Ron Paul on Government Spying: Should We Be Shocked?

Given the furor over the NSA spying exposé by whistleblower Edward Snowden, former US congressman Ron Paul says that spying is supposed to be expected from an increasingly desperate government. 

From the great Ron Paul (Ron Paul Institute)

Last week we saw dramatic new evidence of illegal government surveillance of our telephone calls, and of the National Security Agency’s deep penetration into American companies such as Facebook and Microsoft to spy on us. The media seemed shocked.

Many of us are not so surprised.

Some of us were arguing back in 2001 with the introduction of the so-called PATRIOT Act that it would pave the way for massive US government surveillance—not targeting terrorists but rather aimed against American citizens. We were told we must accept this temporary measure to provide government the tools to catch those responsible for 9/11. That was nearly twelve years and at least four wars ago.

We should know by now that when it comes to government power-grabs, we never go back to the status quo even when the “crisis” has passed. That part of our freedom and civil liberties once lost is never regained. How many times did the PATRIOT Act need renewed? How many times did FISA authority need expanded? Why did we have to pass a law to grant immunity to companies who hand over our personal information to the government?

It was all a build-up of the government’s capacity to monitor us.

The reaction of some in Congress and the Administration to last week’s leak was predictable. Knee-jerk defenders of the police state such as Senator Lindsey Graham declared that he was “glad” the government was collecting Verizon phone records—including his own—because the government needs to know what the enemy is up to. Those who take an oath to defend the Constitution from its enemies both foreign and domestic should worry about such statements.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers tells us of the tremendous benefits of this Big Brother-like program. He promises us that domestic terrorism plots were thwarted, but he cannot tell us about them because they are classified. I am a bit skeptical, however. In April, the New York Times reported that most of these domestic plots were actually elaborate sting operations developed and pushed by the FBI. According to the Times report, “of the 22 most frightening plans for attacks since 9/11 on American soil, 14 were developed in sting operations.”

Even if Chairman Rogers is right, though, and the program caught someone up to no good, we have to ask ourselves whether even such a result justifies trashing the Constitution. Here is what I said on the floor of the House when the PATRIOT Act was up for renewal back in 2011:

“If you want to be perfectly safe from child abuse and wife beating, the government could put a camera in every one of our houses and our bedrooms, and maybe there would be somebody made safer this way, but what would you be giving up? Perfect safety is not the purpose of government. What we want from government is to enforce the law to protect our liberties.”

What most undermines the claims of the Administration and its defenders about this surveillance program is the process itself. First the government listens in on all of our telephone calls without a warrant and then if it finds something it goes to a FISA court and get an illegal approval for what it has already done! This turns the rule of law and due process on its head.

The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing. We need to turn the cameras on the police and on the government, not the other way around. We should be thankful for writers like Glenn Greenwald, who broke last week’s story, for taking risks to let us know what the government is doing. There are calls for the persecution of Greenwald and the other whistle-blowers and reporters. They should be defended, as their work defends our freedom.

Shades of George Orwell’s 1984?

US Government Admits: Drone Warfare Killed Innocent Americans

Imperial US foreign policies coursed through drone warfare has killed even their own citizens

From the New York Times: (hat tip Zero Hedge)

In a letter to Congressional leaders obtained by The New York Times, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. disclosed that the administration had deliberately killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was killed in a drone strike in September 2011 in Yemen.

The American responsibility for Mr. Awlaki’s death has been widely reported, but the administration had until now refused to confirm or deny it.

The letter also said that the United States had killed three other Americans: Samir Khan, who was killed in the same strike; Mr. Awlaki’s son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was also killed in Yemen; and Jude Mohammed, who was killed in a strike in Pakistan.

“These individuals were not specifically targeted by the United States,” Mr. Holder wrote.

Are these more signs of things to come? Will drones be used against the US citizens in their homeland in the name of public safety?

Video: Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fake FBI Terror Plots

Former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, Andrew P. Napolitano narrates of the US government's history of creating 'false flags' or fake terror plots at the Fox News Channel.(hat tip Lew Rockwell.com)

War on Terror: The Imperialist Roots of the Russia-Chechen Conflict

Media likes to portray the “war on terror” such as the Boston bombing incident as either individual (psychological) aberrations or sectarian (religious) problems. They hardly consider the geopolitical or even internal political angles from which may have inspired on such heinous actions. 

