¡Ya Basta!

False flag terrorism, support for the drug trade, sex trafficking, and torture. Amerikan political tactics. And this was under the good liberal Clinton. People need to study history; we’re seeing the same vicious real politik repeated over and over, and no politician is going to stop it.

via: johnpilger.com

The secrets of the crushing of Yugoslavia are emerging, telling us more about how the modern world is policed. The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague, Carla Del Ponte, this year published her memoir The Hunt: Me and War Criminals. Largely ignored in Britain, the book reveals unpalatable truths about the west’s intervention in Kosovo, which has echoes in the Caucasus. Continue Reading »

via: Middle East Times

The small oil-rich emirate of Kuwait – situated between Iraq, Iran and an un-enviable geographic hard place on the northern end of the Persian Gulf – has reportedly activated its “Emergency War Plan” as a massive U.S. and European armada is reported heading for the region.

Coming on the heels of Operation Brimstone just a week ago that saw U.S., British and French naval forces participate in war games in the Atlantic Ocean, the object of which was to practice enforcing an eventual blockade on Iran, the joint task force is now headed for the Gulf and what could easily turn into a major confrontation with Iran.

The naval force comprises a U.S. Navy super carrier battle group and is accompanied by an expeditionary carrier battle group, a British Royal Navy carrier battle group and a French nuclear hunter-killer submarine.

Leading the pack is the nuclear-powered carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt and its Carrier Strike Group Two; besides its 80-plus combat planes the Roosevelt normally transports, it is carrying an additional load of French Naval Rafale fighter jets from the French carrier Charles de Gaulle, currently in dry dock.

Also reported heading toward Iran is another nuclear-powered carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan and its Carrier Strike Group Seven; the USS Iwo Jima, the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal and a number of French warships, including the nuclear hunter-killer submarine Amethyste.

Once the naval force arrives in the Gulf region it will be joining two other U.S. naval battle groups already on site: the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Peleliu; the Lincoln with its carrier strike group and the latter with an expeditionary strike group. Continue Reading »

It’s a pretty simple formula: destroy a country’s economy, pump drugs into low income neighborhoods, and then offer a police state to quell the violence. Create the problem, create the solution. Ordo ab chao. This will only become more common.

via: AP

By JON GAMBRELL – 1 day ago

HELENA-WEST HELENA, Ark. (AP) — Officers armed with military rifles have been stopping and questioning passers-by in a neighborhood plagued by violence that’s been under a 24-hour curfew for a week.

On Tuesday, the Helena-West Helena City Council voted 9-0 to allow police to expand that program into any area of the city, despite a warning from a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas that the police stops were unconstitutional.

Police Chief Fred Fielder said the patrols have netted 32 arrests since they began last week in a 10-block neighborhood in this small town on the banks of the Mississippi River long troubled by poverty. The council said those living in the city want the random shootings and drug-fueled violence to stop, no matter what the cost.

“Now if somebody wants to sue us, they have an option to sue, but I’m fairly certain that a judge will see it the way the way the citizens see it here,” Mayor James Valley said.

“The citizens deserve peace, that some infringement on constitutional rights is OK and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution.”

The area under curfew, in what used to be a West Helena neighborhood, sits among abandoned homes and occupied residences in disrepair.

White signs on large blue barrels warn those passing by that the area remains under curfew by order of Mayor James Valley. The order was scheduled to end at 3 p.m. Tuesday, but Valley said the city council’s vote would allow police to have the same powers across Helena-West Helena.

Among the curfew operation’s arrests, 10 came from felony charges, including the arrest of two people carrying both drugs and weapons, Fielder said. The police chief said the officers in the field carry military-style M-16 or M-4 rifles, some equipped with laser sights. Other officers carry short-barrel shotguns. Many dealing crack cocaine and marijuana in the city carry pistols and AK-47 assault rifles, he said.

“We’ve had people call us, expressing concern for their children,” Fielder said. “They had to sleep on the floor, because of stray bullets.”

Fielder said officers had not arrested anyone for violating the curfew, only questioned people about why they were outside. Those without good answers or acting nervously get additional attention, Fielder said.

