Health Care Rationing to come?

Obama Paving Way for Health Care Rationing, Say Budget Committee Republicans

Matt Cover - CNSNews - February 27, 2009

The ranking Republicans on the House and Senate budget committees see President Obama’s proposed fiscal 2010 budget as a first step toward health-care rationing in the United States.

The budget includes $634-billion that the administration is calling a “down payment” on a health-care reform plan that Obama wants to enact this year. Obama wants to set aside the money before announcing how the plan will work.

“It could lead to rationing,” said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, who was initially nominated by Obama to be Commerce Secretary before he withdrew his name.

Obama’s budget assumes that the government will recognize nearly $700 billion in projected “savings” on health care spending, and it plans to use that money to expand health-care coverage for uninsured Americans.

Related CIVICS NEWS Posts:

~Obama-Daschle's health care federalization snuck into "stimulus bill": Critics Concerned New Economic Stimulus Bill Promotes Rationed Health Care
~British government-run health insurance denies patients life-saving treatment
~British medical socialism: You're too old for heart surgery. You'll have to just die.
~Culture of Death, Abortion, Eugenics, Environmental Anti-Humanism

End marijuana prohibition in California?

The Abrupt Limits of Glenn Beck's Understanding
Lew Rockwell.com Blog - William Grigg - February 26, 2009

I'm as grateful as anybody that Glenn Beck has used his media platform to give exposure to Ron Paul and others who understand the ongoing economic apocalypse. And occasionally Beck, who calls himself a libertarian (but who seems more of an authoritarian populist), has ventured respectably close to a genuinely radical critique of the Regime.

Alas, therein lies his problem: He's still hung up on being "respectable" in some ways. For example, he still doesn't subscribe to the fundamental libertarian premise of self-ownership with respect to the substances people voluntarily consume.

Like most other conservative authoritarians, Beck apparently cannot understand the principle involved here, or why some people like myself who neither smoke nor drink nor take drugs of any kind would want to end the murderous fraud called the War on Drugs.

As the following interview with Rob Campia of the Marijuana Policy Project demonstrates, Beck -- a former alcoholic and drug addict -- is not willing to endorse an end to the stupid, senseless, destructive policy of drug prohibition.

As several observes have noted, Beck the prohibitionist comes off as the one who's on some kind of controlled substance, while Campia -- who has to endure Beck's palpable condescension (first question: "Do you smoke marijuana, Rob?") and constantly misfiring attempts at humor -- is composed, rational, and in command of the facts:






CIVICS NEWS Comment: Grigg's reference to "self-ownership" might need clarification. From a Christian perspective (and Grigg is a Christian), I am a mere creature, and God is sovereign over me. And so I do not own myself in relation to God--I am owned by God. But God gives me stewardship responsibilities and the free will to use my life, my time, my resources, and even my very self the way that I choose (hopefully in a worthy manner that glorifies the Creator).

Here's the key: no other human being has any legitimate say regarding the choices that I make as a sovereign individual. Self-ownership relates only to my fellow man. Nobody else owns me and dictates how I utilize the stewardship responsibilities that God has endowed me by giving me life, liberty, property. No one can use coercive force to compel me to behave in a way that they think is best.

Global bank, Global currency

CNBC Analyst: Global Bank, Global Currency Within 15 Years
Globalists exploit financial crisis to pose as saviors and achieve new world economic order
Paul Joseph Watson - Prison Planet.com - Friday, February 27, 2009

Head of market analysis for Schneider Foreign Exchange Stephen Gallo told CNBC yesterday that the financial crisis will lead to the creation of a global central bank and a global single currency within 15 years, echoing the call of top globalists who have exploited the problems they created to push for a new world financial order.

Highlighting the significance of the introduction of the Euro, Gallo said that the single currency was “where we are headed globally on a monetary basis over the course of the next 10 to 15 years.”

Stating that one of the things that caused the financial crisis was an over expansion of the money supply on a global basis, Gallo said, “Over the course of the next couple of decades central banks are going to need to pay more attention to what’s going on with the global money supply rather than the money supply just in their own borders,” a necessity that, “might call into question the need for some kind of global central bank or a global central bank that’s united by central banks for bigger monetary areas underneath that global central bank.”

As we have highlighted before, the elite have exploited the problem that they created to push for increased centralization and regulation of the world economic system in the pursuit of a de-facto global financial dictatorship.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, EU heads such as Joaquin Almunia and establishment media outlets like the Wall Street Journal amongst many others have all used the economic crisis as an excuse to argue for greater financial power, a “new world economic order” in which control is concentrated into fewer hands - with the IMF and the World Bank enjoying the spoils.
UK Business Secretary and top Bilderberg member Peter Mandelson has also pushed for a “Bretton Woods for this century,” to help build the “machinery of global economic governance”.

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy all made the same appeal at a conference in Paris on the future of capitalism last month.

Merkel called for the creation of a new global economic body under the UN, similar to the Security Council, to judge government policy.

Sarkozy called for a “new world, new capitalism” during his speech, as he commented “In capitalism of the 21st century, there is room for the state.”

Meanwhile, Blair called for a new financial order which he said should be constructed upon “values other than the maximum short-term profit.”

The globalists created the problem of wildly irresponsible fractional reserve banking, the debt bubble and the credit crunch by ceaselessly inflating the money supply and now they are offering their solution to the crisis by posing as the saviors and promising to fix the crisis, but only if complete control of the global financial system be signed over to them.

As Ron Paul, Peter Schiff and their ilk have tirelessly argued, the only way to solve the financial crisis is to allow incompetent banks and companies to fail, not to reward their misdeeds by giving them billions in taxpayer money. The only way to re-capitalize the world is to provide incentives for people to work hard and save money, not by creating more credit out of thin air, which is what caused the problem in the first place.

The globalists’ call for a centralized global economic order has nothing to do with providing solutions to the crisis but everything to do with providing themselves with more power and control over the world financial system.

UN seeking to criminalize criticism of religions

I heard a chapel message today where the speaker eloquently articulated why the Bible is true and why Jesus is who he said he was. The speaker made the argument that Christianity is true, and therefore, Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, and other religions were not true.

This could be viewed as "defamation" of these religions, and it could be criminalized.


Lou Dobbs: United Nations Wants To Regulate Free Speech



Related CIVICS NEWS Posts:
~Federal Government defines the gospels as "hate"

Why isn't the anti-war community going after Obama like they did Bush?

CIVICS NEWS Update: Anne Coulter, arch neo-con militarist, praises Obama.

Obama’s War Machine Needs $800 Billion For 2009
After Iraq “withdrawal,” tens of thousands of U.S. troops will remain

Paul Joseph Watson - Prison Planet.com - Thursday, February 26, 2009

Barack Obama’s election promise to bring “change” to Washington and reverse the juggernaut of the Bush war machine has proven to be nothing more than a cruel hoax, emphasized by his recent actions on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq and his latest demand for a total of around $800 billion in war funds and subsidiary costs just to cover the rest of 2009.

“According to the US defense officials, Obama needs USD 75.5 billion for 2009 to cover the cost of the additional troops deployed in to Afghanistan this year and an another USD 130 billion for the rest of fiscal 2009,” reports Press TV.

An additional $534 billion is required for the Defense Department, added to another figure of $65.9 billion that has already been approved by Congress, bringing the total figure to over $805 billion dollars.

As Wikipedia states, “The military budget is that portion of the United States discretionary federal budget that is allocated to the Department of Defense. This military budget pays the salaries, training, and healthcare of uniformed and civilian personnel, maintains arms, equipment and facilities, funds operations, and develops and buys new equipment. The budget funds all branches of the U.S. military: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard.”

