Bonzie Bean Blog

Freeman finds himself within the borders claimed by a government. This human being decides he does not want to participate in the government organization anymore, so he quits. He then finds a nice plot of "public" property and claims it as his own. He is quickly confronted with a government participant named Citizen, who informs him that the land belongs to the government, and he is trespassing.

Freeman points out that the land is not owned, and so he has claimed it from nature as his own. If this Mr. Government person indeed has first claim on it, then let him show up and prove his claim. Citizen then informs Freeman that there is no "Mr. Government person," and that the government is made up of all of its participants. These participants pay taxes, and so they are the rightful owners of this land, and they all (or at least most of them) say you are trespassing, so clear off.

But Freeman is not so easily moved. Citizen seems to believe that the imaginary organization called government (Yes, it is no more than an intangible, imaginary construct.) can actually claim the right to hold a piece of nature’s resources as if it possessed the rights of an actual human being. Freeman points out, quite correctly, that imaginary creations cannot claim rights equal to that of an actual human being, and so if Citizen is actually saying that Freeman cannot stay here because an imaginary entity has already claimed this land, then Freeman is afraid that Citizen is the one who must leave, as he is the trespasser upon Freeman’s justly acquired property.

But Citizen continues to insist that millions of tax-paying humans have decided that Freeman cannot just appropriate this land that has been declared public, because all those human beings are joint owners. Freeman points out that no human being, or group of human beings, can arbitrarily claim land that they are not using or have never seen as their own, or else the first person to lay claim to the entire planet would rule over all humanity. Every human being has the right to exist upon the Earth, and it is imperative that he be able to claim unused natural resources as his own in order to survive. This right cannot be logically overridden by the supposed rights of a fictional character, nor can it be justly overridden through the aggressive force of the many against the few.

Citizen wishes to convince Freeman that the edicts of government overrule the laws of nature. Citizen does not want to give credence to the idea of natural law. He wants to believe that government is an idea that rules human beings, and not the other way around. Citizen believes that whatever the majority holds to be just, is de facto just. Citizen is a very deluded individual, and Freeman is having none of it.

Citizen then points a gun at Freeman, and the truth of the matter is revealed.

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The Roman poet Juvenal (circa 100 A.D.) wrote regarding the way latter-day Roman emperors retained power and control over the masses that were seemingly more than happy to obsess themselves with trivialities and self-indulgences while their once-great-and-powerful empire collapsed before their very eyes. He wrote:

“Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions–everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.”

I submit that a good many in America are, like Rome of old, carelessly frittering away their God-given liberties, foolishly clamoring for nothing more than government handouts and never-ending entertainment. Millions and millions of Americans (especially males) are literally intoxicated with sports. Sports are no longer a great American pastime; they are now a great American obsession.

Mind you, this writer has been a sports fan all of his life, but for me, no sport will ever interfere with anything that is important, and I am not going to plan my whole universe around any of it. If it is convenient, I will watch. If it’s not, I will read about it in the sports section of the newspaper. And I’m certainly not going to spend my hard-earned money following any sports team (even those I like) all over the country like some rock band groupie.

I am not talking about sports in general; I am talking about the way many American men have allowed sports to control and dominate their lives. With many, sports are not just a hobby; they are a religion. I cannot count the number of conversations between men that I overhear in restaurants, airplanes, boardrooms, and, yes, even church houses, in which every man in the circle is literally consumed with all sorts of sports facts, information, and opinions. In many such discussions, these men will talk about nothing else. To these men, there is absolutely nothing in the world more important than the latest sports score, announcement, or trade. NOTHING!

And there is also a very real psychological pitfall associated with a man’s intoxication with sports. I submit that an obsession with sports gives men a false sense of masculinity and actually serves to steal true manhood from them.

For example, it used to be when men stripped their shirts off and painted their faces, they were heading to the battlefield to kill the tyrant’s troops. Now they are headed off to the sports coliseum to watch a football game. A man’s ego and machismo was once used to protect his family and freedom; now it’s used to tout batting averages and box scores. The fact is, if we could get the average American male to get as exercised and energized about defending the historic principles upon which liberty and Western Civilization are built as he is in defending his favorite quarterback or NASCAR driver, our country would not be in the shape it is in today.

