviously. LRA are Christians the same way al-Qaeda are Muslims – that is, they are among the most selective distorters of doctrines that otherwise preach peace and acceptance.
What is clear: decision-making in U.S. foreign policy, long touted by our officials as humanitarian and altruistic, is deeply entrenched in economic factors, such as energy consumption.
Comments from NB:
I don’t think folks are fooled by t his anymore. But what else can one do to stop it? It is all tied to money, access to resources for survival. If you pull the plug on this type of militarism look at the stakes. Folks are trying to keep “food on their families”.
How does a militarized culture do anything else than make all that it takes to create more and more wars?? It’s a doomed Empire built on aggression, terrorism, devastation of the planet and other human life wasted, annihilated and consider “collateral damage.” What can turn this around??
The entire economic system is based on war or war profiteering. Jobs are bought and sold in congress, a congress that would dare not to vote against war/wars/invasions/aggression/ so-called humanitarian intervention. What other road can the United States of America take. They went from a small colony, to sea to shining sea, to the world, to outer space. I mean what? What territory that is uncharted that can still be charted and claimed by the US hegemonic rulers?? It is what it is.
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
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].
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”.
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
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”.
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.
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 EuropeanCommunist regimes following World War II (although not those of Enver Hoxha and Nicolae Ceaușescu, mentioned below).
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-ShirtObama’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.’ “
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.
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:
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.
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.
Cory Michael Skaaren ArtWednesday, 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.
It is a very sad day. the handwriting on the wall is obscured by ludicrousity, insanity and blatant denial. The masses travail in the muck and mire of an ill-fated illusion. Their deluded hope and belief in a denigrated system, sold out to the power elite. Nothing has changed save a momentary dream awakening to nightmarish proportions. I don’t care who thinks I am a vile voice in the wilderness.
I am a truth warrior, and the truth is the truth. The first time around, no one would listen, so with silent knowing, it came to pass, what could not be spoken aloud. The second time around, courage must speak its truth and open itself to frontal attack from those who cry “naysayer, kill joy, party buster, etc.”
Wake up, people, before it is too late! We live on a prison planet and have just witnessed, the changing of the guards. Same system, different guards. Same system, different keys to the cells. Same system and it will not be changed by the guards or their handlers. NB
President Obama’s second term in the White House was largely secured by record numbers of votes from ethnic minorities, while his popularity among whites plummeted, exit polls have revealed.
Hispanics, the fa stest-growing demographic in the United States, accounted for ten per cent of all voters in the election, an increase on last year’s record of nine per cent, the polls suggested.
Of these, 7 1 per cent voted for Obama, up from 67 per cent in 2008. In a sign Republicans are failing to win over this increasingly influential group, Romney won just 27 per cent.
A record number of Asian voters – three per cent of the electorate – also turned out, with nearly three-quarters backing Obama. He also won a staggering 93 per cent of African-American votes.
Yet while his popularity among ethnic minorities swelled, he received just 39 per cent of the white votes, down by four per cent on the last election, a drop his campaign had anticipated.
Considering the 1.5 million deportations, and the incarceration of so many others, it begs to question, why the Hispanics came out so strongly for him. Not to mention the fact that his address to African Americans was stop complaining, take your slippers off and get to work on change. And the closest he came to digging in with the Black masses was hanging out with Jay-Z (a one per center) and Beyonce’,(I won’t get into what I think about her as a role model for young girls). And writing in on the Census report that he was African American. Not to mention the removal of a towering figure for Black unity and African unity, Muamar Qaddaffi. Hmm, me thinks I sense a hint of cognitive dissonance. NB
“we cling to voting like its our greatest & only chance for change; our one and only lifeboat. we misrepresent ancestors & claim we must participate in the process becuz of their past suffering, while ignoring the fact that their analysis was rooted in their times. since then, we’ve been brutally uprooted & though we can identify the hour, we never seem to kno what time it is. we swear voting is the answer, and when it doesn’t work, we still think it’s the answer, and when it’s proven to us that it doesn’t work, we still think it’s the answer, with a birth defect.”
