The ‘War On Terror’ Has Cost American Taxpayers $250 Million A Day For 16 Years

The ‘War On Terror’ Has Cost American Taxpayers $250 Million A Day For 16 Years:

The U.S. government has spent a staggering $1.46 trillion on wars abroad since September 11, 2001, according to the Department of Defense’s (DoD) periodical “Cost of War” report this amounts to $250 million a day for 16 years consecutively.

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Terrorism, Tyranny And The End Of Freedom

From the article:

“There is no War on Terror. There is a war which is being waged using terrorist proxy groups and they are being used against nation states who are resisting U.S. and Israeli hegemony. And they are also being used as a means of disciplining the work forces in Europe. In a period of mass unemployment and austerity, you now have terrorist attacks being committed by terrorists funded, armed and trained by Western intelligence agencies. There is no such thing as ISIS. ISIS is a creation of the United States.”

Finally, someone tells it like it is.


Sam Gerrans is an English writer, translator, support counselor and activist. He also has professional backgrounds in media, strategic communications and technology. He is driven by commitment to ultimate meaning, and focused on authentic approaches to revelation and realpolitik. He is the founder of Quranite.com – where the Qur’an is explored on the basis of reason rather than tradition – and offers both individual language training and personal support and counseling online at SkypeTalking.com.

police-state

Terrorism, tyranny and the end of freedom

Are the powers-that-be using crises such as recent events in Paris to drive through a tyrannical agenda?

Rahm Emanuel – Obama’s former Chief of Staff – once famously said “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste – it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before”.

He was not saying anything new. He was simply rehashing something self-evident to those who deal in strategy rather than hysteria, and passing off as his own something said years before by Churchill.

Today, the world is hysterical about the recent serious crisis in Paris.

Read moreTerrorism, Tyranny And The End Of Freedom

“Psychopaths Are Running The World” Former US Marine Blows Whistle On Syrian False Flag, Exposes Real Agenda

“Psychopaths Are Running The World” Former US Marine Blows Whistle On Syrian False Flag, Exposes Real Agenda (True Activist via ZeroHedge, Sep 12, 2015):

“All of these players, these politicians are nothing more than puppets, they don’t serve the people there is no real democracy, they serve the rich and powerful who run the world and that would be the bankers who control the money supply. The bankers make huge amounts of money….wars are great for them and ultimately they control the politicians.

Psychopaths are running the world.”

Ken O’ Keefe is a former US Marine turned anti-war campaigner who appeared on a Press TV debate called Syria: War of Deception, and absolutely owned his opponent in such an awesome way that you’ll be cheering at his every comment.

Recorded in August 2013, this interview is now two years old, but in light of the current European refugee crisis it’s more relevant today than ever before. Passionate, articulate and knowledgeable about the subject matter, O’Keefe is the perfect guy to step up and tell these home truths- and boy, does he do a good job. 

This guy nails so many crucial points about the Syria situation in one interview, he’ll have you jumping around and punching the ceiling.

“We have tortured and killed and maimed and raped around this planet; who in their right mind would consider the United States or the West in general to be in any position to punish anybody?” the veteran begins angrily, going on to outline the evidence for Syria being a false flag attack (Note: leaked emails showing how Assad was framed by the USA are detailed in this cached Daily Mail report from January 2013, which was published online briefly before being removed).

He rightly points out that the USA dropped more bombs in Vietnam than during the whole of WW2 combined, that it regularly arms terrorists (but the mainstream press refer to them as ‘freedom fighters’ when it suits them) and the former marine also points out how the so-called ‘War on Terror’ is nothing more than a well-planned strategy to be in a “perpetual state of war to destabilize the region for the Greater Israel plan.”

Read more“Psychopaths Are Running The World” Former US Marine Blows Whistle On Syrian False Flag, Exposes Real Agenda

West Point Professor Calls For Military Strikes On Journalists Critical Of War On Terror

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West Point Professor Calls For Military Strikes On Journalists Critical Of War On Terror (Anti Media, Sept , 2015):

An assistant professor from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point recently declared that professionals critical of the “War on Terror” constitute a “treasonous” opposition that should be subject to military force.

He believes the U.S. should have the right to attack people who are critical of U.S. military operations — specifically, professionals, legal scholars, journalists, and other people effectively spreading ideas that oppose war.

Professor William C. Bradford went as far as to publish a long academic paper in the National Security Law Journal that aggressively promotes suppressing dissent about military force, civilian casualties, and expanding military operations in the Middle East.

Using the excuse that victims would be “lawful targets,” Bradford argues that “law school facilities, scholars’ home offices and media outlets where they give interviews” should be targeted with military force to suppress dissent. He asserted that the war on terror should be expanded, “even if it means great destruction, innumerable enemy casualties, and civilian collateral damage.”

Read moreWest Point Professor Calls For Military Strikes On Journalists Critical Of War On Terror

FLASHBACK: Former UK Ambassador: CIA Sent People To Uzbekistan For Extreme Torture: ‘Raped With Broken Bottles’ – ‘Boiled Alive’ – ‘Having Their Children Tortured In Front Of Them’

Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to Uzbekistan for extreme torture, to be ‘raped with broken bottles,’ ‘boiled alive’ and ‘having their children tortured in front of them’ (Nov 4, 2009)

Three Of The Four U.S. Citizens Killed With Drones Were Killed By Accident

Three of the Four U.S. Citizens Killed with Drones were Killed by Accident (Liberty, Blitzkrieg, May 23, 2013):

While most people reading this are well aware of Eric Holder’s letter to Senator Patrick J. Leahy that four U.S. citizens have been killed by drones strikes, the real story here is that it appears only one of them was killed intentionally.  The others were apparently collateral damage.  Interesting that “targeted” strikes only end up with a 25% success rate, and this is when we are talking about American citizens.  So how many innocent men, women and children have we really killed in these strikes. Does anyone even care?

