'Israelis, Saudis' Behind Iran Terror Plot: Former CIA Operative

"The Congress is crazy for war with Iran” and some U.S. Senators like Joe Lieberman and John McCain “are owned by the Israelis". . . Continue

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Obama Sends 100 Troops to Fight Ugandan Rebels

By BNO

In a letter to Congress, Obama informed that in the next months further U.S. troops will be shipped out to other African countries as well, including South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Continue

From The Archives
Fresh Uganda Oil Find ‘Africa’s Biggest’

By The Times

Paul Atherton, chief financial officer, told The Times that the wider field it was developing, dubbed Buffalo-Giraffe, had several “billions of barrels of oil in place” Continue

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Israel and Libya:
Preparing Africa for the “Clash of Civilizations”

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

The Yinon Plan, is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the balkanization of the Middle Eastern and Arab states into smaller and weaker states. Continue

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"Where is the U.S.-Iran Confrontation Headed?"
Obama Doubles Down

By Stephen M. Walt

It looks like the Administration is making a concerted campaign to ratchet up the pressure on Tehran. Countries like Britain, Saudi Arabia and France are going along with that program, and no doubt Israel is happy to see this development too. Continue

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Is It Immoral to Vote for Obama?

By MIKE WHITNEY

How can anyone cast a ballot for a man who they know will continue to kill people in other countries merely to advance US policy objectives? That’s the question people need to ask themselves. Continue

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A Brief Message for Humanity:
We Want to be Free!

By Andrew Gavin Marshall

Can you hear it? Taste it? Smell it? See it? Touch it? … Can you feel it? The people of the world are waking up, rising up, acting up. Continue

Live Revolution
#OccupyWallStreet Live From Around the World

- Live Video -

All Occupy Wall Street Streams and IRC.

Click to view

John Pilger - Civil Disobedience Is The Only Way Now

Video

Award winning journalist John Pilger
speaks at antiwar demonstration to commemorate 10 years of the war in Afghanistan - Trafalgar Square, London - 08/10/11

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytC6oxf4SnI&feature=player_embedded

"The war on Afghanistan was a fraud right from the beginning, just as the attack on Iraq was a fraud and the invasion of Libya is a fraud."

Stop The Machine Occupies Washington

By Stephen Lendman

October 08, 2011 "October 08, 2011 "Information Clearing House"" --

On October 6, thousands massed in Washington on the 10th anniversary of America's illegal Afghan war against a nonbelligerent country.

Years ago it was lost. Nonetheless, it continues without end. The business of America is war, permanent wars, multiple ones. One nation after another is plundered for wealth and power while homeland needs go begging.

US duopoly power spurns human and civil rights, rule of law principles, and democratic values. Long ago they were abandoned to advance Washington's imperium globally.

Allied with America's military/industrial profiteers, Wall Street runs America. Political Washington serves them. Public needs are increasingly shut out.

The criminal class in Washington is bipartisan. Every new administration and Congress exceed the worst of previous ones. America's heading straight downhill.

Political Washington is corrupted, broken, and unfixable. Thomas Jefferson wrote in America's Declaration of Independence:

"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government..."

That time is now! Change never comes top down, only bottom up by committed people demanding no less.

Fed up Americans across the country want long denied social justice. Slogans like "Banks Got Bailed Out! We Got Sold Out!" are chanted.

Occupy Together.org said "meetups" were established in 761 cities and towns.

They're heading everywhere, despite enormous obstacles confronting them. Corporate money wants them co-opted. Corrupt union bosses and political insiders are involved.

Committed leaders city by city aren't evident. Neither is focus on what matters most. Without it cosmetic changes only are possible.

Issue one is money power in private hands to make more of it. Political Washington gave bankers control for private enrichment. Wall Street crooks took full advantage, transforming America into an unprecedented money making racket.

Working Americans got scammed. They've lost their savings, jobs, homes and futures so privileged elites can get richer and more powerful.

Transforming America depends on returning money power to public hands, according to the Constitution's Article 1, Section 8, giving people through Congress sole control.

Not Goldman Sachs. Not JP MorganChase. Not Bank of America or other Wall Street giants, running America like a wholly owned subsidiary. Taking full advantage, they exploit people for profit, bribing public officials to go along.

