Yearly Archives: 2014

The Christmas Hope: A To-Do List for a Better World

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By John W. Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

As a child, my Christmas wish list came right out of the Sears and Roebuck catalogue—toys, board games, bikes, action figures, etc. My parents, like so many in their day, belonged to the working-class poor, so while I never lacked for the necessities of life, many of the items on my wish list never came to be. Even so, I was no worse off for it.

I wish the same could be said of those still unfulfilled items on my adult Christmas wish list. Each year, I wish for the same things—an end to war, poverty, hunger, violence and disease—and each year, I find the world relatively unchanged. Millions continue to die every year, casualties of a world that places greater value on war machines and profit margins than human life.

I’ve seen enough of the world in my 68 years to know that wishing is not enough. We need to be doing. It’s not possible to solve all of the world’s problems right away. For most people, putting an end to world hunger, poverty, disease and the police state may seem too insurmountable a task to even tackle. But as I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, there are practical steps each of us can take to move things in the right direction. Here’s what I would suggest for a start:

Tone down the partisan rhetoric, the “us” vs. “them” mentality. Instead of wasting time and resources on political infighting, which gets us nowhere, it’s time Americans learned to work together to solve the problems before us. The best place to start is in your own communities, neighbor to neighbor.

Turn off the TV and tune into what’s happening in your family, in your community and your world. Whatever you do, reduce your intake of mindless television and entertainment news. The only reality programming worth taking notice of is the one playing in your home and community.

Show compassion to those in need, be kind to those around you, forgive those who have wronged you, and teach your children to do the same. As author Robert Heinlein observed, “A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot…”

Talk less, listen more. Take less, and give more. If people spent less time dwelling on and attending to their own needs and more time trying to help and understand those around them, many of the problems we currently face could be eliminated.

Stop acting entitled and start being empowered. We have moved into the Age of Entitlement, where more and more people feel entitled to certain benefits without having to work for them. There’s nothing wrong with helping those less fortunate, but as my parents taught me, there’s a lot to be said for an honest day’s work.

Remember that all people are endowed with inalienable rights. America cannot continue to lambast terrorist groups for their contempt for human life and dignity when our own nation violates these same principles time and again.

Stop being a hater. How can we ever hope to curb the hatred and animosity that have spurred global terrorism over the past few decades if we can’t even forgive the human failings of those in our immediate circles?

Learn tolerance in the true sense of the word. True tolerance stems from a basic respect for one’s fellow man or woman. And it should be taught to children from the time they can understand right from wrong.

Value your family. The traditional family, such that it is, is already in great disrepair, torn apart by divorce, infidelity, over-scheduling, overwork, materialism, and an absence of spirituality. Yet without the family, the true building block of our nation, there can be no freedom.

Feed the hungry, shelter the homeless and comfort the lonely and brokenhearted. Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Take part in local food drives. Take a meal to a needy family. “Adopt” an elderly person at a nursing home. Support the creation of local homeless shelters in your community.

Give peace a chance.  The military industrial complex has a lot to gain financially so long as America continues to wage its wars at home and abroad, but you can be sure that the American people will lose everything unless we find some way to give peace a chance. We can start by bringing all of our men and women in uniform home.

Start your own teaspoon brigade.  You don’t have to solve all the world’s problems single-handedly, nor do you have to solve them overnight. Little by little, you’ll get there, but you have to start somewhere. It is up to each of us to do our part to make this a better world for all. As the legendary singer, songwriter and activist Pete Seeger once remarked to me:

I tell everybody a little parable about the “teaspoon brigades.” Imagine a big seesaw. One end of the seesaw is on the ground because it has a big basket half full of rocks in it. The other end of the seesaw is up in the air because it’s got a basket one-quarter full of sand. Some of us have teaspoons, and we are trying to fill it up. Most people are scoffing at us. They say, “People like you have been trying for thousands of years, but it is leaking out of that basket as fast as you are putting it in.” Our answer is that we are getting more people with teaspoons every day. And we believe that one of these days or years—who knows—that basket of sand is going to be so full that you are going to see that whole seesaw going zoop! in the other direction. Then people are going to say, “How did it happen so suddenly?” And we answer, “Us and our little teaspoons over thousands of years.”