From Eric Holder’s letter:

Since 2009, the United States, in the conduct of U.S. counterterrorism operations against al Qa’ida and its associated forces outside of areas of active hostilities, has specifically targeted and killed one U.S. citizen, Anwar Al-Aulaqi.  The United States is further aware of three other U.S. citizens who have been killed in such U.S. counterterrorism operations over that same time period:  Samir Khan, ‘Abd al Rahman Anwar al-Aulaqi and Jude Kennan Mohammad.  These individuals were not specifically targeted by the United States.

Did you catch all of that?  That’s a lot of very scary twisted jargon that can basically justify anything.  I mean “associated forces,” “outside of areas of active hostilities,” and “not specifically targeted.”  We’re in big trouble and it’s not because of terrorists…

Read moreThree Of The Four U.S. Citizens Killed With Drones Were Killed By Accident

Afghan President Hamid Karzai: US Fights In Afghanistan To Loot Country’s Underground Resources, Washington’s War On Terror Is Not Real


Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during a joint press conference with NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at the presidential palace in Kabul on March 4, 2013.

US fights for Afghan underground resources: Afghan president (PressTV, March 12, 2013):

Afghan President Hamid Karzai says the US fights in Afghanistan with the intention of gaining access to the country’s underground resources, adding that Washington’s so-called war on terror is not real, Press TV reports.

“Americans have asked Afghans to give them Afghanistan’s mining contracts, and I said ‘Bring your contracts’… Lots of mines are hidden in Helmand and from the start they have been doing their investigations and finishing their photography. But now they understand that we know about them,” Hamid Karzai said in a Tuesday speech during an official visit to southern Helmand province.

The president went on to say that the US-led foreign forces’ so-called anti-terror war in Afghanistan is not a real one and that the Americans fight for their own interests in the country.

Karzai once again slammed US double standards for holding secret talks with Taliban militants in certain Persian Gulf states and Europe.

“Both Taliban and Americans drink tea and eat chocolate together, but they come and attack civilians in Afghanistan,” Karzai noted.

Karzai had earlier accused Washington of holding unilateral talks with the Taliban militant group, saying that there are “ongoing daily talks between Taliban, American and foreigners in Europe and in the (Persian) Gulf states.”

Referring to two Taliban bombings in Kabul and Khost on March 9, the Afghan president said on Sunday, “Those bombs … were not a show of force to America. They were in service of America. It was in the service of the 2014 slogan to warn us if they (Americans) are not here then Taliban will come.”

Read moreAfghan President Hamid Karzai: US Fights In Afghanistan To Loot Country’s Underground Resources, Washington’s War On Terror Is Not Real

The War On Terror Spreads To Africa: U.S. Sending Troops To 35 African Nations

See also:

US Deploying Troops To 35 African Countries

Watch the Keiser Report down below.


The War On Terror Spreads to Africa: U.S. Sending Troops to 35 African Nations (ZeroHedge, Jan 12, 2013):

The U.S. is sending troops to 35 African nations under the guise of fighting Al Qaeda and related terrorists.

Democracy Now notes:

U.S. Army teams will be deploying to as many as 35 African countries early next year for training programs and other operations as part of an increased Pentagon role in Africa. The move would see small teams of U.S. troops dispatched to countries with groups allegedly linked to al-Qaeda, such as Libya, Sudan, Algeria and Niger. The teams are from a U.S. brigade that has the capability to use drones for military operations in Africa if granted permission. The deployment could also potentially lay the groundwork for future U.S. military intervention in Africa.

NPR reports:

[A special American brigade] will be able to take part in nearly 100 separate training and military exercises next year, in nearly three dozen African countries

Glenn Ford writes:

Read moreThe War On Terror Spreads To Africa: U.S. Sending Troops To 35 African Nations

‘GLADIO, THE LIVING PROOF THERE IS NO AL-QAEDA, NO WAR ON TERROR’ – ‘GLADIO Is AL-QAEDA’ (Veterans Today)

@Amazon.com: Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis

From the article:

“GLADIO, THE LIVING PROOF THERE IS NO AL QAEDA, NO WAR ON TERROR”

“GLADIO is Al Qaeda.”



GLADIO, HOW AMERICA AND NATO INVENTED TERRORISM

Gladio: How We Terrorized Ourselves (Archival) (Veterans Today, Sep 12, 2012):

“NOT ONE TERRORIST IN A HUNDRED….A THOUSAND…..IS REAL”

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Wikipedia’s report on Operation Gladio is reproduced below. This is a threatened document, an important part of our history. Help preserve it.)———-

The original article was written several years ago.  Since that time, Gladio units have reappeared in Norway with the Anders Breivik/Norwegian Police slaying of 77 and have become active across Europe under the guise of the anti-Islamic and ultra-nationalist banners.

America used Libya, during part of the Cold War, as a base for Gladio operations.  American special operations forces stationed there to be activated if Europe fell to a Soviet onslaught were said to be IRA terrorists undergoing training by Libyans.  If one stops and thinks, the idea of a Libyan training the IRA in bomb making had to seem more than a bit ironic.

