Archive for the ‘War’ Category

The “Arab Spring” is now darkening into a cold “Arab Winter” as the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamists groups take majority control of the Egyptian government.

An estimated 50,000 to 70,000 medium and long-range missiles are stationed in Lebanon and pointed south at our staunchest ally in the region, Israel.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is right now traveling through Latin America and no doubt strengthening alliances in the region. In addition, the Iranian Navy is staging aggressive war games in the Straits of Hormuz.

China is expanding its military capability by broadening its maritime and air forces. In North Korea, a 28-year-old four star general is waiting to show his strength as the new national leader, while jangling the keys to a nuclear arsenal.

By Debbie Schlussel

Silly me.  I thought we were in a “War in Afghanistan.”  You can hardly tell because instead of allowing American men to protect themselves and fight people so we can get out of there, we are making soldiers give up legs and arms and eyes and lives so they can builda quarter mile of road for people who hate them.  Oh, and hand out candy to some kid who has either been sentenced to a life of Bacha Bazi or is preparing for Taliban terroristtraining camp.  In any event, we are supposed to be at war.  In this case especially, we are at war with animals.  Animals who have no prob blowing up our people building these dumb roads and handing out silly candy and stuffed animals.

Oorah: This is War. Don’t Get Upset When Marines Act Like Men @ War

(Photo credit: San Jose Mercury News)

The mayor of Richmond, Calif. plans to skip her city’s Veterans Day memorial events to attend an Occupy rally, a choice that’s prompting anger and criticism.

Mayor Gayle McLaughlin will miss a Veterans Day salute Friday in favor of an Occupy Richmond “public speak out,” the San Jose Mercury News reported.

McLaughlin defended her decision, telling the newspaper that the city is not sponsoring the Veterans Day event, and the rally she will attend will honor Scott Olsen, the Iraq war veteran injured at an Occupy Oakland rally last month. Richmond and Oakland, both in the San Francisco Bay Area, are about 12 miles apart.

“I choose to honor our veterans, not only on Veteran’s Day, but daily, by supporting an end to military warfare to prevent further fighting and dying in needless wars,” she said in an email. “I am a strong supporter of Veterans for Peace and Iraq Vets Against the War.”

McLaughlin, a member of the Green Party elected to a second term last year, has been supportive of the Occupy Wall Street movement since its inception. In a message on her website dated Nov. 6, she said since it “burst onto the scene, calling for an end to corporate domination all over the globe…[w]e, in Richmond, are part of this movement and have everything to gain from it.”

Her website also notes former White House “green jobs czar” Van Jones spoke at her 2010 re-election campaign kickoff.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, she marched in Occupy Oakland’s “general strike” earlier this month — the same march that turned into violent rioting. Asked whether she would support Friday’s protesters if they decide to stay and camp after their rally, she told the Chronicle: “Yeah, I would stand with them for that. I stand with this movement.”

A message on her website urged Richmond residents to attend the Occupy rally as well, scheduled for 11 a.m. — the same time as the Veterans Day events.

Jeff Rubin, a Veterans Day memorial organizer, told the San Jose Mercury News the mayor has “very little respect for the country and traditions” and wondered whether the date of the rally was picked on purpose — a decision McLaughlin said had nothing to do with.

“As mayor, she has a responsibility to everyone in our community,” Rubin said. “Not only the disenfranchised and the unemployed, but to the veterans as well.”

Michael Klasno, director of Gold Star Dads of America, called the mayor’s choice a “slap in the face” to veterans and to grieving parents like himself.

“You don’t blow off the veterans of the United States for anybody, and you certainly don’t blow if off for Occupy Wall Street,” he said. “As somebody who’s paid the ultimate sacrifice, that to me is beyond the pale.”

But McLaughlin countered that exercising freedom is respectful of veterans.

“I think a good way to show respect for our veterans is to put all our energy into promoting the values that veterans fought for and some of them died for,” she said.

Even though many still deny their very existence, the fact is… in 1954 the most powerful men in the world met for the first time under the auspices of the Dutch royal crown and the Rockefeller family in the luxurious Hotel Bilderberg of the small Dutch town of Oosterbeck. For an entire weekend they debated the future of the world. When it was over, they decided to meet once every year to exchange ideas and analyze international affairs.

They named themselves the Bilderberg Club. Since then, they have gathered yearly in a luxurious hotel somewhere in the world arrogantly plotting the subversion and silent takeover of constitutional governments everywhere. Their goal is a World Government run exclusively by their hand-picked puppets.

Bilderberg founding member and, for 30 years, a steering committee member, Denis Healey said, “To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn’t go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing.”

Shrewd and calculating, their hearts are filled with lust for power and consumed by greed for money. Rich and aristocratic, they despise Christians and they loathe the lowly working class. They control the world’s press and virtually all our banks and financial institutions. They screen and choose who America’s leaders will be and even determine who will run on the Democratic and Republican Party tickets.

Among the elitist membership or attendees at Bilderberg meetings is David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Lloyd Bentsen, Helmut Kohl, Prince Charles, Prince Juan Carlos I of Spain, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Katharine Graham, Alice Rivlin, Gerald Ford, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Dan Quayle, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin L. Powell, John Edwards, Bill Bradley, Bill Richardson, Christopher Dodd, Dianne Feinstein, Kathleen Sebelius, Alexander Haig, Ralph E. Reed, George Stephanopoulos, William J McDonough (former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York), U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, George Soros, Paul Volcker & Alan Greenspan (former Chairman of the Federal Reserve), Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, World Bank president Robert Zoellick, H. J. Heinz II (CEO of H. J. Heinz Company), Peter A. Thiel (Co-Founder, PayPal), Eric E. Schmidt (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Google), Lloyd Blankfein (CEO of Goldman Sachs), Rupert Murdoch, Donald E. Graham (Chairman of the Board of The Washington Post Company), William F. Buckley, Jr. (founder of National Review and former host of Firing Line), Peter Jennings, George Will, Lesley Stahl, Bill D. Moyers, and many others. The list includes prominent persons in politics, the military, financial institutions, major corporations, academia, and the media.

Leaders of the Bilderberg Club argue that discretion is necessary to allow participants in the debates to speak freely without being on the record or reported publicly. Wikipedia recently deleted the Bilderberg attendees list, citing it to be possibly defamatory towards living persons.

Why are the Davos World Economic Forum and G8 meetings carried in every newspaper, given front page coverage, with thousands of journalists in attendance, while no one covers Bilderberg Club meetings even though they are annually attended by Presidents of the International Monetary Fund, The World Bank, Federal Reserve, chairmen of 100 most powerful corporations in the world such as DaimlerChrysler, Coca Cola, British Petroleum, Chase Manhattan Bank, American Express, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Vice Presidents of the United States, Directors of the CIA and the FBI, General Secretaries of NATO, American Senators and members of Congress, European Prime Ministers and leaders of opposition parties, top editors and CEOs of the leading newspapers in the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I3sqpRtKUA&feature=player_embedded

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.” – David Rockefeller

Tuesday, 19 Jul 2011 07:53 AM

By Ken Timmerman

Thousands of Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) troops crossed into northern Iraq over the weekend, bombarding Iraqi Kurdish villages.

The Iraqi government has quietly acknowledged the Iranian military operation on Iraqi soil, but has not called it an invasion.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the prime minister of the Kurdish regional government, Dr. Barham Salih, left for Beijing as the Iranian invasion began, for a long-planned trip aimed at encouraging Chinese investment in Iraq.

The Iranian military offensive is targeting bases controlled by the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK), the largest and best-organized Iranian opposition group currently operating inside Iran.

Sherzad Kamangar, a PJAK spokesman in northern Iraq, told Newsmax that by Monday evening PJAK forces had pushed the Iranian troops out of Iraqi.

Kamangar said PJAK had confirmed the deaths of 108 Iranian revolutionary guards troops in the clashes, and wounded 200 more, while losing seven PJAK guerilla fighters.

