Category Archives: news

Podcast Roundup

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12/2: On The Progressive Commentary Hour host Gary Null has an in-depth conversation with Peter Levenda on the Nazi legacy, its survival and influence in world events, and its continuation to this day:

Show link: http://s35.podbean.com/pb/1448aab68f3651499d84a256f2ad4c14/54820c63/data1/blogs18/371244/uploads/PCH_120214.mp3

 

12/3: Host KMO and partner Olga have a wide-ranging discussion with podcaster Duncan Crary, and entrepreneur Vic Christopher on localism, architecture and regenerating community among other topics on the C-Realm podcast:

Show link: http://www.c-realm.com/wp-content/uploads/443_Troy.mp3

 

12/3:  On the latest episode of Guns and Butter, host Bonnie Faulker interviews Judyth Vary Baker (an ex-girlfriend of Lee Harvey Oswald) on the connection between cancer causing bioweapons research and the JFK assassination:

Show link: http://archives.kpfa.org/data/20141203-Wed1300.mp3

 

12/4: Freeman and author Jamie Hanshaw discuss propagandistic and ritualistic aspects of the American Music Awards on The Free Zone:

Show link: http://freeman.theanomalieschannel.com/amas-american-mind-control-awards.mp3

 

12/5:  On the Corbett Report, Lionel of LionelMedia.com joins James Corbett for an epic discussion on fake stories in the media, manipulation of the historical record, the fake Syria sniper boy video, the Corbett/Lionel law, and the importance of self-correction.

http://www.corbettreport.com/mp3/2014-12-04%20Lionel.mp3

 

Miguel Conner and author Valarie Ziegler discuss the Gnostic subtext of Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner, one of the greatest television programs of the 60s:

 

 

Surprise: The Drug War Isn’t About Drugs

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Drug-War1By Kevin Carson

Source: Center for a Stateless Society

On the morning of November 6 the US Federal Bureau of Investigation trumpeted its takedown of the Silk Road 2.0 website and the arrest of  alleged operator Blake Benthall.

In so doing the FBI demonstrated, once again, that the War on Drugs has nothing to do with anything its propagandists claim it’s about. If drug criminalization is a public safety issue — about fighting violent crime and gangs, or preventing overdoses and poisoning — shutting down Silk Road is one of the dumbest things the feds can do. Silk Road was a secure, anonymous marketplace in which buyers and sellers could do business without the risk of violence associated with street trade. And the seller reputational system meant that drugs sold on Silk Road were far purer and safer than their street counterparts.

This is true of all the other selling points for the Drug War. Hillary Clinton, in possibly one of the stupidest remarks ever uttered by a human being, says legalizing narcotics is a bad idea “because there’s too much money in it” — referring, presumably, to the lucrative drug trade and the cartels fighting over it.

But there’s so much money in it, and the cartels fight to control it, only because it’s illegal. That’s what happens when you criminalize stuff people want to buy: You create black markets with much higher prices, which organized crime gangs fight to control. Alcohol prohibition created the gangster culture of the 1920s. It’s been with us ever since. When Prohibition was repealed, organized crime just shifted to fighting over other illegal markets. The more consensual, non-violent activities are made illegal, the larger the portion of the economy that’s turned into black markets for gangs to fight over.

In related news, the Mexican drug cartels are reportedly making less money since the legalization or decriminalization of pot in several American states. I wonder why.

Perhaps the biggest joke is that the War on Drugs is fought to reduce drug use. No doubt many people involved in the domestic enforcement side of the Drug War actually believe this, but the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand’s doing. The narcotics trade is an enormous source of money for the criminal gangs that control it, and guess what? The US intelligence community is one of the biggest criminal drug gangs in the world, and the global drug trade is a great way for it to raise money to do morally repugnant stuff it can’t get openly funded by Congress. It’s been twenty years since journalist Gary Webb revealed the Reagan cabinet’s collusion with drug cartels in marketing cocaine inside the United States, to raise money for the right-wing Contra death squads in Nicaragua — a revelation he was gaslighted and driven to suicide for by the US intelligence community and mainstream press.

Now we hear that the US is “losing the drug war in Afghanistan.” Well, obviously — it’s a war that’s designed to be lost. The Taliban were so easy to overthrown in the fall of 2001 because they really did try to stamp out opium poppy cultivation, and with a fair degree of success. This didn’t sit well with the Afghan populace, which traditionally makes a lot of money growing poppies. But the Northern Alliance — which the United States turned into the national government of Afghanistan — was quite friendly to poppy cultivation in its territory. When the Taliban was overthrown, poppy and heroin cultivation resumed normal levels. Putting the US in charge of a “war on drugs in Afghanistan” is like putting Al Capone in charge of alcohol prohibition.

Besides, actually “winning” the drug war would mean ending it. And who in US domestic law enforcement wants to cut off the source of billions in federal aid and military equipment, militarized SWAT teams and unprecedented surveillance and civil forfeiture powers? This is a war meant to go on forever, just like the so-called War on Terror.

The state always encourages moral panic and “wars” on one thing or another in order to keep us afraid, so we’ll give it more power over our lives. Don’t believe its lies.

 

At the Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know podcast Ben and Matt share their views on the War on Drugs.

mp3 link: http://podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/stdwytk-audio/2014-11-14-stdwytk-war-on-drugs.mp3

Michael Brown was Killed Because He Didn’t Prostrate Himself to Police Authority

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This Killing, in Combat, Would Have Been a War Crime

by DAVE LINDORFF

Source: This Can’t Be Happening

What’s wrong with Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson’s killing of the unarmed 18-year-old black teenager, Michael Brown, and with a Grand Jury decision not to indict him for that outrageous slaying, is what is wrong with American law enforcement and American “justice” in general.

