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MEN OF PEACE
"I don't know how to save the world. I don't have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all Earth's inhabitants, none of us will survive - nor will we deserve to." Leonard Peltier
Friday, September 2, 2016
Can Earth Be Saved?
Can Earth Be Saved?
A solar storm could destroy the planet unless we create a massive magnetic shield to protect Earth, warns expert
- Comment made by Joseph Pelton from the International Space University
- There is a worrying possibility of a devastating solar storm hitting Earth
- These could knock out radars and satellites, affecting communications
- If scientists could create a mega-structure, with a huge electromagnetic shield, it could protect the Earth from a massive solar storm
The Earth protects itself from solar storms using an invisible shield known as the 'magnetosphere'.
But because Earth's magnetic poles are continually moving, the magnetosphere is weakening.
This means our planet is increasingly vulnerable to the potentially devastating effects of solar flares.
Now, Joseph Pelton, former dean of the International Space University, in Illkirch-Graffenstaden in France, has called for scientists to take action by creating a massive magnetic shield to protect Earth.
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Solar storms are eruptions of magnetic energy from the solar surface. When this magnetic energy is suddenly released, this accelerates the hot gases near the surface, which can travel quickly towards the Earth
Solar storms are eruptions of magnetic energy from the sun's surface.
When this magnetic energy is suddenly released, this accelerates the hot gases near the surface, which can travel quickly towards the Earth.
A solar flare's 'killer electrons' can travel at up to several million miles per hour towards Earth.
Experts are now warning that humanity is not prepared to tackle a calamitous solar storm, and that the effects could be dire.
If this material collides with the Earth's magnetic field, it can affect many technologies, including satellites orbiting the planet, and radars.
In a new paper published in ROOM, Dr Joseph Pelton, said: 'Over the course of the last half century, the world has finally begun to learn that a massive asteroid or comet strike could create havoc and ruin, on perhaps a planetary scale.
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The Met Office now provides forecasts for space weather to help the public and industry prepare for solar storms that may pose a risk to infrastructure, as outlined in the graphic shown above
'But what we don't have is a global understanding that there is a much more likely danger that is increasing over time and is a very real cosmic danger that could knock out our electric power grids, kill key satellite systems for communications and navigation and defence.'
Dr Pelton also warned that a solar storm could knock out the time synchronisation of the global Internet.
This synchronisation is essential for the internet to continue to function as it does.
He added: 'A massive coronal mass ejection that brings millions of tons of ions travelling perhaps at two million kilometres an hour, could leave the world's economic systems and global infrastructure in shambles.'
Thursday, September 1, 2016
The Battle-Scarred Youngsters
The Battle-Scarred Youngsters
There was one relevant moment in the day’s events at Washington: that was when the youngest speaker on the platform, John Lewis, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, lashed out in anger, not only at the Dixiecrats, but at the Kennedy Administration, which had been successful up to that moment in directing the indignation of 200,000 people at everyone but itself.
The depth of Lewis’ feeling and the direction of his attack may have baffled Northern liberals, mollified recently by the Administration’s new Civil Rights Bill, by its bold words and by the President’s endorsement of the great March. But John Lewis knew, because the young SNCC workers in his organization are on the front lines of the conflict, that while the President and the Attorney General speak loud in Washington, their voices are scarcely whispers in the towns and the hamlets of the Black Belt.
Greenwood, Miss., just before the March, revealed in its own quiet way how the Deep South remains essentially untouched by resonant speeches in the national capital.
Surrounded by cotton plantations, Greenwood overlooks the Delta from a vantage point in west-central Mississippi. It is the headquarters for the Voter Registration Project, in which all the major civil rights organizations cooperate, and whose working force is sup-plied mainly by the youngsters of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC—affectionately called SNICK). It is the seat of Leflore County, where Negroes are 65 per cent of the population and half the Negro families have an income less than $27 a week. Almost no Negroes vote, and attempts of the past year to register Negroes have been met with torch, shotgun and a dozen varieties of official brutality, intimidation and subterfuge.
The SNICK “office” in Greenwood is like a front company headquarters during wartime. As I came in one evening last August, having driven from Memphis, I was greeted by Annell Ponder, whose younger sister I taught at Spelman College in Atlanta, and whose path has crossed mine several times in the last few hectic years. The Ponder girls are all tall, black-skinned and beautiful. Annell has been in Greenwood this past year handling the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s part of the voter registration project. She is quiet and courageous. She has been beaten by police in Winona, Miss. When friends went to the jail one day, they found her sitting there, her face swollen and marked, barely able to speak. She looked up at them, and just managed to whisper one word: “Freedom.”
With Annell at headquarters were a bunch of the SNICK kids. One of them came for-ward to shake hands and we recognized each other—it was Stokely Carmichael, a tall, slender philosophy student at Howard University, born in the West Indies and reared in the sit-in movement. We had met in Albany, Ga., during the first outburst of trouble there in December, 1961.
What was on for the evening? A mass meeting at one of the Negro churches. And then a party at the home of one of the girls.
They showed my wife and me around the building: on the first floor, a big jumbled room for meetings, with a long table in the center—this was the dining room, too, for whatever voter registration workers were around when mealtime came—and a small kitchen to the side, where Mrs. Johnson cooked the meals. Upstairs were cubicles serving as offices, and a large area with two iron cots in a corner, for travelers in the movement. Cartons of books were on the floor; they had been donated by a Northern college, and were soon to go on new pine bookshelves.
At the church meeting, middle-aged Negroes who had lived forty and fifty years in the Delta without shaking a white person’s hand, came up to shake hands and say hello. Greenwood has this past year been going through that tense, hopeful process begun recently in many communities of the Deep South—the first contact on an equal basis with white people; an awakening to the possibility of genuine brotherhood. These first white friends have been college students from New England, or ministers from the Middle West, or just interested people passing through—rather than local whites. But it is a start. And among the SNICK youngsters manning battle posts in the Black Belt have been young white Southerners: Bob Zellner from Alabama, Sandra Hayden from Texas. It is a beginning, and credit belongs mostly to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for blasting open in various parts of the Deep South the first pockets of equal interracial contact.
For Southern whites, watching at the edge of these pockets, it is a painful but inexorable educational process. The first reactions to the sight of Negroes and whites in friendly contact are outrage, fury, often violence. But repetition of the vision dulls the reflex and there begins, not acceptance yet, but at least hesitancy.
Perhaps Greenwood police this past year have begun to move into the second stage. When a police car stopped my wife and me as we were driving away from the SNICK party, they seemed at least a little accustomed to the idea. They flashed their lights again and again into our faces and into the car, and cast looks at the house where the lights were on and the noise of the party could still be heard. They spent some time examining identification papers and then (unlike a previous similar experience in Atlanta, where my companion was a Negro and we were arrested) muttered for us to move on.
The next afternoon, a race against time began among the SNICK workers in the Greenwood office. Thirteen youngsters were in Parchman state prison farm, and had been there for two months. Forty-five other Negroes—men and women of all ages—had been on the county prison farm, also for two months. All of them had been arrested in June on charges of “breach of the peace.” After much legal delay, release was at hand. A young lawyer, representing the National Council of Churches, had come to Greenwood with bond money for these fifty-eight people. But it turned out that information supplied him by local officials, and transcribed on the bonds, was full of errors, and the county attorney would not accept the bonds. If the transaction could not be completed by that Friday afternoon, the prisoners would have to spend another weekend in jail.