An Iranian Revolutionary Guards spokesman, Delavar Ranjbarzadeh, told Iran’s state run news agency that “a large number” of rebels died in clashes near Sardasht, Iran, where the IRGC claims it has dismantled a PJAK base.

PJAK members claimed they had captured 40 IRGC troops who surrendered when the rebels attacked a Revolutionary Guards base near Sardasht, a Kurdish city and government outpost not far from Iran’s northern border with Iraq.

The IRGC had been building up its forces along the northern border with Iraq for several weeks, reinforcing bases in Sardasht, Piranshahr, and Mariwan in Iranian Kurdistan.

In early July, PJAK fighters clashed with IRGC troops on the Iranian side of the Qandil Mountains where PJAK is based, and killed 18 IRGC officers.

But PJAK never announced the skirmish, or their success. “Our struggle is not a military struggle,” PJAK Secretary General Rahman Haj Ahmadi told Newsmax in an interview. “It is primarily a political struggle to change the culture.”

PJAK sources claim that high-ranking Turkish officers and special forces teams are playing an active role in the Iranian army thrust into Iraq. Turkey and Iran have established a joint operational base to attack the Kurds in Urimyeh, in northwestern Iran, where Turkish anti-insurgency experts have been training their Iranian counterparts.

PJAK seized recently manufactured U.S. weapons from Iranian-backed counterinsurgency fighters in clashes two years ago, which they believe were supplied by the Turks to Iran.

The IRGC deployed heavy weaponry in their assault including tanks, katyusha rocket launchers, artillery, mortars, and U.S.-built Huey Cobra attack helicopters against PJAK guerillas.

PJAK’s secretary general, Rahman Haj Ahmadi, believes that Iran is seeking to push PJAK fighters out of the border regions between Iran and Iraq to replace them with radical Islamic terrorists.

“We have been protecting the border from Iranian infiltration since 2003,” he told Newsmax. “That’s one reason Iran wants to push us out. They want to replace us with al-Qaida or Ansar al Islam,” a radical al-Qaida offshoot that operated in Iraqi Kurdistan before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

“If that happens, Suleymania will become another Fallujah,” he warned.  Suleymania is a major city in northeastern Iraq that many Iraqi Kurds consider their second capital.

Ahmadi said that PJAK was pro-Western, secular, and a “natural ally of the United States in the struggle against Islamic fundamentalism.”

Leaked letters from the Kurdistan regional government representative in Tehran, Nazim Debagh, shows Iran repeatedly pressing the government to crack down on PJAK fighters over the past two years, and threatening to take matters in their own hands if it did not act.

In one letter, sent to Prime Minister Dr. Barham Salih on May 9, 2010, Debagh complains that “we have had no response from you about the promises you made to the Iranians” about taking strong steps against Iranian Kurds in the Qandil mountains.

The letter says that the Iranians were pressing for a response by May 13, and urged him “not to delay because in just one month, PJAK targeted four key areas inside Iran.” (On the same day the letter was sent, Iran executed five Kurdish activists, including several PJAK sympathizers.)

Earlier this year, the Iranians again pressed Salih to crack down on the PJAK camps along the Iranian border.

After meeting with Iranian National Security General Secretary Saeed Jalili in January, Salih told Iran’s Fars News Agency, “We are hopeful that greater efforts will be made to protect the prevailing stability and security.”

U.S. Department of Treasury put PJAK on its list of “specially designated” terrorist organizations in February 2009, just as the Obama administration began quiet negotiations with the Iranian regime.

A Treasury Department internal memo, released under the Freedom of Information Act to PJAK’s U.S. attorney, Morton Sklar, claimed the group is “controlled” by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a guerilla movement, but appeared to rely mainly on Turkish and Iranian government media reports to draw that conclusion.

PJAK rebels took me to bases they controlled near the site of the current clashes this February, but they were several hours by road from the areas controlled by the PKK.

While the two groups are friendly, they do not operate in the same areas of Iraq and do not share joint command and control or even political structures.

A Freedom of Information Act request by the Foundation for Democracy in Iran to the Department of Justice found that the Justice Department was not consulted in designating PJAK as a terrorist organization, as required by U.S. law, giving weight to PJAK’s allegation that the designation was politically motivated as a sop to the Iranian regime.

The move by Treasury was a boon to the Iranian regime, since it effectively discouraged other Iranian opposition groups from cooperating with PJAK when the June 2009 protests broke out in Iran and has isolated PJAK.

Iran initially tried to claim PJAK was a creation of the United States when the group first emerged from the more traditional Iranian Kurdish parties in 2003. Only later, as Iran grew closer to the Turkish government of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, did the Iranian regime begin to claim that PJAK was a “branch” of the PKK.

Iran has also been active against the group using aggressive intelligence operations, most notably by hiring Iranian Kurdish hit squads to commit atrocities against civilians in PJAK’s name.

“We track these attacks, but there are so many,” said Amir Karimi, a senior PJAK leader I met in the Qandil mountains in February. “Their main goal is to discredit PJAK, and to frighten the Kurds by operating in both Iran and Iraq. They are directly under the control of the IRGC intelligence.”

Over the past two years, these groups have killed 368 people in Iran and Iraq, dressed them in PJAK guerilla uniforms, then sold them to the IRGC for “kill fees” ranging up to $45,000 apiece.

“Their scheme fell apart when they killed the son of the Friday prayer leader in Mariwan,” Rahman Haj Ahmadi told me. “He demanded an investigation when his son’s body turned up dressed as a PJAK fighter. He said that was impossible, and demanded that the intelligence ministry conduct an investigation.”

© Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Read more on Newsmax.com: Iranian Troops Attack Kurdish Camps in Iraq
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The Civil War didn’t end at the First Battle of Bull Run or at the Second for that matter. World War I didn’t end at the First Battle of the Marne or at the Second.  World War II didn’t end at Midway.

After what we now knowingly call Gulf War I we celebrated with ticker-tape parades and fireworks as if we had defeated Hitler, Tojo, and Stalin all wrapped up in one.  Yet a little more than ten years later we had to go back into Iraq to finish the job, and we’re still trying to finish it today.  What should have been an incursion into Afghanistan has lingered on for more than a decade. The sad result of our nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan will end with Iraq as Iran’s most powerful ally and the Taliban back in power in Kabul. 

One persistent question after politically directed wars is, “How do you win every battle and lose a war?”  After sending the brave into Harm’s Way the generalissimos of the home front drag the fighting out by hamstringing the warriors than when war is no longer a vote getter they throw the victory away through peace-at-any-price diplomacy.

I deeply appreciate the heroic scarifies of our troops, and I’m thankful they’ve provided a life of peace and safety for myself and my family.  I celebrate the victories just as I mourn the losses in this long war.  The death of an enemy leader can have momentous impact upon a war.  The death of Attila ended his empire; the death of Hitler would have ended World War II earlier and did end it when it came.  But the death of FDR did not end the war or change the strategy, and the death of Osama Bin Laden will not bring the end to this undeclared war.

The history of irregular warfare didn’t begin with Al-Qaeda.  It didn’t begin with the Viet Cong.  Irregular warfare has existed as long as there has been ill-equipped resistance to far-flung empires.  The United States has battled irregular forces at home and in the far corners of the world since the Indian Wars. We fought irregular forces the first time we faced Islamic terrorists on the shores of Tripoli.  After we conquered the Philippines from Spain we fought irregulars for years finally winning a war the Spanish never could.  We’ve faced irregular forces in Lebanon, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  In some places we’ve prevailed in others we’ve withdrawn.  At times we’ve even used irregular tactics ourselves such as the 3000 volunteers of Merrill’s Marauders who fought behind Japanese lines in Burma during World War II.

A traditional military organization fighting irregular forces is more like trying to herd snakes than nail Jell-o to the wall, it may be hard but it isn’t impossible.  However, the initiative is on the side of the irregulars because they can strike here, there, and everywhere while the regular forces must protect important components of the infrastructure.  Revolutionaries and other disaffected groups using irregular tactics have instinctively followed the advice  of Sun Tzu, “The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.”  As the regular forces move into an area the irregulars melt into the population.  The disruptions in the lives of civilians create recruits for the irregulars.  This is the force multiplier of the irregulars.  Every action at suppression brings fresh resources to circumvent future actions.

