The retelling of a conversation with a CEO of a large Agro-chemical corporation that opens this brilliant exchange is a real eye opener. DON'T PASS THIS ONE UP.
Chris Hedges is one of our nation’s most insightful cultural critics, social and political activists and authors. For almost 20 years he was a foreign correspondent in war zones and conflicts in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans, having reported for The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor and other news outlets. While at the Times, Chris received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for reporting on global terrorism. The same year he received Amnesty International’s Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Over the years he has taught at Columbia, Princeton, NYU and the University of Toronto.
Among Chris’ many noteworthy books are “American Fascists” (about the fundamental Christian Right), “Empire of Illusion”, and “Death of the Liberal Class". His latest is “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” – a compelling hard look at the most impoverished regions in the US that have become what Chris calls “sacrifice zones” for the benefit of the powerful and wealthy.
Andrew Harvey is an internationally renowned religious scholar, teacher, and author of over thirty books. He is the founder of the Institute of Sacred Activism, an international organization dedicated to inspiring people to become more active and vital in challenging our global crises and to commit themselves to peace and sustainability.
Andrew was born in India, studied at Oxford University where he was a fellow at All Soul’s College. Over the years he has taught at Oxford, Cornell, the California Institute for Integral Studies and other institutions. He is perhaps best known for having explored all the different religions in depth, particularly Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Sufism, and interpreting them in a passionate manner while also preserving their essential meaning and significance for our own time.
Andrew has received many awards for his writings including the Benjamin Franklin Award. His most recent book is “Radical Passion: Sacred Love and Wisdom in Action” and before that “The Hope: A Guide To Sacred Activism” which won the Nautilus Silver Award for Social Change.
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake is a British biochemist and plant physiologist who has experimented with innovative field theory in plants and animals, including humans, to account for the causative formation of the deeper structures of biological development. His research has included efforts to reach a greater understanding of memory, perception and cognition as well as the forces that unfolds an organism. Over the past several decades he developed the theory of morphic resonance and morphogenic fields that are instrinsic to all species. While in India, he became a close associate of the late Father Bede Griffiths – an internationally renowned Dominican monk, mystic and spokesperson for interspiritual dialogue between religions.
Dr. Sheldrake has written extensively on his morphogenic theory since the publication of his first major book A New Science in Life in 1981 . His most recent book is “Science Set Free: Ten Paths to New Discovery” which is a thorough critique of the flaws in the dominant mechanistic scientific establishments and offers alternative evidence to give credence for a new approach in scientific understanding. via: http://prn.fm/2013/04/18/the-gary-null-show-041813-2/#ixzz2S1I0CHTk
Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. - Hermann Goering
When I first heard of this event, I was repulsed not because of the horror of it, as small scale as it was in terms of horrific events of late, but because I knew that the Mainstream Media in conjunction with our Corporatocracy were going to spin this somehow, to justify as with recent events, an escalated dialogue of quickly eliminating what remains of our freedom under the rationale of protecting us from "Terrorism". I knew that the MSM was going to contort the events AT THE LEAST, but I also reserved suspicion that the Military-Media-Industrial-Corporate-Congressional Complex/Shadow Rogue Govt. created the event outright, as we have seen with the Sandy Hook Massacre, the London 7/7/2005 Subway Bombings (Britain's variant of the MMICCC), 9/11, the Oklahoma City Bombing, Gulf of Tonkin on and on and on. You can be sure that the event was a pure fabrication when immediately following the MSM starts cheerleading about the dangers of say, privacy of the internet and the immediate need for surveillance (Patriot Act), or say of the dangers of assault rifles in the hands of a vigilant, informed citizenry (recently narrowly defeated Assault Rifles Ban in the wake of Sandy Hook), and now? Get ready for talk of the necessity of aerial monitoring, 24/7, via unarmed (at first) Predator Drones. http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/12/20/sandy-hook-massacre-official-story-spins-out-of-control/ http://www.cryptogon.com/?p=32890 Gary Null, in his highly recommended discussion with Derrick Jensen and Guy McPherson in the previous blog-post here nails the situation towards the end of the show: The Empire is posturing for a myriad of cascading, interrelated crises that all, inevitably (the Pharmaceutical Industry is temporarily postponing this) entail an enraged American populace in the wake of massive joblessness, a