They willingly grab all they can, getting more every election cycle to serve power, not popular interests.

They, crooked bankers and other corporate criminals transformed America into a corrupted business-run sinkhole.

Change depends on people power regaining what's lost. It includes making the business of America social justice and peace, not unbridled greed and war.

On Thursday, thousands came to Washington for social change. They also want imperial wars ended.

Their October 2011.org site said "(j)oin us in Freedom Plaza starting October 6. STOP THE MACHINE! Create a New World!"

It's for everyone concerned about "injustice, militarism and environmental destruction to join in ending concentrated corporate power" and corrupted politicians serving America's super-rich alone.

"Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!" urges wrongfully imprisoned human rights lawyer Lynne Stewart until another world worth struggling for is gotten!

Now's the time for full throttle action. Rage against the system until it is!

On October 6, after massing in Freedom Plaza, thousands marched past the US Treasury, White House and Commerce Department, shouting:

"We Got Sold Out!" "We Want Jobs! We Want Jobs!"

On the Progressive Radio News Hour, Ray McGovern said he and other were heading to Washington to stay until their demands are met.

In his September 18 Charlottesville, VA speech, he said he "look(ed) forward to descending on our own 'Tahrir Square' at Freedom Plaza in Washington....In the final analysis, we will be confronting the 'upper crust,' which my Irish grandmother described as 'a bunch of crumbs held together by a lot of dough.' "

In Washington and across America, fed up workers, students, teachers, and others vow no longer to take it anymore. Hopefully that spirit won't wane despite enormous corporate pressure to co-op it, when cold weather arrives up north, or because cops keep beating up on people as crime boss enforcers.

So far, committed activists vow to stay the course. October 2011 Americans want "to take control of our country and our lives." They'll occupy Freedom Plaza "and hold a People's Assembly (to) come up with just and sustainable solutions....and demand....people's needs be addressed."

Civil resistance is planned to achieve long denied "inherent rights and freedoms (so) our children have a chance to live in peace, to breathe clean air, and to grow edible natural food."

Urging millions to join them in person or online, "peace, justice and equality....starts here."

"History is knocking. Will you answer the call?"


Martin Luther King's Message

On April 4, 1967, one year to the day before his assassination, Martin Luther King spoke at New York's Riverside Church, saying:

"We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence, or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight."

King headlined his speech, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence."

Silence is "betrayal," he said. War in Vietnam was "an enemy of the poor."

So are multiple Obama ones today.

"(I)t should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life (in) America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam."

"This madness must cease....We must stop now....We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam."

He called for a "revolution of values, (including) declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism."

He ended quoting James Russell Lowell (1819 - 1891), saying:

"Once to every man and nation Comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth and falsehood, For the good or evil side...."

That time is now, said King. It still is unfulfilled 44 years later.


A Final Comment

On the Progressive Radio News Hour, Trends Analyst Gerald Celente discussed a visionary new society - "DIRECT DEMOCRACY NOW!"

America's "representative democracy" never worked. Today it's too corrupted to fix. Presidents and congressional members serve monied, not popular, interests."

http://directdemocracynow.org is a global movement to spread Direct Democracy, using popular referenda power replacing back room deal making.

Victor Hugo said,

"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come."

That time is now.

With enough believers committed to stay the course, "Direct Democracy can happen if we make it happen."

Get involved. Enlist family and friends. Join groups. Link up with others. Do it for yourself and children. Do it for their future and yours.

Do it to stop political Washington and Wall Street crooks from selling you out. Do it to save humanity before imperial warmakers consume it.

Do it because it matters! Do it now!


Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

Occupation: Coming to a City Near You?

