Eight Things I Miss About the Cold War By Jon Wiener

Originally found here.

 
Fifty Years Ago, College Was Cheap, Unions Were Strong, and There Was No Terrorism-Industrial Complex 
By Jon Wiener

At a book festival in Los Angeles recently, some writers (myself included) were making the usual arguments about the problems with American politics in the 1950s -- until one panelist shocked the audience by declaring, “God, I miss the Cold War.”  His grandmother, he said, had come to California from Oklahoma with a grade-school education, but found a job in an aerospace factory in L.A. during World War II, joined the union, got healthcare and retirement benefits, and prospered in the Cold War years.  She ended up owning a house in the suburbs and sending her kids to UCLA.

Several older people in the audience leaped to their feet shouting, “What about McCarthyism?”  “The bomb?”  “Vietnam?”  “Nixon?”

All good points, of course.  After all, during the Cold War the U.S. did threaten to destroy the world with nuclear weapons, supported brutal dictators globally because they were anti-communist, and was responsible for the deaths of several million people in Korea and Vietnam, all in the name of defending freedom. And yet it’s not hard to join that writer in feeling a certain nostalgia for the Cold War era.  It couldn’t be a sadder thing to admit, given what happened in those years, but -- given what’s happened in these years -- who can doubt that the America of the 1950s and 1960s was, in some ways, simply a better place than the one we live in now? Here are eight things (from a prospectively longer list) we had then and don’t have now.

1. The president didn’t claim the right to kill American citizens without “the due process of law.”

Last year we learned that President Obama personally approved the killing-by-drone of an American citizen living abroad without any prior judicial proceedings. That was in Yemen, but as Amy Davidson wrote at the New Yorker website, “Why couldn’t it have been in Paris?”  Obama assures us that the people he orders assassinated are “terrorists.”  It would, however, be more accurate to call them “alleged terrorists,” or “alleged terrorist associates,” or “people said by some other government to be terrorists, or at least terroristic.”

Obama’s target in Yemen was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen who was said to be a senior figure in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.  According to the book Kill or Capture by Daniel Klaidman, the president told his advisors, “I want Awlaki. Don’t let up on him.”  Steve Coll of the New Yorker commented that this appears to be “the first instance in American history of a sitting president speaking of his intent to kill a particular U.S. citizen without that citizen having been charged formally with a crime or convicted at trial.”  (Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, whom no one claims was connected to terrorist activities or terror plots, was also killed in a separate drone attack.)

The problem, of course, is the due-process clause of the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits “any person” from being deprived of “life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”   It doesn’t say: "any person except for those the president believes to be terrorists."

It gets worse: the Justice Department can keep secret a memorandum providing the supposed “legal” justification for the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen, according to a January 2013 decision by a federal judge.  Ruling on a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by the ACLU and the New York Times, Judge Colleen McMahon, wrote in her decision, “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret.”

It's true that the CIA has admitted it had an assassination program during the Cold War -- described in the so-called “family jewels” or “horrors book,” compiled in 1973 under CIA Director James Schlesinger in response to Watergate-era inquiries and declassifiedin 2007.  But the targets were foreign leaders, especially Fidel Castro as well as the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba and the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo.  Still, presidents preferred “plausible deniability” in such situations, and certainly no president before Obama publicly claimed the legal right to order the killing of American citizens.  Indeed, before Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. regularly condemned “targeted killings” of suspected terrorists by Israel that were quite similar to those the president is now regularly ordering in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, Yemen, and possibly elsewhere.

2. We didn’t have a secret “terrorism-industrial complex.”

That’s the term coined by Dana Priest and William Arkin in their book Top Secret America to describe the ever-growing post-9/11 world of government agencies linked to private contractors charged with fighting terrorism.  During the Cold War, we had a handful of government agencies doing “top secret” work; today, they found, we have more than 1,200.

For example, Priest and Arkin found 51 federal organizations and military commands that attempt to track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.  And don’t forget the nearly 2,000 for-profit corporate contractors that engage in top-secret work, supposedly hunting terrorists.  The official budget for “intelligence” has increased from around $27 billion in the last years of the Cold War to $75 billion in 2012. Along with this massive expansion of government and private security activities has come a similarly humongous expansion of official secrecy: the number of classified documents has increased from perhaps 5 million a year before 1980 to 92 million in 2011, while Obama administration prosecutions of government whistleblowers have soared.