Suspects of the unfortunate Boston incident have reportedly been of Chechen descent or from Chechnya

Understanding the Russia-Chechen conflict may give us a clue to the recent events.

From historian Eric Margolis at the lewrockwell.com in 2010

There is an old saying about the fierce Chechen tribes who inhabit southern Russia's Caucasus mountains: "Chechen cannot ever be defeated. They can only be killed."

Chechen are Russia's nemesis. Even the notoriously brutal Russian mafia fears the ferocious Chechen, and for good reason.

Last year, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proudly proclaimed that resistance to Russian rule in the North Caucasus had been eliminated. The region was pacified.

Confounding Putin's claim, Chechen suicide bombers hit Moscow's subway last week, killing 39 and injuring over 70. Chechen suicide bombers in Dagestan killed twelve, mostly policemen. There were further attacks in neighboring Dagestan. The North Caucasus was again at a boil.

The attacks seriously rattled Russians and left the Kremlin deeply embarrassed and enraged.

Two "black widows" – wives or daughters of Chechen independence fighters killed or raped by the Russians (Russians call them "Islamic terrorists" and "bandits") – took their revenge last week, as so often in recent years.

The latest Chechen leader, Doku Umarov – all his predecessors were liquidated by Russia – claimed from his hideout in the Caucasus mountains that the subway attacks were reprisal for the recent killing of Chechen civilians by Russian security forces.

He warned Moscow, "we will make you feel what we feel."

In recent years, Chechen "black widows" have brought down two civilian airliners. Other Chechen hijacked an entire Moscow theater, and derailed the "Alexander Nevsky" Express that runs from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

Chechen are a tiny but fierce North Caucasian mountain people of Indo-European origin. They, and other Muslim Caucasian tribes, such as Dagestanis and Cherkass (Circasians), have battled Russian imperial rule for the past 300 years.

In 1877, Imperial Russia killed 40% of the Chechen population of about 220,000. Four hundred thousand Cherkass were expelled.

Stalin, from neighboring Georgia, hated Chechen. He divided Chechnya, creating the republic of Ingushetia. Then, in July 1937, his secret police, NKVD, shot 14,000 Chechen.

In 1944, Stalin ordered the entire Chechen people rounded up and shipped in cattle cars to his Siberian concentration camps or dumped to perish into icy fields. Other Muslims followed: Ingush, Tatars, Karachai, Balkars.

Neither bullets nor gas chambers were needed in Stalin's death camps. A third of the prisoners died each year from cold, starvation or disease in the concentration camps. In all, some 2.5 million Soviet Muslims were murdered by Stalin, "the Breaker of Nations," among them half of the Chechen people.

In my new book, American Raj, I entitle the section on the Chechen, "Genocide in the Caucasus."

Gulag survivors filtered back to Chechnya. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Chechen demanded independence like the Soviet republics.

Instead, Boris Yeltsin's government invaded Chechnya, killing some 100,000 Chechen civilians through massive carpet bombing and shelling. Chechen leader Dzhokar Dudayev was assassinated, reportedly thanks to telephone homing equipment supplied to Moscow by the US National Security Agency. President Bill Clinton actually lauded Boris Yeltsin as "Russia's Abraham Lincoln."

Incredibly, Chechen fighters managed to defeat Russia's army and won de facto independence.

Read the rest here

As one would note, imperialism typically engenders retributions via acts of “terror” or terrorism.

On the Boston Bombing and the US Police State

Mainstream media has been projecting that the Boston bombing incident has been a triumph of government over terrorism.

But there has been more than meets the eye. Many of things has been occurring beyond the surface.

There was supposedly a police drill that happened “complete with bomb squads and rooftop snipers” at the start of the race. A mere coincidence?

Suspected terrorists have reportedly been “manipulated and harassed” by US authorities for years even before the atrocious act.

Here is Daniel McAdams at the Lew Rockwell Blog:

As Infowars reports, the Boston Bomber the Younger had been manipulated and harassed by the FBI for years. How many of the post-9/11 wannabe terrorists have been actually developed, nurtured, and supported by the FBI and other US intelligence agencies? All of them? These guys too? Will no one but LRC and Alex Jones ask the question?

Hemingway was a paranoid who killed himself over his delusions that he was being followed and manipulated by the US intelligence agencies. What a kook! Until it came out that he was in fact being followed and manipulated by US intelligence agencies.