Both actions were permeated not only with racism, which clearly played a huge rule in both the verdict rendered by a Grand Jury composed of nine whites and only three blacks, and in this tragic police killing by a white cop of a black child, but also by a mentality on the part of police — and apparently by at least a majority of the citizen jurors on a panel evaluating Wilson’s actions — that cops are authorities who must be obeyed without question, on pain of death.

Let’s recall the most crucial evidence in this killing: According to the New York Times it was two shots into the top of the head by Officer Wilson that killed Brown — shots that multiple witnesses confirm were fired after the unarmed Brown was on his knees, already seriously wounded by four other apparently non-lethal shots to arm, neck and upper right chest, with his hands raised and pleading “Don’t shoot.” The Times also reports that those shots, apparently fired when Brown’s head was leaning forward, or from a position above him, appeared to have been fired “not from close range,” a determination based upon an absence of gun powder residue around the area of the entry wounds.

It should not matter in the slightest whether or not Brown had first struck Officer Wilson inside his squad car during a scuffle, as claimed by the cop, or even that the officer, as he testified in an unusual appearance before jurors, “felt terrified” at that time. Nor does it matter, beyond being evidence of an inherent racism, that Wilson says he thought that Brown, approaching him at his car initially, “looked like a demon.” If the non-lethal shots that first hit Brown in arm, neck and upper chest had been fired at that early point, perhaps Wilson would have been justified in firing them in self defense, but it’s what happened after Brown tried to leave the scene that matter.

This is because Brown, multiple witnesses testified, was down on his knees posing no threat whatsoever to the armed officer when Wilson killed him with at least two shots to the head.

That was not a defensive action by Officer Wilson. It was an execution plain and simple — a punishment for Brown’s having allegedly struck the officer earlier, for his attempt to leave the scene of conflict, and perhaps also for Brown’s initial refusal to obey the officer’s order to get out of the middle of the road, which was reportedly the original reason the officer initiated a confrontation with Brown.

That the jury exonerated Wilson speaks volumes about the sorry, racist state of American society and about the sorry state of the US justice system, where citizens charged with looking into whether a murder has been committed will give a pass to a cop who clearly crossed the line and behaved in a manner that, even in war-time, would punishable as a war crime, which is what the Geneva Conventions term the slaying of a combatant whose hands are raised in the universally understood sign of surrender.

Sadly, the Geneva Conventions do not apply to domestic policing. I say sadly, because it is clear that in nearly all jurisdictions in the US, police today are for all intents and purposes a law unto themselves, without even a US Military Uniform Code of Conduct to govern their actions. Rare indeed is the police officer convicted of unlawfully killing a suspect or a person in custody, though such killings are soaring in number, even as the deaths of police officers on the job (excluding those who die in auto accidents involving usually pointless and sometimes illegal high-speed chases), have plummeted to levels not seen since the 19th Century.

I remember covering a coroner’s inquest in Los Angeles back in 1978 involving the 1977 killing of a small, naked and unarmed man by a hulking LAPD sergeant. The victim, Ron Burkholder, a biochemist who had apparently accidentally burned himself badly one night while trying to make PCP in his basement for personal use. In pain, he had torn off his burning clothes and had then run out onto the street. His erratic behavior led Sgt. Kurt Barz, who was passing in a patrol car, to stop and investigate. Barz testified that he felt threatened when Burkholder (clearly seeking help) ran towards him, and he unloaded his pistol into the approaching “threat,” killing Burkholder instantly with six shots.

The LAPD, in an internal affairs investigation, quickly found the killing “justifiable,” and though the inquest later reached the conclusion of wrongful death, there was no prosecution of Barz, though clearly the scrawny Burkholder posed no conceivable threat to him, and being naked, clearly had no weapon.

So it goes.

The only change, in would seem, between 1977, when Officer Barz slaughtered the unarmed, injured and help-seeking Burkholder, and 2014, when Officer Wilson executed the wounded and surrendering Brown, is how much more commonly police murders of citizens occur these days. And yet number of successful prosecutions of cops for such slayings still hovers disturbingly close to zero. Even in the rare instance where cops are indicted for killing someone, when the case goes to trial, the same pro-cop bias among prosecutors, judges and even jurors, tends to work against a conviction, which requires, of course, a unanimous decision to convict.

According to one survey, in the period between May 1, 2012 and August 24, 2013, police killed at least 1450 people in the US. Since the FBI claims there were 400 “justified” police killings during 2012 (and we know how loosely the term “justified” is, given judgements like the Ferguson Grand Jury’s!), we can assume that many or most of those 1450 people killed were killed unjustifiably, i.e.: murdered by police. Many of the victims of police shootings are children or old people, like the elderly man in Georgia killed by cop last year during a traffic stop when he reached into the back of his pickup truck to retrieve his cane, or the two young boys killed recently for holding toy guns, one in Ohio and one in California. Incredibly, there is no official count of the number of Americans killed each year by police. As the Washington Post reports, we know the accurately the number of people killed by sharks each year (53 in 2013), and even the number of hogs living on American farms (64 million in 2010), and we know the number of police killed in the line of duty (48 in 2012). But the FBI and Dept. of Justice, which require all kinds of statistics from police agencies, don’t ask about police-involved-killings. The only possible reason for their not asking for that information is that police don’t like to have their violent acts open to examination, so even asking would be a political third rail.

According to one report cited by the Cato Institute, US cops and other law-enforcement officers killed over 5000 people between 9/11/2001 and November 6, 2013, making police a bigger threat to Americans than terrorists, including the ones accused of attacking the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11.

