Susanne Posel

As our Constitutional Republic descends into a total Fascist Dictatorship, there is a clear emergence of a police state to facilitate the instillation of this incredible takeover. Americans are monitored at every point of their existence; surfing the internet, speaking on the phone, text messages, emails, social media routines, CCTV cameras on every street corner, TSA internal checkpoints, Stasi networks through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) See Something, Say Something campaign. And the list goes on and on . . .

Coinciding with the severe restriction on our freedoms afforded us by our Constitution; the US government is amassing unmistakable amounts of armory designed for protection against an unknown threat. The DHS have acquired an estimated 2,500 heavily armored vehicles under the cover of Police Rescue.

More ammunition has been solicited by the DHS. Within the next 4 years, they expect to acquire 200,000 million rounds of .223 rifle bullets.

For training snipers, DHS have ordered two types of .308 caliber rounds – blanks and 168 grain hollow point boat tail ammunition. This new purchase adds to the 1.8 billion rounds of ammunition they have solicited for months in preparation for – something.

The amount of ammunition purchased by the federal government is estimated at more than 1 billion rounds in 2012 as well as riot gear, bulletproof checkpoint outposts equipped with red and green stoplights, human shaped paper targets for practice – not to mention the LRADs and other crowd control and containment equipment.

More »

Wayne Madsen

Wayne Madsen Report has discovered CIA files that document the agency’s connections to institutions and individuals figuring prominently in the lives of Barack Obama and his mother, father, grandmother, and stepfather.

President Obama’s own work in 1983 for Business International Corporation, a CIA front that conducted seminars with the world’s most powerful leaders and used journalists as agents abroad, dovetails with CIA espionage activities conducted by his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham in 1960s post-coup Indonesia on behalf of a number of CIA front operations, including the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Ford Foundation. Dunham met and married Lolo Soetoro, Obama’s stepfather, at the East-West Center in 1965.

Soetoro was recalled to Indonesia in 1965 to serve as a senior army officer and assist General Suharto and the CIA in the bloody overthrow of President Sukarno.

Barack Obama, Sr., who met Dunham in 1959 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii, had been part of what was described as an airlift of 280 East African students to the United States to attend various colleges — merely “aided” by a grant from the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation, according to a September 12, 1960 Reuters report from London.

The airlift was a CIA operation to train and indoctrinate future agents of influence in Africa, which was becoming a battleground between the United States and the Soviet Union and China for influence among newly-independent and soon-to-be independent countries on the continent.

More »

James Cogan

Australia was elected last Friday by 140 of the 193 member-states to a temporary seat on the UN’s 15-member Security Council. The vote was held after a four-year campaign by the Australian Labor government against rival bids by Finland and Luxemburg. The decision ensures that Washington, which unquestionably played the major role in lining up the necessary votes for Australia, will have a vocal advocate for US foreign policy on the Security Council over the next two years.

From outside the Security Council, the Gillard government played a significant role in drumming up support for the no-fly zone against Libya in 2011, which was exploited by the US and the NATO powers to bombard the country and bring about the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

In her official statement hailing the vote, Prime Minister Julia Gillard wasted no time signalling the pro-US agenda that Australia will aggressively advocate once it takes its seat at the beginning of 2013. She made clear that Australia would insist that the UN “deal with the scourge of [nuclear] proliferation in our world, and particularly the circumstances in Iran and North Korea.”

Gillard’s speech to the UN General Assembly on September 26 echoed US and Israeli warnings that time was running out for Iran to answer the myriad unproven allegations about its nuclear programs. The Australian government is already supporting crippling economic sanctions against the country, and if the US does attack, Australia will undoubtedly back yet another illegal US-led war, this time from inside the UN Security Council.

More »

Gilad Atzmon

The recent attack on Free Gaza’s Greta Berlin and Colonel Ann Wright suggests that we have crossed a red line -- Jewish domination within the Palestinian solidarity movement belongs to the past. We are now, it seems, under Zionist occupation, and we are subject to all the symptoms of Israeli abuse and Zionist brutality.