thoroughly degraded environment, and the prospects of a Jeffersonian society of small independent agrarian communities decisively foreclosed upon in the face of accelerating Anthropogenic Climate Chaos, Permaculture not-withstanding. In simple terms, people are eventually going to realize they have been bamboozled, have no future, a dramatically shortened life-span via GMO everything, forced vaccinations, water fluoridation and a cocktail of exotic metals via Chemtrails among many other factors, have been psychologically programmed to desire material frivolities entailing their wage-enlsavement, all so that an extreme minority of our species, truly socio-pathic, psychotic and extremely self-interested, can lead an existence of material excess, of perceived Utopia. http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/02/01/numbing-out-of-america-public-apathy-explained/ Now if you were this group, and you foresaw this, well it would be prudent to mitigate, forestall and pre-empt this wouldn't it? How would you accomplish this? Well you would have to surveil the society, and you would certainly want to reduce their capacity for violence making, and you would eventually want to make it so you could just turn people off, shut them out, one by one, those who are the most egregious dissenters. We already see the moves to surveil, dis-arm, and monitor the populace but how do you "shut them off"? Easy, that's what the credit score, employment history and voluntary tell-all social media via Facebook is for. Chances are highly likely that if you harbor anti-establishment ideas, and you don't keep them to yourself, you will quickly find yourself alienated at your place of work, leading eventually to a loss of a job. Considering there is no real socio-economic safety-net once this inevitably happens you will need to run up a credit tab to continue to survive. Say goodbye to your credit-worthiness. The prospect of extricating yourself from this situation is extremely unlikely. Not only are potential employers including your credit score as a criterion for employment but property owners are also including it for prospective tenancy. Out of work for more than six months? See the article that follows. Why does your credit score mean anything? Because in a hierarchical society those lower in the strata, in this case property owners, seldom question the mandates handed down from upon high, in our case that would be Wall Street. Oh yes, they are going to do everything within their power to ensure that you continue to play their game. This is why the Occupy Movement was such a serious threat and was met with such an overtly violent response, the participants were advocating changing the game, dethroning the monetary masters. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-terrifying-reality-of-longterm-unemployment/274957/ Meanwhile, society in general is thoroughly programmed with ideas of moral correctness and "patriotic duty" via years and years of television viewing, (its called television programming for a reason) and any ideas along the lines of those expressed by say Ted Kaczynski (right click this link and open in new tab/window) will be met with heightened ridicule. So eventually, everyone who really actually sees what is going on is invariably pushed out of the system. No job, no income, no prospects for survival. You're shut down, turned off, just like that. In fact, you could set up an experiment to explore this. Tell your friends and family that you have serious reservations of the veracity of the spate of recent shootings and bombings as presented by the Mainstream Media, that you feel they are fabricated narratives to serve an agenda on the part of the ruling "Elite". See what kind of reception you receive. But to expedite the wherewithal of State Power to shut down dissenting voices you would need to create some kind of legal framework, that say, makes it possible to just whisk dissenters away, indefinitely, without telling anyone, without any form of due-process. Hmmmm, this sounds familiar, ah yes, the National Defense Authorization Act, NDAA, passed into law only recently, not with an objection from our sitting Murderer in Chief, Mr. Obomber, but with his specific request that American citizens on American soil be allowed to be assassinated as well. Well this is getting rather long, on to the articles: Source: http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/m3-reflections-on-the-massachusetts-marathon-massacre/
M3: Reflections on the Massachusetts Marathon Massacre
God do we Americans love spectacle… we just eat it up. Whether it’s a North Korean standoff, Mexican drug lords, or two young Chechen disaffected intellectuals roaming the streets of Cambridge ready to die rather than be tortured at Guantanamo, we just love spectacle and melodrama. Hollywood can’t keep up with reality! Actually, it can. It does. It creates our reality. You remember ARGO, right? Art is life. Well, most of our daily melodrama is produced and brought to you in large measure by Hollywood, the same ownership, the same investments, the same power players controlling the news, the press, the movies and the music. But, it still eludes the American public — you know, ‘Joe the plumber’ — how the political-military-security-entertainment complex all works in synchronized unison; how they constantly are setting us up for their imperial shenanigans and executing them nearly flawlessly – costumes, props, and all.