The proper information was quickly compiled, and all available typewriters and people who could type were assembled in the Voter Registration Project office. The new data were typed in. The papers were taken to the sheriff. Just before dusk on Friday the fifty-eight emerged.
The headquarters that night had the eerie quality of a field hospital after a battle. Youngsters out of jail—sixteen and seventeen years old—were sprawled here and there. Two of them lay on the narrow cots upstairs while a few of the SNICK girls dabbed their eyes with boric acid solutions; some dietary deficiency in jail had affected their eyes. One boy nursed an infected hand. Another boy’s foot was swollen; he had started to lose feeling in it while in “the hot box” at Parchman, and had stamped on it desperately again and again to restore circulation. Medical attention was refused them in prison. The cold newspaper reports of the past few years about people arrested in various parts of the Deep South for demonstrating have never conveyed the reality of a Black Belt jail.
Three SNICK youngsters, with a tape recorder on the broken-down table near us, told about their arrest, and about life at Parchman.
The first was Willie Rogers:
. . . it was twenty minutes to one when the chief came out of his car and across the street in front of the courthouse. It was June 25th—Tuesday. The chief said, I’m askin’ you-all to move on. We said that we were up there to get our folks registered. So he said, I’m askin’ you-all to move on, you’re crowdin’ the sidewalk—the sidewalk was clear. We walked up to the courthouse steps so as not to block the sidewalk. He said, I’m askin’ you to leave now. We said we came to get them registered and soon as they registered we would leave. So he started placing us under arrest—one by one.
We stayed in jail about two hours before trial came off, and the judge sentenced us to four months and $200 fine for refusing to move on, and about an hour later they came and took us to the penal farm, which we stayed out on the penal farm about a week and worked. . . Tuesday, without us knowing they had sentenced us to Mississippi State Penitentiary, Parchman, Mississippi. . . Two boys named John Hanley and Arthur Jackson and I—he put us in the hot box. We stayed in the hot box two nights. It’s about five foot nine inches square, which they call it the hot box. Long as they don’t turn the heat on—with three in there you can make it. There’s no openings for light or air there was a little crack under the door, but you couldn’t see your hand before your face less you get down on your knees. When they got ready to feed you they band the tray through a little door which they close—and then you can’t eat unless you get down on your knees by the light comin’ in the door—then you can see how to eat. And they had a little round hole in the floor which was a commode—about as big around as a six-pound bucket top. After we stayed in there those two nights, the sergeant started pickin’ at me: “You’re the lyingest nigger in Greenwood, aren’t you?” I told him no, I didn’t lie, which I had, because I didn’t tell him nothing about the movement in Greenwood. . . . The last night he decided to take our T-shirts and things—so we decided not to wear no underwear. So he decided to open all the windows and turn on the fans, and the beds that we were sleepin’ on, they didn’t have no tick or nothing, just metal, and had round holes in it. So last night I didn’t sleep—I stayed up all night and all day today and he came in right after lunch and MacArthur Cotton and I, we weren’t saying anything, and, the guards came around and handcuffed us to the bar . . . . I’m seventeen.
. . . My name is Jesse James Glover. I live in Itta Bena, Mississippi. I was arrested at the courthouse in Greenwood—charged for likewise, not movin’ on. Some of the older people with us, they moved on. But we didn’t think it expedient to move, because the courthouse is a public place. So we stayed. . . . We had a trial next morning. We didn’t have a lawyer . . . We stayed at the county farm four days. We dug ditches in the white part of town. We decided among ourselves we weren’t going to work or eat any more because we were afraid of being shot from a car passing the road or by one of the guards, because we were all working with SNICK. We didn’t eat for two days, neither worked, then they came to take us to Parchman. There was about 25-30 policemen outside with guns and blackjacks and things standing around the bus when we came out—we all put our hands behind our heads and they searched us all, put us on the bus. So we left. . . We stayed there a week and then I took sick. He didn’t let me see a doctor. That’s the man in charge. They call him “sergeant.” We ate twice a day. At night they put the fan on and it was cold. We were sleepin’ on a steel bunk with forty-four holes in it . . . . A week later I was put in a place called the hot box. I stayed in this hot box two days and a half. I was put in because Freddie Harris and Lawrence Guyot and I was whisperin’ to each other. Another week I was put in the hot box again. I stayed there four days. About half a week later he said some lice had gotten in the place, so he cut all our hair and gave us some blue ointment and put fourteen of us in a cell—two beds for fourteen of us. We stayed there all night. About another week, I got put into this hot box again he said we were talkin’. He put nine of us in this box—it’s about six by six. Nine of us we couldn’t lie down . . . . Three or four more days they began to take our T-shirts and cut our food in half—so we gave our shorts back because we said what good are shorts without T-shirts. So they put us back in the cell, without our shorts, and turned of the fan again. We were naked. It was real cold . . . The next day he put thirteen of us in the hole, this six by six hole. We were making it okay about 30 minutes with the fan off—breathing in this oxygen, lettin’ out this carbon dioxide—and the air was evaporating on top of the building, and it got so hot the water was falling off the top of the building all around the sides like it was raining. One boy was taken sick in the box. They took the sick boy out—they didn’t take him to a doctor—they put him in a cell for that morning. He let us out of the hot box that morning, back in the cell. We told everyone to keep quiet because we didn’t want to get in the hot box again—it might cause a death in the hot box. So we all was quiet for a long time. Then a few fellows were talking to each other. He came down and told Lawrence Guyot, I’m going to put these niggers up to this damn bar if I hear any of this racket—so they hung MacArthur Cotton, Arthur Jackson, and Willie Rogers on the bars—MacArthur was singin’ some Freedom songs. . . . Altogether, I was thirteen days in the hot box . . . . How did I get in the movement? I was at a mass meeting in Itta Bena. I’d been walkin’ and canvassin’ on my own. Bob Moses asked me, did I want to work with SNICK. I told him yes. So from then on I been working Monday I’m startin’ school, but in the evening in Itta Bena I’m going to get young people to work with me canvassing—teach the old people how to fill out the forms—try to get my town moving.
. . . My name is Fred Harris. He came around and said, you gonna move? you gonna move? And he frightened the old people. And when we didn’t move he arrested us. . . I stayed in the hole four days. In all I spent 160 hours in the hole—the hot box that is. He told me next time he found paper on the floor in my cell he would hang me up by my arms and my legs. And about a week after, that I asked to see the doctor, and he told me, yes, when I die. I’m seventeen. I’ll be starting school Monday. I got involved with the movement back in 1960, when SNICK came up. I was fourteen then. Sam Block was talking to me about the movement. I told him, yes, I’d be glad to help, and I started from there on. . . At first my mother didn’t want me to be in it. Then she realized it would be best for her and for me If I were in the movement, so she told me I could go ahead and work in the movement.