The sad reality is that much of today’s masculinity is experienced only vicariously through a variety of sports teams and personalities. Instead of personally flexing our muscles for God and country, freedom and liberty, or home and hearth, we punch the air and beat our chests over touchdowns and home runs (even though we had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with them ourselves). Instead of getting in the face of these would-be tyrants in Washington, D.C., who are doing everything they can to steal the American dream, we get in the face of the poor umpire who makes a bad call or the Little League coach who doesn’t play my son enough. Our happiness, well-being, and mood are not determined by anything personally achieved (or lost), but by what others accomplished (or didn’t accomplish) at the ball park. Whether our children inherit a land of liberty and freedom does not seem nearly as important as whether they make the starting lineup on the football team.

Add to an epidemic obsession with sports the demand for more and more handouts from Big Brother and the outlook for liberty is not good. Everywhere we turn, we seem to hear people clamoring for government to give them more and more. They expect government to supply their every need and meet their every demand. They then have the gall to turn around and say, “God bless America: land of the free”?

Ladies and gentlemen, one cannot have it both ways. If we expect government to be our supplier, we cannot expect that it will not become our master. Always remember this: government has nothing to give except that it first takes it from someone else. Every dollar and every job that government gives is first taken from someone else. Furthermore, every job given to government is another freedom–and another dollar–taken from the citizenry. Every government job brings with it a restriction, a prohibition, a regulation, an inspection, a fee, a tax, an assessment, etc. As government grows, freedom shrinks. As government spends, wealth shrinks. And as government hires, opportunity shrinks.

Most historians agree with Juvenal that the mighty Roman Empire collapsed from within due to a morally reckless, selfish, pleasure-crazed, sports-obsessed, bread and circus society that willingly surrendered the principles of self-government to an insatiable central government that, through perpetual wars and incessant handouts, destroyed a once-great republic.

By all appearances, the bread and circus society has reared its ugly head in America. And make no mistake about it: if the people of the United States do not quickly repent of this madness, the consequences will be just as destructive for our once-great republic as it was for Rome.

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Interview with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary US Treasury, Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Professor of Political Economy Center for Strategic and International Studies Georgetown University Washington DC.

Question:  Dr. Roberts,  the United States is regarded as the most successful state in the world today. What is responsible for American success?

Dr. Roberts:  Propaganda. If truth be known, the US is a failed state. More about that later. The US owes its image of success to: (1) the vast lands and mineral resources that the US “liberated” with violence from the native inhabitants, (2) Europe’s, especially Great Britain’s, self-destruction in World War I and World War II, and (3) the economic destruction of Russia and most of Asia by communism or socialism. 

After World War II, the US took the reserve currency role from Great Britain. This made the US dollar the world money and permitted the US to pay its import bills in its own currency. World War II’s destruction of the other industrialized countries left the US as the only country capable of supplying products to world markets. This historical happenstance created among Americans the impression that they were a favored people. Today the militarist neoconservatives speak of the United States as “the indispensable nation.”  In other words, Americans are above all others, except, of course, Israelis.

To American eyes a vague “terrorist threat,” a creation of their own government, is sufficient justification for naked aggression against Muslim peoples and for an agenda of world hegemony.

This hubristic attitude explains why among most Americans there is no remorse over the one million Iraqis killed and the four million Iraqis displaced by a US invasion and occupation that were based entirely on lies and deception. It explains why there is no remorse among most Americans for the countless numbers of Afghans who have been cavalierly murdered by the US military, or for the Pakistani civilians murdered by US drones and “soldiers” sitting in front of video screens. It explains why there is no outrage among Americans when the Israelis bomb Lebanese civilians and Gaza civilians.  No one in the world will believe that Israel’s latest act of barbarity, the murderous attack on the international aid flotilla to Gaza, was not cleared with Israel’s American enabler.

Question:  You said that the US was a failed state. How can that be? What do you mean?

Roberts:  The war on terror, invented by the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney regime, destroyed the US Constitution and the civil liberties that the Constitution embodies. The Bill of Rights has been eviscerated. The Obama regime has institutionalized the Bush/Cheney assault on American liberty. Today, no American has any rights if he or she is accused of “terrorist” activity. The Obama regime has expanded the vague definition of “terrorist activity” to include “domestic extremist,” another undefined and vague category subject to the government’s discretion.  In short, a “terrorist” or a “domestic extremist” is anyone who dissents from a policy or a practice that the US government regards as necessary for its agenda of world hegemony.

