Tag Archives: empire

How Can the US Accuse Any Nation of Violating ‘Rules-Based International Order’?

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North Dakota’s Governor ordered the state’s National Guard to clear the protest encampment of Lakota Sioux water protectors and their supporters during the 2016-17 protests against a pipeline through tribal lands. Click on image to play video (video courtesy RT television)

By Dave Lindorff

Source: This Can’t Be Happening

Sometimes the hypocrisy of the US government, especially when it comes to foreign affairs, it just too much to let pass.

The latest example of this is the Ukraine crisis, where the US pretty much stands all alone (unless you count Britain’s embattled and embarrassed Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who parrots US policy like a trained bird), accusing Russia not just of preparing for an “imminent invasion’ of Ukraine, but of violating international law and “rules-based international order,” as Secretary of State Antony Blinken likes to put it.

The Biden administration’s top diplomat has made repeatedly blasted both Russia for threatening Ukraine with an invasion by moving troops and equipment to its border and to the border between Ukraine and Belarus, Russia’s ally to the west, and China for its threats to Taiwan and for a rights crackdown in Hong Kong, a Chinese Special Administrative Region that had been promised 30 years or “no change” but was put under new stricter national security laws following violent student protests and university occupations in 2019-20.

But how can the US make such accusations against the Russians and the Chinese governments when the US for nearly eight years, has been bombing, launching rocket and drone attacks, and sending troops, under both CIA and Pentagon control, against both ISIS and Syrian government troops and aircraft — even attacking and killing Russian mercenary troops at one point, who, unlike the US, were in Syria at the request of the Syrian government.

US military actions in Syria are completely outside of any “rules based international order.”

International rules, when it comes to warfare, are crystal clear, enshrined in the United Nations Charter, which is an international treaty signed and ratified by the US government along with most other nations of the world and incorporating all the laws of war. The primary law, violation of which is described as the gravest war crime of all “because it contains with in it all other war crimes.” Called a Crime Against Peace, it states that no nation may attack another except if that nation faces an “imminent threat” of attack.

There are no codicils expanding on or getting around that proscription.

The US has committed that  Crime Against Peace countless times, in Vietnam, in Laos, in Cambodia, in Yemen, in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Somalia, in Sudan, in Haiti, in the Dominican Republic, in Nicaragua, in El Salvador, in Cuba, in Niger, in the Congo, in Panama, in Grenada — indeed in so many places I’m sure I’m not remembering them all. Suffice to say that my whole life (I was born in 1949), my country has been a violator of the UN Charter’s ban on launching illegal wars.

Rules-based order? What the F**k is Blinken talking about? The US makes its own rules. In fact, whenever the US launches some illegal invasion or air attack against a country, the biggest complaint we hear in the US is that the president has ordered up and launched a war “without Congressional approval”

The implication is that if Congressional approves an illegal war or act of war, that makes it legit.  It doesn’t.

What makes it worse when the US makes such accusations against Russia and China is that it is accusing two countries which, as objectionable as their actions or threats might be,  at least have a better argument for their legality than does the US.

Let’s start with China. The government in Beijing stands accused by Blinken and the US government under a series of presidents, with threatening Taiwan, an island that historically was a part of China, but became functionally independent in 1949 when the Chinese Communist Party won its revolution on the mainland, founding the People’s Republic of China, and the remnants of the Nationalist Party and its army fled to Taiwan, murdering tens of thousands of local Taiwanese and Hakka Chinese people, and establishing a brutal dictatorship under Nationalist leader and major domo Chiang Kai-Shek. China has never acknowledged the independence of Taiwan, which for 50 years prior to the end of World War II had been a colony of Japan, a spoil of victory in the China-Japan War won by Japan against the Ching dynasty in 1895.

The US initially recognized Taiwan, after the Chinese Communist revolutionary victory in 1949, as an independent country, but Richard Nixon, in a slick realpolitik maneuver masterminded by his National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in order to recognize China and drive a wedge between that country and the Soviet Union, agreed to cease recognizing Taiwan as an independent nation, removed the US embassy from the island, and set one up in Beijing. In other words, at that point, from the US point of view at least, Taiwan’s status became an internal affair of China’s, not an international affair.

The same applies to the Chinese crackdown on rights in Hong Kong. Since July 1997, Hong Kong ceased to be a British colony, and reverted to being part of China. Now it’s true there were negotiations between the Beijing government and departing British government.  During those years of transition, Hong Kong’s appointed colonial Governor Chris Patten, former head of the British Conservative Party, carefully avoided allowing Hong Kongers to obtain long-sought universal suffrage to elect all members of the territory’s legislative council, Legco, before the British departure (a move which would at least have left the Beijing facing a local government that actually represented all the people of Hong Kong, instead of Legco representatives representing various business sectors like banking, the legal profession, the retail industry, property owners, etc).

China agreed during those negotiations to gradually increase the number of Legco members elected from geographic constituencies, and to leave basic freedoms of speech, press, etc. untouched “for 30 years.” But when students rose up to protest the arrests of Hong Kong residents and their deportation to face trials in China, it set in motion a confrontation between democracy advocates in Hong Kong and authoritarians in Beijing, and ultimately to a new Beijing-imposed national security law for Hong Kong that has turned the city into essentially just another bit of China. But again, while it was certainly a draconian over-reaction to legitimate local protests, that action by China is not a violation of international law — just violation of an agreement between a departing (and loathed) colonial power, a legacy of the European Opium War against China, and a new vastly more powerful China. It’s a bit like the US’s brutal crackdown on immigrants at the Mexican border or on Native defenders of water rights in North Dakota. Disgusting, and perhaps criminal under US law, but hardly a violation of some kind of “rules-based international order.”

As for Russia, even the plebiscite in Crimea, some 97% of the population there voted that they wanted to leave Ukraine and return to being part of Russia, as the peninsula had been until 1954, when new Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, as a gift to the region he had grown up in, transferred Crimea from the Russian Soviet to the Ukrainian Soviet, which the US has criticized as somehow fraudulent (Crimea is about 85% ethnic Russian). With 85% of eligible people voting, that plebiscite provided Russia with the justification for reclaiming  jurisdiction over Crimea. Russia’s action, criticized by the US as “aggression,” is less of a violation of democratic norms though than the massive disenfranchisement of blacks and other people of color in Republican-run “red” states of the US — a process that is now being accelerated to warp speed with the approach of the 2022 off-year Congressional elections. If the Biden administration really cared about justice and democracy it would be laser-focused on defending voter rights, not on shipping deadly weapons to Ukraine.