The ubiquity of cell phone cameras and video cams, which are finally documenting police killings, and the growing importance of social media, which allow for the unfiltered reporting of killings like that of Michael Brown, without any pro-cop bias inserted by biased or gutless editors and publishers, is shining a badly needed spotlight on this growing horror, but it will take a lot more anger among the public if this slaughter is to be finally halted.

As libertarian Senator Rand Paul (R-TN), quoting a Heritage Foundation report, just wrote in a recent essay in Time magazine:

…The Department of Homeland Security has handed out anti-terrorism grants to cities and towns across the country, enabling them to buy armored vehicles, guns, armor, aircraft, and other equipment.

Federal agencies of all stripes, as well as local police departments in towns with populations less than 14,000, come equipped with SWAT teams and heavy artillery.

Today, (even Bossier) Parish, Louisiana, has a .50 caliber gun mounted on an armored vehicle. The Pentagon gives away millions of pieces of military equipment to police departments across the country—tanks included.”

When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury—national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, pre-conviction forfeiture—we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands.

Given these developments, it is almost impossible for many Americans not to feel like their government is targeting them. Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them.

Sen. Paul adds:

Americans must never sacrifice their liberty for an illusive and dangerous, or false, security. This has been a cause I have championed for years, and one that is at a near-crisis point in our country.

Sen. Paul is right in linking the killing of young Michael Brown to this militarization of policing in the US, and to the corrupted justice system, in which police, even those bald-facedly lying under oath, tend to get the benefit of the doubt from a citizenry deliberately terrorized daily by government officials who claim that terrorists are about to destroy us and who consequently are quick to call every cop, including killers, a “hero.”

It speaks volumes that Officer Wilson can say he has a “clear conscience” about his slaying of a young man who was begging him not to shoot. Whether or not he really suffers no moral qualms or second thoughts alone at night about what he did, the fact that he feels he can say that in public means that he thinks he can get away with it and even win public support.

At this point, one wonders how long will it be before Judas Iscariot gets praised as a hero by Americans for turning his mentor Jesus over to the Roman cops seeking him on a warrant for sedition?

Dave Lindorff is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective, and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

Darren Wilson Wasn’t the First: A Short History of Killer Cops Let Off the Hook

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The U.S. has a long history of allowing police to walk free after vicious racist violence.

By Flint Taylor

Source: In These Times

The Ferguson grand jury’s decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the killing of African-American teenager Michael Brown is heartless but unsurprising. But it is important to place the case in context with the history of police violence investigations and prosecutions in high profile cases—and the systemic and racist police brutality that continues to plague the nation. In doing so, there are lessons for the movement for justice in the Michael Brown case, as well as for those who are engaged in the broader struggle against law enforcement violence.

What follows, then, is a brief history of similar high profile cases where public outrage compelled the justice system to confront acts of racially motivated police violence—with, to say the least, less than satisfactory results.

Chicago

Over the past 45 years, Chicago has been a prime example of official indifference and cover-up when it comes to prosecuting the police for wanton brutality and torture.

On December 4, 1969, Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were slain in a police raid that implicated the Cook County State’s Attorney and the FBI’s Cointelpro program. A public outcry led to a Federal Civil Rights investigation. Despite finding that the raiding police fired more than 90 shots to one by the Panthers, the Grand Jury in 1970 did not indict, but rather issued a report that equally blamed the police perpetrators and the Panther victims.

Outrage at this decision led to the appointment of a Special Prosecutor who, in the face of extreme official resistance, obtained an indictment against the police and the State’s Attorneys who planned and executed the raid—not for murder and attempted murder, but rather for obstruction of justice.

The case came to trial in front of a politically connected judge who dismissed the case without even requiring that the charged officials put on a defense. Again, the outrage, particularly in the African-American community was so extreme that the chief prosecutor, Edward V. Hanrahan, was voted out of office a week after the verdict was rendered in 1972.

The Jon Burge police torture scandal provides another stark example. Evidence that had been unearthed over the years demonstrated that a crew of predominately white Chicago police detectives, led by Jon Burge, tortured at least 120 African-American men from 1972 to 1991.

Cook County State’s Attorney Richard M. Daley was tendered powerful evidence of this torture as early as 1982, but did not investigate or prosecute Burge and his men. Daley’s office continued to use confessions tortured from the victims to send scores of them to prison—10 of whom went to death row, though they were later saved by a death penalty moratorium in 2000 and by a grant of clemency in 2003 by then-Governor George Ryan—during the next seven years.

In 1989, the local U.S. Attorneys’ office declined to prosecute, as did the Department of Justice in 1996 and Cook County State’s Attorney Richard Devine for the five years directly thereafter. In 2001, due to continuing public pressure, a politically connected Special Prosecutor was appointed to investigate the torture. But after a four year, $7 million investigation, he too refused to indict, instead issuing what is widely considered to be a whitewash report that absolved Daley, Devine, and numerous high Chicago police officials.
Finally, in 2008 the U.S. Attorney indicted Burge for perjury and obstruction of justice, and he was convicted in 2010, and sentenced to 4 ½ years in prison. However, the U.S. Attorney has subsequently declined to prosecute Burge’s confederates for similar offenses.

New Orleans

Chicago is by no means an isolated example of how difficult it is to obtain justice for wanton police violence through the judicial system. In New Orleans, a crew of white detectives responded to the killing of a white police officer in 1980 by terrorizing the black community of Algiers, killing four innocent people and torturing numerous others by “booking and bagging” them: beating suspects with telephone books and suffocating them with bags over their heads.

Seven officers were indicted by the Department of Justice for civil rights violations arising from the torture of one of the victims and three were convicted.  No officers were charged for the four killings or for the other acts of torture.

