Wake the Herd

The Vigilant Crusader rebukes Pastor Terry Jones

2011-06-28T07:23:00.000-07:00

Lansing and Beyond's spiritual adviser, Reverend Willie Joe Clayton, is back at the pulpit of the Shrine of the Crumbling Paradigm. In this replay of his Good Friday 2011 message, Reverend Clayton has a message of truth for all of humanity regarding Florida's Koran-burning "deceiver," Pastor Terry Jones.

While we do not agree with Pastor Jones or his message, we believe that he should be able to say what he wants and, quite frankly, burn all the Korans he can get his hands on. Because the right to be a religious carnival barker is protected under the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

He just can't incite a riot in Dearborn, Michigan while doing so.

That seems reasonable, doesn't it?

The sources for Reverend Clayton's message are below the video.

Warning: Reverend Clayton uses colorful language in his sermons, so please don't listen to this at work.

EXCLUSIVE: Al Qaeda Leader Dined at the Pentagon Just Months After 9/11

Dining with the enemy: Al Qaeda leader linked to 9/11 hijackers 'was invited to the Pentagon for lunch after attacks'

Sibel Edmonds video testimony and deposition exposing Osama Bin Laden's CIA ties

Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs website

Who is Osama Bin Laden?

CIA AND ISI NURTURED MUJAHIDEEN AND TALIBAN

Charlie Wilson's War

Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links

Libya: al-Qaeda among Libya rebels, Nato chief fears

Libyan rebel's story shows links to Taliban, Al Qaeda, NATO

Was Jimi Hendrix the Spawn of Satan?

2011-06-28T07:22:00.000-07:00

From the Shrine of the Crumbling Paradigm, The Vigilant Crusader, Reverend Willie Joe Clayton, brings you a message of hope, truth and love. In this episode, Reverend Clayton settles the issue of the true origins of James Marshall Hendrix, as well as exposing a Lady 'musician' who is currently polluting the earth with her "Ga Ga".

Legalizing marijuana would be a threat to our children?

2011-06-28T07:21:00.002-07:00

So under Michigan's new GOP leadership, our state government is supposed to shrink? Right?

I guess Grand Ledge Senator, and former Eaton County Sheriff, Rick Jones, didn't get the memo according to today's Lansing State Journal.

A state bill placing medical marijuana patients and caregivers in a statewide police database would be a setback for the 2-year-old medical marijuana law, advocates say.

Despite objections from medical marijuana advocates, the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday forwarded that bill - and another bill restricting medical marijuana-related lawsuits against municipalities - to the full Senate for consideration.

A law enforcement database for medical marijuana? Why? Does Michigan law enforcement have a database for alcohol users? Valium users? Viagra users?

This morning in an interview with 1320 WILS host Tony Conley, Conley asked Jones why the state just doesn't legalize marijuana.

Jones response was to say that legalization of drugs would be a threat to our children:

Conley: "Rick why don't we just end all of this. make some money on it for the state and just legalize it?"

Jones: "Well I think there are a lot of problems with legalizing marijuana. Once that gets into the schools, uhh, of course the next step is, 'Well this isn't very exciting, so let's go try cocaine, or methamphetamine, or the new bath salt drug?' Uhh . . . those are very dangerous, very deadly and we certainly don't want to see people transitioning to something worse."

Once "that" gets into the school?

I hate to break it to you Senator, but marijuana has been in the schools for a long time. Hell, I have been out of high school for over 20 years and pot was easier to get than a blowjob back then.

And while I never took a formal survey among my peers, I'm sure than blowjobs would have defeated pot in a landslide had a vote been taken.

There are a lot of problems with our public schools, but pot isn't and never has been one of them.

But I digress. The War on Drugs has always been a joke. A violent, bloody, money wasting, power grabbing, liberty smashing, life destroying joke.

And the only thing that's a bigger joke than the war itself, is the tired old propaganda that drugs are dangerous and must be outlawed to save our children.

So lets laugh at this joke of a war, learn a little about why it is not supposed to be won and why should be stopped?

Wake the Herd episode one - The War on Drugs

If Dick's Armey is leading your Tea Party . . . You are getting screwed.

2011-06-28T07:21:00.001-07:00

As I have said before to my conservative friends, if your Tea Party is being led by Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck or Dick FreedomWorks Armey, you are getting screwed.

And it's not the fun kind of screw either. It's the kind that gives you burning urine, puss-oozing sores and a lower sense of self-esteem.

Well, according to an article from yesterday's Michigan Messenger, it seems that FreedomWorks is sliding closer to another long-time divide-and-conquer establishment front group:

The Institute for Research and Education and Human Rights has a report on the Tea Party group FreedomWorks, led by Dick Armey, and their increasing association with the John Birch Society.

I remember a number of years ago, when I was starting to become politically aware, I sent for a free packet from the John Birch Society to find out more about their organization. When I received the information I quickly got the message of their mission:

To bring about less government, more responsibility, and — with God’s help — a better world by providing leadership, education, and organized volunteer action in accordance with moral and Constitutional principles.

As far as I'm concerned, God and politics are like oil and water . . . fire and gasoline . . . the Detroit Lions and success. Neither should be mixed together for very long or the entire time-space continuum could be compromised.

While the Birchers are most famous for their efforts to combat Communism in all it's forms, I don't think replacing Pinko Commies with the jackboot march of Fascists is a good thing either. Because, as Sinclair Lewis warned in his 1935 book, It Can't Happen Here:

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.”

I don't know about the rest of you, but for me, some days it sure seems like it has already happened here. . . .

Obama down with the people . . . up with the elite

2011-06-28T07:19:00.000-07:00

Bloomberg recently reported that potential Presidential voters are unlikely to vote for the incumbent next year.

Only 30 percent of respondents said they are certain to vote for the president and 36 percent said they definitely won’t. Among likely independent voters, only 23 percent said they will back his re-election, while 36 percent said they definitely will look for another candidate.

Don't worry Obamabots, just like Reagan, Clinton and the Bushes before him, Barack Obama is a globalist bootlicker and will be reelected - not because he is going to do anything for you - but because he is doing everything that the globalist elite wants him to do as the following 2008 documentary, entitled The Obama Deception, illustrates.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw

The system is rigged . . . and to the loyalist bootlicker goes the spoils. Obama will get reelected because he is the perfect company man.

John Pollard is always an interesting listen . . .

2011-06-28T07:18:00.002-07:00

Lansingites who follow the local political scene know who John Pollard is . . . and love him or hate him, he is always an interesting listen. This morning's appearance on WILS' Tony Conley Morning Show is no exception.

Pollard on the TCMS

Is a U.S. attack on Syria in the works?

2011-06-28T07:18:00.001-07:00

As we have been saying for over a month, World War III Preseason Action is getting tense. A new development in that story is explained by researcher and historian Webster G. Tarpley, in a essay from yesterday as well as an appearance on the Alex Jones' radio show.

US Naval and Troop Movements Toward North Africa, Middle East Reported As Syrian Destabilization Escalates

Click to listen to Tarpley's Wednesday (6-15) interview on the Alex Jones Show

If a Syria attack occurs, you will be able to count at least eight wars that the U.S. will be waging . . . the current and potential enemies are:

1. Iraq

2. Afghanstan

3. Pakistan

4. Libya

5. Yemen

6. Syria

7. Iran

8. Hezbollah

NOTE: With eight potential wars resulting from a Syria attack, you are getting very close to pushing Russia and/or China into the fold. China has already warned the United States that an "any attack on Pakistan is construed as an attack on China."

Couple that with Russia warning the U.S. to keep their hands off Syria and saying that the U.S. naval buildup in the Black Sea and their possible smuggling of arms to Georgia may lead to war.

So it is clear that if the U.S. - or Israel - attacks Syria . . . all bets are off as humanity is back in the Cuban Missile Crisis zone with every nuclear power in the NATO alliance, as well as China, Pakistan, Russia, Japan and Israel ready and able to radiate the globe.

And remember, as I wrote nearly two years ago, the only winners in World Wars are the bankers who finance them.

UPDATES: Here is the latest info from this afternoon:

U.S. Invasion of Libya Set for October

US Warships Moved To Syrian Coast

Nigel Farage: Bankers+politicians = ‘unholy alliance’ vs people

Gen. Hamid Gul: Israel/India Running U.S. Foreign Policy

Jim Crow had a Bastard Child and it's name is the War on Drugs

2011-06-28T07:17:00.002-07:00

Did you know that more African Americans are under correctional control today than were enslaved in 1850?

In the above speech, Michelle Alexander argues persuasively we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial segregation has been replaced by mass incarceration as a system of social control.

Michelle Alexander is a longtime civil rights advocate and litigator. She won a 2005 Soros Justice Fellowship and now holds a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Mortiz College of Law at Ohio State University. Alexander served for several years as director of the Racial Justice Project at the ACLU of Northern California, and subsequently directed the Civil Rights Clinics at Stanford Law School, where she was an associate professor. Alexander is a former law clerk for Justice Harry Blackmun on the U.S. Supreme Court, and has appeared as a commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and NPR. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is her first book.

The above video was recorded at New York's Riverside Church on May 21, 2011. More info, reading, and video links about this issue are below the fold.

Detroit's decline predicted . . . 50 years ago . . . in Time Magazine?

Yes, it is true. This well done column by the Detroit News' Daniel Howes, who talks about that article and ties it nicely to how the city is today.

Detroit's story: decline or revival?

And another fine column by the News' Laura Berman about the state of the housing industry north of 8 Mile:

Empty homes dot Oakland County's upscale suburbs

And two stories about the Black Flight and White Flight Part II in Metro Detroit:

Wall Street Journal: Black Flight Hits Detroit

Detroit News: Black influx impacts school choice in Detroit suburbs

This issue also gives me a chance to plug the documentary I produced in 2007 about the 1967 Detroit Riot.

Is that tacky? Maybe. But I'm proud of it and it's gotten good reviews. It has, in a way, become my fourth child. And best of all you can watch and share it for free from my YouTube page.

Deeper Analysis

In regard to the above stories about schools, the Drug War and our failing cities. The first link comes from last week's Michigan Citizen, talking about the March 25 Wayne State University conference entitled, Deconstructing the School-to-Prison Pipeline.

Michigan Citizen: Civil Rights: Deconstructing the school-to-prison pipeline

By the way, it's not-so-funny that this event received no mention in the Detroit News or Free Press - nor any coverage from WWJ or WJR - that I can find (please correct me if I'm mistaken).

Next, Attorney and Ohio State University legal professor, Michelle Alexander, has written a book called The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

This is a speech she gave on the topic in Feb. 2010:

Here's a video of another talk she gave on C-Span's Washington Journal on 2/30/10.

And finally, here is a 2009 Michigan ACLU study - mentioned in the above Michigan Citizen article - about the problem of "Michigan Throwaway Kids."

Reclaiming Michigan’s Throwaway Kids: Students Trapped in the School-to-Prison Pipeline

. . . Read/download the report (PDF) and supporting documents (PDF)

Webster Tarpley talks U.S. v Pakistan with Kevin Barrett

2011-06-28T07:17:00.001-07:00

Great stuff from Webster Tarpley, American's foremost truth-teller regarding U.S. Foreign Policy. You won't hear this kind of information on the alphabet networks.

Click to hear interview

Commentary: Dick Fitzwell talks Weinergate

2011-06-28T07:16:00.001-07:00

CLICK FOR MP3 OF COMMENTARY

In this commentary, Not Ready for Prime Time News chief anchorman, Dick Fitzwell, gives his perspective on the media sensation known as 'Weinergate.' Also included with the following commentary is some behind the scenes banter between Mr. Fitzwell and LansingandBeyond.com Operations Manager, Doug Warren.

A Message for the Youth (or the Young at Heart)

2011-06-28T07:15:00.003-07:00

Are you bored with school, your job, life in general?

Are you . . .

Turned Off?

Tuned Out?

Then maybe it is time to Drop Out

Now, dropping out doesn't mean you stop learning. In fact, it means that your learning has just begun.

Go find a library and read . . . a lot.

Maybe find an older mentor, or two, or three.

Ask lots of questions. 'Pick their brains.'

Listen. Absorb their lessons and advice.

Get on with some REAL learning.

Learn how to build a house, fix your car, grow a garden.

Learn how to skin a buck . . . and run a trotline.

Learn how to provide for yourself and those you care about. It's the kind of learning that you cannot - will not - get from an establishment school.

