The Summer of Discontent is Upon Us

"The Preemptive Revolution to Stave Off the Real One

June 7, 2013

by willyloman
by Scott Creighton

UPDATE: And what exactly did all of this domestic full spectrum dominance do to thwart the Boston Bombing or the Aurora Massacre or the shooting at Sandy Hook or the Ricin letters attacks? Nothing. Not a damn thing. Don’t even have so much as a manifesto or a related text message to show for it from any of the suspects. Why is that you think? Why are none of the MSM asking that all important question?

———–

Something Wicked This Way Comes

• Provocateur Kokesh announces “The Final American Revolution” (May 6, 2013) Armed March Announced
• Benghazi memo rewrites (May 10, 2013) Benghazi memos reportedly revised 12 times
• FBI surveillance of AP (May 13th, 2013) Justice Department secretly obtained AP phone records
• IRS Informs on themselves in Audit Scandal (May 14, 2013) Treasury Inspector General Review
• James Rosen leak probe (May 17, 2013) A rare peek into a Justice Department leak probe
• drone program (May 23th, 2013) Obama Looks to Shift Focus to Drone Strikes As Scandals Swirl
  Justice Department Admits to Spying on Over 100 Individual Associated Press Journalists – See more at: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/breaking-justice-department-admits-to-spying-on-over-100-individual-associated-press-journalists-over-two-month-period_052013#sthash.uy0YeVuV.dpuf
• NSA leaked contract with Verizon (June 6, 2013) NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily

For those of you who are familiar with my work, you know I don’t do fear mongering. I leave that to other, more well-connected scribes. This is not fear mongering, it’s observation.

What is happening right now looks an awful lot like a regime change “color revolution” in the making. The American press along with various “alternative” journalists, breathlessly en mass making mountains out of already well established mole-hills as if they are “breaking news” suddenly stirring up unrest and hostility. Typically this pattern has been a clear indicator when they plan to force a color revolution in some other country once our puppet dictator starts acting like he doesn’t want to be our puppet dictator any longer.

As bad as that is, it may actually be something much, much worse.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. The economy is going to crash, Wall Street is going to get all the rest of the loot and control they missed in the first go-round and we are going to be forced to make do with far less than we have now.Economists have been saying since the middle of last year that the beginning of the summer of 2013 will be start of the next collapse. Seems like they were right.

The neoliberal “brick” of Chicago School of Economics austerity is going to hit and hit hard very, very soon, and suddenly, without warning, the Obamatide is turning in a big way and as far as I can see, with no real “breaking news” to support the near universal nationwide MSM shift.

We have a proven agent provocateur in the form of Adam Kokesh setting up his “armed revolution” for July 4th (less than a month away now) and suddenly there are all kinds of scandals being brought to light, mostly from Washington insider leaks, which promise to turn up the heat going into the Summer of Discontent. Here’s a clue: these scandals were already well known to most people and like the Wikileaks psyop, though they didn’t expose anything new, they are being treated as if each and every one are the Pentagon Papers. That should tell you something.

So what does all of this mean? What is the significance of the timing of these carefully scripted leaks and revelations from the very administration that is demonized by them? Gun control, NDAA 2012, drones in our skies, NSA in our phones… and austerity poised to rain down on us like the Chicago School Brick that slammed Chile in ’73. What does it all mean? What of the announcement of the “Final American Revolution”? How would marketers and PR gurus deal with an unstable society and the threat of a real revolution?

They would fabricate one of their own.

You can’t just suddenly have bunches of armed folks running around shooting other folks for no good reason. There has to be a believable pretext created like the “Innocence of the Muslims” video they attempted to use to explain the Benghazi psyop. That’s the exposition to the story, the portion of a story that introduces important background information to the audience answering critical questions like “why a revolution?” and “why now?”

In a world where the manufacturing of preemptive wars and preemptive arrests are commonplace, is a Preemptive Revolution with all the scandals and the angst to justify it, such an outrageous theory? Is that what we are seeing? The exposition stage of the Preemptive Revolution?

Scandals are one thing. There have been plenty of those since 9/11.  But for the most part they have been swept under the rug or completely ignored by the complicit MSM. These aren’t the kind of scandals that could have our president arrested and removed from office like killing 23 kids in Dec. of 2009 with cruise missiles in support of a Yemen dictator or killing U.S. citizens illegally without due process or the FBI simply murdering a suspect while being questioned because he refuses to confess to something he didn’t do. Though the drone program factors in, the focus is on lesser crimes, including the lesser crimes of the drone program.

Here’s a list of the scandals that have recently broke with the help of “insiders” who leaked info to the press:

• Benghazi memo rewrites (May 10, 2013) Benghazi memos reportedly revised 12 times
• FBI surveillance of AP (May 13th, 2013) Justice Department secretly obtained AP phone records
• IRS Informs on themselves in Audit Scandal (May 14, 2013) Treasury Inspector General Review
• James Rosen leak probe (May 17, 2013) A rare peek into a Justice Department leak probe
• drone program (May 23th, 2013) Obama Looks to Shift Focus to Drone Strikes As Scandals Swirl
  Justice Department Admits to Spying on Over 100 Individual Associated Press Journalists – See more at: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/breaking-justice-department-admits-to-spying-on-over-100-individual-associated-press-journalists-over-two-month-period_052013#sthash.uy0YeVuV.dpuf
• NSA leaked contract with Verizon (June 6, 2013) NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily

You will notice that not a single one of those “scandals” deals with anything as substantial as the 122 children who have been murdered by Obama’s illegal and highly immoral “Terror Tuesday” drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen (go here to read their names and ages, Compiled from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports) (remember Obama making a joke about his drone strikes relating to boys dating his daughters?) countries that we aren’t at war with… countries that had nothing to do with 9/11 or the Ameritrhax attacks… countries that have not attacked us or any other nation.

You will also notice that in every case, the critical information was either leaked by someone on the inside or as in the case of the renewed focus on drone policy and the IRS audit scandal, it was brought before the public’s attention by the government themselves for reasons no one is quite sure of.

Each and every one of those scandals looks like it was custom tailored  to piss off a libertarian or a patriot in the Tea Party. God knows they won’t give a rat’s ass about 122 dead Muslim children or the illegal invasion of other countries or not prosecuting the previous administration for obvious war-crimes and crimes against humanity. But mess with their rights, an invasive IRS? Now them’s fightin words.
Now consider this in light of that rough timeline of “scandals”

• Provocateur Kokesh announces “The Final American Revolution” (May 6, 2013) Armed March Announced

Kokesh has backed off a bit from his original plans possibly due to so many of us out here exposing it for what it was. Were a staged event to take place while Astroturf and his minions crossed the bridge into D.C. there would have been way too many articles spread out across the internet for anyone to claim it was unforeseeable and way too many for them to ignore the probability that it was staged. Plus, many suggested going there with all kinds of video equipment and scouring the rooftops for snipers and the streets for agent provocateurs as the day progressed.

So it was cancelled and in it’s place, protesters are instructed to march on the 50 different capital buildings across the country. That would make staging an event easier in that there will be less witnesses and cameras to account for. It also gives the impression of a larger movement when in fact Astroturf Adam couldn’t get 20 people to show up to protest for his release outside the Federal building where he was supposedly being held after his planned arrest a few weeks ago.

Has all of this been scripted to generate a narrative that the public can easily buy into? A narrative that claims political unrest leading up to the July 4th event boiled over into a bloody confrontation and the creation of a new “al Qaeda” type insurgency inside the United States that has to be crushed in the name of “national security”?

The managed nature of these scandals and the timing of them would certainly lead one to that conclusion.

But perhaps the best evidence is the breathless and exaggerated reactions from the MSM which are completely out of character for the status defending instruments of conventional repression.

You have the Huffington Post headlining their website with “George W Obama” which is something that we have been saying for years, even before his coronation (Obama is just the continuation of Bush – Clinton – Bush – Reagan) and in fact for years the Huffington Post would erase comments and ban commenters who dared to make that claim on their site.

The New York Times has gone so far as to claim the Obama administration “has lost all credibility” and again, the sycophantic Huffington Post echoes that sentiment.

Glenn Greenwald and other respected journalists (“real” journalists, not us “conspiracy theorists” who have been making claims like these for years regarding our vanishing freedoms of the press) recently Tweeted:

@ggreenwald

Glenn Greenwald

Accusing James Rosen of committing crimes – for basic reporting – may be the most dangerous thing the Obama DOJ has done yet

@AntDeRosa

Anthony De Rosa

What was done to James Rosen “goes above and beyond what the Justice Department did when it monitored the AP” http://t.co/O6wYF0BMMl

@DailyCaller

The Daily Caller

DOJ went through so many of this Fox reporters private records, you have to wonder, what didn’t they look at? http://t.co/Gn2xTU8Qik

Websites like Drudge and Fox News are pretty much still doing what they’ve been doing, just with more higher caliber ammo than they are typically allowed to use.

With the new austerity looking to crash down upon us very soon and the stock market only being propped up by mass infusions and transfers of wealth to the big banks on a monthly basis, it’s very interesting timing isn’t it?