How many Americans have heard of Operation Gladio? Many ask, how could simple Arabs or even Israel, put together an organization capable of 9/11?

If, as 78% of Australians indicate in a recent Herald Sun poll, America planned 9/11 herself, how did a democracy lose its way?

How did America’s intelligence and defense groups become terrorists? When did it happen and why? The answer isn’t simple, it started decades ago, when the world was at the edge of obliteration and two systems, or what we then believed were systems, fought for the hearts and minds of the world.


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Today, all that sounds childish. A mature look at the Cold War looks more like two rats fighting over a corpse. Then, however, some saw it as “light and dark,” clear as that. Many believed the Soviet Union would drive its tanks through Europe like a knife through hot butter. To fight this “eventuality,” NATO built a terrorist organization of massive proportions. The remaining cells of Operation Gladio, one of the greatest disasters of military ignorance in history, are busy today.

We call some of them “Al Qaeda.”

Operation Gladio is the heart of world terrorism, alive and well, and built by NATO, built by the United States and used against America and the world. Gladio, created to save us from communism, quickly became a terrorist organization itself, murdering political leaders, rigging elections, terror attacks to blame on one group or another. The “medicine” became the disease. It is now killing us.

Read more‘GLADIO, THE LIVING PROOF THERE IS NO AL-QAEDA, NO WAR ON TERROR’ – ‘GLADIO Is AL-QAEDA’ (Veterans Today)

Special Ops Con, Imaginary Warfare And Non-Existent Enemies (Veterans Today)

Special Ops con, imaginary warfare and non-existent enemies (Veterans Today, Sep 7, 2012):

With an election book by a SEAL, real or imaginary, out now, it is time for an honest discussion of “Special Operations” from someone who has actually sat through “mission planning” sessions involving three continents.

Thus far, the quotes I have read, of finding an unidentified old man shot but not dead and then shooting his wounded body repeatedly makes sense.

Any old man would do as lying about who it is can easily be done under cloak of secrecy, like lying about the helicopter crash though photos of the downed “carbon fibre stealth helicopter” were in every paper.

Witness also so crash dead, crew and SEALS. We lied about that too.

Someone may have murdered an old man; we have no idea who neither did they. The whole thing was staged, go somewhere, kill an old man, claim it is Osama bin Laden, move General Petraeus to CIA and he can’t claim he killed bin Laden and run for president.

The whole thing was a political con.

Then, noting from this recent book that SEALS are obsessed with leaking information, we had a record number of SEAL deaths in an air crash in Afghanistan reported soon after, totaling as many dead SEALS as the entire Vietnam War.

Read moreSpecial Ops Con, Imaginary Warfare And Non-Existent Enemies (Veterans Today)

Delusional Reality: Everything Peddled By Politicians, Media, Banks And TV Is A Fiction

Delusional reality: Everything peddled by politicians, media, banks and television is a fiction (Natural News, Sep 6, 2012):

The “War on Terror” is a complete fabrication. There is no terrorism other than what the government creates in order to sell its agenda of a police state takeover. Click here to read Paul Craig Roberts’ article that lays this out in brilliant detail.

The CDC’s war on West Nile virus is also a complete fabrication. There is no real West Nile virus threat. (Read article here.) The odds of being killed by West Nile are, much like with “terrorism,” even lower than the odds of being killed by a bee sting.

The “economic recovery” of America is a fairy tale. Over the last few days, the federal debt reached a jaw-dropping $16 trillion — nearly $5 trillion of that debt has been incurred under one person: President Obama. Unemployment is at record highs. Half the population is on federal aid of one form or another. Food stamp costs have skyrocketed.

“Obamacare” is a fiasco. Dubbed the “Affordable Care Act,” in reality health insurance costs have vastly increased after the passage of this ill-conceived law.

Bin Laden wasn’t killed by U.S. Navy Seals. The war is a fake. The news is faked. The media is completely, utterly faked, running totally fictional stories. CNN is actually an elaborate theater operation, faking sets, locations, sound effects and everything else you can imagine. Don’t believe me? Watch this totally faked CNN broadcast from the Gulf War, featuring “journalist” Charles Jaco:
http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=B55147E2052701412A47A9F2C9DA754C

The whole thing is so hilarious it’s almost an SNL skit! At one point, a fake air raid siren sounds off, indicating a biological weapons attack (total fear mongering on CNN), and one of the guests in the fake studio frantically straps on a HELMET! Yeah, because helmets are the defense of choice against biological attacks, it seems. See if you can actually watch this CNN video and not laugh out loud…

Newspapers run fake news like “organic foods are no healthier than conventional foods.” (http://www.naturalnews.com/037065_organic_foods_mainstream_media_psyo…)

The FBI plans and carries out fake terror plots all across the USA (http://www.naturalnews.com/034325_FBI_entrapment_terror_plots.html).

Read moreDelusional Reality: Everything Peddled By Politicians, Media, Banks And TV Is A Fiction

Scientist Leuren Moret: Intentional Collapse And Takedown Of The USA – Depleted Uranium (Video)

MUST-SEE!



YouTube Added: 11.02.2011

America: A Government Totally Out Of Control (Video)

Next train ‘Ausschwitz’:

No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: The Entire Financial System Is Collapsing! – This Is FASCISM! (Video, March 26, 2012 )

Flashback:

– Former governor  Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory: Police State (And FEMA Concentration Camps) – Full Length Video

The videos down below are a MUST-SEE!