If the US government cared about following a “rules-based international order,” the it would pull all US military forces out of Syria, pull the US Navy out of the Persian Gulf, stop using drones to kill people in Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere, stop sending US Special Forces wherever the president wants to send them, and rejoin the World Court and respect its adjudication of violations of international rules and laws.

Then we wouldn’t have to listen to all the hypocritical crap uttered by Biden, Blinken and their ilk.

Someday, I’m sure there will come a reckoning, when US leaders will finally be held to account for their long record of crimes against humanity. Until then, we will have to endure all this epic hypocrisy.

Politics Is Dead, Here’s What Killed It

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

Representational democracy–a.k.a. politics as a solution to social and economic problems–has passed away. It did not die a natural death. Politics developed a cancer very early in life (circa the early 1800s), caused by wealth outweighing public opinion. This cancer spread slowly but metastasized in the past few decades, spreading to every nook and cranny of our society and economy as “democracy” devolved into an invitation-only auction of elections and political favors.

Politics might have had a fighting chance but three forces betrayed the nation and its citizenry.

1. The Federal Reserve transferred trillions of dollars of unearned wealth into the feeding troughs of the super-wealthy and corporations, vastly increasing the wealth the top 0.01% had to buy elections and favors. The Federal Reserve cloaked its treachery with jargon– quantitative easing, stimulus, etc.–and then stabbed the nation’s representational democracy in the back.

2. The Supreme Court betrayed the nation’s representative democracy by labeling corporations buying elections and political favors a form of “free speech.” (Please don’t hurt yourself laughing too hard.) The Supreme Court’s equating wealth buying elections and favors with individual citizens’ sacrosanct right of free speech was a knife in the back of the nation and its citizenry.

3. The two political parties betrayed their traditional voter bases to kneel at the altar of corporate / elite wealth, wealth which bought elections and political favors. The Democrats, traditional champions of the workforce in the 20th century, abandoned workers in favor of serving their corporate masters, masking their betrayal with fine-sounding phrases.

The Republican Party, traditionally promoters of Big Business (Wall Street, banks, mega-corporations), had maintained a narrow but crucial interest in trust-busting (limiting monopolies) to defend free enterprise and small business from the predations of monopolies and cartels. Those days are long past; just as the Democratic Party tossed the working class overboard to the sharks, the Republican Party walked small business off the gangplank right into the voracious jaws of cartels and globalized, financialized corporate sharks.

To cloak their betrayal and treachery, the parties have pursued a divide-and-conquer distraction game, pushing half the nation into one-size-fits-all “enemies lists” with labels that have lost all meaning other than as means to promote divisiveness and rancor: Liberal and Conservative, socialist and capitalist, etc.

It’s not the citizenry who are “deplorable,” it’s the parties’ corporate-derriere-kissing toadies, lackeys, apparatchiks, purveyors of propaganda, enforcers, apologists, sycophants, grifters and “leaders” who manage to greatly increase their private wealth while “serving the public” (heh).

These three betrayals of public trust and representational democracy caused the demise of politics as a solution to social and economic problems. “Politics” has been stripped to its essence: an invitation-only auction of elections and political favors. The price to watch from the rear of the auction is $1 million; to actually place a bid, the minimum is $10 million, but the winning bids are generally much higher.

(Lobbying, campaign contributions, bogus think-tanks, and philanthro-capitalist foundations are all part of the auction funding.)

Here’s “politics” in America now: come with mega-millions or don’t even bother to show up. Choose which “enemies list” you want to be on; there’s not much choice. And don’t forget to put a flower on the grave of representational democracy.

Ukraine and U.S. War Propaganda

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By Margaret Kimberley

Source: Black Agenda Report

The 2014 U.S. sponsored coup against the elected government of Ukraine must be the starting point for any discussion of the current crisis. That crisis has been manufactured by Joe Biden, who was the Obama administration point person in using Ukraine as a means of destabilizing Russia.

The corporate media always carry water for the state, and they are never more dangerous than when the nation is on a war footing. Right now the United States government is sending weapons to Ukraine. One wouldn’t know that because of constant references to “lethal aid.” The euphemisms and subterfuge are necessary for a very simple reason. Everyone except the Washington war party knows that provoking war with Russia is extremely dangerous.

Joe Biden is picking up where he left off, as Barack Obama’s Ukraine viceroy. He and his incompetent foreign policy team have spun a tale about a pending Russian attack on Ukraine. In reality, it is the U.S. that is ginning up war by provoking the Ukrainians to start a fight that they can’t win. In 2014 a U.S. backed coup put a far-right clique in power. The people of the Donbass region in the east, largely ethnic Russians, wanted no part of the new anti-Russian government and sought autonomy. The resulting war has killed some 30,000 people.

Now the Biden team who publicly insulted the Chinese government and withdrew from Afghanistan without even being able to secure a major airport, have moved on to opening the proverbial can of whoopass with the world’s other major nuclear power. They are using Ukraine in an ill-advised effort to instigate what could lead to disaster.

The 2014 coup against an elected Ukrainian president took place because the Russians were asleep at the wheel. They roused themselves quickly however and annexed the Crimea, yet another region of Ukraine with close connections to Russia. The U.S./NATO regime change effort came at a steep price for Ukraine. Thanks to Atlanticist meddling it is now the poorest country in Europe that won’t get the NATO and EU membership it was promised. It remains a pawn between two powerful countries.

The U.S. is pulling all the hybrid warfare schemes out of the tool box. For months they claimed that Russian troops were massed on the border, ready to invade. They have engaged in diplomacy but only to try and get their way. Russia has held firm on a guarantee of no further NATO encroachment and the removal of missiles from their border. The French and Germans are feckless and do what Washington wants. They should be pressuring Ukraine to live up to the Minsk II Agreement which requires talks with the breakaway Donbass region.

