You know you’ve hit the big time when the Establishment comes knocking on your door with an offer to sell out. It means you’re drawing blood: that your campaign, or whatever, is having an effect — and not one that pleases the Powers That Be. They want to defang you, if not shut you up, and they’re willing to offer you what Satan offered Jesus up there on that mountain:
“Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.”
If Ron Paul isn’t exactly Jesus, many of his supporters treat him as if he is indeed the incarnation of Liberty in human flesh: the media routinely describes them as “fanatical” – or, more charitably, “devoted” – and I don’t blame them for their enthusiasm (indeed, I share it). Paul is undoubtedly a messianic figure, although he is the last one to give himself that kind of aura, and that’s because we are indeed living in a time of woe, from whence a great many people are seeking deliverance. Ron is their one hope, a bright spot in an ever-darkening and increasingly scary world – and our elites don’t like that one bit.
What they especially don’t like are his foreign policy views, which are routinely described in the lame-stream media as “isolationist” – as if minding our own damned business and not trying to dominate the world would be an isolating act. And of course none of these geniuses ever described, say, Eugene McCarthy, or George McGovern as an “isolationist” – they were “antiwar” candidates because they were on the left, and because no one on the right can ever be against wars of aggression for moral reasons. Yet the 76-year-old country doctor and presidential candidate defies those stereotypes – and, in the process, delegitimizes them as standards of the American political lexicon. He has succeeded in creating a movement that truly transcends the tired old categories of “left” and “right.”
This false left-right dichotomy, which does nothing to accurately map the landscape of 21st century American politics, is one of the main weapons in the War Party’s well-stocked arsenal. Because whatever liberals and conservatives disagree about, when it comes time to unleash the dogs of war both the “left” and the “right” have been equal in their bloodthirstiness. To keep up the illusion of conflict, these two wings of the War Party alternate their warmongering schedules: during the Vietnam war era, it was the right that wanted to obliterate the Soviets militarily and the “left” that took up the anti-interventionist banner – although liberal support for the war made the occupation of Vietnam possible, at least initially. In the1930s, their positions were reversed, with conservatives making the case for “isolationism” (i.e. opposition to empire-building): the warmongering was left to the liberals and the extreme left, notably the American Communist Party.
In both cases, the War Party was able to take advantage of the left-right split. In the Thirties, it was the Eastern seaboard Republicans, the Wendell Wilkie group, that absconded with the GOP presidential nomination and sold out the anti-interventionist cause on the campaign trail, never pushing the issue of FDR’s ill-disguised enthusiasm for getting us into the European war. After the election, Wilkie went over to the enemy completely, becoming one of FDR’s biggest supporters, and a tireless advocate of “internationalism,” i.e. an American empire on which the sun never sets. His book, One World, is a veritable manifesto of left-sounding globaloney. Behind Wilkie were the big investment banks, the Anglophile elite whose cultural loyalties – and investments in the bonds of European governments – naturally led them into the pro-war camp.
In the 1960s, pro-war Democrats played the key role in getting us into Vietnam and keeping us there long after that disaster had begun to unfold. Back then, we were all chanting “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?!” That was what antiwar protesters were shouting in the streets as they demanded the withdrawal of US troops from Southeast Asia. Pro-war liberals, known today as neoconservatives, were an ideological bulwark protecting a Democratic administration against a massive and growing antiwar movement – a role that earned them the well-deserved animus of the New Left. The little group around Senator Henry Jackson (D-Boeing) which organized the “Committee for the Free World,” provided most of the intellectual firepower behind this rearguard action. After the victory of the McGovernites, they threw up their hands and joined the Republicans: today, we know them as the neoconservatives.
The left-right mindset has another key advantage for the War Party: it keeps anti-interventionists out of the GOP. If the right is inherently warlike, and conservatives have a war gene, then anti-interventionists have no place else to go other than the Democratic party. Which means not only that they must buy into the party’s domestic agenda, but also be reduced to pleading when it comes to, say, reducing the “defense” budget, or refraining from intervening to plant the flag of “democracy” in some godforsaken wilderness. Opponents of our foreign policy of global intervention are entirely dependent on the Democratic leadership to implement their agenda, and keeping these people out of the GOP has been one of the key tasks of the neocons, a job they did with some efficiency until the Ron Paul movement came along.
Paul and his movement are onto the War Party’s games, and they are consciously fighting this left-right illusion — with amazing success. The time is right for it: the nation faces a crisis on a scale not seen since the 1930s. Once again we face the twin specters of an economy in collapse and a world at war. Paul cuts through the ideological fog and in doing so breaks with all the conventions, the worn and now useless political labels that have misled us for so long.
Smearing him hasn’t worked, mockery has just added to his fame, and ignoring him has seriously backfired on the mainstream media, which has made itself more hated by the Republican rank-and-file than it already is — no mean feat. Their last hope is to co-opt him – or, at least, co-opt his movement. And we are seeing the first signs of such an attempt in a front page story in the Washington Post, which posits the existence of a “strategic alliance” between Mitt Romney and Paul.