Anyone remember Dubya’s Axis of Evil or John McCain’s sudden love of the Beach Boys with his “bomb, bomb, bomb… bomb, bomb Iran?” Or what about those WMDs in Iraq and mushroom clouds hovering over New York, Washington and (O’s favorite resting place) Hawaii? And who will ever forget Osama the Saudi-Wonder-Boy, our erstwhile ally against that ever-looming Red Threat, a.k.a., Ivan-the-Terrible in Afghanistan? Or how about the Libyan Madman? Of course, the crazy Colonel had to be taken out with much drama and spectacle because he dared to suggest trading African oil for a newly minted African gold dinar rather than greenbacks? It was rather convenient to show other pretenders to the international monetary throne not to mess with Uncle Sam. And who can forget the televised manhunt with State and local police, ATF and FBI all tricked-out in their militarized riot-gear for a purported lone pre-pubescent shooter in the Connecticut woods? All spectacle, my friends. And brought to you live 24/7 courtesy of the same folks who profit from the very spectacles they produce. And, I do not distinguish here between producing the event and producing the spectacular media coverage of the event, the two become indistinguishable.
And now we have M3, the Massachusetts Marathon Massacre, allegedly perpetrated by two disaffected immigrant college students, Chechen no less… dangerous terrorist threats in their own right merely by ethnic association? So lets bring to bear all the various tools and weapons of the militarized security State at our imperial disposal. We will show the American public just how dangerous the homeland can be; and how good we are at finding the bad guys and taking them out… Geronimo! Why, the Boston police even brought in their own armored vehicles – tanks – to harass the wounded teenager into surrendering.
False flags and much chatter continues unabated to keep pressure on the American public while continuing to build up the internal security apparatus. And now all of a sudden there are terrorist plots popping up elsewhere, a planned train derailment in Canada with nothing less than an Iranian Al-Queda connection. Hmm, now isn’t that a rather convenient disclosure. Everyone, the overriding agenda has been set, and the players then do their parts as charged – TSA, ATF, FBI, state and local authorities, and of course, the media, to keep the pressure on. Now, I am not suggesting that Boston or 9/11 or anything else is a conspiracy perpetrated by our stately officials and their well-armed thugs. But still, there are questions that need be asked, and propaganda that is routinely delivered… by the pols, the snoops, the police, and the military, as well as by O’s secret army of homeland security forces… filtered, of course, through the press, a press corps itself owned by and beholding to the same cast of psychopaths.
But we further recognize, through this most recent and unfortunate bloodbath, that within the city walls all activity is and must remain well-monitored, not least by the ever-rolling cameras mounted on each and every street corner and warrantless wiretapping on cell and email. We must stay forever vigilant — ‘always be prepared’! Indeed, the monitoring and preparedness itself become self-justifying in light of such incidents; and perhaps that is the point. Whether or not some part of the hegemony had a hand in orchestrating this madness, it surely behooves them to play it up to the hilt, to make it spectacular! All the while, the increased security, surveillance and militarization of our ‘homeland’ retreats into a shadowy background as we remain enthralled and enraptured by the drama before us, forever vigilant of the the spectacles unfolding one after another in rapid succession. The expenditures on military and security, and the apparatchiks who control it all, can never be too extravagant when at any moment terror can strike at the heart of empire, and chaos loosed upon the land — the sacred homeland. The necessity of militarization, and the evaporation of “civil” rights, is granted without question or calculation of the costs.
No matter, we have got to stop the Reds, the Terrorists, the Islamists, the Chinese, the Mexican Druggies, the Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the North Koreans, the Iranian Theocrats, the Pakistani Pashtun, the Waco Wackos, the lunatic fringe, and any other regime, lone wolf, or self-described savior that threatens our “New American Century” and its sacred life-style. The owners of the means of production (of arms, entertainment, and consumables) will make certain of it. But who will stop the empire? What will stop this impervious machine, drone-ing on and on into the dark night of our planet and giving life to an emerging darkness in our own souls?
The answer, I think, is to be found in the repetitive cycles of nature, of return and renewal. Like the mythological Uruboros eating its own tale, Empire will consume itself in attempting to satisfy its diverse and ravenous appetites — for more oil, more resources, more consumers, more wage-slave laborers, more growth, more imperial expansion more control; the greed and hubris will consume itself. In this act of self-consumption, something new will emerge; but as in all natural cycles, the new will be an instantiation of the old. Nature will rectify the imbalance created by such artifice and seek to return itself to a balanced – homeostatic – condition.