It's the kind of learning you can turn to when life gets tough.

It's the kind of learning that can keep you out of jail and/or the morgue.

Turn off the T.V. . . . Tune in Your Brain.

Start today to begin gathering real knowledge . . . real knowledge that you can use to build a real future.

A future that is on your terms . . . rather than the terms that society steers you toward.

It's your destiny . . . and there is no reason why you shouldn't be in control of it.

Memory Hole History: Tulsa, Oklahoma, May 31, 1921

2011-06-28T07:15:00.001-07:00

The deadliest 'race riot' in American history didn't occur in Detroit or Los Angeles and wasn't even started by 'Negroes.' This is the history that you weren't taught in your favorite government school.

Brought to you by TheRoot.com

J.B. Stradford, the son of a freed Kentucky slave, rose to prominence in Oklahoma during the early 1900s as one of the key developers of the all-black Tulsa enclave Greenwood. A lawyer and businessman, Stradford owned the 65-room hotel that sat right in the heart of the thriving community that would later become known as "the Black Wall Street."

But in a single day, all of that would change. On May 31, 1921, the arrest of a young black man on a questionable charge of assaulting a young white woman touched off the deadliest race riot in U.S. history. Whites charged through the community in retaliation, leaving an estimated 300 people dead, another 10,000 black residents homeless and 35 city blocks in ruin.

The video below is courtesy of CBS/The History Channel:

My fellow Michiganders: Which side of history will you be on?

2011-06-28T07:14:00.001-07:00

As much as I hoped it wouldn’t be the case last November. It appears that Governor Rick Snyder is nothing more than a velvet-gloved austerity whore hell bent on engineering an IMF-style dismantling of Michigan’s government and economy. It’s time for true liberals and conservatives to wake up and unite against the systematic destruction of Michigan’s economy, resources, Constitution and rule of law.

I am pleased to see, in the funny and serious serious links that follow, I am not alone in this belief.

Let's begin with a scathing audio critique of Michigan's Emergency Financial Manager law by the Black Agenda Report's Glenn Ford:

Michigan’s “Emergency” Financial Regime: What Fascism Looks Like

Then let's take a satirical break with Stephen Colbert:

Colbert is funny . . . and correct. Michigan's Emergency Financial Manager Law is a giant F#!k 'Em to any citizens in Michigan who are too poor, ignorant, backwoods, or dark complected to government themselves.

How many of you Michiganders now which that you had voted for that Bernero guy?

Rick Snyder is not a Republican. He is not a nerd. . . . He is a fascist. And if his plan is implemented, the merging of corporate and state power – the essence of Mussolini-style fascism – will be complete. And no Michigander will be immune from the onslaught.

No law should ever be immune from voter repeal. And when a government crosses the line where an emergency manager can unilaterally eliminate collective bargaining, binding arbitration and other legally negotiated and voted upon legislation and regulations, that government crosses the line from democracy into despotism. The Snyder plan could potentially do all of the above now that it is in place.

Snyder and his storm troopers like Al Pscholka and Jase Bolger must be stopped by non-violent legislative action, recall efforts and civil disobedience.

I don’t often agree with the Reverend Jesse Jackson, but in regard to his op-ed in last month's Chicago Sun-Times, I am in full agreement:

This appointed dictator claims breathtaking powers. He can sell public assets, dismiss pension boards and take control of public pension funds and revoke labor contracts. What triggers this takeover? The law is remarkably vague. The governor may act if a payroll is missed, if there are complaints of late bill payment, if pensions are underfunded, if there is a significant budget deficit, a term that goes undefined.

This takeover is a recipe for the worst abuses of oppression, cronyism and corruption. And here, too, Benton Harbor is the example. One of the few citizen treasures in Benton Harbor is the Jean Klock Park, a half-mile of sandy dunes on the edge of Lake Michigan. It was bequeathed to the children of Benton Harbor by the Klock family in 1917 in memory of their daughter.

But developers backed by Whirlpool now want to appropriate a large portion of the park to turn it into a Harbor Shores golf resort with a 350-room hotel, two marinas, a 60,000-foot indoor water park (for members only), and a fancy golf course open to all who can afford a $5,000 entry fee and be approved by the club. The town’s citizens have resisted this development, which is under litigation.

But the new czar’s first act was to take over the Brownfield Redevelopment Authority, most likely as a way to proceed with the development and sidestep the lawsuits. Why be suspicious? Because the law that the new czar is operating under was introduced by Republican state Rep. Al Pscholka, former staff aide to U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, an heir to the Whirlpool fortune.

They’ve shut down the jobs, and taken over the schools. Now they want to shut down the democracy and turn the public parks into a rich man’s playground. But in Benton Harbor, as in Selma and Montgomery, they forget even the poorest people have a sense of dignity. Dr. King wrote, “the ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” In Benton Harbor, it is time for the good people to make themselves heard.

Make no mistake, multi-national corporations and their economic hitmen – who have assassinated budgets, governments and entire populations around the globe with debt, default and austerity – have now turned their sights on the American Republic.

Benton Harbor is Michigan’s ‘canary in the coal mine’ for what historian Webster Tarpley calls the “austerity psychosis” that has gripped politicians in both Washington D.C. and state capitols around the country.

What is now happening in Benton Harbor, is already happening in Detroit and could soon be happening in Flint, Muskegon, and Saginaw. And soon after that, could even come to Grand Rapids, Lansing and beyond if the dollar and property values continue to sink.

And any of you out there who are thinking to yourself that “Benton Harlem” is getting what they deserve – the economic hitmen will come after your pensions, healthcare, property and even our military veteran’s death benefits after they steal everything from your darker-complected neighbors.

What do you think will happen to the Huron and Manistee National Forests, the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, or the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore if Michigan is led into a slash-and-burn budget hellhole by the 'Austerity Psychotics' in Lansing and elsewhere?

They will be privatized to the highest bidder. And just like in Greece and Argentina, you won't be able to afford the cover charge to enjoy those treasures after the transactions are complete.

Now is not the time for Michiganders, or Americans for that matter, to allow our politicians to divide and conquer our economic and political futures along liberal and conservative lines. The Snyder cabal in Lansing is operating straight out of the Economic Hitman playbook. A playbook that has left a trail of economic, political and social carnage throughout the third world.

We the People of Michigan cannot allow that same program to be unleashed on us just as we are beginning to climb out of the state’s worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.

It’s time to wake up and get off the couch and join the recall effort. Which side of history will you be on?

The Tenfold Path to Guts, Solidarity and the Defeat of the Corporate Elite

2011-06-28T07:13:00.002-07:00

A very good primer on how to fight America's corporate takeover at Truthout.org by Bruce E. Levine. - D.W.

Many Americans know that the United States is not a democracy but a "corporatocracy," in which we are ruled by a partnership of giant corporations, the extremely wealthy elite and corporate-collaborator government officials. However, the truth of such tyranny is not enough to set most of us free to take action. Too many of us have become pacified by corporatocracy-created institutions and culture.

Read the rest at Truth-out.org

The Terrorstorm of Fabled Enemies

2011-06-28T07:13:00.001-07:00

On the Friday of this most incredible news week, we present your Not Ready for Prime Time documentaries and interviews of the week.

The top two videos are the two best documentaries on the history of government-sponsored terror (i.e. false-flag attacks):

The first film is Terrorstorm - The History of Government-Sponsored Terror

The second film is Fabled Enemies, which is the true story of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, their connections to the world governments and the September 11, 2001 carnage.

Below that is the series of interviews Infowars.com conducted this week with Dr. Steve Pieczenek. Below is a portion of Dr. Pieczenek's bio from his website:

Dr. Pieczenik trained in Psychiatry at Harvard and has both an M.D. from Cornell University Medical College and a Ph.D. in International Relations from M.I.T. He was the first psychiatrist ever to receive a PhD. focusing on international relations. He served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and/or Senior Policy Planner under Secretaries Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, George Schultz and James Baker.

During his career as a senior State Department official, Dr. Pieczenik utilized his unique abilities and expertise to develop strategies and tactics that were instrumental in resolving major conflicts in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Europe and the United States.

Dr. Pieczenik was the principal International Crisis Manager and Hostage Negotiator under Secretaries Kissinger and Vance. During this time he developed conflict resolution techniques that were instrumental in saving over five hundred hostages in different terrorist episodes, including the Hanafi Moslem Seizure in Washington, DC, the TWA Croatian Hijacking, the Aldo Moro Kidnapping, the JRA Hijacking, the PLO Hijacking, and many other incidents involving terrorists such as Idi Amin, Muammar Quaddafi, Carlos, FARC, Abu Nidal and Saddam Hussein.

Dr. Pieczenik helped develop negotiation strategies for major U.S.- Soviet arms control summits under the Reagan administration. He was also involved in advising senior officials on important psycho-political dynamics and conflict mediation strategies for President Carter's successful Camp David Peace Conference. In 1991, Dr. Pieczenik was a chief architect of the Cambodian Peace Conference in Paris. He is currently an advisor to the Department of Defense.

Talking Tea Party with the "Southern Avenger" Jack Hunter

2011-06-28T07:12:00.002-07:00

In this episode, we talk with American Conservative columnist and author, Jack Hunter, about the Tea Party Revolution within the GOP and how the core of that movement, led by Ron and Rand Paul, stand to create more political shockwaves across the United States in 2012.

Pick up a copy of Rand Paul and Jack's book, The Tea Party Goes to Washington at Amazon.com.

Follow Jack's work, including his American Conservative videocasts at his website.

Read Jack's writings at the American Conservative website.

And his Southern Avenger columns and videos at the Charleston City Paper.

Southern Avenger at Twitter

Jack Hunter on Facebook

Wake the Herd: No More National Debt with Author Bill Still

2011-06-28T07:12:00.001-07:00

In this episode, Doug Warren chats with the author of "No More National Debt," Bill Still, about how to revamp the world's monetary system to free governments and their populations from the clutches of the debt-based monetary systems of the private central banks and the International Banking Cartel.

Last year, Mr. Still released the epic documentary (watch below) on the history of the citizens' battle versus the banksters. Entitled the Secret of Oz, it is the most clear, concise and entertaining explanation of that struggle I have ever seen.

You can help Bill finance his very important life's work by purchasing Mr. Still's latest book via Amazon.com or directly from him on his website.

You can also purchase a copy of his Secret of Oz documentary via Amazon or the documentary's website.

Time For An Uprising In Benton Harbor?

2011-06-28T07:11:00.003-07:00

I don't often agree with the Reverend Jesse Jackson, but in regard to his op-ed in today's Chicago Sun-Times, I am in full agreement.

Make no mistake, multi-national corporations and their economic hitmen - who have assassinated budgets, governments and entire populations around the globe with debt, default and austerity - have now turned their sights on the American Republic.

This appointed dictator claims breathtaking powers. He can sell public assets, dismiss pension boards and take control of public pension funds and revoke labor contracts. What triggers this takeover? The law is remarkably vague. The governor may act if a payroll is missed, if there are complaints of late bill payment, if pensions are underfunded, if there is a significant budget deficit, a term that goes undefined.

This takeover is a recipe for the worst abuses of oppression, cronyism and corruption. And here, too, Benton Harbor is the example. One of the few citizen treasures in Benton Harbor is the Jean Klock Park, a half-mile of sandy dunes on the edge of Lake Michigan. It was bequeathed to the children of Benton Harbor by the Klock family in 1917 in memory of their daughter.

But developers backed by Whirlpool now want to appropriate a large portion of the park to turn it into a Harbor Shores golf resort with a 350-room hotel, two marinas, a 60,000-foot indoor water park (for members only), and a fancy golf course open to all who can afford a $5,000 entry fee and be approved by the club. The town’s citizens have resisted this development, which is under litigation.

But the new czar’s first act was to take over the Brownfield Redevelopment Authority, most likely as a way to proceed with the development and sidestep the lawsuits. Why be suspicious? Because the law that the new czar is operating under was introduced by Republican state Rep. Al Pscholka, former staff aide to U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, an heir to the Whirlpool fortune.

They’ve shut down the jobs, and taken over the schools. Now they want to shut down the democracy and turn the public parks into a rich man’s playground. But in Benton Harbor, as in Selma and Montgomery, they forget even the poorest people have a sense of dignity. Dr. King wrote, “the ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” In Benton Harbor, it is time for the good people to make themselves heard.

Benton Harbor is Michigan's 'canary in the coal mine' for what historian Webster Tarpley calls the "austerity psychosis" that has gripped politicians in both Washington D.C. and state capitols around the country.