We can be assured that the vast majority of the $805 billion is going into the war chest because seperate programs such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance and production are included in the Department of Energy budget. Every single component bar one of the DoD budget is up 5-10% compared to 2008, with the budget for “military construction” increasing by a whopping 19.1%.

The most expensive programs in the DoD budget are things like missile defense, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the F-22 Raptor, as well as the DDG 1000 Destroyer, the F/A-18E/F Hornet and the V-22 Osprey. These are all war-related programs, so mainstream media reports that a mere $200 billion war chest is being demanded do not include the cost of any of these programs which form part of the $500 billion-plus DoD budget.

The demand to refill the war coffers arrives in the same month as Obama’s announcement to send at least 17,000, and eventually perhaps as many as 30,000, extra troops to Afghanistan - over seven years after the U.S. invaded in 2001.

Obama has also recently beefed the U.S. military role in Pakistan beyond that pursued by the Bush administration and “expanded the covert war run by the Central Intelligence Agency inside Pakistan,” according to the New York TImes, with an increase in missile attacks by drone aircraft.

All this within just one month of Obama’s inauguration on the back of an election campaign won on the basis of changing the warmongering policies of the Bush administration!

Meanwhile, despite public pronouncements by Obama that a plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq is in progress, the details of the agreement actually establish a permanent presence of a sizable occupying force in perpetuity.

Despite his pre-election promises it’s interesting to note that the new WhiteHouse.gov website, in the “foreign policy” section, contains nothing whatsoever about Obama’s plans for Iraq. That’s probably because he will simply be following the exact same course undertaken by the Bush administration in publicly stating an intention for withdrawal while privately ensuring that tens of thousands of U.S. troops will remain in Iraq in perpetuity for the reason they were sent there in the first place - to safeguard a U.S. geopolitical foothold in the middle east and maintain control over whatever puppet government is installed.

As Chris Floyd points out in his article today, “The hypocrisy – the literally murderous hypocrisy – of claiming that this plan “leaves Iraq to its people and responsibly ends this war,” as Obama asserted in his State of the Union speech, is sickening. It does no such thing, and he knows it.”

In reality, after the “withdrawal” of U.S. troops in 19 months, “Mr. Obama plans to leave behind a “residual force” of tens of thousands of troops to continue training Iraqi security forces, hunt down foreign terrorist cells and guard American institutions,” reported the New York Times.

A senior military officer spelled it out more plainly to the Los Angeles Times, “‘When President Obama said we were going to get out within 16 months, some people heard, ‘get out,’ and everyone’s gone. But that is not going to happen,’ the officer said.”

“By implementing his war continuation plan, Obama will complete the work of Bush and his militarist clique,” writes Floyd, and in doing so send, “an apparently endless stream of American troops to die — and, in even greater numbers, to kill — in a criminal action that has helped bankrupt our own country while sending waves of violent instability and extremism around the world. It will further enfilth a cesspool of corruption and war profiteering that has already reached staggering, world-historical proportions.”

The ultimate course for Iraq is something closer to what Obama’s presidential rival John McCain conceded - that U.S. troops will remain in the country for 100 years and probably beyond, long after Barack Obama leaves the White House and long after his empty mantra of “change” washes away like a footprint in the sand.

Bush-style torture, murder continue under Obama

CIA Signals Continuity With Bush Era
SIOBHAN GORMAN - The Wall Street Journal - February 26, 2009



WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency’s new director outlined spy policies Wednesday, including an aggressive campaign in Pakistan, that underscored considerable continuity with the Bush administration.

CIA Director Leon Panetta, in his first meeting with reporters, said the agency will continue to carry out drone attacks on militants in Pakistan. He also said that while CIA interrogations will have new limits, President Barack Obama can still use his wartime powers to authorize harsher techniques if necessary. [...]


Related CIVICS NEWS Posts:
~Bush's "war on terror" continues under Obama, killing innocents

$1 Trillion in tax hikes

Obama’s Budget: Almost $1 Trillion in New Taxes
Jake Tapper - ABC News - February 26, 2009

President Obama’s budget proposes $989 billion in new taxes over the course of the next 10 years, starting fiscal year 2011, most of which are tax increases on individuals. [...]

Lew Rockwell bloggers put Obama's $1.8 Trillion budget deficit in perspective

Scott Ritsema
CIVICS NEWS.com
February 26, 2009

We need some perspective on what Obama is actually proposing, when he says that we should run a $1.8 trillion (with a "t") budget deficit in the coming year. Anthony Gregory reminds us that in the year 2000, the entire federal budget was 1.8 trillion, and now Obama proposes a budget deficit of that amount. Amazing.

Also, Gregory points out:

Bill Milligan writes: "Ha. In 1980, the entirety of the national debt, after about one hundred and fifty years of accumulation through an internal war, two world wars, three other major wars, dozens of smaller conflicts, the new deal, the square deal, the great society, and of course hosting Elvis at the White House in 1972, amounted to a mere $930 Billion -- barely more than half of our wondrous new deficit."

And the great Thomas DiLorenzo reminds us that we can thank George "more-liberal-than-LBJ" Bush for big government in the 21st century:

In 2000 the U.S. Had a $1.8 Trillion Budget ... and by 2008 it had increased by about two-thirds, to around $3 trillion, not counting the explosion in spending over the last two months. Dub-Yuh was a bigger domestic spender than even Lyndon Johnson was, and started two wars compared to Johnson's one. In other words, there was already an explosion of government spending long before the current "stimulus" scam.

This proves once again that government spending does not "stimulate" but depress economic activity. The bigger the government "stimulus" the worse off the real, private economy is. All that is stimulated is the overblown egos of the crooks, conmen and tyrants in Washington, along with the ideological devotes of Obammunism.

Obama calls for "largest tax increase" in history of US

Obama’s Cap on Carbon Pollution Is A Huge Tax Increase, Republican Lawmaker Says
Susan Jones - CNSNews - February 25, 2009



In his speech to Congress Tuesday night, President Barack Obama “committed himself to the largest annual tax increase in the history of America,” warns a Republican congressman.

The implementation of a cap-and-trade system, something Obama favors, would raise $300- to $330-billion a year, said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.).

“As bad as the stimulus spending bill was, this would be much worse because instead of being one-time spending, the cap-and-trade tax increase would keep occurring year after year,” Inhofe said.

In his speech to Congress, Obama mentioned cap-and-trade indirectly, asking Congress “to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America.”

During his presidential campaign, however, Obama was more specific. He called for an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Obama's "America" = The Federal Government

Comrade Obama
Lew Rockwell.com Blog - Lew Rockwell - Feb 24, 2009

When he lists the great things about America (by which he means the state) since WWII, he mentions free college tuition for ex-government employees, national government highways to control the states, and landing a bureaucrat on the moon. All were huge redistribution schemes that empowered the central government as against society, and rewarded DC's special interests.

Russia Today with Ron Paul, neo-con Bolton, and Obama

The Skull and Bones Society and Geronimo's Skull

CNN probes: Did Prescott Bush steal Geronimo’s skull?
David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster - Raw Story - Wednesday, Feb 25, 2009



While it has long been rumored that Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society which counts several scions of the Bush family as members, holds the skull of legendary Apache warrior Geronimo, his descendants have taken action to uncover the truth.

Last week, on the 100th anniversary of Geronimo’s death, 20 members of his family filed a suit in a US federal court, asking that his spirit and physical remains, including his skull, be freed.

Tuesday morning, CNN’s Debra Feyerick explored the suit, discussing an 1918 letter from a bonesman, discovered two years ago, which seems to indicate Geronimo’s skull is stored within “the tomb” where members hold meetings on Yale’s campus. The network also repeated allegations that deceased Senator Prescott Bush, father of President George H.W. Bush and grandfather to President George W. Bush, was one of the grave robbers.