Unlike some countries, the US is not an ethic group. It is a collection of diverse peoples united under the Constitution. When the Constitution was destroyed, the US ceased to exist. What exists today are power centers that are unaccountable. Elections mean nothing, as both parties are dependent on the same powerful interest groups for campaign funds. The most powerful interest groups are the military/security complex, which includes the Pentagon, the CIA, and the corporations that service them, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, the oil industry that is destroying the Gulf of Mexico, Wall Street (investment banks and hedge funds), the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, and the agri-companies that produce food of questionable content.

These corporate powers comprise an oligarchy that cannot be dislodged by voting. Ever since “globalism” was enacted into law, the Democrats have been dependent on the same corporate sources of income as the Republicans, because globalism destroyed the labor unions. Consequently, there is no difference between  the Republicans and Democrats, or no meaningful difference.

The “war on terror” completed the constitutional/legal failure of the US. The US has also failed economically. Under Wall Street pressure for short-term profits, US corporations have moved offshore their production for US consumer markets. The result has been to move US GDP and millions of well-paid US jobs to countries, such as China and India, where labor and professional expertise are cheap. This practice has been going on since about 1990.

After 20 years of offshoring US production, which destroyed American jobs and federal, state and local tax base, the US unemployment rate, as measured by US government methodology in 1980, is over 20 percent. The ladders of upward mobility have been dismantled. Millions of young Americans with university degrees are employed as waitresses and bartenders. Foreign enrollment comprises a larger and larger percentage of US universities as the American population finds that a university degree has been negated by the offshoring of the jobs that the graduates expected.

When US offshored production re-enters the US as imports, the trade balance deteriorates. Foreigners use their surplus dollars to purchase existing US assets.

Consequently, dividends, interest, capital gains, tolls from toll roads, rents, and profits, now flow abroad to foreign owners, thus increasing the pressure on the US dollar. The US has been able to survive the mounting claims of foreigners against US GDP because the US dollar is the reserve currency. However, the large US budget and trade deficits will put pressures on the dollar that will become too extreme for the dollar to be able to sustain this role. When the dollar fails, the US population will be impoverished.

The US is heavily indebted, both the government and the citizens. Over the last decade there has been no growth in family income. The US economy was kept going through the expansion of consumer debt. Now consumers are so heavily indebted that they cannot borrow more. This means that the main driving force of the US economy, consumer demand, cannot increase. As consumer demand comprises 70% of the economy, when consumer demand cannot increase, there can be no economic recovery.

The US is a failed state also because there is no accountability to the people by corporations or by government at any level, whether state, local, or federal. British Petroleum is destroying the Gulf of Mexico. The US government has done nothing. The Obama regime’s response to the crisis is more irresponsible than the Bush regime’s response to Hurricane Katrina. Wetlands and fisheries are being destroyed by unregulated capitalist greed and by a government that treats the environment with contempt. The tourist economy of Florida is being destroyed. The external costs of drilling in deep waters exceeds the net worth of the oil industry. As a result of the failure of the American state, the oil industry is destroying one of the world’s most valuable ecological systems.

Question:  What can be done?

Roberts:  The American people are lost in la-la land. They have no idea that their civil liberties have been forfeited. They are only gradually learning that their economic future is compromised. They have little idea of the world’s growing hatred of Americans for their destruction of other peoples. In short, Americans are full of themselves. They have no idea of the disasters that their ignorance and inhumanity have brought upon themselves and upon the world.

Much of the world, looking at a country that appears both stupid and inhumane, wonders at Americans’ fine opinion of themselves. Is America the virtuous “indispensable nation” of neoconservative propaganda, or is America a plague upon the world?

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I wonder how many of you remember the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship the Achille Lauro way back in October 1985?

Four members of the Palestine Liberation Front took control of the liner off Egypt as she was sailing from Alexandria to Port Said.

It was a bungled operation in which the hijackers killed disabled Jewish-American passenger Leon Klinghoffer and then threw his body overboard.

The incident created headlines around the world and polarized people over the Palestinian cause.

It also prompted the law makers to create new legislation making it an international crime for anyone to take a ship by force.