In 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, an NOPD officer fatally shot an unarmed black man named Henry Glover, then several of his fellow officers burned his body to cover-up their crime. NOPD officers also shot and killed two unarmed black men on the Danziger Bridge.

After state authorities botched their investigation, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department indicted the officers involved in the two cases and obtained convictions of some of the main police actors. However, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned the verdict in the Glover case, and the trial judge, citing government misconduct, took the extraordinary step of granting the convicted officers a new trial in the Danziger case. 

New York

In 1997, an NYPD officer sexually assaulted a Haitian-American man named Abner Louima in a precinct station bathroom by shoving a broken broomstick up his rectum. Louima’s attacker was subsequently charged with federal civil rights violations, while three of his police accomplices were charged with covering up the crimes.

After Louima’s attacker pleaded guilty, his accomplices were convicted, but the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturned their convictions on the grounds that the lawyers who represented the officers had a conflict of interest. After they were convicted a second time, the Appeals Court again overturned their convictions—this time on the basis that there was insufficient evidence of intent.

In 1999, four officers from the NYPD’s Street Crimes Unit fired 41 shots at Amadou Diallo, a Guinean immigrant who was reaching for his wallet, hitting him 19 times. The officers were indicted for second degree murder and the case was moved to upstate New York, where a jury acquitted the officers. 

In July of this year, NYPD officers arrested an African-American man named Eric Garner, allegedly for selling untaxed cigarettes. They put a prohibited chokehold on him, forced him to the ground face first with his hands behind his back, and shoved his face into the pavement, where he died a few minutes later of a heart attack. The deadly assault, which was captured on videotape, is now under investigation by a Special Grand Jury empaneled by the District Attorney’s Office.

Los Angeles

Among the most notorious cases was the brutal 1991 beating of Rodney King by five LAPD officers. A videotape captured most of the brutality and also showed several other officers standing by and doing nothing to stop the pummeling of a defenseless black man.

Four officers were charged at the state level with assault with a deadly weapon and use of excessive force. The trial was moved to a predominantly white suburban county, and three of the officers were acquitted of all charges, while the fourth was acquitted of assault with a deadly weapon and other lesser charges. But the jury failed to reach a verdict on his use of excessive force.

After an angry uprising in the Africa- American community of Los Angeles that left 53 dead and around 2,000 injured, the U.S. Justice Department indicted the four officers, and a federal jury convicted two of them, while acquitting the other two.

This past August, LAPD officers fatally shot an unarmed mentally ill African-American man named Ezell Ford, who witnesses said was shot in the back while lying on the ground. Despite massive protests, there has been no grand jury investigation to date, the autopsy report is yet to be released, and the LAPD has not completed its investigation.

Oakland

In Oakland, California in the late 1990s, a unit of police officers dubbed the “Rough Riders” systematically beat, framed and planted narcotics on African Americans whom they claimed were dealing drugs. Four of the “Riders” were indicted by the District Attorney’s Office, and the trial was moved to a suburban county. The ringleader fled the country, and was tried in absentia.

After a year-long trial before a bitterly divided jury on which there were no blacks, the officers were acquitted of eight charges, and the jury was hung on the remaining 27 counts. At the urging of then-Mayor Jerry Brown, the officers were not re-tried.

Also in Oakland, in the early morning hours of New Years Day, 2009, a BART officer shot and killed a young black man named Oscar Grant, who was lying face down, unarmed,  in a busy transit station. The shooting was videotaped, and led to militant protests in Oakland.

Another jury with no black members rejected the charge of murder and instead found the officer guilty of involuntary manslaughter. As a result, Oscar Grant’s killer spent less than a year behind bars. The Department of Justice subsequently opened a civil rights investigation, but no charges were brought.

Milwaukee

From 2007-2012 in Milwaukee, a unit of white police officers, spurred on by the Department’s CompStat program of aggressive policing, stopped and illegally body cavity searched more than 70 African-American men whom they claimed to be investigating for drug dealing. In conducting these searches, most commonly performed on the street, the searching officer reached inside the men’s underwear, and probed their anuses and genitals.

After this highly illegal practice came to light, the unit’s ringleader, Michael Vagnini, was indicted by the Milwaukee County District Attorney on numerous counts of sexual assault, illegal searches, and official misconduct, while three of the other unit officers were also charged for participating in two of the searches. The unit’s sergeant and several other members of the unit, all of whom were present for many of the searches, were not charged.

The charged officers were permitted to plead guilty to the lesser included offenses of official misconduct and illegal strip searches, with Vagnini receiving a 36-month sentence while the other three received sentences that totaled, collectively, less than a month in jail. By pleading guilty, they also received promises that they would not be charged with federal civil rights violations.

Pattern and Practice Investigations

These high profile cases represent only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to cases where racist police violence has not been subjected to equal justice under the law.

Recently, the Justice Department declined to prosecute Little Rock, Arkansas, officers who shot and killed Eugene Ellison, an elderly African American man who was walking out of his home with a cane in his hand, while there have been documented reports of unarmed black men recently being shot down by the police in Chicago; Houston; San Antonio; Beaver Creek, Ohio; and Sarasota, Florida.

In 1994, the United States Congress, recognizing that police misconduct and violence was systemic in many parts of the country, passed 42 U.S. Code Section 14141, which empowered the Justice Department to file suit against police departments alleging patterns and practices of unconstitutional conduct, and to obtain wide ranging court orders, consent decrees, and independent monitors in order to implement reforms to those practices.