How much more power and money do they have now, sixty years and many convenient terrorist attacks later? How many of these terrorists are the creation of the FBI and homeland security and the shadow government? Sure, it's kooky to even ask the question. But evidence shows this is a very kooky time. Maybe we can ask the Black and Tans what they think about it... Whoa, I sound like a kook.

UPDATE: In answer to my questions above, it turns out even the establishment New York Times reports that "Of the 22 most frightening plans for attacks since 9/11 on American soil, 14 were developed in sting operations." In other words, two-thirds of the planned terrorist attacks against us were hatched by our own government!

TV personality Glenn Beck points to a supposed cover up by the White House on an alleged involvement of a Saudi national. Conspiracy theory?

The manhunt against 2 bombers turned part of Boston into a virtual police state. People homes had been raided even without search warrants. More photos here. And such martial law tactics used to happen only in banana republics. Not anymore. 

Yet the martial law in Boston didn’t lead to the arrest of the second suspect, the community did.

From Boston.com (hat tip Professor David Henderson)

By 6 p.m., frustrated officials relaxed the rule and allowed residents to leave their homes. The people of Watertown began to venture outside.

But within an hour, the crack of gunshots again blasted through the neighborhood. ­Sirens blared, and officers on foot scrambled down Franklin Street.

Police found Dzhokhar ­Tsarnaev hiding on a boat stored in a backyard on ­Franklin Street. Police ­exchanged gunfire with him before capturing him alive. Spontaneous celebrations erupted across the region, from the ­Boston Common to the Back Bay streets near the bombing.

The boat’s owners, a couple, spent Friday hunkered down under the stay-at-home order. When it was lifted early in the evening, they ventured outside for some fresh air and the man noticed the tarp on his boat blowing in the wind, according to their his son, Robert Duffy.

The cords securing it had been cut and there was blood near the straps. Duffy’s father called police, who swarmed the yard and had the couple evacuated, Duffy said.

Residents, who had barricaded themselves in their homes for nearly 20 hours, were still deeply shaken.

Shaken by whom, the terrorists or by police action?
 
And in spite of the community lockdown, authorities “requested” or "chose" Dunkin Donuts to remain open, from another Boston.com article

On block after block of the Boston’s Financial District and Downtown Crossing, Starbucks shops went dark as the city locked down, spurred by a manhunt for the second marathon bombing suspect. Dunkin’ Donuts stayed open.

Law enforcement asked the chain to keep some restaurants open in locked-down communities to provide hot coffee and food to police and other emergency workers, including in Watertown, the focus of the search for the bombing suspect. Dunkin’ is providing its products to them for free.

Cronyism amidst the police state? Think of free lunches for authorities. No wonder the allure of the police state. 

Meanwhile while media blares about the virtues of capturing suspects of the Boston bombing, the US Senate passed a Cyber 'privacy-infringement' law without much ado from the public.

Former Texas Congressman Ron Paul writes,

While it did not receive nearly as much attention as the debate on gun control, the House of Representatives passed legislation with significant implications for individual liberty: the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). CISPA proponents claim that the legislation is necessary to protect Americans from foreign “cyber terrorists,” but the real effect of this bill will be to further erode Americans’ online privacy.

Boston bombing as a diversion tactic?

And the Boston incident had also been used as justification for a clampdown on people’s civil liberties. More from Mr. Paul

Sadly, I expect this week’s tragic attacks in Boston to be used to justify new restrictions on liberty. Within 48 hours of the attack in Boston, at least one Congressman was calling for increased use of surveillance cameras to expand the government’s ability to monitor our actions, while another Senator called for a federal law mandating background checks before Americans can buy “explosive powder.”

If there is any clue which the unfortunate Boston Incident tell us, it is that the US seems headed towards a police state.

For instance, 1.6 billion rounds of ammo have been recently purchased by the Department of Homeland Security.

From the Forbes.com

The Denver Post, on February 15^th, ran an Associated Press article entitled Homeland Security aims to buy 1.6b rounds of ammo, so far to little notice.  It confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security has issued an open purchase order for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition.  As reported elsewhere, some of this purchase order is for hollow-point rounds, forbidden by international law for use in war, along with a frightening amount specialized for snipers. Also reported elsewhere, at the height of the Iraq War the Army was expending less than 6 million rounds a month.  Therefore 1.6 billion rounds would be enough to sustain a hot war for 20+ years.  In America.

For what? Has the DHS been preparing for foreign invasion or the Red dawn? Or alien invasion?

The Boston incident adds to many more signs of America’s transition towards a police state or the "Road to serfdom".