US escalates campaign against North Korea

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By Patrick Martin

Source: WSWS.org

The Obama administration ratcheted up the pressure Friday on the isolated Stalinist regime in North Korea, with the FBI formally accusing North Korea of responsibility for the hacking attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment and Obama declaring that the US government would carry out an unspecified “proportionate response” against Pyongyang at “a time and place of our own choosing.”

Obama made no mention of the cyberattack or North Korea’s alleged responsibility in his opening statement at his end-of-the-year White House press conference, waiting until a suitable question was posed by the media to raise the issue.

The FBI offered no proof of a North Korean link to the hacking attack on Sony, which led to the studio’s cancellation of the planned December 25 release of the Seth Rogen film The Interview, a comedy whose premise is that two American journalists are contracted by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The FBI statement claimed several similarities between computer code used in the malware deployed against Sony and that used in previous attacks linked to North Korea, but these claims are unsubstantiated and computer security experts interviewed in the press have cast doubt on whether any definitive links can be established.

The American public is asked to take on faith the FBI’s declaration that it “now has enough information to conclude that the North Korean government is responsible for these actions.” The statement continued: “North Korea’s actions were intended to inflict significant harm on a US business and suppress the right of American citizens to express themselves.”

Such language is ironic coming from a federal agency that plays a central role in the build-up of a police state apparatus in America. A recent report in the Wall Street Journal, citing figures from the National Center for State Courts, found that the FBI has accumulated criminal record files on 80 million Americans—more than one-third of the adult population.

Obama likewise provided no evidence of North Korean involvement, merely citing the FBI statement as authoritative. He criticized Sony Pictures for withdrawing The Interview from circulation in response to threats from the hackers, who called themselves “Guardians of Peace.”

“We cannot have a society where some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States,” Obama said, “because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they’ll do when they see a documentary that they don’t like, or news reports that they don’t like.”

He continued, “That’s not what America’s about. Again, I’m sympathetic that Sony as a private company was worried about liabilities and this and that and the other. I wish they’d spoken to me first. I would have told them, do not get into a pattern in which you’re intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks.”

This pretense of alarm over the threat to the civil liberties of Americans is just as hypocritical coming from Obama as from the FBI. His administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers for leaking information about government crimes to the press than any other in American history. Obama has presided over dragnet surveillance of the telecommunications and email of every American by the National Security Agency, trampling on the Bill of Rights. And he has asserted the unprecedented “right” of the president to order the drone missile assassination of anyone in the world, including American citizens.

As for censorship, this is a government that doesn’t hesitate to demand that major newspapers and television networks withhold information from the public, including information on massive violations of the Constitution by the government itself, in the name of “national security.” The media routinely complies, allowing the government to vet and/or censor articles and news reports before they are aired.

The latest charges against North Korea have provided yet another example of the American press corps’ readiness to function as a de facto sounding board for state propaganda. There has been no pretense of critical independence in the vast bulk of reporting on the hacking attack on Sony and the alleged responsibility of the North Korean regime, which has denied any involvement. The government’s claims are simply reported as facts, whether by the television networks and cable channels or newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post.

The government’s record of lying, whether on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, NSA spying, or, more recently, CIA torture, is simply ignored.

The daily newspapers and television networks have largely dropped any reporting on last week’s Senate Intelligence Committee report documenting systematic torture by the CIA of prisoners held in secret prisons overseas. Not a single question was raised about the torture report at Obama’s hour-long press conference.

Obama made it clear that the US government would retaliate against North Korea for the alleged hacking attack on Sony. “They caused a lot of damage, and we will respond,” he said. “We will respond proportionally, and we’ll respond in a place and time and manner that we choose.”