By Mary Bottari

Find a Big Bank Protest Near You - Everyone who cares about creating an economy that works for working people should get on board. Continue

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Global Revolution
Live from Occupy Wall Street

Video Stream - Chat - Twitter

This channel will feature live streams from global non violent revolution spreading across the globe, with broadcasts from Wall Street Occupation in NYC. Continue

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A New American Revolution

Class Warfare Accelerating, Democracy Losing Grip

By Paul B. Farrell

Warning: Inequalities are at the heart of all revolutions. Today, inequities are at 1929 levels. Continue

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US Murder of Awlaki
Obama Impeachment a Possibility, says Ron Paul

By DAN HIRSCHHORN

Paul called the killing a movement toward “tyranny.” Continue

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Nearly 12,000 Prisoners Join California Hunger Strike To End Torture Conditions

By Jeffrey Kaye

California prisons are a stinking mess, a scandal of gigantic proportions. Continue

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The Anti-Empire Report

Making Americans Aware Of Their Own History

By William Blum

Is history getting too close for comfort for the fragile little American heart and mind? Their schools and their favorite media have done an excellent job of keeping them ignorant of what their favorite country has done to the rest of the world. Continue

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We Are The 99 Per Cent

By Mark Ruffalo

Occupy Wall Street is a peaceful stand against the big American rip-off. Support it and regain your dignity. Continue

Message to the '2nd International Conference of Victims of Agent Orange / dioxin', Hanoi, August 8-9, 2011

Message to:

The Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin (VAVA), on the occasion of the Second International Conference of Victims of Agent Orange / dioxin, held on August 8-9, 2011 in Ha Noi, Socialist Republic of Viet Nam.

From: Bruce McPhie

It is my pleasure and honour to send warm greetings to everyone participating in the 50^th Commemoration of Agent Orange /dioxin sprayed on Viet Nam, and to wish you great success.

This work is of vital importance, on many levels: To raise public awareness of Agent Orange around the world. To provide practical and compassionate support to the Vietnamese Agent Orange victims in desperate need. To seek the basic human right of Justice for the victims. And to disarm the war mongers from using such diabolical weapons of mass destruction again.

Many people from all walks of life, throughout Viet Nam and around the world, are dedicated to this work. They may be doctors, scientists, lawyers, journalists, or just ordinary people like me, and it is wonderful to see our numbers growing, despite the enormous obstacles put in our way by powerful vested interests with a lot to hide and a lot of guilt.

On that fateful day, August 10, 1961, when the US military began spraying toxic chemicals as a weapon of war against Viet Nam, did anyone ever stop to consider the deadly and painful consequences for Viet Nam’s people, the environment, and future generations?

For some 10 years, nearly 100 million litres of diabolical chemicals, including dioxin - perhaps the most dangerous chemical known to man - were sprayed over vast areas and on millions of innocent people in Viet Nam and even Cambodia.

In 1988, the Pentagon compiled a classified report linking Agent Orange to 28 life-threatening conditions, including genetic birth defects and many cancers. The US Academy of Sciences has confirmed this. These effects were known at the time they were being sprayed, but did anyone care?

An international conference in Stockholm in July 2002 asked the United Nations, the US government and the chemical companies to take responsibility for dealing with the long-term consequences of these toxic chemicals. But have they?

A conference at Yale University in April 2003 concluded that in Viet Nam the US had conducted QUOTE “the largest chemical warfare campaign in history.” END OF QUOTE.

I wonder how many people in the world even know that today?

The International People’s Tribunal of Conscience in Paris made its final judgment on May 18, 2009, concluding that the use of dioxin by the US military in Vietnam from 1961 to 1971 was a war crime against humanity. Has anyone been charged with these war crimes?

Now, 50 years since the war crime of Agent Orange was first unleashed on the world, in Viet Nam, we are still waiting for the guilty parties to accept their responsibility to clean up the shocking mess they left behind, or to answer for their crimes.

Now, 50 years later, millions of innocent Vietnamese victims suffer to live and die with the horrible diseases caused by Agent Orange and the kaleidoscope of other toxic chemicals used. These victims are now into the 3^rd and 4^th generation, with no end in sight. What a shocking legacy to leave for the future.

Now, 50 years later, the unrepentant war mongers continue to ignore the consequences of their criminal actions, now using Depleted Uranium munitions in the countries they have bombed since Viet Nam. These radio-active uranium shells are now an every-day weapon of war, yet, as with Agent Orange, these indiscriminate weapons not only kill in the present, but they go on killing with cancers and birth defects long into the future generations. What type of monsters can go on doing this without care?

The innocent people of Libya have now become the latest victims of such genocidal Uranium weapons - after Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan. And who might be next? Depleted Uranium weapons are effectively nuclear weapons, yet so-called civilized, Western powers are using them with hardly a peep of protest. How many people even know about this? Where are the truthful stories exposing these crimes in the mainstream media? Where is the outrage?