Make no mistake, multi-national corporations and their economic hitmen - who have assassinated budgets, governments and entire populations around the globe with debt, default and austerity - have now turned their sights on the American Republic.

What is now happening in Benton Harbor, is already happening in Detroit and could soon be happening in Flint, Muskegon, and Saginaw. And soon after that, could even come to Grand Rapids, Lansing and beyond if the dollar and property values continue to sink.

And any of you Jackasses out there who are thinking to yourself that "Benton Harlem" is getting what they deserve - the economic hitmen will come after your pensions, healthcare, property and even our military veteran's death benefits after they steal everything from your negro neighbors.

It's time to wake up and get off the couch.

Turn off your television. Tune in your Brain. And Unite against your real enemy.

Your Drug-Trafficking Criminal Government

2011-06-28T07:11:00.001-07:00

So a major Mexican Drug Kingpin admits he runs drugs for the U.S. government? . . . As Sonny and Cher used to sing, The Beat Goes On.

The War on Drugs won't end until decriminalization begins.

Top Mexican Drug Lord: I Trafficked Cocaine For The U.S. Government

The “logistical coordinator” for a top Mexican drug-trafficking gang that was responsible for purchasing the CIA torture jet that crashed with four tons on cocaine on board back in 2007 has told the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago that he has been working as a U.S. government asset for years.

Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla is the son of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia, one of the top kingpins of the Sinaloa drug-trafficking organization. Niebla was arrested in Mexico in March 2009 and extradited to the United States to stand trial last February.

“The indictment pending against Zambada Niebla claims he served as the “logistical coordinator” for the “cartel,” helping to oversee an operation that imported into the U.S. “multi-ton quantities of cocaine … using various means, including but not limited to, Boeing 747 cargo aircraft, private aircraft … buses, rail cars, tractor trailers, and automobiles,” writes Narcosphere’s Bill Conroy.

In a two page court pleading filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago, Niebla claims that he was working on behalf and with the authority of, “The U.S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”); and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”); and the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”),” since January 1, 2004.

Wake the Herd, Episode 2: Author William Christie

2011-06-28T07:09:00.000-07:00

In this episode, author and Marine Corps veteran, William Christie, talks about the United States' current situation in the War on Terror; what the future may hold in that conflict; as well as and how the relationships between the the "boots on the ground," the military brass, civilian leadership and the citizenry at large has evolved over the course of U.S. history.

William Christie is the author of 8 previous novels, including The Warriors of God, Mercy Mission, and The Blood We Shed. He is currently at work on his first novel in the "historical fiction" realm. You can learn more about him and his work at his website, williamchristieauthor.com

From Waco to Libya: 18 Years of Humanitarian Mass Murder

2011-06-28T07:08:00.004-07:00

There is a great article today from Anthony Gregory about the hypocrisy and deception behind government and 'humanitarian intervention' at home and abroad.

By the way, today is the 18th anniversary of the U.S. government's humanitarian intervention in Waco, Texas. And what Uncle Sam and his pals in the corporate media told you about happened during that intervention, is a steaming load of Texas' cowpie.

“The Davidian cult in Waco was dealt with by armored vehicles,” remarked Muammar Gaddafi in February, defending his own crackdowns in light of the U.S. government’s. April 19 marks eighteen years since the end of the Waco siege and exactly one month since Obama began bombing Libya. Now that the federal government is again shedding blood in the name of humanitarianism, we might reflect on how it obtains legitimacy for its most brazen acts of violence.

If you want to know what really happened at Waco, Texas 18 years ago (i.e. government-sponsored mass-murder of peaceful men, women and children), you need to watch the Oscar-winning documentary, Waco: Rules of Engagement.

How Does The Money Really Flow?

2011-06-28T07:08:00.003-07:00

Where do our tax dollars really go? How does our monetary system set us up to fail? And what can we do about it? The following videos and links offer answers:

The American Dream: Founders warned against current financial system

Keeping the State's Money in the State: An Alternative Solution to the Budget Crisis

How Wisconsin can turn austerity into prosperity – OWN A BANK

Gold prices to strike records about $1,600 this year

IMF: Banks face $3.6 trillion "Wall" of Debt

Globalists positioned to exploit Japan's tragedy

Why the Japanese government can afford to rebuild: It owns the largest depository bank in the world

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa call for end of dollar dominance

Why are Republicans so silent on falling dollar?

Why an income tax is not necessary to fund the U.S. Government

Rand Paul: ‘Pentagon thinks it’s too big to audit’; no serious budget cuts proposed in Washington

Libya: All About Oil, or All About Banking?

Chris Hedges: Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System

2011-06-28T07:08:00.001-07:00

I don't know if there is a more powerful and articulate thinker in all of America today than Chris Hedges. When I read something from him, it often feels like he is channeling the spirit of Thomas Jefferson:

The truly educated become conscious. They become self-aware. They do not lie to themselves. They do not pretend that fraud is moral or that corporate greed is good. They do not claim that the demands of the marketplace can morally justify the hunger of children or denial of medical care to the sick. They do not throw 6 million families from their homes as the cost of doing business. Thought is a dialogue with one’s inner self. Those who think ask questions, questions those in authority do not want asked. They remember who we are, where we come from and where we should go. They remain eternally skeptical and distrustful of power. And they know that this moral independence is the only protection from the radical evil that results from collective unconsciousness. The capacity to think is the only bulwark against any centralized authority that seeks to impose mindless obedience. There is a huge difference, as Socrates understood, between teaching people what to think and teaching them how to think. Those who are endowed with a moral conscience refuse to commit crimes, even those sanctioned by the corporate state, because they do not in the end want to live with criminals—themselves.

“It is better to be at odds with the whole world than, being one, to be at odds with myself,” Socrates said.

Hedges is correct. Our nation's education system is being destroyed. And it has not happened by accident. I urge all of you to take the time and read The Underground History of American Education, by former NYC public school teacher, John Taylor Gatto. For those of you who cannot afford to purchase a copy, It is free to read online at his website. In my opinion, Gatto's book is the greatest, highly-documented, scholarly breakdown of how, since the late-19th century, America's industrial, economic and social elite have been strangling the education of the American Republic literally to death.

Fluoride: Good, Bad or Both?

2011-06-28T07:07:00.001-07:00

Did you know that in 2010 Time Magazine named fluoride one of the Top 10 Common Household Toxins?

Did you hear about the water treatment plant in Rock Island, Illinois that had a chemical spill of "Hydrofluorosilicic acid (which) is used to add fluoride to the plants water."

Fluoride Spill At Illinois Water Facility Requires Haz-Mat Response, But It’s Ok To Drink

According to local TV news report, the chemical was eating through the concrete in the parking lot before Haz-Mat crews showed up.

But though the chemical posed a "burn risk to skin," authorities assured everyone that there was no risk to the public.

Burn risk to skin. Eats through concrete. But yet it OK to use in treating the public water supply? . . . Drink up folks!

However, while Rock Island maybe telling their citizens to "move along, nothing to see here." Other governments are singing a different tune. Calgary, Alberta banned fluoride from their water supply back in February.

The CBC reports today (Feb. 9, 2011) that the city of Calgary will ban fluoride from their water supply. There has been a long running debate as to whether fluoride is good or bad, not only for dental health, but for overall health. What follows are some articles and analysis that present both sides of the issue:

“Wrap the World in Flames” - The US-Russian Alliance that Saved the Union

2011-06-28T07:06:00.002-07:00

The following essay is written by Webster Tarpley, telling the largely untold alliance between President Abraham Lincoln and Russian Tsar Alexander II, which by many accounts was they key to the North winning the U.S. Civil War, which began 150 years ago yesterday.

"One hundred fifty years after the attack on Fort Sumter, the international strategic dimension of the American Civil War represents a much-neglected aspect of Civil War studies. In offering a survey of some of the main issues involved, one feels required to justify the importance of the topic. It is indeed true that, as things turned out, the international strategic dimension of the 1861-65 conflict was of secondary importance. However, it was an aspect that repeatedly threatened to thrust itself into the center of the war, transforming the entire nature of the conflict and indeed threatening to overturn the entire existing world system. The big issue was always a British-French attack on the United States to preserve the Confederate States of America. This is certainly how Union and Confederate leaders viewed the matter, and how some important people in London, St. Petersburg, Paris, and Berlin did as well.

The result is that today, the international dimension is consistently underestimated: even a writer as sophisticated as Richard Franklin Bensel can repeatedly insist in his recent Yankee Leviathan that the US development over the decade before the Civil War was “acted out in a vacuum,” while asserting that “the relative isolation of the United States on the North American continent contributed to the comparative unimportance of nationalism in American life prior to secession.”² Reports of American isolation, however, were already exaggerated in the era of a British fleet that could summer in the Baltic and winter in the Caribbean.

A Message for the Tea Party and Progressives

2011-06-28T07:06:00.001-07:00

America is sick. . . . Really sick. . . . And our country will not get healthy until we realize where our illness is coming from.

Former Clinton Administration Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, wrote in his blog recently:

The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class – pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don’t believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.

Reich's point - while valid - is only partially correct.

It is the GOP and Democratic hierarchy - on behalf of the globalists who control them - who are steering America into a divide-and-conquer Class War.

It is a war designed to allow us to destroy ourselves, while America's real enemies on Wall Street and at the Pentagon escape unscathed, with their funding intact.

We the People fight over dirty needles, while They the Enemies keep their bailout, deregulation and warmongering mainlines flowing.

Let's not forget that Reich was part of a Clinton Administration that brought us NAFTA.

NAFTA has become a symbol for the mounting insecurities felt by blue-collar Americans. While the overall benefits from free trade far exceed the costs . . . The costs fall disproportionately on the losers -- mostly blue-collar workers who get dumped because their jobs can be done more cheaply by someone abroad who’ll do it for a fraction of the American wage. . . . Even though the winners from free trade could theoretically compensate the losers and still come out ahead, they don’t. America doesn’t have a system for helping job losers find new jobs . . . There’s no national retraining system. Unemployment insurance reaches fewer than 40 percent of people who lose their jobs . . . We have no national health care system to cover job losers and their families. There's no wage insurance. Nothing. And unless or until America finds a way to help the losers, the backlash against trade is only going to grow.

For a decade, it has been acknowledged that NAFTA has been a disaster for workers across North America. But, Reich is right on his point that fixes to help the 'losers' are needed. Backlash and rage is not enough. There needs to be a plan for this complex problem.

So what can be done?

If labor and the American population in general want to fend off the Globalist Austerity Pimps on Wall Street and their prostitutes in Washington D.C., Madison, Lansing and elsewhere, they will need to have a plan.

Webster Tarpley, a noted economist and author, offers up a very good one along with an analysis about the current situation in Michigan, Wisconsin and beyond.

. . . it is the financial transactions of banks, hedge funds, and brokerages, in the form of derivatives, foreign exchange, stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments which are universally exempted in this country from the state sales taxes which everyone else pays when they purchase the necessities and amenities of daily life, from consumer electronics to a car or a pair of shoes. A 1% tax on all financial transactions, which is well within the power of the state of Wisconsin to impose, would provide hundreds of millions or billions of dollars of new revenue and remove any pretext for the current assault on state workers. Right now, we repeat, bankers and hedge fund operators pay absolutely no tax on their daily turnover of trading volume, which can easily reach into trillions of dollars, even in a state like Wisconsin. They need to start paying a Wall Street Sales Tax.

Germany, France and Britain had serious "Bank Tax" plans on the table last summer. As of this year, 10 European countries have put bank taxes into effect. And Germany, has banned Naked Credit Default Swaps entirely.

But other than talk, the U.S. has done nothing to reign in Wall Street, their impotent mirage of a 'reforms' last year notwithstanding.

In fact, it now appears that the UK is set to give the banksters more, not less.

Meanwhile in Iceland, the "Little Nation That Could," actually did tell the banks to go to hell - for a second time - by voting down the plan to repay $5 Billion to British and Netherlands' banks after those banks engineered the crash of Iceland's economy.

The global private central banks are the people's common enemy. They have always been the enemy. The IMF Riots that struck Europe last year, have now spread to the Middle East. And now it appears they are on the verge of happening in our own backyard.

So what is an IMF (i.e. International Monetary Fund) Riot? Well, the former head of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, coined the term, after his ouster (aka firing) as World Bank Chief Economist in 1999, and his conscience got the better of him.