Meanwhile a suicide bombing in Iraq claimed 32 lives and wounded 65 more. Yet such incident hardly gets into the headlines. Why?

Also a US Senator estimates death toll from US drones at 4,700 which included civilians. The senator says because of war, collateral damage is legit. Notice the self-contradiction?  In war, any American civilian fatalities are considered immoral, but foreign civilian deaths are justified. Could such kind of cavalier thinking and actions prompted for the growth of terrorism?

Yet along with the fast expanding police state is the widening dragnet of financial repression via QE, negative interest rates, more taxes, more regulations, FACTA and etc..

Americans seem to have forgotten the admonitions of Benjamin Franklin on sacrificing liberty for safety 

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

German Firm Introduces Anti Drone Laser Weapon System

Well it would seem that drones or the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAVs) has met its nemesis; laser weapons ala star wars.

From the BBC

A laser weapons system that can shoot down two drones at a distance of over a mile has been demonstrated by Rheinmetall Defence.

The German defence firm used the high-energy laser equipment to shoot fast-moving drones at a distance.

The system, which uses two laser weapons, was also used to cut through a steel girder a kilometre away.

The company plans to make the laser weapons system mobile and to integrate automatic cannon.

The 50kW laser weapons system used radar and optical systems to detect and track two incoming drones, the company said. The nose-diving drones were flying at 50 metres per second, and were shot down when they reached a programmed fire sector.

Drones have commonly been used to conduct not only surveillance but also foreign policies in terms of assassination and or bombing missions. Drone warfare has only stoked up anti-American sentiment in the Middle East that has incited more unrest.

Drone warfare has also been reportedly used to strike at suspected terrorists in the Philippines as part of the ‘war on terror’ campaign which allegedly resulted to losses of civilians

Last month, a crashed drone was fished off floating near the Masbate Islands where the US authorities denied that the discovered UAV wreckage had been used for spying or for armed military missions. The increasing reports of incidences of drones could likely be manifestations of the surreptitious deal to re-establish a US base in the Philippines or that the Philippines becomes a launchpad for militarization of Southeast Asia.

In the US, drones have been designated as the next airborne police surveillance where an estimated 30,000 drones have been slated to patrol US airspace at the end of the decade. Unfortunately for the tyrants, many states in the US have balked or expressed opposition to this. For instance, Florida voted to ban drones as an instrument for spying on the citizenry.

Well of course, drones and other forms robotic war machines may not entirely be the domain of the government, as other groups (including outlaws) may access such technology.

The important point is that innovative developments in technology reveal that the drone warfare won’t likely be as dominant as feared. There will be less need to hack on drones to countercheck on them. 

The emergence of laser warfare technology, which is expected to become mobile in the future, will surely contain the advances of drones. The above technology seems reminiscent or the modern day counterpart of the shoulder fired anti-aircraft surface to air missile (SAM), the FIM-92 stinger, which played a prominent role in the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. 

Graphic: How the US Government Identifies Terrorists

Sourced from Politifake.org (hat tip Lew Rockwell Blog)

Drone Warfare: Systematic Mass Killing of Innocents

It is sad and revolting to see how the recent gruesome shooting spree in Newtown Connecticut had claimed 27 innocent lives mostly children.

Yet what has been largely ignored by the public is how belligerent imperial US foreign policies continues to sow terror to unarmed civilians through drone warfare overseas.

This report from Daily Mail says that a US military personnel quit his job after learning of needless civilian deaths…many of them children.

A former U.S. drone operator has opened up about the toll of killing scores of innocent people by pressing a button from a control room in New Mexico.

Brandon Bryant, 27, from Missoula, Montana, spent six years in the Air Force operating Predator drones from inside a dark container.

But, after following orders to shoot and kill a child in Afghanistan, he knew he couldn't keep doing what he was doing and quit the military.

'I saw men, women and children die during that time,' he told Spiegel Online. 'I never thought I would kill that many people. In fact, I thought I couldn't kill anyone at all.'

Mass killings should be seen in a broader context and not just in the US.

As John Aziz at the lewrockwell.com/zero hedge observed: (bold original)

And if we value life and are opposed to violence against innocents, why do we demand action when 27 innocent Americans die, but not when larger numbers of innocent Pakistanis, or Afghanis or Yemenis die? One drone strike in Pakistan killed 69 children, dwarfing the impact of the Newtown Massacre. With predator drones now in American skies, how long until the “collateral damage” (remember – the NDAA declared the entirety of America as a battlefield) eclipses the Newtown massacre? Or how long until a foreign power or terrorist group hacks into a predator drone (technically feasible) over America and uses it as a flying bomb?  And how many more terrorist attacks against America will be fuelled by anger derived from the civilian casualties of the drone wars?