Let’s get this out of the way before we get to the really disturbing stuff: there is no such “alliance,” strategic or otherwise. Reporter Amy Gardner states categorically that “Mitt Romney and Ron Paul haven’t laid a hand on each other.” This is demonstrably and even brazenly untrue. How does Ms. Gardner explain this, and this, and this, and especially this? I could go on, but you see my point.
The piece goes on to note Romney and Paul “became friends in 2008,” and “so did their wives.” This confuses friendship with cordiality, and, again, proves nothing. Undeterred, Ms. Gardner presses ahead with the punch line:
“The Romney-Paul alliance is more than a curious connection. It is a strategic partnership: for Paul, an opportunity to gain a seat at the table if his long-shot bid for the presidency fails; for Romney, a chance to gain support from one of the most vibrant subgroups within the Republican Party.”
So what’s this “strategic partnership” based on? Certainly on nothing Paul has ever said or done – but the people around him are a different matter, and here’s where it gets interesting. After citing various anonymous “senior GOP aides” who advise against alienating either Paul or the Paulians, we are given the following inside information:
“Romney’s aides are ‘quietly in touch with Ron Paul,’ according to a Republican adviser who is in contact with the Romney campaign and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss its internal thinking. The two campaigns have coordinated on minor things, the adviser said — even small details, such as staggering the timing of each candidate’s appearance on television the night of the New Hampshire primary for maximum effect.”
Yes, well, so what? That’s hardly a “strategic partnership”: if anything, it’s a tactical convenience that has nothing to do with any policy or real political issues. On this front, Romney has little or nothing to offer Paul, but that doesn’t stop wily old Satan from taking Jesus up to the mountain, and offering him the following:
“’Ron Paul wants a presence at the convention,’ the [GOP] adviser said — and Romney, if he is the nominee, would grant it.
“What Paul and his supporters would demand, and what Romney would offer, are subjects of some speculation. One Paul adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk freely, said prime-time speaking slots for Paul and his son Rand, the junior senator from Kentucky, are obvious goals. On the policy front, Ron Paul’s priorities are reforming the Federal Reserve and reducing federal spending. So promises to audit the Fed and to tackle deficit reduction seriously could appease the congressman and his supporters, the adviser said.
“Less likely are concessions on foreign policy, where Paul’s non-interventionist stand is at odds with that of Romney and most other Republicans.”
So here is the bargain: give up this non-interventionist foreign policy stuff and we’ll let you speak at the convention, maybe let your son speak – all in exchange for an endorsement of Romney. We may even pay lip service to some of your economic views: maybe we’ll set up a Gold Commission, as was done some years ago under Reagan. Just shut up about foreign policy.
It isn’t going to happen: unless it’s a wide-open convention, Paul will not be given a speaking slot of any prominence, because he won’t endorse Romney. Period. But there are other ways to influence the candidate, who is after all conducting more of an educational and movement-building campaign within the GOP, as opposed to a conventional candidate-centered campaign. In the Paul camp, the focus is on the message, not the candidate – but there are ways to influence the manner in which that message reaches the general public.
Ron himself is incorruptible: indeed, he is far more radical on foreign policy than I ever expected him to be. When the subject is economics, he always brings it back to foreign policy, pointing out the indissoluble link between a free and growing economy and a peaceful foreign policy. He is constantly saying that if only we would get rid of the Empire, we could begin to reform our domestic entitlement programs and deal with all the problems we have right here at home.
They can’t influence Ron – but they can influence his organization. Gardner reports that after Ron’s son, Rand, won the Kentucky primary against an Establishment opponent, “Then, quite strangely, the establishment and the Pauls came together”:
“At [Sen. Mitch] McConnell’s request, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent an adviser to Kentucky to watch over Rand Paul’s general-election campaign — ‘to be the grown-up in the room,’ according to one Washington Republican who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly.
“The adviser, Trygve Olson, developed a friendship with Rand Paul, and the two realized that they could teach each other a lot — to the benefit of both candidate and party. Olson showed Paul and his campaign establishment tactics: working with the news media, fine-tuning its message. And Paul showed Olson — and by extension, McConnell — how many people were drawn to the GOP by his message of fiscal responsibility…. And at Rand Paul’s suggestion, Olson joined his father’s presidential campaign this year, basically to do what he did for Rand: help bring the Paul constituency into the Republican coalition without threatening the party. It’s probably no small coincidence that the partnership helps Rand’s burgeoning political career, too.”
Who is Trygve Olson? A former official of the International Republican Institute (IRI), a tax-funded “regime-change” operation under the rubric of the National Endowment for Democracy, Olson was involved in several of the “color revolutions” that swept Eastern Europe and the central Asian former Soviet republics during the Bush years. ThisNew York Times article reports on his activities in Belarus meddling in their internal politics and plotting to overthrow its thuggish President, Alexander Lukashenko: he also played a part in stirring up similar trouble on Washington’s behalf in Serbia and Poland.