The expulsions - The exclusions and the cleansings that are inherent within Zionism, Israeli and Jewish politics, are now alive and kicking within the Palestinian solidarity movement itself. On a daily basis we are notified about more and more people who ‘must be’ expelled from the ‘movement’: earlier this year we learned that the Palestinian poet and writer Nahida Izzat had first been harassed and later expelled from her local Palestinian solidarity group by a Liverpool Jewish activists' gang. Next, Dr Francis Clark Lowes, former Chairman of the UK PSC was expelled from the organisation, for allegedly being an ‘Anti Semite’ and a ‘holocaust denier’. Norman Finkelstein, probably the leading pro Palestinian Jewish scholar, has also been subjected to repeated smears and attempts at character assassination for voicing some legitimate criticisms re BDS being a cult, and recently, the greatly admired Greta Berlin, co-founder of Free Gaza, has also been subjected to harassment and abuse in the last few weeks. Berlin was labeled 'an anti Semite' and 'a Holocaust Denier' -- and yet, up until the present time, there has not been a shred of evidence provided by her detractors to support such accusations. And now, the respected peace activist Colonel Ann Wright has also been 'purged', and expelled from the current attempt to break the siege on Gaza -- simply for being associated with Mrs Berlin. The pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim is also subject to a BDS boycott. And six months ago I too, faced a call for a disavowal -- by people who were foolish enough to confess that they had not even read a single line of my work.

The message here is clear – some elements within the Palestinian solidarity movement have obviously adopted the most repellent and brutal Zionist symptoms, and we are now engaged, caught up in, and beset by a sinister series of expulsions, purges, crude witch hunts, exclusions, smears, character defamations and cleansings.

More »

Stephen Lendman

Washington's war on Libya rages. Fighting didn't stop after NATO said its seven-month 2011 "mission" ended. Ravaging a nonbelligerent country wasn't good enough.

Occupation harshness inflicts more pain. Jamahiriya Green Resistance is strong. Its struggle continues. It won't stop until Libya regains freedom. Loyalists want no part of NATO control, puppet leaders, imperial plundering, and ordinary Libyans used and abused.

Frequent freedom fights erupt. Tribes are involved. Local militias have their own agenda. Insurgents battle each other and Green Resistance for control. Government forces serve Washington and key NATO partners.

Since early October, Bani Walid's been besieged. Thousands of militiamen are involved. Food, medical supplies, fuel and other essentials are in short supply. Armed men block vehicles with medical and other essential supplies from entering.

Residential neighborhoods are attacked. Nearby villages were looted and burned. Libya's so-called General National Congress (GNC) approved the assault. Puppet rulers want residents to hand over individuals allegedly responsible for killing Omran Shaaban. He's an insurgent involved in Gaddafi's capture and death.

More »

Wendy McElroy

America's mainstream media does not seem to see the children victimized by American drone attacks. The West still tolerates the wounding and murder of children when it is done by the United States in the name of the war on terror.

Some news stories break your heart. On October 9, in Pakistan, 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai was shot twice in the head by Taliban gunmen. She is being treated in a hospital in Birmingham, England, where she was moved for specialized care and personal safety. Doctors say they expect a “good recovery.”

Malala was targeted for assassination because of her prominent role in promoting education for girls in the Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan, which has served as a base for the Taliban. Several times, as power flowed back and forth, the Taliban outlawed the education of girls in the Swat.

Malala became prominent in 2009, at 11 years old, when she wrote a series of blog posts for the BBC in which she chronicled life under the Taliban and pleaded for peace.

More »

Robert S. Dotson, M.D.