Laini Mataka excerpt from “there’s paralysis in our analysis”, from THE PRINCE OF KOKOMO by laini (don’t tread on me) mataka
Akintunde Oluwasegun shared Youyou Muntu-mosi‘s photo.THEY(OBAMA AND HIS WALL STREET TRIBE ) WON’T SAVE KONGO.Congolese people who turn to become the “lovers-of-America” and who live in America or in Congo or elsewhere and still believing that Obama or Romney or any western groups(civil “rights”, NGOs,etc).Any of those vampires,reptiles,looters,criminals will come save you and your country.In contrary,they are plotting to destroy you,remove you fromyour land so they can easily get access to your forests,mines,oil,etc.You are the ONLY one to save your country.Then,wake up,team up with your Congolese and others African sisters and brothers to fight against the invaders/aliens,looters.You and your African brothers and sisters together will build a strong Congo and the rest of Africa.
The More Effective Evil has trounced those Republicans with evil intentions. Folks who never made a single demand of the corporate, war mongering Democrat think they are some kind of victors. “The non-resisters have won a non-victory against an unimpressive enemy,” while Obama plots new atrocities.
Victory! – for the Non-Resistance
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
“Obama is the more effective austerity president – if the Republicans will just let him work his show.”
“Get Away Sandy – God and Obama Will Save Us” read the graffiti, scrawled man-high on a cinderblock wall in the majority Black town of Plainfield, New Jersey. It is an apt articulation of African American politics as we descend into the First Black President’s second term.
Black folks may or may not have a prayer, but they certainly don’t have any earthly influence on the direction of the nation or on a president for whom they gave near-unanimous support, while asking nothing in return.
Wait a minute! I’m hearing echoes of…a familiar voice:
“We have learned that Black politicians and activist-poseurs have an infinite capacity to celebrate not having engaged in struggle with Power, and that the Black masses can be made drunk by the prospect of vicariously (through Obama) coming to power.” – Black Agenda Report, “The Obama ’08 Phenomenon: What Have We Learned?” November 4, 2008.
As Marx said, history repeats itself, “first as tragedy, then as farce.” Independent Black politics, rooted in the historical African American consensus on social justice, racial equality and peace, definitively collapsed, after a long illness, with the first Obama presidential campaign. The tragedy was compounded, exponentially, by the timing, coinciding with capitalism’s greatest crisis since the Great Depression. The autumn of 2008 was an historical juncture for the nation and the world. Either the people would erect structures to protect themselves from being crushed under the dead weight of a system in terminal decay, or the Lords of Capital would swallow the State whole, and buy themselves some time.
African Americans, the most politically volatile and left-oriented U.S. constituency – a people specifically targeted by Wall Street’s machinations – had an historical role to play. “The man STRUCK,” said Frederick Douglass, “is the man to cry out.” But Black folks had already been struck silly with Obama’Laid.
“Despite his background, Obama knew enough about African Americans to pay us no attention and less respect.”
The rulers had, at long last, found our Achilles Heel, the weakest spot in African Americans’ political armor. Our reflexive racial solidarity (actually, an aspect of Black nationalism), which had served us so well, for so long, short-circuited our progressive political instincts. We became fodder for Obama, the slicker-than-Slick-Willie corporate guy with the brown face.
Despite his background, Obama knew enough about African Americans to pay us no attention and less respect. There would be no penalty. Black folks had convinced themselves that Obama needed our protection; it never occurred to most of us that we needed protection from him – not during the primaries, when he praised Ronald Reagan’s reaction to the “excesses” of the Sixties, or when he refused to endorse even a voluntary halt to home foreclosures (while Hillary Clinton and John Edwards endorsed “voluntary” and mandatory moratoriums, respectively); not in the last weeks before his inauguration, when Obama announced that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and all “entitlements” would be “on the table” for chopping under his administration.
Instead, a million Black folks gathered on the National Mall for what we at BAR called “The Great Black Hajj of 2009,” a pilgrimage, as if to Mecca, in celebration of Obama’s ascension. There, he proclaimed to the multitudes: “In the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.”