It’s true that the CIA and the FBI engaged in significant secret and illegal surveillance that included American citizens during the Cold War, but the scale was small compared to the post-9/11 world.

3. Organized labor was accepted as part of the social landscape. 

“Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of their right to join the union of their choice.” That’s what President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in 1952.  “Workers,” he added, “have a right to organize into unions and to bargain collectively with their employers,” and he affirmed that “a strong, free labor movement is an invigorating and necessary part of our industrial society.”  He caught the mood of the moment this way: “Should any political party attempt to… eliminate labor laws, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.”  “There is,” he acknowledged, “a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things, but their number is negligible... And they are stupid.” 

You certainly wouldn’t catch Barack Obama saying anything like that today.  

Back then, American unions were, in part, defended even by Republicans because they were considered a crucial aspect of the struggle against Communism.  Unlike Soviet workers, American ones, so the argument went, were free to join independent unions.  And amid a wave of productive wealth, union membership in Eisenhower’s America reached an all-time high: 34% of wage and salary workers in 1955.  In 2011, union membership in the private sector had fallen under 7%, a level not seen since 1932.

Of course, back in the Cold War era the government required unions to kick communists out of any leadership positions they held and unions that refused were driven out of existence.  Unions also repressed wildcat strikes and enforced labor peace in exchange for multi-year contracts with wage and benefit increases. But as we’ve learned in the last decades, if you’re a wageworker, almost any union is better than no union at all.

4. The government had to get a warrant before it could tap your phone. 

Today, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act (yes, thatrepetitive tongue twister is its real name) gives the government vast powers to spy on American citizens -- and it’s just been extended to 2017 in a bill that Obama enthusiastically signed on December 29th.  The current law allows the monitoring of electronic communications without an individualized court order, as long as the government claims its intent is to gather “foreign intelligence.”  In recent years, much that was once illegal has been made the law of the land.  Vast quantities of the emails and phone calls of Americans are being “data-mined.”  Amendments approved by Congress in 2008, for instance, provided "retroactive immunity to the telecom companies that assisted the Bush administration in its warrantless wiretapping program," which was then (or should have been) illegal, as the website Open Congress notes. 

There were several modest congressional attempts to amend the 2012 FISA extension act, including one that would have required the director of national intelligence to reveal how many Americans are being secretly monitored.  That amendment would in no way have limited the government’s actual spying program.  The Senate nevertheless rejected it, 52-43, in a nation that has locked itself down in a way that would have been inconceivable in the Cold War years.

It’s true that in the 1950s and 1960s judges typically gave the police and FBI the wiretap warrants they sought.  But it’s probably also true that having to submit requests to judges had a chilling effect on the urge of government authorities to engage in unlimited wiretapping.

5. The infrastructure was being expanded and strengthened.

Today, our infrastructure is crumbling: bridges are collapsing, sewer systems are falling apart, power grids are failing.  Many of those systems date from the immediate post-World War II years.  And the supposedly titanic struggle against communism at home and abroad helped build them.  The best-known example of those Cold War infrastructure construction programs was the congressionally mandated National Defense Highways Act of 1956, which led to the construction of 41,000 miles of the Interstate Highway System. It was the largest public works project in American history and it was necessary, according to the legislation, to “meet the requirements of the national defense in time of war.”  People called the new highways “freeways” or “interstates,” but the official name was "the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways."

Along with the construction of roads and bridges came a similar commitment to expanding water delivery systems and the electrical and telephone grids.  Spending on infrastructure as a share of gross domestic product peaked in the 1960s at 3.1%.  In 2007, it was down to 2.4% and is assumedly still falling.

Today the U.S. has dropped far behind potential global rivals in infrastructure development.  An official panel of 80 experts noted that China is spending $1 trillion on high-speed rail, highways, and other infrastructure over the next five years.  The U.S., according to the report, needs to invest $2 trillion simply to rebuild the roads, bridges, water lines, sewage systems, and dams constructed 40 to 50 years ago, systems that are now reaching the end of their planned life cycles.  But federal spending cuts mean that the burden of infrastructure repair and replacement will fall on state and local governments, whose resources, as everyone knows, are completely inadequate for the task.