Obama might cry for Americans in Newtown, but where are his tears for the Pakistani and Yemeni children he has slaughtered? And what about for the many victims who died as a result of thousands guns shipped by the US government to the Mexican drug cartels via Fast and Furious?

The US government seem to promote the kind of policies it pretends to condemn. Drones as pointed out above (and in my previous post) is likely to become a commonplace security feature in the US which may entail the unintended consequences described above.

Yet it is hard to ignore of the possible influence of US foreign policies or the warfare state on her constituency or population. Or put differently, could the recent killing sprees signify as a policy blowback, where these assailants may have sublimely construed government's action as justifying their own? 

The Strategy Behind the US War on Terror: Initiate Terrorism to Justify Overthrow of Governments

The US foreign policy of the "war on terror" may have been a grand covert scheme engineered to promote the political and economic interests of several highly connected power blocs implemented through "false flags".

Writes the Washington's Blog (bold highlights original) [source lewrockwell.com]

Wesley Clark, Supreme Allied Commander NATO, testifies in this 2-minute video that the US planned to overthrow seven countries after 9/11: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.

The Pentagon admitted a strategy to do so (here, here, here):

1. the US conducts acts of terrorism in nations they want to control,
2. the US continues terrorism to provoke an act of reprisal,
3. the US labels the reprisal “terrorism” to justify covert and overt military operations to overthrow targeted governments.

Therefore, the US caused the “war on terror” as a policy choice; 9/11 was pretense and not the cause.

Indeed, war law and two UN Security Council Resolutions provided international cooperation for factual discovery of the 9/11 terrorists, arrests, and trial for lawful justice all nations supported.

The US rejects the rule of law, violates treaty obligations, killed over a million human beings from armed attacks since 9/11, and so far has long-term costs of $4 to $6 trillion to US taxpayers ($40 – $60,000 per household).

This rogue state of the US ends when enough Americans in military, law enforcement, government, media, education, and the general public have sufficient intellectual integrity and moral courage to accept the “emperor has no clothes” obvious facts.

This unlawful policy choice of the US for Wars of Aggression has killed 20-30 million people in covert and overt wars since 1945.

Read the rest here 

In the world of politics, one should be leery of what "appears" to be.  Or what has been peddled or communicated to the public as the cause, by politicians and the politically influenced mainstream media, may most likely just be the effects of an underlying unseen design or plot.

Has the Foiled Bombing of the New York Fed Been a Prank or False Flag?

A supposed attempt to "terrorize" Americans by "bombing" the New York Federal Reserve has been reported foiled.

From LA Times (bold mine) 

A 21-year-old Bangladeshi man who wanted to "destroy America" tried to detonate what he thought was a 1,000-pound bomb in front of the Federal Reserve Bank in Manhattan on Wednesday, but the explosive was a dud provided by agents as part of an FBI sting, authorities said. 

The FBI and New York police said Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, whom they described as an Al Qaeda loyalist, was arrested in a hotel room after several futile attempts to detonate the fake bomb by remote control. He was arraigned in federal court hours later on charges of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to Al Qaeda.

"Attempting to destroy a landmark building and kill or maim untold numbers of innocent bystanders is about as serious as the imagination can conjure," said Mary Galligan, acting assistant director of the FBI in New York. She said there was no danger to the public because two "accomplices" were working with the FBI and because the purported bomb contained no explosives. 

Officials said that did not reduce the seriousness of the threat. 

 "He was arrested, but he clearly had the intent of creating mayhem," New York's police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, told reporters. Kelly said the alleged plot — one of more than a dozen thwarted in New York since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — showed that the city remains "very much a coveted target" of terrorists. "We see this threat as being with us for a long time to come," he said. 

A 21-page complaint details months of alleged planning by Nafis, who entered the United States on a student visa in January but who allegedly told an informant that his true reason for coming to the country was to wage jihad, or holy war. Nafis settled into an apartment in the New York City borough of Queens and allegedly began trying to recruit militants, one of whom was an informant. 

Eventually, authorities say, Nafis also made contact with a second man, whom he believed to be a member of Al Qaeda. In reality, the man was an undercover FBI agent.  