None of this information is conveyed to the American people who live in ignorance orchestrated by republicans, democrats, and their friends in corporate media. Republican senators who want to run for president outdo one another with nonsense about stopping the Nord Stream II gas pipeline that Germany, a U.S. ally, asked the Russians to build. Winter is coming, quite literally, and Europe needs Russia’s gas. But unless they stop following Uncle Sam’s bullying they will end up with nothing.

Now Washington is pulling the same ploy they attempted in Ethiopia. They have declared that the Russians are coming and have even announced an evacuation of embassy personnel families from the capital city of Kyiv. Vassal states Australia and the United Kingdom have followed suit, but a European Union official demurred , “We are not going to do the same thing because we don’t know any specific reasons.” The Ukrainian government, a de facto U.S. colony, wasn’t happy and called the evacuations “premature.”

If the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing, then one can only conclude that big lies are being told. The U.S. has been hoisted on its own petard and now has little more than dangerous bluster to get its own allies in line.

Biden himself is a part of this problem of his own making. In a recent press conference he  declared that Russia was on the verge of invading but then said a little invasion wouldn’t be so bad after all. It isn’t clear if he was speaking from his usual state of confusion or if he really meant what he said.

The Russians certainly mean what they say. As Secretary of State Antony Blinken rushes from Moscow to Berlin to London to Moscow, seemingly making things up as he goes along, the Russians dig in their heels and make clear that their days of being pushovers are in the past. The most committed puppet states like the U.K. go along with whatever Washington wants. They can be counted on to repeat an unsourced story of a Russian plan to overthrow the Ukrainian government or something else equally nonsensical. The people most likely to use a false flag event to justify going to war, instead claim that the other side will do so. The result is a situation that could go badly over the slightest provocation or even a perceived provocation.

The American people should just say no. The Biden administration is sorely mistaken if they think the public are in a mood for war with another nuclear power. They can call ammunition “lethal aid” if they want, but when the match is lit they can expect no support. Then again, the ginned-up conflict may be taking place for that very reason. Biden has failed in almost every respect and is facing electoral defeat for his party in November. Perhaps he thinks that he would be supported by people who have no faith in his ability or willingness to do anything on their behalf.

If hostilities are averted it will be because of forces outside of the U.S. Biden’s team of blood thirsty incompetents spent most of last year predicting a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. It isn’t clear if they grew bored or saw an easier opening in Ukraine.

No one should be fooled by these people. Russia and China are very close, “better than allies ,” as Xi Jinping said. Why shouldn’t they be? Both countries want to protect themselves from American aggression. People in this country had better hope for Russian and Chinese wisdom and experience. If the U.S. is allowed to do what it wants then the whole world is at risk. That statement is not hyperbole. The U.S. has withdrawn from decades old nuclear weapons agreements and now pushes the world toward the precipice.

The New York Times and Washington Post will play the role they did in 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq. They will repeat what spokespeople tell them to say and be a party to warfare. If ever there was a moment to break free from media disinformation this is it. They have nothing to offer except war propaganda and possibly war itself.

The Real Noam Chomsky

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By Raul Fernandez Berriozabal

Source: The Wall Will Fall

This will not be a popular post, simply because of the cult of personality of mythical dimensions built around the figure of Professor Noam Chomsky, regardless, I am posting at the insistence of a friend of mine who encouraged me to publish my critiques highlighting some of the most problematic inconsistencies of Chomksy that ironically enough, have served to “manufacture consent” for the corrupt and criminal establishment that he claims to oppose.

I admit it, for years I admired Professor Chomsky’s work, in spite of his tedious monotone, he comes across as most clever and articulate, yet there is much more to this controversial character that many of his loyal followers perceive as a guru or cult figure and his critics as a faux progressive or a gatekeeper at best and a collaborator at worst.

Here are some of the inconsistencies that I have observed (and documented) during the last few years:

• In spite of the occasional criticism towards Israeli leadership, Chomsky ultimately supports the existence of the belligerent apartheid state of Israel.

• Chomsky opposes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, a global non-violent campaign that uses economic and political pressure on Israel to end of Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian land, full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, respect for the right of return of Palestinian refugees and recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination.

• Chomsky was a propagandist of the US/NATO aggression against the former Yugoslav Federation, enabling the criminal policy that broke the Yugoslav Federation into six unstable, impoverished micro-states after carrying out a 78-day bombing campaign in which US/NATO dropped over 3,000 bombs killing thousands of civilians.

• Chomsky said that the Western military intervention was the only way to prevent genocide in Libya, advocated for the ‘no fly zone’ and subsequent destruction of Libya. Every word he uttered turned out to be completely false. The allegations of abuses by the Libyan government were total war propaganda fabrications and look what happened to Libya, once the most prosperous nation in the African continent under Qaddafi who offered, public housing, free healthcare, free education, and many other public benefits to Libyans is now a failed state, a territory disputed by al-Qaeda, Daesh and other Wahhabi takfiri groups rival groups, where organ trafficking is prevalent, where, thousands of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean after paying human traffickers to take them to Europe in tiny, overloaded boats, where sub-Saharan Africans are openly sold as slaves for as little as $200 and where human life is worth not more than infected yeast.

What is Chomsky saying about Libya these days?

Has he assumed any responsibility for his role in manufacturing consent?

No, not at all, Professor Chomsky remains invested in openly advocating for regime change in Syria.

• Chomsky routinely parrots the corporate media lines by referring to Bashar Al Assad an autocrat who needs to be forcibly removed and seems to justify with the continuous bombing of the great Syrian nation to achieve regime change. As of today, he remains a strong advocate for the U.S. occupation forces to remain illegally occupying Syrian territory.

• Chomsky supported the U.S. led coup in Ukraine which successfully installed Europe’s first Nazi government since Adolph Hitler and his Third Reich.• Chomsky acknowledges the one-party corporate oligarchy, and then urges everyone to vote for the “lesser evil”. He did in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, He publicly supported the candidacy of war criminals, Barak Obama in 2008, Hillary Clinton “Butcher of Libya, Syria and Honduras” in 2016 and Crime Bill’s author, Joe Biden in 2020 just to maintain the status quo and hence a system of injustice that he claims to oppose.