And this is the reason for the brief history lesson – under article 3 of the Rome Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation of 1988, it is an international crime for any person to seize or exercise control over a ship by force, and also a crime to injure or kill any person in the process.

The treaty necessarily adopts a strict approach. One cannot attack a ship and then claim self-defence if the people on board resist the unlawful use of violence.

In other words, according to international law, the actions of the Israeli military were beyond the law and those involved should be treated no differently than, say, the Somali pirates who are also in the habit of boarding ships by force.

Any rights to self defence in such dramatic circumstances rests purely with the passengers and crew on board. Under international maritime law you are legally entitled to resist unlawful capture, abduction and detention.

What those on board the Freedom Flotilla did was perfectly legal. I believe they acted with great courage in the face of heavily armed IDF commandos, while others might have thought their actions reckless.

Whatever your view, a number paid the ultimate price for their international right to resist.

Israel now stands virtually alone having exposed itself as a pariah state.

I wrote an article last year calling them the Pirates of the Mediterranean after they had illegally boarded other aid ships, kidnapping crew and passengers.

Now I want you to ask yourself this question … if a group of Somali pirates had forced their way onto half a dozen humanitarian aid ships from the West, slaughtering around nine or 10 people and injuring scores more what do you think the international reaction would have been?

Let me tell you. A NATO task force would by now be steaming towards the Horn of Africa accompanied by a couple of drones and various members of the press to record the occasion. (On a point of interest the Achille Lauro sank in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia in 1994.)

So why is Israel allowed to get away with murder? In a pre-meditated act the Zionist State showed once again its total disregard for human life – and international law.

There were pensioners, women and children on board those ships which were carrying bags of cement, electric wheelchairs, toys, medicines and water purifiers for Gaza’s people.

Realizing Israel had shot itself in the foot, the vile state’s leader Binyamin Netanyahu then started shooting from the lip.

He asked us to believe that his troops were acting in self-defence. And then, 24 hours later, given time to come up with more lies he told the world that the soldiers were armed with paintballs and had not expected to use their weapons. Not content with insulting our intelligence he said his nice, cuddly IDF folk had only boarded the boats to carry out an inspection and inventory.

Then backing him up was Mark Regev, the Zionist State’s political Pinocchio. He reckons these evil-doers on board the boats grabbed the IDF’s real guns and used them to fire on the soldiers.

These are the same soldiers that come from an elite, highly trained, crack squad … hmm Mr Regev, if that’s the case why would you send in the A-Team if they were just going to do an inventory?

And if they were such a hot squad how did a bunch of civilians manage to overpower them and give them a good slap?

Either Israeli soldiers fight like a bunch of old women – which Hizb’Allah says they do – or they intended to massacre those on board to make sure that no other peace activists get involved in trying to help the Palestinian people of Gaza.

Well if that was the aim then it has failed. As I write this some heroic friends of mine from the Free Gaza Movement are bound for Gaza now onboard the appropriately named ship Rachel Corrie.

In our thousands in our millions … today we are all Palestinians.

Journalist Yvonne Ridley is the European President of the International Muslim Womens Union, and a committed peace activist who was on the first boat to break the siege of Gaza in 2008.

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Sunday’s NYT, gearing up for Memorial Day, carries a leading front-page story direct from the Afghan front, complete with photos. Does it tell of the 1000 Americans who have perished there in America’s longest war or the unknown number of innocent Afghanis to fall or the many more on both sides to be gruesomely injured or the devastation visited on the poor and backward regions of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan by the firepower of the mightiest war machine the world has yet to produce? Absolutely not.

Instead we are treated to a feel-good story about female Marines “bonding” with their Afghan sisters, under the heading “In Camouflage or Veil, a Fragile Bond.” Did a NYT writer dream up that sappy headline or did it come from a basement office in the Pentagon or Langley where prowar psyops against the U.S. citizenry are concocted? Or can such a distinction even be drawn, with journalistic ambition and careerism run wild? In my edition of the paper of record the story was adorned with a photo of a young Marine woman holding an Afghan toddler. How nice these warriors are. No killing for them. Just handing out ibuprofen, “giggling” (sic) with Afghan women and playing with kids.