"Bombing" of the NY FED with a dud or a fake bomb seems more like a prank than an act of terror. 

On the other hand, fingerprints of official involvement may even suggest of another possible false flag similar to the recent CIA double agent underwear bomber. The fugitive not only had relations with an FBI undercover agent but has been on the watchlist for months. 

One can't help draw the involvement of public officials in the understanding that many of the terror plots have been faked.

As Judge Andrew Napolitano explained in this video

 

In today's highly politicized world, one can't really know if events are for real, staged or that people have become paranoids.

Foreign Meddling, Not ‘War in the name of Islam’, Breeds Terror Redux

Back in May of 2011,  I pointed out of the ‘fallacy of composition’ used against Muslims, whom has been associated with 'terrorism', as justifications to advance imperialist-military agenda known as the “war on terror”.

In other words, the so-called religious war only serves as camouflage to advance US imperialist interests.

In the name of War on Terror, more innocent people are being slaughtered every year than the combined activities of the Al Qaeda.

 At the Lew Rockwell Blog, retired Professor Michael S. Rozeff has an expanded view on this. (bold mine)

I read that 23 percent of the world's population is Muslim, or 1.6 billion people. Whatever the number is, it's large. How many are terrorists out to terrorize westerners and push them out of areas they consider to be Muslim areas? How many are terrorists who attack other Muslims? How many are terrorists who attack people of other religions? One source says that Muslim attacks worldwide and against all targets, failed and successful, add up to 18,000 since 2001. This number is bound to be controversial and subject to error. If this involved 18,000 Muslims, that's a little over one-thousandth of one percent of Muslims who engaged in a terrorist or violent attempted attack or attack anywhere in the world.

How many Muslims have American forces killed since 2001? I've found a low-end estimate for 1990 to 2009, and it's 288,000. How many of these were Muslim terrorists? I can't find a tally so far. The number is very, very small relative to 288,000. The tally for drone strikes is 2-3,000 with a high proportion being innocent people. Drone strikes produce more terrorists than they kill, according to a former CIA official. 

What's my point? Same as always. The entire war on terror, or whatever name it now carries, should be stopped, abandoned, shut down, ended. By and large, it has done nothing but kill hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims. Drones are relatively less destructive than ouright armed force attacks as in Iraq, but they too are killing innocents and alienating whole populations. Plus Obama has extended their use into all kinds of countries, thereby entangling the U.S. in future difficulties. Plus they are being run by the unaccountable and rogue CIA. 

Terrorism should be handled in a very different way. It should be handled more or less as something akin to crime but a few notches above that when it involves groups. Such groups are more like a Mafia, if they combine, or otherwise like street gangs, but gangs that have turned to intentional mayhem and destruction. Fighting terrorism does take some inter-state cooperation of domestic agencies tasked with identifying and apprehending terrorists.

Bottom line: Foreign meddling, and not religious conflict, has been the root cause of terrorism

30,000 Drones to Patrol US Skies for Public Safety

The transition towards a police state in the US seems now in progress.

Drones will become the next airborne police surveillance vehicles in the name of “Public Safety”.

From RT.com (italic original)

Don’t be surprised if you catch a federal fleet of sneaky spy drones soaring over your head in the near future, but don’t be too terrified — it’s all in the name of public safety.

The US Department of Homeland Security is asking the makers of small unmanned aerial vehicles to submit their crafts for consideration as the agency ramps up the construction of a full-fledged surveillance state across America. The DHS plans to soon conduct drone tests over the Fort Sill, Oklahoma US Army base, and they’re already soliciting spy planes from the private sector so they can select what kind of UAV to use.

According to a request for information published on the Federal Business Opportunities website recently, the DHS is determined to begin drone tests over the military base soon and is seeking submissions from drone makers that don’t mind making a few bucks by having their products put into the US airspace to conduct sweeping surveillance.

The Borders and Maritime Security Division of the DHS “will conduct flight testing and evaluation of airborne sensors and small unmanned aerial systems,” the request reads, and now invites vendors to submit drones to be tested “under a wide variety of simulated but realistic and relevant real-world operation scenarios.”… 

The Federal Aviation Administration is working towards putting the finishing touches on rules and regulations for widespread domestic drone use, and the agency expects as many as 30,000 UAVs will be in America’s airspace by the decade’s end.

As America's founding father and principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States Thomas Jefferson said, 

Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one

Has the CIA Sponsored Some of the Pirates and Terror Groups in Somalia?