At a meeting of the New Atlantic Initiative, another semi-official interventionist outfit, in 2004, Olson appeared on the same podium as various government apparatchiks of the old Cold Warrior/Radio Free Europe type, who gave seminars on the ins-and-outs of successful “regime change.” While others gave talks on Lukashenko’s “links” to Saddam Hussein and Israel’s other enemies in the region, Olson gave a presentation on polling results in the country. A particular area of concern was the possibility of an economic or political union with Russia, which was seen by the participants as the main threat to “democracy” and Europeanization in Belarus. And while meddling in Eastern Europe appears to be his specialty – his wife, Erika Veberyte, served as chief foreign policy advisor to the Speaker of the Lithuanian parliament – this biography on the web site of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University says:
“Mr. Olson has helped advise political parties and candidates in numerous countries throughout the world including nearly all of Central and Eastern Europe, Indonesia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Serbia.”
The “color revolutions” of the Bush era were brazen attempts to overthrow regimes deemed unfriendly to the US, and absorb the scattered pieces of the former Soviet Union into the Western sphere of influence. Of course, these efforts all backfired: in Georgia, for one example, our chosen candidate set up a veritabledictatorship, jailed his opponents for “treason,” and launched a disastrous war against Russia. In Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, too, our sock puppets set themselves up for a backlash: both US-installed regimes have since been ousted, either by being unceremoniously voted out of office or by force. In Venezuela, the US government has long sought to overthrow the blustering caudillo, Hugo Chavez, and our meddling has only played into his hands, enabling him to muster nationalist resentment against the democratic opposition. The same is generally true elsewhere. These “strategic” deployments of “soft power” never work, and wind up hurting our interests rather than advancing them.
Another aspect of these “soft power” deployments is the inevitable involvement of the American intelligence community in some form or other, engaging in covert operations with no real congressional oversight and without the knowledge or consent of the American people. This can lead to all kinds of abuses that inevitably impact on our domestic politics – an area where the CIA is supposedly forbidden from entering, although that has never been the case.
In the New York Times piece on the Belarussian operation, the reporter describes a meeting attended by Olson and Belarussian dissidents as “a meeting of the freedom industry,” a telling description because that’s exactly what it is: an industry, one in which Olson is a player. It’s the “regime change” industry that has flourished in this country ever since the start of the cold war. The necons played a key role in staffing the organizations and semi-official front groups into which billions of our tax dollar flowed: Reagan gave the National Endowment for Democracy to them as a sort of playground, where they were out of the way and free to think they had some real influence on the administration. In the post-cold war world, the NED took on added importance – and more tax dollars – as the US tried to cash in on the Soviet collapse by sponsoring “color revolutions” throughout the former Soviet bloc. It didn’t matter that the very reason for launching these cold war institutions was no longer in existence: as one needn’t explain to a Ron Paul supporter, government programs have a life of their own, and killing them is akin to driving a stake through the heart of a vampire – a difficult and often impossible feat.
So we have a major player in the “regime change” industry as a “senior advisor” to the Paul campaign: and not only that but a pedagogical relationship between Olson and Rand Paul. The latter has presumably learned from the former why draconian sanctions on Iran – deemed an “act of war” by his father – are a good idea and ought to be supported. Paul recently joined ninety-nine other similarly clueless US Senators in voting “aye” on what is in effect an economic blockade against Iran.
The Establishment’s strategy is clear: get to the father through the son, whose political career can be imperiled by the GOP elders, like McConnell (although that didn’t stop Paul from getting elected over McConnel’s opposition). If the Paul campaign is “infiltrating” the GOP, as Gardner puts it, then the GOP Establishment is intent on infiltrating the Paul campaign at the highest levels.
So if you wondered why the official Paul for President campaign ads devote almost no time to foreign policy issues, then perhaps now you have your answer. Of course, that hasn’t stopped several independent political action committees from making strong anti-interventionist statements on Paul’s behalf: but still, that this end run is even necessary raises all sorts of questions, one of which is surely the exact nature of Olson’s role.
The libertarian movement has been through this sort of thing before. Back in 1980, the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate, Ed Clark, and his handlers at the Cato Institute, tried to pass off libertarianism as “low tax liberalism.” The scheme failed miserably: as Murray Rothbard put it at the time: “They sold their souls for a mess of pottage, and then didn’t even get the pottage!” A similar effort to sell libertarianism as a marginally less belligerent version of conservatism isn’t going to do much better – and certainly Paul himself would have nothing to do with such an effort. As we all know, however, Paul isn’t a hands-on manager: he tends to trust people to carry out his wishes. That hands-off tendency has gotten him in trouble before.
The GOP Establishment fears – and, yes, hates – Ron Paul, and they have good reason to feel that way. It is hardly beyond comprehension that they would attempt to influence – and, ultimately, derail – the campaign and the movement it represents in this covert manner. I don’t think they are stupid enough to believe they can somehow finagle Paul into endorsing Romney, or whoever the GOP candidate might be: what they rightly fear, however, is that the Paul campaign will not end in Tampa – that Paul will launch a third party bid.