Step One is Privatization - which Stiglitz said could more accurately be called, 'Briberization.' Rather than object to the sell-offs of state industries, he said national leaders - using the World Bank's demands to silence local critics - happily flogged their electricity and water companies. "You could see their eyes widen" at the prospect of 10% commissions paid to Swiss bank accounts for simply shaving a few billion off the sale price of national assets.

. . . After briberization, Step Two of the IMF/World Bank one-size-fits-all rescue-your-economy plan is 'Capital Market Liberalization.' In theory, capital market deregulation allows investment capital to flow in and out. Unfortunately, as in Indonesia and Brazil, the money simply flowed out and out. Stiglitz calls this the "Hot Money" cycle. Cash comes in for speculation in real estate and currency, then flees at the first whiff of trouble. A nation's reserves can drain in days, hours. And when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning a nation's own capital funds, the IMF demands these nations raise interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%.

"The result was predictable," said Stiglitz of the Hot Money tidal waves in Asia and Latin America. Higher interest rates demolished property values, savaged industrial production and drained national treasuries.

At this point, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step Three: Market-Based Pricing, a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls, "The IMF riot."

The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, "down and out, [the IMF] takes advantage and squeezes the last pound of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up," as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia exploded into riots, but there are other examples - the Bolivian riots over water prices last year and this February, the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World Bank. You'd almost get the impression that the riot is written into the plan.

. . . The IMF riots (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and teargas) cause new panicked flights of capital and government bankruptcies. This economic arson has it's bright side - for foreign corporations, who can then pick off remaining assets, such as the odd mining concession or port, at fire sale prices.

. . . A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers in this system but one clear winner: the Western banks and US Treasury, making the big bucks off this crazy new international capital churn. Stiglitz told me about his unhappy meeting, early in his World Bank tenure, with Ethopia's new president in the nation's first democratic election. The World Bank and IMF had ordered Ethiopia to divert aid money to its reserve account at the US Treasury, which pays a pitiful 4% return, while the nation borrowed US dollars at 12% to feed its population. The new president begged Stiglitz to let him use the aid money to rebuild the nation. But no, the loot went straight off to the US Treasury's vault in Washington.

Now we arrive at Step Four of what the IMF and World Bank call their "poverty reduction strategy": Free Trade. This is free trade by the rules of the World Trade Organization and World Bank, Stiglitz the insider likens free trade WTO-style to the Opium Wars. "That too was about opening markets," he said. As in the 19th century, Europeans and Americans today are kicking down the barriers to sales in Asia, Latin American and Africa, while barricading our own markets against Third World agriculture.

In the Opium Wars, the West used military blockades to force open markets for their unbalanced trade. Today, the World Bank can order a financial blockade just as effective - and sometimes just as deadly.

Progressives and Libertarians Must Unite

The time has come for We the People to stop allowing our politicians and the corporate media to divide and conquer us. It is time that we put aside the differences that we have in regard to taxes, guns, health care, social issues and morality, and instead unite against our common enemy.

It is time that the left and right sides of Main Street join together to fight Wall Street and the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) that it spawned during World War II.

Break the old chains the corporate media and politicians have used to keep us on our respective political reservations for decades. It's time for the youth of America - conservative and liberal alike - to finish the job the Baby Boomers failed to finish.

It's time for union-backing Progressives to join globalist-hating Libertarians in an 'Americans First' effort and defeat those who planned the destruction of American Industry and our way of life four decades ago.

There is no more time for the liberal versus conservative garbage. The globalist austerity buzzards are circling and they don't give a damn' whether your carcass is red or blue - you, your wealth, your pensions, your assets and your children's future earnings will feed their bloodthirsty bellies just the same.

And if some Boomers with fight left in them want to join in and help Gen X, Gen Y and the Millennials complete Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dreams of brotherhood and peace, let's welcome them. If they want to join the younger generations in heeding President Eisenhower's warning about the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex, we should make space for them. The Boomers have been down this road before and their knowledge and lessons would be an asset as we fulfill the promise of the American Republic.

Dr. King said 44 years ago in his historic Beyond Vietnam speech that:

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

We cannot let that death happen by letting our politicians buy bailouts and bombs instead of school books and bread. We cannot settle for austerity over prosperity. For if we do . . . then Dr. King . . . and the promise of our Republic's founding doctrine will have truly died in vain.

There is room for everyone in this fight against the banksters and MIC. And don't you let a conservative carnival barker or a left-wing gatekeeper tell you otherwise.

Be wary of those politicians who pretend to be on the side of We the People in this battle. LAll you need to do is look at their recent votes on real Constitutional issues like the Patriot Act extension, where Michelle Bachmann, Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin, even a former POW, found common ground when it came to dismantling the U.S. Constitution.

And let's not forget Lansing's local milquetoast GOP Congressmen, Tim Walberg and Mike Rogers voted for tyranny too. Rogers, by the way, co-sponsored the un-Patriotic extension.

The Patriot Act keeps none of us safer, except the entrenched status-quo and their tyrannical ambitions.

Make no mistake, the Patriot Act was created - not for fighting foreign terrorism - but for enabling government terrorism against those that dissent against their actions.

Dissent is not unpatriotic. Being a community organizer is not a bad thing either - provided you are organizing for the betterment of humanity rather than its enslavement.

The Founding Fathers were dissenters and community organizers. Thomas Paine was both. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, Malcolm X, Gandhi, Jesus Christ . . . all dissenters and organizers. And all were branded terrorists during their respective times.

All of the above were also hungry for freedom and justice - and all were sworn enemies of tyranny - just like another American 'terrorist,' Saul Alinsky who once wrote:

"We have permitted a suicidal situation to unfold wherein revolution and communism have become one. These pages are committed to splitting this political atom, separating this exclusive identification of communism with revolution. If it were possible for the Have-Nots of the world to recognize and accept the idea that revolution did not inevitably mean hate and war, cold or hot, from the United States, that alone would be a great revolution in world politics and the future of man. This is a major reason for my attempt to provide a revolutionary handbook not cast in a communist or a capitalist mold, but as a manual for the Have-Nots of the world regardless of the color of their skins or their politics. My aim here is to suggest how to organize for power: how to get it and use it. I will argue that the failure to use power for a more equitable distribution of the means of life for all people signals the end of the revolution and the start of the counterrevolution."

The above quote comes from Alinsky's 1971 masterpiece, Rules for Radicals. It's a book that status-quo puppets like Glenn Beck bash. Beck and many others often cite, accurately, that Alinsky pays tribute to Lucifer in the opening pages of the book. What is funny is that the bashers always forget the two quotes that come before the Lucifer reference. . .

"Where there are no men, be thou a man." - Rabbi Hillel

"Let them call me a rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul. . . " -Thomas Paine

I have to admit, after hearing every conservative from here to Kingdom Hell bash Alinsky during the 2008 campaign, I had to go out and find a copy of his book. . . . Let's just say that Alinsky is anything but what conservatives make him out to be.

After reading Rules for Radicals, I have a feeling that Thomas Jefferson would have been proud to call Alinsky a friend.

Glenn Beck is a shill. Just like Rachael Maddow, Bill O'Reilly, Chris Matthews, etc. They are corporate media snake-oil peddlers whose job it is to divide-and-conquer the masses and keep the status-quo intact.

Conservatives, if you believe your Tea Party is led by Michelle Bachmann, Dick Armey, Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin - you're getting screwed.

And I'm not talking about the fun kind of screwing either. I'm talking about the kind of screw that leaves you with venereal disease, puss-oozing sores and a deflated sense of self esteem.

And for you Liberals, if you're going to get hung up on MSNBC telling you that Ron Paul and his son are going to bring back Jim Crow and burning crosses, then this revolution is going to pass you by too.

You see, those of us who came of age during the MTV era don't give a damn' about racism or anyone who tries to resurrect it. We like white rappers and black golfers. We dig Jungle Fever. We like our Public Enemies served with Anthrax. AND we hate, I mean we really hate, race pimps and racists.

And we will stand against anyone, including the Pauls, if they want to replant that cancer on our soil.

Jim and Jane Crow are dead. They are not coming back. And when we Xers, Yers and Millennials end the globalists' War on Drugs. Jim and Jane's bastard child will be dead too.

The Pauls want to end the Drug War, the Federal Reserve and the MIC's International Offense. That's why we younger folks like the Pauls. And that is why the banksters and warmongers fear them. And as hard as they try, no amount of media race-baiting is going to make us change our minds.

Taking on and eradicating all the evil the International Banking Cartel has brought to the planet will be the battle that will decide the fate of free humanity over the next decade.

It's time for Libertarians and Progressives to unite and throw off the economic, military-industrial and political chains that bind us.

After all, we have a lot more in common with each other than the status-quo would have us believe.

It's time to turn off your politics, tune in your brains and UNITE!

New Malcolm X biography sparks praise and controversy

2011-06-28T07:05:00.003-07:00

I am really looking forward to reading this new biography. I am unapologetic in telling anyone that Malcolm X is one of my heroes. As one would expect, anything related to Malcolm X usually sparks controversy. This biography, written by the recently deceased professor, historian and scholar, Manning Marable, is no exception. What follows is a few links related to Marable and his work on the Malcolm X story, along with a number of reviews of the book.

The Malcolm X Project at Columbia University

Manning Marable on "Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention" (A 2007 Interview with Democracy Now)

LA Times: Manning Marable dies just days before his biography of Malcolm X was to be published

New York Times: Manning Marable, Historian and Social Critic, Dies at 60

Book Reviews:

Democracy Now: “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention”: Manning Marable’s New Biography Investigates Conflicted Reality of the Civil Rights Leader

Washington Post: Manning Marable’s “Malcolm X”

CNN: Malcolm X book reveals startling details of his assassination

AP: Malcolm X's daughters unhappy with new book

Dr. Boyce Watkins: Malcolm X Book Rattles His Daughters: The Truth Sometimes Hurts

Huffington Post: Malcolm X Was "Gay-for-Pay," New Book Says

NPR: Remembering Marable And His New 'Malcolm X'

The Economist: The life of Malcolm X - What he might have become

NPR: Manning Marable's 'Reinvention' Of Malcolm X

New York Times: Peeling Away Multiple Masks

Guardian (UK): Malcolm X: The man behind the myth

I have a lot of respect for Dave Chappelle

2011-06-28T07:05:00.001-07:00

I have never seen these videos before today. Dave Chappelle is a really smart guy, a deep thinker and great comedian. And like many of my favorite comedians, Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Doug Stanhope, Lenny Bruce, he doesn't bullshit on any topic.

Below is the entire interview Chappelle did in 2006 with James Lipton on Inside the Actor's Studio:

The Speech That Killed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

2011-06-28T07:03:00.002-07:00

In my opinion, this is the greatest speech of Dr. Martin Luther King's Jr.'s life. It was also the one that signed his death warrant. That warrant was carried out a year to the day of his first delivery of this speech, 44 years ago, on April 4, 1967 at New York's Riverside Church.

The following rendition however was given by Dr. King 26 days later, in Ebeneezer Baptist Church, in Atlanta, Georgia on April 30, 1967. This rendition is the better because it is much more powerful and emotional than the April 4th debut. Especially towards the end, during the section when he beckons America to "come home."

The speech was prophetic then and it remains so today. This was the hardcore, militant, justice demanding King on full display. The man who had the guts to look the American empire in the eye and call it onto the carpet. This is the Dr. King that Cornel West describes as "a freedom fighter who was unnerving and unsettling and unhousing elites . . . making them shake in their boots."

Please listen to this speech. Read the text that accompanies it. Then absorb and think about the message and how it relates to today. Also, please pass it on to your family and friends. This is not a speech you or your children will hear in school - which is exactly why it needs to be heard by all of us today as America enters the 10th year of another ever expanding war that looks to have no end in sight.

It is time to evolve the idea and the struggle of "Civil Rights" in the 1950's and 60's into a new battlefront for "Human Rights" in the 21 Century. Just as the Vietnam War stood in the way of America's economic and social equality in the 1960's, the War on Terror stands in the way of our economic and social equality and recovery today.

And more importantly, our current conflict stands in the way of our nation's moral standing, just as Dr. King said of Vietnam 44 years ago:

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

The fulfillment and promise of the American Republic - which was Dr. King's greatest dream - will never be achieved so long as America remains the world's chief imperial aggressor.

Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Ebeneezer Baptist Church, April 30, 1967

The sermon which I am preaching this morning in a sense is not the usual kind of sermon, but it is a sermon and an important subject, nevertheless, because the issue that I will be discussing today is one of the most controversial issues confronting our nation. I'm using as a subject from which to preach, "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam."

Now, let me make it clear in the beginning, that I see this war as an unjust, evil, and futile war. I preach to you today on the war in Vietnam because my conscience leaves me with no other choice. The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth. "Ye shall know the truth," says Jesus, "and the truth shall set you free." Now, I've chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing, as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we're always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony. But we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for in all our history there has never been such a monumental dissent during a war, by the American people.

Polls reveal that almost fifteen million Americans explicitly oppose the war in Vietnam. Additional millions cannot bring themselves around to support it. And even those millions who do support the war [are] half-hearted, confused, and doubt-ridden. This reveals that millions have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism, to the high grounds of firm dissent, based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Now, of course, one of the difficulties in speaking out today grows the fact that there are those who are seeking to equate dissent with disloyalty. It's a dark day in our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent. But something is happening, and people are not going to be silenced. The truth must be told, and I say that those who are seeking to make it appear that anyone who opposes the war in Vietnam is a fool or a traitor or an enemy of our soldiers is a person that has taken a stand against the best in our tradition.

Yes, we must stand, and we must speak. [tape skip]...have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam. Many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns, this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. And so this morning, I speak to you on this issue, because I am determined to take the Gospel seriously. And I come this morning to my pulpit to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation.

This sermon is not addressed to Hanoi, or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Nor is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in a successful resolution of the problem. This morning, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans, who bear the greatest responsibility, and entered a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

Now, since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is...a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed that there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the Poverty Program. There were experiments, hopes, and new beginnings. Then came the build-up in Vietnam. And I watched the program broken as if it was some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube. And you may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hope of the poor at home. It was sending their sons, and their brothers, and their husbands to fight and die in extraordinarily high proportion relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with a cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same school room. So we watch them in brutal solidarity, burning the huts of a poor village. But we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago or Atlanta. Now, I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years--especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action; for they ask and write me, "So what about Vietnam?" They ask if our nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence I cannot be silent. Been a lot of applauding over the last few years. They applauded our total movement; they've applauded me. America and most of its newspapers applauded me in Montgomery. And I stood before thousands of Negroes getting ready to riot when my home was bombed and said, we can't do it this way. They applauded us in the sit-in movement--we non-violently decided to sit in at lunch counters. The applauded us on the Freedom Rides when we accepted blows without retaliation. They praised us in Albany and Birmingham and Selma, Alabama. Oh, the press was so noble in its applause, and so noble in its praise when I was saying, Be non-violent toward Bull Connor;when I was saying, Be non-violent toward [Selma, Alabama segregationist sheriff] Jim Clark. There's something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that will praise you when you say, Be non-violent toward Jim Clark, but will curse and damn you when you say, "Be non-violent toward little brown Vietnamese children. There's something wrong with that press!

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964. And I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace Prize was not just something taking place, but it was a commission--a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the brotherhood of Man. This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances. But even if it were not present, I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me, the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the Good News was meant for all men, for communists and capitalists, for their children and ours, for black and white, for revolutionary and conservative. Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved His enemies so fully that he died for them? What, then, can I say to the Vietcong, or to Castro, or to Mao, as a faithful minister to Jesus Christ? Can I threaten them with death, or must I not share with them my life? Finally, I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be the son of the Living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood. And because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned, especially for His suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come today to speak for them. And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak not now of the soldiers of each side, not of the military government of Saigon, but simply of the people who have been under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know these people and hear their broken cries.

Now, let me tell you the truth about it. They must see Americans as strange liberators. Do you realize that the Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation. And incidentally, this was before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. And this is a little-known fact, and these people declared themselves independent in 1945. They quoted our Declaration of Independence in their document of freedom, and yet our government refused to recognize them. President Truman said they were not ready for independence. So we fell victim as a nation at that time of the same deadly arrogance that has poisoned the international situation for all of these years. France then set out to reconquer its former colony. And they fought eight long, hard, brutal years trying to re-conquer Vietnam. You know who helped France? It was the United States of America. It came to the point that we were meeting more than eighty percent of the war costs. And even when France started despairing of its reckless action, we did not. And in 1954, a conference was called at Geneva, and an agreement was reached, because France had been defeated at Dien Bien Phu. But even after that, and after the Geneva Accord, we did not stop. We must face the sad fact that our government sought, in a real sense, to sabotage the Geneva Accord. Well, after the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come through the Geneva agreement. But instead the United States came and started supporting a man named Diem who turned out to be one of the most ruthless dictators in the history of the world. He set out to silence all opposition. People were brutally murdered because they raised their voices against the brutal policies of Diem. And the peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States influence and by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown, they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace. And who are we supporting in Vietnam today? It's a man by the name of general Ky [Air Vice Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky] who fought with the French against his own people, and who said on one occasion that the greatest hero of his life is Hitler. This is who we are supporting in Vietnam today. Oh, our government and the press generally won't tell us these things, but God told me to tell you this morning. The truth must be told.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support and all the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps, where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go, primarily women, and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the towns and see thousands of thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the United Buddhist Church. This is a role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolutions impossible but refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that comes from the immense profits of overseas investments. I'm convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be changed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Oh, my friends, if there is any one thing that we must see today is that these are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. They are saying, unconsciously, as we say in one of our freedom songs, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around!" It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo, we shall boldly challenge unjust mores, and thereby speed up the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing, unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of mankind. And when I speak of love I'm not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of John: "Let us love one another, for God is love. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us."

Let me say finally that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism. The home that all too many Americans left was solidly structured idealistically; its pillars were solidly grounded in the insights of our Judeo-Christian heritage. All men are made in the image of God. All men are bothers. All men are created equal. Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. Every man has rights that are neither conferred by, nor derived from the State--they are God-given. Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. What a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious and healthy place to inhabit. But America's strayed away, and this unnatural excursion has brought only confusion and bewilderment. It has left hearts aching with guilt and minds distorted with irrationality.

It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to come back home. Come home, America. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on." I call on Washington today. I call on every man and woman of good will all over America today. I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today to take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close. And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, "You're too arrogant! And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God."

Now it isn't easy to stand up for truth and for justice. Sometimes it means being frustrated. When you tell the truth and take a stand, sometimes it means that you will walk the streets with a burdened heart. Sometimes it means losing a job...means being abused and scorned. It may mean having a seven, eight year old child asking a daddy, "Why do you have to go to jail so much?" And I've long since learned that to be a follower to the Jesus Christ means taking up the cross. And my bible tells me that Good Friday comes before Easter. Before the crown we wear, there is the cross that we must bear. Let us bear it--bear it for truth, bear it for justice, and bear it for peace. Let us go out this morning with that determination. And I have not lost faith. I'm not in despair, because I know that there is a moral order. I haven't lost faith, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. I can still sing "We Shall Overcome" because Carlyle was right: "No lie can live forever." We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant was right: "Truth pressed to earth will rise again." We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell was right: "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne." Yet, that scaffold sways the future. We shall overcome because the bible is right: "You shall reap what you sow." With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when the lion and the lamb will lie down together, and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid because the words of the Lord have spoken it. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all over the world we will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we're free at last!" With this faith, we'll sing it as we're getting ready to sing it now. Men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. And nations will not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war anymore. And I don't know about you, I ain't gonna study war no more.

Thom Hartmann: The TRUE Story of Tea Party

2011-06-28T07:03:00.001-07:00

Let's travel with Thom back to 1773 - as he reads an original 200-plus-year-old first-edition memoir by George R.T. Hewes - a 17-year old participant on that fateful night. Thom said today on his radio show that it this was maybe the most important commentary he has ever done.

I agree. . . .

Is Nobel Peace Prize Winner Obama More Brutal than Bush?

2011-06-28T06:57:00.000-07:00

A fantastic analysis from the March 31, 2001 Washington's Blog, followed by more thoughts and links from your truly. - D.W.

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(George W.) Bush is correctly regarded as a lying, war-mongering, torturing tyrant.

Is Nobel peace prize winner Obama even worse?

Many governments, U.S. congressmen and other individuals have demanded that Obama return his Nobel peace prize for bombing Libya without congressional approval.

Bush got us into 2 wars to protect our strategic national interests in ... er ... broccoli. Obama just got us into a third war for the same reason. Bush's decision to invade Iraq was met with large protests. Similarly, most Americans didn't want Obama to get involved in Libya.

The Bush administration funded terrorist groups (and see confirming articles here and here). Obama is allegedly funding terrorist groups in Iran, and is now aiding the Libyan "rebels", even though there are allegations that 1,000 of them are Al Qaeda radicals (and there are some indications that their leader is a CIA asset).

Obama has increased the number of drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. Indeed, most people who have looked at the numbers believe that Obama has killed many more civilians with drone attacks than Bush did using the same method.

The Brookings Institution noted in 2009:

"Critics correctly find many problems with this program, most of all the number of civilian casualties the strikes have incurred. Sourcing on civilian deaths is weak and the numbers are often exaggerated, but more than 600 civilians are likely to have died from the attacks. That number suggests that for every militant killed, 10 or so civilians also died."

Read More @ Washington's Blog
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With the recent brown-people-bombing-brigades over Libya and the ongoing torture of the 'guilty until proven innocent' Bradley Manning, among other examples, it should be clear to anyone with an IQ higher than room temperature that America's current Bootlicker-in-Chief loves gang-raping the Constitution as much or more so than his predecessor.

From ProPublica (via Raw Story):

. . . the order establishes indefinite detention as a long-term Obama administration policy and makes clear that the White House alone will manage a review process for those it chooses to hold without charge or trial.

Nearly two years after Obama's pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo, more inmates there are formally facing the prospect of lifelong detention and fewer are facing charges than the day Obama was elected.

That is in part because Congress has made it difficult to move detainees to the United States for trial. But it also stems from the president's embrace of indefinite detention and his assertion that the congressional authorization for military force, passed after the 2001 terrorist attacks, allows for such detention.

Don't for a minute you believe that this order will be to fight our government's favorite bogeymen, al-CIA-da. It is going to be used against We the People, as this excerpt from the Military Commissions Act of 2006 shows.

How can someone who is not already a citizen of the United States have an "allegiance or duty" to "breach" to the United States?

This creeping "National Security State" is coming directly for the American people. And it is being done to squash us on behalf of the International Banking Cartel and the Military Industrial Complex - who own Congress and the Executive Branch - and will soon attempt to foreclose on the rest of America when the dollar collapses and those fancy new FEMA Detention Centers are rolled out to "accommodate" those of us who refuse to submit in the Land of the Sheep and the Home of the Slaves.

Active or Radioactive: The Coming War with Iran

2011-06-28T06:56:00.002-07:00

The U.S. government has been itching to attack Iran since shortly after their one-time ally Saddam Hussein was pulled out of a spider hole in 2003. Iran for centuries has been the straw that stirs the Middle Eastern drink. And as the globalists continue to - or attempt to - carry out their long-term plan to knock down the dominoes (Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Syria) blocking their path to an all out attack on the Persians; you can be sure that more propaganda promoting a possible false-flag attack somewhere in the West by their al-Qaeda goon squads will be in the cards.

And as usual, you can be sure that the globalist-owned corporate media will lie and distort their coverage to help in the effort. Including omitting the all important documented facts that follow.

Shortly after the 2003 Iraq invasion, Iran made a very strong offer to meet at the peace table with the U.S. to talk about getting along. The U.S. told them to hit the road instead.

Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by U.S. forces three years ago, an unusual two-page document spewed out of a fax machine at the Near East bureau of the State Department. It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States, and the fax suggested everything was on the table -- including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups.

But top Bush administration officials, convinced the Iranian government was on the verge of collapse, belittled the initiative. Instead, they formally complained to the Swiss ambassador who had sent the fax with a cover letter certifying it as a genuine proposal supported by key power centers in Iran, former administration officials said.

Remember the "accident" of the fully loaded with nukes B-52 that flew from North Dakota to Alabama before being discovered by the Air Force? Well that incident was not an accident as cooler heads in the Air Force hierarchy stopped the bomber from flying its real mission to the Middle East.

Remember the "incident" in the Strait of Hormuz in 2007, when it was reported that an Iranian naval vessels threatened to attack a U.S. warship? It turns out the official story was a lie. As Seymour Hersch explains in the video below, a really, big false-flag attack lie.