More, we find that the women have done this in the face of skepticism from some of the male commanding officers! Not only are the Marines’ fearless females helping the benighted Afghan women and providing fine examples of women imperial warriors, they are striking a blow against male chauvinism in the Imperial army. These humanitarian wars are almost too good to be true. No wonder Medea Benjamin disclosed a soft spot in her very neoliberal heart for Obama’s wars.

The NYT was not alone. Not to be outdone, the Washington Post ran a piece under the heading “Life Lessons the Afghanistan War Taught Me,” wherein we are treated to the usual clichés about war’s pinup girls, rough weather and army food. But the writer reminds us forcefully that “American soldiers are here by choice. They want to make a difference for Afghans and provide security for the folks back home.” How lucky that the Post did not find one of the many soldiers who hate the wars and got trapped into them with multiple tours of duty. Just the luck of the draw, one might guess.

Out West, the LA Times commissioned a piece by a returned Iraqi vet who writes about a fallen comrade after reminding us why they were sent to that ravaged country, namely to “work on projects aimed at rebuilding Iraq and winning hearts and minds … to rebuild schools, repair the power grid and pass out Beanie Babies.” No mention of who caused the destruction in the first place or the lies that were fed to soldiers and citizens alike to con them into that ugly war. No, just humanitarian efforts by well-meaning Americans. And so it goes. There will be more of the same tomorrow from the NYT to NPR, which has a special affinity for this kind of stuff, no doubt because its clientele is more open to imperialism of the humanitarian variety. And although there is an enormous percentage of our citizenry opposed to these wars, on both Left and Right and in the middle,  expect none of them to gain access to the mainstream media to voice their opposition, much less rage at the death and destruction wrought by the Empire to preserve its hegemony.

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Respected Middle East expert and former BBC presenter Alan Hart has broken his silence on 9/11, by revealing that the world’s most prominent civil engineering company told him directly that the collapse of the twin towers was a controlled demolition.

Speaking on the Kevin Barrett show yesterday, Hart said he thought the 9/11 attack probably started as a Muslim operation headed up by Osama Bin Laden but that the plot was subsequently hijacked and carried out by Mossad agents in collusion with elements of the CIA, adding that since its formation, Israel has penetrated every Arab government and terrorist organization.

“My guess is that at an early point they said to the bad guys in the CIA – hey this operation’s running what do we do, and the zionists and the neo-cons said let’s use it,” said Hart, making reference to how top neo-cons like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and their fellow Project For a New American Century authors had called for a “catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor,” the year before 9/11.

“The twin towers were brought down by a controlled ground explosion, not the planes,” said Hart, adding that this view was based on his close friendship with consultants who work with the world’s leading civil engineering and construction firm.

Hart asked the company to study the collapse of the twin towers, after which they told him directly, “There’s absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the towers were brought down by a controlled ground explosion.”

Hart then explained how the five dancing Israelis seen celebrating the attack on the World Trade Center in New Jersey as it unfolded, who turned out to be Mossad agents, proves at at a minimum Israel knew the attack was going to happen. Hart went further in speculating that the planes had been fitted with transponders and that the Israelis were guiding them in to the towers.

Host Barrett pointed out that to carry out the successful controlled demolition of three of the biggest buildings in history, the conspirators would have to ensure that they were hit, making the use of remote controlled airliners a distinct possibility. In addition, Barrett mentioned the fact that he had interviewed numerous pilots who dismissed the chances of accurately guiding a huge commercial airliner into a building while flying at sea level at around 600 miles per hour, especially considering the alleged 9/11 hijackers struggled to even fly basic Cessna light aircraft.

“Sounding a chilling note, Hart added that the U.S. is in grave danger of an Israeli-instigated false-flag nuclear attack, perhaps using an American nuclear weapon stolen from Minot Air Force Base during the “loose nukes” rogue operation of August, 2007. The motive would be to trigger a U.S. war with Iran, and perhaps to finish the ethnic cleansing of Palestine under cover of war–which Hart is convinced the Zionists are planning to do as soon as the opportunity presents itself,” writes host Barratt.

Given his biography and standing, Hart’s comments are not to be taken lightly. Hart is a former Middle East Chief Correspondent for ITN News and has also presented for BBC Panorama specializing in the Middle East. He was also a war reporter in Vietnam and the first journalist to reach Suez Canal with the Israeli army in 1967. Over the decades, Hart has developed close relationships with numerous high profile political figures, including the Shah of Iran, Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres.