That’s what this wheeling and dealing, these shadowy movements in the background, are all about. Whether they will succeed remains to be seen. The signs, however, are not good. Gardner cites Jesse Benton, Paul’s campaign manager, as saying:
“You can dress in black and stand on the hill and smash the state and influence nobody, or you can realize the dynamics and the environment and get involved in the most pragmatic way to win minds and win votes and influence change. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
This is the classic argument for a sell out. The irony is that there is nothing pragmatic about it. The American people stand shoulder to shoulder with Ron when it comes to foreign policy, as every poll has shown. The question is whom do the Paulians want to “influence” – the American people, or the very Establishment they’ve been fighting all these years? The alternative to standing on a hill and making a fashion statement isn’t selling out libertarianism’s anti-imperialist heritage: it’s making that heritage understandable and attractive to the American majority, which is already with us in spirit.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
The plan, apparently, is to push Rand Paul for the Vice Presidential nomination. These people are deluding themselves – but, then again, that’s how the sell out starts.
More info on this specific police state threat will be examined by Heather and Jack Blood on Channel 11 – 6:30 PM CT, February 4, 2012. (Austin Cable access / Time Warner) I will add a link to view this live, rebroadcast… Before the taping.
Here is Heather Fazio warning our City Council in Austin about Militarizing (and Federalizing) our local Police, and mentioning “Urban Shield”.
T.A.G. (Texans for Accountable Government) Facebook page HERE
More info via our story about recent Los Angeles drills which took place in January of 2012, HERE (includes actual video of air, land drills)
http://www.urbanshield.org/ (details of the special Op drills, and vendors. Scheduled Urban Shield for Alameda County (Bay Area) California October 26-29, 2012
Also:
US Military, (and NORAD) had drills using jets as weapons before and DURING the 911 attacks.
NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Police Department recommended increasing surveillance of thousands of Shiite Muslims and their mosques, based solely on their religion, as a way to sweep the Northeast for signs of Iranian terrorists, according to interviews and a newly obtained secret police document.
The document offers a rare glimpse into the thinking of NYPD intelligence officers and how, when looking for potential threats, they focused their spying efforts on mosques and Muslims. Police analysts listed a dozen mosques from central Connecticut to the Philadelphia suburbs. None has been linked to terrorism, either in the document or publicly by federal agencies.
The Associated Press has reported for months that the NYPD infiltrated mosques, eavesdropped in cafes and monitored Muslim neighborhoods with plainclothes officers. Its spying operations were begun after the 2001 terror attacks with help from the CIA in a highly unusual partnership.
The May 2006 NYPD intelligence report, entitled “US-Iran Conflict: The Threat to New York City,” made a series of recommendations, including: “Expand and focus intelligence collections at Shi’a mosques.”
The NYPD is prohibited under its own guidelines and city law from basing its investigations on religion. Under FBI guidelines, which the NYPD says it follows, many of the recommendations in the police document would be prohibited.
The report, drawn largely from information available in newspapers or sites like Wikipedia, was prepared for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. It was written at a time of great tension between the U.S. and Iran. That tension over Iran’s nuclear ambition has increased again recently.
Police estimated the New York area Shiite population to be about 35,000, with Iranians making up about 8,500. The document also calls for canvassing the Palestinian community because there might be terrorists there.
“The Palestinian community, although not Shi’a, should also be assessed due to presence of Hamas members and sympathizers and the group’s relationship with the Iranian government,” analysts wrote.
The secret document stands in contrast to statements by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who said the NYPD never considers religion in its policing. Kelly has said police go only where investigative leads take them, but the document described no leads to justify expanded surveillance at Shiite mosques.
The document also renews debate over how the NYPD privately views Muslims. Kelly has faced calls for his resignation recently from some Muslim activists for participating in a video that says Muslims want to “infiltrate and dominate” the United States. The NYPD showed the video to nearly 1,500 officers during training.
Documents previously obtained by the AP show widespread NYPD infiltration of mosques. It’s not clear, however, whether the May 2006 report prompted police to infiltrate the mosques on the list. One former police official who has seen the report said that, generally, the recommendations were followed but he could not say for sure whether these mosques were infiltrated.
A current law enforcement official, also familiar with the report, said that since it was issued the NYPD learned that Hezbollah was more political than religious and concluded that it’s not effective to monitor Shiites.
Both insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program.
Neither David Cohen, the NYPD’s top intelligence officer, nor department spokesman Paul Browne responded to emails or phone calls from The Associated Press this week.
Iran is an overwhelmingly Shiite country, but Shiites are a small percentage of the U.S. Muslim population. By contrast, al-Qaida is a Sunni organization and many U.S. leaders consider Shiite clerics as allies in the fight against homegrown extremism. Shiites are often oppressed overseas and many have sought asylum in the West.
The document is dated just weeks after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Congress that, “We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran.”
Even now, the U.S. remains particularly concerned with Iran, not only because of its nuclear research but also because intelligence officials don’t believe they know how Iranian sympathizers inside the United States would respond if the two countries went to war. By far, the largest group of Iranians in the U.S. lives in or around Los Angeles. Yet the NYPD, with a smaller Iranian population that police estimated at about 8,500 in New York City, shared the concerns about reactions to an open military conflict.