■ “Mitt Romney is a wolf in a wolf’s clothing. Barack Obama is a wolf in a sheep’s clothing, but they both essentially have the same agenda.” – Jill Stein
■ “Bipartisan usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.” – George Carlin
■ “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it away from the fog of controversy.” — Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, remarks at the 2010 Legislative Conference for the National Association of Counties prior to passage of PPACA

October has brought the mini-series that accompanies our quadrennial exercise in faux democracy, the Presidential Debates. As has been usual for many decades, the public was entertained by carefully vetted corporatist representatives of War Party A and War Party B via the televised game show format that is sold as “serious debate” here at the End of Empire. Nothing illustrated the silliness and irrelevance of such spectacle better than the inane exchanges between Obama and Romney concerning healthcare. The charade was played out yet again when the Vice Presidential candidates, Biden and Ryan, performed in another nondebate on October 11th.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, aka Obamacare, aka Romneycare or, most accurately, Obamneycare) is the 21st century poster child for social legislation in our corporatist state. Despite its origins, Obamneycare is simply another hand-out to the ruling oligarchy. In true New Speak fashion, despite the title patients will not be protected nor will healthcare become “affordable”.

More »

Glenn Morris & Russell Means
Republic of Lakotah

When Taino Indians saved Christopher Columbus from certain death on the fateful morning of Oct. 12, 1492, a glorious opportunity presented itself. The cultures Europe and the Americas could have merged, and the beauty of both races could have flourished.

Unfortunately, what occurred was neither beautiful nor heroic. Just as Columbus could not, and did not, “discover” a hemisphere that was already inhabited by nearly 100 million people, his arrival cannot, and will not, be recognized as a heroic and celebratory event by indigenous peoples.

Unlike the Western tradition, which presumes some absolute concept of objective truth, and consequently, one “factual” depiction of history, the indigenous view recognizes that there exist many truths in the world and many legitimate recollections of any given historical event, depending on one’s perspective and experiences.

More »

James Petras

Skyline of London's financial district, "City of London"

Introduction: Whenever financial swindlers prosper at the expense of investors or a bank jiggers interest rates to bugger their competitors or tax evaders flee fiscal crises or rent gouging petrol monarchies recycle profits or oligarchs pillage economies and drive millions to drink, drugs and destitution they find a suitable secure sanctuary in London.

They are wooed and pursued by big British realtors eager to sell them multi-million dollar estates, trophy properties and landmark mansions. Pompous and pretentious British academics convince them to send their progeny to six digit private schools, promising them that when they graduate they will be speaking English through their nasal cavities, rolling their r’s and mastering the art of eloquent but vacuous elocution. British governments, Labor Liberal and Conservative, in the best and most hypocritical legal traditions, fashion the legal loopholes to attract the biggest and wealthiest parasites of the world.

Crime Wave Sweeps City of London: A veritable crime wave[1] has invaded the City of London, where millionaire investment bankers cook the books for billionaire clients and bilk the Treasury to pay their fines and flout the Law. Courses in business ethics are obligatory at Oxford and Cambridge since it has become standard operating procedure for mega-swindlers to plead guilty ,to pay a fine and avoid jail and to solemnly promise to never, ever, flout the law….. until the next mega-deal.

More »

Philip Giraldi

Spencer Tracy by the tracks in the John Sturges thriller
from 1955, Bad Day at Black Rock. It tells the story of a
mysterious stranger who arrives at a tiny isolated town in
a desert of the southwest United States in search of a man.

I am still trying to recover from the Republican Party’s overwhelming failure to understand that only Ron Paul was speaking good sense about the dismal state of U.S. foreign policy. Depending on whom you listen to, however, one might almost think in spite of all evidence to the contrary that the revolution is still going on and just one more tweak will deliver a Brave New World. That is because hardly a day passes without yet another email from the various organizations that are seeking to cash in on the Ron Paul legacy, demonstrating that they have the moxie to continue the fight. The most recent email from John Tate and Campaign for Liberty pledged to do something about drones, the latest empty promise that comes on top of not-quite-achieved victories in auditing the Fed and Pentagon and defending the Internet. Just send $50 or whatever one can spare. We’ll spend it wisely. Really.