“It’s been 100 years since the death of my great-grandfather in 1909. It’s been 100 years of imprisonment,” Geronimo’s great-grandson Harlyn Geronimo told reporters after the suit had been filed in the district court in Washington.

“The spirit is wandering until a proper burial has been performed,” Harlyn Geronimo said.

The suit, which names US President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates among the defendants, seeks “to free Geronimo, his remains, funerary objects and spirit from 100 years of imprisonment at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the Yale University campus at New Haven, Connecticut and wherever else they may be found.”

The remains would be returned to Geronimo’s wilderness birthplace in the western United States for a true Apache burial, a key facet of the native American tribe’s culture. [...]

“Skull and Bones, with all its ritual and macabre relics, was founded in 1832 as a new world version of secret student societies that were common in Germany at the time,” reported CBS News. “Since then, it has chosen or ‘tapped’ only 15 senior students a year who become patriarchs when they graduate — lifetime members of the ultimate old boys’ club.”

In 2004, both candidates for the presidency, George W. Bush and John F. Kerry, were reported to be members. The group’s numbers “include some of the most powerful men of the 20th century,” according to CBS.

“Skull and Bones is so tiny. That’s what makes this staggering,” Alexandra Robbins, author of “Secrets of the Tomb” — an investigation of the secret society — told the network news service. “There are only 15 people a year, which means there are about 800 living members at any one time.”

“‘It’s a secret,’ John Kerry said when asked about his membership,” reported Time magazine. “‘So secret, I can’t say anything more,’ George W. Bush wrote in his autobiography, as if to complete Kerry’s sentence.” [...]


CIVICS NEWS Related:
~Bohemian Grove: gay merriment and occult rituals
~Skull & Bones: The elite and occult secret societies
~The elite work in the shadows--The Bilderberg Group
~The elite that run the world-Vatican, Bilderberg, Bohemian Grove

Update on state soveriegnty declarations

New World Liberty has posted the following as states who have passed soveriegnty resolutions. [See CIVICS NEWS analysis here.]

2009: Arkansas - 9th Amendment, 10th Amendment, Funding Issues
2009: Arizona - 9th Amendment, 10th Amendment
1994: California - 10th Amendment
1995/96: Georgia - 10th Amendment
2009: Georgia - 10th Amendment
2009: Kansas - 10th Amendment
1997/98: Louisiana - Sovereignty Constitutional Amendment
2009: Michigan - 10th Amendment
2009: Minnesota - 10th Amendment
2009: Missouri - Freedom of Choice Act (Abortion), 10th Amendment
2009: Montana - 9th Amendment, 10th Amendment, 2nd Amendment
2009: New Hampshire - 9th Amendment, 10th Amendment, Federal Reserve, Taxes, Martial Law, 2nd Amendment, Draft/War, Patriot Act, Labor Camps, 1st Amendment
2008: Oklahoma - 10th Amendment, (Other Legislation: No Child Left Behind, Real ID Act)
2009: Oklahoma - 9th Amendment, 10th Amendment, Funding Issues
2009: South Carolina - 9th Amendment, 10 Amendment, Martial Law and Related, 1st Amendment, 2nd Amendment
2009: Tennessee - 10th Amendment
2009: Texas - 9th Amendment, 10th Amendment, Funding Issues
2009: Utah - Real ID Act
2009: Washington - 10th Amendment
* Proposed: Alabama - 9th Amendment, 10th Amendment
* Proposed: Alaska
* 1994: Colorado - 10th Amendment
* 1995: Florida - 10th Amendment
* Proposed [HJM RS18517]: Idaho - 10th Amendment
* 2009: Indiana - 10th Amendment
* 2009: Iowa - 10th Amendment
* Proposed: Maine
* Proposed: Nevada
* Proposed: Ohio - 10th Amendment
* Proposed: Pennsylvania - 10th Amendment
* Proposed: Virginia - 10th Amendment
* Proposed: West Virginia - Same As New Hampshire
Republic of Lakotah - Full Independence
Hawaii - Full Independence
* Some are not verified with the actual state and may have not yet been proposed or passed in the state.

Lawyer says Guantanamo abuse worse since Obama

Luke Baker - Reuters - Wednesday, Feb 25th, 2009

Abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has worsened sharply since President Barack Obama took office as prison guards “get their kicks in” before the camp is closed, according to a lawyer who represents detainees.

Abuses began to pick up in December after Obama was elected, human rights lawyer Ahmed Ghappour told Reuters. He cited beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-forcefeeding detainees who are on hunger strike.

The Pentagon said on Monday that it had received renewed reports of prisoner abuse during a recent review of conditions at Guantanamo, but had concluded that all prisoners were being kept in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

“According to my clients, there has been a ramping up in abuse since President Obama was inaugurated,” said Ghappour, a British-American lawyer with Reprieve, a legal charity that represents 31 detainees at Guantanamo.

“If one was to use one’s imagination, (one) could say that these traumatized, and for lack of a better word barbaric, guards were just basically trying to get their kicks in right now for fear that they won’t be able to later,” he said.

Is compulsory national service on the way?

Democrats Introduce Public National Service Bills
Comprehensive national service plan detailed; Corporation for National Service would be granted Cabinet-level status



Steve Watson - Infowars.net - Wednesday, Feb 25th, 2009

A Democratic Senator from Connecticut has introduced four bills aimed at establishing a groundwork for a system of comprehensive national service.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., says that the legislation will “create the architecture and the structure that will serve as the invitation for everyone to serve.”

The Senate bills, co-sponsored by Thad Cochran, R-Miss., are companion legislation to bills Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District, introduced Tuesday in the House, calling for increases in federal spending for public service programs.

The legislation would target everyone from schoolchildren to the elderly and aim to create new bases of volunteers beyond the usual young-adult pool of service-program participants, reports The Day.

Two of the bills, named the Summer of Service Act and the Semester of Service Act, are particularly aimed at middle school and high school students and will offer “credits” in return for participation in community-service programs.

Some residents and education experts are concerned that such public service programs may become part of student graduation requirements.

A third bill, named The Encore Service Act, offers cash awards to people aged 55 and over who complete 250 or 500 hours of public service. In return for their service, participants would also receive an education award which could be transferred to their children or grandchildren.

A fourth bill, The ACTION Act, is aimed at increasing awards for AmeriCorps volunteers and reestablishing the Corporation’s connection with federal agencies. The bill would also grant the Corporation for National Service Cabinet-level status under the Obama administration.

Sen. Dodd is reintroducing the bills which he previously failed to bring to a vote.
Dodd told the media that the legislation is a response to President Obama’s call in his inaugural address for national service.

”People ask me why I joined - I joined because the president asked,” Dodd said. “We’ve got a president who’s asking.”

We have previously highlighted the eagerness that the new president and his staff have displayed in calling for a system of national service.

Back in July 2008, Obama, then the presidential front runner, called for a “civilian national security force” as powerful as the U.S. military.

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded,” Obama told a Colorado Springs audience.

The comments that were ignored by the vast majority of the corporate media but were found to be troubling by some independent journalists who compared the idea to the formation of the Nazi Hitler Youth.

Fears of “youth brigades” or civilian stasi style units increased following Obama’s appointment of Rahm Emanuel to chief-of staff.

In his book, “The Plan: Big Ideas for America,” Emanuel writes: “It’s time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, all Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service.”

The book also notes, “Some Republicans will squeal about individual freedom, ruling out any likelihood that they would let people opt out of universal citizen service.”

