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Up From Imperialism: How to End the Terrorist Threat and Return to Normalcy

Monday December 7, 2015

The San Bernardino massacre, in which a seemingly harmless county worker and his wife murdered 14 people in cold blood and wounded 21 others, marks a new phase in the cycle of war and repression that characterizes the post-9/11 era. The authorities recognize this, and they are moving swiftly to take advantage of their opportunity. As Rahm Emmanuel famously put it:

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.

On the left as well as the right, the cry goes up: Give the government more power! Protect us! Oh, and there’s always this old standby: Bombs away!

As Jeh Johnson, Homeland Security chieftain, put it to the New York Times: “We have moved to an entirely new phase in the global terrorist threat and in our homeland security efforts.” Terrorists have “in effect outsourced attempts to attack our homeland. We’ve seen this not just here but in other places. This requires a whole new approach, in my view.”
read on...

Obama Speech: Don't Give In To Fear...But Be Scared To Death

Monday December 7, 2015

President Obama's address to the nation last night urged Americans to not give in to fear, all the while he stoked fear of terrorist threats all around. He outlined four components to his strategy to fight terrorism that looked like what he had been doing all along, seemingly to no avail. He praised American exceptionalism. Then he said he wanted to take the guns from Americans on the government "no-fly" list -- even though we know that due to government incompetence thousands are on the list with no ties to terrorism whatsoever. More on Obama's sly propagandism on today's Liberty Report...
read on...

Will the IRS Take Your Passport?

Sunday December 6, 2015

A little-noticed provision in the highway funding bill Congress passed this week threatens a right most Americans take for granted: the right to travel abroad. The provision in question gives the Internal Revenue Service the authority to revoke the passport of anyone the IRS claims owes more than $50,000 in back taxes.

Congress is giving the IRS this new power because a decline in gas tax receipts has bankrupted the federal highway trust fund. Of course, Congress would rather squeeze more money from the American people than reduce spending, repeal costly regulations, or return responsibility for highway construction to the states, local governments, and the private sector. On the other hand, most in Congress fear the political consequences of raising gas, or other, taxes. Giving the IRS new powers allows politicians to increase government revenue without having to increase tax rates. Some even brag about how they are “cracking down on tax cheats.”
read on...

‘No Gun for You!’: Obama’s ‘Soup Nazi’ Gun Control Proposal

Sunday December 6, 2015

The Soup Nazi character in the Seinfeld television show sells, at his take-out restaurant, soup that some people consider the best in New York City. But, there is a catch. Customers placing their orders at the restaurant’s counter are in fear that one mistake in phrasing or some other minor misstep will draw the ire of the Soup Nazi along with his decree “No soup for you!”

In a CBS television interview the day of the killings in San Bernardino, California, President Barack Obama effectively proposed giving an unknown number of nameless bureaucrats arbitrary “Soup Nazi” power to decide which individuals in America may or may not possess or obtain guns. If Obama’s proposal becomes law, one bureaucrat, based on the flimsiest of reason or an outright mistake, could summarily decree an individual barred from gun ownership. “No gun for you!”

Here is what Obama, in his own words, recommends in the Wednesday interview:

And for those who are concerned about terrorism, some may be aware of the fact that we have a no-fly list where people can't get on planes, but those same people who we don't allow to fly could go into a store right now in the United States and buy a firearm and there's nothing that we can do to stop them. That's a law that needs to be changed.

The next day, a vote was held in the US Senate regarding an amendment offered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) that would, in line with Obama’s recommendation, allow the US government to decree that individuals with some supposed connection to a terrorism threat are barred from accessing guns. By a 54 to 45 vote, senators voted not to move forward with the amendment.
read on...

Are We In A Clash Of Civilizations?

Sunday December 6, 2015

The credibility of all American politicians now requires acknowledging that America is engaged in a great war for survival – “the war against Islam.” Fear of “radical Islamic terrorists” requires our undivided attention. We’re to believe that the ugly and vicious violence of a very small percentage of the 1.7 billion Muslims around the world, without an army, navy, or air force, is on the verge of engulfing America and Western civilization. The claim is that the Western concept of Christianity, liberty, and free markets is threatened. If this is so, it speaks more about the weak support for these values than for the strength of a small group claiming to speak for all of Islam. It may not make much sense, but it provokes the fear required for war-mongering.
read on...