Hart has been a successful author for years and has no reason to fabricate the fact that a top construction firm told him point blank that the towers were brought down in a controlled demolition.

In forwarding this information, Hart joins legions of other credible experts who to some extent or other have all publicly challenged the official 9/11 story, with many outright stating that the attacks were an inside job, people like 20-year decorated CIA veteran Robert Baer, who told a radio host that “the evidence points at” 9/11 having had aspects of being an inside job.

In addition, no less than 1198 architectural and engineering specialists have signed a petition demanding Congress re-open an official investigation into the 9/11 attack and the collapse of the twin towers.

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Today, the number of Americans who are able to financially survive without any reliance on the U.S. government whatsoever is declining at a staggering rate.  Whether it is through direct handouts, entitlement programs, student loans, government bailouts, government contracts or direct employment, the truth is that now a solid majority of the American people are at least partially dependent on the federal government for their economic survival.  The sad thing is that the majority of the American people say that there is too much government in their lives when opinion polls are taken, but if you try to take the government check that they are getting away from them those same people will scream bloody murder.  But the truth is that it is getting to be really, really hard to be completely independent of the U.S. government economically.  That is because the U.S. government has their hands in almost everything.  The ideal of a “limited federal government” has long since faded away.  Very few people seem to believe in it anymore.  Instead, Americans today look to the federal government as the answer to all of our problems, as the provider of all of our needs, and as the regulator of every single detail of our lives. 

The U.S. government has become the “Big Mother” that we all scramble to for a handout when we get into trouble.

When you sit down and really analyze it, you quickly realize that there is no way that the U.S. government can be extricated from the U.S. economy now.  Instead of the free enterprise system that we once had in this country, today we have a situation where the U.S. government has become the very core of the economy.  It is the hub around which everything else in the economy revolves.

You don’t believe this?

The following are 11 signs that the U.S. government has become an overgrown monstrosity that almost every American is dependent upon for economic survival….  [Read more →]

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To the guffaws of assembled media celebrities, President Barack Obama used his monologue Saturday night before the Washington Correspondents Association dinner to joke about using Predator drones, a weapon that has killed hundreds of civilians on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and enraged millions throughout the region.

Obama’s joke was ostensibly aimed at the pop group Jonas Brothers, who were among the large number of show business types invited to the annual affair. The President began by noting that his two pre-teen daughters were fans of the boy band and went on to warn: “…but boys, don’t get any ideas. Two words for you: predator drones. You will never see it coming. You think I’m joking?”

Like virtually all of the supposed humor employed at such affairs, Obama’s joke was directed to Washington “insiders,” government officials, politicians of both parties and members of the media elite itself, all of whom would know what he was talking about and could generally be expected to find nothing amiss in his remarks.

The Predator drone has become a hallmark of the Obama administration’s bloody escalation of the nearly nine-year-old war in Afghanistan and its expansion across the border into Pakistan.

According to one recent estimate by Pakistani officials, some 700 Pakistani civilians, the majority of them women and children, were killed by Hellfire missiles fired by drones in attacks ordered by the White House during Obama’s first year in office. The officials indicated that for every alleged Al Qaeda or Taliban figure killed in these remote-controlled assassinations, 147 civilians have died.

A running tally of reported casualties kept by the web site pakistanbodycount.org puts the total number of civilians killed since the first known US drone attack on Pakistan in May 2004 at 1,226.

So the butt of Obama’s joke was, in the first instance, the people of Pakistan, whose rage against the drone strikes has fed a wave of anti-American sentiment.

But the joke was not on the Pakistanis alone. Not so coincidentally, the same night that Obama was delivering his monologue, New York City’s Time Square was paralyzed by an attempted car bombing that could have claimed hundreds of lives. According to police investigators, Faisal Shahzad, the suspect arrested in connection with the attempted terrorist act, said he was driven to the action after seeing the bloody effects of the drone attacks during a recent visit to his native Pakistan.

And the joke doesn’t end there. Last month, Obama made history by officially ordering the assassination of a US citizen—the American-born Muslim cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki—on foreign soil, presumably also to be executed by means of a Predator missile strike.