Dutifully, Black folks set aside the last vestiges of their vaunted distrust of Power. Henceforth, African Americans would consider themselves as a Palace Guard – the antithesis of independent political actors. Thus was Obama empowered to become the “More Effective Evil.”
With little resistance on the Left, and virtually none from organized Black America, Obama has worked miracles for the resuscitation of the Lords of Capital and their imperial apparatus – feats that only a Black corporate Democrat could accomplish. After saving George Bush’s bank bailout in October of 2008 (it passed only after candidate Obama’s intervention), Obama undertook the historic mission of placing the U.S. State at the total disposal of finance capital. Under Obama’s watch, the Treasury Department and, especially, the Federal Reserve have funneled at least $16 trillion to Wall Street and its foreign annexes – a sum greater than the national GDP. The “free money” window at the Federal Reserve has become a permanent fixture of the global financial order, permanently blurring the lines between the U.S. state and international finance capital. Obama has embedded the state into the banks, and vice versa, in ways that cannot be undone without causing the system to collapse. In a very real sense, the “good faith and credit” of the United States has become a collective corporate asset of the Lords of Capital – an outcome that fits the classic structural description of fascism. No Republican could have delivered the state apparatus so effectively to the banks – there would have been fierce resistance from within the Democratic base, as well as libertarian Right. But Obama has proven to be the more effective facilitator of the bankers’ state.
“Obama has embedded the state into the banks, and vice versa, in ways that cannot be undone without causing the system to collapse.”
Social Security was untouchable – until Obama laid his hands on it. Beginning with his pre-inauguration pronouncements on entitlements, Obama has been the guiding hand of an austerity offensive that did not exist on Election Day, 2008. Instead, Obama made deficit reduction his own priority, at a time when pundits were saying obituaries over the GOP. (Much as they are, today.) The Black Democrat appointed the Right-weighted Deficit Reduction Commission to promulgate a $4 trillion blueprint for austerity, a formula that matched Republic proposals in 2011. The blueprint would have been the basis for Obama’s cherished Grand Bargain had the GOP not balked at “modest” taxes on the rich – levies that are irrelevant to those who will lose their programs under the axe. Obama is the more effective austerity president – if the Republicans will just let him work his show.
Imperial aggression has never fared better than under the opposition-less Obama. At one point, he was bombing five countries simultaneously, pretty good work for a Nobel Peace Prize winner – or did the prize help empower him to such heights of bellicosity? His ever-evolving “Kill List” includes not only individuals of all nationalities (including our own) but also any country whose government is inconvenient to the United States. With “humanitarian” jargon as his only justification, President Obama has attempted to render international law a dead letter. No nation has any rights that he feels bound to respect. Obama, with his drone armadas and multiplying Special Forces troops, represents a far greater threat to global civilization – which must be rooted in law! – than the failed conquerer George Bush (who actually negotiated the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq). Unlike Bush, Obama has promulgated his own, novel doctrine of war, which declares that wars only exist when sufficient numbers of Americans become casualties. Under this construct, Libya was not a war, and the possibilities for U.S. non-war depredations are endless.
Preventive detention is the crown jewel of Obama’s presidential exceptionalism. Statutory authority to imprison Americans without charge or trial was beyond Bush’s reach, and he knew it. But Obama guided a bill through the Congress with very little Democratic opposition. He is the more effective secret police warden.
Now Obama has won another “mandate,” which he will use to finish the projects he started: wider wars, a more profound government subservience to finance capital, and that “new legal architecture” on national security that he warned about on the Daily Show, a few weeks ago. He looks forward to fulfilling his austerity dreams early in his new term: “I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially I’ve been offering to the Republicans for a very long time.”
The non-resisters have won a non-victory against an unimpressive enemy, while the more effective evil plots new atrocities.
You will note that I have not specifically mentioned Black folks since the beginning of this article; that’s because African Americans have made themselves irrelevant – not just for the second Obama presidency, but possibly deep into the future. “Power concedes nothing without a demand,” and Black folks have failed to demand even elementary respect from this president, much less concrete programs, or peace. Obama isn’t the only one who has noted Black ineffectuality. Until an independent African American politics and political movement can be rebuilt, there is no reason for a president or Congress to pay “the Blacks” any more attention than Obama did.