Asad Sadiq, president of the Bait-ul-Qaim mosque in the Philadelphia suburb of Delran, N.J., said the NYPD was being unfairly broad.
“If you attack Cuba, are all the Catholics going to attack here? This is called guilt by association,” Sadiq, a dentist, said after seeing his mosque in the NYPD document. “Just because we are the same religion doesn’t mean we’re going to stand up and harm the United States. It’s really absurd.”
The AP showed the document to several veteran counterterrorism analysts. None said they had seen anything like it.
“It’s really problematic if you make a jump from a possible international conflict to saying therefore we need to monitor Shiite mosques writ large,” said Brian Fishman, the former research director at West Point’s Combatting Terrorism Center. “It doesn’t follow.”
For instance, the NYPD analysts focused much of the report on the Alavi Foundation, a New York nonprofit group that the federal government has since accused of being secretly controlled by the Iranian government. Analysts then looked at a mosque where Alavi members prayed and that police say may have been linked to an effort to buy information about rocket technology for Iran.
There is no explanation, however, for how those suspicions warranted expanding surveillance to other Shiite mosques, including those far outside the department’s jurisdiction in Connecticut and New Jersey.
“Any time that you begin to isolate certain communities from a policing perspective because you think there’s risk, you have the potential that somebody overreaches,” said Robert Riegle, a former Department of Homeland Security analyst who oversaw efforts to work with state and local agencies.
At the Al-Mahdi Foundation mosque in Brooklyn, worshippers intoned their prayers Wednesday while touching their foreheads to disks of clay on the floor, a Shiite tradition.
“After 1,400 years, the Shias are being targeted in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, everywhere,” imam Malik Sakhawat Hussain said after being told that his mosque was in the NYPD document. “If U.S. authorities become suspicious of the Shias, I would say we are a very oppressed community of the world.”
At the Masjid Al-Rahman, a prayer hall in the basement of a Brooklyn apartment building, manager Abo Maher was surprised to see his mosque on the NYPD’s list of Shiite locations.
“This isn’t even Shia,” he said. “Their information is wrong.”
The police department’s Demographics Unit, the secretive squad of plainclothes officers used to monitor restaurants, social clubs and other gathering spots, found similar issues in Iranian neighborhoods, one former NYPD official recalled.
Muslims make up only a fraction of New York’s Iranian community so squad members returned from their rounds in Iranian neighborhoods and reported finding Jews and Christians, the former official said.
Sadiq, the New Jersey mosque president, said about 250 families — mostly Pakistanis and Indians and few Iraqis — attend his mosque. Every few years, he said, an FBI agent stops by, introduces himself and asks whether there’s been any radical rhetoric in his mosque and whether he knows anyone with connections to Iran. The most recent meeting was just Wednesday, he said, and the NYPD would be welcome if it came openly.
The intelligence unit operates in secrecy with little outside oversight. The City Council is not told about secret intelligence programs. And though the unit operates under the auspices of a federal anti-drug task force and receives federal money, it is not overseen by Congress. The Obama administration, including the Justice Department, has repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether it endorses the NYPD’s tactics.
“They think that they can do whatever they want and get away with it,” Sadiq said.
The document also suggests a broader international intelligence mission than the department has previously acknowledged. The NYPD has officers stationed in 11 foreign cities such as London, Paris, Madrid, and Tel Aviv, where they work with local police and act as the NYPD’s eyes and ears overseas.
In their recommendations for the foreign liaison unit, analysts wrote that officers should: “Focus international intelligence collection on the Iranian threat, to include the activities of the IIS, Hezbollah, Hamas etc. throughout Europe and the Middle East.”
NYPD officers abroad are not supposed to be spies and do not answer to the U.S. director of national intelligence or the CIA station chiefs who coordinate America’s efforts to gather intelligence on Iran. In fact, the NYPD’s international officers aren’t even paid by the department. Rather, the program is paid for through a nonprofit foundation that raises money from corporate donors.
It has not previously been known that the NYPD would consider gathering overseas intelligence on Iranian intelligence services. The police department does not disclose details about the inner workings of the international program to the City Council, to Congress or to U.S. intelligence agencies.
“Sustainability” seems to be a code world for all out global control. Of course the most influential will find a way to receive exemptions and special privileges in the market place, allowing the NWO to choose who fails and who succeeds in a “green” economy. Dont fall for it. The Oil oligarchs control the UN!
The world can no longer afford to ignore the environmental cost of economic growth and must redefine the very concept of national wealth, a UN panel of heads of state and environment ministers said Monday.
The panel challenged leaders to recognise that “current global development is unsustainable.”
“We need to chart a new, more sustainable course for the future, one that strengthens equality and economic growth while protecting our planet,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in Addis Ababa to mark the release of the panel’s report, which outlines more than 50 policy recommendations.
By 2030, the report warned, the planet will need at least 50 percent more food, 45 percent more energy and 30 percent more water.
These needs are emerging “at a time when environmental boundaries are throwing up new limits to supply,” it said.
Continuing along the same path as today risks “irreversible damage to both ecosystems and human communities.”