• Chomsky is perfectly kosher with W Bush government’s official narrative of 9/11 – he went as far as to say, “who cares?” about who might be the real culprits of this historical event.

• Chomsky was academically formed by and works for MIT, an elitist university with close ties with the Military Industrial Complex and the CIA.

• Chomsky defines himself as an “anarcho-syndicalist” yet he defends the existence of the Federal Reserve – while Chomsky bemoans the widespread poverty in America and the Third World, he has never spoken publicly on the role of the Federal Reserve. Therefore, most leftist activists influenced by Chomsky remain unaware of the role played by this privately owned banking cartel which basically prints worthless flat currency out of thin air.

• Chomsky opposes the Right of Return of the Palestinian diaspora – which in essence is opposing international law, since the Right of Return is an inalienable and basic human right.

• These days, Chomsky has turned full-blown fascist as he called for the isolation of the unvaccinated from society even if that means their starvation. Chomsky’s most inflammatory comment came when he was asked how this isolated class he is proposing would receive food. He remarked that this was a problem for the unvaccinated. The solution then, according to Chomsky, is to appeal to moral capacity and then claim that those who do not understand should live in an isolated existence with food uncertainty. Please keep in mind that in his authoritarian views, Chomsky is oblivious to clinical data that shows that Covid vaccines do not prevent neither infection nor transmission, in fact, early data shows that the variant, Omicron is infecting those who are “fully vaccinated” at a much higher rate than the unvaccinated and American authorities also revealed the 79% of the country’s infection cases were vaccinated.

• In addition, Chomsky belittles the importance of Medicare for All in the midst of a global pandemic and cynically refers to it as “candy” to be pursued, but never achieved.In essence, Chomsky has made a career talking from both sides of his mouth while perfecting the art of manufacturing consent.

Chomsky talks like an anarchist during off years, then tucks tail and comes slinking back to the establishment during election years – that is why many refer to him as “controlled opposition” or “left gatekeeper”, this is why I have no use for Chomsky, and why it baffles me when people speak of him in tones of reverence and awe.

Another Nail in the U.S. Empire’s Coffin… Biden Signs $770 Billion War Budget

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By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

As this year ends, U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law military spending of $770 billion. That’s just for the next year alone. The scale of wastefulness and bloated corruption is eye-watering. It eclipses what the United States is willing to invest for overhauling its badly neglected civilian infrastructure and for combating the coronavirus pandemic that has killed far more people in the U.S. than in any other nation.

If there is one thing that portends a historic collapse of U.S. global power it is its pathological addiction to militarism that is hemorrhaging vital resources.

What is also amazing is how this gargantuan deformity in economic planning is presented as somehow rational and normal by the Western media.

Three decades after the Cold War officially ended, the U.S. is setting a new record high for annual expenditure on its armed forces.

Biden’s budget – his first as president – exceeds the record set by the previous Trump administration for military largesse of $740 billion.

So much for wishing humanity peace and prosperity – as is the international tradition at this time of year – when the U.S. allocates such a grotesque amount of resources to the means of war and annihilation.

This obscene expenditure is not in any way conceivably a “defense budget” as it is termed in Orwellian newspeak. It is a dreadful and despicable war budget.

The United States spends more on its military than the next 11 top nations combined. Compared with China ($250bn) the U.S. budget is nearly three times bigger. The U.S. spends over 12 times more than Russia ($60bn) on its armed forces.

Those figures alone tell beyond any doubt which nation is the ultimate aggressor. Yet, farcically, the Western corporate media in Orwellian fashion portray China and Russia as the aggressors against whom the United States is “defending’ the rest of the world.

Biden’s 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), as it is formally titled, devotes billions more to devising new nuclear weapons and to provoke China and Russia. Camouflaged with Orwellian rhetoric, there is some $7 billion for the “Pacific Deterrence Initiative” and $4 billion for the “European Defense Initiative”.

The Biden administration has committed a further $300 million in military support for Ukraine over the next year. This is on top of the $2.5 billion in arms that Washington has plowed into Ukraine since the CIA-backed coup d’état in Kiev in 2014 which brought to power a Russophobic regime.

Next week, U.S. and Russian officials are to hold negotiations in Geneva to deescalate tensions over Ukraine and Europe generally. It is blindingly obvious that the crisis over security has been created by the United States pushing a policy of militarizing Europe against Russia in the form of expanding the NATO alliance all the way to Russia’s borders.

With twisted logic, Moscow is accused of “threatening” Ukraine and European security even though its troops are on Russian soil and it is American weapons that are encroaching on Russia’s territory.

The inordinate military spending by the United States year after year is proof of the source of international tensions.

When the Cold War supposedly ended in 1991 following the demise of the Soviet Union, there was a reasonable expectation around the world for a “peace dividend” to ensue. That is, whereby Cold War militarism would at last give way to peaceful economic development and cooperation. How lamentable the disappointment!

The inescapable fact is that the U.S. economy is a war-driven system. The military-industrial complex at the heart of American capitalism is dependent on massive taxpayer-funded financial subvention. If an economy is driven for war, then it follows that conflicts and wars are inevitable. This is why, 30 years after the supposed end of the Cold War, the United States is closer to starting a war with Russia and China than ever before.

In an insightful interview this week, former United Nations diplomat Alfred Maurice de Zayas condemned what he called the “universal provocation” of the US “war budget”. De Zayas points out that the United States is preeminently guilty of undermining global peace and security. Its relentless militarism compels other nations to spend excessively on defense in order to counter the threat posed by the United States. Both China and Russia have long-proposed multilateralism and “win-win” cooperation. Neither of these nations has threatened the United States. It is always the U.S. with its mixture of paranoia and hubris that constantly portrays others as enemies and existential dangers. Again, that is due to the need for justifying the abomination of American military orgy year after year.

The truth is the United States has been at war against the rest of the world since at least the end of the Second World War. For most of that period, the Cold War, Washington cited the threat of Soviet and Chinese communism. It waged wars in dozens of countries on every continent killing tens of millions of people purportedly in the “defense of democracy and the free world”. How godawful ridiculous is that?