America: A Government Out Of Control (ZeroHedge, April 8, 2012):

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have”
– Thomas Jefferson

Something odd and not quite as planned happened as America grew from its “City on a Hill” origins, on its way to becoming the world’s superpower: government grew. A lot. In fact, the government, which by definition does not create any wealth but merely reallocates it based on the whims of a select few, has transformed from a virtually invisible bystander in the economy, to the largest single employer, and a spending behemoth whose annual cash needs alone are nearly $4 trillion a year, and where tax revenues no longer cover even half the outflows. One can debate why this happened until one is blue in the face: the allures of encroaching central planning, the law of large numbers, and the corollary of corruption, inefficiency and greed, cheap credit, the transition to a welfare nanny state as America’s population grew older, sicker and lazier, you name it. The reality is that the reasons for government’s growth do not matter as much as realizing where we are, and deciding what has to be done: will America’s central planners be afforded ever more power to decide the fates of not only America’s population, but that of the world, or will the people reclaim the ideals that the founders of this once great country had when they set off on an experiment, which is now failing with every passing year?

As the following video created by New America Now, using content by Brandon Smith whose work has been featured extensively on the pages of Zero Hedge, notes, “we tend to view government as an inevitability of life, but the fact is government is not a force of nature. It is an imperfect creation of man and it can be dismantled by man just as easily as it can be established.” Unfortunately, the realization that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and absolute central planning leads to epic catastrophes without fail, seems a long way away: most seem content with their lot in life, with lies that their welfare money is safe, even as the future is plundered with greater fury and aggression every passing year, until one day the ability to transfer wealth (benefiting primarily the uber rich, to the detriment of the middle class which is pillaged on an hourly basis), from the future to the present is gone, manifesting in either a failed bond auction or hyperinflation. The timing or shape of the transition itself is irrelevant, what is certain is that America is now on collision course with certain collapse unless something changes. And one of the things that has to change for hope in the great American dream to be restored, is the role, composition and motivations of government, all of which have mutated to far beyond what anyone envisioned back in 1776. Because America is now saddled with a Government Out Of Control.

Watch the two clips below to understand just how and why we have gotten to where we are. Also watch it to, as rhetorically asked by the narrator, prompt us to question whether the government we now have is still useful to us and what kind of powers it should be allowed to wield.


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Rep. Ron Paul: The NDAA Repeals More Rights

The NDAA Repeals More Rights: (Congressman Ron Paul):

Little by little, in the name of fighting terrorism, our Bill of Rights is being repealed.  The 4th amendment has been rendered toothless by the PATRIOT Act.  No more can we truly feel secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects when now there is an exception that fits nearly any excuse for our government to search and seize our property.  Of course, the vast majority of Americans may say “I’m not a terrorist, so I have no reason to worry.” However, innocent people are wrongly accused all the time.  The Bill of Rights is there precisely because the founders wanted to set a very high bar for the government to overcome in order to deprive an individual of life or liberty.  To lower that bar is to endanger everyone.  When the bar is low enough to include political enemies, our descent into totalitarianism is virtually assured.

Read moreRep. Ron Paul: The NDAA Repeals More Rights

Thrive (Documentary – Full Length)

For your information.

The elitists vs. the people.



YouTube Added: 13.11.2011

For more information: Thrive

President Bush Rejects Taliban Offer To Surrender Osama Bin Laden (The Independent – 15 October 2001)

In other news:

Bush rejects Taliban offer to hand Bin Laden over (The Guardian, Oct 14, 2001)

–  U.S. rejects Taliban offer to try bin Laden (CNN, Oct 7, 2001)

Bush rejects Taliban Bin Laden offer (Washington Post, Oct 14, 2001)


Bush rejects Taliban offer to surrender bin Laden (The Independent, Oct 15 2001):

Second week of bombing begins; Media visits village hit by missile

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Monday, 15 October 2001

After a week of debilitating strikes at targets across Afghanistan, the Taliban repeated an offer to hand over Osama bin Laden, only to be rejected by President Bush.

The offer yesterday from Haji Abdul Kabir, the Taliban’s deputy prime minister, to surrender Mr bin Laden if America would halt its bombing and provide evidence against the Saudi-born dissident was not new but it suggested the Taliban are increasingly weary of the air strikes, which have crippled much of their military and communications assets.

Read morePresident Bush Rejects Taliban Offer To Surrender Osama Bin Laden (The Independent – 15 October 2001)

Paul Craig Roberts: A Plague Upon The World: The USA is a “Failed State”

Interview with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary US Treasury, Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Professor of Political Economy Center for Strategic and International Studies Georgetown University Washington DC.

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Question:  Dr. Roberts,  the United States is regarded as the most successful state in the world today. What is responsible for American success?

Dr. Roberts:  Propaganda. If truth be known, the US is a failed state. More about that later. The US owes its image of success to: (1) the vast lands and mineral resources that the US “liberated” with violence from the native inhabitants, (2) Europe’s, especially Great Britain’s, self-destruction in World War I and World War II, and (3) the economic destruction of Russia and most of Asia by communism or socialism.

After World War II, the US took the reserve currency role from Great Britain. This made the US dollar the world money and permitted the US to pay its import bills in its own currency. World War II’s destruction of the other industrialized countries left the US as the only country capable of supplying products to world markets. This historical happenstance created among Americans the impression that they were a favored people. Today the militarist neoconservatives speak of the United States as “the indispensable nation.”  In other words, Americans are above all others, except, of course, Israelis.