While the returned prisoners took turns lying on the bunks, SNICK workers were being delivered to different parts of the Negro section of Greenwood to announce a mass meeting that night to welcome the prisoners back home. You find, roughly, three kinds of SNICK workers in a place like Greenwood: two or three regular staff members, who make $10 or $20 a week in those weeks when there is money; ten to fifteen students from various parts of the country who have left school temporarily to work with SNICK, and who subsist on $5 or $10 perhaps every other week; indeterminate numbers of young people from the town and the surrounding countryside, who volunteer their time, risk their lives and their liberty, and get an occasional meal at headquarters.
I sat in on the staff meeting next morning, held in the large main room. In one corner was a boiler, in another a rubbish can. On the walls were a map of the cty of Greenwood, newspaper clippings on civil rights, photos of Pete Seeger when he was in Greenwood, photos of Jim Forman (executive secretary of SNICK). Scattered around were two typewriters, some broken chairs, books and newspapers and a big pot for Kool-Aid.
But if poverty showed in the material possessions at SNICK headquarters, the human resources were something else. Chairing the meeting was Bob Moses, the quiet fighter in charge of the Voter Registration Project, a veteran by now of Mississippi violence and nonviolence. Here was Sam Block, silent, thin, dark, his home deep in the Delta, who did the early reconnaissance for SNICK in the area and almost lost his life for it. Here was Willie Peacock, also from Mississippi, another SNICK veteran. Annell Ponder was here, representing SCLC (Martin Luther King’s group); Martha Prescod, a slender college student from the North; Stokely Carmichael, the fiery young man from Howard; Jean Wheeler, a smiling coed, also from Howard. Here too was a former star student of mine at Spelman College—her home a little town in South Carolina—now just graduated from Yale Law School: Marian Wright. With her, was another graduate from Yale, a young white fellow named Oscar Chase. (Chase recently wrote a valuable legal paper which shows how the federal government, by bold, imaginative use of the injunction, could fulfill its responsibility to protect the constitutional rights of Negroes in the Deep South.) In the room also was another of the increasing number of white college students in this essentially Negro-led movement—a California sociology major named Mike Miller, who has done impressive research on civil rights matters. And five of the youngsters just out of Parchman jail were present.
That afternoon we drove in two cars to Itta Bena, a feudal cotton village outside Greenwood, where Negroes came off the land to meet in a dilapidated little church, welcome back the Parchman prisoners, and sing freedom songs with an overpowering spirit. One of the returned prisoners was Mother Perkins, fragile and small, seventy-five years old, who had just spent, like the rest, two months on the county prison farm for wanting to register.
Cars filled with white men rumbled by along the road that passed by the church door, but the meeting and the singing went on. Anyone who felt the urge got up and spoke. An old man rose on his cane and said. “All these years, going along behind my plow, I thought some day things would change but I never dreamed I’d see it now.”
Bob Moses told them that Negroes—and whites—were without jobs in all the big cities of the nation, that they could not run away any more from the Delta to Chicago and Detroit, that they must stay and wrench from the State of Mississippi what they deserved as human beings. Marian Wright told them a fable about an eagle that for a long time was told it was a chicken and believed it. Stokely Carmichael reminded them that while the Lord might be on their side, they would have to secure their rights by their own intense efforts. Meanwhile, the automobiles kept passing on the road outside.
The crushing conclusion that comes out of Greenwood, Miss—and Selma, Ala., and Danville, Va., and Americus, Ga.—is that the federal government is but a shadow in the hard-rock places of the Deep South. Standing at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, John Lewis turned his wrath, not at the easy target, the Dixiecrats, but against the Administration. “It is the federal government that indicted nine of our people in Albany.” The Democratic Party, Lewis made clear, cannot be treated as a savior as long as it lives with Eastland, nor can the Republicans, harboring Goldwater. “What political leader can stand up and say his party is the party of freedom?” And then, the most dangerous question one can ask in a country boasting of its two-party system; “Where is our party?”
To many, the March had been presented as a gigantic lobby for the Administration’s Civil Rights Bill, but Lewis pointed quickly, unerringly, to the weaknesses in the bill. Furthermore, by sponsoring a new civil rights bill, the Administration had skillfully turned attention to Congress, and deflected the erratic spotlight of the civil rights movement from possibly focusing on inadequacies of the Executive.
The straight, crass fact at which John Lewis was aiming is this: the national government, without any, new legislation, has the power to protect Negro voters and demonstrators from policemen’s clubs, hoses and jails and it has not used that power.
Despite the welcome new words of concern by the Kennedy Administration, despite several dozen suits filed by the Justice Department in voting cases, the Negro in the Deep South still stands alone and unprotected as he tries to eat in a bus terminal, register to vote, or hand out a leaflet on a street corner. The right to vote, and freedom of expression, are not in themselves solutions to the fundamental problem, which is a rear-ranging of economic and political power in the South. But they are prerequisites to that rearrangement.
There is a constitutional rock to which the Executive branch can tie its lines and then smash, with all the power at its command, every Wallace, every Barnett, every Chief Pritchett, every Commander Lingo, every Bull Connor, who ever begins to lift a billy club at an American citizen exercising his constitutional rights. That is the Supreme Court’s statement in the Debs case of 1895: “The entire strength of the nation may be used to enforce in any part of the land the full and free exercise of all national powers and the security of all rights entrusted by the Constitution to its care.”
But to act on that dictum calls for certain traits which the Administration has thus far not shown: imaginativeness in the use of the courts; boldness in the exercise of Executive power; the courage to set new precedents in federal relations; the willingness to bypass Congress on an issue about which Congress spoke its mind in 1866—when it passed the Fourteenth Amendment.
Above all, it means changing to the offensive. Up to now the Administration has simply reacted to every racial crisis. Southern officials have thrown thousands of people into jail, and then put the burden on the civil rights movement to get them out. The national government needs to act, and then put the burden on Southern segregationists to revoke the action; let them wrestle with courts, raise money for trial, plead for toleration.
The “equal protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court’s statement in the Debs case, the declaration of Section 242 of the U.S. penal code that any official who deprives a person of his constitutional rights has committed a federal crime; these are the already-existing legal bases for Executive action. That action requires, first, stationing all over the south hundreds of federal agents (replacing the F.B.I., which is incompetent in the field of civil rights) to protect the constitutional rights of Negroes. These agents would have the specific assignment, and the authority granted by the President, to jail any local official who violates the Constitution.
At the same time, the President must begin filling—as he has failed to do so far—the federal judgeships of the Deep South with persons committed to the principle of equality, regardless of the wishes of the region’s Senators. Among the outworn political institutions of this nation is that of “Senatorial courtesy,” which requires Kennedy to consult Eastland in the appointment of a federal judge in Mississippi, Talmadge and Russell in Georgia. The shattering of precedent can start here. Then, a combination of quick-acting federal agents and determined judges can begin to rivet into the mind of the Deep South, and into the mind of the nation, not that Negroes are equal (that will take time), but that if they are not treated equally the consequences will be swift and harsh. When ten CORE and SNCC people, white and Negro, walked into Alabama to try to establish what Bill Moore, at the cost of his life, had failed to establish—the right to walk safely on a public highway—a cordon of federal marshals should have surrounded them. And when Alabama Safety Director Al Lingo showed up with his electric prod poles and guns, he should have been taken immediately into federal custody.
The burden of legal proof needs to be borne by the segregationists, and this has not yet been done. Any good lawyer knows that the advantage is in the hands of the man who moves first, that delay and bureaucracy and legal complications all work against those who are trying to undo an action. Yet the civil rights movement, which cannot help it, and the Justice Department, which can, have been on the defensive.