Wait for it. Watch as it unleashes its own spectacle. Watch the earthquakes, the droughts, the vanishing of wildlife, the spoiling of the seas, the fouling of the air, the depletion of the soils, the melting of the ice caps, the storms, the floods, the vanishing coastlines. Watch the death, destruction, and disease as the spectacle unfolds and engulfs our cherished citadels of civilization. Watch the New American Century as it consumes itself in its ravenous acts of consumption; watch as the end approaches. Watch! And continue to tend your garden.
“Of all the tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”—C.S. Lewis
This is an all-out psy op at this point with bizarre claims of “double agents” and future attacks in the works. Having been caught with their pants down–where the younger Tsarnaev brother, Dzhokhar, was photographed at the scene with his backpack, which was completely different than those used in the bombings, and spent his week as a normal college student–and and now they are throwing in everything but the kitchen sink, including fantastic stories of him and his brother, Tameran, as “double agents”, which is nearly as ludicrous as the original story.
What we know is that Craft International was doing this for the DHS and that the operation was botched badly, where the internet has a blizzard of reports that take it apart, piece by piece. The agenda appears to have been to smother news about the Bush/Cheney and Obama/Biden administrations having been engaged in torture, the transfer of some of our most sophisticated weapons to Israel for use in an attack on Iran, the legitimization of the use of military forces to maintain law and order in violation of “Posse Comitatus”, and to create sympathy for Israel by suggesting that, “Now we know what they experience on a daily basis”.
That appears to have been the rationale for sending Israeli investigators and Israeli doctors to Boston, as though it were remotely necessary. Does anyone think they would know Boston better than local cops? or that Boston does not have abundant medical experts? Some were injured and killed, but consider the case of the man who lost his legs TWICE for the sake of a worthy cause. They apprehended the older brother and then later beat him to death. He was a boxer and his younger brother was a wrestler. Their parents and relatives are complaining that these were good kids, who were set up as patsies–and they appear to be right! Think “Ruby shoots Oswald”. Caught, they are trying to sow confusion on a massive scale. As “false flags” go, this was the Original Amateur Hour and the toothpaste is out of the tube.
This week’s terror attack in Boston is not the first incredible failure of intelligence and law enforcement America has suffered. By “incredible,” I mean exactly that, “not to be believed.”
Before the smoke had cleared, the Israel Lobby and DEBKA had identified “domestic terrorists with Mid-East connections” as the guilty parties. This, alone, was taken as a confirmation that a very real conspiracy was involved, this time the most obvious false flag terror attack yet.
Highest sources “weigh in” on Boston bombing
During 9/11, NORAD and the entire United States Air Force “vaporized” just like the FBI, DHS, and Boston PD security did. We’re getting used to it, being lied to and, frankly, being murdered as well.
Within minutes of the Boston attack, America’s intelligence and Special Operations community put their back-channel “round-robin” into motion. This is how America’s top intelligence operatives informally share sensitive information on threats.
Those with the highest access to both human and signals intelligence, those tasked with tracking and killing terrorists came to a very startling conclusion.
“An American agency was involved, our first guess is that it is the FBI.”
Had I asked this question three years ago and I did, I would have been called a “conspiracy theorist,” and, in fact, I was. Now I am told, “Duff, you were right all along, we feel like such idiots.”
Not only has CSPAN and The Washington Journal been inundated with calls from ordinary citizens raising concerns that the Boston bombing was a “false flag” that was designed to undermine our civil rights, but we have overwhelming proof that the young men accused of the crime were innocent, not only from their parents and relatives complaints they were being framed but from photos that show the younger brother leaving the area, probably wearing his back pack over his right shoulder:
We now have reports and video showing that the older brother, was captured alive and then beaten to death or run over by a car, while his younger brother, Dzhokhar,was shot in the throat, which means that he can no longer speak. How convenient! The older brother, Tameran, was a boxer and the younger a wrestler, who was active in school, including the drama club. Their parents are protesting loudly that they are innocent and have been framed, which is provable. This has become such a huge boondoggle that the feds want to shut down any further discussion about the Boston bombing:
In that video, he is obviously alive and well. He has been stripped naked and is being placed into a police car. When he is subsequently found dead, the claim is even being made that his brother ran him over with a car, which is about as absurd as it gets. A witness reports that he was run over by the police in an SUV, which would have to have been after his apprehension. His body is badly bruised and he appears to have suffered from a savage beating. Here is a photograph of Tameran, which contradicts the stories that the public is being sold:
Staged event does not inhibit lawmakers
That the brothers appear to be patsies and that the bombing was staged does not appear to have inhibited Republicans from demanding that the surviving brother be treated as an enemy combatant and be denied his rights as a United States citizen. Even Alan Dershowitz has observed that denying the suspect his Miranda rights jeopardizes any case that might be brought against him, assuming, of course, that any semblance of due process remains in this nation.