To American eyes a vague “terrorist threat,” a creation of their own government, is sufficient justification for naked aggression against Muslim peoples and for an agenda of world hegemony.

This hubristic attitude explains why among most Americans there is no remorse over the one million Iraqis killed and the four million Iraqis displaced by a US invasion and occupation that were based entirely on lies and deception. It explains why there is no remorse among most Americans for the countless numbers of Afghans who have been cavalierly murdered by the US military, or for the Pakistani civilians murdered by US drones and “soldiers” sitting in front of video screens. It explains why there is no outrage among Americans when the Israelis bomb Lebanese civilians and Gaza civilians.  No one in the world will believe that Israel’s latest act of barbarity, the murderous attack on the international aid flotilla to Gaza, was not cleared with Israel’s American enabler.

Question:  You said that the US was a failed state. How can that be? What do you mean?

Roberts:  The war on terror, invented by the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney regime, destroyed the US Constitution and the civil liberties that the Constitution embodies. The Bill of Rights has been eviscerated. The Obama regime has institutionalized the Bush/Cheney assault on American liberty. Today, no American has any rights if he or she is accused of “terrorist” activity. The Obama regime has expanded the vague definition of “terrorist activity” to include “domestic extremist,” another undefined and vague category subject to the government’s discretion.  In short, a “terrorist” or a “domestic extremist” is anyone who dissents from a policy or a practice that the US government regards as necessary for its agenda of world hegemony.

Unlike some countries, the US is not an ethic group. It is a collection of diverse peoples united under the Constitution. When the Constitution was destroyed, the US ceased to exist. What exists today are power centers that are unaccountable. Elections mean nothing, as both parties are dependent on the same powerful interest groups for campaign funds. The most powerful interest groups are the military/security complex, which includes the Pentagon, the CIA, and the corporations that service them, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, the oil industry that is destroying the Gulf of Mexico, Wall Street (investment banks and hedge funds), the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, and the agri-companies that produce food of questionable content.

These corporate powers comprise an oligarchy that cannot be dislodged by voting. Ever since “globalism” was enacted into law, the Democrats have been dependent on the same corporate sources of income as the Republicans, because globalism destroyed the labor unions. Consequently, there is no difference between  the Republicans and Democrats, or no meaningful difference.

Read morePaul Craig Roberts: A Plague Upon The World: The USA is a “Failed State”

Mike Krieger: Goodbye Disneyland! – The Neo-Feudalistic, Gulag Casino Economy Has Already Begun

Mike Krieger, formerly a macro analyst at Bernstein, and currently running his own fund, KAM LP, summarizies the pretend reality we are all caught in now, knowing full well America is set on a crash course with reality at some point, yet sticking our collective heads in the sand, as the collapse will be some time in the “indefinite” future. In the meantime, banks will continue to boost US GDP by peddling “financial innovation” and restructuring advice to countries like Greece… and nothing else.


Goodbye Disneyland, by Mike Krieger

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.  It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it.  Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.  The heresy of heresies was common sense.  And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right.  For, after all how do we know that two and two make four?  Or that the force of gravity works?  Or that the past is unchangeable?  If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?
– Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
– Thomas Jefferson

We Must Move to a Free Market and Shun the Welfare-Warfare State or all will be Lost

Unfortunately for all of us, the primary economic policy of the U.S. government as well as many others around the world is an extend and pretend strategy that is economic suicide primarily in that it keeps the irresponsible in their assets and it makes the responsible shudder and shun productive investments.  Whether it be a homeowner that is subsidized to stay in a home that he cannot afford or a bank that doesn’t want to come clean on the extent of its bad assets, the result is the same.  Complete economic inertia.  Now of course there has been a rebound in demand, but my argument has been and continues to be that this is the most unproductive rebound in aggregate demand that perhaps the world has ever seen.  Whether it be in the U.S. or China, the demand is taking away spare capacity in many areas indeed but we must question the methods.  This is where the whole idea of inflation comes into play.  The whole reason why printing a million dollars and giving it to everyone doesn’t work is because this “liquidity” is not created through a productive process.  It is purely an injection of new dollars into the economy.  The basic rule of supply/demand kicks in.  In the average person’s pocket, this money is unlikely to be “invested” in productive capital endeavors, rather the vast majority of it will simply be spent to consume the resources of that which can be supplied by the already existing capital stock.  So in many ways it isn’t that the creation of the money itself that is the biggest problem, it is the distribution channel of that money.  Only a small percentage of the population that receives the million dollars has the ability, drive and discipline to invest the money into something that will create economic value for the society at large rather than just blow it on a flat screen television.  This is the entire premise of why a free market economy works when it is allowed to work (which I would argue is not possible under the current Federal Reserve system).  The Fed is a socialist organization that SETS the most important price in the economy, the price of money.  Even worse, when they set that price at say 0% as is basically the case today that 0% or anything close to it is not offered to all the small businessmen or potential entrepreneurs out there.  It might not even be so bad if the low interest rates weren’t simply being used to gamble or play a carry trade with treasuries.  Of course, the banks or anyone else for that matter playing a spread by borrowing at near zero to buy long-term treasuries is doing irreparable harm to this nation.  They are complicit in the gross misallocation of capital to the government, capital that can then be doled out at will to favored interests.  So all we have today is essentially a creation of money and credit out of thin air that is allocated to two major constituents.  First, it has primarily been used to maintain the people of wealth, power and political connections (on both sides of the isle) before the crash entrenched in their socioeconomic roles.  Second, is to pay off political favors.  Those who supported the President in his campaign have been paid back handsomely and are today much more powerful and secure than before whether we are talking unions or the oligopoly banks.  If we wish to have any hope of a sustainable recovery preventing the inevitable social unrest to come from truly getting dangerous we must restore the free market and end the union of big business and government, which historically has presented an extremely dangerous situation.  For those that are in big business and think they have made a great move by joining forces with the state I suggest you go back and read your history.  You never will possess the ultimate power, you will be seduced into thinking you do and then when the time is right government can eliminate you and your fortune with the stroke of a pen.  Power is granted to you by this authority when you engage in this unholy union and it can be taken away on whim and your wealth confiscated. Selling out freedom and your fellow citizens for some extra money or government contracts will come back to haunt you.  Your legacy to the United States will be a neo-feudalistic, gulag casino economy that has already begun. Below is a link to an excellent interview with Bill Moyers on PBS about our financial oligarchy (I believe many industries here are becoming oligarchies but the financial one is the most powerful) and the need to stop its cancerous growth.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04162010/watch.html