In spite of it all, I strongly believe that Dr. Paul’s immense contribution to the political debate forced something of a rethinking of the unfortunate direction that our nation has taken in the past 10 years. His message continues to resonate, if muted, and is worth more than an eventual footnote in a history book. In the area of foreign policy, he alone had the courage to speak out on issues that the other candidates chose to ignore while puffing out their chests, wrapping themselves in the flag, and boasting of “American Exceptionalism.”

More »

Stephen Lendman

In Shakespearean terms, indeed that's the question. Longstanding regime change plans are known. Means to achieve them have been ongoing for years. A previous article put it this way:

Red lines, timelines, deadlines, sanctions, sabotage, subversion, cyber attacks, assassinations, saber rattling, falsified IAEA hype, ad nauseam warmongering, Netanyahu/Barak bluster, spurious accusations, manipulated to fail P5+1 talks, and inflammatory headlines up the stakes for war.

Washington also uses color revolutions. Some work. Others don't. Iran's so-called "green" one was made in America. After Iran's June 12, 2009 election, days of street protests and clashes with security forces followed. Washington stirred the pot and caused them. They replicated previous efforts elsewhere. Regime change is the common thread.

Spurious Western media reports claimed electoral fraud. A new vote was demanded. Events replicated Georgia's "rose revolution" and Ukraine's "orange" one. Both worked. The Iranian scheme failed. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won fair and square. He became the Islamic Republic of Iran's sixth and current president. What Iranian voters chose, Washington wasn't able to put asunder. It hasn't stopped trying.

More »

Susanne Posel

In Texas, children attending school in the Northside Independent School District will be required to carry RFID chipped cards while on campus. The 6,000 student’s movements will be monitored by faculty, in a pilot program that hopes to expand to tracking all students in the 12 districts.

Principal Wendy Reyes of Jones Middle School, explains: “It’s going to give us the opportunity to track our students in the building. They may have been in the nurse’s office, or the counselor’s office, or vice principal’s office, but they were markedly absent from the classroom because they weren’t sitting in the class. It will help us have a more accurate account of our attendance.”

Schools being the intended beta-test ground for social conditioning, is using RFID chips to track students as cattle is monitored on a ranch; impeding on their privacy and dignity.

RFID technology is furthered by corporations like Proteus Biomedical that have developed the microchip that is activated by human stomach acids, embeds into the lining of the stomach and remotely sends information collected through sensors about the environment. These transmission can be syphoned to the internet, a doctor’s office via computer or any intercepting entity.

Called “smart pills”, the bio-tech corporations Novartis are creating microchipping that will assist in organ transplants and anti-rejection drugs as well as using human clinical trials to test safety measures. How will the pharmaceutical corporations explain away the fact that electronic capacitors are toxic to the human body and swallowing them on a regular basis will cause serious complications?

Continuous data broadcasting impinges on privacy and it could also be used for nefarious use. Being a human transmission tower means to be interceded by anyone with a WiFi connection or “pharmecurticals microchipping scanners”.

More »

Joseph Kishore

In a bellicose foreign policy speech Monday, Republican Party presidential candidate Mitt Romney threatened war with Iran, expanded military intervention in Syria, an unending occupation of Afghanistan, and the reintroduction of US troops into Iraq.

While framed as a criticism of the policy of the Obama administration, the main contours of Romney’s speech were in line with the agenda proposed by the current president. Romney’s remarks highlighted the bipartisan conspiracy against the American people, as both candidates plan an aggressive expansion of US militarism abroad, behind the backs of the public.

Romney delivered his speech at the Virginia Military Institute, continuing a tradition, shared by the current president, in which foreign policy speeches are delivered before a military audience. The military is treated as—and indeed is in fact—an independent and overriding power in the American political establishment.

After his speech, Romney held a closed-door meeting with retired generals, in which the war plans of a potential Romney administration were no doubt discussed with even greater candor.