Although understaffed, the Pattern and Practice Unit of the Justice Department has attacked systemic and discriminatory deficiencies in police hiring, supervision, and monitoring in numerous police departments over the past 20 years.  A particularly egregious act or series of acts of police violence often prompts the Unit to initiate an investigation, and its lawyers have obtained consent decrees or court orders in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Steubenville, Ohio, New Orleans, Puerto Rico, Oakland, and Miami.

Last month, lawyers handling the Little Rock cases requested that the DOJ do a pattern and investigation of the LRPD, and the Unit is reportedly now investigating the practices of the Ferguson Police Department. While these investigations are not a panacea, they offer a mechanism for exposing and reforming blatantly unconstitutional police practices, and have also demonstrated how pervasive the problem systemic police violence continues to be.

In light of this history, the pre-ordained failure of a biased local prosecutor to obtain an indictment against Darren Wilson should not surprise us. But the movement for justice for Michael Brown has brought widespread attention to the nationwide problem of systemic and racist police violence and highlighted the movement that has come together to battle against it.

Just two weeks ago, the Brown case, along with the Burge torture cases, was presented to the United Nations Committee Against Torture in Geneva. The movement should now turn its attention to the Department of Justice, demanding a federal civil rights indictment against Wilson a full scale pattern and practice investigation of the Ferguson Police Department, and, more broadly, an end to systemic and racist police violence.

As the history of the battle against racist police violence so pointedly teaches, the public outcry and agitation must continue not only in Ferguson but across the nation. Because as Frederick Douglas rightly stated many years ago, power concedes nothing without a demand.
Flint Taylor is one of the lawyers for the families of slain Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark and together with his law partner Jeffrey Haas was trial counsel in the marathon 1976 civil trial. For more information on the Hampton/Clark case, the history of Black Panther Party, and the FBI’s Program to destroy it, visit peopleslawoffice.com.

 

Confronting Battered Citizen Syndrome

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By James F. Tracy

Source: The Memory Hole

State-sponsored terrorism poses a significant challenge to the psychological well-being of the body politic. While evident in many geopolitical locales, this condition arising from such government abuses is especially prevalent in the West. Such a disorder is comparable to the psychological manipulation recognized on a micro-level in some spousal relationships.

Indeed, the 13-year-old “war on terror” has contributed to a grave societal malady that might be deemed “battered citizen syndrome.” As the project of a transnational New World Order is laid out, the psychological constitution of the polity must necessarily experience perpetual crises and the threat thereof. Genuinely non-conventional political communication, organization and activism are among the few substantial means of combating battered citizen syndrome and the spiritual and psychological slavery it perpetuates.

Battered citizen syndrome is an extremely damaging psychological condition that effects individuals who are collectively subjected to emotional abuse and political disenfranchisement by the psychopathic types that all-too-frequently occupy public office in an era of political and socio-economic decay. The condition is often the result of “false flag” terrorism initiated by a tyrannical state that has long grown unresponsive to the citizen’s actual needs. This syndrome subdues individuals’ awareness of their own historical and political agency, and discourages them from seeking assistance for and ultimately remedying their unsafe situation.

There are various stages one will experience as a result of this condition. When persons in the singular or aggregate undergo the threat or experience of state violence in the form of false flag terror (i.e., political assassinations, seemingly spontaneous bombings or shootings, gigantic skyscrapers falling inexplicably at free-fall speed, CIA-sponsored terror bogeys such as Al Qaeda and ISIS, and perhaps even deadly plagues) they will find it expedient to deny such exploitation and decline to admit they are being manipulated by a paranoid and psychopathic state. Corporate-owned or controlled mass media routinely propagating the notion of “free choice” and personal agency by touting the supposed integrity of electoral processes and political institutions actively aid in this denial.

Once a victim accepts the fact that such manipulation is taking place, they will feel remorse. Victims will often believe that the abuse is their fault and not the fault of criminal governance. Eventually, a victim of state terror and violence will realize that they are not to blame for the cruelty they are being subjected to. Despite this realization, the individual will typically choose to remain in the abusive relationship. It may take some time, but eventually the truly self-respecting citizen-victim will understand that in order to defend themselves and their loved ones from harm they must escape their injurious relationship. These stages can be observed in many of the victims who have ultimately recognized and escaped their relationships with an abusive state.

Denial
The first stage of battered citizen syndrome is denial. Denial occurs when a victim of abuse is unable to acknowledge and accept that they are being subjected to political violence in the form of false flag terror and contrived events. During this stage, a victim of such psychological abuse will not only avoid admitting the mistreatment to their friends and their family members, but they themselves will not acknowledge the brutality from which they suffering. They will fail to recognize any problems between themselves and their government. There are numerous factors that may contribute to such steadfast denial.

In many instances, an individual does not realize they are being subjected to such calculating state violence. This is largely due to the manipulative and coercive behavior of the offending government. The acts of abuse may be so subtle that they do not appear to be harmful or damaging. In other instances, a victim of Machiavellian offenses may suppose that denial is the most effective way to avoid being subjected to further violence and cruelty. Whatever the cause, denial is extremely unhelpful to the victim. Until citizens individually and collectively admit and confront the abuses they are experiencing, they will not be able to secure necessary psychic and material aid and protection.

Guilt
After a citizen experiences the denial period they will move on the guilt stage. During this phase, victims of such coercive violence will undergo feelings of extreme guilt and dishonor by being fingered as potential terrorists themselves. Through the suggestion that they may also be terrorists, citizens will believe they may have somehow caused the harm that in reality elements within their exploitative government has subjected them to.