Emanuel is also an enthusiastic supporter of the United States Public Service Academy Act, a lobbying group founded in 2006 in order to promote the foundation of an American public service academy modeled on the military academies - a youth corps whose students would be trained in “civilian internship in the armed forces”.

Furthermore, in a rediscovered 2006 audio clip of an interview with Ben Smith of the New York Daily News, Emanuel outlined the agenda for compulsory military-style training, essentially a domestic draft, aimed at preparing Americans for a chemical or biological terrorist attack.

When controversy arose over the program last November, the use of the word “required” to describe the program was removed from Obama’s change.gov website and replaced with “community service” type terminology.

Last month we also reported on the introduction by the Department of Defense of a “civilian expeditionary workforce” that will see American civilians trained and equipped to deploy overseas in support of worldwide military missions.

Though the civilian expeditionary workforce program is restricted to DoD employees, similar programs have already been established for public sector workers.

One such program has seen hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and utility workers recently trained and dispatched as “Terrorism Liaison Officers” in Colorado, Arizona and California to watch for “suspicious activity” which is later fed into a secret government database.

CIVICS NEWS Related Posts:
~Starbucks, Rangel call for citizens to serve the state (UPDATED: Entertainers call for us to "serve" Obama!)
~Obama-Emmanuel's civilian national security force
~Independent media strike again
~Slavery to the state

Ron Paul grills Bernanke

You can't re-inflate the bubble. Printing money out of thin air is not how capital is accrued. Capital comes from savings.

Ron Paul on Glenn Beck discussing Globalist "nightmare"

Clinton, Quigley, and the New World Order

The End Run - February 23, 2009

I’ve been doing a lot of research lately, and I recently came across this little-known quote while reading through Bill Clinton’s book My Life. In Chapter 24, he writes:

“I ended 1987 with my third speech of the decade at the Florida Democratic convention…

I told the Florida Democrats, “We have to do nothing less than create a new world economic order and secure the place of the American people within it.” The central arguments I made were “We’ve got to pay the price today to secure tomorrow” and “We’re all in it together.”

In retrospect, my speeches in the late eighties seem interesting to me because of their similarity to what I would say in 1992 and what I tried to do as President.”

Recall that Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar. Recall also that one of Clinton’s professors at Georgetown was Carroll Quigley, and that he has quoted Quigley and payed homage to him as a mentor many times in his speeches, including his 1992 nomination acceptance speech. In My Life he discusses the “lasting impact” that Quigleys “insights” had on him. On page ix of The Anglo-American Establishment, Quigley writes:

“The Rhodes scholarship established by the terms of Cecil Rhodes’ seventh will are known to everyone. What is not so widely known is that Rhodes, in five previous wills, left his fortune to form a secret society, which was to devote itself to the preservation and expansion of the British Empire. And what does not seem to be known to anyone is that this secret society … continues to exist to this day. To be sure, [it] is not a childish thing like the Ku Klux Klan, and it does not have any secret robes, secret handclasps, or secret passwords. It does not need any of these, since its members know each other intimately. It probably has no oaths of secrecy nor any formal procedure of initiation. It does, however, exist and holds secret meetings…. This Group is, as I shall show, one of the most important historical facts of the twentieth century.”

And what were the goals of this “group”? According to Quigley (Tragedy and Hope, pg. 324):

“…nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and he economy of the world as a whole. The system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basil, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank …sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world”

And how does he know that? Two pages later he writes:

“I know of the operation of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years during the 1960’s to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have for much of my life been close to it and to many of its instruments. In general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown.”

This is merely the tip of the iceberg. If you really want to understand the relevance of this quote by Clinton, I highly recommending reading the five part series entitled The Future Is Calling by G. Edward Griffin. All of these Quigley quotes can be found in part two, entitled Secret Societies and Hidden Agendas (though you will benefit greatly if you start with part one.)

Also, read The Trilateral Commission: Usurping Sovereignty by Patrick Wood. Bill Clinton is a member of the Trilateral Commission, which — as you will learn if you don’t already know — was founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski with the explicit goal of creating the “new world economic order” that Clinton is talking about. The creation of this new world order, according to the Trilateral Commission’s own writings, means “working against the best interest of the United States”[1] to accomplish an “end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece”[2], which will eventually give way to a one world collectivist government run by them from behind the scenes.

Senator Barry Goldwater tried to warn us about this thirty years ago. In his book With No Apologies (1979), he wrote:

“Where I differ from [then Governor Nelson Rockefeller] is in the suggestion implicit throughout his [1962 lectures at Harvard University] that… the United States must submerge its national identity and surrender substantial matters of sovereignty to a new political order. The implications in Governor Rockefeller’s presentation have become concrete proposals advanced by David Rockefeller’s newest international cabal, the Trilateral Commission. Whereas the Council on Foreign Relations is distinctly national in membership, the Trilateral Commission is international… It is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. Zbigniew Brzezinski and David Rockefeller screened and selected every individual who was invited to participate in shaping and administering the proposed new world order.” (pg 293)

“What the Trilaterals truly intend is the creation of a worldwide economic power superior to the political governments of the national-states involved… As managers and creators of the system they will rule the future.” ” (pg. 299)

See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSQFySxzznw

[1] Trilateral Commission founder David Rockefeller, in his book “Memoirs”, pg. 405. He also openly says that he is part of a “secret cabal” that is “conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will”
[2] Trilateral Commissioner Richard Gardner, “The Hard Road to World Order”, Foreign Affairs, April 1974, pg. 558

Politicians serve economic interests only of Wall Street

Herbert Hoover Copycats
ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH - Counterpunch - Sunday, Feb 22, 2009

Faced with the financial meltdown of the Great Depression, the Hoover administration created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation that poured taxpayers’ money into the coffers of the influential Wall Street banks in an effort to save them from bankruptcy. Like today’s Bush/Obama administrations, the Hoover administration used the “too-big-to-fail” scare tactic in order to justify the costly looting of the national treasury. All it did, however, was to simply postpone the day of reckoning: almost all of the banks failed after nearly three years of extremely costly bailouts schemes.

In a similar fashion, when in the mid- to late-1990s major banks in Japan faced huge losses following the bursting of the real estate and loan-pushing bubble in that country, the Japanese government embarked on a costly rescue plan of the troubled banks in the hope of “creating liquidity” and “revitalizing credit markets.” The results of the bailout plan have likewise been disastrous, a disaster that has come to be known as “Japan’s lost decade.”

Despite these painful and costly experiences, the Bush/Obama administrations (along with the U.S. Congress) are following similarly ruinous solutions that are just as doomed to fail. This is not because these administrations’ economic policy makers are unaware of the failed policies of the past. It is rather because they too function under the influence of the same powerful special interests that doomed the bailout policies of the Hoover and Japanese governments: the potent banking interests.

More former Bush people repenting--Ridge: We were wrong to torture

Homeland Security Chief: We Were Wrong to Torture
George Washington’s Blog - Sunday, Feb 22, 2009

The first head of the Department of Homeland Security - Tom Ridge - has agreed with the recent report by the International Commission of Jurists which said that anti-terror measures worldwide had seriously undermined international human rights law.

Ridge also said that even terrorism suspects are entitled to due process.

And Ridge acknowleged that waterboarding is torture.

Your naked body

Sheep Led Through the Scanner
Lew Rockwell.com Blog - J.H. Huebert - 2/20/09

The TSA is starting to put people through those airport body scanners, and of course the sheep go along with it without complaint, even when they're asked what they think. "That's pretty cool," says one. "It makes me feel a little safer," says another. This is what Americans have become.