However, such stops likely violate residents’ constitutional rights to freely assemble and protections against unreasonable police searches, said Holly Dickson, a lawyer for the ACLU of Arkansas who addressed the council at its packed Tuesday meeting. Because of that, Dickson said any convictions coming from the arrests likely would be overturned.

“The residents of these high-crime areas are already victims,” she said. “They’re victims of what are happening in the neighborhoods, they’re victims of fear. But for them to be subject to unlawful stops and questioning … that is not going to ultimately going to help this situation.”

The council rejected Dickson’s claims, at one point questioning the Little Rock-based attorney if she’d live in a neighborhood they described as under siege by wild gunfire and gangs.

“As far as I’m concerned, at 3 o’clock in the morning, nobody has any business being on the street, except the law,” Councilman Eugene “Red” Johnson said. “Anyone out at 3 o’clock shouldn’t be out on the street, unless you’re going to the hospital.”

The curfew is the second under the mayor’s watch since the rival cities of Helena and West Helena merged in 2006. That year, Valley set a nightly citywide curfew after a rash of burglaries and other thefts.

Police in Hartford, Conn., began enforcing a nightly curfew for youths after recent violence, including a weekend shooting that killed a man and wounded six young people.

Helena-West Helena, with 15,000 residents at the edge of Arkansas’ eastern rice fields and farmland, is in one of the nation’s poorest regions, trailing even parts of Appalachia in its standard of living.

In the curfew area, those inside the homes in the watch area peered out of door cracks Tuesday as police cruisers passed. They closed the doors afterward.

via: Survival Blog

This is the full interview that was used for an Alternet article that’s less good.

AlterNet: Is survivalism a failure of community? A celebration of it?

JWR: I’d say that survivalism is indeed a celebration of community. It is the embodiment of America’s traditional “can do” spirit of self-reliance that settled the frontier.

AlterNet: Is it engineered by personal issues? Is it a racial, or economic phenomenon, in your opinion? Or both?

JWR: Survivalism [is a movement that] crosses all racial and religious lines. It is essentially color blind. For 99% of us, we could care less about the color of someone’s skin, but we care a lot about about including people with valuable skill sets. The preparedness movement is simply a rational quest for family and community level self-sufficiency in an increasingly dangerous world. There is unfortunately a very small but very vocal minority that are disgustingly racist idiots. I’m sad to say that they also call themselves survivalists. They get an inordinate amount of press coverage, making that 1% look much larger than it really is. In my opinion they should be ignored and shunned, and I certainly don’t give them a platform on SurvivalBlog.

The economic cross section of SurvivalBlog readers is also amazing. We have working class readers that a worried about how they are going to make their next car payment posting alongside surgeons and entrepreneurs. We have both starving students and Little Old Lady pensioners. The readership is also global. We have regular readers in more than 90 countries. But even with this diversity, we all get along. [I didn't mention that I also edit out a lot of rants and foul language from the readers' letters that I post.] Part of this is the realization that the next Great Depression will be a tremendous “leveler”.

AlterNet: Do you think survivalism is a rational response to our current crises?

JWR: Absolutely. Continue Reading »

GOOD magazine wrote a fluff piece mocking conspiracy theorists and dismissing the dangers of Bilderberg, Skull and Bones, et al. It was crap journalism and I spent a long damn time composing a response that will probably end up in a spam box. Oh well. I might as well put it here.

The GOOD article

Hello Matt,

I have read and enjoyed your magazine before, but was greatly disappointed by the GOOD Guide: to the Shadowy Organizations That Rule the World. It is the kind of snarky, self-satisfied fluff I expect from hip youth-oriented political-esque media like MTV News or an E! election special, not GOOD. The research is fairly accurate, but the analysis is insubstantial and glossy, letting the reader remain comfortably in his or her smug liberal worldview without really considering the issues presented. This is a weak article and I’d like to discuss some of the flaws I found in it.