Abusive governments stage false flag terror events not only to create confusion, but also induce guilt in their subjects. Professional political and opinion leaders prompt feelings of guilt through similar rhetorical appeals. Those of the liberal or “progressive” sort in particular claim that such events are the result of “blow back,” due to the given nation’s foreign policy and imperialist overreach. Similarly, conservatives assert that the nation has been victimized because it has been too forthright in parading its “freedoms.”

Once internalized, “war on terror” guilt ideation is reinforced via the messaging slogans of state agencies. Typical messaging may include communications such as, “Is your neighbor or coworker a homegrown extremist?” “Keep your luggage with you at all times,” “Step this way after removing your shoes and valuables,” and so on.

Regardless of guilt stimulus, feelings of culpability are used to exert further control via rituals of submission, such as enacting excessive and unwarranted security measures to partake in travel, gain access to a public building, or withdraw cash from one’s bank account.

Along these lines, the offending government will convince the victim that it must resort to physical violence in order to punish the citizenry for their negative qualities or behavior. They may threaten or enact violence to teach the citizen not to take part in the activities of which it disapproves or finds inconvenient, such as public demonstrations and civil disobedience.

In addition to such acts, tyrannical governments strip citizens of their civil liberties and establish or strengthen a police state in order to further expand their control. As a result, the citizen’s already low self-esteem and depression will accelerate downward. Once this occurs, it is not difficult to convince the victim that they are being subjected to abuse due to their own faults and inadequacies. If they could only be more dependent on the state and live up to its expectations, they would not be experiencing state terror and exploitation. Victims of such manipulation will believe this. Therefore, they will not contest the abuse being experienced because they have rationalized that their abusive government is not to blame for such cruelty.

Enlightenment
One of the most important phases of the battered citizen’s syndrome is enlightenment. This occurs when a target of abuse recognizes how they are not to blame for their ill-treatment. They will begin to understand that no one deserves to be subjected to state-inflicted terror and violence regardless of their personal characteristics or perceived shortcomings. The fact that the state  seeks to manipulate their subjects and exhibits disapproval of their victim’s behavior does not justify exposing the victim to the trauma prompted by terrorist threats and violence.

During this stage, a citizen will begin to acknowledge that most states are abusive, violent, overseen by psychopathic personalities, and thus the violence experienced is the result of an external socio-political condition and not inherent in themselves. It is now that a victim begins to realize the importance of coming to terms with their situation and holding those in power accountable.

Despite the realization that their fear, anxiety, and loss of civil liberties likely stem from the broader designs of treacherous individuals in power, victims will continue to accept overzealous state power and commit themselves to saving the seriously flawed relationship. They will often use various reasons in order to justify this decision. However, individuals who choose to remain in such an environment will soon find that in most cases the tyrannical government will only increase the severity of its abuses.

Responsibility
Once a citizen recognizes how the psychological torment and terroristic violence they are suffering from is the fault of their government, it is only a matter of time before these victims understand the importance of taking responsibility and escaping their current situation. In the majority of cases, state violence does not improve over time. Most governments subjecting their citizens to violence and brutality are “repeat offenders” and will continue to reinforce control by exposing subjects to heightened abuses. When an individual acknowledges this, they will understand that their safety, and the safety of their loved ones, depends on establishing new modes of governance. During the responsibility stage of the battered citizen’s syndrome, a victim of state violence may experience a vast array of difficulties.

It is essential that an individual plan their escape well. Citizens who have decided to depart from their unfavorable situation should avoid the enticements of major political parties that are usually the root cause of battered citizen syndrome.

If a victim would like support and advice about leaving their abusive relationship they may wish to contact or support a third party candidate running for public office. Citizen violence shelters in the form of information derived from alternative news media, meaningful political discussion and debate, and grassroots and independent political organizing can also provide victims with the necessary support to make a clean break from tyrannical state power that will ultimately lead toward the forging of more constructive political realities for themselves and their fellow citizenry.

Clear as Mud

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Middle East Explained_0The current state of U.S. foreign policy in a nutshell:

Are you confused by what is going on in the Middle-East? Let me explain. We support the Iraqi government in its fight against Islamic State (IS/ISIL/ISIS). We don’t like IS but IS is supported by Saudi Arabia whom we do like. We don’t like President Assad in Syria. We support the fight against him, but not IS, which is also fighting against him.

We don’t like Iran, but the Iranian government supports the Iraqi gov’t against IS. So, some of our friends support our enemies and some of our enemies are our friends, and some of our enemies are fighting our other enemies, whom we don’t want to lose, but we don’t want our enemies who are fighting our enemies to win.

If the people we want to defeat are defeated, they might be replaced by people we like even less. And, all this was started by us invading a country to drive out terrorists who weren’t actually there until we went in to drive them out – do you understand now?

There is no reasoning with an empire waging a world war of deception

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By Larry Chin

Source: Intrepid Report

On September 24, 2014, the United Nations passed a resolution paving the way to open-ended “anti-terror” warfare against the Islamic State (IS), the “network of death,” promising a war that will “last for years.”

The “war on the Islamic State” is a lie. It is the same fetid Big Lie that is the “war on terrorism,” reheated and updated with new, bloodier special effects, new propaganda, a familiar but revised cast of demonic villains and a new military attack calendar.

Three thousand lives were sacrificed on 9/11 for the fabricated “war on terrorism” against “Al-Qaeda” and Osama bin Laden. Now, thirteen years of continuous imperial onslaught and tens of thousands of deaths and atrocities later, the “Islamic State” escalation will topple Syria, Iran, transform Iraq, and provide yet another pretext to wreak havoc anywhere else the empire wishes.

But it is the same lie, built on the same propaganda cornerstones: the myth of the “outside enemy,” the threat of “Islamic terror,” eternal pretexts to galvanize public opinion behind an Anglo-American agenda of conquest and war that will never end.