More »

Stephen Lendman

Several previous articles said Venezuelans won't tolerate going back to their ugly past. On Sunday, they proved it. They voted in record numbers. Long lines queued hours before dawn. Polls stayed open well into the night so everyone coming out could vote. Turnout was nearly 81% of Venezuela's 19,119,809 registered voters.

US elections usually get around 50%. Off-year congressional races average under 40%. From 1960 - 2010, the highest percentage participation was 63.1%. It was in 1960 when Kennedy defeated Nixon. The lowest turnout was 49.1% in 1996 when Clinton bested Bob Dole. In the off-year 2010 congressional election, a meager 37.8% participated. America's electoral process lacks credibility. Duopoly power permits no choice. Big Money always wins.

Venezuelans get the real thing. Their electoral process is the best in the world. It's independently judged open, free and fair. Every vote counts. They're tabulated fully and honestly.

US elections are rigged. Politics in America reflect more hypocrisy than democracy.

More »

Wayne Madsen

The recent passage of a resolution by the Turkish parliament to authorize cross-border retaliatory military action against Syria after a recent barrage of mortar rounds from Syria into Turkey is a sign that Turkey, working with NATO's neoconservative Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, is hoping to invoke for the second time in its history the NATO collective security authorization, Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty that stipulates an act of aggression against one NATO member is an attack on all. The first time Article 5 was invoked after the 9/11 attacks on the United States…

Rasmussen is the perfect facilitator to engineer NATO action in Syria. He was a leading cheerleader for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, including the shedding Danish military blood in the senseless military operations.

And after Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay was caught red-handed lying about Syria officially apologizing for the shelling when, in fact, the shelling was carried out by units of the Turkish-supported Free Syrian Army, Turkey is taking a page from the "false flag" military doctrine practiced for decades by Israel. Five civilians in the Turkish village of Akçakale were killed in the October 3 mortar barrage from Syria but in false flag actions, it is innocent civilians who are the key to success. Civilian deaths help whip up war fever by the general public against a real or imagined enemy. An October 5 mortar round from Syria landed in the Turkish village of Aşağıpulluyazı in the restive Turkish province of Hatay, where there exists a sizable Alawite community that feels a kinship with the dominant Alawite government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that Turkey’s standard response to any fire from Syrian territory – regardless of its source – would be met with Turkish artillery fire. Borrowing a page from Israeli “price tag” attacks on Palestinian Muslims and Christians, Davutoglu said that Turkey would respond one-for –one, for each artillery round from Syrian soil. The Turkish policy is obviously aimed at increasing tensions.

More »

Matthew J. Nasuti

They are shunned by politicians who want happy news

Michelle and Barack Obama have time for Hollywood, but not for fallen soldiers. This week the Obamas had time to appear on the television show “The View.” This follows guest appearances by Mrs. Obama on the Jay Leno show, the David Letterman show and the Steve Harvey show, which follows a fund raising dinner for the Obamas in Los Angeles with actor George Clooney.

The last time President Obama went to Dover Air Force Base to pay his respects to the returning caskets of war heroes was on August 9, 2011. It is not clear if President Obama or Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have ever attended a funeral for any of the U.S. military, diplomatic or civilian casualties of the Afghan war. Perhaps if they attended some of these funerals there would be less of them as these officials would quickly tire of these tragic ordeals.

The caskets make a lonely journey from Bagram Air Base to Dover Air Force Base, where they are quietly routed to their final destinations. They arrive with no fanfare and no headlines. Obama Administration officials seem too important and too busy to pay any respects.

The names of the fallen and their stories and contributions remain largely unknown because the American news media has polled its audiences and determined that such stories are not popular. Those who gave their lives for the United States deserve better, as do their loved ones who remain behind.

More »

Gilad Atzmon

Is it really possible that not a single Palestinian or Palestinian solidarity activist would stand up for Greta Berlin, one of the founders of the Free Gaza Movement and its spokesperson for the last several years? Is it possible that not a single peace activist would rush to defend the person who was directly and physically involved in every naval attempt to break the siege on Gaza? Apparently, yes.

