I* am JOSEPH F BARBER, Founder of the veterans project

I* am JOSEPH F BARBER, Founder of the veterans project

I* am JOSEPH F BARBER, Founder of the veterans project,freelance writer editor and author ,blogger and veteran of the United states Army ,it is my dream to make true change in our world and to use the gifts I was given by god to help all of humanity make a better world free of hunger ,violence and cruelty I hope you will join me in this endeavor,If you haven’t donated yet, please consider donating $5 - $10 to get me closer to my goal. No donation is too small!  

I am Founder of the Veterans Project We believe that "When our grandchildren ask us where we were when the voiceless and vulnerable of our era needed a leader of compassion and purpose and hope - I hope we can say we showed up, and that we showed up on time

We believe, Ignorance is the enemy of peace and human suffering the true cost of war.

We believe that lies kill and those who tell them, profit without regard to human costs.

We believe that a single teardrop, torn from the heart of a child who witnesses the needless death of its parent or sibling, has more value than all of the wealth spent on bombs and armaments.

We believe that when we join with others and discover the harsh realities about our history and the torment that has paid for our comfortable lives, we are each compelled to help others understand that another way is possible.

Citizens of our world “We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.” “The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?” “No Big Power in all history ever thought of itself as an aggressor. That is still true today.” There is no way to peace; peace is the way.

When the typical reformer or revolutionist proclaims the new order, he goes on to urge men to organize, agitate, get out the vote, fight. Jesus also proclaimed The Kingdom of God [i.e., the revolution] is at hand; but immediately added in true prophetic fashion, Repent. That is to say, if we are to have a new world, we must have new men; if you want a revolution, you must be revolutionized. A world of peace will not be achieved by men who in their own souls are torn with strife and eagerness to assert themselves. In the degree that the anti-war or pacifist movement is composed of individuals who have not themselves, to use Aldous Huxley's phrase, achieved detachment, who have not undergone an inner revolution, it too will experience the same failure to achieve self-discipline, integrity, true fellowship among its own members which has afflicted other movements for social change.

“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.” and many do but at a price of being placed on a watch list or to be detained hounded and arrested held and with out due process they are the heroes those whom have chosen to speak out at any cost from veterans to soldiers to the citizen STAND AND BE COUNTED

https://www.gofundme.com/f/Alternative-Measures?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

A little about us... We run this non-sectarian, non-partisan organization to ignite discussion on our world and in our communities, to educate our world about the injustice of aggressive violence. We believe that in order to reach out to our peers most effectively, we cannot stand on religious arguments alone, and we cannot adhere entirely to one political side in our currently polarized culture. We believe that the consistent life ethic is not for any one religious group or for any one political position, but rather for everyone dedicated to human rights, life and dignity. No matter your reason for believing in the inherent value of human life, we hope you can join us, and through our efforts we can together endeavor to make violence unthinkable - - - to make it history!

YOU CAN BE A PARTNER FOR PEACE AND ALL LIFE

Please act now - Support our effort to create a more just and peaceful world.

Phone-760-261-9122

Email. veteransproject@yahoo.com

https://www.gofundme.com/f/Alternative-Measures

https://www.gofundme.com/f/Alternative-Measures?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

https://www.facebook.com/donate/437474426946002/

Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber

Putting the ‘Christ’ Back in Christmas God bless us, every one!

Putting the ‘Christ’ Back in Christmas
God bless us, every one!

President Donald Trump added a radical twist to the annual National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony last Friday by invoking the divinity of Jesus Christ. You would think revering the season’s central figure would be expected, but you’d be wrong. Although his predecessor, Barack Obama, mentioned the Nativity in general terms as “the story of a child born far from home … who’d ultimately spread a message that has endured for more than 2,000 years,” the more direct Trump went right to the sacred heart of the matter.

“As the Bible tells us, when the wise men had come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary, his mother, and fell down and worshipped him. Christians give thanks that the Son of God came down to save humanity,” Trump said. In fulfilling his promise to renormalize the greeting “Merry Christmas” away from the deliberately vague “happy holidays,” Trump venerated the Yuletide’s raison d’être. Hollywood didn’t get the memo, though. That’s no surprise; the industry has long had a problem with religiosity.

Last week, ABC re-broadcast the perennial classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas,verbatim on national television:
on its 54th network run. By now almost everybody has seen the Peanuts holiday special, along with its show-stopping climax. Right after Charlie Brown, depressed by the commerciality of his Christmas, cries, “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?,” Linus calmly responds, “Sure, Charlie Brown, I can tell you what Christmas is all about.” He climbs onto the school stage, gets spotlighted, and proclaims the Gospel according to Luke, King James Version,

And there were, in the same country, shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them. The glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, “Fear not, for behold I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” And suddenly there were with the angel a multitude of Heavenly hosts praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace and goodwill toward men.”