In the case of Viet Nam, the US war propagandists told the great lie that this was a “noble cause” to “save” the people of Viet Nam. Somehow “We had to destroy the town in order to save it”, as the US army officer infamously said about 1968. Many people believed it, at least at first, because ordinary, decent people want to believe that their governments act with good intentions, not evil.

Today, imperialist wars continue to be ‘sold’ to the public by similar feel-good messages, such as the big lie that the ongoing US / NATO war against Libya is a “humanitarian mission” to “save innocent civilians”. Of course, it is no such thing. NATO is killing civilians with weapons including Depleted Uranium (the Agent Orange of the present wars), which will go on killing future generations, long after the conflict is over, as is the case with Viet Nam.

The intent in Libya is regime change for a host of other strategic reasons, none of which have anything to do with compassion for ordinary people, or respect for the rule of law. It is all about oil, control of resources, and to stop the introduction of the Gold Dinar as an alternative currency to the USD and the Euro. Powerful vested interests really don’t like that idea!

As was the case with Viet Nam, imperialist powers seek to defeat the very idea that any country can exercise its right to develop independently outside the exploitative control of the international capitalist financial system. Of course, they use nice-sounding words to hide their true intent, as they did in Viet Nam, and as they do today with Libya.

There is a long-term, consistent plan here. U.S. General Wesley Clark (Retired) is on public record saying that he was told years ago that the US Administration of George W. Bush planned to take out 7 countries in 5 years - Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran.

What do these seven countries have in common?

In the context of banking, one thing is that none of them is listed among the 56 member banks of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), thus putting them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers' central bank in Switzerland.

Kenneth Schortgen Jr., writing on Examiner.com, noted that QUOTE "six months before the US moved into Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein, the oil nation had made the move to accept euros instead of dollars for oil, and this became a threat to the global dominance of the dollar as the reserve currency, and its dominion as the petrodollar." END OF QUOTE

According to a Russian article titled ‘Bombing of Libya - Punishment for Ghaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar’, Gaddafi made a similarly bold move: he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar. Gaddafi was successfully working towards a united African continent, with its 200 million people using this single gold dinar currency, so he had to be stopped.

George W. Bush has been replaced by a new Nobel Peace Prize-winning warrior president, but the imperialist war crimes continue with no change ‘we can believe in’, just more of the same or worse.

It is safe to assume that imperialist wars are always fought for the benefit of the rich ruling class, and never for the interests of the ordinary people. They are always sold to the public with cynical, carefully-crafted lies, and sustained corporate media propaganda. Our only defence against that is to always be sceptical, to be well-informed from a variety of news sources, and not to automatically believe the official stories promoting unjust wars with lies and misinformation.

This is one of the important and enduring lessons of the Viet Nam experience, which we all must learn if we are to understand the real reasons behind the ongoing, endless imperialist wars of the present and future.

US Major-General Smedley Butler knew this long ago. As a 33-year veteran of the US marine corps and America’s most decorated soldier, Smedley Butler became a whistle blower against war, writing his powerful book ‘War is a Racket’ way back in 1935. In that book he wrote:

“…For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it…I must face it and speak out...” He confessed to having been a “…high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.” END OF QUOTE

During the American War against Viet Nam, ordinary GIs played a vital role in helping to end that imperialist war, when they awoke to the truth of what it was really all about. Similarly, veterans of the imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are also mobilizing against the ‘racket of war.’ Meanwhile, Bradley Manning, who allegedly released official documents to WikiLeaks exposing the criminality of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, still languishes in a US prison, tortured and denied his legal rights. In a sane world, heroic whistle blowers against wars would get the Nobel Peace Prize, wouldn’t they?

However, the war makers and profiteers are tireless and persistent in the pursuit of their vested interests. So we, the people, must be at least as equally tireless and persistent if we are to enjoy the human right to live in a sustainable world free of imperialist war.

Agent Orange is just one of the diabolical weapons of war, which should never be used again. The greatest evil is war itself. For the sake of humanity, and the planet, we must move beyond war and find peaceful means to settle conflicts. But we cannot actually move on until past crimes are properly dealt with. This includes healing the wounds of war in Viet Nam, and delivering care, compassion and justice for the innocent Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange.