It is the same lie, founded upon the idea that “Islamic terrorists” are enemies of the West, when, in amply documented fact, these terrorists are the West’s finest foot soldiers and military-intelligence assets.

The Islamic State, like Al-Qaeda and all entities that comprise the “Islamic Jihad” is a creation of the CIA and Anglo-American intelligence (Pakistan’s ISI, Saudi intelligence, British MI6, the Israeli Mossad, etc.). The various jihadist militias and military-intelligence assets and fronts—IS, Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusrah, etc.—are “American made,” openly supported and utilized by the United States and its allies, as they have been continuously from the Cold War to this very second. These forces are carefully manipulated and guided weapons for US-NATO. Terrorists are instrumental to the ongoing US-led covert and overt operations in Syria. Terrorists run by the US and CIA destabilized and toppled Libya, are integral to coming regime changes. Under both direct and indirect orders of US-NATO sponsors and handlers, these “demon hordes” are, and will continue to be, the leading military-intelligence assets behind every major geostrategic action in the region.

The IS joins Al-Qaeda as today’s favorite “boogeyman” target. The war masks the true intent, which is the toppling of Syria and Iran, and onward.

The “terrorists” are depicted in propaganda as either villains or “freedom fighters,” depending on the day and the military theater. The horrific acts of the death squads, including beheadings and other atrocities, are standard operating procedure in CIA black operations, terror techniques going back to the Vietnam War and the Phoenix Program, and are done upon orders of US and US-allied military-intelligence. Decapitations of Syrian civilians have been ongoing for years, to media silence. The recent spate of beheadings of Americans and British have been selectively carried out (and in some cases staged) for propaganda purposes. Political theater designed to galvanize the dimwitted, ignorant masses to support massive retaliatory war.

According to recent polls, four out of five registered American voters overwhelmingly support military attacks against the Islamic State. The acquiescent, ignorant American masses, still irretrievably pacified by the propaganda “shock and fear” effect of 9/11, enthusiastically back any “retaliation” against “bad guys who cut off heads” and “threaten America,” and have no problem sending American youth to the front lines to be cannon fodder. They are “defending freedom.” The American sheeple believe—even love to believe—the Big Lie. Whereas the citizens of Hong Kong and in other countries take passionately to the streets to fight for their democracy, the average American has long abdicated his and her duty as an informed, vigilant citizen. Far too busy shooting nude selfies on handheld gadgets—their brains addled by inane entertainment, and Hollywood celebrations of the national security apparatus—to care.

So-called liberals and progressives also back action against the Islamic State. The few who have any inkling that Islamic terror is a product of the US war machine wind up wringing their sweaty hands over the red herring of “blowback”: the tired idea that the US created but lost control of a Jihadist force that it now must contain. It is bogus. These militias are the American empire’s key foot soldiers and operatives, the leading force behind plans to topple Syria, just as they were in Libya. This is not blowback, but a well orchestrated military-intelligence operation, cloaked beneath a criminal conspiracy that is maintained by an ironclad elite consensus.

Islamic terrorism “stops” the minute that its sponsors at CIA, MI, ISI, etc. stop using it. The war itself stops when the elites who have planned this Final Solution to seize control of the last remaining oil supplies on the planet—the very life blood of the Anglo-American empire—stop, and give up their war of conquest and greed. The entire apparatus collapses. But this will not happen in this lifetime. Not even in the event of planetary calamity.

To threaten humanity, to pretend to wage war against boogeyman that they themselves created, and continue to support and use, only those of world class evil could conceive of and carry out this horror.

The American network of death goose-steps to the abyss

With each passing day, more of the Anglo-American empire’s veneer falls away, revealing the violence at its core.

Leading the charge in front of the United Nations, the mendacious President Barack Obama thundered: “No God condones this terror. There can be no reasoning—no negotiation—with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force.”

Here was a performance directly out of the playbook of the Third Reich and Bush/Cheney, brimming with threats, false morality, pseudo-religious claptrap, and invective directed against the perceived enemies. Here was Obama being who he really is, a war criminal. The ghost of Hitler has to be envious.

No God condones deceit. No God condones the terror of the Anglo-American empire’s war of conquest. No God condones the extermination of tens of thousands of lives in more than a decade of imperial conquest for oil.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with the criminal leadership of an empire that will thrash and kill to the brink of extinction. There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with warmongers who have wiped out entire swaths of humanity.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with an empire so desperate and out of answers that gangsterism replaces the rule of law, and false flag operations constitute foreign policy. There is no reasoning with those who could, in the span of just a few months, set off false flag destabilizations in Syria, false flag operations in support of a neo-Nazi cabal in Ukraine, plan and cover up the false flag shootdown of Flight MH-17 (blamed on Russia), support the bombing and conquest of Gaza by Israel (blamed on Hamas, in the wake of the murder of Israeli teenagers by ISIL terrorists), and set off the “sudden” rise of the Islamic State.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with an empire that must and will stop at nothing to control every inch of the Eurasian subcontinent, and destroy all opposition along the way, including potential nuclear confrontations with Russia and China.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with the functionaries and enablers of this empire in governments, in media, everywhere. There is also no reasoning—no negotiation—with the cognitively impaired sheeple.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with the killers, the world planning orchestrators speaking the “language of force”; these “great men and women” who hold humanity in contempt.

There is, indeed, no reasoning—no negotiation—with this brand of evil.

Larry Chin is an Associate Editor of Intrepid Report.