Of course, it’s true that the freeways built in the 1950s made the automobile the essential form of transportation in America and led to the withering away of public mass transit, and that the environment suffered as a result.  Still, today’s collapsing bridges and sewers dramatize the loss of any serious national commitment to the public good.

6. College was cheap.

Tuition and fees at the University of California system in 1965 totaled $220.  That’s the equivalent of about $1,600 today, and in 1965 you were talking about the best public university in the world.  In 2012, the Regents of the University of California, presiding over an education system in crisis, raised tuition and fees for state residents to $13,200.  And American students are now at least $1 trillion in debt, thanks to college loans that could consign many to lifetimes as debtors in return for subprime educations.

In 1958, in the panic that followed the Soviet Union’s successful launch of Sputnik, the first satellite, public universities got a massive infusion of federal money when the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) was passed.  The Department of Education website today explains that the purpose of the NDEA was “to help ensure that highly trained individuals would be available to help America compete with the Soviet Union in scientific and technical fields.”  For the first time, government grants became the major source of university funding for scientific research.  The Act included a generous student-loan program.

With the end of the Cold War, federal funding was cut and public universities had little choice but to begin to make up the difference by increasing tuitions and fees, making students pay more -- a lot more.

True, the NDEA grants in the 1960s required recipients to sign a demeaning oath swearing that they did not seek the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, and that lots of government funding then supported Cold War military and strategic objectives.  After all, the University of California operated the nuclear weapons labs at Livermore and Los Alamos. Still, compare that to today’s crumbling public education system nationwide and who wouldn’t feel nostalgia for the Cold War era?

7. We had a president who called for a “war on poverty.”

In his 1966 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Baines Johnson argued that “the richest Nation on earth… people who live in abundance unmatched on this globe” ought to “bring the most urgent decencies of life to all of your fellow Americans.”  LBJ insisted that it was possible both to fight communism globally (especially in Vietnam) and to fight poverty at home.  As the phrase then went, he called for guns and butter.  In addition, he was determined not simply to give money to poor people, but to help build “community action” groups that would organize them to define and fight for programs they wanted because, the president said, poor people know what’s best for themselves.

Of course, it’s true that Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” unlike the Vietnam War, was woefully underfunded, and that those community action groups were soon overpowered by local mayors and Democratic political machines.  But it’s also true that President Obama did not even consider poverty worth mentioning as an issue in his 2012 reelection campaign, despite the fact that it has spread in ways that would have shocked LBJ, and that income and wealth inequalities between rich and poor have reached levels not seen since the late 1920s.  Today, it’s still plenty of guns -- but butter, not so much.

8. We had a president who warned against “the excessive power of the military-industrial complex.”

In Eisenhower’s “farewell address,” delivered three days before John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, the departing president warned against the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” He declared that “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”  The speech introduced the phrase “military-industrial complex” into the vernacular.  It was a crucial moment in the Cold War: a president who had also been the nation’s top military commander in World War II was warning Americans about the dangers posed by the military he had commanded and its corporate and political supporters.

Ike was prompted to give the speech because of his disputes with Congress over the military budget.  He feared nuclear war and firmly opposed all talk about such a war being fought in a “limited” way.  He also knew that, when it came to the Soviet Union, American power was staggeringly preponderant.  And yet his opponents in the Democratic Party, the arms industry, and even the military were claiming that he hadn’t done enough for “defense” -- not enough weapons bought, not enough money spent.  President-elect Kennedy had just won the 1960 election by frightening Americans about a purely fictitious “missile gap” between the U.S. and the Soviets.

It’s true that Ike’s warning would have been far more meaningful had it been in his first or even second inaugural address, or any of his State of the Union speeches.  It’s also true that he had approved CIA coups in Iran and Guatemala, and had green-lighted planning for an invasion of Cuba (that would become Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs disaster).  He had also established Mutual Assured Destruction as the basis for Cold War military strategy, backed up with B-52s carrying atomic bombs in the air 24/7.

By the end of his second term, however, Ike had changed his mind.  His warning was not just against unnecessary spending, but also against institutions that were threatening a crisis he feared would bring the end of individual liberty.  “As one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization,” the president urged his fellow citizens to resist the military-industrial complex.  None of his successors has even tried, and in 2013 we’re living with the results.