While the tone was matter-of-fact, Obama refused to rule out military action in response to a follow-up question by a reporter, saying only that he would not expand on his previous statement about an indeterminate future response.

White House, Pentagon and intelligence officials were holding daily meetings on North Korea, an Obama spokesman said. Before the FBI issued its finding, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was “very concerned” about the US potentially concluding that a nation-state was behind the attack. “When and if that call is made, it will be a moment to confront that reality” of a state-supported cyberattack on a US corporation, Dempsey said.

The US military buildup in the Asia-Pacific region continues apace. Obama has just signed the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act, which provides for expanded efforts to establish a joint missile defense system in northeast Asia, involving South Korea and Japan. This would be directed against North Korea in the first instance, but ultimately against China, the main US target in the region.

On Thursday, Obama approved the sale of four US frigates to Taiwan, under the Naval Vessel Transfer Act, over the vociferous opposition of Beijing. The sale of the guided-missile frigates “blatantly interferes in China’s domestic affairs and undermines China’s sovereignty and security interests,” a Chinese defense ministry spokesman said.

While Obama said the FBI had not linked the Sony attack to any nation other than North Korea, other US officials pointed out that North Korea’s only connection to the World Wide Web is through China, an indication that further escalation of the Sony affair could involve charging China with at least a supporting role.

Meanwhile, evidence continues to surface that the entire Sony Pictures affair, going back to the original decision by the studio to make a film depicting the murder of Kim Jong-un, was a provocation inspired by the US military-intelligence apparatus.

Email communications obtained by the online publication Daily Beast and cited in many columns and commentaries Friday strongly suggest this. Sony Pictures co-chairman Michael Lynton is on the board of trustees of the Rand Corporation, a leading private consulting firm for the CIA and Pentagon, and it was Rand’s North Korea specialist, Bruce Bennett, who pushed hard for the Sony film to focus on the assassination of North Korea’s ruler.

According to one of these emails, Seth Rogen, the film’s co-director, had initially intended the film to target an unnamed leader of an unnamed country, and it was Lynton himself “that told them to not use a fictitious name, but to go with Kim Jong-un.” The same message, written by Marisa Liston, a Sony senior vice president, said that Rogen and co-director Evan Goldberg “mention that a former CIA agent and someone who used to work for Hillary Clinton looked at the script.”

An email from Bennett, the Rand analyst, to Lynton suggested that the film could actually help unseat the North Korean regime. “I have been clear that the assassination of Kim Jong Un is the most likely path to a collapse of the North Korean government,” Bennett wrote. “I believe that a story that talks about the removal of the Kim family regime and the creation of a new government by the North Korean people (well, at least the elites) will start some real thinking in South Korea and, I believe, in the North once the DVD leaks into the North (which it almost certainly will).”

Lynton responded, “Bruce—Spoke to someone very senior in State (confidentially). He agreed with everything you have been saying. Everything. I will fill you in when we speak.”

Other emails name two State Department officials—Assistant Secretary Daniel Russel and Ambassador Robert King, US special envoy for North Korea human-rights issues—as providing input to the film.

The CIA-engineered oil glut to bring down Putin and Maduro

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Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro during a signing ceremony at the Kremlin in Moscow

By Wayne Madsen

Source: Intrepid Report

John Brennan’s long familiarity with Saudi Arabia, owing to the time he spent there as the CIA station chief in Riyadh in the 1990s and his knowledge of Saudi oil operations, has paid off. WMR has learned that Brennan’s agents inside Saudi Aramco convinced the firm’s management and the Saudi Oil Ministry to begin fracking operations to stimulate production in Saudi Arabia’s oldest oil fields.

By pumping salt water into older wells, some at a depth of 3 to 6 thousand feet, an inordinate amount of pressure was built up. The CIA’s oil industry implants knew what would occur when the fracking operations began. Due to the dangerously high water pressure, the Saudis were forced continuously pump oil until the pressure became equalized. That process is continuing. If the Saudis ceased pumping oil, they would permanently lose the wells to salt water contamination. In the current “pump it or lose it” situation, the Saudis are forced to pump at a rate that may take up to 5 years before they can slow down production rates.