The needed initiative is not likely to come from a government whose dedication to racial equality is as circumspect as that of the Kennedy brothers. It took a series of explosive crises throughout the nation to force from them words of moral concern that became part of the Constitution a hundred years ago. It took something close to a revolution to bring forth a moderate civil rights bill, which will be further moderated by Congress, and by segregationist federal judges, and by a cautious Justice Department.
Basic changes are needed in the social structure of the nation before meaningful racial equality can be established. But in the Deep South, a prerequisite for such changes is the establishment of the right to vote, to organize, to speak, write and assemble freely and without fear of violence. That requires a radical new use of initiative and power by the national government. And because the Administration—and inherently, any administration—lacks the internal motivation for such a seizure of initiative, it will have to be prodded by the increased use of nonviolent direct action.
Right now, those who see this most clearly, feel it most intensely, and are best prepared to move on it, are the young people in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Posted on October 5, 1963 by Howard Zinn
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber
LAWFUL REBELLION STAND FOR WHAT IS RIGHT "There is no way to peace, peace is the way."
The Campaign to Blame Putin for Everything
The Campaign to Blame Putin for Everything
Hardly a day goes by without some “news” about the Russian “threat,” and in the past twenty-four hours the hate-on-Russia campaign seems to have picked up speed. After learning from Hillary Clinton that Vladimir Putin is not only responsible for the Trump campaign, but also for the “global nationalist movement” that yanked the British out of the European Union, mainstream media are telling us that Russian interlopers are supposedly invading our electoral process by hacking into voter databases. The Washington Post “reports”:https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-is-investigating-foreign-hacks-of-state-election-systems/2016/08/29/6e758ff4-6e00-11e6-8365-b19e428a975e_story.html
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/08/28/clintons-crazy-conspiracy-theory/
“Hackers targeted voter registration systems in Illinois and Arizona, and the FBI alerted Arizona officials in June that Russian hackers were behind the assault on the election system in that state.
“The bureau told Arizona officials that the threat was ‘credible’ and severe, ranking as ‘an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10,’ said Matt Roberts, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office.
“As a result, Secretary of State Michele Reagan shut down the state voter registration system for almost a week.”
So the Russkies are invading the American polity, launching a cybernetic assault on the very basis of our democracy? Really? Well, no, as becomes apparent when the reader gets down in the weeds and exercises his critical faculties, if such exist. Because by the time we arrive at paragraph five of this “news” story, we learn that:
“It turned out that the hackers did not succeed in compromising the state system or even any county system, but rather had managed to steal the user name and password for one Gila County elections official.”
Oh, but never mind that nothing much happened and no data was altered, because:
“Nonetheless, the revelation comes amid news that the FBI is investigating suspected foreign hacks of state election computer systems, and earlier this month warned states to be on the alert for intrusions.”
“Russian” hackers have now been magically transformed into “suspected foreign hacks”: we aren’t supposed to notice this shift in attribution because, after all, the FBI is supposedly putting its imprimatur on this conspiracy theory. Except they aren’t: nowhere in the story does the FBI confirm that the Russians or any foreign actors are behind this.
In Illinois, election officials – who just happen to be Democrats – report a similarly minor intrusion, which one Kyle Thomas, director of voting and registration systems for the State Board of Elections, describes as “a highly sophisticated attack most likely from a foreign (international) entity.” How does he know that? Well, he doesn’t. As we read on, we are told that “The bureau has told Illinois officials that they’re looking at possible foreign government agencies as well as criminal hackers.”
In other words, it could’ve been a couple of teenagers sitting in a cyber-café in Shanghai.
Is there a shred of evidence the Russians were behind any of this, as reporter Ellen Nakashima states in her opening paragraph? The answer to that question is an unequivocal no.
The same day the Washington Post story appeared yet another act of Russian aggression on American soil was revealed to a breathless world: Russian “state actors” have hacked into a number of unnamed Washington thinktanks! The story appeared in “Defense One,” a web site that caters to “insiders” in the national security bureaucracy and their corporate cronies. In an “exclusive,” they claim:
“Last week, one of the Russia-backed hacker groups that attacked Democratic computer networks also attacked several Russia-focused think tanks in Washington, D.C., Defense One has learned.
“The perpetrator is the group called COZY BEAR, or APT29, one of the two groups that cybersecurity company CrowdStrike blamed for the DNC hack, according to founder Dmitri Alperovitch. CrowdStrike discovered the attack on the DNC and provides security for the think tanks.”https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/
So the same company paid by the Democratic National Committee to echo the party line on the DNC hacks is now telling us that they know the Russians are behind this alleged hack. And yet, as cyber-security expert Jeffrey Carr points out here, there is no way CrowdStrike (or anybody else) could definitively point to Russian “state actors” as the culprits in this or any other case: that’s because the procedure they use in “tracing” a hack is inherently subjective, what Carr calls “faith-based attribution.”
Technical analysis of code and the software utilized by the hackers is less than helpful in identifying hackers: if Chinese characters are found in code, well then you’ve been hacked by the People’s Liberation Army. If Russian characters are discovered, well then it’s Putin’s spies. Except this is nonsense: as Carr explains it, if a Kalashnikov is used in a murder, does that mean the murderer is a Russian? Well, uh, no – and no one would ever make that assumption. And yet this is precisely the sort of “analysis” we’re getting from the hucksters who infest the “cyber-security” industry. In short,the “scientific” analysis marketed by these companies is based on assumptions that cannot be objectively verified.
These companies would like their customers to believe that their conclusions are based on science, but as Carr points out:
“It’s important to know that the process of attributing an attack by a cybersecurity company has nothing to do with the scientific method. Claims of attribution aren’t testable or repeatable because the hypothesis is never proven right or wrong.
“When looking at professions who use an investigative process to determine a true and accurate answer, the closest profession to the attribution estimate of a cyber intelligence analyst is that of a religious office like a priest or a minister, who simply asks their congregation to believe what they say on faith. The likelihood that a nation state will acknowledge that a cybersecurity company has correctly identified one of their operations is probably slightly less likely than God making an appearance at the venue where a theological debate is underway about whether God exists.”
If you look at the “analysis” done by those who attribute the DNC hack to Russian state actors, a pattern of confirmation bias emerges, as Carr shows:
“On June 15, 2016, CrowdStrike’s co-founder and CTO Dmitri Alperovich announced in a blog post that two Russian hacker groups were responsible for the DNC breach: Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear; and that both hacker groups worked for competing Russian intelligence services.
“Other cybersecurity companies including FireEye, Kaspersky Lab, ESET, TrendMicro, Microsoft, iSight Partners, and AlienLab have made similar claims of attribution to the Russian government. The question that this article seeks to answer is, are those claims grounded in evidence or guesswork?