The fallacies that are being committed in the frenzy to convince the public that this was a “terrorist attack” and not a “false flag” include the selective use of evidence (known as “special pleading”), taking for granted that they were responsible (called “begging the question”) and tacitly endorsing the use of torture, even though it diminishes this nation and corrupts our moral standing in the world, which, in the past, has been our greatest safeguard against bona fide terrorist attacks.
G.O.P. Lawmakers Push to Have Boston Suspect Questioned as Enemy Combatant
WASHINGTON — Some Republican lawmakers want President Obama to declare the surviving Boston bombing suspect an enemy combatant in order to question him without a lawyer and other protections of the criminal justice system, intensifying a recurring debate over how to handle terrorism cases arising inside the United States.
But while the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a naturalized American citizen, is a Muslim, there is no known evidence suggesting that he is part of Al Qaeda. The United States is engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, not all Muslim extremists. As a result, the dispute is pushing beyond familiar arguments and into new territory.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, is among the earliest and most vocal proponents of declaring Mr. Tsarnaev an enemy combatant. Others include Senators Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and John McCain of Arizona, as well as Representative Peter T. King of New York, all also Republicans.
The Obama administration has said it thinks terrorism suspects arrested inside the United States should be handled exclusively in the criminal justice system. It has indicated no intention to do otherwise in Mr. Tsarnaev’s case, but the issue is taking on political currency, underscoring a major divide on national security legal policy.
Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that the laws of war did not apply to Mr. Tsarnaev and that there was so far no evidence that he was “part of any organized group, let alone Al Qaeda, the Taliban or one of their affiliates — the only organizations whose members are subject” to detention as a part of war.
“In the absence of such evidence, I know of no legal basis for his detention as an enemy combatant,” Mr. Levin said. “To hold the suspect as an enemy combatant under these circumstances would be contrary to our laws and may even jeopardize our efforts to prosecute him for his crimes.”
In an interview, Mr. Graham acknowledged that if no evidence were to emerge linking Mr. Tsarnaev to Al Qaeda, then he should not continue to be held as an enemy combatant. But he argued that given the need to swiftly find out if Mr. Tsarnaev knew of other planned attacks or terrorist operatives, the government could and should hold him as a combatant while it searched for any such links.
“You can’t hold every person who commits a terrorist attack as an enemy combatant, I agree with that,” Mr. Graham said. “But you have a right, with his radical Islamist ties and the fact that Chechens are all over the world fighting with Al Qaeda — I think you have a reasonable belief to go down that road, and it would be a big mistake not to go down that road. If we didn’t hold him for intelligence-gathering purposes, that would be unconscionable.”
One of the absurdities in this article is that the US is in collusion with Al Qaeda, which was a contrivance of our own CIA to assist in driving the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. We have lied so many times about Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein that the “official story” about 9/11 has become completely incoherent, where fake raids have been conducted to create the false impression that Osama was still alive in 2011, when he in fact died in Afghanistan in 2001. The public in the past has been gullible enough to buy this rubbish, but perhaps there is a chance that the Boston fiasco might awaken them from their dormant slumber, because, as John W. Whitehead observes, the fate of the nation hangs in the balance.
“Of all the tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”—C.S. Lewis Caught up in the televised drama of a military-style manhunt for the suspects in the Boston Marathon explosion, most Americans fail to realize that the world around them has been suddenly and jarringly shifted off its axis, that axis being the U.S. Constitution.
For those like myself who have studied emerging police states, the sight of a city placed under martial law—its citizens under house arrest (officials used the Orwellian phrase “shelter in place” to describe the mandatory lockdown), military-style helicopters equipped with thermal imaging devices buzzing the skies, tanks and armored vehicles on the streets, and snipers perched on rooftops, while thousands of black-garbed police swarmed the streets and SWAT teams carried out house-to-house searches in search of two young and seemingly unlikely bombing suspects—leaves us in a growing state of unease.