Did you know that since at least 2007, the United States has funded Islamic terrorist groups to wreak havoc in Iran? Well it is true. And the proof is here and here and here and here.

It's should be no surprise that our supposed ally, Israel, has been nipping at Washington's heels to attack Iran. In fact, in 2008, they went so far as to plan it themselves via false-flag attack; but U.S. Armed Forces Joint Chiefs chairman, Admiral Michael Mullen, told the Israelis that another U.S.S. Liberty style provocation would not be tolerated.

Would Mullen still hold to that promise? Is there anyone outside of the War Pigs' gang who really wants to test him?

The war drums that currently beat in support for an attack on Iran talk of how they are working on building nuclear weapons are strikingly similar to the Weapons of Mass Destruction drums that were sounded prior to the 2003 Iraq invasion. Of course, those drums reeked with the stench of propaganda at the time. But nevertheless, the War Pigs got their war as the bloodthirsty U.S. corporate media conned much of the U.S. population into believing the lie that Iraq was connected to the 9-11 attacks and that only an overthrow of former U.S. puppet Saddam Hussein could save the U.S. from another 9-11.

Of course, we all know that Saddam's WMD program was a impotent as Bob Dole on a barbiturate bender, but dammit wasn't the Shock and Awe a fun-to-watch ratings grabber!

But I digress.

A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate from December 2007 said that Iran had stopped their weapons program in 2003, ironically around the same time that their aforementioned peace offer to the U.S. was rebuffed:

A major U.S. intelligence review has concluded that Iran stopped work on a suspected nuclear weapons program more than four years ago, a stark reversal of previous intelligence assessments that Iran was actively moving toward a bomb.

The new findings, drawn from a consensus National Intelligence Estimate, reflected a surprising shift in the midst of the Bush administration's continuing political and diplomatic campaign to depict Tehran's nuclear development as a grave threat. The report was drafted after an extended internal debate over the reliability of communications intercepts of Iranian conversations this past summer that suggested the program had been suspended.

Couple that with the fact that in May, 2010, Iran signed a treaty to send its uranium to NATO member Turkey to be enriched . . .

Under the deal, Iran has said it is prepared to move its uranium within a month of its approval by the so-called Vienna Group (US, Russia, France and the IAEA).

In return, Iran says it expects to receive 120kg of more highly enriched uranium (20%) - a purity well below that used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons - within a year.

. . . and it would seem that the Iranians are doing all they can to keep the Shock and Awe from kicking down their door.

But despite those documented efforts from Iran, the war drums pound on.

Don't be mislead by the warmongering corporate media and the chicken-hawk dolts who occupy their bloody analyst chairs, who tell you that a war with Iran will be quick and easy. Any attack on Iran will be met with major retaliation that would make the highly effective Afghan and Iraqi resistance look impotent by comparison.

Put yourself in Iran's shoes for a moment. If the world's greatest imperial power and their hot-tempered little brother continually threatened to attack you, you would probably prepare to fight back in some fashion, wouldn't you?

A still highly relevant and realistic look at what an attack on Iran might bring was penned by William S. Lind in 2006.

There are two ways, not mutually exclusive, that Iran could attempt to cut our supply line in Iraq in response to an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. The first would be by encouraging Shi’ite militias to which it is allied, including the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades, to rise up against us throughout southern Iraq, which is Shi’ite country. The militias would be supported by widespread infiltration of Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who have shown themselves to be good at this kind of thing. They are the people who trained and equipped Hezbollah for its successful defense of southern Lebanon against the vaunted Israeli army this past summer.

The Shi’ite militias already lie across our single supply line, and we should expect them to cut it in response to Iranian requests. We are already at war with the Mahdi Army, against which our forces in Iraq have been launching a series of recent raids and air strikes. A British journalist I know, one with long experience in Iraq, told me he asked the head of SCIRI, which controls the Badr Brigades, how he would respond if the U.S. attacked Iran. “Then,” he replied, “we would do our duty.”

Iran has a second, bolder option it could combine with a Shi’ite insurrection at our rear. It could cross the Iran-Iraq border with several armored and mechanized divisions of the regular Iranian Army, sever our supply lines, then move to roll us up from the south with the aim of encircling us, perhaps in and around Baghdad. This would be a classic operational maneuver, the sort of thing for which armored forces are designed.

At present, U.S. forces in Iraq could be vulnerable to such an action by the Iranian army. We have no field army in Iraq; necessarily, our forces are penny-packeted all over the place, dealing with insurgents. They would be hard-pressed to assemble quickly to meet a regular force, especially if fuel was running short.

The U.S. military’s answer, as is too often the case, will be air power. It is true that American air power could destroy any Iranian armored formations it caught in the open. But there is a tried-and-true defense against air power, one the Iranians could employ: bad weather. Like the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge, they could wait to launch their offensive until the weather promised a few days of protection. After that, they would be so close to our own forces that air power could not attack them without danger of hitting friendlies. (This is sometimes know as “hugging tactics.”) Reportedly, the Turkish General Staff thinks the Iranians can and will employ this second option, no doubt in combination with the first.

Perhaps the greatest danger lies in the fact that, just as the French high command refused to consider the possibility of a German attack through the Ardennes in 1940, Washington will not consider the possibility that an attack on Iran could cost us our army in Iraq. We have made one of the most common military mistakes—believing our own propaganda. Over and over, the U.S. military tells the world and itself, “No one can defeat us. No one can even fight us. We are the greatest military the world has ever seen!”

Unfortunately, like most propaganda, it’s bunk. The U.S. Armed Forces are technically well-trained, lavishly resourced Second-Generation militaries. They are today being fought and beaten by Fourth-Generation opponents in Iraq and Afghanistan. They can also be defeated by Third-Generation opponents who can react faster than America’s process-ridden, PowerPoint-enslaved military headquarters. They can be defeated by superior strategy, by trick, by surprise, and by preemption. Unbeatable militaries are like unsinkable ships: they are unsinkable until something sinks them.

If the U.S. were to lose the army it has in Iraq to Iraqi militias, Iranian regular forces, or a combination of both, cutting our one line of supply and then encircling us, the world would change. It would be our Adrianople, our Rocroi, our Stalingrad. American power and prestige would never recover. Nothing, not even Israel’s demands, should lead us to run this risk, which is inherent in any attack on Iran.

On top of that, there is no question that an attack on Iran could spill over into a World War III scenario. That warning comes most strikingly from Russian President Demetri Medvedev earlier this year.

Couple that with the comments from Chief of Russia’s General Staff General Nikolay Makarov:

And analysis from investigative reporter, former Navy officer and National Security Agency employee Wayne Madsen:

And you can see that a U.S. attack on Iran would do nothing but harm to an already staggered United States economy and military worldwide.

Do I even have to mention what an Iranian attack could trigger on the Korean Peninsula?

But despite all of the thwarting, false starts and dire analysis of what a war with Iran could mean for the United States and the world - the push from the War Pigs is still strong, as Webster Tarpley illustrates in his comprehensive analysis from July 21, 2010, which begins with the following paragraph:

After about two and a half years during which the danger of war between the United States and Iran was at a relatively low level, this threat is now rapidly increasing. A pattern of political and diplomatic events, military deployments, and media chatter now indicates that Anglo-American ruling circles, acting through the troubled Obama administration, are currently gearing up for a campaign of bombing against Iran, combined with special forces incursions designed to stir up rebellions among the non-Persian nationalities of the Islamic Republic. Naturally, the probability of a new fake Gulf of Tonkin incident or false flag terror attack staged by the Anglo-American war party and attributed to Iran or its proxies is also growing rapidly.

And ends with this call for action:

It is genuinely appalling to realize that we are now back to something resembling the desperate situation of 2002, with Iran as the target this time around. One rule of thumb which many learned during the Bush-Cheney years is that the attack is likely to start during the dark of the moon. This suggests a possible timetable built around August 10, September 8, or October 7 of this year, or perhaps some time later. It may come as an October surprise, as de Borchgrave seems to suggest. We are back once again to the classic predicament of persons of good will in recent decades: get active or get radioactive. So it’s time to get active

So which are you going to be? Active . . . or radioactive?

The Coming Economic Collapse: Analysis and Solutions

2011-06-28T06:56:00.001-07:00

Three very good articles this week about America's coming Greater Depression and what it means for everyone. One local angle from Lansing Online News' Bonnie Bucqueroux. Another is from the Wall Street Journal's Paul B. Farrell. After that is a guest op-ed from today's New York Times by - as of today - the former special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), Neil M. Barofsky.

And finally, a quality 5-point solution to the coming crisis provided in PDF format (to download and share) by economist and unapologetic New Dealer, Webster G. Tarpley.

The GOP Education Agenda: Why earning a diploma will no longer buy you a job or a middle-class life

David Waymire of Martin Waymire Advocacy Communications was a staunch Snyder supporter, but he is now concerned about the depth of his proposed cuts to our state’s college and universities. In his view, Michigan’s future prosperity demands investing in education as the key to attracting “knowledge industries.” Waymire’s recent Facebook post said, “Of the top 16 states in per capita income, all but two are in the top 16 in college attainment. The other two are oil states. College is the only path to prosperity…the cuts being proposed now, combined with diligent efforts to lower the quality of life in our cities, will ensure we never become one of those top 16.”

A college degree has long been the key to building a strong middle class, but the 2008 economic meltdown and the right-wing assault on public education and collective bargaining are conspiring to undermine Michigan’s prosperity for the foreseeable future. Just as NAFTA initiated a race to the bottom for Midwest factory workers, the new austerity promoted by the GOP will gut public education, while deflating the wages and benefits for college-educated workers and then, by extension, everyone else.

Tax the Super Rich now or face a revolution

Our top 1% honestly believe they’re immune, protected from the unintended consequences of beating down average Americans for three decades with the free-market, trickle-down Reaganomics doctrines that made them Super Rich.

They honestly believe those same doctrines will protect them in the next depression. Why? Because they have megabucks stashed away. Provisions for the long haul. Live in gated compounds with mercenaries guarding them.

They believe they’ll continue living just fine in a depression. But you won’t. Nor will your retirement. Neither will the rest of America. And still the Super Rich don’t care, “except in the abstract, because they aren’t directly affected.”

Warning: The Super-Rich Delusion has pushed us to the edge of a great precipice: Remember the Roaring Twenties? The Crash of 1929? Great Depression? Just days before the crash one leading economist, Irving Fisher, predicted that stocks had “reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”

Yes, he was trapped in the “Great Gatsby Syndrome,” an earlier version of today’s Super-Rich Delusion. It was so blinding in 1929 that the president, Wall Street, all America were sucked in … until the critical mass hit a mysterious flash point, triggering the crash.

Yes, we’re reliving that past — never learn, can’t hear. And oddly it’s not just the GOP’s overreach, the endlessly compromising Obama, too-greedy-to-fail Wall Street banksters, U.S. Chamber of Commerce billionaires and arrogant Forbes 400. America’s entire political, financial and economic psyche is infected, as if our DNA has been rewired.

The Collective American Brain is trapped in this Super-Rich Delusion, replaying the run-up to the ’29 Crash.

Where the Bank Bailout Went Wrong

TWO and a half years ago, Congress passed the legislation that bailed out the country’s banks. The government has declared its mission accomplished, calling the program remarkably effective “by any objective measure.” On my last day as the special inspector general of the bailout program, I regret to say that I strongly disagree. The bank bailout, more formally called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, failed to meet some of its most important goals.

From the perspective of the largest financial institutions, the glowing assessment is warranted: billions of dollars in taxpayer money allowed institutions that were on the brink of collapse not only to survive but even to flourish. These banks now enjoy record profits and the seemingly permanent competitive advantage that accompanies being deemed “too big to fail.”

Though there is no question that the country benefited by avoiding a meltdown of the financial system, this cannot be the only yardstick by which TARP’s legacy is measured. The legislation that created TARP, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, had far broader goals, including protecting home values and preserving homeownership.

These Main Street-oriented goals were not, as the Treasury Department is now suggesting, mere window dressing that needed only to be taken “into account.” Rather, they were a central part of the compromise with reluctant members of Congress to cast a vote that in many cases proved to be political suicide.