The world can certainly learn valuable lessons from the experiences of Viet Nam in wartime and peace.

Thank you and warm regards to you all.

Bruce McPhie

July 10, 2011

http://lemonjuicebruce.blogspot.com/

Extrajudicial Executions

Ron Paul Condemns Killing of "al Qaeda’s" Awlaki

By Elizabeth Williamson

“Nobody knows if he ever killed anybody,” Mr. Paul said after a breakfast at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics. “If the American people accept this blindly and casually…I think that’s sad.” Continue

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The Due-process-free Assassination of U.S. Citizens is Now Reality

By Glenn Greenwald

From an authoritarian perspective, that's the genius of America's political culture. It not only finds ways to obliterate the most basic individual liberties designed to safeguard citizens from consummate abuses of power. It actually gets its citizens to stand up and clap and even celebrate the destruction of those safeguards. Continue

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Extrajudicial Executions
Obama Can Kill Anyone He Wants To

By Robert Dreyfuss

American citizens are supposed to have legal and civil rights that protect them from political or prosecutorial assassinations, even if they’re bad guys. Apparently, no longer. Continue

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He Kills His Own People

Obama: A Disaster for Civil Liberties

By Jonathan Turley
He may prove the most disastrous president in our history in terms of civil liberties. Continue

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Is The War On Terror A Hoax?

By Paul Craig Roberts

When I observe the gullibility of my fellow citizens at the absurd “terror plots” that the US government manufactures, it causes me to realize that fear is the most powerful weapon any government has for advancing an undeclared agenda.

In the past decade, Washington has killed, maimed, dislocated, and made widows and orphans millions of Muslims in six countries, all in the name of the “war on terror.” Washington’s attacks on the countries constitute naked aggression and impact primarily civilian populations and infrastructure and, thereby, constitute war crimes under law.

Nazis were executed precisely for what Washington is doing today.

Moreover the wars and military attacks have cost American taxpayers in out-of-pocket and already-incurred future costs at least $4,000 billion dollars--one third of the accumulated public debt--resulting in a US deficit crisis that threatens the social safety net, the value of the US dollar and its reserve currency role, while enriching beyond all previous history the military/security complex and its apologists.

Perhaps the highest cost of Washington’s “war on terror” has been paid by the US Constitution and civil liberties. Any US citizen that Washington accuses is deprived of all legal and constitutional rights. The Bush-Cheney-Obama regimes have overturned humanity’s greatest achievement--the accountability of government to law.

If we look around for the terror that the police state and a decade of war has allegedly protected us from, the terror is hard to find. Except for 9/11 itself, assuming we accept the government’s improbable conspiracy theory explanation, there have been no terror attacks on the US. Indeed, as RT pointed out on August 23, 2011, an investigative program at the University of California discovered that the domestic “terror plots” hyped in the media were plotted by FBI agents.

FBI undercover agents now number 15,000, ten times their number during the protests against the Vietnam war when protesters were suspected of communist sympathies. As there apparently are no real terror plots for this huge workforce to uncover, the FBI justifies its budget, terror alerts, and invasive searches of American citizens by thinking up “terror plots” and finding some deranged individuals to ensnare. For example, the Washington DC Metro bombing plot, the New York city subway plot, the plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago were all FBI brainchilds organized and managed by FBI agents.

RT reports that only three plots might have been independent of the FBI, but as none of the three worked they obviously were not the work of such a professional terror organization as Al Qaeda is purported to be. The Times Square car bomb didn’t blow up, and apparently could not have.

The latest FBI sting ensnared a Boston man, Rezwan Ferdaus, who is accused of planning to attack the Pentagon and US Capitol with model airplanes packed with C-4 explosives. US Attorney Carmen Ortiz assured Americans that they were never in danger, because the FBI’s undercover agents were in control of the plot.

Ferdaus’ FBI-organized plot to blow up the Pentagon and US Capitol with model airplanes has produced charges that he provided “material support to a terrorist organization” and plotted to destroy federal buildings--the most serious charge which carries 20 imprisoned years for each targeted building.