The net result of the CIA-inspired fracking operations, which the Saudis were warned not to pursue by petroleum engineers working for some foreign-based firms like Schlumberger, is that there will be an oil supply glut for the next 5 years. The glut will be followed by a reduction in Saudi oil production unless new oil fields are brought on line. There is now a major push by U.S. and Canadian oil companies to bring the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the United States to offset the expected sharp rise in oil prices in five years.

The CIA operation to frack Middle Eastern oil fields was not only limited to Saudi Arabia. WMR has learned from oil industry sources that similar fracking caused overproduction problems in Kuwait and Iraq.

The result of the sudden decline in oil prices has resulted in heavy damage to the economies of the CIA-targeted countries of Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. Brennan and his economic warfare operatives banked on the Saudi overproduction to harm the economies of all three countries and the CIA has not been disappointed. The CIA figures that the governments of Vladimir Putin in Russia, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran, and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela will have long since collapsed and been replaced by pro-Western regimes within 5 years.

Already, from his base in Switzerland, exiled Russian tax evader billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky has called for Putin’s overthrow and even his assassination. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress and the Obama administration have taken cues from the CIA to impose devastating economic sanctions on both Russia and Venezuela. Similar congressional legislation to increase sanctions on Iran is pending.

Russia has been harmed the most by the CIA’s Saudi oil production scheme. The Russian ruble fell 56 percent in value against the U.S. dollar while Russian interest rates climbed to 17 percent. The price of shares of Russia’s largest lending bank, Sberbank, fell 18 percent. Although the Russian economic collapse has resulted in financial ripples around the world, with Austrian and French banks losing their stock values and the value of the Polish zloty and Hungarian forint falling against the dollar, the Obama administration says that there will be no easing on economic sanctions imposed on Russia over Ukraine. Obama has put the investments of American holders of Russian bonds in dire jeopardy.

The Pacific Investment Management Company’s (PEBIX) Emerging Markets Bond Fund, which holds over $800 million in Russian bonds, has lost almost 8 percent in value in the past few weeks.

Russian Central Bank Vice Chairman Sergei Shvetsov said, “What is happening is a nightmare that we could not even have imagined a year ago.”

Meanwhile, basic staples in Venezuela, including cooking oil, rice, and corn flour, are becoming hard to obtain. The U.S. dollar has jumped 1,700 percent in value against the Venezuelan bolivar on the black market. The CIA is using the financial collapse to push for an undemocratic overthrow of the Venezuelan government.

Iran, which has been under punitive Western economic sanctions for a number of years over its nuclear power program, is probably best able to weather the storm. Iran has built up a rather impressive domestic food production, telecommunications, and oil industry infrastructure to survive the sanctions. However, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani appears very aware of the Saudi role in the conspiracy to drive down oil prices.

Rouhani recently said, “The main reason for [the oil price plunge] is [a] political conspiracy by certain countries against the interest of the region and the Islamic world and it is only in the interest of some other countries . . . Iran and people of the region will not forget such conspiracies, or in other words, treachery against the interests of the Muslim world.”

Brennan’s and the CIA’s industrial sabotage of the Saudi and other Middle East oil industries will continue to have far-reaching effects on the world economy. Oil industry insiders fear that the CIA has unleashed something that may deal a devastating blow to the global economy.

Deep Politics of the Sony Hack

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When news of the Sony hack first broke in late November it seemed of relatively little importance. Stories about hacking and stolen data are increasingly common these days and Sony wasn’t a particularly sympathetic victim in light of their DRM rootkit CD scandal a few years ago. I have mixed feelings about Sony as I do with most tech/entertainment conglomerates. On one hand I appreciate the media storage innovations they’ve helped develop over the years, but with rare exceptions (eg. Starship Troopers and Attack the Block), I’ve been less fond of the content they’ve produced. Some of the worst U.S. propaganda films have been from Sony/TriStar, such as Airforce One, Black Hawk Down and Zero Dark Thirty, indicating at least some filmmakers within the studio have strong government ties. Though I’ve yet to see “The Interview”, it would be no surprise if the comedy contained elements of propaganda as well.