Mind you, these are no longer warning signs of a steadily encroaching police state. The police state has arrived.
Equally unnerving is the ease with which Americans welcomed the city-wide lockdown, the routine invasion of their privacy, and the dismantling of every constitutional right intended to serve as a bulwark against government abuses. Watching it unfold, I couldn’t help but think of Nazi Field Marshal Hermann Goering’s remarks during the Nuremberg trials. As Goering noted:
It is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.
As the events in Boston have made clear, it does indeed work the same in every country. The same propaganda and police state tactics that worked for Adolf Hitler 80 years ago continue to be employed with great success in a post-9/11 America.
Whatever the threat to so-called security—whether it’s rumored weapons of mass destruction, school shootings, or alleged acts of terrorism—it doesn’t take much for the American people to march in lockstep with the government’s dictates, even if it means submitting to martial law, having their homes searched, and being stripped of one’s constitutional rights at a moment’s notice.
As journalist Andrew O’Hehir observes in Salon:
In America after 9/11, we made a deal with the devil, or with Dick Cheney, which is much the same thing. We agreed to give up most of our enumerated rights and civil liberties (except for the sacrosanct Second Amendment, of course) in exchange for a lot of hyper-patriotic tough talk, the promise of “security” and the freedom to go on sitting on our asses and consuming whatever the hell we wanted to. Don’t look the other way and tell me that you signed a petition or voted for John Kerry or whatever. The fact is that whatever dignified private opinions you and I may hold, we did not do enough to stop it, and our constitutional rights are now deemed to be partial or provisional rather than absolute, do not necessarily apply to everyone, and can be revoked by the government at any time.
Particularly disheartening is the fact that Americans, consumed with the need for vengeance, seem even less concerned about protecting the rights of others, especially if those “others” happen to be of a different skin color or nationality. The public response to the manhunt, capture and subsequent treatment of brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is merely the latest example of America’s xenophobic mindset, which was also a driving force behind the roundup and detention of hundreds of Arab, South Asian and Muslim men following 9/11, internment camps that housed more than 18,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II, and the arrest and deportation of thousands of “radical” noncitizens during America’s first Red Scare.
Moreover, there has been little outcry over the Obama administration’s decision to deny 19-year-old U.S. citizen Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his due process rights and treat him as an enemy combatant, first off by interrogating him without reading him his Miranda rights (“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”).
Presently, under the public safety exception to the Miranda rule, if law enforcement agents believe a suspect has information that might reduce a substantial threat, they can wait to give the Miranda warning. For years now, however, the Obama administration has been lobbying to see this exception extended to all cases involving so-called terror suspects, including American citizens. Tsarnaev’s case may prove to be the game-changer. Yet as journalist Emily Bazelon points out for Slate: “Why should I care that no one’s reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights? When the law gets bent out of shape for him, it’s easier to bend out of shape for the rest of us.”
The U.S. Supreme Court rightly recognized in its 1966 ruling in Miranda v. Arizona that police officers must advise a suspect of his/her civil rights once the suspect has been taken into custody, because the police can and often do take advantage of the fact that most Americans don’t know their rights. There have been few exceptions to the Miranda rule over the last 40 years or so, and with good reason. However, if the Obama administration is allowed to scale back the Miranda rule, especially as it applies to U.S. citizens, it would be yet another dangerous expansion of government power at the expense of citizens’ civil rights.
This continual undermining of the rules that protect civil liberties, not to mention the incessant rush to judgment by politicians, members of the media and the public, will inevitably have far-reaching consequences on a populace that not only remains ignorant about their rights but is inclined to sacrifice their liberties for phantom promises of safety.
Moments after taking Tsarnaev into custody, the Boston Police Dept. tweeted “CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won.” Yet with Tsarnaev and his brother having been charged, tried and convicted by the government, the media and the police—all without ever having stepped foot inside a courtroom—it remains to be seen whether justice has indeed won.
The lesson for the rest of us is this: once a free people allows the government to make inroads into their freedoms or uses those same freedoms as bargaining chips for security, it quickly becomes a slippery slope to outright tyranny. And it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican at the helm, because the bureaucratic mindset on both sides of the aisle now seems to embody the same philosophy of authoritarian government. Increasingly, those on the left who once hailed Barack Obama as the antidote for restoring the numerous civil liberties that were lost or undermined as a result of Bush-era policies are finding themselves forced to acknowledge that threats to civil liberties are worse under Obama.