US foreign or imperial policies “spawn” their own “monsters” which they eventually end up fighting against.

They never seem to learn from their experience with Al Qaeda, or perhaps these have been part of the undercover scheme to promote foreign interventions and wars abroad in the interests of neoconservative politics and of the Wall Street backed military industrial complex.

From the Business Insider,

An attempt by CIA-connected trainers to create a sophisticated counter-piracy force in Somalia turned into hundreds of half-trained and well-armed Somali mercenaries being left to their own devices in the desert, Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt of The New York Times report.

The Puntland Maritime Police Force, trained by dozens of South African mercenaries from sometime in 2010 to June 2012, was run by a Dubai-based company called Sterling Corporate Services that seems to be connected to the CIA.

The Times reports that in July a United Nations investigative group uncovered that the force shared some facilities with the Puntland Intelligence Service, a spy organization that answers to the president of the semi-autonomous Somali region of Puntland and has been trained by the CIA for more than a decade.

Michael Shanklin, a former C.I.A. station chief in Mogadishu, was reportedly hired to work his contacts both in Washington and East Africa to build support for the force while Erik Prince, the founder of the private security firm Blackwater, made several trips to the Puntland camp to oversee the training of the counter-piracy force.

It is important to emphasize that the “private company” has not only been backed by the CIA, the UAE government had considerable involvement in them. According to the New York Times “millions of dollars in secret payments by the United Arab Emirates”. So the private sector contractor is in reality a crony or a politically connected firm operating on stealth political goals.

In addition, the unintended consequences of interventionism have not merely been that these abandoned highly trained and armed groups have been left to their devices, but rather, as the NYT points out they may have joined up with “the pirates or Qaeda-linked militants or to sell themselves to the highest bidder in Somalia’s clan wars — yet another dangerous element in the Somali mix”. So in essence, the CIA trained possible and or potential, if not current, members of future pirates and terror groups.

The above signifies as further evidence that the perpetual foreign interventions, which ironically fostered her pirate industry has, contrary to mainstream expectations, induced the vicious cycle of violence in “stateless” Somalia.

However, Somalia isn’t “stateless” anymore. Repeated foreign interventions has finally resulted to the installation of a new Western backed government for the first time in four decades. As for the longevity of this US sponsored government, this remains to be seen.

US Drone Warfare Fuels Arabic and Islamic Hatred

One of the main reasons why there has been too much vile and hatred against Americans in the Muslim world has been because of the imperialist-interventionist-militant foreign policies adapted by the US government influenced by the military industrial complex and the imperial goals of the politically entrenched neoconservatives.

One such evidence is the rampant use by the US military of drones to supposedly weed out terrorists. Such actions in reality defies the 3D policies (Development, Diplomacy and Defense), framed by Secretary of State and former first lady Hilary Clinton

As Professor Bill Easterly of the NYU in a recent blog writes,

Hilary Clinton said a while ago that Defense and Development were complements.

Not so much. A new report from Stanford and NYU (see excellent summary in the Guardian) found that US drone strikes (greatly increased under this administration) in Pakistan were killing and terrorizing civilians, while very few killed their terrorist targets.

It would be hard for Development to benefit from “drones hovering 24 hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning.”

The report alleges that drones strike areas multiple times, killing rescuers of victims of the first strike.

Such gruesome violation of human rights which masquerades as the war on terror will exacerbate geopolitical tensions instead of solving them

Yet the best way to promote peace is through trade.

As Judge Andrew Napolitano recently pointed out,

Is it not more likely that when the West supported toppling Arab strongmen, the rioters in the streets saw that as a signal to express hatred toward the meddling West? Might Obama’s drones, which have fallen all over the Middle East killing innocents in schools and hospitals, at weddings and funerals, and demolishing mosques and homes, be coming back to haunt him?

The Arab Spring has become the Western Winter, brought about by two American presidents who thought they could kill without moral justification or painful consequence. We should come home from these barbaric places and leave them alone. We should trade with them, since they want to buy our iPads and washing machines and blue jeans, but let them run their own governments.

Yet another emerging problem has been the escalating anxiety over the overbearing use of drones against Americans in their homeland—another sign of America’s transition towards a police state. These are symptoms of the growing desperation of the ruling class.

Quote of the Day: The Roots of Arab and Islamic Hatred

What are the roots of that Arab and Islamic hatred?