 

Political issues in the Ebola crisis

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ebola

By Patrick Martin

Source: WSWS.org

The report that a healthcare worker in Dallas, Texas, one of those who treated Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan before his death, has herself contracted the disease, is a significant and troubling event. Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, admitted in a television interview Sunday, “It’s deeply concerning that this infection occurred.”

While Frieden claimed that current protocols for treating Ebola patients were effective in preventing the spread of the disease, arguing that there must have been “a breach of protocol,” no actual explanation has been given for how the healthcare worker became infected. She was not one of the 48 primary contacts with Duncan who were being monitored for possible exposure, but worked in a more peripheral role. Her infection was only detected when she contracted a fever and reported it herself.

There are a growing number of such cases, including doctors and nurses in the affected regions of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, who were well aware of the procedures, and an NBC News photographer, whose infection has caused the quarantining of the entire reporting team, led by Dr. Nancy Snyderman, the network’s chief medical correspondent. These cases suggest that despite the repeated assurances from health officials, there is much that is not known about how the disease is transmitted.

What is certain is that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is a catastrophe for the people of that region. More than 8,000 people have been infected and more than 4,000 have died, with no signs that the epidemic has been curtailed. The heroic efforts of doctors, nurses and aid workers have been sabotaged by the collapse of the healthcare systems of these countries, among the poorest in the world. Only 20 percent of the affected population in West Africa has access to a treatment center.

It is almost impossible to overstate the dimensions of the disaster. Until this year, Ebola was a disease of remote rural areas that had killed only 1,500 people in 20 previous outbreaks over 40 years. Now the disease has reached urban centers like Monrovia, capital of Liberia, a city of one million, and individuals infected with the virus have travelled from the region only to fall ill in the United States, Spain and Brazil. There are well-founded fears that Ebola could become a global plague, particularly if it reaches more densely populated countries like Nigeria, or the impoverished billions of South and East Asia.

The impotent global response to the immense tragedy in West Africa is a serious warning. The Ebola crisis has proven to be a test of the ability of capitalism, as a world system, to deal with an acute and deadly threat. The profit system has failed. A society organized on the basis of production for private gain and divided into antagonistic nation-states, with a handful of imperialist powers dominating the rest, is incapable of the systematic, energetic and humane response that this crisis requires. It is no accident that the Ebola outbreak takes place in countries that are former colonies of imperialist powers. Guinea was a French colony, Sierra Leone a British colony, and Liberia a de facto US colony since its founding by freed American slaves. Despite their nominal independence, each country remains dominated by giant corporations and banks based in the imperialist countries, which extract vast profits from the mineral wealth and other natural resources. Guinea is the world’s largest bauxite exporter, Sierra Leone depends on diamond exports, Liberia has long been the fiefdom of Firestone Rubber (now Bridgestone).

These countries are unable to provide even rudimentary healthcare services to their populations, not because they lack resources, but because they are exploited and oppressed by a global economic system controlled by Wall Street and other financial and commodity markets. This economic system is so unequal that the 85 richest individuals on the planet control more wealth than the poorest three billion people, nearly half of humanity.

Economic development, particularly over the past 40 years, has created an interconnected and globalized world. Thousands of people travel every day between West Africa and other parts of the world. The revolution in transportation and communications means that what happens in West Africa today can affect Dallas, Boston, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro tomorrow. This makes the Ebola epidemic not a regional event, but a world event.

But the response to the Ebola crisis is carried out by national governments driven by competing national interests, and concerned, not with the danger of the virus to the world’s people, but with how it affects the interests of the ruling class in each nation. Thus there are calls in the United States and Europe for imposing an embargo on travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, although health experts warn that such an action would cause the economic collapse of these countries, vastly worsening the epidemic and making its global spread more rather than less likely.

Equally reactionary is the Obama administration’s decision to send 4,000 US troops to Liberia, ostensibly to build health treatment facilities. Why are heavily armed soldiers chosen for such a mission? They are not construction workers or healthcare providers. If healthcare workers and journalists have become infected, despite taking every precaution, then certainly soldiers could themselves fall victim to the disease, and bring the virus home with them. The real agenda of Washington is to secure a basis for its Africa Command (AFRICOM), up to now excluded from the continent by local opposition, thus advancing the interests of American imperialism against its rivals, particularly China.

The potential dangers of a disease like Ebola spreading from rural Africa to the world have long been understood by epidemiologists and other scientists. It has been the subject of specialized studies and best-selling books. The issue has even penetrated into popular culture through films from The Andromeda Strain to Outbreak and 28 Days. But the profit system has been incapable of generating a serious effort to forestall an entirely predictable crisis.

The detection of Ebola in the mid-1970s should have been the occasion for the launching of an intensive effort to study the virus, analyze how it is transmitted and develop antidotes and a vaccine. This did not take place, in large measure, as a report last month suggested, because the giant pharmaceutical companies that control medical research saw little profit in saving the lives of impoverished villagers in rural Africa (see “Profit motive big hurdle for Ebola drugs”).

What little research has been conducted on possible cures and vaccines was funded by the US Pentagon, for dubious reasons: at best, to protect US soldiers who might be deployed to the jungles of central Africa as an imperialist invasion force; at worst, to determine whether the virus could be weaponized for use against potential enemies.

What would a serious response to the Ebola crisis look like? It would entail a massive, internationally coordinated response which calls on vast resources on the scale necessary both to save as many as possible of those under immediate threat and to prevent the development of an outbreak on a global scale.

It would mean the mobilization of doctors, nurses, public health workers and scientists from America, Europe, Russia, China and the rest of the world to fight back against a deadly threat to the entire human race. And it would mean taking control of this response out of the hands of the national military establishments, particularly the Pentagon, and the giant pharmaceutical firms, one of the most corrupt and rapacious detachments of big business.