The Democratic administration has carried one step further the logic of the Bush White House’s assertion of the right to proclaim American citizens “enemy combatants” and thereby imprison them on executive order, without charges or trial. The Obama administration has arrogated to itself the right to serve as judge, jury and executioner, assassinating US citizens on the president’s sole say-so that they are enemies of the state.

This, presumably, was what Obama’s joke writers saw as “edgy.” Here one is dealing with an American president who has self-proclaimed and—at least within the ruling establishment—universally accepted police-state powers to assassinate innocent civilians as well as US citizens branded as his enemies. To threaten to utilize these real powers against Disney-promoted pre-teen idols was no doubt seen as hilarious.

Involved here is not merely a wildly inappropriate joke, but rather one of those moments that provide an unintentionally revealing look into the real state of political life and culture within Washington’s ruling establishment. From the state apparatus, to a corporate media that acts as its propaganda arm, to the current inhabitant of the White House himself, it is dominated by an atmosphere of brutality and dehumanization in which every crime committed to further the interests of America’s ruling financial elite is justified.

Indeed, just days before Obama delivered his “joke,” legal experts testified on Capitol Hill to the effect that the drone assassinations in Pakistan constitute violations of international law, and that those who order them as well as the CIA operatives, military personnel and private contractors who execute them from air-conditioned cubicles thousands of miles away in the US can be prosecuted as war criminals.

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We are approaching a decade of war in Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq is in its eighth year. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands more Afghans and Pakistani civilians have been killed. Millions have been driven into squalid displacement and refugee camps. Thousands of our own soldiers and Marines have died or been crippled physically and psychologically. We sustain these wars, which have no real popular support, by borrowing trillions of dollars that can never be repaid, even as we close schools, states go into bankruptcy, social services are cut, our infrastructure crumbles, tens of millions of Americans are reduced to poverty, and real unemployment approaches 20 percent. Collective, suicidal inertia rolls us forward toward national insolvency and the collapse of empire. And we do not protest. The peace movement, despite the heroic efforts of a handful of groups such as Iraq Veterans Against the War and the Green Party, is dead. No one cares.

The roots of mass apathy are found in the profound divide between neo-liberals, who are mostly white and well educated, and our disenfranchised working class, whose sons and daughters, because they cannot get decent jobs with benefits, have few options besides the military. Neo-liberals, whose children are more often to be found in elite colleges than the Marine Corps, did not fight the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 and the dismantling of our manufacturing base. They did nothing when the Democrats gutted welfare two years later and stood by as our banks were turned over to Wall Street speculators. They signed on, by supporting the Clinton and Obama Democrats, for the corporate rape carried out in the name of globalization and endless war, and they ignored the plight of the poor. And for this reason the poor have little interest in the moral protestations of neo-liberals.

Neo-liberals are justly hated for their tacit complicity in the corporate assault on workers and their families.

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Those who have studied history know that nothing invigorates and empowers an authoritarian regime more than a spectacular act of violence, some sudden and senseless loss of life that allows the autocrat to stand on the smoking rubble and identify himself as the hero. It is at moments like this that the public—still in shock from the horror of the tragedy that has just unfolded before them—can be led into the most ruthless despotism: despotism that now bears the mantle of “security.”

Acts of terror and violence never benefit the average man or woman. They only ever benefit those in positions of power.

This is why Nero fiddled while Rome burned: it gave him a chance to throw the Christians to the lions and rebuild the capital of the Roman Empire in his own image.

This is why Hearst and the warmongers of the emerging American Empire were delighted by the destruction of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor: it gave them the excuse they needed in order to rouse the public into supporting the Spanish-American War.

This is why Israel attacked the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967 during the Six Day War, strafing and torpedoing it relentlessly for hours in a vain attempt to send it to the bottom: the Israelis believed that the loss of the Liberty could be blamed on Egypt and draw the Americans into war.

This is why there are hundreds of documented examples of governments staging attacks in order to blame them on their political enemies. In every civilization, in every culture, in every historical period, authoritarians have known that spectacular acts of violence help to further consolidate their own power and control. And sadly, throughout history there have been all too many willing to allow attacks to occur, to pretend that attacks have occurred or even to attack their own population in order to further their political agenda.