Trying to make the images of your virtual strip-search sound inoffensive, one TSA creep says, "I don't look at them as people. I look at them as a thing that could have something on it." I don't doubt it.

Iranians don't "hate us because we have freedom"

IRAN AND THE WEST: A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
February 16, 2009
Eric Margolis

Iran is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its historic Islamic revolution after three decades of siege warfare by the western powers. To understand why relations between Tehran and the West are so bitter, we must understand their historical context.

Iran’s jagged relations with the West began during World War II. In 1941, the British Empire and Soviet Union jointly invaded and occupied the independent kingdom of Persia, as it was then known. This oil-motivated aggression was every bit as criminal as the German-Soviet occupation of Poland in 1939, but has been blanked out of western history texts.

The Allies deposed Iran’s ruler, Reza Shah, and installed his weak, pliant son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, on the throne as the latest puppet ruler in the British Empire.

But in 1951, a highly popular Iranian democratic leader, Mohammed Mossadegh, became prime minister and promptly nationalized Iran’s British-owned oil industry, ordering its profits be used to lift Iran from poverty rather than enriching Britain. The Shah and his entourage of western advisors fled.

Two years later, US and British intelligence mounted a coup that overthrew Mossadegh, ending Iran’s first democratic government. The Shah was restored to the Peacock Throne. Iran’s oil wealth returned to British and, now, US control. Washington and London proclaimed they had won an important victory against `Communism.’

Washington and London set about turning Shah Pahlavi into the `gendarme of the Gulf’ to protect their oil interests. The Shah quickly blossomed into a megalomaniac, styling himself the `Shah of Shahs,’ and `Imperial Light of the Aryans’ (Iranians are an ancient Indo-European people), comparing himself to the ancient Persian emperors, Darius and Xerxes.

The Shah’s relatives and Iran’s tiny ruling, western-oriented elite looted the nation, living like pre-Revolution Russian royalty. Wives of the elite flew to Paris to have their hair done for gala parties. The nation’s oil revenues went to buy large amounts of US and British arms and build gaudy palaces. The rest of Iran remained mired in abject poverty as the nouveau riche royal court flaunted its wealth.

Iran’s elite put on European airs and dismissed Islam as a backwards faith of superstitious peasants. In this sense, they much resembled today’s so-called `secular’ Turks who bitterly oppose Islam.

Iranians who objected to the court’s lurid ostentation, Iran’s status as a Western puppet, or the looting of its oil wealth, were branded Communists or Islamic fanatics.

Savak, the vastly powerful security agency, imposed a reign of terror on Iran. American and Israeli experts advised and taught Savak. Real and imagined opponents of the Shah, the Shia clergy, and leftists all fell victim to Savak, whose tortures and brutalities were legendary, even by brutal Mideast standards.

Iran and Israel, both hostile to their Arab neighbors, became very close allies, to the fury of deeply religious Iranians and the Shia clergy, which strongly supported the Palestinians. The Shah even negotiated to buy Israeli missiles with nuclear warheads in exchange for a steady supply of oil. Washington offered to sell Iran 26 nuclear reactors.

By the late 1970’s, the Shah’s imperial pretensions, the arrant corruption of his corrupt family, and the elite’s scorning of Islam brought Iran to a boil. In 1979, an exiled Shia religious leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni, returned from exile in France and led a popular revolution that quickly overthrew the hated Shah. The US was caught flat footed by Iran’s revolution. It had relied entirely on Savak for political information.

Popular fury quickly turned against the Shah’s primary supporter, the US. Mobs stormed the US Embassy, taking hostage and bringing the two nations close to war. Shredded CIA documents patiently pieced together by Iranian women showed the amazing extent of CIA’s influence over Iran. All CIA’s networks were rolled up.

Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed his nation’s oil wealth would be devoted to social programs. He called on the US-backed Arab oil states to follow the Koran’s teachings and share their wealth with poor Muslims everywhere. He called for the overthrow of other Mideast rulers, whom he damned as illegitimate apostates and western puppets.

Washington and London immediately began planning the overthrow of Iran’s new revolutionary Islamic government which directly threatened the Anglo-American domination of the Mideast – what I call in my new book , the American Raj. CIA sought to mount a number of military coups. Forty percent of Iran’s government leaders were assassinated by the Marxist `People’s Mujahidin.’

In 1980, when these efforts failed to overthrow the Islamic regime, the US, Britain and their Arab oil clients got another US `gendarme,’ – Iraq’s Saddam Hussein – to invade Iran.

The resulting bloody, eight year Iran-Iraq war cost Iran one million casualties, half of them dead. Iran suffered more dead in this war than the US did in World War II. So violent and desperate was the World War I-style trench fighting that 12-year old Iranian boys and old men went forward to clear Iraqi minefields with their bodies.

The US, Britain, and the oil Arabs financed and helped arm Iraq. Israel sold Iran a reported $5 billion in US arms and spare parts. Europe supplied Iraq with chemical weapons, food and arms.

After the US Navy entered the war on Iraq’s side, Iran was forced to sued for peace. Iran lay in financial and emotional ruins, with an entire generation killed in battle or horribly maimed by Iraq’s western-supplied chemical weapons that included the burning agents mustard gas and Lewisite, chlorine, cyanide, and a variety of modern nerve gases.

Rightly or wrongly, most Iranians blame the West for their historical suffering. They see the Western powers and Israel continuing efforts to overthrow their government, isolate Iran, and seize its oil. Or even launch a long-awaited air blitz against Iran’s so-far civilian nuclear program.
A former commander in the Iran-Iraq War, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who led many dangerous missions behind Iraqi lines, is today the president of Iran. While Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei retains the nation’s real executive power, the bombastic, anti-western Ahmadinejad speaks for much of Iran’s people.

President Barack Obama, who says he wants to open serious talks with Iran and establish better relations, will have his work cut out for him.

Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2009

Do you "celebrate" the deified "Father Abraham"

Why Americans Don't 'Celebrate' Lincoln
Lew Rockwell.com Blog - Thomas DiLorenzo - February 18, 2009

Neocon Lincoln cultist Walter Berns claims in the Wall Street Journal that "Americans Celebrate Lincoln." Really? When's the last time you and your friends said: "Hey, it's February 12, bring out the champagne! Let's celebrate! Party! Party! Party!??

In reality, Americans pay more attention each February to whether or not The Groundhog has seen his shadow than they do to yet another Lincoln's birthday. And they certainly celebrate St. Patrick's Day, a month later, much more than they do Lincoln's birthday.

It is the state and its court historians, like Walter Berns, who "celebrate" Lincoln, for Lincoln is the face of the American empire. The purpose of his deification, on grotesque display in recent weeks, is to indoctrinate the public in the idea that whatever the American empire does is moral and right -- just like "Father Abraham," as the Claremontistas call him.

In his book Making Patriots, for example, Berns urges that all school children be indoctrinated in Lincoln's political rhetoric ("our national poet," he says)so that they can be more easily duped in joining the military NOT to defend their own country, but for whatever non-defensive military adventures AEI neocons like Berns happen to be fantasizing about at the moment.

As is typical of all Lincoln cultists, Berns is grossly misleading at times. He criticizes Judge Roger B. Taney for stating that slavery was (in his opinion) constitutional while contrasting Dishonest Abe's flowery rhetoric. One piece of Lincolnian rhetoric that he leaves out, however, is Lincoln's statement in his first inaugural address that slavery was, in his opinion, already constitutional, and that he had "no objection to making it express and irrevocable" by explicitly writing it into the document. He agreed completely with Judge Taney, in other words, a fact that Berns seems oblivious to.