This will be the inevitable result of the death of Osama Bin Laden.  The immediate aftermath was wild jubilation on the part of a segment of our population, electioneering on the part of the administration, and a gross overestimation of the military significance.  One man does not make a movement and one leader does not encompass the enemy in an irregular war.

This is especially true in the case of Bin Laden and his brain child Al-Qaeda.   This organization is post-modern or perhaps pre-modern in style.  It doesn’t have a pyramid shaped flow-chart.  It doesn’t have a top-down command structure.  In many ways it’s more like a pyramid scheme where every franchise spins off new franchises and they spread out subdividing like amoebas into multiple places and shapes. These autonomous groups and rogue individuals are tied together by beliefs and ideology, united by tactics and strategy but each independent, separated and, anonymous.  No leader knows all the followers and few followers are connected directly to any leader.  These international conspirators are not united by personal contacts or unified by strategic planning; instead they’re forged into an inter-active whole by solidarity of purpose and continuity of world-view.  In such a structure the death of any one person no matter how highly placed or inspirational will not have more than a marginal impact.

As omnipresent and as faceless as the internet and as private and personal as family relations the tenuous filaments of the interlocking terror networks will prove more resilient than expected and more tenuous than imagined.  One man’s life can make a difference in the world, one man’s death rarely does.  Grave yards are filled with indispensable people.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com View the trailer for Dr. Owens’ latest book @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ypkoS0gGn8 © 2011 Robert R. Owens dr.owens@comcast.net  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook.

Tony Cartalucci, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Bangkok, Thailand April 29, 2011 – The latest game of Washington musical chairs expects to seeGeneral David Petraeus head the CIA while current CIA Director Leon Panetta is to take over Robert Gate’s position as Secretary of Defense. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) astutely noted that this arrangement further blurs the lines between America’s “intelligence community” and the role of the US Armed Forces.

To call the CIA an “intelligence agency” is entirely a misnomer. In reality, the CIA has become an extra-legal private military that has waged secret wars for decades. It has been recently augmenting its repertoire with pilotless drones to carry out air campaigns along the Afghan-Pakistani border. The CIA has also been involved in on-going military operations inside of Iran, Somalia, and now Libya. The CIA’s ever expanding budget has long been categorized as “classified” and therefore entirely unaccountable to both the American tax payers and their so-called elected representatives.

The CFR’s article, “Crumbling Wall Between the Pentagon and CIA” notes that the CIA’s growing influence is due to “its greater integration with the military.” This “greater integration” will engender the US military with less oversights and more secrecy as it expands its support for the CIA’s growing role in waging global war.

As the lines blur between the US military and this private, secretly funded army we can expect the worst of both worlds to be combined, with the US military already conducting extra-legal operations in Libya in tandem with the CIA, with absolutely no Congressional oversight or even so much as token approval given. If the US military and CIA are not accountable to the American tax payers or their elected representatives, who are they accountable to?

The short answer is global corporate-financier interests. These are the entities that create, fund, and supply a steady stream of resources to private international think-tanks that shape and peddle what ultimately becomes US, and to a greater extent, “Western” foreign and domestic policy. The move toward “international law” and “international institutions” being the ultimate arbiters of Western progress, leaves the future of an increasing number of nations under the control of unelected, often largely unknown corporate-financier oligarchs. General Petraeus himself was a Council on Foreign Relations member as of 2009.

Operations in Libya within the greater “Arab Spring” is just one example of what we can expect, as policy planned in the shadows of secrecy are piecemeal revealed and sold to the public by a complicit corporate-owned media, and carried out by an increasingly unaccountable military-intelligence-industrial complex. The usurpation of personal and national sovereignty is not solely a matter of foreign policy. Americans need only look back to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the extra-legal collection of legal firearms, the extra-legal deployment of military troops in direct violation of Posse Comitatus, along with entirely illegal and illegitimate private mercenaries roving the streets of New Orleans. This is only the beginning of what is becoming a truly dystopian nightmare.

As people continue to wake up and call for accountability, even the scant illusion of such accountability will be systematically taken away. Such accountability will continue to ebb as long as the corporate-financier oligarchy continues to hold the power and resources we literally depend on to live. The US Constitution specifically put arms in the hands of citizens and the duty to declare war in the hands of elected representatives to prevent what is happening this very day. This dangerous separation of state and military represents another aspect of American government taking the unmistakable shape of absolute tyranny.

In the face of such unaccountable power mongering, the answer is to usurp in turn the power of these corporate-financier oligarchies, built upon over a century of our own ignorant complicity. Byboycotting and replacing their system, purchase-by-purchase, house-by-house, community-by-community, we will erode the foundation upon which they wield such ever-expansive unwarranted influence. From their fiat financial system, to their factory farms, to their monopolistic industrial practices that stand like a brick wall in the way of real technological progress, everything they have commandeered has become a bane to our existence and an exercise of control over us. We have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain by taking these responsibilities back into our own hands, lest this corporate army, unaccountable to the people, becomes the enforcer of this increasingly neo-feudal system.

Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at
Land Destroyer Report.

Via Weasel Zippers comes a provocative op-ed in the Boston Globe by Alan J. Kuperman, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas and the author of The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention. The op-ed is titled “False pretense for war in Libya?”
Kuperman claims that President Barack Obama “grossly exaggerated the humanitarian threat” in Libya in order to justify military action there.
Last month, Obama said that U.S. military involvement in Libya was necessary in order to avoid “blood bath” and “humanitarian catastrophe.”
The president said, “If we waited one more day, Benghazi . . . could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”
Notwithstanding the harrowing tale of alleged Libyan rape victim Iman al-Obeidi, Kuperman says that new data from Human Rights Watch paints a very different picture of what’s actually happening on the ground in Libya.
Kuperman:
But Human Rights Watch has released data on Misurata, the next-biggest city in Libya and scene of protracted fighting, revealing that Moammar Khadafy is not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government.
But that’s Misurata. What about Benghazi?
Despite ubiquitous cellphones equipped with cameras and video, there is no graphic evidence of deliberate massacre. Images abound of victims killed or wounded in crossfire — each one a tragedy — but that is urban warfare, not genocide.
Nor did Khadafy ever threaten civilian massacre in Benghazi, as Obama alleged. The “no mercy’’ warning, of March 17, targeted rebels only, as reported by The New York Times, which noted that Libya’s leader promised amnesty for those “who throw their weapons away.’’ Khadafy even offered the rebels an escape route and open border to Egypt, to avoid a fight “to the bitter end.’’
If bloodbath was unlikely, how did this notion propel US intervention?
Kuperman explains that the rebels deftly crafted the narrative of an “impending genocide” in order to sway the international community to intervene in Libya.
And it worked.
So did the president lead the U.S. into war under false humanitarian pretenses, or was he duped by the rebels? Either way, Professor Kuperman paints a rather grim picture of the president’s Libya debacle. “It is hard to know whether the White House was duped by the rebels or conspired with them to pursue regime-change on bogus humanitarian grounds,” he writes.

HUGO HAS BEEN NEGLECTED AND GROOMES A MILITIA

IT IS a long way from Tripoli to Caracas. But although Hugo Chavez, unlike his friend and close ally Muammar Oaddafi, is an elected president, there are some strik­ing similarities between the Libyan and Venezuelan regimes. Mr Chavez’s grass­roots “communes” resemble Colonel Oad-dafi’s “people’s committees”, for example. And a new decree, published last month, speeds up the creation of a sectarian mili­tia like that which opened fire against un­armed protesters in Libya.

A year ago Mr Chavez assembled more than 30,000 uniformed, gun-toting militia­men and women for a parade in the centre of Caracas. Unsheathing a sword that be­longed to Simon Bolivar, Venezuela’s inde­pendence hero, he led them in an oath to work tirelessly to “consolidate.. .the social­ist revolution”. Officials claim that the mili­tias total 125,000, and that the goal is to reach 2m. Sceptics put the number trained so far at under 25,000.