What is the terrorist organization that Ferdaus is serving? Surely not al Qaeda, which allegedly outwitted all 16 US intelligence services, all intelligence services of America’s NATO and Israeli allies, NORAD, the National Security Council, Air Traffic Control, Dick Cheney, and US airport security four times in one hour on the same morning. Such a highly capable terror organization would not be involved in such nonsense as a plot to blow up the Pentagon with a model airplane.

As an American who was in public service for a number of years and who has always stood up for the Constitution, a patriot’s duty, I must hope that the question has already popped into readers’ minds why we are expected to believe that a tiny model airplane is capable of blowing up the Pentagon when a 757 airliner loaded with jet fuel was incapable of doing the job, merely making a hole not big enough for an airliner.

When I observe the gullibility of my fellow citizens at the absurd “terror plots” that the US government manufactures, it causes me to realize that fear is the most powerful weapon any government has for advancing an undeclared agenda.

If Ferdaus is brought to trial, no doubt a jury will convict him of a plot to blow up the Pentagon and US Capitol with model airplanes. Most likely he will be tortured or coerced into a plea bargain.

Apparently, Americans, or most of them, are so ruled by fear that they suffer no remorse from “their” government’s murder and dislocation of millions of innocent people. In the American mind, one billion “towel-heads” have been reduced to terrorists who deserve to be exterminated. The US is on its way to a holocaust that makes the terrors Jews faced from National Socialism into a mere precursor.

Think about this: Are not you amazed that after a decade (2.5 times the length of WW II) of killing Muslims and destroying families and their prospects in six countries there are no real terrorist events in the US?

Think for a minute how easy terrorism would be in the US if there were any terrorists. Would an Al Qaeda terrorist from the organization that allegedly pulled off 9/11--the most humiliating defeat ever suffered by a Western power, much less “the world’s only superpower”--still in the face of all the screening be trying to hijack an airliner or to blow one up?

Surely not when there are so many totally soft targets. If America were really infected with a “terrorist threat,” a terrorist would merely get in the massive lines awaiting to clear airport “security” and set off his bomb. It would kill far more people than could be achieved by blowing up an airliner, and it would make it completely clear that “airport security” meant no one was safe.

It would be child’s play for terrorists to blow up electric sub-stations as no one is there, nothing but a chain link fence. It would be easy for terrorists to blow up shopping centers. It would be easy for terrorists to dump boxes of roofing nails on congested streets and freeways during rush hours, tying up main transportation arteries for days.

Before, dear reader, you accuse me of giving terrorists ideas, do you really think that these ideas would not already have occurred to terrorists capable of pulling off 9/11?

But nothing happens. So the FBI arrests a guy for planning to blow up America with a model airplane. It is really depressing how many Americans will believe this.

Consider also that American neoconservatives, who have orchestrated the “war on terror,” have no protection whatsoever and that the Secret Service protection of Bush and Cheney is minimal. If America really faced a terrorist threat, especially one so professional to have brought off 9/11, every neoconservative along with Bush and Cheney could be assassinated within one hour on one morning or one evening.

The fact that neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, William Kristol, Libby, Addington, et. al., live unprotected and free of fear is proof that America faces no terrorist threat.

Think now about the airliner shoe-bomb plot, the shampoo-bottled water plot, and the underwear-bomb plot. Experts, other than the whores hired by the US government, say that these plots are nonsensical. The “shoe bomb” and “underwear bomb” were colored fireworks powders incapable of blowing up a tin can. The liquid bomb, allegedly mixed up in an airliner toilet room, has been dismissed by experts as fantasy.

What is the purpose of these fake plots? And remember, all reports confirm that the “underwear bomber” was walked onto the airliner by an official, despite the fact that the “underwear bomber” had no passport. No investigation was ever conducted by the FBI, CIA, or anyone into why a passenger without a passport was allowed on an international flight.

The purpose of these make-believe plots is to raise the fear level and to create the opportunity for former Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff to make a fortune selling porno-scanners to the TSA.

The result of these hyped “terrorist plots” is that every American citizen, even those with high government positions and security clearances, cannot board a commercial airline flight without taking off his shoes, his jacket, his belt, submitting to a porno-scanner, or being sexually groped. Nothing could make it plainer that “airport security” cannot tell a Muslim terrorist from a gung-ho American patriot, a US Senator, a US Marine general, or a CIA operative.