Clearly, the outlook for civil liberties under Obama grows bleaker by the day, from his embrace of indefinite detention for U.S. citizens and drone kill lists to warrantless surveillance of phone, email and internet communications, and prosecutions of government whistleblowers. Most recently, capitalizing on the nation’s heightened emotions, confusion and fear, government officials used the Boston Marathon tragedy as a means of extending the reach of the police state, starting with the House of Representatives’ overwhelming passage of the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which opens the door to greater internet surveillance by the government.
These troubling developments are the outward manifestations of an inner, philosophical shift underway in how the government views not only the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but “we the people,” as well. What this reflects is a move away from a government bound by the rule of law to one that seeks total control through the imposition of its own self-serving laws on the populace.
All the while, the American people remain largely oblivious to the looming threats to their freedoms, eager to be persuaded that the government can solve the problems that plague us—whether it be terrorism, an economic depression, an environmental disaster or even a flu epidemic. Yet having bought into the false notion that the government can ensure not only our safety but our happiness and will take care of us from cradle to grave—that is, from daycare centers to nursing homes, we have in actuality allowed ourselves to be bridled and turned into slaves at the bidding of a government that cares little for our freedoms or our happiness.
John W. Whitehead is an attorney and author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law and human rights.
Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
The Brothers Tsarnaev: The Lee Harvey Oswalds of the Boston bombings?
by Kevin Barret A speaker of Russian, he traveled to Russia and back on ultra-sensitive missions – supposedly without any spy services noticing. Yet it turns out that he was followed for years by the FBI! Framed for a murderous crime on a crowded street, exonerated by crime scene photographs, declared innocent by loved ones and by all who knew him, caught by police after being framed for “murdering a police officer,” gunned down by agents of the National Security State after his arrest to prevent him from proclaiming his innocence in court…haven’t we heard this story before? Are we talking about Lee Harvey Oswald – or the Brothers Tsarnaev? Fifty years ago, Lee Harvey Oswald was framed for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Today, the same National Security State that killed JFK still rules America, using the same tools of murder and deception. And it appears to have set up two “Oswalds” – Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – to take the blame for the Boston Marathon bombings. The parallels between Oswald and the brothers Tsarnaev are uncanny. First parallel: All three have been exonerated by crime scene photographs. Eyewitness testimony established that Oswald must have been on or near the ground floor of the Texas Book Depository – not the sixth floor “sniper’s nest” – when JFK was shot. This testimony is supported by a picture of Oswald standing in the street outside the Depository as the presidential motorcade goes by. Expert photographic analysis has revealed that the figure in this picture is Oswald, not Lovelady, as JFK assassination expert Dr. James Fetzer explains in his article “JFK Special: Oswald was in the Doorway, after all!“ The photographic record of the JFK assassination, like that of the Boston bombings, not only exonerates the patsy, but reveals who really committed the crime. Photographic evidence places Edward Lansdale, America’s top political assassinations specialist, and CIA agent and future president George H.W. Bush standing in front of the Texas School Book Depository running the JFK assassination. This evidence is discussed in the article “Did George H.W. Bush Coordinate a CIA Hit Team?” by Richard Hooke and James Fetzer. Photographs of the Boston bombing similarly exonerate Dzokhar Tsarnaev, who is seen in this photograph leaving after the bombing with his backpack still on. If Dzokhar Tsarnaev was framed, that means that his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was also framed. Crime scene photographs show us who really planted the bombs. The bomber was a member of a paramilitary operative team wearing black caps with identical skull logos. The photo below shows the bomber fleeing the crime scene without his backpack. That backpack has a white square on top. The paramilitary bomber is the only person in any of the photos with a backpack featuring that white square. Here is the same backpack after the explosion. So the Brothers Tsarnaev, like Lee Harvey Oswald, are innocent patsies. But Oswald, unlike the Brothers Tsarnaev, was able to speak for himself. After his arrest, and before being gunned down in the Dallas Police Department basement by CIA-linked mob hit-man Jack Ruby, Oswald said: “I’m a patsy.” The