Are We in a Clash of Civilizations?

Saturday December 5, 2015

It is the extremists on both sides -- the radical Islamists and the neocons at home -- who are pushing a clash of civilizations to suit their own agendas, says Ron Paul in this brand new address. The idea that the western, "Christian" world is at a war to the death with Islam is a fantasy in the minds of both sides. The great danger is that this tiny minority on both sides can make headway, each earning its own recruits to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. They must be resisted. We must cling to the ideas of liberty, peace, and prosperity...
read on...

War With Russia or With ISIS: What Ever Happened to Peace?

Saturday December 5, 2015

According to the Nation magazine and many others, there are two options available to the US government. One is increased hostility perhaps leading to nuclear war with Russia. The other is a joint US-Russia-and-others war on ISIS.

Many in the United States who generally oppose war and who look for information outside the US corporate media manage to recognize the US focus on overthrowing the Syrian government, with Iran next on the list.

They notice the lack of US concern over Saudi and Turkish assistance to ISIS. And at least in the backs of their minds they remember that the destruction of Iraq was the critical ingredient in the creation of ISIS. But they've been as frightened by the beheading videos as any Donald Trump fanatic screaming for the eradication of Muslims -- all right, maybe a bit less frightened, but still very frightened.

So they find refuge in the idea that Russia really wants to destroy ISIS, and they urge the United States to help. The alternative of war with Russia is unthinkable. But why in the world should that be the only alternative?
read on...

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: 'Is Overthrowing the Syrian Government Worth Risking Nuclear War with Russia?'

Friday December 4, 2015

US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) is fast becoming one of the the most interesting Members of Congress. A Captain in the US Army National Guard, she deployed twice overseas to the Middle East, including to Iraq in 2004. 

In her first term as a Member of Congress, Rep. Gabbard sits on the influential Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees. House Democratic leadership may have thought seating a female combat veteran on these committees would add a politically-useful militaristic voice to their stable. If that is the case, they miscalculated in a major way.
read on...

Think Before You Rush to War!

Friday December 4, 2015

Concentration of forces is the most basic law of military science. Victory on the battlefield is won by amassing as many troops as possible at the key point of attack, or ‘schwerpunkt,’ as it’s known in German.

Unfortunately, the amateur strategists in the White House seem to have been studying social anthropology and women’s issues instead of basic military science. What they want is, to use the term coined by Russian poet Yevtuschenko, a half war.

This week, Pentagon chief Ash Carter, announced the US would send about 200 more special forces troops to Iraq and Syrian to fight the Islamic State. After vowing not to send troops to the Mideast, President Obama has by now deployed 3,500 new US soldiers to Iraq for “training.”
read on...

After 13 Years in Gitmo, Pentagon Says Detainee is Case of ‘Mistaken Identity’

Friday December 4, 2015

Mustafa Abd-al-Qawi Abd-al-Aziz al-Shamiri was captured in 2002 and believed then to be a major al Qaeda facilitator or courier, or maybe a trainer, according to the Department of Defense.

He was interrogated “vigorously” and when he did not admit to those activities and did not supply detailed, high level information on al Qaeda, was thrown away, without charge, into America’s offshore penal colony at Guantanamo Bay.

For 13 years.

Now, desiring after 13 years to reduce the prison population at Gitmo, the Department of Defense says al-Shamiri’s imprisonment was all a simply mistake of confused identity. In the Kafkaesque world America created post-9/11, al-Shamiri could not answer his torturers because he had no knowledge of what they were demanding from him. His silence was taken as insolence, and he was punished accordingly.

For 13 years.

Al-Shamiri is now age 37. He spent about one third of his entire life in Gitmo because of a mistake. And if somehow you are not human enough to be moved by that alone, perhaps you can care about the $2.7 million per prisoner per year it costs the U.S. to keep a person in Guantanamo.
read on...