It wasn’t initially clear if the hacks were directly related to The Interview (and still isn’t in terms of hard evidence) but the story did serve as a reminder of the importance of internet privacy and security. Leaked information also provided an interesting glimpse into the arrogant and racist culture of the upper echelons of typical multinational corporations. About a week ago after threats allegedly from the hackers began escalating (soon after the CIA torture report story started to gain momentum), a number of theater chains announced they wouldn’t screen The Interview and a few days later Sony shelved the film completely. The decision received widespread condemnation (including harsh words from Obama), but since Sony is dealing with three class action lawsuits related to leaked personal information from the hacking, they’re probably reasonably worried about further litigation due to larger leaks and possible terrorist attacks (whether “real” or hoaxed). But the most alarming aspect of the hacking story is the reaction from the U.S. government, especially last Friday’s official press release from the FBI blaming North Korea.

Typical of U.S. government agencies, they provided zero hard evidence yet attempt to justify the absence by claiming “the need to protect sensitive sources and methods precludes us from sharing all of this information…“. So what did they provide to support their conclusion? From the press release:

  • Technical analysis of the data deletion malware used in this attack revealed links to other malware that the FBI knows North Korean actors previously developed. For example, there were similarities in specific lines of code, encryption algorithms, data deletion methods, and compromised networks.
  • The FBI also observed significant overlap between the infrastructure used in this attack and other malicious cyber activity the U.S. government has previously linked directly to North Korea. For example, the FBI discovered that several Internet protocol (IP) addresses associated with known North Korean infrastructure communicated with IP addresses that were hardcoded into the data deletion malware used in this attack.
  • Separately, the tools used in the SPE attack have similarities to a cyber attack in March of last year against South Korean banks and media outlets, which was carried out by North Korea.

None of this qualifies as a smoking gun because tools and codes used by hackers are not unique identifiers (it’s not uncommon for them to share or duplicate hacking techniques). It doesn’t matter if there’s similarities with previous alleged North Korean hacking attempts or links to North Korean infrastructure because such incriminating data can be fabricated by true hackers. But the FBI tips their hand with the following paragraph where they state: “North Korea’s attack on SPE reaffirms that cyber threats pose one of the gravest national security dangers to the United States.” In other words, they’re pushing a “cyber terror” scenario which could possibly lead to a “cyber Patriot Act” and increased geopolitical aggression. The national security state wants the Sony hack to be a “cyber 9/11” though they may also exploit larger attacks in the future (whether “genuine” or false-flag).

In the same paragraph the FBI states with absolutely no self-awareness or shame of hypocrisy:  “North Korea’s actions were intended to inflict significant harm on a U.S. business and suppress the right of American citizens to express themselves. Such acts of intimidation fall outside the bounds of acceptable state behavior. The FBI takes seriously any attempt—whether through cyber-enabled means, threats of violence, or otherwise—to undermine the economic and social prosperity of our citizens.”

It’s obviously not considered a crime by the FBI when the U.S. government and collaborators in the private sector spy on us, suppress our freedom of speech, and/or threaten our livelihoods, and where were they when the big banks wrecked the economy? From a government that has inflicted horrific torture and countless other crimes, who are they to determine what falls outside the bounds of “acceptable state behavior”?

On the day before the release of the FBI statement, White House press secretary Josh Earnest ominously announced “[members of the national security team] would be mindful of the fact that we need a proportional response, and also mindful of the fact that sophisticated actors, when they carry out actions like this, are oftentimes — they’re not always but often seeking to provoke a response from the United States of America. They may believe that a response from us in one fashion or another would be advantageous to them.”