You can also factor in the American Gladio operation that started nearly a year ago in a theater in Aurora. The push for gun grabbing has been building but without a growing popular consensus. At this point, the people still want their second amendment rights and who can blame them.

Finally, factor in the worse intangible, the gradual buildup of the domestic police state and the militarization of our “protect and serve” public servants.

And don’t forget that martial law little rehearsal drill they ran after the staged Boston Bombing event.

When you step back far enough to see the big picture, when you admit to yourself that we all knew for quite sometime that the NSA was scooping up everything we said or wrote in order to use it against us in the future, you come to understand that focusing on this one thing alone isn’t helping one bit.

So-called “alternative” news analysts like Mike Rivero of What Really Happened are out there, once again, promoting the status quo line (just like he’s doing on the Turkey psyop by the way) breathlessly screeching that you HAVE TO BE ANGRY at all of this.

Yeah? To what end Mike?

I’ve been doing this kind of analysis for some time now. I do it under my real name and I do it with the full understanding of the consequences it has brought and will bring. And I tell you this – these are not coincidences. The Summer of Discontent is upon us, early in the Obama second term. The control grid they have been putting in place is about to tighten across the country just like it has in so many other nations where the crippling austerity of neoliberal Chicago School Economics has been imposed. And what we have seen thus far pales in comparison. Left vs Right, White vs Black, Rich vs Poor, Christian vs Muslim… all kinds of divide and conquer tricks are being used while anger and desperation is channeled in all directions but the right ones.

When a country is dragged into 3rd world status and the people grasp the astronomical divide between the oligarchs and the proletariat, revolutions tend to flourish. So what is the best way to counter the instability of such a threat?

The best way is to manufacture it yourself before the real one takes shape. That way you can justify rounding up the potential leaders and participants and disarm the public before the public disarms you.

I don’t do fear mongering, I do observation. You stand far enough back from anything observing without emotional distraction or the blinders of identity politics and you can see it’s form and it’s design from the beginning. Something wicked this way comes… of that I am sure.

--MORE w/VIDEOS--"

George Bush Asks What Would I Have Done?

The new library -- which must border on Orwellian surrealism -- asks that question?

Okay, a few things I wouldn't have done:

I wouldn't have sat in classroom for 30 minutes after I was told the nation was under attack, and would have wanted to know why my secret service detail didn't hustle me out of there in violation of all protoco.... hey, wait a minute, then he and they must have known something. What I would have done is cancelled the war games drill and false flag operation the way JFK knocked down Operation Northwoods (which horrified him, btw. I believe it was at that point that he finally realized the insidious evil he was dealing with). And I wouldn't have brought in a whole crowd of neo-con Israeli-first crazies to run foreign policy.

I wouldn't have invaded Afghanistan, droned Pakistan, or told lies about weapons-of-mass-destruction (the same lies the AmeriKan ma$$ media is now spewing about Syria and Iran) in Iraq. 'nuff said.

I wouldn't have tortured innocent people that I knew were innocent. And I would have let go the people that are being held in perpetuity. I would have called out all the lies that led to torture. I wouldn't have used chemical weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I wouldn't have allowed Israel to get away with their occasional forays and never-ending siege of Gaza. Of course, by that point I would have been dead somehow.

I wouldn't have allowed the Wall Street banks and other corporations to run roughshod over the economy and develop their fancy looting schemes as they did during your tenure. I wouldn't have allowed the fraudulent foreclosing of homes, although we are now straying into the area of your successor. You just left him the mess. I wouldn't have bailed them out, but at least some Enron crooks went to jail during your term. Obama considers the banks too big to jail, and is thinking of letting Skilling of Enron out early.

I'm sure if I sat here and kept typing I could think of many other things, but those above are a few of the larger items I would have done different.

Bushbama

Obama Year Two: Continued Betrayal and Failure (Part I) - by Stephen Lendman

Last December, a two-part article discussed Obama's year one betrayal and failure, accessed through the following links:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/12/obama-year-one-betrayal-and-failure.html

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/12/obama-year-one-betrayal-and-failure_23.html

In year two, the pattern continued, revealing domestic and foreign policies that:

-- outdid George Bush by exceeding his harshness, lawlessness, belligerency, and public trust betrayal;

-- maintained a 30 year agenda of shifting public wealth to the rich, as well as supporting capital, not public welfare, including targeting middle class households for destruction;

-- looted the nation's wealth, wrecked the economy, and consigned growing millions to impoverishment without jobs, homes, savings, social services, or futures;

-- let hunger, homelessness, poverty, and those uninsured grow to unacceptable levels;

-- backed Wall Street's financial coup d'etat by greater Fed empowerment, as well as institutionalizing speculation, "too-big-to fail," super-wealth, and big money power;

-- plans new global monetary measures to control the world's money;

-- continued America's permanent war agenda by expanding imperial adventurism, increasing covert and overt aggression on new fronts with out-of-control military spending, exceeding the rest of the world combined at a time America has no enemies;

-- became the latest war criminal Nobel Peace Prize recipient;

-- executed his first successful coup d'etat in Honduras against its democratically elected president, then backed the fascist regime replacing him;

-- failed attempting regime change in Iran;

-- continued providing military, economic and political aid to the world's most ruthless, corrupt despots;

-- maintained a longstanding policy of supplying Israel with annual billions, more on request, other add-ons and extras, interest-free loans, the latest weapons, munitions and technology, unrestricted US market access, free entry of its immigrants, and unbridled support for its illegal belligerence, occupation, and crimes of war and against humanity;

-- presides over a bogus democracy under a homeland police state apparatus, sacrificing due process, judicial fairness, and other civil liberty protections in the name of national security;

-- continued torture as official policy, extraordinary rendition to prison hellholes, and for the first time, targeted US citizens for assassination;

-- invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent lawsuits by victims of rendition, torture, abuse, and those opposing warrantless wiretapping;

-- targets whisleblowers, dissenters, Muslims, environmental and animal rights activists, anyone challenging state power, and civil rights lawyers who defend them too vigorously called terrorists or threats to national security;

-- endorsed preventive detention without charge for those at Guantanamo considered dangerous, but no evidence allows prosecuting them;

-- expanded Bush administration spying and secrecy;

-- refused to prosecute its officials, suppressing proof of their culpability;

-- planned cybersecurity tyranny, threatening a free and open Internet, consumer privacy, and civil liberties; more on how below;

-- waged war on organized labor through fewer jobs, less pay, reduced benefits, and gutted work rules, including health and safety on-the-job protections;

-- tried controlling the media more aggressively than Nixon;

-- denied budget-strapped states financial help, forcing them to slash welfare programs, education, health care for the poor, and other vital services when they're most needed;

-- continued to commodify public education, end government responsibility for it, and make it another business profit center;

-- promoted dangerous vaccines for a non-existent threat;

-- promoted health care legislation that rations care; enriches insurers, drug giants and large hospital chains; places profits above human need; and keeps a dysfunctional system in place; Peter Singer's July 15, 2009 New York Times article endorsed administration policy, headlined: "Why We Must Ration Health Care," saying it's essential to apportion a "scarce resource" to those who can afford it; others will get only what they can pay for;

-- on the pretext of improving food safety, enacted agribusiness-friendly House legislation, harming consumers, small farms and food producers without improving America's industrial food system; on November 30, the Senate passed its own version; more on that below;

-- wants so far not passed legislation to let corporate polluters reap huge windfall profits by raising energy cost, while creating a speculative bonanza through a new carbon trading derivatives scheme;

-- cracks down harder on undocumented immigrants than George Bush, deporting a record number in FY 2010; others are held in over 300 detention facilities in nearly every state in the country, treated like criminals or terrorists; and

-- promoted a national ID card for all citizens and legal residents to be able to monitor them everywhere at all times.

Year two: Obama's destructive agenda continued.

Militarizing and Exploiting Haiti

An earlier article explained that Haiti is no stranger to adversity. Except for a brief time after its successful 1791 - 1803 revolution turning slaves into citizens and during Jean-Bertrand Aristide's tenure, it's experienced over 500 years of severe oppression, slavery, despotism, colonization, occupation, reparations, embargoes, sanctions, deep poverty, starvation, unrepayable debt, and natural calamities from destructive hurricanes to powerful earthquakes, most recently on January 12. It devastated greater Port-au-Prince, killing up to 300,000, leaving around 1.5 million Haitians homeless with little aid and no help to rebuild.

Some countries reacted quickly, mostly a few Latin American ones, including Cuba and Venezuela. Washington did nothing, deploying marines and paratroupers instead, militarizing the country, obstructing, not providing aid, promising $1.1 billion, delivering none, planning only exploitation of Haiti's resources and cheap labor.

Haiti was opened for business, occupied to be plundered, its people on their own, sink or swim under circumstances assuring mass suffering, starvation, disease and for many, death. Only corporate interests mattered at a time of dire need.

Eleven months later, Haiti is still plagued by rubble everywhere, extreme deprivation, promised aid undelivered, none from Washington, 1.5 million without shelter in streets and other open spaces, and now raging cholera, and the aftermath of a sham election, institutionalizing coup d'etat rule.