Under the new law, the Bolivarian mili­tia will now have its own officers and will be commanded directly by the president. That is something the army previously re­sisted. But General Carlos Mata Figueroa, the defence minister, insists that the militia is a “complementary”, not parallel, force. According to Carlos Escarra, a chavista leg­islator, it is “disingenuous” of opponents to suggest that the militia “will be a sort of praetorian guard for the president”.

Mr Chavez’s own statements suggest otherwise. The president has always said that his leftist “revolution” is “peaceful, but armed”, and that violence would ensue if it were to be thwarted. In December 2012 he faces a presidential election which opinion polls suggest he might lose. But both he and his top general, Henry Rangel Silva, have said that the armed forces would resist the orders of a post-Chavez government. According to General Rangel, the high command is “wedded to the polit­ical project” of Mr Chavez.

The officer corps may not be. A recently retired military dissident says only 10% are unconditional chavistas, with 20% consti­tutionalists and the rest pragmatic. If so, Mr Chavez’s decision to strengthen his paramilitary force may make sense to him. But it bodes ill for peace in Venezuela.

Like Colonel Oaddafi, Mr Chavez also has foreign fighters he may be able to count on in a fix. Venezuela has an unknown number of Cuban military advisers. Some sources say the Cubans give orders and(with Russians) run the intelligence ser­vice. But tens of thousands of Cubans, all with military training, have been de­ployed across the country as medical staff, sports instructors and the like. Many have defected and fled abroad. But some might defend the revolution, guns in hand.

Such a scenario is an explicit part of the government’s planning. Mr Chavez claims, and may even believe, that “the empire” (ie, the United States) is seeking an excuse to topple him by force. Colonel Oaddafi, he declared, “is doing what he has to do, re­sisting imperialist aggression”. The doc­trine of Venezuela’s armed forces now in­cludes a version of what Cuba calls “the war of all the people”. In theory, all Vene­zuelans must train to resist an occupier.

Many Venezuelans fear that the militia is really aimed at Mr Chavez’s domestic opponents. The president accuses the op­position leadership, almost daily, of being a fifth column for foreign capitalists des­perate to grab the country’s oil. From there, it is a short step to imagining the chavista militia, armed with Russian Dragunov sniper-rifles, taking aim at counter-revolu­tionaries. “It is not possible to stage an un­armed revolution against this bourgeoi­sie,” Mr Chavez told his militia rally last year. Mere bravado, perhaps, but many Venezuelans fear he may be serious.

LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press – Tue Apr 5, 10:19 am ET

WASHINGTON – The Air Force secretary says the service has been spending about $4 million a day to keep 50 fighter jets and nearly 40 support aircraft in the Libya conflict, including the cost of munitions.

Secretary Michael Donley tells reporters that the Air Force has spent $75 million as of Tuesday morning on the war. He says the U.S. decision to end its combat strike role in the conflict will cut costs, but he could not say by how much.

He says the Air Force has spent close to $50 million on the relief effort for the Japan earthquake, including $40 million to evacuate between 5,000-6,000 U.S. personnel.

The total U.S. costs for the Libya air campaign as of March 28 were $550 million, not counting normal deployment spending.

Joining the slow motion delivery of Iraq to the Ayatollahs of Iran and the decade long quagmire of Afghanistan America’s Progressive leadership stumbled into Libya with all the bravado and none of the experience of Custer at Little Big Horn.  The UN and NATO get more attention and have more influence on a decision affecting the lives of our warriors and the security of our nation then the United States Congress. 

The government drifts rudderless into the whitewaters of war, the mission changes with each new speaker at the podium, and the President appears more interested in sporting events and vacations than in doing his job.  With a foreign policy this well directed the unintended consequences are the only consequences we should count on, which makes one wonder how unintended they are. 

On the Home front after all the back-slapping died down its plain that as far as Congress goes the new boss is just like the old boss.  First the Patriot Act receives rubber-stamp approval.  Then a series of highly publicized overly dramatic Continuing Resolutions take one step back and billions of steps deeper into debt.  And after the record-shattering victory of the Tea Party led Republicans the Progressive’s Evolution Revolution continues as the Stimulus, Obamacare, and the Financial Reform Bill take affect and strangle the economy.

The Stimulus: a slush-fund to help re-elect the President kicks into high gear pouring out money for make work jobs. The administration trumpets each drop in the unemployment figures as a return to normalcy when everyone knows it is merely a reflection of discouraged workers leaving the job market as America’s work force shrinks.  It is patently absurd to think that government spending can grow the economy.  Government only gets money by expropriating it from the economy in the form of taxes, inflation, or borrowing.  It then rakes off exorbitant handling fees and then puts it back into the economy.  If I take twenty dollars out of my right pocket, throw eleven dollars down a rat hole and then put nine dollars in my left pocket how have I increased my net worth?

Obamacare: sold to the American people on the basis of insuring 30-40 million people while at the same time lowering costs is busting the budget.  Even according to the Progressive’s own Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media the budgets so far proposed by President Obama add in excess of $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years, as analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). 

This nonpartisan report contrasts with the still disturbing projections of the White House, which stated that President Obama’s budget would produce deficits adding only $8.5 trillion to the national debt in the same time frame. That was last year and the dominant Progressive party never passed that budget in the face of elections.  This year’s budget is even bigger yet the administration claims it will result in lower deficits and a decreasing debt and the cow jumped over the moon.

This optimistic White House projected a deficit of about $1.5 trillion last year or 10.3% of the entire economy which would be the largest since World War II.  The report went on to predict a $1.3 trillion in 2011.  It is now estimated at 1.6 trillion.  The sobering news does not stop there however.

The CBO continues in a considerably less optimistic vein predicting that deficits would never fall below 4% of the economy under President Obama’s policies and that they will begin to grow even larger after 2015.  The report also notes that perpetual deficits of this size will make it necessary for the government to continue to borrow at ever accelerating rates and that by 2020 the national debt will account for an astounding 90% of the economy.  The CBO also projected that the interest payments on this escalating debt would increase by over $800 billion in the next decade.

The financial reform Bill was passed on a wave of indignation concerning big banks which foreclosed on homes without reading error-filled paperwork.

It is beyond absurd that legislators who routinely pass thousand page bills without reading them were really indignant at the crony capitalists who are among their biggest donors because they foreclose on houses without reading the mortgage papers.  Can’t you just see our legislators from central casting in the best Congress money can buy, sleeves rolled-up, coat over the shoulder ready for a photo-op as they plan more regulations to clean up the mess their previous regulations caused? 

The crisis with the big banks exploded after President Obama theatrically pointed his finger at the EVIL bankers telling them defiantly, “We want our money back!” as he is lobbied Congress for the imposition for a Financial Crisis Responsibility Tax.  It turns out that the bankers are passing any taxes imposed on them to consumers in the form of fees.  So now we get to contribute the money to pay ourselves back for the money Washington appropriated from us to bail out the banks. 

To finish the cyclical kabuki farce Congress then bails-out their friends again so they can return to the casino floor to place our money, our children’s futures, and the fate of our economy on Red-13.  It’s time to deactivate the robo-signers.  It’s time to vote out the cronies in Congress and to stop doing business with the cronies in the financial industry.   There are alternatives available: citizen-patriots who will serve a few terms and return to the real world and locally owned banks and credit unions. 

What’s the shape of our Transformed America? Looking at the government-induced government-sustained Great Recession, the unsustainable debt that grows every day, and the increasing over-extension of our military obligations the now repudiated doctrine of Too-Big-to-Fail may be our last best hope.  America’s status as the largest consumer economy in the world makes us valuable to China, the largest manufacturer in the world.  Hopefully they will continue to buy and hold our debt. After two years of the Obama Administration it feels like America’s New Motto should be “Help I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com View the trailer for Dr. Owens’ latest book @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ypkoS0gGn8 © 2011 Robert R. Owens dr.owens@comcast.net  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook.