The Cold War was supposed to have ended, yet the U.S. continues its remorseless warmongering. It retreated from Afghanistan this year after two decades of futile war, only to now wind up tensions with Russia and China. The pretexts and excuses change over the decades, but the fundamental story remains the same: the United States is at war with the rest of the world in the vain ambition of exerting hegemonic domination. Arguably, that’s an essential definition of fascism.

But it’s not just against the rest of the world that the U.S. rulers are waging war. They are waging war against their own American citizens. The Washington elite of both parties (comprising the de facto War Party) whistle through a military budget funded by taxpayers that dwarves anything the federal government is prepared to spend on societal infrastructure and decent human development.

Far above any other nation, the U.S. has a pandemic killing nearly 850,000 people so far and there is no end in sight. U.S. rulers refuse to allocate more financial help to the population to defeat the pandemic yet they are planning to spend billions on offensive weapons systems to threaten Russia and China.

The hideously perverse priorities of the United States as demonstrated by its wanton militarism are a portent and ultimate cause of its historic failure. It is a vile disgrace that the apparent solution to its inherent contradictions is to start a catastrophic war. Fortunately, Russia and China are strong enough militarily to not let that happen. And so the outcome we will witness more of over the coming year will be the United States cratering from its own internal corruption.

The Real Threat to Democracy is Corrupting Wealth Inequality

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

Imagine a town of 1,000 adults and their dependents in which one person holds the vast majority of wealth and political influence. Would that qualify as a democracy? Now imagine that 100 of the 1,000 adults own 90% of all the wealth, collect 97% of all the income from capital and have virtually all the political power. How can a society in which 90% of the populace is decapitalized, disenfranchised and demoralized by political powerlessness be a democracy?

This is America: a kleptocratic autocracy that serves the few at the expense of the many, stripmining the bottom 90% under the guise of a fraudulent “democracy” in which only the few wield real power. Recall Smith’s Neofeudalism Principle #1: If the citizenry cannot replace a kleptocratic government and/or limit the power of the financial Aristocracy at the ballot box, the nation is a democracy in name only.

That our elected government responds only to the super-wealthy and corporations has been well-established:Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.

It’s also a fact that the top 10% get virtually all the gains from the nation’s capital, and this wealth is concentrated in the top 0.1%:Monopoly Versus Democracy: How to End a Gilded Age
Ten percent of Americans now control 97 percent of all capital income in the country. Nearly half of the new income generated since the global financial crisis of 2008 has gone to the wealthiest one percent of U.S. citizens. The richest three Americans collectively have more wealth than the poorest 160 million Americans.

Exactly how can a system of governance that is nothing but an invitation-only auction of political favors in which the top 0.1% own more than the bottom 80% be a functional democracy? The answer is it cannot. Politics and government have been reduced to protecting and enriching a neofeudal autocracy while claiming to serve the stripmined public.

This extreme concentration of wealth and power is not accidental; the government’s policies have generated this concentration of wealth which has hollowed out democracy. The super-wealthy didn’t siphon $50 trillion from those earning their living from labor on their own; government policies aided and abetted this vast transfer of wealth.

Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018: $50 trillion in earnings has been transferred to the Financial Aristocracy from the bottom 90% of American households over the past 45 years.

The catastrophic consequences of this systemic concentration of wealth and power are also well documented. For example, Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling inequality and use of resources in the collapse or sustainability of societies. Extreme inequality brings down societies, and America is now a society dominated by extreme inequality.

America is nothing but a vast moral cesspool that the public is told is a pristine pond of “democracy”. Self-enrichment is cloaked as “doing God’s work,” profiteering is sold as “value,” fraud is packaged as “finance” and rapacious monopolies are marketed as “enterprise.”

Institutions have become little more than rackets enriching insiders and the wealthiest few; they have lost moral legitimacy which is the fundamental foundation of democracy and a market-based economy.

As I explain in my new book Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States, moral legitimacy is the foundation of social cohesion. Once moral legitimacy has been lost, social cohesion unravels and the nation falls.

It wasn’t just bad luck that financialization and globalization hollowed out America’s economy and democracy and turned the bottom 90% into debt-serfs and tax donkeys; it was government policies implemented by elected officials and the appointed handmaidens of the super-wealthy. Virtually every major policy implemented by either party served the interests of the super-wealthy and corporations: tax cuts had trivial impacts on the bottom 90% while vastly increasing the wealth of the super-wealthy; the Supreme Court’s rulings in favor of corporate “personhood” and “free speech” (a.k.a. the best government we can buy), and the evisceration of the rule of law for corporate fraud, collusion and embezzlement (“too big to fail, too big to jail”).

The Federal Reserve’s free money for financiers distributes gains on the order of 20-to-1 in favor of the super-wealthy: $2 trillion in gains for the bottom 90%, $40 trillion for the top tier.

The list is long and painful proof that the elected government of the United States serves the interests of the top few–a reality masked by expert PR and partisanship.

Partisanship reflects a core structural dynamic: America is now a two-tier society and economy. If you’re an executive at a big Wall Street investment bank, you can rig markets and embezzle billions and you’ll never face any personal legal consequences such as being indicted, convicted and imprisoned. (Bernie Madoff’s conviction was a classic Soviet-style show trial to mask the fact that thousands of other white-collar criminals kept their ill-gotten gains and faced no consequences.)

But try being an employee at a local credit union and embezzle $5,000–a prison sentence is very predictable.

If a spoiled-rotten rich kid gets caught with drugs, Mommy and Daddy’s lawyer kicks into gear and gets a suspended sentence plea bargain. The kid from the bottom 90% gets a tenner in the Drug War Gulag. And so on.

America is also a regional two-tier economy/society. When a society kneels down and worships financialization and globalization, it gives all the political and financial power to the already-super-wealthy and corporations who get 97% of the gains from financialization and globalization.

Since the majority of already-super-wealthy and corporate managers reside in coastal metropolitan areas, the tide of new wealth flooding into the hands of the few boosts the economies of these select regions. The Brookings chart below may look like a chart of political polarization, and superficially that’s obvious: the 500 counties Biden won hold 70% of the nation’s GDP while the 2,500 counties Trump won hold 30% of the nation’s GDP.

The real polarization is economic-financial: there are two economies in America and there’s very little commonality in the two economies. One benefited greatly from financialization and globalization, and the other was hollowed out and brought to its knees by financialization and globalization.