Please see the links below the article on Barack Obama, election fraud, non-voting as revolutionary resistance and faux democracy in America. Listen to this warning to America from Spain which accurately describes the police state America has become under the Bush-Obama administrations. (See The Coup Of 2012) Regardless of which candidate is “elected”, The Deep State and The Doomsday Project/Operation Endgame as described by Peter Dale Scott, will advance its agenda of establishing a totalitarian dictatorship dedicated to global destruction and perpetual war unless the American people rise up and stop it.
(See State Crimes Against Democracy & The NDAA)
Alexandra Valiente Editor of Ephemeris 360°
I’ve called on readers of this blog to abstain from voting in order to delegitimize the current political system. In this regard, I align myself with Muammar Gaddafi, who wrote:
“It is an indisputable fact that direct democracy is the only ideal form that is practical.”
I do not believe that anything in this article contradicts that perspective.
– Nina Westbury, Editor of Crimson Satellite
Jim Creegan Via Crimson Satellite Barack Obama hardly represents a rampart against Republican extremism, as some on the left still maintain.
When in March a reporter asked an advisor of Mitt Romney if the Republican presidential candidate was not tacking too far to the right in the primaries to win the presidential election, Eric Fehrnstrom replied that the post-primary campaign would be “like Etch a Sketch – you can shake it up and we start all over again”.
Fehrnstrom spoke on behalf of a candidate whose political career has depended heavily on the use of the above-named drawing toy with an erasable screen. To capture the Republican nomination, he had already morphed from the ‘moderate’ Republican governor of liberal Massachusetts into the self-described “severe conservative” playing for the allegiance of the party’s far-right base.
Now, for the three televised presidential debates held in October, the nominee shape-shifted yet again. Gone was the Tea Party firebrand, for whom refusing to rescind Bush’s tax cuts for the rich was a matter of rock-bottom principle; in his place on the platform stood a Romney anxious to assure a viewing audience of nearly 70 million (in language vague enough to avoid reneging on his earlier pledge) that the top 5% will continue as now to pay 60% of federal income taxes under his plan.
In place of the man who had praised as a model for the nation Arizona’s ‘stop and frisk’ law, permitting police to detain anyone suspected of being an illegal alien and demand proof of citizenship, stood a candidate who emphasised that he had no wish to round up aliens, and even thought that the more worthy among them should have a way to become citizens. The candidate who had earlier spoken of a possible unilateral nuclear strike against Iran now affirmed his commitment to “peaceful and diplomatic means”, at least to begin with. And, instead of repeating his original criticism of Obama for setting a withdrawal date from Afghanistan, Romney now affirmed his intention, if elected, to abide firmly by the scheduled 2014 departure deadline.
The newly unveiled moderate Mitt put himself forward as the saviour of a middle class, “crushed during the last four years” of the Obama administration, which, he said, offers nothing but more of the same in a second term. He reiterated his commitment to reducing the federal deficit and promised to create 12 million new jobs. Apart from getting tough on Chinese “currency manipulation” and drilling for more oil on federal lands, he was vague on specific means to these ends. But he asked the American people to trust that his decades as a successful CEO have given him the know-how to get the job done.
Taken aback by the new Romney, and perhaps a little groggy from the mountain altitude of the first debate venue of Denver, Colorado, Obama turned in a semi-comatose performance, which cost him dearly in the opinion polls. By the second debate, however, he seemed to have regained his composure (though not his wide polling-number lead). There, he sounded the note that he has struck repeatedly on the campaign trail ever since, and hopes will carry him through to the election: pointing out the yawning discrepancies between Romney’s currently proclaimed softer positions and his ‘radical’ utterances of just a few months, or even weeks, before. Obama has given a name to his opponent’s condition. He calls it “Romnesia”.