“I chose to look at Fancy Bear (APT28 in FireEye’s ecosystem). The most comprehensive report on that threat actor was written by FireEye and released last October, 2014 so I started with that. To my surprise, the report’s authors declared that they deliberately excluded evidence that didn’t support their judgment that the Russian government was responsible for APT28’s activities: ‘APT28 has targeted a variety of organizations that fall outside of the three themes we highlighted above. However, we are not profiling all of APT28’s targets with the same detail because they are not particularly indicative of a specific sponsor’s interests.’ (emphasis added)
“That is the very definition of confirmation bias. Had FireEye published a detailed picture of APT28’s activities including all of their known targets, other theories regarding this group could have emerged; for example, that the malware developers and the operators of that malware were not the same or even necessarily affiliated.”
What we are dealing with here is an industry – “cyber-security” – that has a vested interest in promoting the idea that its methodology is “scientific,’ and that it can provide answers to its paying customers who want to know for sure who hacked their computer systems. It wouldn’t do to tell them that no definitive answers are possible, and that any attribution procedure is necessarily based on a whole range of assumptions that are not objectively verifiable. That wouldn’t do much to improve their profit margins. So they market themselves as “scientists” who have all the answers, when, in fact, they have no answers.
This is how a corporate scam turns into a political scam. Reporters looking for “experts” to verify what they already believe, and government officials and partisan players who have a similar agenda, are all too willing to suspend disbelief. A combination of technical ignorance, laziness, and extreme bias produces the kind of “journalism” that is fueling the campaign to attribute every case of hacking to the Russians.
In the case of these mostly unnamed “Russia-focused” thinktanks, the bias is inherent in their ideologically-driven orientation. One alleged victim is named, however, the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Their Senior Vice President, one James Andrew Lewis, boasted:
“It’s like a badge of honor – any respectable think tank has been hacked. The Russians just don’t get the idea of independent institutions, so they are looking for secret instructions from Obama. Another benefit is they can go to their bosses and show what they took to prove their worth as spies.”
Lewis is naturally eager to pin himself and his employer with that “badge of honor,” as well as to imbue CSIS with the penumbra of “respectability.” And as for actual evidence that the Russians are responsible for this, Lewis couldn’t care less. In a piece on the DNC hacks, he avers:https://www.csis.org/analysis/russia-and-dnc-hacks
“Wrangling over evidentiary standards misses the point. The rules for great power politics are not the same as the rules for a court, if a country wants to remain a great power. This is politics, not jurisprudence.”
The rules of logic, let alone legal standards of proof, don’t apply to Lewis and his confreres in the national security Establishment. After all, he writes, “it is far too late to reverse this story. Both private and government sources attribute the hacking to Russia.” These are the same sources, I might point out, who assured us that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction” – and who now exhibit same disregard for truth that resulted in that infamous “intelligence failure.” The reality is that, for Lewis and the grandees of the national security state, there is no truth, because “this is politics, not jurisprudence.”
Oh, those rascally Russkies are everywhere! According to our news media, they are not only responsible for the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, but Putin’s spies have also gotten their mitts on the computer files of the Clinton Foundation. The same evidence-free rationale – promulgated by the same “cyber-security” companies in the pay of the Democrats – is utilized to validate this latest claim. And indeed a Bloomberg piece on the alleged hack informs us that
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-22/clinton-foundation-said-to-be-breached-by-russian-hackers
“If the Democrats can show the hidden hand of Russian intelligence agencies, they believe that voter outrage will probably outweigh any embarrassing revelations, a person familiar with the party’s thinking said.”
Deny, deflect, distract – that’s Hillary’s strategy. With a compliant media in tow, so far it seems to be working, at least to the extent that Russian hackers are now generally accepted as a veritable arm of the Trump campaign – when, in fact, there is absolutely zero evidence that Russian state actors are involved in any way. We haven’t seen this level of deception since the ginned up “evidence” of Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction.”
This entire conspiracy theory is based on a much broader one, which has been pushed by a number of groups with a vehemently anti-Russian cold war agenda. The Legatum Institute, headquartered in Britain, as well as the usual neoconservative suspects in this country, have long maintained that the Russians, while militarily and economically weak, have turned to “information warfare” as their primary instrument of “aggression.” Legatum has been pushing for a government-subsidized “anti-disinformation” agency to combat this new “threat,” as well as urging outright censorship of Russian state-subsidized networks such as “Russia Today” and “Sputnik.” So who are these folks? Legatum is the creature of one Christopher Chandler, a billionaire investor aptly described by investigative reporter Mark Ames:
http://www.li.com/events/the-menace-of-unreality-combatting-russian-disinformation-in-the-21st-century
https://pando.com/2015/05/17/neocons-2-0-the-problem-with-peter-pomerantsev/
“The Chandler brothers reportedly were the single biggest foreign beneficiaries of one of the greatest privatization scams in history: Russia’s voucher program in the early 1990s, when each Russian citizen was given a voucher that represented a share in a state concern to be privatized . . . and most naive Russians were fooled or coerced into dumping their vouchers for next to nothing, snapped up by clever vulture capitalists and factory directors from the inside. Institutional Investor magazine described how the Chandlers benefited by snapping up Russians’ vouchers and converting them into stakes in some of the largest and most lucrative companies in the world.”
When Putin took over from the corrupt and perpetually drunk Boris Yeltsin, the Chandlers’ game was over. As Ames puts it, with characteristic wit: “Putin’s cronies don’t need them; they replaced them and pocketed the money for themselves. Therefore, Russia is a threat to western civilization.”
The Legatum thesis, backed by Chandler’s billions, has gained momentum with journalists in this country, and flies in tandem with the “blame Putin” meme that now accompanies news of every hacking incident. We are told that a Russian “disinformation” campaign is spreading “false stories” designed to “sow discord” and causing people to question the policies favored by their leaders, such as whether Sweden ought to join NATO.
As New York Times reporter Neil MacFarquahar put it in a “news” story about this latest example of Putin’s perfidy, the Russian President has “invested heavily in a program of ‘weaponized’ information, using a variety of means to sow doubt and division. The goal is to weaken cohesion among member states, [and] stir discord in their domestic politics.” Notice the phraseology: information is now a “weapon,” the dissemination of which is an act of “aggression.”
In other words, if you question the utility of NATO – now that the Soviet Union has been dead and gone for some thirty years – you’re the functional equivalent of a Russian spook. Are you seeking to “sow discord”? Well, then, you must be an agent of the FSB, the successor to the Soviet KGB. The strategy of guilt by association – so integral to the Clinton campaign’s tactics in this election – is on full display in the MacFarquahar piece:
“Tracing individual strands of disinformation is difficult, but in Sweden and elsewhere, experts have detected a characteristic pattern that they tie to Kremlin-generated disinformation campaigns.
"’The dynamic is always the same: It originates somewhere in Russia, on Russia state media sites, or different websites or somewhere in that kind of context,’ said Anders Lindberg, a Swedish journalist and lawyer.
"’Then the fake document becomes the source of a news story distributed on far-left or far-right-wing websites,’ he said. ‘Those who rely on those sites for news link to the story, and it spreads. Nobody can say where they come from, but they end up as key issues in a security policy decision.’"
“Fake document”? What “fake document”? You can see how the framework for denying the authenticity of embarrassing documents unearthed by WikiLeaks is being built up by Hillary’s journalistic camarilla. And of course those evil “far left’ and “far right” web sites – gee, I wonder which category Antiwar.com falls under! – are also Moscow’s pawns, and therefore not credible.https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-putin-sponsored-october-surprise/2016/08/29/d7f21d16-6e33-11e6-9705-23e51a2f424d_story.html
It’s all so transparent, and yet with practically every “mainstream” media outlet echoing the same conspiracy theory, the effect is self-reinforcing. This is how fiction becomes “fact.”