Washington's imperial hand orchestrated it, denying Haitians any chance for real change. It represents another betrayal by a president showing contempt for essential needs, human rights, and basic freedoms, at home and abroad, even under the most dire conditions.

America's Permanent War Agenda

America glorifies wars in the name of peace, historian Gore Vidal titling his 2002 book, "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace," saying:

"Our rulers for more than a century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people, not to mention our own."

It's persisted mainly since Franklin Roosevelt goaded Japan to attack us. It then continued in Korea, Vietnam, numerous proxy wars, the Cold War until the Soviet Union's 1991 dissolution, and now Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and new wars to be launched at opportunistic times against unnamed enemies.

Obama is America's latest warrior president, talking peace, waging war, packaged as liberating ones for democracy, freedom, and justice against bogus threats, when, in fact it's an imperial agenda for wealth, power, and unchallengeable global dominance.

He lied calling Afghanistan a "war of necessity, not choice," doubled the force contingent since taking office, yet stays mired in an unwinnable quagmire. He also destabilized Pakistan, plans control over the Caspian Sea's oil and gas riches, as well as energy routes to secured ports for export.

He approved US military bases encircling Russia, China and Iran, obstructing their solidarity and cohesion. He promised change and delivered betrayal, nearing year three of his tenure. Like his predecessor, he aroused global anger, his agenda endangering everyone, including Americans, heading the country for tyranny and ruin.

Enacting Obamacare

An earlier article called March 21 a day of infamy when House and Democrat leaders bullied, bribed, cajoled, muscled, and jerry-rigged Obamacare to pass, despite most Americans opposing it with good reason. Ralph Nader called it a "pay-or-die system that is the disgrace of the Western world," costing double what other Western countries spend and delivering less, rationing care to enrich corporate providers while making a dysfunctional system worse.

Henceforth, junk insurance policies will leave millions underinsured. Costs will remain out-of-control. Insurers can still deny care by delaying, contesting, preventing or over-charging people from accessing it. Everyone must have coverage or be penalized if opt out, a provision many states are contesting. A Virginia federal judge just ruled it unconstitutional, a battle the Supreme Court will decide. Company-provided policies will be taxed as ordinary income, harming working households most of all.

Physicians for a National Health Program denounced it, saying the new law "will enrich and further entrench (private insurers, forcing) millions of Americans to buy" defective coverage leaving most worse off than before at a cost of hundreds of billions of tax dollars given predators to game the system for profit, the public losing out. Moreover, 23 million Americans will remain uninsured, "translate(d) into an estimated 23,000 unnecessary deaths annually and an incalculable toll of suffering."

Obama's centerpiece domestic policy scammed the public with a package of expensive mandates, new taxes, and sweetheart deals, creating a fragmented, dysfunctional, unsustainable system, denying Americans what they urgently need - universal coverage, an expanded, improved Medicare for all, everyone in, no one out, what neither party or Obama delivered.

Capitulating on Financial Reform

Omitting real structural reforms, Democrats, Republicans, and Obama agreed on a patchwork of half-measures. Instead of restraining financial fraud, too-big-to-fail empowerment, an out-of-control Fed, and casino capitalism's ability to game the system with public money, it institutionalized business as usual. The Financial Times (FT) quoted a Wall Street banker saying "We are all breathing a sigh of relief here....we can live with this." Indeed so since Wall Street lawyers wrote it. The FT added: investors believe the "overhaul in financial rules would not have a significant impact on the industry's structure and profitability."

Indeed not by:

-- empowering a financial aristocracy;

-- letting Wall Street run the country;

-- institutionalizing fraud, speculation and bailouts;

-- leaving executive pay, bonuses and perks untouched;

-- letting credit agency scams continue;

-- permitting giant banks, insurers and other financial firms to get bigger; and

-- establishing a toothless Consumer Financial Protection Bureau along with other anti-reform provisions.

Bottom line: the worst of bad practices will continue, besides teams of lawyers devising ways around whatever regulations emerge. According to University of San Diego Law Professor Frank Partnoy, "Wall Street has always been very skilled at getting around rules, and this law will be no different," especially with its loopholes, half-measures, and overall weakness. Bankers got the best deal big money can buy. The public again was scammed.

Part II will conclude Obama Year Two: Continued Betrayal and Failure.

--MORE--"

America No Longer Exists

"It Is Official: The US Is A Police State

by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research, September 25, 2010

On September 24, Jason Ditz reported on Antiwar.com that “the FBI is confirming that this morning they began a number of raids against the homes of antiwar activists in Illinois, Minneapolis, Michigan, and North Carolina, claiming that they are ‘seeking evidence relating to activities concerning the material support of terrorism.’”

Now we know what Homeland Security (sic) secretary Janet Napolitano meant when she said on September 10: “The old view that ‘if we fight the terrorists abroad, we won’t have to fight them here’  is just that--the old view.”  The new view, Napolitano said, is “to counter violent extremism right here at home.”

“Violent extremism” is one of those undefined police state terms that will mean whatever the government wants it to mean. In this morning’s FBI’s foray into the homes of American citizens of conscience, it means antiwar activists, whose activities are equated with “the material support of terrorism,” just as conservatives equated Vietnam era anti-war protesters with giving material support to communism.

Anti-war activist Mick Kelly whose home was raided, sees the FBI raids as harassment to intimidate those who organize war protests. I wonder if Kelly is under-estimating the threat. The FBI’s own words clearly indicate that the federal police agency and the judges who signed the warrants do not regard antiwar protesters as Americans exercising their Constitutional rights, but as unpatriotic elements offering material support to terrorism.

“Material support” is another of those undefined police state terms. In this context the term means that Americans who fail to believe their government’s lies and instead protest its policies, are supporting their government’s declared enemies and, thus, are not exercising their civil liberties but committing treason.

As this initial FBI foray is a softening up move to get the public accustomed to the idea that the real terrorists are their fellow citizens here at home, Kelly will get off this time.  But next time the FBI will find emails on his computer from a “terrorist group” set up by the CIA that will incriminate him. Under the practices put in place by the Bush and Obama regimes, and approved by corrupt federal judges, protesters who have been compromised by fake terrorist groups can be declared “enemy combatants” and sent off to Egypt, Poland, or some other corrupt American puppet state--Canada perhaps--to be tortured until confession is forthcoming that antiwar protesters and, indeed, every critic of the US government, are on Osama bin Laden’s payroll.

Almost every Republican and conservative and, indeed, the majority of Americans will fall for this, only to find, later, that it is subversive to complain that their Social Security was cut in the interest of the war against Iran or some other demonized entity, or that they couldn’t have a Medicare operation because the wars in Central Asia and South America required the money.

Americans are the most gullible people who ever existed. They tend to support the government instead of the Constitution,  and almost every Republican and conservative regards civil liberty as a coddling device that encourages criminals and terrorists.

The US media, highly concentrated in violation of the American principle of a diverse and independent media, will lend its support to the witch hunts that will close down all protests and independent thought in the US over the next few years. As the Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels said, “think of the press as a great keyboard on which the Government can play.”

An American Police State was inevitable once Americans let “their” government get away with 9/11. Americans are too gullible, too uneducated, and too jingoistic to remain a free people.  As another Nazi leader Herman Goering said, “ The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. Tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace-makers for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger.”

This is precisely what the Bush and Obama regimes have done. America, as people of my generation knew it, no longer exists.

--MORE--"   

Also see: UN is a showcase for US propaganda 

Old News: The USA Has Been A Police State Since 1787 

Can't Complain If You Are an AmeriKan

"U.S., UK urge Iran halt stoning execution: As if Anyone Cares what they have to say!

by Jack Rabbit

********

"The U.S. State Department said it was deeply troubled by reports of the proposed stoning execution, which it called "a form of legalized death by torture.""

-----

Ha ha ha ha. What a bunch of hypocrites. I suggest the U.S. State Department shut their faces since the United States is guilty of TORTURE. No moral high ground here anymore. What right does a government that tortures and asserts the right to kill its own citizens have to criticize anyone?

The United States federal government has forfeited the moral high ground earned by generations of Americans going all the way back to George Washington - yet they continue to live in their delusional disconnected fake reality - that somehow the world hasn't noticed that they are a bunch of paid-off whores, liars, cheats, hypocrites, warmongers, murderers and torturers. And that this world will listen to the U.S. State Department as if they really had something to say that wasn't self-serving propaganda.

This government makes me sick. I wish they would stop embarrassing us taxpayers and just shut their pie-holes.

By the way - isn't it really odd - that Israeli soldiers killed an American citizen by shooting him four times in the head - with not a peep out of this government in protest - since Israel did it. Yet it's big news when the Iranians are going to stone someone to death. Don't get me wrong - this punishment from Iran is barbaric and disgusting to me. It really discredits that nation. It makes me wonder - what kind of people are the Iranians that they would actually stone someone to death for adultery - something that seems fashionable in Hollywood?