This scene would be anathema to any contemporary Hollywood production, and it was controversial even in 1965. Rookie animation producer Lee Mendelson and director Bill Melendez actually argued against it, afraid it would kill their big break. They were already on thin ice for two revolutionary decisions on a kids’ show: the adult jazz score by little-known composer Vince Guaraldi, and having child non-actors voice the dialogue. A literal deus ex machina ending was suicidal, they thought. “There’s never been any animation that I know of from the Bible,” said Mendelson. “It’s kind of risky.” But the third man on the team disagreed and demanded they use it — Charles Schulz, the Peanuts creator. “If we’re going to do a Christmas special, we’ve really got to do it the right way and talk about what Christmas is all about,” said Schulz, a Sunday school teacher. “If we don’t do it, who will?”

When CBS executives saw the finished product, they balked. “You can’t read from the Bible on network television,” one of them declared. But they had an unbreakable commitment to the show’s sponsor, Coca-Cola, so the special aired on schedule, December 9, 1965. That night, A Charlie Brown Christmas drew 15 million viewers and a 45 percent share, coming in second for the week behind Bonanza. It has been an annual ratings winner every year since, and its overt Christian message has been welcomed the world over. I remember sitting in fifth grade at Little Flower Catholic School outside of Washington, D.C., the day after one showing, when old Sister Gabriel gushed about the Luke reading to my class. We kids accepted the Linus recitation as perfectly normal. Yet to the Hollywood powers that be, it remains an unfathomable enigma.

As late as 1977, the same CBS network ran one of the greatest films ever made, Ben Hur, minus its brilliant, beautiful pre-credits sequence — a depiction of the Nativity story. It starts with Joseph and Mary’s passage into Bethlehem, followed by a series of masterful painting-like shots. To a glorious score by Miklós Rózsa, we see a star-filled night sky, with one bright star traveling the screen left to right. It moves over Bethlehem, watched silently by villagers, by the three eastern kings on their camels, and then by shepherds in the field. The star flies past the city, stops, and shines a beam of light on a simple stable. More villagers stand, curious, outside the stable looking in, and they make room for the three kings bearing gifts. The royals kneel down in adoration before the inauspicious Joseph and Mary and her baby. One of the villagers steps back from the rest and blows a horn, signaling the occurrence of something momentous. Then the credits roll — which is where the CBS broadcast began. This must have been an easy decision for the network suits, deeming the sequence too time-wasting. Why should they have cared that the full title of the original book — the bestselling American novel of the 19th century — is Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ?

I just reread an even older novel, the most famous Christmas-themed fictional work of all time, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The timeless tale of a bitter misanthrope’s Yuletide-prompted redemption avoids overt religiosity while stressing the unique goodness of Christmas. It has non-clerical charity workers and spirits rather than angels. Yet Christianity permeates the work. Early in it, the accursed Marley’s ghost moans, “Why did I walk through crowds of fellow beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode?” A little later, Scrooge’s poor clerk Bob Cratchit desperately praises his invalid son, Tiny Tim: “He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember, upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.” But it is Tiny Tim himself, and Dickens, who speak for all during this wonderful holy season, clear enough for even Hollywood to hear,

The Afghanistan War Has Been A Tissue Of Lies

The Afghanistan War Has Been A Tissue Of Lies

“In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.”.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

This week, the venerable Washington Post newspaper revealed a bombshell, 2,000 page, secret Pentagon report detailing the astounding failure of US war strategy in Afghanistan, America’s longest war.

Americans have been fed a steady stream of lies about the Afghan War, concluded the Post.  So asserted this writer in ‘American Conservative’ magazine in 2003 when the US invaded Afghanistan.

`We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking,’ admitted three star General Douglas Lute who commanded US forces in Afghanistan under Presidents George Bush and Barack Obama.

Arrogance and ignorance, backed by mammoth brute force, led US policy in the remote Asian nation.  Attacking Afghanistan was revenge for the 9/11 attacks against the US.  As this writer saw first hand in Afghanistan, all the claims about Osama bin Laden’s ‘terrorist training camps’ in Afghanistan were lies.  9/11 was not planned in Afghanistan.
Taliban were not ‘terrorists.’  They were lightly armed tribal warriors fighting bandits and the US-backed Afghan intelligence services run by the Communist Party.  Taliban’s fathers, the mujahidin, were hailed as ‘freedom fighters’ by Ronald Reagan.  In 2003, the US did a total volte-face to support the Afghan Communists who promised to allow US-owned pipeline routes south from Central Asia’s oil rich Caspian Basin to Pakistan’s coast.  After Taliban refused the chintzy US pipelines offer, this nationalist, anti-drug movement that battled the rape of Afghanistan was branded ‘terrorists’.

The US-installed Kabul regime was a bunch of off-the-shelf CIA assets: warlords, major drug dealers, and communists.  Billions upon billions of US dollars were flown in to hire mercenaries and pay off warlords and criminals.  The biggest war criminals in Afghanistan became key US allies.