Entitled “Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing,” the 100-page report seeks to shape in broad strokes the agenda for the Rio+20 summit this summer.
The June 20-22 event in Rio de Janeiro takes place 20 years after the landmark 1992 Earth Summit that set down the UN conventions for protecting biodiversity and tackling global warming.
Led by Finnish President Tarja Halonen and South African President Jacob Zuma, the 22-member panel said a new blueprint for growth and low-carbon prosperity must be “mainstreamed” into economic policy as quickly as possible.
Social and environmental costs must be factored into how the world prices and measures economic activity, and into a revised measure of wealth that goes beyond the narrow calculus of gross domestic product (GDP), it said.
“Our report makes clear that sustainable development is more important than ever given the multiple crises now enveloping the world,” Zuma said in a statement.
The report called for:
– a new nexus between food, water and energy. “All three need to be fully integrated, not treated separately, if we are to deal with the global food security crisis”;
– a stronger interface between science and policy. “We must define what scientists refer to as planetary boundaries” beyond which human activity could wreck the planet;
– reducing social exclusion and closing the widening gap of social inequality.
European Union Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard, one of the report’s authors, said it should be a “wake up” call for action.
“Government support for fossil fuel industry is about seven times more than for renewable energy,” she said in a statement.
“We simply can’t continue as if business as usual was the cheapest solution. It is not.”
Hedegaard said the Rio+20 summit was an opportunity to “kick off this global transition towards a sustainable growth model for the 21st century.”
People just LOVE calling the police of each other! This new Application for your smart phone will help you to turn in citizens at the touch of a finger, wherever you might be. While you are being monitored on your phone, you can help monitor your surroundings…. Millions of eyes (cameras) and ears for the Police state!
No we do not advocate violent crimes, and in a perfect world something like this could be helpful to keep us all safe. Unfortunately, in the real world, it will give new power to those who feel it is their job to report even the smallest transgression; and this will likely clog the system even more than it is, making it harder to protect the citizenry from REAL criminals.
Revolutionizing Crime Reporting. CrimePush is Available On iTunes Today.
As any Smartphone user will tell you, the Smartphone’s application store is the go to place for tools to make your Smartphone even smarter. Do you want the song playing in the department store on your playlist? Download Shazam. Want to find out the latest celebrity gossip? Get the Us Weekly app. Want investment advice at your fingertips? Get the Forbes app. But can an application provide women and students with the tools to empower themselves and help strengthen law enforcement?
A new company says yes. CrimePush, available on iTunes today, is the latest in mobile technology to provide urban populations with fast, discrete, and intelligent safety assistance. After being held at gunpoint on the streets of Washington, DC co-founder, Shayan Pahlevani thought of a way to conveniently help report and prevent crimes for the 21st century.
The company utilizes Smartphone technology to put crime reporting, literally, in the hands of users. After downloading the free iPhone or Android application, users can report an ongoing crime with the push of a button. A package of information including the location of the crime, photo, video, audio, and text description of the crime are sent to authorities immediately. The application also allows for users to report crime anonymously so that they may continue with their busy lives knowing that with a push of a button, police will know and have everything to pursue the criminal. Ordinary users become the eyes and ears of authorities.
“There are often tense situations when calling the police is not an option. There are other times when inconvenience or fear of reprisal prevents one from reporting an incident,” explains co-founder, Eman Pahlevani. “Featuring the ability to take a photo, record video and audio, and provide a description of the incident, citizens can now be assured that their phone has the capability to alert family, friends, and the authorities at the push of a button, should a threat arise.”
Amy Vorenberg, a former Assistant District Attorney in New York City, and current Professor of Criminal Law at the University of New Hampshire School of law, states the importance of the application:
“In today’s world, everything is going mobile…why not crime prevention? CrimePush is giving local authorities a 21st century make-over when it comes to reporting and preventing crimes.”
The application would be especially useful for high school and college students, who often find themselves walking back from class late at night, or the victim of hazing, bullying, or drug use. What is key about CrimePush.com is that it empowers the average citizen, ordinary bystanders, to report crime instead of ignoring it.
Pahlevani tells us to take a moment to think about the number of crimes that go unreported. “Often people are witness to crimes, such as sexual assault and robbery, but do not take the time or effort to call the police. There are other times when personal security is at stake and there is no discreet method of alert,” says Pahlevani. “Opening a new channel via a mobile application, youth populations will be more motivated to provide crime tips and informants will have better tools utilizing a phone’s built-in technology to capture audio, image, or video evidence.”
While this application may be a new channel to report crime tips to the police in the United States, in other countries where security systems fail the average citizen on a daily basis, it can be an even more powerful tool. Consider the uprisings sweeping through many Middle Eastern and North African countries right now. Often times governments try to control protesters by shutting down popular social media forums such as Facebook and Twitter, both which have played an instrumental role in allowing Arab youth to organize online.