History is distended with conspiracies. It’s very simple: those who have some power and desire more seek allies and make clandestine plans to achieve their aims. We all understand that the Iraq War was plotted in secret by a group of political elites, don’t we? That’s a conspiracy. Iran Contra. Watergate. The USS Liberty attack. Bay of Pigs. All well documented conspiracies. Basically everything the CIA has ever done from drug smuggling to assassinations and foreign coups (see the Congressional Church Committee’s findings in 1975) originated in conspiracy. In 1934 Major General Smedley Butler—the most decorated Marine in US history and the author of War is a Racket—warned Congress of the Business Plot, a conspiracy by business elites to overthrow the government and install a fascist regime. Even the Revolutionary War was conceived by a group of men (many of whom were wealthy Freemasons as you point out) meeting in secret. Continue Reading »

Ron Paul July 22, 2008

The Latin term “fiat” roughly translates to “there shall be”. When we refer to fiat money, we are referring to money that exists because the government declares it into existence. It is not based on production or earnings, and not backed by any commodity. It is solely based on trusting the government. Fiat money is exchanged in the economy as long as there is faith in the government that issues it.

Some are blaming the recent shakeup in the markets to “whining” or financial fear-mongering, which misses the whole point. History has shown that fiat money, or “faith-based currency” always fails, because when governments claim this power, they always behave irresponsibly.

When government has the ability to create and spend all the money it wants, priorities shift, and the concept of budgeting, as most Americans know it, loses all meaning. Hand a teenager a credit card, and tell him there is no limit and no accountability for what he spends, and the effect would be the same. You see, this problem is not unique to our government. It is a predictable outcome based on human nature, and we’ve seen variations of what we are experiencing now happen over and over throughout history. I didn’t have a crystal ball or a fortune teller when I predicted this 3, 7, or even 30 years ago. Actions have logical consequences. The government becomes the reckless teenager with the credit card, and in the end, the taxpaying citizens get the bill. What happens after that is never pretty.

Continue Reading »

There’s an interesting column in Business Week on America’s prospects for the future. It’s nothing new for the doomers crowd, but has some good local flavor and at least the suggestion that even working class folks in Maine are thinking about alternative energy. The second to last paragraph is perticularly good, but also pisses me off in a really fundamental way.

Civilizations can prosper or decline. This is no coin flip but a consequence of how well societies perceive and adapt to economic, social, and environmental ruptures. In 1980, still in the grip of the last energy crisis, Americans signed on for “Morning in America.” The promise of Ronald Reagan’s candidacy, and of every President and Congress since, has been to humor our fears with a message of eternal sunshine—that everything is as it has always been. We’ve been lulled into escapism by opportunistic leaders. We chose to be pacified. Now decades have been lost while we’ve kept our heads in the sand. Most Americans alive today cannot recall the Depression—the last great shattering of our economic life—and what it felt like to be frozen. Will the economy mark the onset of our lingering decline, or will it finally rally us from denial?

Yes, the power elite tricked us into this precipice. Yes, we are poisoned and dumbed down. Yes, we are a nation of victims, but fucking hell America, welcome to the real world. Folks is worried the time of plenty is over and we’re heading into the Great Depression again. I empathize with them; I don’t want to see anyone suffer. But wake the fuck up: American prosperity has always been built upon a global apartheid. Black, brown and red people have bled for centuries so that the white middle class could afford its electric appliances and suburban lawns. Our cheap commodities have been made by the hands of foreign children for decades, and this is no secret. Boo fucking hoo America, no more Wal Mart shopping sprees. This is how the vast majority of the world has been living for centuries. Clean water is a goddamn luxury for most people on earth and Americans are getting worried that fuel costs are going up. They burn plastic bags for cooking fuel in African refugee camps! We voted in Reagan and Bush twice a piece. Goddamn, I don’t want to see this Depression happen, but it’s been going on for a long fucking time almost everywhere else in the world. No shit, consumerism wasn’t the answer to all your problems. No shit, you can’t float through life on credit card debt. Wow. Oh it’s morning in America, and we’re coming off a wicked bender. No one weeps for a drunk driver’s hangover after he’s run down little Susy and her pet dog. Yes the power elite fucked us over, but only because we were content to let them fuck over the entire rest of the world for hundreds of years.