To shore up the crucial women’s vote, Obama never ceases to remind audiences of Romney’s earlier statement that he would be happy to sign any bill outlawing abortion, or that he favours (or until recently favoured) leaving the decision about whether to cover contraceptive care in the hands of the private employers who pay health-benefit premiums for their employees. Nor does he cease to remind Latino voters of Romney’s support for the Arizona ‘Show me your papers’ anti-immigrant law.
And, given Romney’s role as finance capitalist and political spokesmen for his class, Obama can hardly avoid a few jabs at his view that the main answer to the country’s economic woes is to help the wealthy and the corporations even more. But the mild class content that has forced its way into Obama’s stump speech – “The rich should pay their fair share of taxes” – is usually accompanied by declarations of fealty to free enterprise. Matter of degree
Moreover, there is a bleakness at the heart of Obama’s election effort. The slogans of “hope” and “change” that electrified his followers in 2008 after four years under Bush would be absurdly out of place in 2012. During his first four years in office, the president has shown himself to be not the crusading reformer most of his supporters imagined (contrary to the evidence) that they were voting for, but a right-centrist bourgeois politician.
His multi-billion-dollar bailout of the banks at public expense can hardly be forgotten easily. His signature reform initiative, the health insurance scheme now known as Obamacare, actually consolidated the grip of private-insurance profiteers on the medical industry. The exceptions, loopholes and ambiguities of his party’s attempt to rein in financial speculation, the Dodd-Frank Bill, greatly weaken the restrictions it places on Wall Street swindlers. This record makes it amply clear that any reform efforts to come out of a second Obama term will, like those of the first, strain to stay within the limits of acceptability laid down by corporate power, even though Wall Street will denounce such reforms as steps toward socialism anyway. Obama’s attempts to undo some of the grosser inequities of the tax code have been abandoned time and again to achieve a legislative compromise with Congressional Republicans.
Thus Obama stands before the electorate with little in the way of inspiration. The ‘progressive’ achievements he touts – the Lily Ledbetter ‘fair pay’ act, making it easier for women to sue over pay inequities in the workplace; his decision to allow gays to serve openly in the military; and his personal acceptance of gay marriage – seem inadequate in relation to the mass joblessness, underemployment and low wages that are foremost in the mind of the electorate. To these deep worries, Obama offers answers that ring hollow. He promises no new government stimulus of any kind, and his emphasis on expanded training for “the skilled jobs of tomorrow” ignores what everyone knows: that there are not, nor will there be, enough of these jobs to absorb even the university-educated young now entering the job market under mountains of debt.
So, as Romney argues that a second Obama term will mean that the next four years will be as bad as the last four, the incumbent, bereft of any big ideas or arresting slogans for the future, and unable to argue that he will implement any major changes after having failed to do so when he had the chance, can only reply that things were not so bad as all that during his first term – and will get even worse under Romney.
But, for the mass of people, things will get worse under Obama too. It is only a matter of degree. The first major crisis of a second Obama term would take place at the end of November, when Congress must once again consider voting to raise the government debt ceiling. The stand-off between the two parties that occurred when Congress last took up this matter in the summer of 2011 resulted in a compromise by which a bipartisan committee of lawmakers must either come up with a plan for deficit reduction or face automatic cuts (‘sequestration’) in January, including reductions in military spending, which neither party really wants. To avoid going over the ‘fiscal cliff’, as the automatic cuts are called, Obama is already talking once again about a “grand bargain” with the Republicans, which would include “entitlement reform” – most likely decreases in social security and/or Medicare.
A foretaste of what labour can look forward to in a second Obama term was provided in Chicago. The city’s recently elected mayor, Rahm Emanuel, previously served in the White House as the president’s chief of staff. In Chicago, he intensified the war against teachers’ unions being carried out by the ruling class throughout the country with the support of Obama’s secretary of education, Arne Duncan. In contract negotiations, Emanuel sought to lengthen the school day, replace teachers’ automatic pay increases by ‘merit pay’, based largely on student performance on standardised tests, and make teachers redundant without regard to seniority from the many schools he plans to close. The teachers, however, had earlier replaced the Democrat-loyal, concession-prone leadership of their union with a more militant reform group (the Caucus of Rank and File Educators, or Core). In contrast to the bureaucratic methods of most union officials, Core mobilised the rank and file of the union and reached out to parents and community organisations in preparation for the seven-day strike that closed the schools and made national headlines in September. Public opinion in Chicago favoured the strikers.