There Will be Surplus…In 2050!

Read moreMike Krieger: Goodbye Disneyland! – The Neo-Feudalistic, Gulag Casino Economy Has Already Begun

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld ‘Knew Guantánamo Prisoners Were Innocent’

In other news:

Bush knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent, former Colin Powell aide tells court (Daily Mail, April 10, 2010)

The Times has removed the following article.



Two detainees are escorted to interrogation by US military guards at Guantánamo Bay (Andres Leighton/AP)

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld ‘Knew Guantánamo Prisoners Were Innocent’ (Times, April 9, 2010):

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.

Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.

General Powell, who left the Bush Administration in 2005, angry about the misinformation that he unwittingly gave the world when he made the case for the invasion of Iraq at the UN, is understood to have backed Colonel Wilkerson’s declaration.

Colonel Wilkerson, a long-time critic of the Bush Administration’s approach to counter-terrorism and the war in Iraq, claimed that the majority of detainees – children as young as 12 and men as old as 93, he said – never saw a US soldier when they were captured. He said that many were turned over by Afghans and Pakistanis for up to $5,000. Little or no evidence was produced as to why they had been taken.

Read moreBush, Cheney and Rumsfeld ‘Knew Guantánamo Prisoners Were Innocent’

Paul Craig Roberts: It Is Now Official: The U.S. Is A Police State

Must-read.


Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Americans have been losing the protection of law for years. In the 21st century the loss of legal protections accelerated with the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” which continues under the Obama administration and is essentially a war on the Constitution and U.S. civil liberties.

The Bush regime was determined to vitiate habeas corpus in order to hold people indefinitely without bringing charges. The regime had acquired hundreds of prisoners by paying a bounty for “terrorists.” Afghan warlords and thugs responded to the financial incentive by grabbing unprotected people and selling them to the Americans.

The Bush regime needed to hold the prisoners without charges because it had no evidence against the people and did not want to admit that the U.S. government had stupidly paid warlords and thugs to kidnap innocent people. In addition, the Bush regime needed “terrorists” prisoners in order to prove that there was a terrorist threat.

As there was no evidence against the “detainees” (most have been released without charges after years of detention and abuse), the U.S. government needed a way around U.S. and international laws against torture in order that the government could produce evidence via self-incrimination. The Bush regime found inhumane and totalitarian-minded lawyers and put them to work at the U.S. Department of Justice (sic) to invent arguments that the Bush regime did not need to obey the law.

The Bush regime created a new classification for its detainees that it used to justify denying legal protection and due process to the detainees. As the detainees were not U.S. citizens and were demonized by the regime as “the 760 most dangerous men on earth,” there was little public outcry over the regime’s unconstitutional and inhumane actions.

As our Founding Fathers and a long list of scholars warned, once civil liberties are breached, they are breached for all. Soon U.S. citizens were being held indefinitely in violation of their habeas corpus rights. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui an American citizen of Pakistani origin might have been the first.

Read morePaul Craig Roberts: It Is Now Official: The U.S. Is A Police State

The Guantánamo ‘Suicides’: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle

Related information:

Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to Uzbekistan for extreme torture, to be ‘raped with broken bottles,’ ‘boiled alive’ and ‘having their children tortured in front of them’


Satellite photograph from Terraserver. (Click on image to enlarge.)
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This is the full text of an exclusive advance feature by Scott Horton that will appear in the March 2010 Harper’s Magazine. The issue will be available on newsstands the week of February 15.

1. “Asymmetrical Warfare”

When President Barack Obama took office last year, he promised to “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great.” Toward that end, the president issued an executive order declaring that the extra-constitutional prison camp at Guantánamo “shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.” Obama has failed to fulfill his promise. Some prisoners are being charged with crimes, others released, but the date for closing the camp seems to recede steadily into the future. Furthermore, new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama’s young administration with crimes that occurred during the Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously—and may even have continued—a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guantánamo in 2006.

Late in the evening on June 9 that year, three prisoners at Guantánamo died suddenly and violently. Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, from Yemen, was thirty-seven. Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, from Saudi Arabia, was thirty. Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, also from Saudi Arabia, was twenty-two, and had been imprisoned at Guantánamo since he was captured at the age of seventeen. None of the men had been charged with a crime, though all three had been engaged in hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their imprisonment. They were being held in a cell block, known as Alpha Block, reserved for particularly troublesome or high-value prisoners.