Osama bin Laden in his declaration of war against us gave three reasons as his casus belli.

His first reason for war was the presence of U.S. troops on the soil of Saudi Arabia, sacred home to Mecca and Medina. His second was the U.S. sanctions on Iraq then said to be causing the premature deaths of as many as 500,000 Iraqi children.

Third was U.S. support for Israel, seen in the Arab world as a colonial implant to humiliate them and deny to the Palestinian people their right to a nation of their own.

Lately, new causes of Arab and Muslim hatred of us have arisen.

The first is what devout Muslims regard as our immoral and decadent culture, which they see as a threat to their societies and their young.

The second are the Islam haters and baiters in America and the West who deliberately provoke them with insulting and blasphemous portrayals of the Prophet and their faith.

While the U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia have by now largely been closed, and the United States is largely withdrawn from Iraq and the sanctions there have all been lifted, America is not going to change herself to accommodate their world.

Support of Israel is the declared position of both parties. And, though Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rightly called the crude amateur film "Innocence of Muslims," which caused the latest anti-American rioting, both disgusting and reprehensible, we are not going to repeal the First Amendment, which protects provocateurs and pornographers.

Yet, worldwide, there are hundreds of millions of Muslims for whom their faith is their most priceless possession. They live it. They will die for it. And not a few will kill for it. Others will seize upon real or imagined insults to that faith to excite the crowds to expel us from their world.

And some Americans will accommodate them by using books, films and videos to manifest their contempt of Islam.

So we have here an irreconcilable conflict.

The Islamic word, especially across the Arab region, is undergoing a transformation, a Great Awakening. Muslims from Nigeria to Mali to Ethiopia to Sudan to the Maghreb and Middle and Near East are growing more militant and more hostile toward Christianity and other faiths.

This is from Patrick J. Buchanan, co-founder and editor of The American Conservative writing at the Lew Rockwell.com

Video: Ron Paul on Foolish US Foreign Policies

Neil Cavuto to Congressman Ron Paul "You were decades ahead of this" (hat tip Bob Wenzel)

False Flag Operations by Governments

Here is a list of False Flag operations conducted by governments.

False Flag, according to Wikipedia.org, are covert operations designed to deceive in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is: flying the flag of a country other than one’s own.

From Washington’s Blog (hat tip Lew Rockwell.com)

• A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that - under orders from the chief of the Gestapo - he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland. Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering admitted to setting fire to the German parliament building, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson

• The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950's to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister

• Israel admits that an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind "evidence" implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this)

• The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism. As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: "You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security" (and see this)(Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred)

• As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in the 1960's, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Official State Department documents show that - only nine months before - the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other high-level officials discussed blowing up a consulate in the Dominican Republic in order to justify an invasion of that country. (While the Joint Chiefs of Staff pushed as a serious proposal for Operation Northwoods to be carried out, cooler heads fortunately prevailed; President Kennedy or his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara apparently vetoed the plan)

• The South African Truth and Reconciliation Council found that, in 1989, the Civil Cooperation Bureau (a covert branch of the South African Defense Force) approached an explosives expert and asked him "to participate in an operation aimed at discrediting the ANC [the African National Congress] by bombing the police vehicle of the investigating officer into the murder incident", thus framing the ANC for the bombing

• An Algerian diplomat and several officers in the Algerian army admit that, in the 1990s, the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings (and see this video; and Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002, French Court Dismisses Algerian Defamation Suit Against Author)

• Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Hugh Shelton says that a Clinton cabinet member proposed letting Saddam kill an American pilot as a pretext for war in Iraq (and see this)
• According to the Washington Post, Indonesian police admit that the Indonesian military killed American teachers in Papua in 2002 and blamed the murders on a Papuan separatist group in order to get that group listed as a terrorist organization.

• The well-respected former Indonesian president also admits that the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings

• As reported by BBC, the New York Times, and Associated Press, Macedonian officials admit that the government murdered 7 innocent immigrants in cold blood and pretended that they were Al Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate Macedonian police, in order to join the "war on terror".

Read the rest here

Recently the supposed underwear bomber suicide bomber turned out to be a CIA double agent

In the Philippines, the Marcos regime staged the ambush of then Secretary of National Defense Juan Ponce Enrile as pretext to impose Martial Law.

Bottom line: Political events can be manipulated by governments to achieve stealth goal/s.

I believe this may apply to the controversial territorial disputes

We can’t simply trust politically influenced media or the mainstream to tell us the truth.