Since income and political power flow to capital, the disparity / inequality far exceed the 70/30 split depicted in this chart. The chart showing the soaring wealth of billionaires is a more accurate reflection of inequality in America.

What’s missing from the 70/30 map is the staggering percentage of residents in the wealthiest 500 counties who are precariats living paycheck to paycheck, the ALICE Americans: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.

Is there any wonder that stripmined Americans who sense their powerlessness are attracted to virulent partisanship? The more extreme the pendulum swing of wealth-power inequality, the more extreme the political blowback.

America’s political class has no plan to reverse this destructive tide. Our leadership’s “plan” is something they know well first-hand: bribery and complicity: just send a monthly stipend of bread and circuses to all the disempowered, decapitalized households, urban and rural, so they can stay out of trouble and not bother the elites’ profitable pillaging of America and the planet.

The insurrection and coup happened long ago, when financialization and globalization hollowed out the real economy and disempowered the bottom 90%. When the whole rotten palace of corruption collapses in a putrid heap, look no further for the cause than the extremes of wealth-power inequality that rendered “democracy” a convenient facade for the stripmining of the bottom 90%.

Try to find a developing-world kleptocracy in which the top few collect more than 97% of the income from capital. There aren’t any that top the USA, the world’s most extreme kleptocracy. We’re Number 1.

Poking the Russian Bear: US-NATO Aggression and Russia’s Red Line

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By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

Following the Taliban’s victory over US-NATO forces in Afghanistan, Washington is walking into another death trap, but this time on Russia’s borders with the neighboring Ukraine.  So now, Washington’s non-partisan bureaucrats and the Military-Industrial Complex are calling for ways to fight “Russian aggression”.  On November 30th, a report published by Reuters ‘Putin warns Russia will act if NATO crosses its red lines in Ukraine’ said that Putin mentioned what is at stake if NATO expands eastward while they deployed the Aegis Ashore missile defense systems in Poland and Romania:

The Russian leader, who questioned why NATO had ignored repeated Russian warnings and expanded its military infrastructure eastwards, singled out the deployment in Poland and Romania of the Aegis Ashore missile defence system.  He made it clear he did not want to see the same launch MK41 systems, which Russia has long complained can be used to also launch offensive Tomahawk cruise missiles, in Ukraine.

“Creating such threats (in Ukraine) would be red lines for us. But I hope it doesn’t come to that. I hope that a sense of common sense, responsibility for both our countries and the world community will prevail,” said Putin

To make matters worse, US senators from the Republican party submitted a bill that calls for $450 million in military aid to the Ukraine with new sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 project. The bill will also label Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism” according to a December 18th report from rt.com, ‘Russia reacts to US ‘state sponsor of terrorism threat’:

On Wednesday, eight American Republican party senators submitted a bill, speculatively titled the ‘GUARD Act’, containing a range of measures designed to support Kiev. The proposed legislation would authorize an additional $450 million in military aid and impose new sanctions on Nord Stream 2, the recently constructed pipeline that will bring Russian gas to Europe through the Baltic Sea, which Ukraine and the US have strongly opposed.

The bill would also officially designate Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism” if Moscow advances militarily on its eastern European neighbor. In recent weeks, American and Ukrainian intelligence services have accused the Kremlin of “aggressive actions” on the border with Ukraine, including troop buildup, and said they suspected a Russian invasion could be in the works

Another important article from rt.com ‘China & Russia are ready to end US dominance of global finance’ said that Russia and China are on the way to bypass the US dollar:

A financial partnership between China and Russia, the world’s largest energy importer and the world’s largest energy exporter, is an indispensable instrument for dethroning the petrodollar. In 2015, approximately 90% of trade between Russia and China was settled in dollars, and by 2020, dollar-denominated trade between the two Eurasian giants had almost reduced by half, with only 46% of trade in dollars. Russia has also been leading the way in cutting the share of US dollars in its foreign reserves. The mechanisms for de-dollarizing China-Russia trade are also used to end the use of the greenback with third parties – with advancements being seen in places such as Latin America, Turkey, Iran, India, etc. The US has been pumping out dollars to the entire world for decades, and at some point, the tide will change as the sea of dollars return home with increasingly diminished value

Russia and China has also been working on alternatives to the SWIFT system:

The SWIFT system for financial transactions between banks worldwide was previously the only system for international payments. This central role for SWIFT began to erode when the US used it as a political weapon. The Americans first expelled Iran and North Korea, and in 2014, Washington began threatening to expel Russia from the system as well. Over the past few weeks, the threat of using SWIFT as a weapon against Russia has intensified. 

China has responded by creating CIPS and Russia developed SPFS, both being alternatives to SWIFT. Even several other European countries have banded together with an alternative to SWIFT to curb Washington’s extra-territorial jurisdiction and thus continue trading with Iran. A new China-Russia financial architecture should integrate CIPS and SPFS, and make them more available to third parties. If the US expels Russia, then the decoupling from SWIFT would intensify further 

The US wants its dollar to remain king by any means necessary. One of the main reasons Washington went to war with Iraq was not only about oil, it was because Saddam Hussein had switched from selling oil in US dollars to accepting payments in Euros as retribution for US sanctions. In Libya, Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and murdered by US-backed forces because he was creating an alternative currency which was a gold-backed African  dinar to replace U.S. dollars and Euros in the African continent.