As a young journalist covering the war in Bosnia in the early 1990s, Samantha Power berated Peter Galbraith, then the U.S. ambassador to Croatia, for “not doing enough to stop the slaughter,” Galbraith recalls.

Last week, when President Barack Obama was considering whether to intervene to stop Muammar Qaddafi’s assault on rebels in Libya, Galbraith turned the tables on his friend Power, who had won a Pulitzer Prize for her book on genocide and now serves on Obama’s National Security Council staff.

“How can you sit on your hands while Qaddafi is slaughtering his people?” Galbraith recounted needling her in an e-mail. “You’re the person who exposed what happened in Rwanda — how could you let this become Obama’s Rwanda?”

That incident underscores the journey that Power, 40, has made from outsider to White House aide with a voice at the center of discussions over how far the U.S. should go to protect civilians from repressive regimes.

Obama had come under fire from Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill and allies in Europe and the Mideast for not taking swift action to aid Qaddafi’s opponents in Libya.

In White House meetings, Power, a public advocate of government efforts to halt human rights abuses before she joined the administration, pressed for U.S. intervention on humanitarian grounds, according to people involved in the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Pressing on Libya

She played a role, along with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice and other NSC advisers, in convincing Obama to push for a UN Security Council resolution to authorize a coalition military force to protect Libyan civilians. Other administration figures were concerned about the effectiveness of a no-fly zone and differences within NATO over what Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned would be a “big operation.”

The U.S.-commanded military campaign, now in its seventh day, has neutralized Qaddafi’s air defenses and pummeled his ground forces attacking rebel strongholds.

Power, who sought the limelight as a writer and public intellectual, has learned to be a behind-the-scenes policymaker over the past two years, associates say.

The transition wasn’t seamless. As an Obama adviser during the 2008 presidential campaign, Power learned what it was like to be on the other side of the notebook when a Scottish journalist reported that she referred to Hillary Clinton, Obama’s main opponent for the Democratic nomination, as a “monster.” Power apologized and resigned from the campaign.

Repairing Relations

After Obama’s victory, he named her to the National Security Council. Friends say she has worked to repair her relationship with Clinton, and three weeks ago accompanied her on a trip to Geneva for a human rights conference.

Power, who declined to be interviewed, came into the administration with a reputation as an intellectual star who was also adept at self-promotion.

“Journalists are by their nature publicity-hounds,” Galbraith said. “You write a book and you do everything you can to promote the book and the arguments, especially when you’re an advocacy journalist,” he said. She is no longer a journalist and plays a different role as a public official, he said.

At the same time, after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, there were media stories touting her role in turning Obama around to stronger support for the protesters. In the past several days, she has been portrayed as one of the leading advocates for the Libyan intervention.

Target for Conservatives

Power has been targeted by some conservatives, who see her ideology and influence on the president as troubling.

Her ideas “impinge significantly on national sovereignty,” said Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. Allowing international organizations to call for interventions because of alleged war crimes “cuts against America’s own ability to make decisions to go to war.”

In her writings, Power has endorsed the use of limited military force to achieve humanitarian ends, in cases such as Bosnia and Rwanda. Yet she opposed the war in Iraq, in part, because the U.S. didn’t make an issue of Saddam Hussein’s human rights record.

“By parallel reasoning, she ought to oppose the attack on Libya — since we didn’t protest Qaddafi’s domestic abuses previously,” said Jeremy Rabkin, a professor at George Mason University and a member of the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Supporters say Power is advocating a foreign policy based on morality and universal rights, and that she has managed to translate her ideals into the world of policy and politics.

Mirroring Obama Shift

Her career as a public intellectual thrived while she ran a human rights center at Harvard University, published award- winning writings and appeared in documentary films. In the last two years, associates say, she has learned instead to duck the spotlight.

Tom Malinowski, a former senior director at the NSC under President Bill Clinton who has participated in recent NSC advisory meetings over North Africa, said the shift Power has made “is not all that different from the transition that Barack Obama and many members of his administration have made.”

They went from “being idealists with a vision of what government should do to being the managers of a government that in fact is limited in what it is able to do,” he said.

Born in Dublin, Power moved to Atlanta as a child before heading off to Yale University, where she has said she was more interested in sports than human rights.

Images From Bosnia

The television images from Bosnia changed her outlook, and after working at a policy research group in Washington, she packed for the Balkans to cover the conflict, writing for the Boston Globe, the Washington Post and the Economist.

In the fall of 1996, she enrolled at Harvard Law School, where a research paper eventually turned into her first book, “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 2003.

The book was an indictment of a weak U.S. response to conflicts that claimed countless civilian lives. She also wrote a September 2001 article for Atlantic magazine that contained a harsh judgment of one person with whom she works closely today: UN Ambassador Rice.

In the article, Rice, who was an NSC Africa adviser during the 1994 Rwanda genocide, is portrayed as being more interested in the effect of a military intervention on the congressional midterm elections.

Humanitarian Intervention

Today, Rice and Power — along with deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, NSC senior director Gayle Smith, and the council’s director for human rights Jeremy Weinstein — form the core of a White House group that has argued the case for humanitarian intervention, according to people who have participated in the discussions.

Romeo Dallaire, the commander of UN forces in Rwanda during the genocide and now a Canadian senator, called Power “a force to reckon with.”

Power has seized her “opportunity to get inside the system and actually influence it,” he said.

Malinowski, who was a chief foreign policy speechwriter for Bill Clinton, said it would be wrong to attribute more influence to Power than she has as one of many policy advisers.

As an NSC adviser “you participate in policy debate, alongside many other people,” Malinowski said. “Your job is to give the president the information he needs. But he, and not Samantha Power or anyone else, is the decider.”

by Ed Lasky

As stories leak out regarding who was responsible for Barack Obama’s sudden pivot from passivity regarding Libya towards military engagement (albeit with England and France being in the lead) one name has emerged as playing a key role in persuading him to push the button: Samantha Power.

Her influence might cause qualms among supporters of the American-Israel relationship. As has been covered by American Thinker and others (notably Noah Pollak in Commentary Contentions, among them), Power has been critical of the strength of this friendship and alliance. This concern should be now be heightened. Not only has she emerged as a key player in foreign policy but the rationale that was used to justify American actions towards Libya can be used by other nations – if not the United States – to justify more active involvement in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Power was Barack Obama’s most influential foreign policy adviser during the campaign; they go back years and are basketball and Blackberry buddies. Any influence she has would not be good for the American-Israel relationship-for reasons outlined here and here (where she said this regarding problems Barack Obama had during the campaign; “So much of it is about: Is he good for the Jews?”).

Power may also have played a role in the granting of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Mary Robinson, a person with a checkered record regarding actions towards Israel.

She now serves on the National Security Council. Foreign-policy making in this administration has been opaque at best. But one dynamic that has been now made clear is that Power has emerged as a key player.

From John Podhoretz’s column in the New York Post:

The Tuesday-evening meeting at the White House at which the president decided to move on Libya was “extremely contentious,” according to a report in Josh Rogin’s excellent blog, The Cable.

Power and a few others took the position that the United States couldn’t stay on the sidelines as Moammar Khadafy murdered his own people and snuffed out the people-power revolt in the Middle East in its infancy.

They were opposed by Power’s own boss, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

But apparently, Samantha Power and Hillary Clinton persuaded Barack Obama to act. The rationale they used that led to military can come back to haunt friends of Israel’s.

Again, from Podhoretz:

According to Rogin, the governing doctrine that helped Obama to make his decision to act was not an appeal to the national interest, but rather to a recent concept promulgated at the United Nations called “responsibility to protect,” or R2P.

R2P is an effort to create a new international moral standard to prevent violence against civilians.

In her career as a genocide expert, Power was an indefatigable proponent of R2P, and now on the National Security Council has been “trying to figure out how the administration could implement R2P and what doing so would require of the White House going forward.” Hillary is her ally in this effort, it appears.

So it was not an appeal to our national interest that led President Obama to act but rather a new concept circulating in international policy circles – and one actively promoted by Power – that prompted his shift.