Last summer, as the Green Revolution galvanized young people in Iran to fight for their democratic right to vote, Iranian authorities reacted by shutting down Twitter. US authorities at the State Department urged Twitter to remain open through scheduled site maintenance so they could as much information about what was happening on the ground in Iran before the Government was able to completely shut out international media. An application like CrimePush could literally revolutionize the revolutions taking place in the Middle East. Governments can try to shut down the Internet, but an application that sends a distress message with video evidence would be harder to tackle.
In developing nations, this technology could mean a matter of life and death and many aid organizations are already catching onto the advantages of mobile technology. Non-profit organizations are using mobile technology to spread development, allowing rural populations more access to their programs and basic health services.
Cell phones can be life changing for women in emerging markets because it allows them access to banking services, text messages alerting them when the communal water tap is working, and even sends them instructions in prenatal care. If CrimePush has its way, women will be able to determine their own security all at the push of a button.
The size of the US government’s secret list of suspected terrorists who are banned from flying to or within the country has more than doubled in the past year.
The no-fly list jumped from about 10,000 known or suspected terrorists one year ago to about 21,000, according to government figures. About 500 are US nationals.
The flood of new names began after the failed Christmas 2009 bombing of a Detroit-bound jetliner when the US government lowered the standard for putting people on the list and scoured its files for anyone who qualified. “We learned a lot about the watchlisting process and made strong improvements, which continue to this day,” said Timothy Healy, director of the Terrorist Screening Centre, which produces the no-fly list.
Among the most significant new standard is that a person doesn’t have to be considered only a threat to aviation to be placed on the list.
People considered a broader threat to domestic or international security or who attended a terror training camp are also included, said a US counter-terrorism official who spoke on condition of anonymity. As agencies complete the reviews of their files, the pace of growth is expected to slow, the counter-terrorism official said.
The American Civil Liberties Union has previously sued the US government on behalf of Americans who believe they are on the no-fly list and have not been able to travel by air for work or to see family.
“The news that the list is growing tells us that more people’s rights are being violated,” said Nusrat Choudhury, of the ACLU. “It’s a secret list, and the government puts people on it without any explanation. Citizens have been stranded abroad.”
People who complain they’re unfairly on the list can submit a letter to the homeland security department, but the only way they’ll know if they’re still on the list is to try to fly again, she said.
While the list is secret, it is subject to continuous review to ensure the right people are on it and that those who shouldn’t be are removed, said Martin Reardon, a former chief of the FBI’s terrorist screening operations centre.
If a person is nominated to be on the no-fly list, but there is insufficient information to justify it, the person is downgraded to a different list, he said. “You can’t just say: ‘Here’s a name. Put him on the list.’ You’ve got to have articulable facts.” (Right…)
On average, there are 1,000 changes to US watchlists each day, most of which involve adding new information about someone on the list.
The no-fly list previously swelled to 20,000 people in 2004. At the time, people including the late Ted Kennedy, a sitting senator, were being stopped before flying.
The US transportation security administrator, John Pistole, said instances of travellers being mistaken for terrorists were, however, down significantly since the US government and not airlines became responsible for checking the list.
Travellers must provide their full name, birthdate and gender when purchasing an airline ticket so the government can screen them against the terror watchlist.
A small quantity of radioactive gas leaked inside one of the buildings at San Onofre nuclear power plant north of San Diego, according to a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The spokesman said the radiation levels were “barely measurable,” but the plant was shut down as a precaution.
“At no point were the public or our workers in any danger,” Southern California Edison spokesman Gil Alexander told ABC News.
Officials say the radiation leak likely occurred in the steam generator tubes of San Onofre’s reactor #3. The steam system, which is supposed to be shielded from exposure to radiation, was replaced in December 2010. Alexander said plant officials will be conducting an investigation into why the new steam tubes leaked.
Gary Headrick is part of the environmental group San Clemente Green and lives just eight miles away from San Onofre.
“If we don’t make them shut it down, it’s going to be too late,” Headrick said.
San Onofre is one of dozens of U.S. reactors facing new scrutiny after Japan’s nuclear crisis. It is located right on the coast, and in the heart of America’s earthquake country.
It also is right next door to Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps base where 38,000 military families live, and another 32,000 people work each day, all of whom would be in immediate danger if there’s ever a meltdown.
ABC News visited San Onofre the day the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan melted down. At the time, plant officials were eager to reassure the public that the same thing could not happen on the California coast.
“This plant is safe,” California Edison’s Chief Nuclear Officer Pete Dietrich told ABC News.
After Japan, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission updated its seismic model and in a report issued yesterday found that 96 reactors in the central and southern U.S. are in regions at a higher risk for quakes than previously thought.
The report included parts of the country that are not traditionally seen as geologically active, places like Chattanooga, Tenn., Savannah, Ga., Jackson, Miss., Manchester, N.H., and Houston, Texas.
Major metropolitan areas are uncomfortably close to nuclear plants, with as many as 120 million Americans living within 50 miles of a nuclear reactor, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Indian Point, outside of New York City, has 20 million people living within a 50-mile radius. And Dresden is just 50 miles from the heavily-populated suburbs of Chicago.
Nuclear regulators plan to give plant operators four years to reevaluate seismic risks, but some of the plants may be too expensive to make earthquake safe.