Federal Government debt bigger than the world's GDP

65 Trillion - U.S. Financial Obligations Exceed The Entire World’s GDP



The Final Hour - February 17, 2009

The total liabilities of the United States government, including future social security and medicare payments that the U.S. government is already committed to pay out, now exceed 65 TRILLION dollars, which is more than the entire GDP of the whole world.

According to the 2008 Financial Report of the United States Government, which is an official United States government report, the U.S. actually had a budget deficit of 5.1 trillion dollars in 2008.

So why did the Congressional Budget Office report that the federal budget deficit was only 455 billion dollars (which is certainly a total disaster) in 2008?

The difference lies in accounting. The CBO’s figures are based on cash accounting, while the 2008 Financial Report of the United States Government is based on GAAP accounting. GAAP accounting is what is used by all the major firms on Wall Street and it is regarded as a much more accurate reflection of financial reality.

So why is there such a big difference?

Well, what the Congressional Budget Office does is some really bad accounting. When you pay social security taxes, the federal government takes that money and instead of putting it away to pay your social security benefits in the future, it takes that money and spends it however it wants.

So what about the future social security and medicare benefits that the government owes you?

There is no money there for those payments.

The government is using that money right now to make the budget look better.

That’s right, you have been conned.

And as bad as the numbers from 2008 look, they do not reflect any significant money from the monstrous financial bailouts that Congress has passed.

So 2009 is going to look MUCH worse.

Pretty picture, eh?

The reality is the the United States of America is a total financial disaster.

Ron Paul in 1988 on the bankers, CFR, Trilateral Commission

Republicans have found their principles again...for now

Rush and the Republicans Are Right
Lew Rockwell.com Blog - Laurence Vance - February 15, 2009

I never thought I would say it but Rush and the Republicans are right--in their opposition to the stimulus bill. Recently, and for the first time in about two years, I heard Rush Limbaugh on the radio. He was denouncing Obama and the Democrats for the stimulus bill. All of the Republicans in the House voted against the bill and all but three Republicans in the Seante (Specter, Collins, & Snowe) voted against the bill.

So, am I ready to applaud Rush and the Republicans? Hardly. Many Republicans voted for the bailout bill last year when we had a Republican president who supported it. Is there any doubt that if McCain had won the election that he would have his own stimulus bill right now and that many Republicans would be voting for it?

And as for Rush Limbaugh, he may have opposed the stimulus bill and the bailout bill, but he had no trouble supporting the spending of $1 trillion on the war in Iraq.

Ron Paul: What if the American people learn the truth?

My favorite line: What if Christians promoted peace instead of preventive wars of aggression? (Thanks to Josh and Rob for the heads-up on this clip.)

Non-citizens to join U.S. military in increasing numbers

U.S. Military Will Offer Path to Citizenship
JULIA PRESTON - NY Times - Sunday, Feb 15, 2009

Stretched thin in Afghanistan and Iraq, the American military will begin recruiting skilled immigrants who are living in this country with temporary visas, offering them the chance to become United States citizens in as little as six months.

Immigrants who are permanent residents, with documents commonly known as green cards, have long been eligible to enlist. But the new effort, for the first time since the Vietnam War, will open the armed forces to temporary immigrants if they have lived in the United States for a minimum of two years, according to military officials familiar with the plan.

Not one Congressman read the stimulus bill

A New World Economic Order

G7 sets sights on ‘new world economic order’
Agence France-Presse - Sunday, Feb 15, 2009

The world’s richest nations called Saturday for urgent reform of global finance to save the world from the economic devastation that is dragging more and more countries into recession.

Italy’s Finance Minister called for a “new world economic order” as he wrapped up the crisis meeting of finance leaders from the Group of Seven leading economies over which he presided here.

In a joint declaration, the G7 called for “urgent reforms” of the international financial system.

China is very upset about reckless U.S. monetary policy

Poll: Two thirds of Americans support probes of Bush era

John Byrne - Raw Story - Friday, Feb 13, 2009



Almost 40 percent of Americans support criminal investigations into the Bush Administration’s use of harsh interrogations and warrantless wiretapping program, even after President George W. Bush left office, a USA Today/Gallup poll found Thursday.

Forty-one percent favor a criminal investigation into the Bush Administration’s use of the Justice Department for political purposes; 38 percent favor an investigation for the Administration’s warrantless wiretapping and 38 percent favor a criminal probe for the possible use of torture in terrorism investigations.

Close to two-thirds of respondents also said they’d like to see formal investigations of Bush policies, even if not criminal probes.

These results are based on a Jan. 30-Feb. 1 USA Today/Gallup poll.

Strikingly, Gallup and USA Today presented the polls in entirely different lights.

USA Today headlined their article, “Poll: Most want inquiry into anti-terror tactics,” while Gallup bannered theirs, “No Mandate for Criminal Probes of Bush Administration.”

Unredacted documents reveal prisoners tortured to death

Stephen C. Webster - Raw Story - Friday, Feb 13, 2009

Human rights groups accuse Pentagon of running secret prison, cooperating with CIA “ghost detention” program

The American Civil Liberties Union has released previously classified excerpts of a government report on harsh interrogation techniques used in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. These previously unreported pages detail repeated use of “abusive” behavior, even to the point of prisoner deaths.

The documents, obtained by the ACLU under a Freedom of Information Act request, contain a report by Vice Admiral Albert T. Church, who was tapped to conduct a comprehensive review of Defense Department interrogation operations. Church specifically calls out interrogations at Bagram Air base in Afghanistan as “clearly abusive, and clearly not in keeping with any approved interrogation policy or guidance.”

The ACLU’s release comes on the same day as a major FOIA document dump by three other leading human rights groups: Documents which reveal the Pentagon ran secret prisons in Bagram and Iraq, that it cooperated with the CIA’s “ghost detention” program and that Defense personnel delayed a prisoner’s release to avoid bad press.

“In both cases, for example, [prisoners] were handcuffed to fixed objects above their heads in order to keep them awake,” reads the document. “Additionally, interrogations in both incidents involved the use of physical violence, including kicking, beating, and the use of “compliance blows” which involved striking the [prisoners] legs with the [interrogators] knees. In both cases, blunt force trauma to the legs was implicated in the deaths. In one case, a pulmonary embolism developed as a consequence of the blunt force trauma, and in the other case pre-existing coronary artery disease was complicated by the blunt force trauma.”

In a press release, the ACLU summarized the documents as detailing, “[An] investigation of two deaths at Bagram. Both detainees were determined to have been killed by pulmonary embolism caused as a result of standing chained in place, sleep depravation and dozens of beatings by guards and possibly interrogators. (Also reveals the use of torture at Gitmo and American-Afghani prisons in Kabul).

“[An] investigation into the homicide or involuntary manslaughter of detainee Dilar Dababa by U.S. forces in 2003 in Iraq.

“[An] investigation launched after allegations that an Iraqi prisoner was subjected to torture and abuse at ‘The Disco’ (located in the Special Operations Force Compound in Mosul Airfield, Mosul, Iraq). The abuse consisted of filling his jumpsuit with ice, then hosing him down and making him stand for long periods of time, sometimes in front of an air conditioner; forcing him to lay down and drink water until he gagged, vomited or choked, having his head banged against a hot steel plate while hooded and interrogated; being forced to do leg lifts with bags of ice placed on his ankles, and being kicked when he could not do more.

“[An] investigation of allegations of torture and abuse that took place in 2003 at Abu Ghraib.
“[And an] investigation that established probable cause to believe that U.S. forces committed homicide in 2003 when they participated in the binding of detainee Abed Mowhoush in a sleeping bag during an interrogation, causing him to die of asphyxiation.”