(By the way, the fact that Power played a key role in persuading Barack Obama to apply military force to protect civilians in Libya is akin to the same advice she counseled regarding Israel: Power also advocated that America send armed military forces, “a mammoth protection force” and an “external intervention”, to impose a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians).

But there are other problems inherent in the concept of R2P (how easy that must be to tap out on Blackberrys) and with the precedent that has now been established that allows international intervention.

It is not hard to envision that this R2P concept, swirling through the United Nations and in international foreign policy circles, can one day be applied against Israel when that nation is forced to respond from attacks coming from the West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon. Terrorists hide behind civilians; Israeli actions to defend themselves often happen in densely populated areas where civilian deaths are almost inevitable – despite all the precautions Israel takes to prevent them.

Power’s promotion of the R2P concept is not a surprise. Barack Obama’s adoption of the same concept should be cause for concern. A Pandora’s Box may have just been opened. Power’s emergence as a key playe, and her influence over the President, who already is inclined to outsource American foreign policy to the “international community,” should heighten this concern.

Just one more reason to try to keep track of the role and influence that Samantha Power has in the Oval Office. If Hillary Clinton decides to resign as Secretary of State (she has already declared she will not serve in a second term) there will be a reshuffling of positions of power (Susan Rice, Samantha Power, etc) and there is no telling who may end up moving closer to the center of power.

UPDATE:

The always astute Omri Ceren has more regarding the R2P concept over at Commentary Contentions. He notes that there is a bit of history regarding the concept’s application to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. There was a group created in 2009, the International Coalition For The Responsibility To Protect, that has spoken out against Israel, notably during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. The Coalition released this statement:

The recent escalation of violence in Gaza has raised serious questions about the use of the Responsibility to Protect to urge international action to protect civilians in the conflict. The Responsibility to Protect has been referred to, notably by Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, but also others who claim that crimes committed in Gaza by Israeli forces have reached the threshold of R2P crimes.

Ceren continues:

This is part and parcel of the statements that the ICRtoP has been publishing since it was established in the immediate aftermath of Cast Lead. They published a petition absurdly insisting that “the rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas deplorable as they are, do not… amount to an armed attack entitling Israel to rely on self-defence.” They passed along Richard Falk’s “Israelis could be charged with war crimes” lawfare spin on the Goldstone Report. They reprinted other articles accusing Israelis of war crimes here and here and here and here and here. All of this was under the umbrella of “evaluating” whether R2P should be brought to bear against Israel’s self-defense campaigns.

The Responsibility To Protect, in other words, is an international norm that has been incubated with eyes on Israel at least since Cast Lead.

Now Samantha Power has seemingly slipped this concept into the mind and policies of Barack Obama. Once these international “concepts” are formed and promoted they often transform from mere intellectual ideas into the basis of international policy.

Israel should be worried.

Update II:

One more clue to Power being the promoter of the R2P concept within the Obama administration is her history. She opened a symposium put on the by the International Coalition for The Responsibility To Protect (ICR2P) as recently as November, 2010, with a keynote address. Furthermore, Sergio Vieira, was an international diplomat who pioneered the concept of the “responsibility to protect.” Vieira was later killed in a suicide bombing attack in Iraq. Power wrote an admiring biography (if not a hagiography) of Vieira a few years ago that noted his role in developing and promoting that concept.

Concepts become norms and, in the wrong hands, norms can become weapons.

In attempting to explain how lobbyists get U.S. foreign aid for Egypt, journalist Pratap Chatterjee of the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress writes that Tony Podesta, “the brother of a former White House chief of staff,” joined with Toby Moffett, a former Democratic Congressman, and Bob Livingston, a former Republican Congressman, to create a lobbying organization, the PLM Group, to represent Egypt in Washington.

He wrote, “The Livingston Group made the largest number of contacts with the U.S. government for the Egyptians to make sure that this money continued to flow, but they were not the only ones. Tony Podesta, the brother of a former White House chief of staff, and Toby Moffett, a former Democratic Congressman, joined forces with Livingston to create the PLM Group to represent Egypt in Washington, according to foreign-agent records at the Justice Department.”;

See Related Report: Congress Must Investigate Support for Muslim Brotherhood and Revolutionary Socialists

The reference to that “former White House chief of staff” was meant to suggest that Tony Podesta has real clout and influence, especially in Democratic Party circles. But who is that “former White House chief of staff?” And why wasn’t he named?

What Chatterjee did not want to openly acknowledge, for obvious reasons, is that this unnamed brother of lobbyist Tony Podesta is none other than John Podesta, his boss at the Center for American Progress (CAP). John Podesta, former Clinton chief of staff, is the President and CEO of CAP.

Politico reported that Tony and John Podesta started Podesta Associates in the late 1980s and that it was later renamed the Podesta Group. So John Podesta was in on this money-making scheme from the start. Soros subsequently asked John Podesta to run the Center for American Progress, whoseforeign policy expert, Brian Katulis, has been arguing on MSNBC that the U.S. ought to pull the plug on the Hosni Mubarak government in Egypt and deal with the Muslim Brotherhood.

In other words, the Podesta brothers are on both sides of this international crisis.

Chatterjee, who also contributes to the British Guardian, echoes the views of many on the left. He is upset that the lobbyists making over $1 million a year from Egypt succeeded in getting military training and tear gas shells supplied to the Egyptian military. That tear gas provided to what he calls Egypt’s “military-industrial complex” has been used against pro-democracy protesters in Egypt.

Chatterjee is right in the middle of this, having joined the Center for American Progress in September 2010 as a Visiting Fellow. His writing has won an award from “Project Censored,” but he engaged in some news manipulation of his own by omitting the name of John Podesta from his column on influence peddling. It’s a matter of not biting the hand that feeds you.

Before he opened fire on lobbying for the Egyptian government, Chatterjee was on his assigned mission, attacking Republicans for considering cuts in the federal budget. One article asserted that federal workers were not overpaid. Another article attacked Republicans for proposing a federal hiring freeze.

Now, however, he has taken a carefully guarded look at lobbying interests that involve his boss. But as the curious omission of the name of John Podesta suggests, however, don’t expect to see any follow-up investigations into the activities of the Podesta Group from Chatterjee. The author of Halliburton’s Army, published by Nation Books, Chatterjee cannot be counted on to write a follow-up on the “Soros Army.”;

As we have argued, Soros’s multibillion dollar international business and influence network makes Halliburton look like a Mom ‘n Pop operation.

Interestingly, it turns out that the Podesta Group has some journalists of its own on its payroll, including:

·         John Ward Anderson, a former foreign correspondent with The Washington Post and contributing editor of Politico.

·         David Marin, said to be an “award-winning journalist” with “extensive relationships with the national, regional and trade press.”

Speaking of curious omissions, John Podesta’s bio at the website of the Center for American Progress makes no mention of his role in forming Podesta Associates with his brother. Strangely, hisbio at the site of the Center for American Progress Action Fund does include this information.

Speaking of biographies, one for Chatterjee says that he has served as a board and staff member with many “activist groups,” including Project Underground. The latter was “a Berkeley, CA-based human rights and environmental group” devoted to “supporting the human rights of communities resisting mining and oil exploitation.” It folded in 2000 but had been attacking Republicans and even Al Gore as pawns of Big Oil. (Gore had extensive ties to Occidental Petroleum). In 2009, all of this was forgotten as Gore appeared with John Podesta and Senator Harry Reid at a CAP-sponsored “Clean Energy Summit.”

Politico has since reported that the lobbyists in the Podesta Group and the Livingston Group had lobbied on the issue of a Senate resolution calling for free elections in Egypt. The story didn’t mention that a former Politico editor, John Ward Anderson, now works for the Podesta Group.

Anderson’s wife, Molly Moore, who also was a reporter for the Post, left the paper for Sanderson Strategies Group, “a communications company” also active politically.

This curious network of special interests is standard for Washington, D.C. For that reason, we need an adversary media willing to look beneath the surface. And this is why George Soros’s buying of reporters (He is giving $1.8 million to buy journalists at National Public Radio) works against the public’s right to know.