When Taliban was in power, it eliminated 90% of Afghanistan’s extensive trade of high-grade morphine and heroin.  Once the US seized Kabul and installed its own puppet regime, drug production surged to all-time highs.  US forces and their allies became deeply involved in the drug trade that sustained the nation’s economy.  Today, US-run Afghanistan is the world’s biggest drug dealer.

Those journalists like this one who insisted on telling the truth about Afghanistan were fired or ignored.  I was booted off CNN for denying their false claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.  And that the US was ‘winning’ the Afghan War.  I was banned from certain radio and public TV networks for asserting that ISIS was a western invention, backed by Turkey, the US, France, Britain and Israel.  I was branded a ‘radical’ for trying to tell the truth.

I mention these examples to affirm charges, made by the Washington Post, that the entire Afghan conflict was a farrago of lies and half-truths cooked up by the US government to justify a brutal war of aggression against a weak, medieval nation that dared to block our demands for strategic pipeline routes.
The Washington Post played a key role in promoting the lies that opened the way to the US invasion of Iraq.  Today, it is doing penance by revealing all the lies that facilitated the Afghan War – and the thousands of US soldiers killed or wounded there, the vast destruction wrought on Afghanistan by US warplanes, wide scale torture, starvation, mass killing of civilians and all the other horrors of war.

According to the Pentagon report, the US has wasted at least one trillion dollars ($1 trillion) on its Afghanistan War to no discernible effect other than great numbers of dead and wounded, destroyed villages, machine-gunned farm animals, and vast chemical pollution.  If it moves, bomb it is the American credo.

That’s why we see the shameful spectacle of US B-1 and B-52 heavy bombers carpet bombing Afghan villages, and swarms of helicopter and AC-130 gunships blasting apart medieval Afghan tribesmen and wedding parties.  The Soviets were just as ruthless; but we are more efficient.

America’s media, with a few small exceptions, has promoted the Pentagon’s war against the Afghan people and totally covered up its atrocities and egregious lies.  This war has become a giant, money devouring killing machine that boosts politicians and military contractors.  The past presidents who cheered on this disgraceful war against one of the world’s poorest, most backward nations deserve to be disgraced.

Meanwhile, we must stop and think about the Pashtun tribal fighters who held off the world’s mightiest military machine for the past 18 years with little more than old AK-47 rifles and indomitable courage.  We owe them our sincerest apologies and a rebuilt country.  As a former US soldier I salute them, these bravest of the brave.



 Eric S. Margolis



I* am JOSEPH F BARBER, Founder of the veterans project,
freelance writer editor and author ,blogger and veteran of the United states Army ,it is my dream to make true change in our world and to use the gifts I was given by god to help all of humanity make a better world free of hunger ,violence and cruelty I hope you will join me in this endeavor,If you haven’t donated yet, please consider donating $5 - $10 to  get me closer to my goal. No donation is too small!

Joseph F Barber Veteran kneeling center with his team Ft Dix NJ

I am Founder of the Veterans Project We believe that "When our grandchildren ask us where we were when the voiceless and vulnerable of our era needed a leader of compassion and purpose and hope - I hope we can say we showed up, and that we showed up on time

We believe, Ignorance is the enemy of peace and human suffering the true cost of war.

We believe that lies kill and those who tell them, profit without regard to human costs.

We believe that a single teardrop, torn from the heart of a child who witnesses the needless death of its parent or sibling, has more value than all of the wealth spent on bombs and armaments.

We believe that when we join with others and discover the harsh realities about our history and the torment that has paid for our comfortable lives, we are each compelled to help others understand that another way is possible.

Citizens of our world “We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.” “The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?” “No Big Power in all history ever thought of itself as an aggressor. That is still true today.” There is no way to peace; peace is the way.

When the typical reformer or revolutionist proclaims the new order, he goes on to urge men to organize, agitate, get out the vote, fight. Jesus also proclaimed The Kingdom of God [i.e., the revolution] is at hand; but immediately added in true prophetic fashion, Repent. That is to say, if we are to have a new world, we must have new men; if you want a revolution, you must be revolutionized. A world of peace will not be achieved by men who in their own souls are torn with strife and eagerness to assert themselves. In the degree that the anti-war or pacifist movement is composed of individuals who have not themselves, to use Aldous Huxley's phrase, achieved detachment, who have not undergone an inner revolution, it too will experience the same failure to achieve self-discipline, integrity, true fellowship among its own members which has afflicted other movements for social change.

“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.” and many do but at a price of being placed on a watch list or to be detained hounded and arrested held and with out due process they are the heroes those whom have chosen to speak out at any cost from veterans to soldiers to the citizen STAND AND BE COUNTED

A little about us... We run this non-sectarian, non-partisan organization to ignite discussion on our world and in our communities, to educate our world about the injustice of aggressive violence. We believe that in order to reach out to our peers most effectively, we cannot stand on religious arguments alone, and we cannot adhere entirely to one political side in our currently polarized culture. We believe that the consistent life ethic is not for any one religious group or for any one political position, but rather for everyone dedicated to human rights, life and dignity. No matter your reason for believing in the inherent value of human life, we hope you can join us, and through our efforts we can together endeavor to make violence unthinkable - - - to make it history!
YOU CAN BE A PARTNER FOR PEACE AND ALL LIFE

Please act now - Support our effort to create a more just and peaceful world.