But looking inward - it also makes one wonder what the rest of the world thinks of us Americans - a democratic republic - that tortures, allows the murder of its own citizens, claims the right to murder its own citizens without trial, and killed its own people on September 11, 2001. What does the world think about Americans - who are proud to serve in uniform in a military that has engaged in two illegal wars of aggression, and continues them as occupiers - supporting the heroin trade - while claiming to fight a "war on drugs" at home? I'll bet the rest of the world thinks we need to shut up. I'll bet the rest of the world would be happy to see America get a taste of its own medicine - after all - applying the standards of those who preach gospel - what does "an eye for an eye" mean?

Perhaps I sound like a sanctimonious broken record - but then again - so does my government and it is my duty to speak out when I observe their disconnect with reality.

The U.S. government has discredited itself through its actions. For a while their words - propagated by a phony crony media of retired generals and sundry suck-ups was able to continue acting contrary to American values - but the media spell is wearing off. Their actions have become so obscene, so inexcusable that the best propaganda apparatus the world has ever known can no longer prop them up. Their days are numbered - their fall is ineluctable - only the "when" remains in question.

As we joe-six-packs join forces and sort out who the good guys are and who the bad guys are - things will slowly start to come around - as the deluded begin to realize that the party is over. But unless we all shout loud, act decisively and do our part - whatever that is - they will lapse back into their steady-state of "gimme gimme gimme more."

Remember - 911 is the crime that got us all into this mess - and we are going to have to face that as a country. It is ugly. The 911 truth movement and peace movement better come together or they will die together - divided and conquered.

Remember that we were lied into these wars of aggression and occupation. The citizens of ANY occupied country - America, Iraq, or Afghanistan not only have the right - they have the DUTY to overthrow their oppressors. As oppressors, we Americans have forfeited the most important aspect of any war - being justified and on the side of good. We are NOT.

Remember that serving ones country doesn't mean carrying an automatic rifle into someone else's country as is the popular depiction - serving one's country means fixing it when it is broken, kicking out bad government that no longer serves its purpose, and governing the governors. (as Thomas Jefferson said.)

It is time to put the flags down and turn the critical thinking skills up. It is time to support the troops by bringing them home rather than enabling nutcases sending them to die for undefinable goals and the opium trade. It is time to stop wasting our tax money on bullshit - and start fixing roads, bridges, and our infrastructure in general. It is time for solar power.

It is time for a revolution. I hope we can keep it peaceful - violence is a crap shoot. Turned out bad for the Romans in the long run when they killed Julius Caesar. But if our government claims the right to murder us - what are we supposed to do next - start walking into gas chambers?

I hope anyone reading this will take a look in the mirror and ask themselves "What am I getting out of all this?" The honest American will know the answer: Loss of liberty - loss of U.S. sovereignty. Loss of freedom of speech. Loss of right to bear arms. All for what? For nothing.

The deluded person will cling to their belief that somebody somewhere in the U.S. government cares about them - despite Katrina, despite the 911 murder of our own citizens, despite wars based on lies, despite a sold-out economy.

The deluded person will ignore the reality that the Federal Reserve is a scam - charging us to use our own money. The deluded person will say "support our troops" without finishing the sentence: "Occupying countries who's resources we covet."

We Americans better force OUR House of Representatives to get real - now. We Americans must DEMAND control over OUR airwaves that are supposed to serve US. We are approaching a point of no return. Don't ask me how I know this - I have no crystal ball - but I have studied history. Current events are lining us up for civil war, revolution, world war and depression combined. Yes - that's the severity as I see it - and I have to call it as I see it.

Get on the phone, get involved, attend meetings, get informed - and listen to everything you can. Open your mind and take on ideas that you have previously refused to listen to that you thought were "crazy." Just try it - listen to the end and reserve judgement until you have given the "crazy person" a chance to explain. You may be surprised how much truth lies in the fringes of our society - since the corporate monopolization of our media has pushed truth there.

To conclude and make a long story short: Torturers and murderers don't get to complain about torture and murder. It is as simple as that.

--MORE--"

Holding On to a Dead Man

Is that anything like whipping a dead horse?

"Holder, GOP at odds over trials; Bin Laden will never be captured alive, AG says" by Devlin Barrett, Associated Press | March 17, 2010

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress yesterday that Osama bin Laden will never face trial in the United States because he will not be captured alive.

Oh, so HE KNOWS the guy is DEAD!!!

In testy exchanges with House Republicans, Holder compared terrorists to mass murderer Charles Manson and predicted that events would ensure “we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden’’ not to the Al Qaeda leader as a captive....

And if you want to find that corpse, here you go:

Good luck with your digging.

“Let’s deal with reality,’’ Holder said. “The reality is that we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden. He will never appear in an American courtroom.’’

Yeah, let's deal with those REALLY RESPONSIBLE for 9/11!!!!

I doubt they will ever appear inside an AmeriKan courtroom, either.

--more--"

Yeah, and about those tapes from the grave:

"When Seeing and Hearing Isn't Believing" by William M. Arkin/Washington Post Feb. 1, 1999

"Gentlemen! We have called you together to inform you that we are going to overthrow the United States government." So begins a statement being delivered by Gen. Carl W. Steiner, former Commander-in-chief, U.S. Special Operations Command.

At least the voice sounds amazingly like him.

But it is not Steiner. It is the result of voice "morphing" technology developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. By taking just a 10-minute digital recording of Steiner's voice, scientist George Papcun is able, in near real time, to clone speech patterns and develop an accurate facsimile....

For Hollywood, it is special effects. For covert operators in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, it is a weapon of the future....

PSYOPS seeks to exploit human vulnerabilities in enemy governments, militaries and populations.

--more--"

I'm not fooled anymore, are you?

Related: Al Qaeda would use nuclear weapon, Obama warns

Oh, REALLY?

So which "Al-CIA-Duh" would that be, huh?

The made-up "Al-CIA-Duh?"

Or the "Al-CIA-Duh" CREATION for the COURTROOM!?

The President You Got

Is this what you thought you elected, America?

"’08 ruling may snag Obama administration’s Guantanamo plans

The rulings in the Hatim case and the 31 others may be a harbinger of trouble for the Obama administration, which is considering plans to indefinitely detain dozens of Guantanamo Bay prisoners without civilian or military trials....

A Justice Department-led task force has concluded that... about 50 who are considered too dangerous to be freed but cannot face trial because the evidence is too weak to hold up in court.... "

That's change?

"Under Obama, US opts for more killings, not captures, of terrorists

The Obama administration has authorized such targeted killings more frequently than the Bush administration did in its final years...."

Yeah, that is change but in the wrong direction.

Related: Obama Gets Cooking

Also see: The President America Always Wanted

Looks like you got him back, America.

Or he never left:

Insouciant Americans

"Insouciant Americans

By Paul Craig Roberts

The Underwear Bomber case indicates that whoever is behind these bomb scares is laughing at our gullibility.

How realistic is it that al-Qaida, an organization that allegedly pulled off the most fantastic terror attack in world history, would in these days of heightened security choose for an attack on an airliner a person who is the most conspicuous of all? Umar Farouk Mutallab had a one-way ticket, no luggage, no passport, and his father, reportedly a CIA and Mossad asset, had reported him to the CIA and Mossad. Does anyone really believe that al-Qaida would choose as an airliner bomber a person waving every red flag imaginable?

This obvious question has escaped the U.S. media, a collection of salespersons marketing full body scanning machines for airports.

Would al-Qaida, with its extensive knowledge of explosives, have armed Umar with a "bomb" that experts say couldn’t have blown up his own seat?

It is difficult to imagine a more gullible population than America’s, but do even Americans believe this story?

Since 9/11 the F.B.I. has been busy enticing people, who lack organizational skills, into "terrorist plots" that consist of F.B.I. initiated hot air talk. These ridiculous stings are then taken to trial, and the media fans the flames of fear of "home-grown terrorist plots against Americans."

There is little doubt that those interested in leading the U.S. deeper into a police state and deeper into a "war on terror" are active in adding orchestrated events to whatever real ones real terrorists manage to accomplish. The paucity of real terrorists has caused the U.S. government and its Ministry of Truth to promote the Taliban to terrorist rank. The problem is that these "terrorist acts" are taking place thousands of miles away in lands that the average American cannot find on a map and, thus, lack scare value. To keep the peril alive for Americans, we have the Underwear Bomb Plot.

What will be next? An elaborate head of hair laced with nano-thermite?

The "war on terror" is a far greater threat to Americans than all the terrorists in the world combined. This is so because the "war on terror" has destroyed the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. American citizens are now helpless in the event someone in government decides that some constitutionally protected behavior, such as free speech, or a contribution to a children’s hospital in Gaza, where Hamas, a U.S.-declared "terrorist organization," happens to be the elected government, constitutes aiding and abetting terrorism.

On Jan. 5 a ruling by the Federal Appeals Court in the District of Columbia gave away the most essential protection of liberty by declaring that the U.S. government is not bound by law during war. The ruling absolves Washington from complying with America’s own laws and from complying with international laws, such as the Geneva Conventions. It makes a mockery of all war crime trials everywhere. By elevating the executive branch above the law, the court gave the government carte blanche.

The rationale offered by the court for refusing to uphold the law came from Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who said that America had been pushed by war past "the leading edge of a new and frightening paradigm, one that demands new rules be written. War is a challenge to law, and the law must adjust." By "adjust" she means "be set aside" or "be thrown out."