What we are seeing in this election season is a propaganda campaign the likes of which we haven’t experienced since the run up to the Iraq war. We are being buried in a veritable shit-storm of lies on a daily basis. Except that, this time, the target isn’t some third-rate Third World despot like Saddam Hussein, nor it is really Donald Trump, whose electoral prospects were never that great to begin with. Trump is just collateral damage – the real quarry is Vladimir Putin.
In concert with a bevy of exiled Russian oligarchs and Western “investors” who plundered Yeltsin-era Russia and were cut off from their orgy of lucrative looting by Putin, the historically Russophobic Clintons and their newfound neoconservative allies dream of regime change in Russia. The vast oil and mineral wealth to be found in Russia’s central Asian provinces and “near abroad,” is a tempting target for those who habitually combine profiteering with politics. The Clintons and their crony capitalist corporate benefactors are drooling at the prospect of looting a prostrate Russia, and Putin stands in their way. Therefore, he must go – and if they have to risk World War III in order to accomplish their goal, well then so be it.https://theintercept.com/2016/07/25/robert-kagan-and-other-neocons-back-hillary-clinton/
Greed and politics are pushing us to the brink of an all-out conflict with nuclear-armed Russia. It’s an old story, but true.
We here at Antiwar.com are doing our best to debunk this nonsensical – and dangerous – “blame Putin for everything” meme. But we can’t do it without your help – your financial help.
We don’t have billionaires with an agenda subsidizing this site: we don’t have the big military contractors, who are ecstatic at this sudden eruption of Russophobia, donating millions to Antiwar.com – of course we don’t! We just have you – ordinary Americans who care about the future of this country, and don’t want to see it dragged into foreign wars for the benefit of fat-cat globalists and their bought-and-paid for politicians.
By Justin Raimondo
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber
LAWFUL REBELLION STAND FOR WHAT IS RIGHT "There is no way to peace, peace is the way."
Are You a Mind-Controlled CIA Stooge?
Are You a Mind-Controlled CIA Stooge?
Do you smirk when you hear someone question the official stories of Orlando, San Bernardino, Paris or Nice? Do you feel superior to 2,500 architects and engineers, to firefighters, commercial and military pilots, physicists and chemists, and former high government officials who have raised doubts about 9/11? If so, you reflect the profile of a mind-controlled CIA stooge.
The term “conspiracy theory” was invented and put into public discourse by the CIA in 1964 in order to discredit the many skeptics who challenged the Warren Commission’s conclusion that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald, who himself was assassinated while in police custody before he could be questioned. The CIA used its friends in the media to launch a campaign to make suspicion of the Warren Commission report a target of ridicule and hostility. This campaign was “one of the most successful propaganda initiatives of all time.”
So writes political science professor Lance deHaven-Smith, who in his peer-reviewed book, Conspiracy Theory in America, published by the University of Texas Press, tells the story of how the CIA succeeded in creating in the public mind reflexive, automatic, stigmatization of those who challenge government explanations. This is an extremely important and readable book, one of those rare books with the power to break you out of The Matrix.
Professor deHaven-Smith is able to write this book because of the original CIA Dispatch #1035-960, which sets out the CIA plot, was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Apparently, the bureaucracy did not regard a document this old as being of any importance. The document is marked “Destroy when no longer needed,” but somehow wasn’t. CIA Dispatch #1035-960 is reproduced in the book.
The success that the CIA has had in stigmatizing skepticism of government explanations has made it difficult to investigate State Crimes Against Democracy (SCAD) such as 9/11. With the public mind programmed to ridicule “conspiracy kooks,” even in the case of suspicious events such as 9/11 the government can destroy evidence, ignore prescribed procedures, delay an investigation, and then form a political committee to put its imprimatur on the official story. Professor deHaven-Smith notes that in such events as Kennedy’s assassination and 9/11 official police and prosecutorial investigations are never employed. The event is handed off to a political commission.
Professor deHaven-Smith’s book supports what I have told my readers: the government controls the story from the beginning by having the official explanation ready the moment a SCAD occurs. This makes any other explanation a “conspiracy theory.” This is the way Professor deHaven-Smith puts it:
“A SCAD approach to memes assumes further that the CIA and other possibly participating agencies are formulating memes well in advance of operations, and therefore SCAD memes appear and are popularized very quickly before any competing concepts are on the scene.”
The CIA’s success in controlling public perception of what our Founding Fathers would have regarded as suspicious events involving the government enables those in power positions within government to orchestrate events that serve hidden agendas. The events of September 11 created the new paradigm of endless war on behalf of a Washington-dominated world. The CIA’s success in controlling public perceptions has made it impossible to investigate elite political crimes. Consequently, it is now possible for treason to be official US government policy.
Professor deHaven-Smith’s book will tell you the story of the assassination of President Kennedy by elements of the US military, CIA, and Secret Service. Just as the Warren Commission covered up the State Crime Against Democracy, Professor deHaven-Smith shows why we should doubt the official 9/11 story. And anything else that the government tells us.
Read this book. It is short. It is affordable. It is reality preparation. It will inoculate you against being a dumbshit, insouciant, brainwashed American. I am surprised that the CIA has not purchased the entire print run and burned the books. Perhaps the CIA feels secure from its success in brainwashing the public and does not believe that American democracy and accountable government can be restored.
Dear Millennials: If You Want to Escape Minimum Wage Debt-Serfdom...
Dear Millennials: If You Want to Escape Minimum Wage Debt-Serfdom...
Those without value-creating human/social capital will be mired in a low/minimum wage environment that will make it difficult to escape debt-serfdom.
Let's start with the sobering reality that the Millennial generation faces economic challenges that are unique to this era: sky-high student loan debt, soaring costs for basics such as rent and healthcare, a stagnant neofeudal crony-cartel economy and an intellectually bankrupt status quo in thrall to failed ideologies: Keynesian Cargo Cult central banking, outdated models of capital and labor and an unthinking worship of debt-funded centralization as the "solution" to all social and economic ills.
The potential solutions are also unique to this era. Never before has humankind had such a wealth of revolutionary decentralizing technologies: nearly friction-free peer-to-peer networks and commerce, decentralized cryptocurrencies and the expansion of what my friend G.F.B. describes as neo-tribalism: opt-in communities that are not bound to geography or central-state imposed identities.
Many smart, well-informed people see massive government stimulus using borrowed money as the "solution" to Millennial impoverishment and under-employment--in other words, more debt-funded centralization.
The idea here is that such debt-funded stimulus will employ millions of Millennials to rebuild America's crumbling infrastructure.
While we all understand the appeal of this proposal, those proposing it have little experience in actually building or repairing infrastructure. The assumption that such massive public spending will create millions of jobs is never examined closely, nor is the impact of adding trillions of dollars in additional public debt considered.
What such schemes boil down to is: Millenials are supposed to borrow trillions from their future earnings and their children's earnings to fund a few years of employment.
But what happens after the bridges get repaired and the homeless housing gets built? In the conventional fantasy, the economy magically moves into a self-sustaining growth cycle because those construction workers will be buying more coffee at Starbucks, more lunches at Mickey D's, and so on.