Phone-760-261-9122

Email. veteransproject@yahoo.com

https://www.gofundme.com/f/Alternative-Measures

https://www.gofundme.com/f/Alternative-Measures?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

https://www.facebook.com/donate/437474426946002/

Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber

Betraying the Constitution: Who Will Protect Us from an Unpatriotic Patriot Act?

Betraying the Constitution: Who Will Protect Us from an Unpatriotic Patriot Act?

“It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”—Thomas Paine

While Congress subjects the nation to its impeachment-flavored brand of bread-and-circus politics, our civil liberties continue to die a slow, painful death by a thousand cuts.

Case in point: while Americans have been fixated on the carefully orchestrated impeachment drama that continues to monopolize headlines, Congress passed and President Trump signed into law legislation extending three key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, which had been set to expire on December 15, 2019.

Once again, to no one’s surprise, the bureaucrats on both sides of the aisle—Democrats and Republicans alike—prioritized political grandstanding over principle and their oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution.

As Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) predicted:

Today, while everyone is distracted by the impeachment drama, Congress will vote to extend warrantless data collection provisions of the #PatriotAct, by hiding this language on page 25 of the Continuing Resolution (CR) that temporarily funds the government. To sneak this through, Congress will first vote to suspend the rule which otherwise gives us (and the people) 72 hours to consider a bill. The scam here is that Democrats are alleging abuse of Presidential power, while simultaneously reauthorizing warrantless power to spy on citizens that no President should have... in a bill that continues to fund EVERYTHING the President does... and waiving their own rules to do it. I predict Democrats will vote on a party line to suspend the 72 hour rule. But after the rule is suspended, I suspect many Republicans will join most Democrats to pass the CR with the Patriot Act extension embedded in it.

Massie was right: Republicans and Democrats have no problem joining forces in order to maintain their joint stranglehold on power.

The legislation passed the Senate with a bipartisan 74-to-20 vote. It squeaked through the House of Representatives with a 231-192 margin. And it was signed by President Trump—who earlier this year floated the idea of making the government’s surveillance powers permanent—with nary a protest from anyone about its impact on the rights of the American people.

Spending bill or not, it didn’t have to shake down this way, even with the threat of yet another government shutdown looming.

Congress could have voted to separate the Patriot Act extension from the funding bill, as suggested by Rep. Justin Amash, but that didn’t fly. Instead as journalist Norman Solomon writes for Salon, “The cave-in was another bow to normalizing the U.S. government’s mass surveillance powers.”

That, right there, is the key to all of this: normalizing the U.S. government’s mass surveillance powers.

In the 18 years since the USA Patriot Act—a massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA—was rammed through Congress in the wake of the so-called 9/11 terror attacks, it has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.

The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments—the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments—and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well.

The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience are now considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.

The Patriot Act justified broader domestic surveillance, the logic being that if government agents knew more about each American, they could distinguish the terrorists from law-abiding citizens—no doubt a reflexive impulse shared by small-town police and federal agents alike.

This, according to Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow, Jr., was a fantasy that “had been brewing in the law enforcement world for a long time.” And 9/11 provided the government with the perfect excuse for conducting far-reaching surveillance and collecting mountains of information on even the most law-abiding citizen.

Federal agents and police officers are now authorized to conduct covert black bag “sneak-and-peak” searches of homes and offices while you are away and confiscate your personal property without first notifying you of their intent or their presence.

The law also granted the FBI the right to come to your place of employment, demand your personal records and question your supervisors and fellow employees, all without notifying you; allowed the government access to your medical records, school records and practically every personal record about you; and allowed the government to secretly demand to see records of books or magazines you’ve checked out in any public library and Internet sites you’ve visited (at least 545 libraries received such demands in the first year following passage of the Patriot Act).

In the name of fighting terrorism, government officials are now permitted to monitor religious and political institutions with no suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government has subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation; monitor conversations between attorneys and clients; search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without showing probable cause; and jail Americans indefinitely without a trial, among other things.

The federal government also made liberal use of its new powers, especially through the use (and abuse) of the nefarious national security letters, which allow the FBI to demand personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit companies at the mere say-so of the government agent in charge of a local FBI office and without prior court approval.

In fact, since 9/11, we’ve been spied on by surveillance cameras, eavesdropped on by government agents, had our belongings searched, our phones tapped, our mail opened, our email monitored, our opinions questioned, our purchases scrutinized (under the USA Patriot Act, banks are required to analyze your transactions for any patterns that raise suspicion and to see if you are connected to any objectionable people), and our activities watched.