When pressed on how provoking a response might be advantageous, Earnest argues “it’s not hard to imagine that there may be some organizations or individuals who would perceive a specific response from the United States as something that might enhance their standing, either among their cohorts or colleagues, or even on the international stage.” Translation: shouldn’t all brainwashed Americans realize that being sabotaged, embargoed, and/or bombed by the U.S. is considered a badge of honor and prestige among the Axis of Evil?

As for what exactly the White House considers a “proportional response”, Earnest tenaciously sticks to his talking points: “I wouldn’t speculate at this point about the range of options that are currently under consideration.  I also wouldn’t commit at this point to being entirely transparent about what that response is… I don’t anticipate that we’ll be in a position where we’re going to be able to be completely forthcoming about every single element of the response that has been decided upon… it would be inappropriate to get ahead of that investigation to start publicly discussing what our response is going to be, particularly in light of the fact that I’m confident that at least some of the measures that will be considered as a response are the kinds of things we wouldn’t want to telegraph in advance… I think I’ve been pretty candid about the fact that I’m not talking in a lot of detail about what our response is going to be.” etc…

As usual, the government is only interested in advancing a narrative that can further their agenda in secrecy (whether or not they were directly involved in setting up the crime). As with 9/11, it will be up to independent researchers and critical thinkers to ask “who truly benefits?” Who has the greatest means, motive and opportunity?

Saturday Matinee: I Don’t Know Jack

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Because tomorrow marks the birthday of Jack Nance, I’d like to bring attention to “I Don’t Know Jack” (2002), a documentary on cult actor Jack Nance exploring the uniqueness of his character, his unconventional career, and the strange circumstances surrounding the death of his wife in 1991 and himself five years later. The film features interviews with family and friends including Catherine Coulson, Brad Dourif, Dennis Hopper, David Lynch and Charlotte Stewart.

Hawaii County Officials Will Appeal Monsanto Court Ruling

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Source: Inquisitr

In a 5 to 4 decision, Hawaii County Council voted yesterday to appeal the decision of a U.S. Magistrate Judge who has ruled to protect Monsanto and GMO’s testing and production on the Big Island and will continue their battle in a higher court.

Recently, an overwhelmingly popular vote of direct democracy in Hawaii County chose to ban the cultivation of GMO (genetically modified organisms) in their communities. However, genetic engineering giant Monsanto, refused to accept the law, or the will of the people, and sued Hawaii County over the new law.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Kurren, ruled in favor of Monsanto and ordered the Hawaii County Council to stop any enforcement of the law. However, some questions have been raised about the judge who may have Monsanto ties through his wife. This, along with the type of political and financial pressure that Monsanto wields, has called into question whether or not Judge Kurren was able to be unbiased in this decision. Judge Kurren also has an established history of ruling in favor to protect Monsanto’s interest over that of the people. In August of this year, he also struck down Kaua’i’s Pesticide Reform Act claiming there that it was pre-empted by state law denying local government right to pass it’s own regulations; this is the same tactic that he used in this ruling as well. Regardless, the Hawaii County Officials will appeal in higher court to keep the Big Island GMO free.

Of course, this is not the first time that Monsanto has sought to over ride the will of the people and force GMO crops on those who clearly do not want them. Monsanto and its partner companies have spent millions to fight measures to label products containing GMO’s across the country including in Oregon, California, and now Vermont. Top Monsanto officials also end up serving in key governmental positions with the FDA, EPA, or other government posts including current Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas who is the former legal council for Monsanto.

These heavy government ties further complicates matters for those trying to deal with the ecological fall out and health implications of GMO’s. In India there have been over 290,000 farmers who have committed suicide because of GMO’s crops leading most to call Monsanto (or Monsatan as many not so affectionately call it) “the most evil company in the world“.