A recent press conference, the US president and liberal war hawk, Joe Biden was asked about what consequences Russia would face if they invaded Ukraine’s territory. The liberal cheerleaders for war at CNN have been reporting what US and European leaders have been up to in regards to planning harsh sanctions on Russia because it’s President, Vladimir Putin  is misbehaving, therefore punishment must be served by the American empire, So how dare you Vlad for wanting to protect your country!, “the kinds of costs the US and European allies are discussing for Russia are “designed to be implemented very, very fast,” the official said, without detailing what those measures would be. “That is partly why we have chosen the measures that we are working on.” One of their actions is most likely to cut Russia off the Swift payment system since the US dollar is still the world’s reserve currency for the moment.  “The Biden administration has repeatedly said there will be severe economic consequences. Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan also made clear last week there will be further US defensive military support for Ukraine as well as US support for NATO countries on the eastern flank of Russia invades Ukraine”,  continued:

I’ve made it absolutely clear to President Putin,” Biden said. “If he moves on Ukraine, the economic consequences for his economy are going to be devastating. Devastating, number one. Number two, we will find it required that we’ll have to send more American and NATO troops into the Eastern Flank, the (Bucharest) 9, all those NATO countries where we have a sacred obligation to defend them against any attack by Russia. And number three, the impact of all of that on Russia and his attitude, the rest of the world, his view of Russia would change markedly. He’ll pay a terrible price

In early December, rt.com also has been documenting what’s been happening with the Ukraine’s decision to recklessly build-up its troop levels in the Donbass region which is a clear threat to Russia’s security concerns:

Ukraine has now stationed well over 100,000 troops and large quantities of hardware in the war-torn Donbass region, the Russian Foreign Ministry alleged on Wednesday morning, amid rising tensions.  Speaking at a briefing on Wednesday, diplomatic spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed that “the Armed Forces of Ukraine are increasing [their] military force, pulling heavy equipment and personnel.”

“According to some reports, the number of troops… in the conflict zone already reaches 125,000 people, and this, if anyone does not know, is half of the entire composition of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” she said.  Zakharova also condemned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for submitting a bill to the national parliament that would allow units from foreign armed forces to enter the country as part of multinational exercises next year.  According to her, such a move directly contradicts the Minsk agreement, signed in 2014 in a bid to end the fighting between Kiev’s forces and troops loyal to two self-declared breakaway republics

What’s even more dangerous is the talk of a first-strike option with nuclear weapons against Russia by Mississippi’s high-ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Roger Wicker as reported by FOX news:

Sen. Wicker made the startling comment during an on-air interview where he was asked about the escalating situation abroad. Wicker, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that he is ruling nothing out as a potential response to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty against Russia and its leader, President Vladimir Putin.  “I would not rule out American troops on the ground,” Wicker said, adding, that “We don’t rule out first-use nuclear action”

Let’s make something clear, if the US and Europe are considering a war against Russia through Ukraine, it can escalate into another nuclear standoff reminiscent of the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis. 

Russia is well-prepared for an all-out war with the west because they know that the American empire will not quit until they submit to Washington’s demands.  Russia is ready, they learned a long-time ago when they were the former Soviet Union during World War II when more than 27 million Russian civilians and soldiers lost their lives fighting Nazi Germany within their borders.  Washington is backing Ukraine’s aggressive behavior which will bring them closer to war with Russia.  Although I believe cooler heads will prevail, anything at this point in time can happen with an out of control empire worried about losing their control over the planet.  The US has its back against the wall, the question is what will they do knowing that Russia and China have the military capabilities including their new hypersonic missiles that can hit the US mainland at anytime. 

The US-NATO forces would not prevail on a multi-front war with Russia and China, they should have learned a lesson in Afghanistan with the Taliban who had by far, a less-developed fighting force than Russia or China but had managed to defeat US-NATO forces after 20 years of conflict.  Washington and the Pentagon knows deep down that defeating Russia, China and the rest of their adversaries will be a difficult mission, but it seems that the psychopaths in Washington and Brussels live in a fantasy land and believe they can win this coming war.  Let’s hope it don’t get that far because it would be disastrous for the entire world.       

The Christmas Baby Born in a Police State: Then and Now

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By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.” ― Howard Thurman

The Christmas story of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one.

The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable (a barn), where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus. Warned that the government planned to kill the baby, Jesus’ family fled with him to Egypt until it was safe to return to their native land.

Yet what if Jesus had been born 2,000 years later?

What if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, Jesus had been born at this moment in time? What kind of reception would Jesus and his family be given? Would we recognize the Christ child’s humanity, let alone his divinity? Would we treat him any differently than he was treated by the Roman Empire? If his family were forced to flee violence in their native country and sought refuge and asylum within our borders, what sanctuary would we offer them?

A singular number of churches across the country have asked those very questions in recent years, and their conclusions were depicted with unnerving accuracy by nativity scenes in which Jesus and his family are separated, segregated and caged in individual chain-link pens, topped by barbed wire fencing.

Those nativity scenes were a pointed attempt to remind the modern world that the narrative about the birth of Jesus is one that speaks on multiple fronts to a world that has allowed the life, teachings and crucifixion of Jesus to be drowned out by partisan politics, secularism, materialism and war, all driven by a manipulative shadow government called the Deep State.

The modern-day church has largely shied away from applying Jesus’ teachings to modern problems such as war, poverty, immigration, etc., but thankfully there have been individuals throughout history who ask themselves and the world: what would Jesus do?

What would Jesus—the baby born in Bethlehem who grew into an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist, who not only died challenging the police state of his day (namely, the Roman Empire) but spent his adult life speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo of his day, and pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire—do about the injustices of our  modern age?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked himself what Jesus would have done about the horrors perpetrated by Hitler and his assassins. The answer: Bonhoeffer was executed by Hitler for attempting to undermine the tyranny at the heart of Nazi Germany.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn asked himself what Jesus would have done about the soul-destroying gulags and labor camps of the Soviet Union. The answer: Solzhenitsyn found his voice and used it to speak out about government oppression and brutality.

Martin Luther King Jr. asked himself what Jesus would have done about America’s warmongering. The answer: declaring “my conscience leaves me no other choice,” King risked widespread condemnation as well as his life when he publicly opposed the Vietnam War on moral and economic grounds.

Even now, despite the popularity of the phrase “What Would Jesus Do?” (WWJD) in Christian circles, there remains a disconnect in the modern church between the teachings of Christ and the suffering of what Jesus in Matthew 25 refers to as the “least of these.”

Yet this is not a theological gray area: Jesus was unequivocal about his views on many things, not the least of which was charity, compassion, war, tyranny and love.

After all, Jesus—the revered preacher, teacher, radical and prophet—was born into a police state not unlike the growing menace of the American police state. When he grew up, he had powerful, profound things to say, things that would change how we view people, alter government policies and change the world. “Blessed are the merciful,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Love your enemies” are just a few examples of his most profound and revolutionary teachings.