To think that such staged provocations and false flag attacks no longer occur would be as unrealistic as believing that human nature itself has changed, that powerful people no longer seek to increase their power, that influence is never used for deceit or manipulation, that lies are no longer told to satisfy greed or slake the thirst for control. It is to believe that our society is immuned from those things that we have seen in every other society in every other era. In short, it is a dangerous delusion.

The people are once again learning the power of this delusion. They are learning the extent to which they have been lied to. They are once again studying their history.

The Russians are learning how the FSB was caught planting bombs in Moscow in the 1990s during a terror scare that swept Putin into power and stirred the public into supporting the Second Chechen War. They are learning how their autocratic ex-President came to power campaigning on the graves of those his old FSB cronies had killed.

The Israelis are learning how Mossad has been caught time and again posing as the very Muslim terrorists they claim to be opposing. They are learning how Israel uses the specter of terror to further extend their blank cheque drawn on American funds to expand their police state at home and maintain their hardline stance, the world’s sixth-largest nuclear superpower supposedly threatened by the possibility that one of their neighbours may one day obtain a single nuclear weapon.

The British are learning how their SAS officers were caught dressing up as Arabs in Iraq, driving around with trucks full of munitions, shooting at police to stir up ethnic tensions and insure that permanent bases could be built in the region. They are learning how Haroon Aswat, the supposed mastermind behind the 7/7 bombings, was working for British Intelligence.. They are learning how British military intelligence took part in IRA bombings.

The Indians are learning how the Mumbai attack was helped by an U.S. Agent who is cooperating with investigators so that he won’t face questioning by foreign authorities.

The Canadians are learning how their own provincial police dressed up as protestors in 2007 and threatened violence against other police in order to force a crackdown on peaceful protests.

And the Americans are learning that there were multiple bombs found, dismantled and taken out of the Alfred P. Murrah building on April 19, 1995. They are learning that Timothy McVeigh had written a letter to his sister in which he claimed to be in the Special Forces for the U.S. Army. They are learning the bombing was being directed by FBI informants, just as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was. They are learning about 9/11 and the Gulf of Tonkin and Operation Northwoods and their own Army Counterinsurgency Manuals that teach officers how to commit false flag attacks to blame on their enemies.In short, the people are learning the truth. 

And now we see the same build-up to a false flag event taking place that we saw in 1995. At that time the U.S. had a corporate media desperate to fling mud at anyone concerned by the actions of their government, and it had a government that was desperately unpopular in the face of growing dissatisfaction. Today we see the exact same factors at play.If anything, the situation today is worse than it was in the run-up to the Oklahoma City Bombing, with media consolidation meaning that groups of concerned citizens like the Oath Keepers are being attacked by the controlled minions on both the left and the right. And now it is not just the militia that is being demonized by the establishment: it is veterans and gun owners, third party supporters and libertarians, anti-war protestors and human rights campaigners, people who are upset with the government giving trillions to the banks that have engineered our current financial crisis in the first place. In short, everyone is now a potential terrorist, according to the governmental and media agencies that deign to limit our range of acceptable opinion and control dissent. 

Even the word ‘terrorist’ means something more than it did back in 1995, after the false flag anthrax attack allowed the passage of the Patriot Act, after the boogey of Al-CIAda gave the NSA the opportunity to announce that they were collecting everyone’s emails and everyone’s telephone calls, after the former Homeland Security Secretary came out and admitted that the Bush administration had made up terror threats in order to scare the people into supporting the government, now we know what the real definition of terrorism is. It is governments scaring their own populations into line. 

But there is something else that’s different now from what it was in 1995. The people are learning something else about terrorism: they are not terrorists for speaking out against their government. They are not terrorists for wanting the government to stop selling their children into servitude to pay bankers their bonuses. They are not terrorists for pointing out that the FBI and the CIA and Mossad and MI6 are behind every major terrorist event. 

The people are not terrorists because they do not want to see more death. They do not want more destruction, the spilling of the blood of their fellow citizens is not in their interests. Death and destruction only ever serves the governmental and financial and industrial interests who always grow in power and wealth in the wake of every tragedy. Time and again, the people pay with their lives, and the governments and the banks and the war machine only grows and prospers. 

The people do not want terrorism because it does not benefit them. It only benefits the existing power structure. 

And this time, when there is another staged event to blame on the government’s enemy of the day, the people will know who to blame.

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