30 MILLION PRODUCTIVE JOBS TO REBUILD US INFRASTRUCTURE, INDUSTRY AND AGRICULTURE: THE PROGRAM TO END THE ECONOMIC DEPRESSION

The US and the world are gripped by a deepening economic depression. There is no recovery and no automatic business cycle which will revive the economy. This bottomless depression will worsen until policies are reformed. The depression results from deregulated and globalized financial speculation, especially the $1.5 quadrillion world derivatives bubble. The US industrial base has been gutted, and the US standard of living has fallen by almost two thirds over the last four decades. We must reverse this trend of speculation, de-industrialization, and immiseration. Current policy bails out bankers, but harms working people, industrial producers, farmers, and small business. We must defend civil society and democratic institutions from the effects of high unemployment and economic breakdown.

. . . This program will create 30 million jobs in less than five years. It will end the depression, rebuild the US economy, improve wages and standards of living, re-start productive investment, and attain full employment with increased levels of capital investment per job. Most orders placed under this program will go to US private sector bidders. Because of the vastly increased volume of goods put on the market, inflation will not result.

Motor City Burning - The History of America's Crown Jewel of Urban Blight

2011-06-28T06:55:00.000-07:00

For decades, Detroit has been the crown jewel of United States' urban blight. Over the last 60 years they have lost roughly 1.1 million citizens, from their 1950 peak of 1,849,568. The latest census shows the city at it's lowest population number since 1910, at 713,777.

There are many reasons for the decline. But while many cite the 1967 riots as the beginning of the end, the decline actually began well before that. And the reasons for the decline go much deeper - and remain more complex - than the violence of July 1967.

In 2007, I produced a radio documentary on the 1967 Detroit riot. Through interviews, research and archival footage, the program was an examination of the political, social and economic factors that led to the riot, as well as what happened to Detroit in the years afterward. The 2-plus hour production is now on my YouTube channel. The first segment of the sixteen-part report begins below.

Motor City Burning: Parts 1-16

Census 2010: Detroit population plummets to lowest level since 1910

. . . 65 people left every day since 2000

. . . 25% decline

Gerritt: Detroit must stop the bleeding

Dzwonkowski: Census numbers in Detroit prove Bing's case

Detroit vacant housing rate doubles to 22.8%

The Wars on Terror and Drugs are Wars on Reality

2011-06-28T06:54:00.000-07:00

The U.S. government cries about dictators like Qaddafi, Chavez and Hussein - yet they look the other when when backing the same types of thugs in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

Medics spoke of how three ambulances were hijacked by state forces.

“They are preventing us from attending the wounded,” said one nurse. “This is what this government is doing to its people. Please, the international community must do something to help us.”

There is little doubt among medics and anti-government protesters that the regime received clearance from political allies in Washington, London and the other Gulf states to step up its four-week old repression against the civilian population.

“The US Fifth Fleet is only one kilometre from this hospital. One phone call and this slaughter would stop,” said Arif Rajab, a surgeon at Salmaniya.

They warn us about al-Qaeda and all the dangers they pose to our way of life, while at the same time they fund terrorists:

The U.S. government effectively attacked Iran yesterday after its proxy terror group Jundullah launched a suicide bomb attack against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard at their headquarters in Pishin, near the border with Pakistan.

Leaders of the Al-Qaeda affiliated Sunni terrorist group Jundullah have claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Iran that killed over 40 people yesterday. The group is funded and trained by the CIA and is being used to destabilize the government of Iran, according to reports out of the London Telegraph and ABC News.

Train terrorists:

U.S. military sources have given the FBI information that suggests five of the alleged hijackers of the planes that were used in Tuesday’s terror attacks received training at secure U.S. military installations in the 1990s.

THREE OF THE alleged hijackers listed their address on drivers licenses and car registrations as the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla.—known as the “Cradle of U.S. Navy Aviation,” according to a high-ranking U.S. Navy source.

Another of the alleged hijackers may have been trained in strategy and tactics at the Air War College in Montgomery, Ala., said another high-ranking Pentagon official. The fifth man may have received language instruction at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Tex. Both were former Saudi Air Force pilots who had come to the United States, according to the Pentagon source.

Supply terrorists:

In the 1980s Washington's secret services had assisted Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran. Then, in 1990, the US fought him in the Gulf. In both Afghanistan and the Gulf, the Pentagon had incurred debts to Islamist groups and their Middle Eastern sponsors. By 1993 these groups, many supported by Iran and Saudi Arabia, were anxious to help Bosnian Muslims fighting in the former Yugoslavia and called in their debts with the Americans. Bill Clinton and the Pentagon were keen to be seen as creditworthy and repaid in the form of an Iran-Contra style operation - in flagrant violation of the UN security council arms embargo against all combatants in the former Yugoslavia.

The result was a vast secret conduit of weapons smuggling though Croatia. This was arranged by the clandestine agencies of the US, Turkey and Iran, together with a range of radical Islamist groups, including Afghan mojahedin and the pro-Iranian Hizbullah. Wiebes reveals that the British intelligence services obtained documents early on in the Bosnian war proving that Iran was making direct deliveries.

Arms purchased by Iran and Turkey with the financial backing of Saudi Arabia made their way by night from the Middle East. Initially aircraft from Iran Air were used, but as the volume increased they were joined by a mysterious fleet of black C-130 Hercules aircraft. The report stresses that the US was "very closely involved" in the airlift. Mojahedin fighters were also flown in, but they were reserved as shock troops for especially hazardous operations.

And to this day, and run cover for them in Libya:

“Asked if American officials feared whether Colonel Qaddafi could open a new terrorism front, President Obama’s top counterterrorism official John O. Brennan said: “Qaddafi has the penchant to do things of a very concerning nature. We have to anticipate and be prepared for things he might try to do to flout the will of the international community.”

“Al Qaeda has a demonstrated track record of trying to exploit political vacuums, political change or uncertainty in a number of countries,” Mr. Brennan added. “The situation in Libya now will be no exception.”

This is pretty rich considering the fact that it was British MI6 and the CIA who paid Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda $100,000 dollars to assassinate Gaddafi in 1996.

In 2002 French intelligence experts revealed how western intelligence agencies bankrolled a Libyan Al-Qaeda cell controlled directly by Bin Laden to hatch a plot to kill Gaddafi that was foiled in March 1996. The cell was led by Anas al-Liby, who was with Bin Laden in Sudan before Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan.

They tell us they are fighting a War on Drugs, while for decades they have run narcotics into the U.S.

FOR THE BETTER PART of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a Mercury News investigation has found.

This drug network opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the "crack'' capital of the world. The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America and provided the cash and connections needed for L.A.'s gangs to buy automatic weapons.

It is one of the most bizarre alliances in modern history: the union of a U.S.-backed army attempting to overthrow a revolutionary socialist government and the Uzi-toting "gangstas'' of Compton and South-Central Los Angeles.

The army's financiers -- who met with CIA agents both before and during the time they were selling the drugs in L.A. -- delivered cut-rate cocaine to the gangs through a young South-Central crack dealer named Ricky Donnell Ross.

. . . laundered the money in Wall Street banks

Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.

They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else.

The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August 2010 issue.

This was no isolated incident. Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers -- including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.

. . . and as you read, they still supply drug cartels with weapons.

Hoping to score a major prosecution of Mexican drug lords, federal prosecutors and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives permitted hundreds of guns to be purchased and retained by suspected straw buyers with the expectation they might cross the border and even be used in crimes while the case was being built, according to documents and interviews. . . .

Click here to read documents and interviews related to the investigation. Redactions were made by the Senate Judiciary Committee to protect the identities of confidential informants, undercover agents and cooperating gun stores.

The decision — part of a Phoenix-based operation code named “Fast and Furious” — was met by strong objections from some front-line agents who feared they were allowing weapons like AK-47s to “walk” into the hands of drug lords and gun runners, internal agency memos show. Indeed, scores of the weapons came back quickly traced to criminal activity.

Wake up and smell the propaganda. The U.S. government is nothing more than a criminal mafia. They have lied to their citizens for decades about which side of the War on Drugs and Terror they are really on. We the People are nothing more than pawns in their war games.

From the White House to Capitol Hill to Langley, Virginia and beyond, our Republic has been hijacked by the same type of thugs and hard-core killers that would have made Al Capone and Lucky Luciano piss their britches.

It's time for Americans everywhere to turn off our TVs, tune in our brains, and unite to clean up the mess our criminal government has created before it is too late.

Globalists on the March: From Libya to Michigan to Mexico

2011-06-28T06:51:00.000-07:00

From Libya to Lansing, the globalists are on the march smashing all opposition their their global takeover. Whether it is removing an anti-globalist dictator in Libya, assaulting unions and local governmental authority in Michigan, or aiding and abetting Mexican drug cartels to destabilize the American southwest and Mexico, no one is safe from the globalist mission to create "Order Out of Chaos" from the Middle East to our own backyards.

Libya

Breaking: Libya halts all Military Operations

Epic Fail: Libya declares ceasefire

Europeans and Oik Sheiks prepare for mass murder in Libya

A big win for Hillary Clinton

. . . pushed over the edge by Obama indecision

Neo-Libs rejoice as UN declares war on Libya

Inside the U.S. war plan

U.N Security Council authorizes war plan

Ron Paul: No-Fly Zone would be an act of war

International community responds to Fukushima crisis — by bombing Libya

Michigan

Politico: Michigan passes 'financial martial law' bill

. . . Governor Snyder signs

It's now clear, Rick Snyder is One Tough Fascist

Bernero joins rally at Capitol, says budget proposal is unfair

. . . fears tax plan will halt development projects

Rally at the Capitol: A new day or more hallow political theater?

Snyder pushes Kalamazoo model of combining police/fire departments

World Trade Organization sides with Chinese State Capitalism instead of U.S.

Father of Reaganomics: Stealing from Social Security to pay for wars and bailouts

Mexico

BATF busted trafficking guns to Mexican Drug Cartels

. . . BATF secret operation creates terror in Mexican border towns

. . . Anger over BATF actions spread through Mexico

CBS: Documents show BATF gun running since 2008

FOX: ATF & Justice Department in damage control mode

GOP wants answers to BATF actions

It’s Now Clear – Rick Snyder is One Tough Fascist

2011-06-28T06:50:00.000-07:00

As much as I hoped it wouldn't be the case last November. It appears that Governor Rick Snyder is nothing more than a velvet-gloved austerity whore hell bent on engineering an IMF-style economic dismantling of Michigan's government and economy. It's time for true liberals and conservatives to wake up and unite against the systematic destruction of Michigan's economy, Constitution and rule of law.

Rick Snyder is not a Republican. He is not a nerd. . . . He is a fascist. And if his plan is implemented, the merging of corporate and state power - the essence of Mussolini-style fascism - will be complete. And no Michigander will be immune from the onslaught.

No law should ever be immune from voter repeal. And when a government crosses the line where an emergency manager can unilaterally eliminate collective bargaining, binding arbitration and other legally negotiated and voted upon legislation and regulations, that government crosses the line from democracy into despotism. The Snyder plan could potentially do all of the above if enacted.

Snyder's tax plan could be immune from voter repeal

Snyder seeks emergency powers

Expert: 'Unlike in a corporate liquidation, the citizens don’t just go away'

Constitutionality of emergency manager powers questioned

. . . Read the bill (PDF)

If you want to know what the goal really is behind our state and federal government leaders claims that 'the money has run out' - as well as learn real solutions to end these manufactured crises once and for all - you need to read the following articles by Ellen Hodgson Brown, whose Web of Debt website and various books and economic analysis have been hailed by everyone from Thom Hartman to Alex Jones.

Wisconsin: Broke unless you count the $67 Billion . . .

Restoring Economic Sovereignty: The Push for State-Owned Banks

. . . Washington State joins the movement for public banking

The Egyptian Tinderbox: How Banks and Investors are Starving the Third World

The Fed has Spoken: No Bailout for Main Street

I addition I urge all of you to read and listen to the analysis and solutions of Webster Griffin Tarpley, who has been far ahead of the curve in analyzing global unrest and offering real political and economic solutions to counter today's globalist austerity madness.

Finally, if you don't have the time for all of the above. I urge you to take the time and watch and share The Secret of Oz by Bill Still.

It is the most informative, and entertaining look at who really controls the broken American monetary system - and how to fix it - that I have ever seen.

Now is not the time for Michiganders, or Americans for that matter, to allow our politicians to divide and conquer our economic and political futures along liberal and conservative lines. The current legislation in Lansing, Wisconsin and elsewhere is straight out of the Economic Hitman playbook. A playbook that has left a trail of economic, political and social carnage throughout the third world.

We the People of Michigan cannot allow that same program to be unleashed on us just as we are beginning to climb out of the state's worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.