If a passenger requires for health or other reasons quantities of liquids and cremes beyond the limits imposed on toothpaste, shampoo, food, or medications, the passenger must obtain prior approval from TSA, which seldom works. One of America’s finest moments is the case, documented on UTube, of a dying woman in a wheelchair, who requires special food, having her food thrown away by the gestapo TSA despite the written approval from the Transportation Safety Administration, her daughter arrested for protesting, and the dying woman in the wheelchair left alone in the airport.

This is Amerika today. These assaults on innocent citizens are justified by the mindless right-wing as “protecting us against terrorism,” a “threat” that all evidence shows is nonexistent.

No American is secure today. I am a former staff associate of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee. I required high security clearances as I had access to information pertaining to all US weapons programs. As chief economist of the House Budget Committee I had information pertaining to the US military and security budgets. As Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, I was provided every morning with the CIA’s briefing of the President as well as with endless security information.

When I left the Treasury, President Reagan appointed me to a super-secret committee to investigate the CIA’s assessment of Soviet capability. Afterwords I was a consult to the Pentagon. I had every kind of security clearance.

Despite my record of highest security clearances and US government confidence in me including confirmation by the US Senate in a presidential appointment, the airline police cannot tell me from a terrorist.

If I were into model airplanes or attending anti-war demonstrations, little doubt I, too, would be arrested.

After my public service in the last quarter of the 20th century, I experienced during the first decade of the 21st century all of America’s achievements, despite their blemishes, being erased.

In their place was erected a monstrous desire for hegemony and highly concentrated wealth. Most of my friends and my fellow citizens in general are incapable of recognizing America’s transformation into a warmonger police state that has the worst income distribution of any developed country.

It is extraordinary that so many Americans, citizens of the world’s only superpower, actually believe that they are threatened by Muslim peoples who have no unity, no navy, no air force, no nuclear weapons, no missiles capable of reaching across the oceans.

Indeed, large percentages of these “threat populations,” especially among the young, are enamored of the sexual freedom that exists in America. Even the Iranian dupes of the CIA-orchestrated “Green Revolution” have forgotten Washington’s overthrow of their elected government in the 1950s. Despite America’s decade-long abusive military actions against Muslim peoples, many Muslims still look to America for their salvation.

Their “leaders” are simply bought off with large sums of money.

With the “terrorist threat” and Al Qaeda deflated with President Obama’s alleged assassination of its leader, Osama bin Laden, who was left unprotected and unarmed by his “world-wide terrorist organization,” Washington has come up with a new bogyman--the Haqqanis.

According to John Glaser and anonymous CIA officials, US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen “exaggerated” the case against the Haqqani insurgent group when he claimed, setting up a US invasion of Pakistan, that the Hagganis were an operating arm of the Pakistan government’s secret service, the ISI. Adm. Mullen is now running from his “exaggeration,” an euphemism for a lie. His aid Captain John Kirby said that Mullen’s “accusations were designed to influence the Pakistanis to crack down on the Haqqani Network.” In other words, the Pakistanis should kill more of their own people to save the Americans the trouble.

If you don’t know what the Haqqani Network is, don’t be surprised. You never heard of Al Qaeda prior to 9/11.

The US government creates whatever new bogymen and incidents are necessary to further the neoconservative agenda of world hegemony and higher profits for the armaments industry.

For ten years, the “superpower” American population has sat there, being terrified by the government’s lies. While Americans sit in fear of non-existent “terrorists” sucking their thumbs, millions of people in six countries have had their lives destroyed. As far as any evidence exists, the vast majority of Americans are unperturbed by the wanton murder of others in countries that they are incapable of locating on maps.

Truly, Amerika is a light unto the world, an example for all.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was appointed by President Reagan Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and confirmed by the US Senate. He was Associate Editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, and he served on the personal staffs of Representative Jack Kemp and Senator Orrin Hatch.

He was staff associate of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, staff associate of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, and Chief Economist, Republican Staff, House Budget Committee. He wrote the Kemp-Roth tax rate reduction bill, and was a leader in the supply-side revolution.

He was professor of economics in six universities, and is the author of numerous books and scholarly contributions. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions.

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