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to defend both the Constitution and the principle that government is not above the law. Last Dec.14 the Supreme Court refused to review a ruling by the Federal Appeals Court in the District of Columbia, which dismissed a torture case with the argument that "torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants." In other words, neither U.S. nor international laws against torture can be enforced in U.S. courts. The opinion [PDF] was written by Judge Karen Lecraft Henderson.

The "war on terror," which is enriching Halliburton, Blackwater (now operating under an alias), and the military/security complex, while denying Americans health care, is running up debt that is a threat to Americans’ purchasing power and living standards. The contrast between America’s sanctimonious rhetoric and the murder of civilians and torture of prisoners has destroyed America’s reputation and caused Europeans as well as Muslims to despise the United States.

The sacrifice of the Constitution and rule of law to a hyped "terrorist threat" has destroyed the heart and soul of America herself.

As a poet wrote, "our world in stupor lies."

--MORE--"

Hell-Bent AmeriKans

"Americans Are Hell-Bent on Tyranny

by Paul Craig Roberts

Obama’s dwindling band of true believers has taken heart that their man has finally delivered on one of his many promises—the closing of the Guantanamo prison. But the prison is not being closed. It is being moved to Illinois, if the Republicans permit.

In truth, Obama has handed his supporters another defeat. Closing Guantanamo meant ceasing to hold people in violation of our legal principles of habeas corpus and due process and ceasing to torture them in violation of US and international laws.

All Obama would be doing would be moving 100 people, against whom the US government is unable to bring a case, from the prison in Guantanamo to a prison in Thomson, Illinois.

Are the residents of Thomson despondent that the US government has chosen their town as the site on which to continue its blatant violation of US legal principles? No, the residents are happy. It means jobs.

The hapless prisoners had a better chance of obtaining release from Guantanamo. Now the prisoners are up against two US senators, a US representative, a mayor, and a state governor who have a vested interest in the prisoners’ permanent detention in order to protect the new prison jobs in the hamlet devastated by unemployment.

Neither the public nor the media have ever shown any interest in how the detainees came to be incarcerated. Most of the detainees were unprotected people who were captured by Afghan war lords and sold to the Americans as “terrorists” in order to collect a proffered bounty. It was enough for the public and the media that the Defense Secretary at the time, Donald Rumsfeld, declared the Guantanamo detainees to be the “780 most dangerous people on earth.”

The vast majority have been released after years of abuse. The 100 who are slated to be removed to Illinois have apparently been so badly abused that the US government is afraid to release them because of the testimony the prisoners could give to human rights organizations and foreign media about their mistreatment.

Our British allies are showing more moral conscience than Americans are able to muster. Former PM Tony Blair, who provided cover for President Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq, is being damned for his crimes by UK officialdom testifying before the Chilcot Inquiry.

The London Times on December 14 summed up the case against Blair in a headline: “Intoxicated by Power, Blair Tricked Us Into War.” Two days later the British First Post declared: “War Crime Case Against Tony Blair Now Rock-solid.” In an unguarded moment Blair let it slip that he favored a conspiracy for war regardless of the validity of the excuse [weapons of mass destruction] used to justify the invasion.

The movement to bring Blair to trial as a war criminal is gathering steam. Writing in the First Post Neil Clark reported: “There is widespread contempt for a man [Blair] who has made millions [his reward from the Bush regime] while Iraqis die in their hundreds of thousands due to the havoc unleashed by the illegal invasion, and who, with breathtaking arrogance, seems to regard himself as above the rules of international law.” Clark notes that the West’s practice of shipping Serbian and African leaders off to the War Crimes Tribunal, while exempting itself, is wearing thin.

In the US, of course, there is no such attempt to hold to account Bush, Cheney, Condi Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the large number of war criminals that comprised the Bush Regime. Indeed, Obama, whom Republicans love to hate, has gone out of his way to protect the Bush cohort from being held accountable.

Here in Great Moral America we only hold accountable celebrities and politicians for their sexual indiscretions. Tiger Woods is paying a bigger price for his girlfriends than Bush or Cheney will ever pay for the deaths and ruined lives of millions of people. The consulting company, Accenture Plc, which based its marketing program on Tiger Woods, has removed Woods from its Web site. Gillette announced that the company is dropping Woods from its print and broadcast ads. AT&T says it is re-evaluating the company’s relationship with Woods.

Apparently, Americans regard sexual infidelity as far more serious than invading countries on the basis of false charges and deception, invasions that have caused the deaths and displacement of millions of innocent people. Remember, the House impeached President Clinton not for his war crimes in Serbia, but for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Americans are more upset by Tiger Woods’ sexual affairs than they are by the Bush and Obama administrations’ destruction of US civil liberty. Americans don’t seem to mind that “their” government for the last 8 years has resorted to the detention practices of 1,000 years ago—simply grab a person and throw him into a dungeon forever without bringing charges and obtaining a conviction.

According to polls, Americans support torture, a violation of both US and international law, and Americans don’t mind that their government violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and spies on them without obtaining warrants from a court. Apparently, the brave citizens of the “sole remaining superpower” are so afraid of terrorists that they are content to give up liberty for safety, an impossible feat.

With stunning insouciance, Americans have given up the rule of law that protected their liberty. The silence of law schools and bar associations indicates that the age of liberty has passed. In short, the American people support tyranny. And that’s where they are headed.

--MORE--"

The New Evil Empire

See that reflection in the mirror, America?

"The Evil Empire

By Paul Craig Roberts

November 06, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- The US government is now so totally under the thumbs of organized interest groups that “our” government can no longer respond to the concerns of the American people who elect the president and the members of the House and Senate. Voters will vent their frustrations over their impotence on the president, which implies a future of one-term presidents. Soon our presidents will be as ineffective as Roman emperors in the final days of that empire.

Obama is already set on the course to a one-term presidency. He promised change, but has delivered none. His health care bill is held hostage by the private insurance companies seeking greater profits. The most likely outcome will be cuts in Medicare and Medicaid in order to help fund wars that enrich the military/security complex and the many companies created by privatizing services that the military once provided for itself at far lower costs. It would be interesting to know the percentage of the $700+ billion “defense” spending that goes to private companies. In American “capitalism,” an amazing amount of taxpayers’ earnings go to private firms via the government. Yet, Republicans scream about “socializing” health care.

Republicans and Democrats saw opportunities to create new sources of campaign contributions by privatizing as many military functions as possible. There are now a large number of private companies that have never made a dollar in the market, feeding instead at the public trough that drains taxpayers of dollars while loading Americans with debt service obligations.

Obama inherited an excellent opportunity to bring US soldiers home from the Bush regime’s illegal wars of aggression. In its final days, the Bush regime realized that it could “win” in Iraq by putting the Sunni insurgents on the US military payroll. Once Bush had 80,000 insurgents collecting US military pay, violence, although still high, dropped in half. All Obama had to do was to declare victory and bring our boys home, thanking Bush for winning the war. It would have shut up the Republicans.

But this sensible course would have impaired the profits and share prices of those firms that comprise the military/security complex. So instead of doing what Obama said he would do and what the voters elected him to do, Obama restarted the war in Afghanistan and launched a new one in Pakistan. Soon Obama was echoing Bush and Cheney’s threats to attack Iran.

In place of health care for Americans, there will be more profits for private insurance companies.

In place of peace there will be more war.

Voters are already recognizing the writing on the wall and are falling away from Obama and the Democrats. Independents who gave Obama his comfortable victory have now swung against him, recently electing Republican governors in New Jersey and Virginia to succeed Democrats. This is a protest vote, not a confidence vote in Republicans.

Obama’s credibility is shot. And so is Congress’s, assuming it ever had any. The US House of Representatives has just voted to show the entire world that the US House of Representatives is nothing but the servile, venal, puppet of the Israel Lobby. The House of Representatives of the American “superpower” did the bidding of its master, AIPAC, and voted 344 to 36 to condemn the Goldstone Report.

In case you don’t know, the Goldstone Report is the Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. The “Gaza Conflict” is the Israeli military attack on the Gaza ghetto, where 1.5 million dispossessed Palestinians, whose lands, villages, and homes were stolen by Israel, are housed. The attack was on civilians and civilian infrastructure. It was without any doubt a war crime under the Nuremberg standard that the US established in order to execute Nazis.

Goldstone is not only a very distinguished Jewish jurist who has given his life to bringing people to accountability for their crimes against humanity, but also a Zionist. However, the Israelis have demonized him as a “self-hating Jew” because he wrote the truth instead of Israeli propaganda.

US Representative Dennis Kucinich, who is now without a doubt a marked man on AIPAC’s political extermination list, asked the House if the members had any realization of the shame that the vote condemning Goldstone would bring on the House and the US government. The entire rest of the world accepts the Goldstone report.

The House answered with its lopsided vote that the rest of the world doesn’t count as it doesn’t give campaign contributions to members of Congress.

This shameful, servile act of “the world’s greatest democracy” occurred the very week that a court in Italy convicted 23 US CIA officers for kidnapping a person in Italy. The CIA agents are now considered “fugitives from justice” in Italy, and indeed they are.