As news of the deaths emerged the following day, the camp quickly went into lockdown. The authorities ordered nearly all the reporters at Guantánamo to leave and those en route to turn back. The commander at Guantánamo, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, then declared the deaths “suicides.” In an unusual move, he also used the announcement to attack the dead men. “I believe this was not an act of desperation,” he said, “but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” Reporters accepted the official account, and even lawyers for the prisoners appeared to believe that they had killed themselves. Only the prisoners’ families in Saudi Arabia and Yemen rejected the notion.

Two years later, the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which has primary investigative jurisdiction within the naval base, issued a report supporting the account originally advanced by Harris, now a vice-admiral in command of the Sixth Fleet. The Pentagon declined to make the NCIS report public, and only when pressed with Freedom of Information Act demands did it disclose parts of the report, some 1,700 pages of documents so heavily redacted as to be nearly incomprehensible. The NCIS report was carefully cross-referenced and deciphered by students and faculty at the law school of Seton Hall University in New Jersey, and their findings, released in November 2009, made clear why the Pentagon had been unwilling to make its conclusions public. The official story of the prisoners’ deaths was full of unacknowledged contradictions, and the centerpiece of the report—a reconstruction of the events—was simply unbelievable.

According to the NCIS, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell’s eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated. The NCIS report also proposes that the three prisoners, who were held in non-adjoining cells, carried out each of these actions almost simultaneously.

Al-Zahrani, according to the report, was discovered first, at 12:39 a.m., and taken by several Alpha Block guards to the camp’s detention medical clinic. No doctors could be found there, nor the phone number for one, so a clinic staffer dialed 911. During this time, other guards discovered Al-Utaybi. Still others discovered Al-Salami a few minutes later. Although rigor mortis had already set in—indicating that the men had been dead for at least two hours—the NCIS report claims that an unnamed medical officer attempted to resuscitate one of the men, and, in attempting to pry open his jaw, broke his teeth.

The fact that at least two of the prisoners also had cloth masks affixed to their faces, presumably to prevent the expulsion of the rags from their mouths, went unremarked by the NCIS, as did the fact that standard operating procedure at Camp Delta required the Navy guards on duty after midnight to “conduct a visual search” of each cell and detainee every ten minutes. The report claimed that the prisoners had hung sheets or blankets to hide their activities and shaped more sheets and pillows to look like bodies sleeping in their beds, but it did not explain where they were able to acquire so much fabric beyond their tightly controlled allotment, or why the Navy guards would allow such an obvious and immediately observable deviation from permitted behavior. Nor did the report explain how the dead men managed to hang undetected for more than two hours or why the Navy guards on duty, having for whatever reason so grievously failed in their duties, were never disciplined.

A separate report, the result of an “informal investigation” initiated by Admiral Harris, found that standard operating procedures were violated that night but concluded that disciplinary action was not warranted because of the “generally permissive environment” of the cell block and the numerous “concessions” that had been made with regard to the prisoners’ comfort, which “concessions” had resulted in a “general confusion by the guard and the JDG staff over many of the rules that applied to the guard force’s handling of the detainees.” According to Harris, even had standard operating procedures been followed, “it is possible that the detainees could have successfully committed suicide anyway.”

This is the official story, adopted by NCIS and Guantánamo command and reiterated by the Justice Department in formal pleadings, by the Defense Department in briefings and press releases, and by the State Department. Now four members of the Military Intelligence unit assigned to guard Camp Delta, including a decorated non-commissioned Army officer who was on duty as sergeant of the guard the night of June 9–10, have furnished an account dramatically at odds with the NCIS report—a report for which they were neither interviewed nor approached.

All four soldiers say they were ordered by their commanding officer not to speak out, and all four soldiers provide evidence that authorities initiated a cover-up within hours of the prisoners’ deaths. Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman and men under his supervision have disclosed evidence in interviews with Harper’s Magazine that strongly suggests that the three prisoners who died on June 9 had been transported to another location prior to their deaths. The guards’ accounts also reveal the existence of a previously unreported black site at Guantánamo where the deaths, or at least the events that led directly to the deaths, most likely occurred.

2. “Camp No”

The soldiers of the Maryland-based 629th Military Intelligence Battalion arrived at Guantánamo Naval Base in March 2006, assigned to provide security to Camp America, the sector of the base containing the five individual prison compounds that house the prisoners. Camp Delta was at the time the largest of these compounds, and within its walls were four smaller camps, numbered 1 through 4, which in turn were divided into cell blocks. Life at Camp America, as at all prisons, was and remains rigorously routinized for both prisoners and their jailers. Navy guards patrol the cell blocks and Army personnel control the exterior areas of the camp. All observed incidents must be logged. For the Army guards who man the towers and “sally ports” (access points), knowing who enters and leaves the camp, and exactly when, is the essence of their mission.

One of the new guards who arrived that March was Joe Hickman, then a sergeant. Hickman grew up in Baltimore and joined the Marines in 1983, at the age of nineteen. When I interviewed him in January at his home in Wisconsin, he told me he had been inspired to enlist by Ronald Reagan, “the greatest president we’ve ever had.” He worked in a military intelligence unit and was eventually tapped for Reagan’s Presidential Guard detail, an assignment reserved for model soldiers. When his four years were up, Hickman returned home, where he worked a series of security jobs-prison transport, executive protection, and eventually private investigations. After September 11 he decided to re-enlist, at thirty-seven, this time in the Army National Guard.