But the cold reality is: once the money has been spent, those jobs go away. Once the bridge has been repaired with public money, the workers are laid off because there is no private-sector funding for more bridges or homeless housing, etc. Once the construction workers are laid off, sales at coffee shops and fast-food outlets fall back to pre-stimulus levels.
The surge in employment fades as soon as the funding dries up. Additionally, there is little productivity gain from the infrastructure spending: the repaired bridge performs the same service as the aging bridge.
The problem is this: after the government funding dries up, we still have a corrupt crony-cartel economy based on predatory privilege, parasitic rackets and central-state enforced fraud. In other words, we still have an economy that strangles productivity that could benefit the many in order to further enrich the few.
And as Gail Tverberg and Art Berman have explained, we have an economy that is facing lower energy consumption per capita (per person)--even if oil prices remain around $40/barrel.
Oil Prices Lower Forever? Hard Times In A Failing Global Economy
An Updated Version of the “Peak Oil” Story
Central state stimulus funded by debt only creates a brief illusion of prosperity; it changes nothing in our broken system. All it does is burden a heavily indebted generation with more debt--a generation that cannot afford to consume more because so much of their income is already devoted to debt service.
The other fly in the ointment is this sort of spending doesn't create as many jobs as the uninformed assume. If you stop and look at a bridge being repaired, you'll note the crew is small--in many cases, a half-dozen or less. The same is true of road resurfacing crews and other infrastructure repair work.
You'll also notice the crew has skills that take years to acquire: operating a crane, welding, etc. The unskilled are limited to waving the traffic-control flags.
The same is true of new construction. If you count the workers erecting large new residential buildings, you'll note a few dozen workers on site--and the buildings are finished in a matter of months.
Since on-site construction labor has been more expensive than factory labor for decades, construction fabrication has been pushed to the factory. Beams, walls and other components are assembled at the factory, where wages typically remain between $15 and $20/hour. These components are shipped to the site and assembled by small crews of skilled workers.
Much of the expense in construction is now in the financing (private or public, the interest payments and bond sales fees constitute a large percentage of total construction costs), permits/fees and materials. The actual labor component of major construction/repair work is relatively modest.
It makes no financial sense to hire people with little experience for high-skill tasks. What makes sense is to increase the hours of the experienced workers the contractor already employs. What is the payoff for a contractor to spend three years training neophytes to become productive? That only makes sense if you can keep the trained worker, and the intermittent nature of construction work means your workforce shrinks when demand falls. The worker you trained goes off to work for somebody else.
The beneficiaries of infrastructure stimulus will be workers that already have the requisite skills and experience--Gen X and those Millennials who have completed formal or informal apprenticeships.
But even these workers have to look beyond the few years of infrastructure stimulus, and acquire whatever skills the private sector will need.
As I explain in my book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy, whatever is abundant has little scarcity value: that includes unskilled labor and credentials such as college degrees.
What's scarce are value-creating skillsets, most of which are path-dependent, i.e. they must be accumulated over years of work experience.
What creates value? The ability to solve problems and increase productivity.
If you want to know why the economy and Millennial prospects are both stagnating, just look at productivity--it's tanking:
the line between labor and capital is becoming blurred. Capital is increasingly intangible: the most productive forms of capital are human, social and intellectual--the knowledge, experience and networks acquired by people.
In contrast, the return on money--a traditional form of capital--is near-zero.
Owning a credential is not the same as owning skills. If we think of human/social capital as an asset, then we see a new line between labor and capital: labor is low-skilled labor with little scarcity value, and capital is high-skilled human/social capital.
Those without value-creating human/social capital will be mired in a low-wage/minimum wage environment that will make it difficult to escape debt-serfdom. To understand why human/social capital is the most important form of capital, we must understand that this capital asset is fundamentally an enterprise.
If we look at what wealthy households own, we note they own enterprises. This is not a coincidence, as wealth is generated by value-creating enterprises.
If you want to escape Minimum Wage Debt-Serfdom, start by developing skills that create value by solving problems and increasing productivity, which is another way of saying doing more with less.
Understand that your human/social capital is fundamentally an enterprise that you own and manage. Taking ownership of your capital and managing that asset as an enterprise is the first step to escaping stagnation.
The Biggest Landowners of the United States
The Biggest Landowners of the United States
The United States of America may be a vast country, but it appears that huge swathes of its land are in fact owned by a relatively small number of people.
So who are these ‘land barons’ exactly? Let’s take a look.
1 King family
The King dynasty has owned huge stretches of land in Texas for over 150 years, as Richard King began purchasing it in 1853 and kept expanding his holdings all the way until his death in 1885. Today, the King Ranch is the biggest in Texas, comprising 825,000 acres of land covering six of the state’s counties.
2 Brad Kelley
Billionaire tobacco tycoon Brad Kelley owns a considerable number of holdings in New Mexico, Texas, Wyoming and Colorado. He bought his first when he was 17, right after graduating from high school, though apparently he never originally intended to become a land magnate.
3 Emmerson family
Huge swathes of land and forests of California belong to the Emmerson family, making Archie Aldis Emmerson the biggest private landowner in the state. And even though the Emmersons own one of the largest logging companies in the country, Sierra Pacific Industries, they also take great care to protect the environment and constantly plant new trees in place of those that they cut down.
4 Ted Turner
When Ted Turner was ten, he was brought to court for poaching squirrels on his neighbor’s property. After this ordeal, the man who would eventually become the founder of CNN promised himself that he’ll earn so much money he’d be able to buy his own place to hunt and fish. Now, as one of the biggest landowners in the US, it seems that he more than fulfilled that promise.
5 John Malone
John Malone, the founder of the Liberty Media Corporation, is probably the biggest landowner in the entire United States. The total acreage of his holdings is 150 times the size of Manhattan and three times the size of Rhode Island.
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber
LAWFUL REBELLION STAND FOR WHAT IS RIGHT "There is no way to peace, peace is the way."
Patriotism
Patriotism
The 2016 UEFA European Championship: I was struck with the team from Iceland. This team made it to the quarterfinals, finally losing to host nation France. Iceland has a population of some 330,000 people. It was reported that up to ten percent of the island’s population were attending the team’s matches in France. When the team returned to Iceland from their eventual defeat to France, they were greeted by what seemed to be the entire population of the island.
A real feel-good story. Which caused me to reflect: why feel good about this display of national pride?
I suspect every person in Iceland has not more than one or two people in between them and a player on the team. A community, happily cheering for people with whom there is a personal connection; like cheering for your child, your cousin, or your friend from the gymnasium.
In other words, a nation in the healthiest sense of the word. Unfortunately, there are not too many countries that offer such a possibility: decentralization to the point where the nation, country, and state correspond much closer to natural relationships.
Pathological
Today’s example is to be found in American football: American football – like most American sports – cannot be separated from the military. Every game includes some honor or another to or regarding the military: from a presentation to a “wounded warrior,” to a flyover, to the home team wearing camouflage-style jerseys. People cheer louder for the military and for flag worship than they do for a touchdown.