The kidnapped person was renditioned to the American puppet state of Egypt, where the victim was held for years and repeatedly tortured. The case against him was so absurd that even an Egyptian judge order his release.

One of the convicted CIA operatives, Sabrina deSousa, an attractive young woman, says that the US broke the law by kidnapping a person and sending him to another country to be tortured in order to manufacture another “terrorist” in order to keep the terrorist hoax going at home. Without the terrorist hoax, America’s wars for special interest reasons would become transparent even to Fox “News” junkies.

Ms. deSousa says that “everything I did was approved back in Washington,” yet the government, which continually berates us to “support the troops,” did nothing to protect her when she carried out the Bush regime’s illegal orders.

Clearly, this means that the crime that Bush, Cheney, the Pentagon, and the CIA ordered is too heinous and beyond the pale to be justified, even by memos from the despicable John Yoo and the Republican Federalist Society.

Ms. deSousa is clearly worried about herself. But where is her concern for the innocent person that she sent into an Egyptian hell to be tortured until death or admission of being a terrorist? The remorse deSousa expresses is only for herself. She did her evil government’s bidding and her evil government that she so faithfully served turned its back on her. She has no remorse for the evil she committed against an innocent person.

Perhaps deSousa and her 22 colleagues grew up on video games. It was great fun to plot to kidnap a real person and fly him on a CIA plane to Egypt. Was it like a fisherman catching a fish or a deer hunter killing a beautiful 8-point buck? Clearly, they got their jollies at the expense of their renditioned victim.

The finding of the Italian court, and keep in mind that Italy is a bought-and-paid-for US puppet state, indicates that even our bought puppets are finding the US too much to stomach.

Moving from the tip of the iceberg down, we have Ambassador Craig Murray, rector of the University of Dundee and until 2004 the UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, which he describes as a Stalinist totalitarian state courted and supported by the Americans.

As ambassador, Murray saw the MI5 intelligence reports from the CIA that described the most horrible torture procedures. “People were raped with broken bottles, children were tortured in front of their parents until they [the parents] signed a confession, people were boiled alive.”

“Intelligence” from these torture sessions was passed on by the CIA to MI5 and to Washington as proof of the vast al Qaeda conspiracy.

Amb. Murray reports that the people delivered by CIA flights to Uzbekistan’s torture prisons “were told to confess to membership in Al Qaeda. They were told to confess they’d been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes.”

“I was absolutely stunned,” says the British ambassador, who thought that he served a moral country that, along with its American ally, had moral integrity. The great Anglo-American bastion of democracy and human rights, the homes of the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, the great moral democracies that defeated Nazism and stood up to Stalin’s gulags, were prepared to commit any crime in order to maximize profits.

Amb. Murray learned too much and was fired when he vomited it all up. He saw the documents that proved that the motivation for US and UK military aggression in Afghanistan had to do with the natural gas deposits in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The Americans wanted a pipeline that bypassed Russia and Iran and went through Afghanistan. To insure this, an invasion was necessary. The idiot American public could be told that the invasion was necessary because of 9/11 and to save them from “terrorism,” and the utter fools would believe the lie.

“If you look at the deployment of US forces in Afghanistan, as against other NATO country forces in Afghanistan, you’ll see that undoubtedly the US forces are positioned to guard the pipeline route. It’s what it’s about. It’s about money, its about energy, it’s not about democracy.” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23906.htm

Guess who the consultant was who arranged with then Texas governor George W. Bush the agreements that would give to Enron the rights to Uzbekistan’s and Turkmenistan’s natural gas deposits and to Unocal to develop the trans-Afghanistan pipeline. It was Karzai, the US-imposed “president” of Afghanistan, who has no support in the country except for American bayonets.

Amb. Murray was dismissed from the UK Foreign Service for his revelations. No doubt on orders from Washington to our British puppet.

--MORE--"

The US Special Forces Counterinsurgency Manual

"US Special Forces counterinsurgency manual analysis
From Wikileaks

(Redirected from How to train death squads and quash revolutions from San Salvador to you)

Wikileaks has obtained the "Petraeus doctrine" the Pentagon didn't want to show you.

JULIAN ASSANGE (investigative editor)
June 16, 2008, updated: October 8, 2008

Nicaraguan civil-war victims, 1978

“	[T]he psychological effectiveness of the CSDF concept starts by reversing the insurgent strategy of making the government the repressor. It forces the insurgents to cross a critical threshold-that of attacking and killing the very class of people they are supposed to be liberating.	„
	— US Special Forces doctrine obtained by Wikileaks

So states the US Special Forces counterinsurgency manual obtained by Wikileaks, Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces (1994, 2004). The manual may be critically described as "what the US learned about running death squads and propping up corrupt government in Latin America and how to apply it to other places". Its contents are both history defining for Latin America and, given the continued role of US Special Forces in the suppression of insurgencies, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, history making.

The leaked manual, which has been verified with military sources, is the official US Special Forces doctrine for Foreign Internal Defense or FID.

FID operations are designed to prop up "friendly" governments facing popular revolution or guerilla insurgency. FID interventions are often covert or quasi-covert due to the unpopular nature of the governments being supported ("In formulating a realistic policy for the use of advisors, the commander must carefully gauge the psychological climate of the HN [Host Nation] and the United States.")

The manual directly advocates training paramilitaries, pervasive surveillance, censorship, press control and restrictions on labor unions & political parties. It directly advocates warrantless searches, detainment without charge and (under varying circumstances) the suspension of habeas corpus. It directly advocates employing terrorists or prosecuting individuals for terrorism who are not terrorists, running false flag operations and concealing human rights abuses from journalists. And it repeatedly advocates the use of subterfuge and "psychological operations" (propaganda) to make these and other "population & resource control" measures more palatable.

The content has been particularly informed by the long United States involvement in El Salvador.

In 2005 a number of credible media reports suggested the Pentagon was intensely debating "the Salvador option" for Iraq.^[1]. According to the New York Times Magazine:

The template for Iraq today is not Vietnam, with which it has often been compared, but El Salvador, where a right-wing government backed by the United States fought a leftist insurgency in a 12-year war beginning in 1980. The cost was high — more than 70,000 people were killed, most of them civilians, in a country with a population of just six million. Most of the killing and torturing was done by the army and the right-wing death squads affiliated with it. According to an Amnesty International report in 2001, violations committed by the army and associated groups included ‘‘extrajudicial executions, other unlawful killings, ‘disappearances’ and torture. . . . Whole villages were targeted by the armed forces and their inhabitants massacred.’’ As part of President Reagan’s policy of supporting anti-Communist forces, hundreds of millions of dollars in United States aid was funneled to the Salvadoran Army, and a team of 55 Special Forces advisers, led for several years by Jim Steele, trained front-line battalions that were accused of significant human rights abuses.

US trained "death squad" victims in San Salvador, 1981

The same article states James Steele and many other former Central American Special Forces "military advisors" have now been appointed at a high level to Iraq.

In 1993 a United Nations truth commission on El Salvador, which examined 22,000 atrocities that occurred during the twelve-year civil war, attributed 85 percent of the abuses to the US-backed El Salvador military and its paramilitary death squads.

It is worth noting what the US Ambassador to El Salvador, Robert E. White (now the president for the Center for International Policy) had to say as early as 1980, in State Department documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act:

The major, immediate threat to the existence of this government is the right-wing violence. In the city of San Salvador, the hired thugs of the extreme right, some of them well-trained Cuban and Nicaraguan terrorists, kill moderate left leaders and blow up government buildings. In the countryside, elements of the security forces torture and kill the campesinos, shoot up their houses and burn their crops. At least two hundred refugees from the countryside arrive daily in the capital city. This campaign of terror is radicalizing the rural areas just as surely as Somoza's National Guard did in Nicaragua. Unfortunately, the command structure of the army and the security forces either tolerates or encourages this activity. These senior officers believe or pretend to believe that they are eliminating the guerillas.^[2]

Selected extracts follow. Note that the manual is 219 pages long and contains substantial material throughout. These extracts should merely be considered representative. Emphasis has been added for further selectivity. The full manual can be found at US Special Forces counterinsurgency manual FM 31-20-3.

---

DISTRIBUTION RESTRICTION: Distribution authorized to U.S. Government agencies and their contractors only to protect technical or operational information from automatic dissemination under the International Exchange Program or by other means. This determination was made on 5 December 2003. Other requests for this document must be referred to Commander, United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, ATTN: AOJK-DTD-SFD, Fort Bragg, North Carolina 28310-5000.

Destruction Notice: Destroy by any method that must prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document.

[...]

Counterintelligence

[...]

Most of the counterintelligence measures used will be overt in nature and aimed at protecting installations, units, and information and detecting espionage, sabotage, and subversion. Examples of counterintelligence measures to use are

• Background investigations and records checks of persons in sensitive positions and persons whose loyalty may be questionable.
• Maintenance of files on organizations, locations, and individuals of counterintelligence interest.
• Internal security inspections of installations and units.
• Control of civilian movement within government-controlled areas.
• Identification systems to minimize the chance of insurgents gaining access to installations or moving freely.
• Unannounced searches and raids on suspected meeting places.
• Censorship.