“A large portion of the torture, maiming, and murder of detainees occurred under authority issued under secret rules of engagement in the Pentagon,” wrote Scott Horton, a contributing editor with Harper’s magazine. “Much of this flowed through Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, a figure who has so far evaded scrutiny in the torture scandal and now serves as vice president for strategy of QinetiQ North America, a subsidiary of the United Kingdom-based defense contractor QinetiQ. Even the Senate Armed Services Committee review fails to get to the bottom of Dr. Cambone, his interrogations ROEs for special operations units he controlled, and the death, disfigurement and torture of prisoners they handled. This is one of many reasons why a comprehensive investigation with subpoena power is urgently needed. But full airing of the internal investigations already conducted by the Department of Defense is an essential next step.”

The ACLU’s catalog of documents relating to torture under the Bush administration may be found here.

Turley: Truth commission a ’shameful’ way to avoid prosecuting war crimes

David Edwards and Muriel Kane - Raw Story - Thursday, Feb 12, 2009

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) called on Monday for a “truth and reconciliation commission” to investigate Bush administration abuses, describing it as a “middle ground … to get to the bottom of what happened.” However, constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley believes that would be a terrible idea.

“There’s no question that torture occurred here,” Turley told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. “There’s no question that it was a war crime. And so the only reason to have a commission of this kind is to avoid doing what we’re obligated to do under a treaty.”

“It is shameful that we would be calling for this type of commission,” Turley continued, calling it “incredible” that Leahy would be proposing an approach most associated with emerging democracies that lack a well-developed legal system.

“We’re obligated to investigate,” he insisted. “This whole discussion in front of the whole world is basically saying that we are not going to comply with the promise we made, not to ourselves, but to the world.”

Olbermann noted that since the Bush administration itself claims that its actions were somehow above the law, “Does not using a special forum inherently validate the Bush claim that the regular rules did not apply to his presidency?”

“It absolutely does,” Turley replied. “There is great love for President Obama, and I have great respect for him, but you cannot say that no one is above the law and block the investigation of the war crimes by your predecessor. It is a position without principle.”

“At the end of the day,” continued Turley, “no one believes that people will be prosecuted for a known war crime — and when we do that then we will become accessories. Those crimes of President Bush will become our crimes. His shame will become our collective shame.”

“The Democrats are going to have to decide whether they want to detach themselves from principle, start their control of this government with an act of the most unprincipled sort,” Turley concluded. “You have to decide whether you are a statesman or just one more politician looking for the next election.”

New York Times on Tom Woods, Ron Paul, anti-Fed sentiment

Fed Up With the Fed
NYT Ideas - Tom Kuntz - February 11, 2009

Admire F.A. Hayek as they may, fiscal conservatives (Ron Paul aside) have tended to ignore the Austrian economist’s admonition against central banking — until now, an article says. “It’s not surprising that arguments against the Fed are finally resonating. Since the crisis began in 2007, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke has engaged in all manner of emergency activity, much of it unprecedented and of such dubious legality that even some of those who may reject or be unfamiliar with arguments against the Fed have begun to wonder about the unaccountable power this institution wields over the economy.” [American Conservative]

Graven images on coins not only un-Christian, but un-republican

The Lincoln Penny Is "Too Monarchical"
Lew Rockwell.com Blog - Thomas DiLorenzo - 2/10/09



That's what George Washington would say. In a Feb. 8 NY Times article on the history of the Lincoln penny, author Thomas Vinciguerra wrote of how "Before its [the Lincoln penny] debut in 1909, no actual person had been depicted on a regular-denomination circulating United States coin."

"This was no accident" because "Emperors, kings and other authority figures had long projected their power by stamping their faces on loose change." In 1791 the U.S. Congress wanted to put George Washington's head on a coin, but "Washington argued against the idea, deeming it too monarchical." "It smacked of royalty" and "It was not a good omen for a new republic," said one expert who is quoted.

So instead of George Washington, in 1792 "an impression emblematic of liberty" was put on the coinage. Promoting liberty, as opposed to despotism and imperialism, on the coinage was ended by the lunatic Teddy Roosevelt who put Dishonest Abe's mug on the penny.

Britain's holocaust

FLASHBACK: UK Killed Over 10 Million Indians In Holocaust
Randeep Ramesh - London Guardian - Re-Posted Wednesday, February 11, 2009

A controversial new history of the Indian Mutiny, which broke out 150 years ago and is acknowledged to have been the greatest challenge to any European power in the 19th century, claims that the British pursued a murderous decade-long campaign to wipe out millions of people who dared rise up against them. In War of Civilisations: India AD 1857, Amaresh Misra, a writer and historian based in Mumbai, argues that there was an “untold holocaust” which caused the deaths of almost 10 million people over 10 years beginning in 1857. Britain was then the world’s superpower but, says Misra, came perilously close to losing its most prized possession: India.

Conventional histories have counted only 100,000 Indian soldiers who were slaughtered in savage reprisals, but none have tallied the number of rebels and civilians killed by British forces desperate to impose order, claims Misra.

The author says he was surprised to find that the “balance book of history” could not say how many Indians were killed in the aftermath of 1857. This is remarkable, he says, given that in an age of empires, nothing less than the fate of the world hung in the balance.

“It was a holocaust, one where millions disappeared. It was a necessary holocaust in the British view because they thought the only way to win was to destroy entire populations in towns and villages. It was simple and brutal. Indians who stood in their way were killed. But its scale has been kept a secret,” Misra told the Guardian.

His calculations rest on three principal sources. Two are records pertaining to the number of religious resistance fighters killed - either Islamic mujahideen or Hindu warrior ascetics committed to driving out the British.

The third source involves British labour force records, which show a drop in manpower of between a fifth and a third across vast swaths of India, which as one British official records was “on account of the undisputed display of British power, necessary during those terrible and wretched days - millions of wretches seemed to have died.”

There is a macabre undercurrent in much of the correspondence. In one incident Misra recounts how 2m letters lay unopened in government warehouses, which, according to civil servants, showed “the kind of vengeance our boys must have wreaked on the abject Hindoos and Mohammadens, who killed our women and children.”

Obama to leave Bush crimes un-investigated, un-prosecuted

Obama signals he isn’t interested in ‘truth commission’ to investigate Bush abuses
John Byrne - Raw Story - Tuesday, Feb 10, 2009

President Barack Obama gave a cool welcome at his Monday night press conference to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) call for a “truth commission” to probe alleged abuses under George W. Bush, offering a fresh signal that the new president may not be interested in investigating President Bush.

Obama claimed at the first press conference of his presidency that he had not seen the proposal from Sen. Leahy and would have a look at it — “but my general orientation is to say let’s get it right moving forward.”

But “my view is also that nobody is above the law. And if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen,” Obama said.

UN says Israel blocks most Gaza aid

Press TV - Wednesday, Feb 11, 2009

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says Israel only allows a meager amount of humanitarian aid to enter the impoverished Gaza Strip.

The United Nations strives to provide relief to one million people daily inside a coastal sliver that is home to 1.5 million people, Ban said during a news conference on Tuesday.

Israel, however, is only allowing supplies enough for 30,000 people to get through and only from one crossing, he added.

“We are experiencing serious difficulty in getting all the materials, humanitarian assistance, so it is absolutely necessary that they open the crossings,” the secretary general affirmed while announcing plans to launch a probe into Israel’s bombing of UN compounds during its war on the Gazan population.

Ban told reporters that although Israel has completely ignored his calls, he “will continue to urge that” Tel Aviv allow more aid into the Palestinian strip.

Human rights watchdog Amnesty International has largely criticized Ban for being too timid on the extent of an inquiry into Israel’s attack on its facilities.