...But there is one thing I do NOT miss about the Cold War: nuclear arsenals on hair-trigger alert.

Our Cold War enemy had nuclear weapons capable of destroying us, and the rest of the planet, many times over.  In 1991, when the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union had more than 27,000 nuclear weapons.  According to the Federation of American Scientists, these included more than 11,000 strategic nuclear weapons -- warheads on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched missiles, and weapons on bombers capable of attacking the US -- along with more than 15,000 warheads for “tactical” use as artillery shells and short-range “battlefield” missiles, as well as missile defense interceptors, nuclear torpedoes, and nuclear weapons for shorter-range aircraft.  We learned in 1993 that the USSR at one time possessed almost 45,000 nuclear warheads, and still had nearly 1,200 tons of bomb-grade uranium.  (Of course, sizeable Russian -- and American -- nuclear arsenals still exist.)  In comparison to all that, the arsenalsof al-Qaeda and our other terrorist enemies are remarkably insignificant.

Jon Wiener teaches American history at the University of California-Irvine and is a contributing editor at the Nation. His latest book, How We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey Across America (University of California Press), has just been published.

Copyright 2013 Jon Wiener

A Message To The 'Left' From A 'Right Wing Extremist'

This article is true to my heart as I too am a former Republicrat.  Recognize there is a shadow government of elite that manipulate our foreign and domestic policies.  Elections are nothing more than political theater   Obama is a puppet to the High Cabal.  For more on that you'll need to listen to the Peace Revolution Podcast put together by 9/11 whistleblower Richard Grove.

Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market blog,

A Message To The 'Left' From A 'Right Wing Extremist'

Some discoveries are exciting, joyful, and exhilarating, while others can be quite painful.  Stumbling upon the fact that you do not necessarily have a competent grasp of reality, that you have in fact been duped for most of your life, is not a pleasant experience.  While it may be a living nightmare to realize that part of one’s life was, perhaps, wasted on the false ideas of others, enlightenment often requires that the worldview that we were indoctrinated with be completely destroyed before we can finally resurrect a tangible identity and belief system.  To have rebirth, something must first die...

In 2004, I found myself at such a crossroads.  At that time I was a dedicated Democrat, and I thought I had it all figured out.  The Republican Party was to me a perfect sort of monster.  They had everything!  Corporate puppet masters.  Warmongering zealots.  Fake Christians.  Orwellian social policies.  The Bush years were a special kind of horror.  It was cinematic.  Shakespearean.  If I was to tell a story of absolute villainy, I would merely describe the mass insanity and bloodlust days of doom and dread wrought by the Neo-Con ilk in the early years of the new millennium.

But, of course, I was partly naïve...

The campaign rhetoric of John Kerry was eye opening.  I waited, day after day, month after month for my party’s candidate to take a hard stance on the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I waited for a battle cry against the Patriot Act and the unconstitutional intrusions of the Executive Branch into the lives of innocent citizens.  I waited for a clear vision, a spark of wisdom and common sense.  I waited for the whole of the election for that man to finally embrace the feelings of his supporters and say, with absolute resolve, that the broken nation we now lived in would be returned to its original foundations.  That civil liberty, freedom, and peace, would be our standard once again.  Unfortunately, the words never came, and I realized, he had no opposition to the Bush plan.  He was not going to fight against the wars, the revolving door, or the trampling of our freedoms.  Indeed, it seemed as though he had no intention of winning at all.

I came to see a dark side to the Democratic Party that had always been there but which I had refused to acknowledge.  Their leadership was no different than the Neo-Cons that I despised.  On top of this, many supporters of the Democratic establishment had no values, and no principles.  Their only desire was to “win” at any cost.  They would get their "perfect society" at any cost, even if they had to chain us all together to do it. 

There was no doubt in my mind that if the Democrats reoccupied the White House or any other political power structure one day, they would immediately adopt the same exact policies and attitudes of the Neo-Conservatives, and become just as power-mad if not more so.  In 2008 my theory was proven unequivocally correct.