[...]

PSYOP [Psychological Operations] are essential to the success of PRC [Population & Resources Control]. For maximum effectiveness, a strong psychological operations effort is directed toward the families of the insurgents and their popular support base. The PSYOP aspect of the PRC program tries to make the imposition of control more palatable to the people by relating the necessity of controls to their safety and well-being. PSYOP efforts also try to create a favorable national or local government image and counter the effects of the insurgent propaganda effort.

Control Measures

SF [US Special Forces] can advise and assist HN [Host Nation] forces in developing and implementing control measures. Among these measures are the following:

• Security Forces. Police and other security forces use PRC [Population & Resources Control] measures to deprive the insurgent of support and to identify and locate members of his infrastructure. Appropriate PSYOP [Psychological Operations] help make these measures more acceptable to the population by explaining their need. The government informs the population that the PRC measures may cause an inconvenience but are necessary due to the actions of the insurgents.
• Restrictions. Rights on the legality of detention or imprisonment of personnel (for example, habeas corpus) may be temporarily suspended. This measure must be taken as a last resort, since it may provide the insurgents with an effective propaganda theme. PRC [Population & Resources Control] measures can also include curfews or blackouts, travel restrictions, and restricted residential areas such as protected villages or resettlement areas. Registration and pass systems and control of sensitive items (resources control) and critical supplies such as weapons, food, and fuel are other PRC measures. Checkpoints, searches, roadblocks; surveillance, censorship, and press control; and restriction of activity that applies to selected groups (labor unions, political groups and the like) are further PRC measures.

[...]

Legal Considerations. All restrictions, controls, and DA measures must be governed by the legality of these methods and their impact on the populace. In countries where government authorities do not have wide latitude in controlling the population, special or emergency legislation must be enacted. This emergency legislation may include a form of martial law permitting government forces to search without warrant, to detain without bringing formal charges, and to execute other similar actions.

[...]

Psychological Operations

PSYOP can support the mission by discrediting the insurgent forces to neutral groups, creating dissension among the insurgents themselves, and supporting defector programs. Divisive programs create dissension, disorganization, low morale, subversion, and defection within the insurgent forces. Also important are national programs to win insurgents over to the government side with offers of amnesty and rewards. Motives for surrendering can range from personal rivalries and bitterness to disillusionment and discouragement. Pressure from the security forces has persuasive power.

[...]

Intelligence personnel must consider the parameters within which a revolutionary movement operates. Frequently, they establish a centralized intelligence processing center to collect and coordinate the amount of information required to make long-range intelligence estimates. Long-range intelligence focuses on the stable factors existing in an insurgency. For example, various demographic factors (ethnic, racial, social, economic, religious, and political characteristics of the area in which the underground movement takes places) are useful in identifying the members of the underground. Information about the underground organization at national, district, and local level is basic in FID [Foreign Internal Defense] and/or IDAD operations. Collection of specific short-range intelligence about the rapidly changing variables of a local situation is critical. Intelligence personnel must gather information on members of the underground, their movements, and their methods. Biographies and photos of suspected underground members, detailed information on their homes, families, education, work history, and associates are important features of short-range intelligence.

Destroying its tactical units is not enough to defeat the enemy. The insurgent's underground cells or infrastructure must be neutralized first because the infrastructure is his main source of tactical intelligence and political control. Eliminating the infrastructure within an area achieves two goals: it ensures the government's control of the area, and it cuts off the enemy's main source of intelligence. An intelligence and operations command center (IOCC) is needed at district or province level. This organization becomes the nerve center for operations against the insurgent infrastructure. Information on insurgent infrastructure targets should come from such sources as the national police and other established intelligence nets and agents and individuals (informants).

The highly specialized and sensitive nature of clandestine intelligence collection demands specially selected and highly trained agents. Information from clandestine sources is often highly sensitive and requires tight control to protect the source. However, tactical information upon which a combat response can be taken should be passed to the appropriate tactical level.

The spotting, assessment, and recruitment of an agent is not a haphazard process regardless of the type agent being sought. During the assessment phase, the case officer determines the individual's degree of intelligence, access to target, available or necessary cover, and motivation. He initiates the recruitment and coding action only after he determines the individual has the necessary attributes to fulfill the needs.

All agents are closely observed and those that are not reliable are relieved. A few well-targeted, reliable agents are better and more economical than a large number of poor ones.

A system is needed to evaluate the agents and the information they submit. The maintenance of an agent master dossier (possibly at the SFOD B level) can be useful in evaluating the agent on the value and quality of information he has submitted. The dossier must contain a copy of the agent's source data report and every intelligence report he submitted.

Security forces can induce individuals among the general populace to become informants. Security forces use various motives (civic-mindedness, patriotism, fear, punishment avoidance, gratitude, revenge or jealousy, financial rewards) as persuasive arguments. They use the assurance of protection from reprisal as a major inducement. Security forces must maintain the informant's anonymity and must conceal the transfer of information from the source to the security agent. The security agent and the informant may prearrange signals to coincide with everyday behavior.

Surveillance, the covert observation of persons and places, is a principal method of gaining and confirming intelligence information. Surveillance techniques naturally vary with the requirements of different situations. The basic procedures include mechanical observation (wiretaps or concealed microphones), observation from fixed locations, and physical surveillance of subjects.

Whenever a suspect is apprehended during an operation, a hasty interrogation takes place to gain immediate information that could be of tactical value. The most frequently used methods for gathering information (map studies and aerial observation), however, are normally unsuccessful. Most PWs cannot read a map. When they are taken on a visual reconnaissance flight, it is usually their first flight and they cannot associate an aerial view with what they saw on the ground.

The most successful interrogation method consists of a map study based on terrain information received from the detainee. The interrogator first asks the detainee what the sun's direction was when he left the base camp. From this information, he can determine a general direction. The interrogator then asks the detainee how long it took him to walk to the point where he was captured. Judging the terrain and the detainee's health, the interrogator can determine a general radius in which the base camp can be found (he can use an overlay for this purpose). He then asks the detainee to identify significant terrain features he saw on each day of his journey, (rivers, open areas, hills, rice paddies, swamps). As the detainee speaks and his memory is jogged, the interrogator finds these terrain features on a current map and gradually plots the detainee's route to finally locate the base camp.

If the interrogator is unable to speak the detainee's language, he interrogates through an interpreter who received a briefing beforehand. A recorder may also assist him. If the interrogator is not familiar with the area, personnel who are familiar with the area brief him before the interrogation and then join the interrogation team. The recorder allows the interrogator a more free-flowing interrogation. The recorder also lets a knowledgeable interpreter elaborate on points the detainee has mentioned without the interrogator interrupting the continuity established during a given sequence. The interpreter can also question certain inaccuracies, keeping pressure on the subject. The interpreter and the interrogator have to be well trained to work as a team. The interpreter has to be familiar with the interrogation procedures. His preinterrogation briefings must include information on the detainee's health, the circumstances resulting in his detention, and the specific information required. A successful interrogation is contingent upon continuity and a welltrained interpreter. A tape recorder (or a recorder taking notes) enhances continuity by freeing the interrogator from time-consuming administrative tasks.

[...]

Political Structures. A tightly disciplined party organization, formally structured to parallel the existing government hierarchy, may be found at the center of some insurgent movements. In most instances, this organizational structure will consist of committed organizations at the village, district province, and national levels. Within major divisions and sections of an insurgent military headquarters, totally distinct but parallel command channels exist. There are military chains of command and political channels of control. The party ensures complete domination over the military structure using its own parallel organization. It dominates through a political division in an insurgent military headquarters, a party cell or group in an insurgent military unit, or a political military officer.

[...]

Special Intelligence-Gathering Operations

Alternative intelligence-gathering techniques and sources, such as doppelganger or pseudo operations, can be tried and used when it is hard to obtain information from the civilian populace. These pseudo units are usually made up of ex-guerrilla and/or security force personnel posing as insurgents. They circulate among the civilian populace and, in some cases, infiltrate guerrilla units to gather information on guerrilla movements and its support infrastructure.

Much time and effort must be used to persuade insurgents to switch allegiance and serve with the security forces. Prospective candidates must be properly screened and then given a choice of serving with the HN [Host Nation] security forces or facing prosecution under HN law for terrorist crimes.

Government security force units and teams of varying size have been used in infiltration operations against underground and guerrilla forces. They have been especially effective in getting information on underground security and communications systems, the nature and extent of civilian support and underground liaison, underground supply methods, and possible collusion between local government officials and the underground. Before such a unit can be properly trained and disguised, however, much information about the appearance, mannerisms, and security procedures of enemy units must be gathered. Most of this information comes from defectors or reindoctrinated prisoners. Defectors also make excellent instructors and guides for an infiltrating unit. In using a disguised team, the selected men should be trained, oriented, and disguised to look and act like authentic underground or guerrilla units. In addition to acquiring valuable information, the infiltrating units can demoralize the insurgents to the extent that they become overly suspicious and distrustful of their own units.

[...]

After establishing the cordon and designating a holding area, the screening point or center is established. All civilians in the cordoned area will then pass through the screening center to be classified.