The result was a concessionary contract (the school day was lengthened, school closures were not stopped, and seniority in redundancies remained unprotected) that in a period of greater labour strength would have been considered a defeat. But perhaps the most significant aspect of the strike was that – unlike the outcome of many recent union struggles – defeat was less than total. The union forced the withdrawal of certain give-back demands (for a merit pay system) and the dilution of others (only 30% of teacher evaluations, as opposed to the 45% originally demanded, will be based on standardised student tests), thus demonstrating to its members, and workers throughout the country, that striking is not futile. But, however one judges the outcome, there could be no doubt in the minds of the strikers concerning the commitment of the Obama administration to the bipartisan ruling class policies of deepening austerity and assaults on workers. ‘National security state’
If austerity is one pillar of the ruling class programme being pursued by both parties, the other is the retrenchment of the American empire around the world. Both these objectives require the strengthening of the ‘national security state’. And, in this area, the winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize has made the considerable efforts of George W Bush seem modest by comparison.
Figuring prominently in the final presidential debate on foreign policy was the prospect of military intervention against Iran following the elections – either by the US directly or by Israel with US approval. Both candidates sought to outdo each other in proclaiming their support for the Zionist state. Regarding Iran, Obama pointedly pledged to “keep all options on the table”. Despite Romney’s effort to appear more decisive and belligerent than Obama, it soon became apparent to most commentators that little divided the two candidates where foreign policy is concerned. As Obama quipped to his opponent, “Governor, you’re saying the same things as us, but you’d say them louder.”
As a result of the failure of US military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama seeks to place greater emphasis on remote, high-tech warfare. His sixfold expansion of US drone strikes in the Pakistan tribal areas since taking over from Bush, with a corresponding fivefold increase in (mostly civilian) deaths, are well known, along with the private ‘kill list’ from which the president personally orders the lethal strikes. So too is his government’s vindictiveness toward Bradley Manning and Julian Assange for piercing the veil behind which the empire conducts its military and diplomatic operations.
But subtending these more visible actions is a vast expansion in secrecy, surveillance and repression, abroad and at home. In 2011, 70 million government documents were ordered classified, 40% more than in the previous year. The government now hires 30,000 people to listen in on the private telephone conversations of Americans, and has built a $2 billion facility in Bluffdale, Utah for storing the data thus gathered. The Obama administration pushed through Congress the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which permits the government to imprison anyone, including US citizens, for an indeterminate length of time on suspicion of terrorism, in blatant violation of the right of habeas corpus guaranteed in the fifth amendment to the constitution.
The administration has also authorised the assassination of anyone living abroad said to be participating in terrorist activities, again including US citizens, even though they are not directly involved in armed combat. The most famous target of this policy was Anwar al-Awlaki, a self-exiled American citizen who made propaganda videos for al Qa’eda, and was accused, without public proof, of participating in plotting the 9/11 attack. Al-Awlaki was killed in Yemen by a US drone strike. His 16-year-old son was also killed in another drone strike two weeks later. No one alleged that the Denver-born high-school student was involved in terrorist activity.
Although Obama failed to keep his election promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, and is proceeding with military trials of those held there, he seems inclined to replace the whole cumbersome process of detention, ‘secret rendition’ and military tribunals with the simpler expedient of assassination. Quoting theWashington Post, left-liberal columnist Glenn Greenwald reports that a government agency called the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) has developed what it calls a “disposition matrix”. According to Greenwald, “One of its purposes is ‘to augment’ the ‘separate but overlapping kill lists’ maintained by the CIA and the Pentagon: to serve, in other words, as the centralised clearing house for determining who will be executed without due process, based upon how one fits into the executive branch’s ‘matrix’.” He adds: “… the NCTC operates a gigantic data-mining operation, in which all sorts of information about innocent Americans is systematically monitored, stored and analysed. This includes ‘records from law enforcement investigations, health information, employment history, travel and student records …’ In other words, the NCTC – now vested with the power to determine the proper ‘disposition’ of terrorist suspects – is the same agency that is at the centre of the ubiquitous, unaccountable surveillance state aimed at American citizens” (Common Dreams October 24).