It really is amazing.  I have seen the so-called “anti-war” party become the most accommodating cheerleader of laser guided death and domination in the Middle East, with predator drones operating in the sovereign skies of multiple countries raining missiles upon far more civilians than “enemy combatants”, all at the behest of Barack Obama.  I have seen the “party of civil liberties” expand on every Constitution crushing policy of the Bush Administration, while levying some of the most draconian legislation ever witnessed in the history of this country.  I have seen Obama endorse enemy combatant status for American citizens, and the end of due process under the law through the NDAA.  I have seen him endorse the end of trial by jury.  I have seen him endorse secret assassination lists, and the federally drafted murder of U.S. civilians.  I have seen him endorse executive orders which open the path to the declaration of a “national emergency” at any time for any reason allowing for the dissolution of most constitutional rights and the unleashing of martial law.

If I was still a Democrat today I would be sickly ashamed.  Yet, many average Democrats actually defend this behavior from their party.  The same behavior they once railed against under Bush.

However, I have not come here to admonish Democrats (at least not most of them).  I used to be just like them.  I used to believe in the game.  I believed that the rules mattered, and that it was possible to change things by those rules with patience and effort.  I believed in non-violent resistance, protest, civil dissent, educational activism, etc.  I thought that the courts were an avenue for political justice.  I believed that the only element required to end corruption would be a sound argument and solid logic backed by an emotional appeal to reason.  I believed in the power of elections, and had faith in the idea that all we needed was the “right candidate” to lead us to the promise land.  Again, I believed in the game. 

The problem is, the way the world works and the way we WISH the world worked are not always congruent.  Attempting to renovate a criminal system while acting within the rigged confines of that system is futile, not to mention delusional.  Corrupt oligarchies adhere to the standards of civility only as long as they feel the need to maintain the illusion of the moral high ground.  Once they have enough control, the mask always comes off, the rotten core is revealed, and immediate violence against dissent commences. 

Sometimes the only solutions left in the face of tyranny are not peaceful.  Logic, reason, and justice are not revered in a legal system which serves the will of the power elite instead of the common man.  The most beautiful of arguments are but meaningless flitters of hot air in the ears of sociopaths.  Sometimes, the bully just needs to be punched in the teeth.

This philosophy of independent action is consistently demonized, regardless of how practical it really is when faced with the facts.  The usual responses to the concept of full defiance are accusations of extremism and malicious intent.  Believe me, when I embarked on the path towards the truth in 2004, I never thought I would one day be called a potential “homegrown terrorist”, but that is essentially where we are in America in 2013.  To step outside the mainstream and question the validity of the game is akin to terrorism in the eyes of the state and the sad cowardly people who feed the machine. 

During the rise of any despotic governmental structure, there is always a section of the population that is given special treatment, and made to feel as though they are “on the winning team”.  For now, it would appear that the “Left” side of the political spectrum has been chosen by the establishment as the favored sons and daughters of the restructured centralized U.S.  However, before those of you on the Left get too comfortable in your new position as the hand of globalization, I would like to appeal to you for a moment of unbiased consideration.  I know from personal experience that there are Democrats out there who are actually far more like we constitutionalists and “right wing extremists” than they may realize.  I ask that you take the following points into account, regardless of what the system decides to label us...

We Are Being Divided By False Party Paradigms

Many Democrats and Republicans are not stupid, and want above all else to see the tenets of freedom respected and protected.  Unfortunately, they also tend to believe that only their particular political party is the true defender of liberty.  The bottom line is, at the top of each party there is very little if any discernible difference between the two.   If you ignore all the rhetoric and only look at action, the Republican and Democratic leadership are essentially the same animal working for the same special interests.  There is no left and right; only those who wish to be free, and those who wish to control.

Last year, the “Left and the “Right” experienced an incredible moment of unity after the introduction of the NDAA.  People on both sides were able to see the terrifying implications of a law that allows the government to treat any American civilian as an enemy of war without right to trial.  In 2013, the establishment is attempting to divide us once again with the issue of gun disarmament.  I have already presented my position on gun rights in numerous other articles and I believe my stance is unshakeable.  But, what I will ask anti-gun proponents and on-the-fence Democrats is this:  How do you think legislation like the NDAA will be enforced in the future?  Is it not far easier to threaten Americans with rendition, torture, and assassination when they are completely unarmed?  If you oppose the NDAA, you should also oppose any measure which gives teeth to the NDAA, including the debasement of the 2nd Amendment.