Monsanto has done much to earn that title as well, beyond their “round up ready” seeds and massively polluting pesticides, Monsanto was also convicted in 2002 in Alabama for “knowingly contaminated their community for decades with PCBs, chemicals used as an insulating fluid in electrical capacitors and transformers.” In 2012 a French court ruled that Monsanto was guilty of chemical poisoning and in Brazil courts found Monsanto guilty of false advertising for claiming that their products were environmentally safe. And in Haiti, farmers there chose to burn the free GMO seeds from Monsanto rather than allow them to infect their nation even in the wake of disaster.

Monsanto and it’s company Dow Chemical were also responsible for Agent Orange which lead to the death of half a million civilians in Vietnam, left over 3 million people contaminated and was responsible for birth defects of half a million Vietnamese children. The U.S. Military did not escape the wrath of Ancient Orange either and many who survived continued to be ill for the rest of their lives.

Monsanto has not been at all shy about their agenda and have accepted no responsibility for any of the problems associated with their global lab experiment. In 1998, Monsanto’s director of corporate communications, Phil Angell made their views on safety clear.

“Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible.”

It is the that very lack of any safety testing and the havoc that GMO crops and accompanying Round Up pesticides may be causing to the food chain, natural plants, and the pollinator’s the keep it all working is one of the key reasons why so many nations, states, and activists are moving to have GMO’s labeled or out right banned all together. But this does not seem to phase the global giant; their spokesman for Britain who had this to say in 1999.

“People will have Roundup Ready soya whether they like it or not”

Many will be watching the battle in Hawaii very closely. It is of monumental importance because not only is it a part of American’s battle for safe food, to protect bees, and insure the survival of natural plants, but it is also critical in the abilities of local government to operate and if Hawaii County loses this battle it could cripple local law makers everywhere and give unprecedented power to those in the corporate world, like Monsanto, to operate above the law and the will of the people.

 

How ‘Awesome’ Is America?

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By Robert Parry

Source: ConsortiumNews.com

Fox News host Andrea Tantaros is facing some well-deserved ridicule for refuting the stomach-turning Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture by declaring that “The United States is awesome. We are awesome” and claiming that the Democrats and President Barack Obama released the report because they want “to show us how we’re not awesome.”

Tantaros’s rant did have the feel of a Saturday Night Live satire, but her upbeat jingoism was only a slight exaggeration of what Americans have been hearing from much of their media and politicians for decades. At least since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, any substantive criticism of the United States has been treated as unpatriotic.

Indeed, a journalist or a politician who dares point out any fundamental flaws in the country or even its actual history can expect to have his or her patriotism challenged. That is how debate over “how we’re not awesome” is silenced.

Fox News may be the poster child of this anti-intellectualism but the same sentiments can be found on the Washington Post’s neocon editorial pages or in the higher-brow New Republic. If you dare point out that America or one of its favored “allies” has done some wrong around the world, you’re an enemy “apologist.” If you regularly adopt a critical stance, you will be marginalized.

That’s why so many serious national problems have lingered or gotten worse. If we don’t kill the messenger, we denounce him or her as un-American.

For instance, the data on racial disparities in police killings and prison incarcerations have long been available, but the vast majority of whites seem oblivious to these continued injustices. To point out that the United States has still not done the necessary hard work to correct these history-based imbalances makes you seem out of step amid the happy-face belief that whatever racism there was is now gone. We have a black president, you know.

So, when white police shoot or otherwise apply excessive violence against blacks at a wildly disproportionate rate to whites, many white Americans just shrug. They even get annoyed if black athletes join in some symbolic protests like raising their hands as Michael Brown did before he was shot to death in Ferguson, Missouri. Many people hate to have the real world intrude on their sports entertainment.

In reaction to such events, Fox News and much of talk radio find reasons to ridicule the victims and the protesters rather than address the real problems. The unwelcome evidence of racism is just another excuse to roll the eyes and infuse the voice with dripping sarcasm.