The Silence Has Become Betrayal – Ending America’s Drug and Terror Wars

2011-06-28T06:48:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder why the U.S. always seems to be on the losing end of the War on Drugs and War on Terror? Well, it because the game is rigged. America will never win because our own government's corruption and criminal activity ensures that both wars will 'fail' in the traditional sense. While in reality, the criminals in our government, their buddies on Wall Street and the in greater New World Order bloody profits from the very terrorism, drug and gun trafficking they claim to be fighting.

And more importantly, both wars erode America's economic, political, social and moral fiber to its collective core.

More evidence of said corruption comes from a report today from the Center for Public Integrity.

Hoping to score a major prosecution of Mexican drug lords, federal prosecutors and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives permitted hundreds of guns to be purchased and retained by suspected straw buyers with the expectation they might cross the border and even be used in crimes while the case was being built, according to documents and interviews.

The decision — part of a Phoenix-based operation code named “Fast and Furious” — was met by strong objections from some front-line agents who feared they were allowing weapons like AK-47s to “walk” into the hands of drug lords and gun runners, internal agency memos show. Indeed, scores of the weapons came back quickly traced to criminal activity.

The evidence is clear. The U.S. War on Drugs is not supposed to be won. And neither is its bastard cousin, the U.S.-led War on Terror.

It is high time that - in this time of massive tax increases, attacks on public and private pensions, social safety nets, basic infrastructure funding, and household budgets - that We the People stand up and demand an end to the two wars that are doing nothing but destroying our futures by plunging the United States into Austerity Hell.

On April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “there comes a time when silence is betrayal.” Dr. King was at the time talking about the injustice of the Vietnam War. Forty-three years later, the time has come for all Americans of conscience to put an end to the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.

Anyone who is honest with themselves will admit that a large majority of violence in our society will not end, until the War on Drugs is brought to a close. Just as alcohol prohibition was a failure in the 1920s, the forty-plus year War on Drugs has been a failure too.

In addition, it is clear that the War on Terror has been corrupted and co-opted beyond repair. In April 30, 2010 report on Fox News Channel, we were told that the United States has to let the Afghan farmers grow and sell opium; otherwise they will turn against us and join al-Qaeda.

That, quite frankly, is fractured logic and an insult to history. How soon we forget the documented facts regarding the CIA’s cocaine trafficking in the 1980’s during Iran-Contra and their heroin trafficking in Indochina from World War Two up through the Vietnam War.

Over the last 50 years, when the United States’ government goes to war, their pals on Wall Street get their drug-running and money-laundering operations into high gear underneath the fog of war.

And the Wall Street and International Banking Cartel historically reaps billions in profits bankrolling the death and destruction.

America’s War on Drugs and the War on Terror have been nothing but a war on the American poor and middle class. While the drug war is used to destroy urban and rural American families through violence, addiction, imprisonment and the militarization of police forces; the War on Terror has been the tool our politicians in Washington have used to justify torture, warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens, and more recently, attempts to enact laws that could imprison citizens indefinitely without charges and strip them of their citizenship based on suspicion of terrorism alone.

As the cost of these wars continue to morally and financially bankrupt our nation at a level never before seen, it is clear that the United States is no longer the shining beacon on the hill. We have instead allowed our federal and state governments – and in turn ourselves – to become everything we should despise.

And it will be up to We the People – and those still uncorrupted in our local, county and state governments – to fix our nation.

The 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution are the state and local governments’ check and balance against overreaching federal power. For far too long, our local and state governments have neglected and often ignored those protections.

And as the unfunded mandates and budget deficits pile up at record levels across the nation, it is time for local, county and state officials to unite to break the federal government’s stranglehold on their citizens’ tax dollars and liberties.

Our economic and social problems in our nation will not be solved – and United States will not become the nation that was envisioned for us through the Declaration of Independence and Constitution – until these fraudulent, failing and bankrupting wars are brought to an end.

The time for our government officials to choose Main Street over Wall Street and the Military/Prison/Industrial Complex has arrived.

It is time for Americans everywhere to join together with the people of Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Romania and across the Middle East to lead a new worldwide revolution of liberty and freedom. It is time for the people of all nations to tell our political leaders – and the international banking cartel that controls them – that the time for political rhetoric, austerity smoke and mirrors and other quick fixes is over.

The citizens of the world see through your propaganda, your divide and conquer tactics and your lies. True liberty and freedom for all of humanity worldwide is coming soon. We are the great-grandchildren of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Harriet Tubman, Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine and Frederick Douglas. We are the children of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Mohandas Gandhi and Malcolm X. We are the brothers and sisters of KRS-One, Catherine Austin Fitts, Subcommandante Marcos, Webster Tarpley, Sibel Edmonds, Jesse Ventura and Naomi Wolf.

We have embraced the warnings of President Eisenhower and General Smedley Butler. The Wars of the Military/Prison/Industrial Complex are a racket – and they must end. The international central banking cartel that bankrolls past and future wars must be brought to its knees.

And those who seek to use military and economic warfare against humanity to strip us of our natural born rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness will be brought to justice.

This is an exciting time to be alive. And 43-years is a long enough wait for the citizens of United States to unite against those in and out of government who peddle IMF Austerity and Constitutional gang rape as the answers to America's problems.

The International Banking Cartel is the New World Order

2010-12-07T07:00:00.000-08:00

My belief in the existence of the New World Order centers around the activities, actions and writings of the members of the elite (mostly Anglo-American) inside the international banking cartel - which of course includes the Rockefeller and Rothschild families – over roughly the last century.

This cartel, through their financing of two World Wars; the revolutions of Lenin/Stalin and Hitler, among others; the creation of the IMF, World Bank and other private "central banks" like the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England; as well as their backing of international organizations like the United Nations, World Health Organization, World Trade Organization has sought to control not only the purse strings of the governments of the world, but also the policies, laws and programs that those governments and agencies implement.

Through their financing of both sides of wars (WWI and II, Cold War, War on Drugs, War on Terror, etc); their manufacture of financial crisis (Great Depression, the coming Greater Depression) and financing of ideological movements (eugenics/population control, feminism, communism, fascism, global warming, etc) the banking cartel has sought to undercut the political, economic and social sovereignty of nations around the world. As a result, their IMF, World Bank and other central bank proxies have managed to put nation after nation in massive debt to them. And as a result, they can further manipulate and control the governments (and citizens) of those nations to further enact their goal of a global government and banking system run - by them and for them - at the expense of all of humanity.

IMO, the New World Order is not a Jewish thing, it’s not a religious thing, it’s not even solely a money thing (although money is its greatest weapon). It instead is a control thing. They banking elite want to be able to control the globe and everyone in it.

However, as many who attempt to debunk the New World Order exists have said, nationalism and traditional political and ethnic hostilities have hampered the cartel’s quest for a one world government. Because of this, Russia, China and renegade states like Iran and Venezuela remain largely on the fringes of the NWO’s inner circle. Russia and China are both too big (unlike Iraq, Afghanistan, Panama) and potentially valuable to the cause to ignore or wipe out. But while political and economic relations exist between the western powers and the two outsiders; the potential for conflict with Russia and China in Eurasia or Africa remain very real.

Throughout the last century, the countries and political leaders that refused to play ball with the banking cartel got their asses kicked. Unfortunately, in the post-WWII world, the United States (both covertly and overtly) has been doing most of the ass kicking for the cartel. And we are in debt up to our eyeballs and our Constitution is hanging by a thread because of it (more on that later). Of course, we see the lesser “outsiders” Iran and Venezuela cozy up to Russia and China and use it to their advantage to thwart the banking cartel’s attempts to have the U.S., or other pro-cartel, military force take them out.

But, just as it was in the World Wars and the Cold War, the banking cartel benefits if any conflict (short of all-out thermonuclear war) takes place between major and even lesser powers. That’s because war - and the debt that follows it – makes them more money. And it also allows the cartel to step in and offer a “solution” for a peaceful future once hostilities are over, as they did with the United Nations and the Bretton Woods economic makeover after World War II.

Of course the United Nations, through the corporate media, has largely been painted ineffective to this point. But that ineffectiveness is only on the surface. When it comes to controlling the third world via their population control, medical and economic programs – which are full of systematic graft and corruption – the success of the UN has been tremendous because they “control” the third world by keeping it in the political and economic shitter while their resources are being stripped right out from under the very people the UN is supposed to be helping.

But, as money is the NWO’s greatest weapon, and nationalism and traditional nation-state and religious strife is painted as a major threat to its goals (it's not of course, because as Smedley Butler said "War Is A Racket"). The biggest threat to the New World Order and their aims is the belief of personal liberty and the political self-determination that comes with it; which has stemmed largely from the United States since we were still colonies under British control.

That doctrine – which the whole of good humanity has aspired to and dreamed of for two centuries – and the future of what it entails is where We the People of the United States come in. What the banking cartel has been doing to other nations – engineered economic collapse via their economic hitmen and Wall Street jackals – is now being done to the United States. Our economy is being systematically destroyed through unprecedented debt via the private Federal Reserve. The goal – as it was in other countries who refuse to yield to global government - is to completely collapse the U.S. economy. Then – through the civil unrest and economic carnage that follows the collapse – install a centrally dominated, dictatorial government where, in the case of the United States, the Constitution and Bill of Rights no longer exist.

You can see now through the corporate media how anyone who questions the government and their policies as being painted as a potential terrorist. Department of Homeland Security has labeled citizens on the left and right side of the political spectrum as threats. The Department of Defense has said that protest is terrorism. Opponents of the Federal Reserve system are labeled extremists or kooks. And the legislation aimed at exposing its agenda is being ignored, despite its overwhelming support on Capitol Hill and on Main Street. And once again, just as they did with the stimulus - the banking cartel is engaging in economic terrorism - promising total economic collapse if a full open audit of the Federal Reserve takes place.

From the Patriot Act I and II, the Military Commissions Act, the John Warner Defense Authorization Act - to the current Hate Crimes, Cap and Trade and Cyber Security bills in Congress – the banking cartel and their political whores in Washington D.C. and elsewhere in our nation seek to destroy our founding doctrine and put us under the thumb of the most oppressive, controlled and tax heavy government in American history.

The longtime goal of the banking cartel and their agents in the U.S. government and corporate whore media is the total destruction of the American Republic. The cartel cannot complete their NWO agenda if We the People are running around touting our Constitution and Bill of Rights as a beacon of freedom for all of humanity to aspire to.

The banking cartel hates the Constitution. They hate the fact that it says – in Article 1, Section 7, that only Congress has the power:

"To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures"

The banking cartel hates the 1st Amendment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

They hate the 2nd Amendment:

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

They hate the 4th Amendment:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

They hate the 9th Amendment:

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

They hate the 10th Amendment:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

And they would really hate if we removed the 16th Amendment, which by the way is quite likely the only amendment they love:

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

They banking cartel hates the Constitution and those who believe in it, because we stand together in direct opposition to everything they seek in the United States and worldwide. And they hate that for the last 200-plus years, every human being seeking freedom and a better way of life for themselves, their family and their respective countries have looked to the American Republic and our founding doctrine and dream that one day they too can bring “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” to their part of the world.

As many of you know, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan recently said on national T.V. that the Federal Reserve is above the law and answerable to no one including Congress.

He said it, on national TV, just like Second National Bank of the United States chairman, Nicholas Biddle, wrote it back in the 1830’s (The following pages come directly from Arthur Schlesinger's Pulitzer Prize winning book, "The Age of Jackson").

The Federal Reserve isn’t above the law. No one in the United States is above the law. And it will be up to We the People to restore the rule of law to our land and punish Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and the rest of the banking cartel and political scum who have brought the United States to the brink of financial ruin.

As trends forecaster Gerald Celente has stated:

"The fight that this country has been waging since its inception is for the central bankers not to take over the country."

Thomas Jefferson warned of the central bank evils in 1791:

"If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered."

IMO, the central bankers – both in the U.S. and abroad - are the New World Order. They began their third quest to take over our nation in 1913. And unless they are stopped and the private and criminal Federal Reserve is audited - so that we can expose in broad daylight where each and every dollar they have received since its inception has gone to – they will complete their takeover. If that happens, the United States and the world will collapse into the darkest period since the Great Depression/World War II, when the cartel crashed the world economy, bankrolled Adolf Hitler and led the world into the most deadly and, in their case, profitable war in world history.

What would Andrew Jackson do?