We’re also being subjected to invasive patdowns and whole-body scans of our persons and seizures of our electronic devices in the nation’s airports. We can’t even purchase certain cold medicines at the pharmacy anymore without it being reported to the government and our names being placed on a watch list.

It’s only getting worse, folks.

Largely due to the continuous noise from television news’ talking heads, most Americans have been lulled into thinking that the pressing issues are voting in the next election, but the real issue is simply this: the freedoms in the Bill of Rights are being eviscerated.

The Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded to such an extent that what we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago. Most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments to the Constitution—which historically served as the bulwark from government abuse.

Set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches and the like—all sanctioned by Congress, the White House and the courts—a recitation of the Bill of Rights would understandably sound more like a eulogy to freedoms lost than an affirmation of rights we truly possess.

We can pretend that the Constitution, which was written to hold the government accountable, is still our governing document. However, the reality we must come to terms with is that in the America we live in today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

What once were considered inalienable, fundamental “rights”  are now mere privileges to be taken away on a government bureaucrat’s say-so.

To those who have been paying attention, this should come as no real surprise.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the Constitution has been on life support for some time now, and is drawing its final breaths.

The American government, never a staunch advocate of civil liberties, has been writing its own orders for some time now. Indeed, as the McCarthy era and the wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr. and others illustrates, the government’s amassing of power, especially in relation to its ability to spy on Americans, predates the passage of the Patriot Act in 2001.

What the Patriot Act and its subsequent incarnations did was legitimize what had previously been covert and frowned upon as a violation of Americans’ long-cherished privacy rights.

After all, the history of governments is that they inevitably overreach.

Thus, enabled by a paper tiger Congress, the president and other agencies of the federal government have repeatedly laid claim to a host of powers, among them the ability to use the military as a police force, spy on Americans and detain individuals without granting them access to an attorney or the courts. And as the government’s powers have grown, unchecked, the American people have gradually become used to these relentless intrusions into their lives.

In turn, the American people have become the proverbial boiling frogs, so desensitized to the government’s steady encroachments on their rights that civil liberties abuses have become par for the course.

Yet as long as government agencies are allowed to make a mockery of the very laws intended to limit their reach, curtail their activities, and guard against the very abuses to which we are being subjected on a daily basis, our individual freedoms will continue to be eviscerated so that the government’s powers can be expanded, the Constitution be damned.

Impeach the Government: Rogue Agencies Have Been Abusing Their Powers for Decades

Impeach the Government: Rogue Agencies Have Been Abusing Their Powers for Decades

“When a man unprincipled in private life[,] desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper . . . despotic in his ordinary demeanour — known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty — when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity — to join in the cry of danger to liberty — to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion — to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day — It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”—Alexander Hamilton

By all means, let’s talk about impeachment.

To allow the President or any rogue government agency or individual to disregard the rule of law whenever, wherever and however it chooses and operate “above the law” is exactly how a nation of sheep gives rise to a government of wolves.

To be clear: this is not about Donald Trump. Or at least it shouldn’t be just about Trump.

This is a condemnation of every government toady at every point along the political spectrum—right, left and center—who has conspired to expand the federal government’s powers at the expense of the citizenry.

For too long now, the American people have played politics with their principles and turned a blind eye to all manner of wrongdoing when it was politically expedient, allowing Congress, the White House and the Judiciary to wreak havoc with their freedoms and act in violation of the rule of law.

“We the people” are paying the price for it now.

We are paying the price every day that we allow the government to continue to wage its war on the American People, a war that is being fought on many fronts: with bullets and tasers, with surveillance cameras and license readers, with intimidation and propaganda, with court rulings and legislation, with the collusion of every bureaucrat who dances to the tune of corporate handouts while on the government’s payroll, and most effectively of all, with the complicity of the American people, who continue to allow themselves to be easily manipulated by their politics, distracted by their pastimes, and acclimated to a world in which government corruption is the norm.

Don’t keep falling for the Deep State’s ploys.

This entire impeachment process is a manufactured political circus—a shell game—aimed at distracting the public from the devious treachery of the American police state, which continues to lock down the nation and strip the citizenry of every last vestige of constitutional safeguards that have historically served as a bulwark against tyranny.

Has President Trump overstepped his authority and abused his powers?

Without a doubt.

Then again, so did Presidents Obama, Bush, Clinton, and almost every president before them.

Trump is not the first president to weaken the system of checks and balances, sidestep the rule of law, and expand the power of the president. He is just the most recent.

If we were being honest and consistent in holding government officials accountable, you’d have to impeach almost every president in recent years for operating “above the law,” unbound by the legislative or judicial branches of the government.

When we refer to the “rule of law,” that’s constitutional shorthand for the idea that everyone is treated the same under the law, everyone is held equally accountable to abiding by the law, and no one is given a free pass based on their politics, their connections, their wealth, their status or any other bright line test used to confer special treatment on the elite.