No Republican or Tea Party supporter, for all their talk about the encroachments of “big government”, has to our knowledge uttered a peep of protest about these developments. And no-one who has been on the receiving end of nationally coordinated efforts to remove Occupy encampments from public squares, or stepped-up police harassment of leftwing protestors, will believe that the government will limit itself, in a period of imperial decline and mass austerity, to deploying this repressive apparatus against Islamic terrorists. Zyklon C
Hopes that disappointment in Obama would lead to a leftward break with the Democratic Party have thus far been unrealised. The Occupy movement had little sympathy for Obama. But its stalwarts consider themselves above not only Democratic politics, but politics in general. This abstentionism left Occupy unprotected against the inevitable efforts to channel the energies it had released into electoral support for the party of the ‘lesser evil’. Few among Occupy’s quasi-anarchist core will vote for the Democrats, but almost none were able to conduct the active anti-Democratic propaganda effort that any shift to the left would require.
Hence, on a left spectrum bounded on one end by liberalism and on the other by populist radicalism and socialism, with many indistinct hues in between, little has changed since 2008. The two principal candidates running to the left of the Democrats, Jill Stein of the Green Party and Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party, are local politicians virtually unknown outside their states (Massachusetts and Utah respectively).The anti-Obama minority clustered around the webzine, Counterpunch, has stuck to its guns. The other two left media mainstays – Amy Goodman’s syndicated television and radio programme, ‘Democracy Now!’ and the Pacifica radio network – remain, as before, non-committal.
On the rest of what calls itself the left, lesser-evilism is rampant. In the 2000 presidential elections, the pages of the country’s leading left-liberal magazine, The Nation, hosted a lively debate between the supporters of the Democratic candidate, Al Gore, and partisans of the Green Party’s Ralph Nader. But all the then-Naderites have since been purged, and, with the death in July of the last columnist to advocate an independent politics of the left, Alexander Cockburn, the magazine is drably homogeneous.
A special election issue, titled ‘Why Obama?’ (October 22), contains contributions from 10 writers, all of whom advocate critical support for the president, arguing only about just how critical one should be. The authors can hardly make their case on the basis of the naive hopes of 2008, so completely disappointed in the four years since. They can only argue on the basis of fear of Romney and the Republicans, heightened by the party’s right-extremist dérivé. They provide a pristine example of what Cockburn dubbed the “Zyklon C” approach to politics: resisting the use of Zyklon B (the gas used by the Nazis in the death chamber of Auschwitz) will only result in the deployment of an even more lethal gas called Zyklon C.
Perhaps the most comprehensive Zyklon C manifesto was issued over the summer by a long-time social democrat, Bill Fletcher, and a former Students for a Democratic Society leader and Maoist, Carl Davidson, who is now with the National Committees of Correspondence, a rightward split from the Communist Party. The article is entitled, ‘The 2012 elections have little to do with Obama’s record … which is why we are voting for him’. The best thing about the article is its acknowledgement that the position of the left represents a “Groundhog Day” scenario – alluding to the movie in which the protagonist, played by Bill Murray, finds himself trapped in a perpetual February 2. What they forget to add is that lesser-evilists like themselves are a predictable part of the scenario.
Fletcher and Davidson state that the 2012 elections are “unlike anything that any of us can remember”, and will be “one of the most … critical elections in recent history”. The authors were, however, saying similar things during the elections of 2004 and 2008, in which both also urged support for the Democrats.
The arguments of Fletcher and Davidson boil down to alarmism over the Republican Party, which they claim has been captured by the forces of “revenge-seeking white supremacy”, bent upon resisting the political influence of the country’s soon-to-be non-white majority, even to the point of severely curtailing electoral democracy. They argue further that Barack Obama, regardless of his political record, has become a hate symbol for these forces. His re-election would therefore represent a defeat for white revanchism, which would give “progressive forces” a “breathing space” in which to build their strength.