Mundane Neglect

On a more mundane level in Arlington County, Virginia, where I live, many whites simply don’t see the racial disparities though they are all around. While overwhelmingly white North Arlington benefits from all manner of public investments, including a state-of-the-art subway system which cost billions upon billions of dollars and amenities likes a $2 million “dog park renovation,” racially diverse South Arlington, the historic home of the County’s black population, is systematically shortchanged, except when it comes to expanding the sewage treatment plant.

When the County Board finally approved a much cheaper light-rail mass-transit plan for South Arlington’s Columbia Pike and voted for a public pool complex in another South Arlington neighborhood, North Arlington residents rose up in fury. The local newspaper, the Sun-Gazette, which doesn’t even distribute in much of South Arlington – due to the demographics – rallied the political opposition.

Before long, the County Board was in retreat, killing both the public pools and the light-rail plan, all the better to free up taxpayer money for more North Arlington projects. Yet, when I have noted the racial component to how the two halves of the county are treated, many Arlington whites get furious. They simply don’t see the residual racism or don’t want to see it. They view themselves as enlightened even as they favor neglecting their black and brown neighbors.

After I wrote a column about the history of Columbia Pike, which became an African-American freedom trail after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and ex-slaves escaped up the roadway toward Washington, one reader complained that I had slighted Robert E. Lee by saying he had “deserted” the U.S. Army when his fans prefer saying that he “resigned his commission,” which sounds so much more proper.

The point is interesting not only because the commenter didn’t seem nearly as concerned about the fate of the African-Americans, some of whom joined the U.S. Colored Troops to fight for the final defeat of slavery. And not only because General Lee violated his oath as a U.S. officer in which he swore to “bear true allegiance to the United States of America” and to “serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States.”

But the commenter’s point is also interesting because it underscores how white Americans have excused and even glorified the Confederate “heroes” who were fighting to protect a system based on the ownership of other human beings. If you have any doubt about the glorification, just visit Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, where towering statues of Confederate generals dominate the skyline.

Or, if you’re in Arlington and driving on Route One, you might notice that it is still named in honor of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy who was a fervent white supremacist and a major slaveholder. And, if President Davis and General Lee had been successful in their war of secession, it could have meant that slavery might never have ended. Yet, these protectors of slavery are treated with the utmost respect and any slight toward them requires a protest.

Crude Racism

My writings about Thomas Jefferson also have elicited anger from some people who wish to idolize him as a noble philosopher/statesman when the reality was that he was a crude racist (see his Notes on the State of Virginia) who mistreated his Monticello slaves, including having boys as young as ten whipped and raping one and likely other of his slave girls. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Thomas Jefferson: America’s Founding Sociopath.”]

Much like the defender of Robert E. Lee who preferred more polite phrasing about the general’s betrayal of his oath, defenders of the Jefferson myth expressed much more outrage over my pointing out these inconvenient truths about their hero than they did about the victims of Jefferson’s despicable behavior and stunning hypocrisies.

Which gets us back to Andrea Tantaros and how “awesome” America is. The context for her remarks was the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report which detailed what can no longer be euphemized away as “enhanced interrogation techniques” or EITs as CIA officials prefer.

The only word that can now apply is torture, at least for anyone who has read the page-after-page of near drownings via waterboard, the hallucinatory effects of sleep deprivation, the pain inflicted by hanging people from ceilings, and the sexual sadism of keeping detainees naked and subjecting them to anal rape under the pretext of “rectal rehydration” and “rectal feeding.”

The various apologists for this torture – people like Tantaros, Vice President Dick Cheney and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer – prefer to counterattack by questioning the patriotism or the intellectual consistency of those Americans who are outraged at these actions. The torture defenders excuse the behavior because we were scared after 9/11 and wanted the Bush administration to do whatever it took to keep us safe.

All of these excuses are designed to prevent the sort of soul-searching that one should expect from a mature democratic Republic, a country that seeks to learn from its mistakes, not cover them up or forget them.

Instead of Americans confronting these dark realities of both their history and their present – and making whatever amends and adjustments are necessary – the torture apologists or those who don’t see racism would simply have us wave the flag and declare how “awesome” we are.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.