Fortunately, Joseph Farah’s WorldNetDaily is working to blow the lid off. WND’s Aaron Klein hasbroken the news that the Soros-led International Crisis Group (ICG) issued a 2008 report urging Egyptian government acceptance of the pro-terrorist Muslim Brotherhood.

One key ICG member, Klein notes, is Robert Malley, a former adviser to Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign. Malley resigned after it was exposed he had communicated with Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood off-shoot. His father, Simon Malley, was an important figure in the Egyptian Communist Party.

I saw a political cartoon today that has Patrick Henry saying, “Give me liberty or give me civility.” The apparent point being that civility is a limit on liberty. There is a saying that people in the old west tended to be rather polite, because everybody was armed; to the degree that is true, people voluntarily limited the offensiveness of their speech as a matter of prudence. The reality is that anything that governs any action is a limit on liberty, which is why the Founding Fathers held the idea of limited government as a basic tenet of the foundation of our republic.

There is a balance that should be maintained between complete freedom to say and behave in any way a person chooses and in civility and polite behavior. Politeness and civility come from a person’s upbringing and the social culture of society.

When I was a child, in the 1950’s, society was considerably more polite than it is today, not only in speech, but in grooming, dress, and general behavior. Men were careful of their personal appearance, were chivalrous, tipping their hats (everyone wore a hat), stepping aside to allow others to pass on the sidewalk, holding doors for women, children, and the elderly, and watching their language in public.

The big change to this came from the younger members of my generation in the late sixties and seventies. Inspired by left-leaning professors, it started with college students who refused to honor the draft, developed into opposition to the Viet Nam war; running counter to traditional patriotic support of our soldiers during time of war. This bloomed into the hippy era, drug culture, free love, abortion rights, women’s rights, environmentalism, and a general anti-establishment philosophy. They rose up in a mass rebellion against pretty much every social and moral more of the time.

From the close of World War II, the Soviet Union was very actively working to foment this type of unrest through agents and contacts in the American Communist Party, the Socialist Party, labor unions, the universities, and the media. These have elevated extremism to mainstream politics via left wing groups from followers of Alinsky, SDS, Acorn, and various other “community organizations” and radical groups.

The McCarthy hearings of the early fifties identified some of this activity, but concentrated most on the film industry, where they were fairly successful in disarming that propaganda effort. The irony of the Soviet success in placing socialist plants and creating civil unrest was that, while they ended up succeeding beyond their original hope, it did not cause a push for Soviet style communism, but instead a push toward greater liberty; almost, but not quite, an anarchy type of freedom.

There were some very good things that came from all this. Freedom of speech and expression were given a greater emphasis than ever before. Women gained equality in the workplace and a greater say in the political and civic arena. Citizens became openly hostile toward public corruption and cronyism. Industrial pollution and toxic waste has been reduced by probably 90%.

Business has been changed from the type X labor/management conflict model to a more win/win approach. Families have switched from a rigid patriarchal style, to more of a partnership with greater parental involvement with children. All these are examples of the good that came out of this period of unrest.

However, there were almost an equal number of bad things that came from this period; it was a sort of a “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” situation. The polite civility of our parent’s generation didn’t completely disappear, but it was badly damaged and greatly reduced.

The use of slang, poor grammar, and of aggressive, offensive, and threatening language greatly increased. Self-discipline and personal accountability have been replaced with selfish hedonism and victimization. The concept of earning respect was replaced with deserving respect. Our children have been raised to believe that competing is bad, and winning isn’t important; everybody deserves the same reward regardless of personal effort and performance.

Political correctness has created a society unable to address differences between cultures, races, or other social distinctions, while at the same time destroying the concept of the American social “melting pot.” We now have Afro-, Hispano-, Asian-, etc. Americans who believe the culture and values of their homeland or racial group is more important than their identity as Americans. We have inadvertently created a new type of segregation.

So in addition to the many good things, the history of the Baby Boomers and their children has created all kinds of bad fall-out. Examples are extremely high rates of birth out of wedlock, huge numbers of abortions, huge numbers of single parent families, widespread use of drugs, illogical environmental and social laws, great loss of heavy industry, tremendous growth in government and the taxes required to support it, and a less civil, more crude society.

A second irony is the left accusing the right of using violent rhetoric when the use of extreme aggressive violent language, hyperbole, rhetoric , and imagery has been an invention and mainstay of the left; they are now accusing a much more mild right, in particular the Tea Party and talk radio, of abusing freedom of speech with excessive use of violent language. For any liberal to make such an accusation is not only ironic, but also hypocritical.

Personally, I would like for people on all sides of the political spectrum to avoid aggressive language and instead endeavor to express their ideas and opposition with more accuracy and less emotion. I don’t think this will really happen, because the left is steeped in the concept of using every crisis to drive an emotional following to a loud attack on their opposition.

I recently stated that I dislike seeing the Republicans “playing nice” with the Democrats; and I definitely feel that way. I think the Republicans need to respect the right of the Democrats to their opinions, but I also think Republicans need to strongly counter those damaging and anti-American ideas.

Modern politics is more clearly than ever aligned between not just conservative and liberal, but right and wrong. The conservatives are simply right, and the liberals are simply wrong, and there is nothing in that to compromise. I would rather see congress unable to ever pass another law than to pass one more law that will hurt our country.

An example of left-wing civility

By Bill Moyer

STUDY THIS METHOD OF THE PROGRESSIVES REVOLUTION. RECOGNIZE THE WAY IT IS DONE AND BE INFORMED ON WHAT TO EXPECT

Social movements are not spontaneous events. According to Bill Moyer, successful social movements follow eight stages. His schema helps us not only to plan social movements, it helps to overcome a sense of failure and powerlessness that we often feel — the sense that we are always losing.
We don’t criticize a sophomore in college because she hasn’t graduated from college; similarly, social movements are not unsuccessful just because they haven’t met their objectives yet. Movements build toward their goals over time, building on a series of phases. Moyer’s concept is important because it combats one of the key weapons of the status quo, which seeks to continually make its opponents feel powerless. The Eight Stages of Successful Social Movements is a practical strategy and action planning model describing eight stages that successful movements progress through over many years. For each stage, it gives the roles of the movement, powerholders, and the public, and movement goals appropriate to that stage.
The following eight stages are grouped into five broad phases of hidden problem, increasing tensions, take-off, waging the movement, and success.
Hidden Problem
Stage 1: Normal Times
• A critical social problem exists that violates widely held values.
• The general public is unaware of this problem.
• Only a few people are concerned.
Movement uses official channels, demonstrations are small and rare.
Powerholders: chief goal is to keep issue off social and political agenda.
Public is unaware of the problem and supports powerholders. Only 10-15% of public support change.
Movement goals of Stage 1:
• Build organizations, vision, and strategy.
• Document problems and powerholders’ roles. Become informed.
Increasing Tensions
Stage 2: Efforts to Change the Problem Demonstrate the Failure of Official Remedies
• A variety of small and scattered opposition groups do research, educate others.
• New wave of grassroots opposition begins.
• Official mechanisms are used to address the problem: hearings, the courts, the legislature; if these work, the problem is resolved. But often, the official approaches don’t work. This shows how entrenched the problem is and demonstrates the failure of institutions to solve it.
Movement uses official system to prove it violates widely held values.
Powerholders: chief goal is to keep issue off social and political agenda and maintain
routine bureaucratic functioning to stifle opposition.
Public still unaware of issue and supports status quo. 15-20% of the public support change.
Movement goals of Stage 2:
• Prove and document the failure of official institutions and powerholders to uphold public trust and values.
• Begin legal cases to establish legal and moral basis for opposition.
• Build opposition organizations, leadership, expertise.
Stage 3: Ripening Conditions
• Recognition by the public of the problem and its victims slowly grows.
• Pre-existing institutions and networks (churches, peace and justice organizations) lend their support.
• Tensions build. Rising grassroots discontent with conditions, institutions, powerholders, and “professional opposition organizations” (e.g., large lobbying groups).
• Upsetting events occur, including ones which “personify” the problem.
• Perceived or real worsening conditions.
Movement: grassroots groups grow in number and size. Small nonviolent actions begin. Parts of progressive community won over, pre-existing networks join new cause.
Powerholders still favor existing policies and control official decision-making channels.
Public still unaware of problems and supports powerholders. 20-30% oppose official policies.
Movement goals of Stage 3:
• Educate/win over progressive community.
• Prepare grassroots for new movement.
• More local nonviolent actions.
Take-off
Stage 4: Take-Off
• A catalytic (“trigger”) event occurs that starkly and clearly conveys the problem to the public (e.g., the killing of Matthew Shepard in 2000; 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident).
• Building on the groundwork of the first three stages, dramatic nonviolent actions and campaigns are launched.
• These activities show how this problem violates widely held values.
• The problem is finally put on “society’s agenda.”
• A new social movement rapidly takes off.
Movement enacts or responds to trigger event, holds large rallies and demonstrations and many nonviolent actions. A new “movement organization” is created, characterized by informal organizational style, energy, and hope for fast change. “Professional opposition organizations” sometimes oppose “rebel” activities.
Powerholders areshocked by new opposition and publicity, fail to keep issue off social agenda, reassert official line, and attempt to discredit opposition.
Public becomes highly aware of problem. 40-60% oppose official policies.
Movement goals of Stage 4:
• Put issue on social agenda. Create a new grassroots movement.
• Alert, educate and win public opinion.
• Legitimize movement by emphasizing and upholding widely held societal values.
Waging the Movement
Stage 5: Movement Identity Crisis — A Sense of Failure and Powerlessness
• Those who joined the movement when it was growing in Stage 4 expect rapid success. When this doesn’t happen there is often hopelessness and burn-out.
• It seems that this is the end of the movement; in fact, it is now that the real work begins.
Movement: numbers down at demonstrations, less media coverage, long-range goals not met. Unrealistic hopes of quick success are unmet. Many activists despair, burn out, and drop out. “Negative rebel” and “naive citizen” activities gain prominence in movement.
Powerholders and media claim that movement has failed, discredit movement by highlighting and encouraging “negative rebel” activities, sometimes through agents provocateurs.
Public alienated by negative rebels. Risk of movement becoming a subcultural sect that is isolated and ineffective.
Movement goals of Stage 5:
• Recognize movement progress and success. Counter “negative rebel” tendencies.
• Recognize that movement is nearing Stage Six and pursue goals appropriate to that stage.