However, in the case of San Onofre, it’s unlikely the leak had anything to do with seismic safety and was probably just faulty equipment. Officials have been taking extra care to reassure the public that there’s no danger, since after Japan, the idea of radiation leaking from a nuclear plant tends to set people on edge.
NEW YORK — Authorities say a TSA agent stole $5,000 from a passenger as he was going through security at Kennedy Airport.
Police and the Transportation Security Administration say Alexandra Schmid took the cash from a passenger’s jacket as it went along an X-ray conveyor belt around 8 p.m. Wednesday in JFK’s Terminal 4.
Police spokesman Al Della Fave (fahv) says surveillance video showed Schmid wrapping the money in a plastic glove and taking it to a bathroom.
He said the money has not been recovered. Police are investigating whether Schmid gave it to another person in the bathroom.
Schmid was arrested on a charge of grand larceny.
The name of her attorney was not immediately known.
Andrew P. Napolitano joined FOX News Channel (FNC) in January 1998 and currently serves as the senior judicial analyst. He provides legal analysis on both FNC and FOX Business Network (FBN). He is also host of FOX Business’ “Freedom Watch” show.
THIS ADMITTED FBI ENTRAPMENT CASE (BELOW) SHOULD ALWAYS BE ADDED WHEN CITING THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN FALSE FLAG TERROR:
THE NEW YORK TIMES Thursday October 28, 1993 Page A1″Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast” By Ralph Blumenthal
Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast.
The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad Salem, should be used, the informer said.
The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings that Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as being in a far better position than previously known to foil the February 26th bombing of New York City’s tallest towers.
The explosion left six people dead, more than a thousand people injured, and damages in excess of half-a-billion dollars. Four men are now on trial in Manhattan Federal Court [on charges of involvement] in that attack.
Mr. Salem, a 43-year-old former Egyptian Army officer, was used by the Government [of the United States] to penetrate a circle of Muslim extremists who are now charged in two bombing cases: the World Trade Center attack, and a foiled plot to destroy the United Nations, the Hudson River tunnels, and other New York City landmarks. He is the crucial witness in the second bombing case, but his work for the Government was erratic, and for months before the World Trade Center blast, he was feuding with the F.B.I.
Supervisor `Messed It Up’
After the bombing, he resumed his undercover work. In an undated transcript of a conversation from that period, Mr. Salem recounts a talk he had had earlier with an agent about an unnamed F.B.I. supervisor who, he said, “came and messed it up.”
“He requested to meet me in the hotel,” Mr. Salem says of the supervisor.
“He requested to make me to testify, and if he didn’t push for that, we’ll be going building the bomb with a phony powder, and grabbing the people who was involved in it. But since you, we didn’t do that.”
The transcript quotes Mr. Salem as saying that he wanted to complain to F.B.I. Headquarters in Washington about the Bureau’s failure to stop the bombing, but was dissuaded by an agent identified as John Anticev.
Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev had told him,
“He said, I don’t think that the New York people would like the things out of the New York Office to go to Washington, D.C.”
Another agent, identified as Nancy Floyd, does not dispute Mr. Salem’s account, but rather, appears to agree with it, saying of the `New York people’:
“Well, of course not, because they don’t want to get their butts chewed.”
FBI agents used a chainsaw to enter a Fitchburg apartment.
FITCHBURG (CBS) – It’s going to be a while before things get back to normal for Judy Sanchez and her three-year-old daughter.
Last Thursday, a team of FBI agents swarmed her apartment building as part of a massive citywide drug and weapons gang raid.
Trouble is, Sanchez lives in apartment 2R.
The suspect they were after is in 2F.
At 6:04 last Thursday morning, just before Sanchez’ alarm was set to go off, she heard a pounding outside her second floor apartment.
“I just happened to glance over and saw this huge chainsaw ripping down the side of my door,” she explains. “And I was freaking out. I didn’t know what was going on.”
Within moments, the chainsaw had cut through most of her door, and someone on the FBI’s arrest team kicked the rest of it in.
“That’s when I heard the clicking of a gun and I heard ‘FBI, get down!’, so I laid right on down.
And they said get your dog, so I got her and at the same time I am laying in her urine because she did pee on herself at the same time.”
That dog is the family’s three-month-old pit bull puppy.
Sanchez says they left her on the floor for 35 minutes, with her daughter screaming for her mommy in the other room.
“I was told not to move, so I didn’t move,” she tells WBZ, out of fear that she’d be shot.
Eventually the feds figured out they were in the wrong spot and they arrested the suspect they were after in the next door apartment.
Sanchez can’t believe that a two-year long federal investigation ended at the wrong door.
“The looks on their faces when they knew they got the wrong door was priceless,” she recalls. “They looked at each other dumbfounded.”
Sanchez says another agent came by later that day to offer an apology, but it was one that Sanchez felt wasn’t quite genuine.
“For me it felt routine apology, it felt like just a regular, ‘I’m sorry for the inconvenience. Here’s the phone number for your landlord to get reimbursed for the door, have a good day.’
And that’s how I felt, like it was a smack in the face.”
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