Democrats Are Looking For Help In The Wrong Place

Strangely, Democrats very often search for redress within the very system they know is criminal.  For some reason, they think that if they bash their heads into the wall long enough, a door will suddenly appear.  I’m here to tell you, there is no door. 

The biggest difference between progressives and conservatives is that progressives consistently look to government to solve all the troubles of the world, when government is usually the CAUSE of all the troubles in the world.  The most common Democratic argument is that in America the government “is what we make it”, and we can change it anytime we like through the election process.  Maybe this was true at one time, but not anymore.  Just look at Barack Obama!  I would ask all those on the Left to take an honest look at the policies of Obama compared to the policies of most Neo-Cons, especially when it comes to constitutional liberties.  Where is the end to Middle Eastern war?  Where is the end to domestic spy programs?  Where is the end to incessant and dictatorial executive orders?  Where is the conflict between the Neo-Cons and the Neo-Liberals?  And, before you point at the gun control debate, I suggest you look at Obama’s gun policies compared to Mitt Romney’s and John McCain’s – there is almost no difference whatsoever…

If the two party system becomes a one party system, then elections are meaningless, and electing a new set of corrupt politicians will not help us.

Democrats Value Social Units When They Should Value Individuals Instead

Democrats tend to see everything in terms of groups.  Victim status groups, religious groups, racial groups, special interest groups, etc.  They want to focus on the health of the whole world as if it is a single entity.  It is not.  Without individuals, there is no such thing as “groups”, and what we might categorize as groups change and disperse without notice.  Groups do not exist beyond shared values, and even then, the individual is still more important in the grand scheme of things. 

As a former Democrat, I know that the obsession with group status makes it easy to fall into the trap of collectivism.  It is easy to think that what is best for you must be best for everybody.  This Utopian idealism is incredibly fallible.  Wanting the best for everyone is a noble sentiment, but using government as a weapon to force your particular vision of the “greater good” on others leads to nothing but disaster.  The only safe and reasonable course is to allow individuals to choose for themselves how they will function in society IF they choose to participate at all.  Government must be left out of the equation as much as possible.  Its primary job should be to safeguard the individual’s right to choose how he will live.  You have to get over the fact that there is no such thing as a perfect social order, and even if there was, no government is capable of making it happen for you.   

Democrats Can Become As Power-Mad As Any Neo-Con

I think it is important to point out how quickly most Democratic values went out the door as soon as Barack Obama was placed in the White House.  Let’s be clear; you cannot claim to be anti-war, anti-torture, anti-assassination, anti-surveillance, anti-corporate, anti-bank, anti-rendition, etc. while defending the policies of Obama at the same time.  This is hypocrisy. 

I have heard some insane arguments from left leaning proponents lately.  Some admit that Obama does indeed murder and torture, but “at least he is pushing for universal health care…”.  Even if it did work (which it won’t), is Obamacare really worth having a president who is willing to murder children on the other side of the world and black-bag citizens here at home?  Do not forget your moral compass just because you think the system is now your personal playground.  If you do, you are no better than all the angry bloodcrazed Republicans that bumbled into the Iraq War while blindly following George W. Bush. 

There Is A Difference Between Traditional Conservatives And Neo-Cons

Neo-Cons are not conservative.  They are in fact socialist in their methods, and they always expand government spending and power while reducing constitutional protections.  The “Liberty Movement”, of which I am proudly a part, is traditional conservative.  We believe that government, especially as corrupt as it is today, cannot be trusted to administrate and nursemaid over every individual in our nation.  It has proven time after time that it caters only to criminally inclined circles of elites.  Therefore, we seek to reduce the size and influence of government so that we can minimize the damage that it is doing.  For this, we are called “extremists”. 

Governments are not omnipotent.  They are not above criticism, or even punishment.  They are merely a collection of individuals who act either with honor or dishonor.  In the Liberty Movement, we treat a corrupt government just as we would treat a corrupt individual.  We do not worship the image of the state, nor should any Democrat.