When the government and its agents no longer respect the rule of law—the Constitution—or believe that it applies to them, then the very contract on which this relationship is based becomes invalid.

Although the Constitution requires a separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government in order to ensure accountability so that no one government agency becomes all-powerful, each successive president over the past 30 years has, through the negligence of Congress and the courts, expanded the reach and power of the presidency by adding to his office’s list of extraordinary orders, directives and special privileges.

All of the imperial powers amassed by Barack Obama and George W. Bush—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to operate a shadow government, and to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—were inherited by Donald Trump.

These presidential powers—acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and which can be activated by any sitting president—enable past, president and future presidents to act as a dictator by operating above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.

Yet in operating above the law, it’s not just the president who has become a law unto himself.

The government itself has become an imperial dictator, an overlord, a king.

This is what you might call a stealthy, creeping, silent, slow-motion coup d’état.

This abuse of power has been going on for so long that it has become the norm, the Constitution be damned.

There are hundreds—make that thousands—of government bureaucrats who are getting away with murder (in many cases, literally) simply because the legislatures, courts and the citizenry can’t be bothered to make them play by the rules of the Constitution.

Unless something changes in the way we deal with these ongoing, egregious abuses of power, the predators of the police state will continue to wreak havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives.

It’s the nature of the beast: power corrupts.

Worse, as 19th-century historian Lord Acton concluded, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a politician, an entertainment mogul, a corporate CEO or a police officer: give any one person (or government agency) too much power and allow him or her or it to believe that they are entitled, untouchable and will not be held accountable for their actions, and those powers will eventually be abused.

We’re seeing this dynamic play out every day in communities across America.

A cop shoots an unarmed citizen for no credible reason and gets away with it. A president employs executive orders to sidestep the Constitution and gets away with it. A government agency spies on its citizens’ communications and gets away with it. An entertainment mogul sexually harasses actors and actresses and gets away with it. The U.S. military bombs civilian targets and gets away with it.

Abuse of power—and the ambition-fueled hypocrisy and deliberate disregard for misconduct that make those abuses possible—works the same whether you’re talking about sexual harassment, government corruption, or the rule of law.

Twenty years ago, I was a lawyer for Paula Jones, who sued then-President Clinton for dropping his pants and propositioning her for sex when he was governor of Arkansas. That lawsuit gave rise to revelations about Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, a 21-year-old intern at the White House, and his eventual impeachment for lying about it under oath.

As Dana Milbank writes for The Washington Post:

We didn’t know it at the time, of course. But in Bill Clinton were the seeds of Donald Trump. With 20 years of hindsight, it is clear… Clinton’s handling of the Monica Lewinsky affair was a precursor of the monstrosity we now have in the White House: dismissing unpleasant facts as “fake news,” self-righteously claiming victimhood, attacking the press and cloaking personal misbehavior in claims to be upholding the Constitution…. Clinton set us on the path, or at least accelerated us down the path, that led to today.

It doesn’t matter what starts us down this path, whether it’s a president insisting that he get a free pass for sexually harassing employees, or waging wars based on invented facts, or attempting to derail an investigation into official misconduct.

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

After all, it is a tale that has been told time and again throughout history about how easy it is for freedom to fall and tyranny to rise, and it often begins with one small, seemingly inconsequential willingness on the part of the people to compromise their principles and undermine the rule of law in exchange for a dubious assurance of safety, prosperity and a life without care.

For example, 86 years ago, the citizens of another democratic world power elected a leader who promised to protect them from all dangers. In return for this protection, and under the auspice of fighting terrorism, he was given absolute power.

This leader went to great lengths to make his rise to power appear both legal and necessary, masterfully manipulating much of the citizenry and their government leaders.

Unnerved by threats of domestic terrorism and foreign invaders, the people had little idea that the domestic turmoil of the times—such as street rioting and the fear of Communism taking over the country—was staged by the leader in an effort to create fear and later capitalize on it.

In the ensuing months, this charismatic leader ushered in a series of legislative measures that suspended civil liberties and habeas corpus rights and empowered him as a dictator.

On March 23, 1933, the nation’s legislative body passed the Enabling Act, formally referred to as the “Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Nation,” which appeared benign and allowed the leader to pass laws by decree in times of emergency.

What it succeeded in doing, however, was ensuring that the leader became a law unto himself.

The leader’s name was Adolf Hitler, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Yet history has a way of repeating itself.

Hitler’s rise to power should serve as a stark lesson to always be leery of granting any government leader sweeping powers.

Clearly, we are not heeding that lesson.

“How lucky it is for rulers,” Adolf Hitler once said, “that men cannot think.”

The horrors that followed in Nazi Germany might have been easier to explain if Hitler had been right. But the problem is not so much that people cannot think but that they do not think. Or if they do think, as in the case of the German people, that thinking becomes muddled and easily led.

Hitler’s meteoric rise to power, with the support of the German people, is a case in point.