Stage 6: Winning Majority Public Opinion
• The movement deepens and broadens.
• The movement finds ways to involve citizens and institutions from a broad perspective to address this problem.
• Growing public opposition puts the problem on the political agenda; the political price that some powerholders have to pay to maintain their policies grows to become an untenable liability.
• The consensus of the powerholders on this issue fractures, leading to proposals from the powerholders for change (often these proposals are for cosmetic change).
• The majority of the public is now more concerned about the problem and less concerned about the movement’s proposed change.
• Often there is a new catalytic event (re-enacting Stage 4).
Movement transforms from protest in crisis to long-term struggle with powerholders to win public majority to oppose official policies and consider positive alternatives. Movement broadens analysis, forms coalitions. Many new groups involved in large-scale education and involvement. Official channels used with some success. Nonviolent actions at key times and places. Many sub-goals and movements develop. Movement promotes alternatives, including paradigm shift.
Powerholders try to discredit and disrupt movement and create public fear of alternatives. Promote bogus reforms and create crises to scare public. Powerholders begin to split.
Public: 60-75% of the public oppose official policies, but many fear alternatives. However, support for alternatives is increasing. Backlash can occur and counter-movements may form.
Movement goals:
• Keep issue on social agenda.
• Win over and involve majority of the public.
• Activists become committed to the long haul.
Success
Stage 7: Success: Accomplishing Alternatives
• Majority now opposes current policies and no longer fears the alternative.
• Many powerholders split off and change positions.
• Powerholders try to make minimal reforms, while the movement demands real social change.
• The movement finally achieves one or more of its demands.
• The struggle shifts from opposing official policies to choosing alternatives.
• More costly for powerholders to continue old policies than to adopt new ones. More “re-trigger” events occur.
Movement counters powerholders’ bogus alternatives. Broad-based opposition demands change. Nonviolent action, where appropriate.
Powerholders: Some powerholders change and central, inflexible powerholders become increasingly isolated. Central powerholders try last gambits, then have to change policies, have the policies defeated by vote, or lose office.
Public majority demands for change are bigger than its fears of the alternatives. Majority no longer believe powerholders’ justifications of old policies and critiques of alternatives.
Movement goals:
• Recognize movement’s success and celebrate, follow up on the demands won, raise larger issues, focus on other demands that are in various stages, and propose better alternatives and a true paradigm shift.
• Create ongoing empowered activists and organizations to achieve other goals.

Stage 8: Continuing the Struggle
• Our struggle to achieve a more humane and democratic society continues indefinitely. This means defending the gains won as well as pursuing new ones.
• Building on this success, we return to Stage 1 and struggle for the next change.
• Key:The long-term impact of the movement surpasses the achievement of its specific demands.
Movement takes on “reform” role to protect and extend successes. The movement attempts to minimize losses due to backlash, and circles back to the sub-goals and issues that emerged in earlier stages. The long-term focus is to achieve a paradigm shift.
Powerholders adapt to new policies and conditions, claim the movement’s successes as their own, and try to roll back movement successes by not carrying out agreements or continuing old policies in secret.
Public adopts new consensus and status quo. New public beliefs and expectations are carried over to future situations.
Movement goals:
• Retain and extend successes.
• Continue the struggle by promoting other issues and a paradigm shift.
• Recognize and celebrate success. Build ongoing grassroots organizations and power bases.

The plan is called the Eight Stages of Successful Social Movements. The plan was designed by Bill Moyer in San Francisco.
Learn about this plan, tell your neighbors and nullify it if you can. Don’t be fooled by it. Soros and Obama are using the uncontrolled spending to be the social problem in this plan.

Bill Moyer (September 17, 1933 — October 21, 2002), was a United States social change activist who was a principal organizer in the 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement. He was an author, and a founding member of the Movement for a New Society.
Chicago Open Housing Movement
Initially trained as an engineer, Moyer was introduced to the philosophy and practice of nonviolence by Quaker friends, and completed a degree in social work. He became involved in campaigns for civil rights and open housing integration, working and organizing in the early and mid-1960s with the Chicago branch of the Quaker-based American Friends Service Committee along with Kale Williams, civil rights activist Bernard Lafayette, and others. Then, in 1966, he joined with James Bevel, Martin Luther King Jr. and the other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) during the Chicago Movement.
James Bevel, who strategized and directed that action, credits Moyer with influencing him to center the Chicago Movement on open housing.
Further Social Movements
Over the next decade, Moyer was involved in the SCLC’s 1969 Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C., nonviolent blockades of arms shipments to Bangladesh (1971) and to Vietnam (1972), support for the American Indian Movement occupation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota (1973), and a nuclear power plant blockade at Seabrook, New Hampshire (1977).
It was during the nonviolent blockade of the Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant, which involved the participation of more than one thousand individuals that Moyer recognized the need for social change activists to understand the dynamics behind movement success. In particular, the need to openly address the contradiction that activists often perceive the normal signs of campaign progress as signs of failure
Moyer developed the Movement Action Plan (MAP) to achieve this end. Since its development it has been used to train hundreds of activists, most notably in the United States, Australia, Canada and Europe. After the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, Moyer participated in many workshops in Eastern Europe about nonviolence and social change. In the mid-1980s, he moved to San Francisco, California, where he began to explore Transpersonal psychology and continued his participation in the Friends meeting there. He also developed a workshop called “Creating Peaceful Relationships” based on his realizations regarding dominator cultures.Moyer’s book Doing Democracy (New Society Publishers), co-authored by JoAnn McAllister, Mary Lou Finley and Steven Soifer, summarises his theories of social change with case studies from the anti-nuclear, civil rights, gay and lesbian, breast cancer and Global Justice movements.