National police personnel will complete, if census data does not exist in the police files, a basic registration card and photograph all personnel over the age of 15. They print two copies of each photo- one is pasted to the registration card and the other to the village book (for possible use in later operations and to identify ralliers and informants).

The screening element leader ensures the screeners question relatives, friends, neighbors, and other knowledgeable individuals of guerrilla leaders or functionaries operating in the area on their whereabouts, activities, movements, and expected return.

The screening area must include areas where police and military intelligence personnel can privately interview selected individuals. The interrogators try to convince the interviewees that their cooperation will not be detected by the other inhabitants. They also discuss, during the interview, the availability of monetary rewards for certain types of information and equipment.

[...]

Civilian Self-Defense Forces [Paramilitaries, or, especially in an El-Salvador or Colombian civil war context, right wing "death squads"]

When a village accepts the CSDF program, the insurgents cannot choose to ignore it. To let the village go unpunished will encourage other villages to accept the government's CSDF program. The insurgents have no choice; they have to attack the CSDF village to provide a lesson to other villages considering CSDF. In a sense, the psychological effectiveness of the CSDF concept starts by reversing the insurgent strategy of making the government the repressor. It forces the insurgents to cross a critical threshold-that of attacking and killing the very class of people they are supposed to be liberating.

To be successful, the CSDF program must have popular support from those directly involved or affected by it. The average peasant is not normally willing to fight to his death for his national government. His national government may have been a succession of corrupt dictators and inefficient bureaucrats. These governments are not the types of institutions that inspire fight-to-the-death emotions in the peasant. The village or town, however, is a different matter. The average peasant will fight much harder for his home and for his village than he ever would for his national government. The CSDF concept directly involves the peasant in the war and makes it a fight for the family and village instead of a fight for some faraway irrelevant government.

[...]

Members of the CSDF receive no pay for their civil duties. In most instances, however, they derive certain benefits from voluntary service. These benefits can range from priority of hire for CMO projects to a place at the head of ration lines. In El Salvador, CSDF personnel (they were called civil defense there) were given a U.S.-funded life insurance policy with the wife or next of kin as the beneficiary.If a CSDF member died in the line of duty, the widow or next of kin was ceremoniously paid by an HN official. The HN administered the program and a U.S. advisor who maintained accountability of the funds verified the payment. The HN [Host Nation] exercises administrative and visible control.

Responsiveness and speedy payment are essential in this process since the widow normally does not have a means of support and the psychological effect of the government assisting her in her time of grief impacts on the entire community. These and other benefits offered by or through the HN government are valuable incentives for recruiting and sustaining the CSDF.

[...]

The local CSDF members select their leaders and deputy leaders (CSDF groups and teams) in elections organized by the local authorities. In some cases, the HN [Host Nation] appoints a leader who is a specially selected member of the HN security forces trained to carry out this task. Such appointments occurred in El Salvador where the armed forces have established a formal school to train CSDF commanders. Extreme care and close supervision are required to avoid abuses by CSDF leaders.

[...]

The organization of a CSDF can be similar to that of a combat group. This organization is effective in both rural and urban settings. For example, a basic group, having a strength of 107 members, is broken down into three 35-man elements plus a headquarters element of 2 personnel. Each 35-man element is further broken down into three 1 l-man teams and a headquarters element of 2 personnel. Each team consists of a team leader, an assistant team leader, and three 3-man cells. This organization can be modified to accommodate the number of citizens available to serve.

[...]

Weapons training for the CSDF personnel is critical. Skill at arms decides the outcome of battle and must be stressed. Of equal importance is the maintenance and care of weapons. CSDF members are taught basic rifle marksmanship with special emphasis on firing from fixed positions and during conditions of limited visibility. Also included in the marksmanship training program are target detection and fire discipline.

Training ammunition is usually allocated to the CSDF on the basis of a specified number of rounds for each authorized weapon. A supporting HN government force or an established CSDF logistic source provides the ammunition to support refresher training.

[...]

Acts of misconduct by HN [Host Nation] personnel

All members of training assistance teams must understand their responsibilities concerning acts of misconduct by HN personnel. Team members receive briefings before deployment on what to do if they encounter or observe such acts. Common Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions lists prohibited acts by parties to the convention. Such acts are-

• Violence to life and person, in particular, murder, mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture.
• Taking of hostages.
• Outrages against personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.
• Passing out sentences and carrying out executions without previous judgment by a regularly constituted court that affords all the official guarantees that are recog-nized as indispensable by civilized people.
• The provisions in the above paragraph represent a level of conduct that the United States expects each foreign country to observe.

If team members encounter prohibited acts they can not stop, they will disengage from the activity, leave the area if possible, and report the incidents immediately to the proper in-country U.S. authorities. The country team will identify proper U.S. authorities during the team's initial briefing. Team members will not discuss such matters with non-U.S. Government authorities such as journalists and civilian contractors.

[...]

Most insurgents' doctrinal and training documents stress the use of pressure-type mines in the more isolated or less populated areas. They prefer using commandtype mines in densely populated areas. These documents stress that when using noncommand-detonated mines, the insurgents use every means to inform the local populace on their location, commensurate with security regulations. In reality, most insurgent groups suffer from various degrees of deficiency in their C2 [Command & Control] systems. Their C2 does not permit them to verify that those elements at the operational level strictly follow directives and orders. In the case of the Frente Farabundo Marti de la Liberation Nacional (FMLN) in El Salvador, the individual that emplaces the mine is responsible for its recovery after the engagement. There are problems with this concept. The individual may be killed or the security forces may gain control of the area. Therefore, the recovery of the mine is next to impossible.

[...]

Homemade antipersonnel mines are used extensively in El Salvador, Guatemala and Malaysia. (Eighty percent of all El Salvadoran armed forces casualties in 1986 were due to mines; in 1987, soldiers wounded by mines and booby traps averaged 50 to 60 per month.) The important point to remember is that any homemade mine is the product of the resources available to the insurgent group. Therefore, no two antipersonnel mines may be the same in their configuration and materials. Insurgent groups depend to a great extent on materials discarded or lost by security forces personnel. The insurgents not only use weapons, ammunition, mines, grenades, and demolitions for their original purpose but also in preparing expedient mines and booby traps.

[...]

A series of successful minings carried out by the Viet Cong insurgents on the Cua Viet River, Quang Tri Province, demonstrated their resourcefulness in countering minesweeping tactics. Initially, chain-dragging sweeps took place morning and evening. After several successful mining attacks, it was apparent that they laid the mines after the minesweepers passed. Then, the boats using the river formed into convoys and transited the river with minesweepers 914 meters ahead oft he convoy. Nevertheless, boats of the convoy were successfully mined in mid-channel, indicating that the mines were again laid after the minesweeper had passed, possibly by using sampans. Several sampans were observed crossing or otherwise using the channel between the minesweepers and the convoy. The convoys were then organized so that the minesweepers worked immediately ahead of the convoy. One convoy successfully passed. The next convoy had its minesweepers mined and ambushed close to the river banks.

[...]

Military Advisors

[...]

Psychologically pressuring the HN [Host Nation] counterpart may sometimes be successful.Forms of psychological pressure may range from the obvious to the subtle. The advisor never applies direct threats, pressure, or intimidation on his counterpart Indirect psychological pressure may be applied by taking an issue up the chain of command to a higher U.S. commander. The U.S. commander can then bring his counterpart to force the subordinate counterpart to comply. Psychological pressure may obtain quick results but may have very negative side effects. The counterpart will feel alienated and possibly hostile if the advisor uses such techniques. Offers of payment in the form of valuables may cause him to become resentful of the obvious control being exerted over him. In short, psychologically pressuring a counterpart is not recommended. Such pressure is used only as a last resort since it may irreparably damage the relationship between the advisor and his counterpart

PSYOP [Psychological Operations] Support for Military Advisors

The introduction of military advisors requires preparing the populace with which the advisors are going to work. Before advisors enter a country, the HN [Host Nation] government carefully explains their introduction and clearly emphasizes the benefits of their presence to the citizens. It must provide a credible justification to minimize the obvious propaganda benefits the insurgents could derive from this action. The country's dissenting elements label our actions, no matter how well-intended, an "imperialistic intervention."

Once advisors are committed, their activities should be exploited. Their successful integration into the HN [Host Nation] society and their respect for local customs and mores, as well as their involvement with CA [Civil Affairs] projects, are constantly brought to light. In formulating a realistic policy for the use of advisors, the commander must carefully gauge the psychological climate of the HN [Host Nation] and the United States.

[...]

PRC [Population & Resources Control] Operations.

Advisors assist their counterparts in developing proper control plans and training programs for PRC measures. They also help coordinate plans and requests for materiel and submit recommendations to improve the overall effectiveness of operations. They can be helpful in preparing to initiate control.

• Select, organize, and train paramilitary and irregular forces.
• Develop PSYOP [Psychological Operations] activities to support PRC operations.
• Coordinate activities through an area coordination center (if established).
• Establish and refine PRC operations.
• Intensify intelligence activities.
• Establish and refine coordination and communications with other agencies.

--SOURCE--"