On January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in full accordance with the country’s legal and constitutional principles. When President Paul von Hindenburg died the following year, Hitler assumed the office of president, as well as that of chancellor, but he preferred to use the title Der Füehrer (the leader) to describe himself. This new move was approved in a general election in which Hitler garnered 88 percent of the votes cast.

It cannot be said that the German people were ignorant of Hitler’s agenda or his Nazi ideology. Nazi literature, including statements of the Nazi plans for the future, had papered the country for a decade before Hitler came to power. In fact, Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, which was his blueprint for totalitarianism, sold more than 200,000 copies between 1925 and 1932.

Clearly, the problem was not that the German people did not think but that their thinking was poisoned by the enveloping climate of ideas that they came to accept as important.

At a certain point, the trivial became important, and obedience to the government in pursuit of security over freedom became predominant.

As historian Milton Mayer recounts in his seminal book on Hitler’s rise to power, They Thought They Were Free, “Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people‑—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies’, without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.”

The German people were not oblivious to the horrors taking place around them. As historian Robert Gellately points out, “[A]nyone in Nazi Germany who wanted to find out about the Gestapo, the concentration camps, and the campaigns of discrimination and persecutions need only read the newspapers.”

The warning signs were definitely there, blinking incessantly like large neon signs.

“Still,” Gellately writes, “the vast majority voted in favor of Nazism, and in spite of what they could read in the press and hear by word of mouth about the secret police, the concentration camps, official anti-Semitism, and so on. . . . [T]here is no getting away from the fact that at that moment, ‘the vast majority of the German people backed him.’”

Half a century later, the wife of a prominent German historian, neither of whom were members of the Nazi party, opined: “[O]n the whole, everyone felt well. . . . And there were certainly eighty percent who lived productively and positively throughout the time. . . . We also had good years. We had wonderful years.”

In other words, as long as their creature comforts remained undiminished, as long as their bank accounts remained flush, as long as they weren’t being discriminated against, persecuted, starved, beaten, shot, stripped, jailed and turned into slave labor, life was good.

This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.

The American kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) has sucked the American people down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry is powerless to defend itself against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.

This dissolution of that sacred covenant between the citizenry and the government—establishing “we the people” as the masters and the government as the servant—didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen because of one particular incident or one particular president. It is a process, one that began long ago and continues in the present day, aided and abetted by politicians who have mastered the polarizing art of how to “divide and conquer.”

Unfortunately, there is no magic spell to transport us back to a place and time where “we the people” weren’t merely fodder for a corporate gristmill, operated by government hired hands, whose priorities are money and power.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, our freedoms have become casualties in an all-out war on the American people.

So yes, let’s talk about impeachment, but don’t fall for the partisan shell game that sets Trump up as the fall guy for the Deep State’s high crimes and misdemeanors.

Set your sights higher: impeach the government for overstepping its authority, abusing its power, and disregarding the rule of law.

Obama on Mount Rushmore: Move Over Guys, Room for One More Con Artist

Obama on Mount Rushmore: Move Over Guys, Room for One More Con Artist

I am on the emailing lists of both the Republican and Democratic Parties because I like to know what the enemies of the American people are up to. Recently there has been a lot of squeaking from the GOP , but the truly remarkable emailing has been coming out of the Democratic Party, which is desperately seeking to convince the public that it actually represents something.

Hillary Clinton and daughter Chelsea have been particularly active promoting their allegedly co-authored The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience. They apparently see themselves as “gutsy” as opposed to parasitical, entitled and corrupt while also leaving out the book’s chapter telling one what to do when a husband is receiving oral sex from an intern in the Oval Office or raping a campaign worker in Arkansas.

But Hillary is ancient history even though there is talk of her making another “run.” And she certainly has done her best to repay the donors of the hundreds of millions of dollars given to the Clinton Family Foundation by attempting to destroy the candidacy of Tulsi Gabbard, the only Democrat who appears to be genuinely opposed to perpetual war and globalism.

Of more recent vintage among “traditional” Democrats is ex-president Barack Obama, who has been beatified by the media, and who has now dedicated himself to the task of removing Trump. It is an admirable goal surely, but for the fact that the Democrats have difficulty in finding a candidate and stitching together a platform that actually resonates with American voters.
Obama has always had a lot going for him. Being half-black meant that he got top marks from the Democratic Party Social Justice Warrior wing just because of what he was genetically when he was born. He is always presentable and well-spoken and does not seem interested in having sex with women other than his wife. He plays basketball, which demonstrated to ghetto voters that he had not lost his roots, even though he was raised by his mother in a largely white middle class environment.

But Obama’s actual achievements after eight years in office can be counted on the fingers of one hand. From a foreign policy perspective, one would include only the easing of restrictions on trade and travel with Cuba and the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran, both of which have been rescinded by Trump. On the domestic side, his hallmark Affordable Care Act has ironically made insurance unaffordable for many. The president basically turned over medical care to a predatory and inefficient health care industry that raised premiums while also diminishing coverage for those Americans who actually had jobs to pay for their insurance. In the foundation I worked at when Obamacare came in group plan premiums doubled in the first year, doubled again in the following year and were about to go up another 25% when we decided that we could no longer afford health insurance. Sure, some Americans got free or subsidized health insurance but the rest of us paid for it and the heartless and soulless health care industry reaped the benefits.