When confronted by those in authority, Jesus did not shy away from speaking truth to power. Indeed, his teachings undermined the political and religious establishment of his day. It cost him his life. He was eventually crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be.

Can you imagine what Jesus’ life would have been like if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, he had been born and raised in the American police state?

Consider the following if you will.

Had Jesus been born in the era of the America police state, rather than traveling to Bethlehem for a census, Jesus’ parents would have been mailed a 28-page American Community Survey, a mandatory government questionnaire documenting their habits, household inhabitants, work schedule, how many toilets are in your home, etc. The penalty for not responding to this invasive survey can go as high as $5,000.

Instead of being born in a manger, Jesus might have been born at home. Rather than wise men and shepherds bringing gifts, however, the baby’s parents might have been forced to ward off visits from state social workers intent on prosecuting them for the home birth. One couple in Washington had all three of their children removed after social services objected to the two youngest being birthed in an unassisted home delivery.

Had Jesus been born in a hospital, his blood and DNA would have been taken without his parents’ knowledge or consent and entered into a government biobank. While most states require newborn screening, a growing number are holding onto that genetic material long-term for research, analysis and purposes yet to be disclosed.

Then again, had Jesus’ parents been undocumented immigrants, they and the newborn baby might have been shuffled to a profit-driven, private prison for illegals where they first would have been separated from each other, the children detained in make-shift cages, and the parents eventually turned into cheap, forced laborers for corporations such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart, and Victoria’s Secret. There’s quite a lot of money to be made from imprisoning immigrants, especially when taxpayers are footing the bill.

From the time he was old enough to attend school, Jesus would have been drilled in lessons of compliance and obedience to government authorities, while learning little about his own rights. Had he been daring enough to speak out against injustice while still in school, he might have found himself tasered or beaten by a school resource officer, or at the very least suspended under a school zero tolerance policy that punishes minor infractions as harshly as more serious offenses.

Had Jesus disappeared for a few hours let alone days as a 12-year-old, his parents would have been handcuffed, arrested and jailed for parental negligence. Parents across the country have been arrested for far less “offenses” such as allowing their children to walk to the park unaccompanied and play in their front yard alone.

Rather than disappearing from the history books from his early teenaged years to adulthood, Jesus’ movements and personal data—including his biometrics—would have been documented, tracked, monitored and filed by governmental agencies and corporations such as Google and Microsoft. Incredibly, 95 percent of school districts share their student records with outside companies that are contracted to manage data, which they then use to market products to us.

From the moment Jesus made contact with an “extremist” such as John the Baptist, he would have been flagged for surveillance because of his association with a prominent activist, peaceful or otherwise. Since 9/11, the FBI has actively carried out surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations on a broad range of activist groups, from animal rights groups to poverty relief, anti-war groups and other such “extremist” organizations.

Jesus’ anti-government views would certainly have resulted in him being labeled a domestic extremist. Law enforcement agencies are being trained to recognize signs of anti-government extremism during interactions with potential extremists who share a “belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy.”

While traveling from community to community, Jesus might have been reported to government officials as “suspicious” under the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” programs. Many states, including New York, are providing individuals with phone apps that allow them to take photos of suspicious activity and report them to their state Intelligence Center, where they are reviewed and forwarded to law-enforcement agencies.

Rather than being permitted to live as an itinerant preacher, Jesus might have found himself threatened with arrest for daring to live off the grid or sleeping outside. In fact, the number of cities that have resorted to criminalizing homelessness by enacting bans on camping, sleeping in vehicles, loitering and begging in public has doubled.

Viewed by the government as a dissident and a potential threat to its power, Jesus might have had government spies planted among his followers to monitor his activities, report on his movements, and entrap him into breaking the law. Such Judases today—called informants—often receive hefty paychecks from the government for their treachery.

Had Jesus used the internet to spread his radical message of peace and love, he might have found his blog posts infiltrated by government spies attempting to undermine his integrity, discredit him or plant incriminating information online about him. At the very least, he would have had his website hacked and his email monitored.

Had Jesus attempted to feed large crowds of people, he would have been threatened with arrest for violating various ordinances prohibiting the distribution of food without a permit. Florida officials arrested a 90-year-old man for feeding the homeless on a public beach.

Had Jesus spoken publicly about his 40 days in the desert and his conversations with the devil, he might have been labeled mentally ill and detained in a psych ward against his will for a mandatory involuntary psychiatric hold with no access to family or friends. One Virginia man was arrested, strip searched, handcuffed to a table, diagnosed as having “mental health issues,” and locked up for five days in a mental health facility against his will apparently because of his slurred speech and unsteady gait.

Without a doubt, had Jesus attempted to overturn tables in a Jewish temple and rage against the materialism of religious institutions, he would have been charged with a hate crime. Currently, 45 states and the federal government have hate crime laws on the books.

Had anyone reported Jesus to the police as being potentially dangerous, he might have found himself confronted—and killed—by police officers for whom any perceived act of non-compliance (a twitch, a question, a frown) can result in them shooting first and asking questions later.

Rather than having armed guards capture Jesus in a public place, government officials would have ordered that a SWAT team carry out a raid on Jesus and his followers, complete with flash-bang grenades and military equipment. There are upwards of 80,000 such SWAT team raids carried out every year, many on unsuspecting Americans who have no defense against such government invaders, even when such raids are done in error.

Instead of being detained by Roman guards, Jesus might have been made to “disappear” into a secret government detention center where he would have been interrogated, tortured and subjected to all manner of abuses. Chicago police have “disappeared” more than 7,000 people into a secret, off-the-books interrogation warehouse at Homan Square.

Charged with treason and labeled a domestic terrorist, Jesus might have been sentenced to a life-term in a private prison where he would have been forced to provide slave labor for corporations or put to death by way of the electric chair or a lethal mixture of drugs.

Indeed, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, given the nature of government then and now, it is painfully evident that whether Jesus had been born in our modern age or his own, he still would have died at the hands of a police state.

Thus, as we draw near to Christmas with its celebration of miracles and promise of salvation, we would do well to remember that what happened in that manger on that starry night in Bethlehem is only the beginning of the story. That baby born in a police state grew up to be a man who did not turn away from the evils of his age but rather spoke out against it.

We must do no less.