Hickman deployed to Guantánamo with his friend Specialist Tony Davila, who grew up outside Washington, D.C., and who had himself been a private investigator. When they arrived at Camp Delta, Davila told me, soldiers from the California National Guard unit they were relieving introduced him to some of the curiosities of the base. The most noteworthy of these was an unnamed and officially unacknowledged compound nestled out of sight between two plateaus about a mile north of Camp Delta, just outside Camp America’s perimeter. One day, while on foot patrol, Hickman and Davila came across the compound. It looked like other camps within Camp America, Davila said, only it had no guard towers and it was surrounded with concertina wire. They saw no activity, but Hickman guessed the place could house as many as eighty prisoners. One part of the compound, he said, had the same appearance as the interrogation centers at other prison camps.

The compound was not visible from the main road, and the access road was chained off. The Guardsman who told Davila about the compound had said, “This place does not exist,” and Hickman, who was frequently put in charge of security for all of Camp America, was not briefed about the site. Nevertheless, Davila said, other soldiers-many of whom were required to patrol the outside perimeter of Camp America-had seen the compound, and many speculated about its purpose. One theory was that it was being used by some of the non-uniformed government personnel who frequently showed up in the camps and were widely thought to be CIA agents.

A friend of Hickman’s had nicknamed the compound “Camp No,” the idea being that anyone who asked if it existed would be told, “No, it doesn’t.” He and Davila made a point of stopping by whenever they had the chance; once, Hickman said, he heard a “series of screams” from within the compound.

Read moreThe Guantánamo ‘Suicides’: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle

Rising US Military Suicides: The pace is faster than combat deaths in Iraq or Afghanistan.

More U.S. military personnel have taken their own lives so far in 2009 than have been killed in either the Afghanistan or Iraq wars this year, according to a Congressional Quarterly compilation of the latest statistics from the armed services.

As of Tuesday, at least 334 members of the military services have committed suicide in 2009, compared with 297 killed in Afghanistan and 144 who died in Iraq, the figures show.

Lawmakers in recent years have been increasingly concerned about the growing problem of military suicides, especially in the Army. They have been holding hearings, passing bills and approving billions of dollars more than requested to improve mental health care for military personnel and veterans.

But even those who have been most intensely focused on the issue said they found the new numbers alarming. So far in 2009, the Army has had 211 of the 334 suicides, while the Navy had 47, the Air Force had 34 and the Marine Corps (active duty only) had 42.

“These numbers are just staggering and, tragically, are an indication that we are simply not doing the job of providing adequate mental health care for both our active-duty service people and our veterans, said Bob Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

Read moreRising US Military Suicides: The pace is faster than combat deaths in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Pakistan: Two More Bomb Blasts Kill at Least 43, 100 Dead in Five Days

Pakistan Militants Bomb Multan, 100 Dead in Five Days (Bloomberg)

Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) — Militants bombed a fifth Pakistani city in as many days, the latest attack in a nationwide surge in violence that has killed about 100 people, half of them in the country’s economic powerhouse region of Punjab.

A bomb near the spy agency’s office in the Punjab city of Multan killed 12 people. Earlier, Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said 40 people died and 100 were injured last night in bombings at a market in Lahore, the provincial capital. Pakistan’s key stock index fell 1.7 percent to its lowest in almost a month.

“The militants are going for civilian and security targets in a no-holds-barred manner and in a barbaric manner,” Mahmood Shah, a security analyst, said in a telephone interview from the northwestern city of Peshawar, where 10 people were killed in a bombing yesterday.

About 450 civilians and security officials have died in retaliatory bomb and gunfire attacks since Pakistan’s army began an offensive Oct. 17 against Taliban guerrillas in the tribal region of South Waziristan, near the border with Afghanistan. President Barack Obama has called Afghanistan and Pakistan the “epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al-Qaeda.”


Remember that there are only 100 Al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan according to the US government:

UPDATE: $300 MILLION FOR EVERY AL QAEDA MEMBER IN AFGHANISTAN

President Barack Obama made the decision to send some 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan despite being informed that the country is now host to only 100 Al Qaeda fighters, ABC News reports.

A senior U.S. intelligence official told ABCNews.com the approximate estimate of 100 al Qaeda members left in Afghanistan reflects the conclusion of American intelligence agencies and the Defense Department. The relatively small number was part of the intelligence passed on to the White House as President Obama conducted his deliberations.

ABC News estimates that, with the surge included, there will be a ratio of 1,000 US troops for every Al Qaeda member in the country. The cost of the war will work out to $300 million for every Al Qaeda fighter.


At least 43 killed in Pakistan bomb blasts

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Attacks as night fell: The scene after the bomb blasts in the Lahore market (Reuters: Mohsin Raza)

Bomb blasts have torn through two of Pakistan’s main cities overnight, killing at least 43 people and wounding more than 100 as the nation struggles to quell a worsening Taliban insurgency.

Two blasts devastated a busy market and engulfed it in flames killing at least 33 people in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, while in the north-west provincial capital of Peshawar a suicide bomber killed 10 people.

Attacks blamed on Islamist militants have surged this year as Pakistan presses military offensives against the Taliban across the north-west, under fierce US pressure to do more to destroy the extremists’ strongholds.

Read morePakistan: Two More Bomb Blasts Kill at Least 43, 100 Dead in Five Days