The problem with this line of argument is its tendency to view the racial question in isolation from the class dynamics with which it is interwoven and to which, in the end, it is subordinate. The ugly racist undercurrent in the Tea Party is certainly real enough. But so also is the fact that the racial (and misogynist) insults that regularly arise from the movement’s depths are a source of embarrassment to its leaders, who routinely apologise and have made a conscious attempt to appropriate the symbols and rhetoric of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Open, vulgar racism may still be alive and well in the south and beyond, but, despite the temptation to pander to these sentiments at election time, there is a recognition amongst national Republican political operatives that the programme of white revanchism, given an eventual non-white majority, could only mean the construction of a neo-apartheid state, which cannot be sold to the electorate, and therefore ultimately not to the ruling class, as the preferred way of pursuing their principal agenda of austerity. No rampart
And this agenda is one in which the Democratic leadership shares. It is true that the Republicans, because their base includes far fewer of the victims of austerity, are less constrained than the Democrats about pushing it. But the Democrats are hardly a rampart against Republican reaction. A victory for Obama and Democratic Congressional candidates will not be the electoral equivalent of the Treaty of Brest Litovsk, affording the working class and unemployed “breathing space”, as Fletcher and Davidson think. It is rather more akin to the Munich Pact, opening the way for a new round of retreats before the Republicans, and Democratic-sponsored measures to weaken social programmes and worker rights, encouraging even bolder rightwing thrusts.
It may be true, as Fletcher and Davidson aver, that merely not voting for the Democrats, or voting for a protest candidate, is hardly a political strategy. Voting for them, however is not a strategy either, but a resigned acceptance of the status quo. Refusing to vote for the lesser evil is at least the beginning of the wisdom required to exit Groundhog Day.
Obama’s lacklustre performance in the first presidential debate was not only the result of the mountain altitudes in which it took place. What the country perhaps glimpsed was the real Obama, lacking the will to do battle with the Republicans, and profoundly bored with the whole adversarial charade (he even went so far as to say that he and Romney had the same essential views on social security). That performance cost the president what was till then a commanding lead in the opinion polls, and the contest has become much closer. Some opinion samplings even show Romney with a slight advantage.
The president is not elected by direct popular suffrage, but the Electoral College, whose delegates are apportioned according to the population of the state, and in which the candidate with the majority in each state gets all of its delegate votes. The popular vote in solidly Republican or Democratic states is therefore irrelevant, having been figured into electoral calculations from the start. The outcome therefore hinges on a few ‘swing states’, the most important in this election being Ohio, where both contenders are campaigning heavily. Despite the evening out of opinion polls, the arithmetic of the Electoral College still favours Obama only a few days before November 6.
An Obama victory will surely cause great consternation in Republican ranks, and a ripple or two in the ruling class. Certain factions will be driven even further to the right. But perhaps others will become convinced that racial innuendo and open contempt for the majority are no way to run a country or an empire. It would be wrong to be too confident in the rationality of the bourgeoisie, but we shall see. And perhaps the inevitable rightward trajectory of a second Obama presidency may yet convince the enemies of the ruling class that Obama is, in the words of Black Agenda Report editor, Glen Ford, not so much the lesser evil as the more effective one.
But I think the bigger reason is that great man-made river and the technology he used to change a desert into farmland. They don’t really need oil, that is a sham, they know all about free energy. They wanted and seized Qaddafi’s 3-4 billion dollars in gold dinars. He was threatening to change his economy to the gold dinar and he was encouraging other African leaders to do the same. And there is historical, spiritual and cosmic reasons for them to seize certain territories. If you notice, these territories are mentioned in the Bible stories. These lands are so ancient, that Europeans cannot be found there. The history is unbelievable. If they can conquer these regions they can really re-write history while gaining access to the ancient secrets.These folks know what’s up, they keep the masses in the dark
decacsinc 
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