I’m sorry to rant, but fucking hell. “First they came for the Tainos… 200 years later I started to notice.”

via: Business Week

The Polar ice cap may be melting, but the U.S. economy is frozen, starting right here in my small town. Gradually rising levels of dismay at the gas pump and in the supermarket gave way to paralytic shock last week when “lock-in” notices from the local fuel company arrived. This year’s advance price for home heating oil is nearly twice what people paid last year. A collective gasp of disbelief from my tough, resourceful Maine neighbors echoed across the meadows and up the rocky coast. Many claimed they would never sign the contract. “What’s your alternative?” I asked a friend.

“I don’t have one,” he muttered.

In the days that followed, a new quality of dread settled over the place like soot, as people weighed their options. Heat or food? Gas or electricity? Medicine or mortgage payments? What to give up? What to cut back? The conversations were everywhere. In the supermarket, I heard one man tell another: “When I was a kid, you woke up, went into the bathroom, and broke up the ice in the toilet. Now my kids will have to do the same. America is moving backward.” …

Raw Story | July 15, 2008

Update: Full speech text reprinted below

(AP) - Contending that the U.S. is not pursuing a sound strategy for keeping Americans safe, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama laid out goals Tuesday that he argued would deal with the nation’s most pressing threats.

In a major speech on the war, Obama listed ending the war in Iraq responsibly as the top priority. If elected president, he said, he would also finish the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban; secure nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue nations; achieve “true energy security”; and rebuild the nation’s alliances.

The speech sets the stage for Obama’s upcoming visit to Iraq and offers a high-profile explanation of his opposition to the war and his pledge to complete a U.S. troop pullout within 16 months of becoming president. It also gives him a forum for criticizing President Bush and his rival for the presidency, Republican John McCain.

“By any measure, our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy for keeping America safe,” Obama said in remarks prepared for delivery at the International Trade Center in Washington. “In fact - as should have been apparent to President Bush and Sen. McCain - the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was.”

Obama said the Bush strategy that McCain supports has placed the burden for U.S. foreign policy on American military. National security policy should go well beyond Baghdad, he said, and involve allies around the world. He focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan, saying that if the U.S. were attacked again, it likely would be from the same region where the Sept. 11 attacks were planned. Continue Reading »

via: AP

BAGHDAD (AP) — It is a politician’s dream: Handing out cold, hard cash to people on the street as they plead for help. Iraq’s prime minister has been doing just that in recent weeks, doling out Iraqi dinars as an aide trails behind, keeping a tally.

The handouts by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and a handful of other top officials are authorized — as long as each goes no higher than about $8,000, and the same people don’t get them twice. Aides say they are meant merely to ease the pain a bit, and are motivated by a belief that better conditions will lead to more security. Continue Reading »

There are those who say governments are increasingly irrelevant these days, and in the new era corporations are the major players. No, not quite. Governments are still the enforcement arm of the global elite, the thugs and leg breakers. They have powers to extract resources, punish civilians, and seize property that corporations just don’t have, and that system works. The corporations blame the government and the government the corporations. The dialectic is a source of power, a means of control.

via: LA Times

The federal government took control of Pasadena-based IndyMac Bank on Friday in what regulators called the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.

Citing a massive run on deposits, regulators shut its main branch three hours early, leaving customers stunned and upset. One woman leaned on the locked doors, pleading with an employee inside: “Please, please, I want to take out a portion.” All she could do was read a two-page notice taped to the door.

The bank’s 33 branches will be closed over the weekend, but the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will reopen the bank on Monday as IndyMac Federal Bank, said the Office of Thrift Supervision in Washington. Customers will not be able to bank by phone or Internet over the weekend, regulators said, but can continue to use ATMs, debit cards and checks. Normal branch hours, online banking and phone banking services are to resume Monday.

Federal authorities estimated that the takeover of IndyMac, which had $32 billion in assets, would cost the FDIC $4 billion to $8 billion. Regulators said deposits of up to $100,000 were safe and insured by the FDIC. The agency’s insurance fund has assets of about $52 billion. Continue Reading »