“What is needed is a comprehensive international investigation that looks at all alleged violations of international law by all armed groups involved in the conflict,” Irene Khan, the secretary general of Amnesty International, said in an announcement.

Khan added that researchers have found clear evidence of war crimes during the operation - in which more than 1300 Gazans have been killed and over 5300 others have been injured.

Obama-Daschle's health care federalization snuck into "stimulus bill"

Critics Concerned New Economic Stimulus Bill Promotes Rationed Health Care
Steven Ertelt - LifeNews - February 10, 2009

Critics of the new economic stimulus bill Congress is considering are concerned that, buried in it, is a new plan for rationed health care. Betsy McCaughey, the former Lt. Governor of New York, has written a widely circulated editorial with the analysis.

Rationed health care is not a new fear for the pro-life movement.

The British government has been condemned for years for its nationalized health care system which puts off important surgeries and other health care for patients.

If instituted in the United States, pro-life advocates have been concerned it could lead to the denial of lifesaving medical treatment or euthanasia of patients.

McCaughey, an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, says the rationing provisions “reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle,” who was the former nominee for the Health Secretary before he withdrew his name over a tax scandal.

The stimulus bill includes health rules to have medical treatments tracked electronically by a federal system to help reduce duplicate tests and errors.

But it goes further by establishing a new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, that monitors treatments, as McCaughey says, “to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective.”

“The goal is to reduce costs and ‘guide’ your doctor’s decisions,” she explains. “These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book” where ‘doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.’”

The bill calls for penalties for doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system — a term the new Health Secretary will define.

“What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional,” McCaughey writes in an editorial condemning the measure.

What is the point of these new regulations?

“The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs,” McCaughey writes. “He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept ‘hopeless diagnoses’ and ‘forgo experimental treatments,’ and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.”

‘Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt,” according to Daschle.

Thomas Woods--a true American historian

Glenn Beck and Gerald Celente on the "Greatest Depression"

[Warning: mild profanity by Glenn Beck]



re: Gerald Celente on FOX
Lew Rockwell.com Blog: Lew Rockwell 2/11/09

Writes Doug Carkuff:

Liked the video of Mr. Celente on Glen Beck, but Beck is so full of baloney. This claim that he has been warning of the collapse of the economy – essentially heeding Ron Paul – when in fact he spent virtually all of the past election cycle calling people like you and Dr. Paul and Ron Paul supporters like myself whackos and terrorists is fairly revolting. I’m glad to see he has come on over from the dark side, but pretending he has been a font of truth and wisdom and courage for these past couple years is a deception.

Best historian in Ameirca--Thomas E. Woods--on Glenn Beck

[Warning: a small amount of profanity by Glenn Beck.]

Obama protects Bush's torture secrets, threatens Britain

Obama Administration Threatened Britain To Suppress Torture Evidence
Guantanamo detainee tortured into bombing confession

Paul Joseph Watson - Prison Planet.com - Wednesday, February 4, 2009


The Obama administration has been caught in a fresh torture controversy after it emerged that America threatened to cease all intelligence ties with Britain if it revealed that a British suspect held at Guantanamo Bay had been tortured into confessing to being part of a dirty bomb plot.

“Two senior British judges have expressed their anger and surprise that President Barack Obama’s Government has put pressure on Britain to suppress evidence of torture in US custody,” reports the London Times.

“Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said they had been told that America had threatened to stop co-operating with Britain on intelligence matters if evidence were published suggesting that Binyam Mohammed, a British resident held at the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, had been tortured into confessing crimes.”

In their ruling, the judges, acting on behalf of the Foreign Office & Commonwealth Office, scorned the hypocrisy behind the Obama administration’s actions.

“We did not consider that a democracy governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials . . . relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be,” they stated.

“We had no reason . . . to anticipate there would be made a threat of the gravity of the kind made by the United States Government that it would reconsider its intelligence-sharing relationship, when all the considerations in relation to open justice pointed to us providing a limited but important summary of the reports.”

Binyam Mohammed has been held at Guantanamo Bay since September 2004 after being kidnapped at the behest of U.S. authorities in Pakistan in 2002. He claims he was tortured and mistreated into confessing to being part of a dirty bomb plot. Reports written by U.S. intelligence officials apparently confirm Mohammed’s claims.

The British judges declined to publish the reports after America’s threat, but lambasted America for bullying Britain to conceal information that posed no threat to America’s national security.
“Championing the rule of law, not suppressing it, is the cornerstone of a democracy,” said the ruling.

“The suppression of reports of wrongdoing by officials (in circumstances which cannot in any way affect national security) would be inimical to the rule of law and the proper functioning of a democracy.”

The controversy follows the revelation that Obama, despite his superficial moves against torture which have been given much attention by the establishment media, has in fact signed an executive order that will ensure a continuance of the practice of “rendition,” the secret capture, transportation, and imprisonment of so called “enemy combatants” in countries renowned for carrying out torture.

Secret rendition “black sites” hit the headlines in late 2005 when U.S. and foreign intelligence officials blew the whistle on the CIA’s practice of hiding and interrogating “al Qaeda” captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe.

The secret facility was revealed to be part of a covert CIA prison system, set up after 9/11, that at various times included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. The Washington Post refused to name the European countries involved after pressure from senior U.S. officials.

Horror stories of brutality and psychological torture of detainees at the secret prisons emerged soon after.

Many on the political left were fast and loose with their praise for Obama after he made moves to shut down Guantanamo Bay, but the real torture black sites and the process by which suspects are kidnapped and taken to them will remain in place thanks to Obama’s executive order.

Did Osama sneak explosives into the WTC buildings?

FBI Believed that Bombs Were Used on 9/11
George Washington’s Blog - Wednesday, Feb 11, 2009

On 9/11, the FBI believed that bombs were involved in the attacks.

How do I know that?

Because, according to the FBI’s website:

Following the massive terrorist attacks against New York and Washington, the FBI dedicated 7,000 of its 11,000 Special Agents and thousands of FBI support personnel to the PENTTBOM investigation. “PENTTBOM” is short for Pentagon, Twin Towers Bombing.
(see also this and this).

Indeed, the FBI told a reporter for USA Today that FBI agents believed there were bombs in the Twin Towers.

Similarly, the Washington Post believed that bombs were involved, as reflected in a September 21, 2001 article containing the following phrase:

In the hours after Tuesday’s bombings . . . .

Many firefighters and policemen also said there were bombs in the Twin Towers.

And perhaps “the premiere collapse expert in the country”, who 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer referred to as a “very, very respected expert on building collapse”, the head of the New York Fire Department’s Special Operations Command and the most highly decorated firefighter in its NYFD history, who had previously “commanded rescue operations at many difficult and complex disasters, including the Oklahoma City Bombing, the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, and many natural disasters worldwide” thought that the collapse of the South Tower was caused by bombs, because the collapse of the building was too even to have been caused by anything else (pages 5-6).

But surely experts have since proven that no bombs were involved. Right?

In fact, structural engineers, architects, scientists and demolition experts and other high-level experts have examined the evidence and think that there were bombs.

Even the former head of the Fire Science Division of the government agency which claims that the World Trade Centers collapsed due to fire, who is one of the world’s leading fire science researchers and safety engineers, a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering (Dr. James Quintiere) doesn’t bevelieve an adequate investigation into 9/11 has been conducted. He has called for an independent review of the World Trade Center Twin Tower collapse investigation. “I wish that there would be a peer review of this,” he said, referring to the NIST investigation. “I think all the records that NIST has assembled should be archived. I would really like to see someone else take a look at what they’ve done; both structurally and from a fire point of view. … I think the official conclusion that NIST arrived at is questionable.”