An American football player decides not to stand for the national anthem. He has apparently done this before, but it is only now news. The reaction was (only verbally, so far) violent: how dare he disrespect the troops! Except he didn’t. His protest was against the treatment of minorities in America; he could not stand for the anthem or flag of such a country. But to the masses, “nation” (as represented by the anthem) equals military and state. This player disrespected the troops, no matter what he says.
The semi-thoughtful commentators (as opposed to the totally ignorant) were able to process this distinction: “thank God he didn’t disrespect the troops.” Translations: it is OK to protest over an SJW cause, “just don’t protest about the troops”; “they fight and die for us to have the freedom to protest.” This passed for thoughtful commentary.
The even more thoughtful offered: if we cannot remain seated for the anthem, what does that say about America. Totalitarian governments demand such things, not us!
Let’s see if they say such things when someone refuses to stand for the troops. Because protesting regarding the police treatment of dark-skinned people in the US is acceptable; protesting regarding the US military treatment of dark-skinned people in other countries…well…we know the answer.
As one talking mouthpiece said: “I don’t know a single person who doesn’t support the troops.” To which I say, move to Iraq, Syria, Libya, or Afghanistan. See how you feel about it then.
Or, stop by here,https://www.lewrockwell.com/ here,http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/ and here,http://www.antiwar.com/ once a day: it will be physically much safer, but intellectually and emotionally crushing.
Conclusion
Iceland. Given the size and relative cohesiveness of the population, one place where I envision the possibility of country, nationalism, and state reasonably co-existing: a possibility for healthy, all-encompassing patriotism.
In a place like the United States? Patriotism equals a sickly self-identification with international murderers and criminals; it also means crucifixion for those who don’t go along. Pathological.
By Bionic Mosquito
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber
LAWFUL REBELLION STAND FOR WHAT IS RIGHT "There is no way to peace, peace is the way."
Who Runs America? The Truth About The Secret Government & Why Your Vote Doesn’t Matter
Who Runs America? The Truth About The Secret Government & Why Your Vote Doesn’t Matter
As the world, are we thriving at our best? The question may seem comical. Of course, it depends on how you look at it. There is our day-to-day happiness, living in the moment, and feeling fulfilled by our home, our job, our loved ones, our environment. Then there is the deep-rooted issue of feeling like we are not thriving as the world, because there are obstacles we simply cannot overcome.
I was sitting on the beach the other day, staring out at the vast ocean, and asked myself, do I feel free? At first, I thought, well, yes. Despite government control, in my own little world, I am happy, and do not feel chained to an idea, a person, and so on. But then I wondered if perhaps I am just brainwashed.
Foster Gamble of Thrive answers in a way that both alarms me and causes me to open my eyes:
http://www.thrivemovement.com/the_problem-gda
“…my research revealed that a small group of financial elite have gained control over key areas of our lives – energy, food, health care, education and more – and are the single greatest threat to humanity’s ability to thrive.”
The financial elite who govern us do so out of greed, not for a better world, a better America, but for heavy pockets and incredible power. A study conducted by two political science professors suggests ordinary Americans have virtually no impact on the making of national policy. So who runs America? Rich individuals and business-controlled interest groups.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/civil-rights/214857-who-rules-america
In the throes of political upheaval, there is so much discussion about what should have been, could have been, and what will be. It is a confusing and controversial time in the U.S. When voters put Barack Obama in office, they anticipated big changes. Obama sought to defend civil liberties and privacy, yet many questions how Obama’s version of national security is that much different than the one he inherited.
“His 2007 speech has become a cautionary tale of the gulf between powerful campaign rhetoric and reality,” noted CNN. So while the president lets down the country, and we are left to believe in his wrongdoings, the reality is, he couldn’t have pulled through in the first place.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/10/politics/obama-eight-years-later/
“Guantanamo Bay remains open. The NSA has, if anything, become more aggressive in monitoring Americans. Drone strikes have escalated. Most recently it was reported that the same president who won a Nobel Prize in part for promoting nuclear disarmament is spending up to $1 trillion modernizing and revitalizing America’s nuclear weapons,” notes a 2014 article from The Boston Globe.https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/10/18/vote-all-you-want-the-secret-government-won-change/jVSkXrENQlu8vNcBfMn9sL/story.html
This isn’t really a discussion about what was accomplished or not with Obama in office, however. That’s just a small part of a much bigger issue. Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon backs up this idea that Obama couldn’t have changed policies much even if he tried. As Americans, we are told we can steer our own government by electing new officials, but the truth of the matter is we are victims of a “double government.” There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, in which a disturbing amount of policy goes unchecked.
For instance, Glennon points outs out Obama and his team’s shock and dismay upon discovering that the military gave them only two options for the war in Afghanistan once he arrived in office: The United States could add more troops, or they could add a lot more troops. So while Obama fans became angered to find that he had opted for adding 30,000 more troops, the reality is, he had no choice.https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/10/18/vote-all-you-want-the-secret-government-won-change/jVSkXrENQlu8vNcBfMn9sL/story.html
It’s hard to swallow the pill that a “secret government” truly governs us, making us mere puppets in their play, but there are far too many examples of such a theory for it to be overlooked.
Take a look at the National Security Agency (NSA) for instance. Founded in 1952, its existence was kept secret from the public until the mid-1960s. And even more disturbing is the National Reconnaissance Office. Founded in 1960, it remained a secret for 30 years before it was officially revealed by Edward Snowden a few years ago.http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/09/15/10-presidents-politicians-who-told-us-that-a-secret-government-controls-the-world-what-they-said/
There are a plethora of political individuals who have discussed this secrecy as well. John F. Hylan, for example, was Mayor of New York City from 1918-1925, and has been famously quoted as saying:
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F07EED6153AEF33A25753C1A9649D946395D6CF
“The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation … The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties … [and] control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen [and] seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection.”
And in times like today, with WikiLeaks blowing the lid on the many lies within the U.S. government, it’s hard not to feel even more tricked, even more out of control of our lives than ever before. Bernie Sanders said from the beginning that he was essentially being bullied by the DNC, yet it wasn’t until the first “Hillary Leaks” that we have come to find out just how real and serious, and, more than anything, how rigged the political game really is. It’s not about fairness. It’s about money, and so a hidden agenda sweeps us all off our feet and continues to take control.
So the question remains, and is more pertinent now than ever before: How can we truly believe we are living in a “democracy” when presidents don’t even have enough power to significantly change anything?
Are we really free? Or have we been conditioned to believe we are? Corporations and mainstream media have us glued to our TV screens, searching for answers, searching for promises that can never be kept. Living as the puppets we are, we’ve become distracted from the truth, our attention diverted to what we want to hear as opposed to what we need to hear.
Go ahead and argue over who should be president, and go ahead and be angry or excited over the president that does get elected. But just know that you are wasting your breath on this very surface idea.
If we want real change, we have to look within, we have to look to ourselves. We can’t keep putting our faith and tasking our ‘leaders’ with the task of changing this world. The first step is awareness, and it’s happening faster and faster. More people are starting to become aware of what’s really happening on our planet. The next step is action, and we are just starting as a collective to take various action steps. The future really is brighter than ever, it’s always darkest before the dawn.
By Alexa Erickson
Collective Evolution
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber
LAWFUL REBELLION STAND FOR WHAT IS RIGHT "There is no way to peace, peace is the way."
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