So what else did Saint Obama do? For starters, Obama was the first president in US history to be at war for every single day of his eight year presidency. As president, Obama approved military action in seven countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen as well as special operations on a smaller scale all over the globe.

Obama presided over an offshore prison (which he had promised to close) at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Individuals suspected of being terrorists, however that is defined, were confined there and not a single one was tried. It is believed that many of them have been tortured. The United States Constitution’s Sixth Amendment guarantees a public and “speedy” trial to all those accused of crimes and Obama, by the way, is supposed to be an expert on constitutional law.

Obama exceeded the number of killings by drone carried out by his predecessor George W. Bush. His administration also institutionalized the “profile” killing of individuals on the ground. That meant in the case of Afghanistan any male walking around carrying a gun, as is common in rural areas. Or in some cases, it was guilt even without a gun if it was a male aged over 18. All males over age 18 in Afghanistan were considered to be possible terrorists.

Obama was the first and only president to spend his Tuesday mornings in meetings with his security staff drawing up “kill lists” that included American citizens who were somewhere overseas and considered dangerous. Acting off that list, he was the first and only president to actually execute American citizens without any due process using lethal drones. Anwar al-Awlaki and his son Abdulrahman were targeted and killed in Yemen together with another American citizen, and four other citizens were also executed under Obama in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The al-Awlaki son had not been accused or any crimes or membership in any terrorist groups. Many other foreigners, plus families, friends and neighbors were also killed off the lists based purely on the fact that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. All of the killing overseas has been carried out in countries with which the United States is not at war, so they are unconstitutional as well as illegal.

Obama ran for president promising to do his best to rid the world of nuclear weapons. He then authorized the spending of $1 trillion to upgrade America’s nuclear arsenal.

Under Obama, National Security Agency spying on American citizens accelerated using the authorities granted by the two Patriot Acts. The public would not know about the spying but for the actions of several whistleblowers, to include Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. Obama declared “war on whistleblowers,” punishing more of them more severely than any other president.

Obama and his team of women warmongers destroyed the nation of Libya without there being any US national security interest in so doing. They turned it into a failed state and a haven for terrorists, with its looted weapons arsenals supplying radical groups in Africa and the Middle East. Prior to Obama, Moammar Gaddafi’s Libya had been the richest and most developed nation in Africa.

Obama’s desire to bring about regime change in Syria led to the US covert arming of factions of “freedom fighters” with weapons from Libya that produced something like a civil war which killed hundreds of thousands and created a wave of millions of refugees. Most of the fighters trained and equipped by the US joined ISIS or al-Qaeda affiliates. Syria, like Libya, was no threat to the United States when it was attacked by Washington.

Obama directed his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and his hostile Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul to explore a reset with Russia with predictable results, initiating the steadily worsening relationship that has continued to this day. He subsequently presided over the attempts to spin the narrative and blame Moscow for Hillary’s loss while also encouraging accusations that Trump and his team were Russian agents. His national security team prepared a dossier that included numerous lies about both Trump and some of his key appointees.
Obama allowed neocon extraordinaire Victoria Nuland to lead the charge against Ukraine, with the intention of bringing about regime change of a government that he considered to be too pro-Russian. He succeeded but spent $5 billion doing so and Ukraine wound up with a puppet government presiding over a country that is both the poorest and most corrupt in Europe.

Obama made a famous “New Beginning” speech in Cairo in June 2009 that led directly to his being awarded a Nobel Peace prize later that year. He promised to reach out to the Muslim world and improve relations with Washington but promptly ignored what he had said for the following seven years, preferring to take the easy path by deferring to Israel’s expressed interests.

Obama always looked the other way when the Saudi Arabians bombed civilians in Yemen. Likewise, when the Israelis bombed Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. And he allowed the monstrous Benjamin Netanyahu to collude with Congress to manage US foreign policy in the Middle East with hardly any pushback from his foreign policy and national security team.

The Guardian prepared a bit of a retrospective on Obama during the week when he handed over the reins of power to Donald Trump in January 2017. It could not have described the man and his failings better: “Obama is, in terms of influence, nothing more than a used-car salesman. His job is not to create policy, but to sell neocon ideas to the general public, but his lack of agency cannot excuse his lack of vision or morals. Under Obama’s notional leadership the world has moved to the very brink of self-immolation in the name of protecting American hegemony. Domestically America still crumbles. He had a nice smile, and a good turn of phrase. He was witty, and cool, and looked good in a suit…but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t just more of the same. He could say the right things, and sound like he meant them, but he was still a monster.”


By Philip Giraldi
Strategic Culture