Brothers Tsarnaev may never be allowed to speak in their own defense; fifty years after Oswald’s “I’m a patsy,” the National Security State appears to have learned that lesson well. Indeed, the Israeli doctors tasked with treating Dzokhar Tsarnaev in the hospital reported that “he may never speak again.” (Why were Israeli doctors assigned an American national security case? Perhaps for the same reason that an Israeli team of terror specialists flew to Boston, on a trip organized before the bombing, to take charge of the “investigation.” After all, Israel is the global “A Team” of false-flag terrorism.) Dzokhar Tsarnaev did speak out, in a way, in his own defense – by endorsing 9/11 truth before he was framed for the bombing. Using his Twitter account, he wrote: “Idk why it’s hard for many of you to accept that 9/11 was an inside job.” That tweet, like Oswald’s “I’m a patsy,” may go down in history. It strongly suggests Dzokhar’s innocence. (Why would any Muslim who knew 9/11 was an inside job – as 80% of Muslims do, according to polls – want to commit terrorism whose only beneficiaries are Zionists and imperialists?) Though the Brothers Tsarnaev will not be allowed to defend themselves, their loved ones are doing it for them. Their mother, father, and aunt all say they are innocent patsies, framed by agents of the National Security state. Oswald’s girlfriend, Judith Vary Baker, has similarly exonerated Oswald. Listen to my interview with Judith Vary Baker at
http://www.americanfreedomradio.com/archive/Truth-Jihad-32k-111412.mp3 Another Tsarnaev-Oswald parallel: They were Russian speakers who were shadowed for years by the FBI before being framed for a spectacular crime. Oswald was not only shadowed by the FBI, he was actually reporting to the FBI on a regular basis during the years between his return from Russia in 1961 and his murder on November 24th, 1963. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, his parents tell us, was shadowed for years by the FBI before being set up as the patsy in the Boston Marathon bombings. The FBI, we may recall, is the agency developed by arch-criminal J.Edgar Hoover as America’s gestapo. Though most low-level FBI agents are honest, the higher-ups are psychopathic criminals –mobsters with badges. The FBI organized the plot and built the bomb that devastated the World Trade Center in 1993. FBI informant Emad Salem, who hatched the plot and delivered the bomb as part of his FBI duties, secretly recorded a conversation with his FBI handler protesting about how the FBI delivered a real bomb, not a dummy bomb as promised. It is well known, even among mainstream scholars, that the FBI has organized virtually every “Muslim terrorist” incident of the past decade. As Judge Napolitano admitted on Fox TV, the FBI has been involved in at least 17 false-flag plots to attack America since 9/11. Another uncanny parallel between Lee Harvey Oswald and Tamerlan Tsarnaev is that both were earmarked “enemies” (Tsarnaev a “radical Muslim,” Oswald a “communist”) who traveled to Russia on mysterious errands – and both, according to official pronouncements, managed to pass completely undetected by the national security apparatus of both nations! In reality, both were being run by US federal agencies – Oswald to feed top secret U2 data to the Russians to make the fake U2 shootdown plausible and destroy Eisenhower’s detente; and Tsarnaev to interface with CIA-Mossad assets in the “Chechen al-Qaeda community." “Al-Qaeda-linked radical Muslims” in Chechnya are allies, not enemies, of the US. Their “terrorism” is entirely directed at Russia, and they are armed, trained, and sent on their missions by the US government. As I wrote in a recent article, the correct translation of “al-Qaeda” is “The CIA Database.” So if Dzokhar Tsarnaev was a terrorist – which seems unlikely – he was part of a group controlled by US government agencies. But it seems much more probable that Tsarnaev was an Oswald-style patsy: A pawn on the grand chessboard who was deemed expendable, arrested, and then murdered to keep him from talking. Like Oswald, who was murdered in the Dallas police station while in custody, it appears that both Tsarnaev brothers were in perfectly good health when they were arrested – and then were shot after their arrests. Dzokhar Tsarnaev’s aunt has positively identified Dzokhar as the “naked man” arrested by Boston police, uninjured and in perfectly good health. And helicopter videos show Dzhokhar Tsarnaev looking healthy and uninjured as he climbs out of the boat he was hiding in. (The government says he was critically wounded – but look at the images yourself and decide.) Bottom line: The US National Security State and its Israeli handlers – not the Brothers Tsarnaev – is the real perpetrator of the Boston bombings…and the real enemy of the American people. The complete lockdown of Boston, which removed eyewitnesses from the streets and allowed the frame-ups and shootings of the Brothers Tsarnaev, is a taste of the kind of martial law and draconian repression that is in store for the American people if they do not rise up in rebellion against the criminals posing as their guardians.