A few days ago Greta Berlin had been subject to a vile Israeli and Zionist smear campaign following her facebook post containing the following message: “Zionists operated the concentration camps and helped murder millions of innocent Jews.” Berlin also added to her Facebook post a link to a video of a lecture by Eustace Mullins. I am not familiar with the work of Mullins but I guess that he is far from being a popular political thinker in Tel Aviv or Golders Green.

Zionists and hasbara agents were very quick to slander Berlin. They tagged her as an ‘anti Semite’ and a ‘Holocaust denier’. But clearly there is no Holocaust denial in Berlin’s message.

More »

Stephen Lendman

What's been ongoing for over 18 months looks all too familiar. It could continue for some time. It took most of the 1990s to fully balkanize Yugoslavia. America was the lead belligerent. Whether or not Washington plans the same for Syria remains to be seen. Only the fullness of time will tell. For sure regime change is prioritized. Ravaging the country ruthlessly continues.

If full-scale war erupts, perhaps hundreds of thousands may die. America doesn't keep count or care. Unchallenged dominance alone matters. Mass slaughter and destruction are means to very ugly ends. Whether or not achieved, ruins and human misery testify to America's ruthlessness. That's how imperialism works. It terrorizes humanity everywhere it targets. Syria may or may not be ground zero. It's hard to tell. Washington wages so many direct and proxy wars. It's official policy to ravage one country after another or in multiples.

No nation ever threatened human survival more than America. It's no idle speculation. Mushroom cloud determination may decide things one way or another. Forget about who's president next year. Policies remain the same. Duopoly power mandates it. Permanent war is policy. World dominance is prioritized. Imagine what's coming if not stopped.

More »

Mark E. Smith

Boycotting elections alone will not oust the oligarchy, but it is the only proven non-violent way to delegitimize a government.

“In Cuba, when Fidel Castro’s small, ragged, tired band were in the mountains, the dictator Batista held an election (at the suggestion of the US, by the way). Only 10% of the population voted. Realizing that he had lost the support of 90% of the country, Batista fled. Castro then, knowing that he had the support of 90% of the country, proceeded to bring about a true revolution.”

The most common activist strategies, such as street demonstrations, protests, etc., rarely seem to bring about any change in government. There is only one nonviolent tactic that has been proven to work. Recently I asked the new president of a local activist group that had banned me from speaking, if I would be allowed to speak under the new leadership. I explained that I’m an election boycott advocate. The reply I got was:

“So my question is – how does NOT voting change anything? I can see actually writing in someone you believe in – but not voting simply is giving up.”

I decided to answer the question as thoroughly as I could. Here’s what I wrote.

More »

Stephen Lendman

The entire system is corrupt and dysfunctional. It has no legitimacy whatever.

It's bad enough to make some despots blush. It doesn't rise to the level of good fiction. No respectable film producer would accept a script explaining it. Who'd believe a democratic system so implausible. It's more fanciful than real.

Longstanding electoral fraud alone subverts democracy in America. The entire process lacks legitimacy. Most democracies have proportionally representative (PR) governance. America's winner-take-all system lacks credibility. It's borderline lawless.

PR represents all voters and all political parties or groups proportionally to their electoral strength. Thus, if candidates from one party win 30% of the votes, they get 30% of legislative seats. Not in America. Here, 50.1% takes all.

The Electoral College constitutes another systemic flaw. It's fundamentally undemocratic. Bush v. Gore stands out. Winning the popular vote doesn't matter. Gore, of course, also won an Electoral College majority. Final determination came months too late to matter. Gore won but never contested. Perhaps his candidacy just went along for the ride.

At the same time, it likely made no difference who won. Both candidates represented two sides of the same coin. Duopoly power runs America. Big Money owns it. Independent opposition has no chance. Voters have no say.

More »