Liberty Minded Conservatives Are Not “Terrorists”

There will come a time, very soon I believe, when people like me are officially labeled “terrorists”.  Perhaps because we refuse gun registration or confiscation.  Perhaps because we develop alternative trade markets outside the system.  Maybe because some of us are targeted by federal raids, and we fight back instead of submitting.  Maybe because we speak out against the establishment during a time of “declared crisis”, and speech critical of the government is labeled “harmful to the public good”.  One way or another, whether you want to believe me now or not, the day is coming. 

Before this occurs, and the mainstream media attacks us viciously as “conspiracy theorists” and traitors, I want the Left to understand that no matter what you may hear about us, our only purpose is to ensure that our natural rights are not violated, our country is not decimated, and our republic is governed with full transparency.  We are not the dumb redneck racist hillbilly gun nuts you see in every primetime TV show, and anyone who acts out of personal bias and disdain for their fellow man is not someone we seek to associate with.  We fight because we have no other choice.  Our conscience demands that we oppose centralized tyranny.  We do what we do because the only other option is subservience and slavery.   

Many of the people I have dealt with in the Liberty Movement are the most intelligent, well-informed, principled and dedicated men and women I have ever met.  They want, basically, what most of us want:

• to be free to determine their own destinies.
• To be free to speak their minds without threat of state retribution.
• To be free to defend themselves from any enemy that would seek to oppress them.
• To live within an economic environment that is not rigged in favor of elitist minorities and on the verge of engineered collapse.
• To live in a system that respects justice and legitimate law instead of using the law as a sword against the public.
• To wake up each day with solace in the knowledge that while life in many regards will always be a difficult thing, we still have the means to make it better for ourselves and for the next generation.
• To wake up knowing that those inner elements of the human heart which make us most unique and most endearing are no longer considered “aberrant”, and are no longer under threat.

Illuminati Gun Grab & the Superpower Complex

This article comes hot off the presses from Dean Henderson's Left Hook.

Illuminati Gun Grab & the Superpower Complex by Dean Henderson Today the Obama Administration announced a series of gun control measures in response to the Sandy Hook school massacre. The proposals – the creepiest of which requires background checks on even private gun sales – come on the heels of weeks of patronizing lemming-like hand-wringing by the MSNBC establishment liberal arm of the Illuminati programming machine. The December 14, 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, CT which left 26 dead bore all the hallmarks of a SatanicIlluminati horror-fest designed as a pretext for accomplishing the Eight Families’ longtime goal of disarming pesky American revolutionaries in preparation of the imposition of world government by lizard bloodline. It was a Merry Christmas card from the same Zionist filth that killed Jesus. The alleged shooter Adam Lanza had a history of mental problems, making him the perfect patsy. Several eyewitness local news reports state that there was no assault rifle found beside Lanza’s dead body, just two pistols. Local news cameras also filmed another man arrested in the nearby woods. Many researchers think Lanza was killed earlier, his dead body later conveniently dropped at the school, where a team of military-trained snipers did the deed. The kill ratio would indicate this is true. According to a now well-circulated Russian FSB report, Lanza’s mother Nancy, who often took the disturbed boy to shooting ranges, was a top CIA psychological analyst assigned to the Pentagon’s secretive Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), where the 911 false flag was most likely hatched. DARPA is heavily involved in developing violent video games used in MK-ULTRA type programs. Lillian Bittman, who served on the Sandy Hook school board until 2011, stated that Nancy Lanza was not a teacher at her school, as reported extensively by Illuminatimedia. Adam Lanza’s father Peter is an executive at GE Energy Financial Services. Early reports surfaced that Peter, along with Colorado theatre shooter James Holmes’ father, were scheduled to testify at upcoming LIBOR scandal hearings. Veterans Today Senior Editor Gordon Duff fingers Israeli terror squads in the Sandy Hook massacre (http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/12/19/super-viral-israeli-death-squads-involved-in-sandy-hook-bloodbath-intelligence-analyst/) Duff says Israeli PM Netanyahu was livid at Obama’s recent snub of Israel at the UN post-Gaza bombing and by his choice of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense. I picked Hagel for CIA Director in a recent column (http://deanhenderson.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/column-11-hill-n-holler-review/). Hagel’s appointment could signal both a significant move away from Israel and its neo-con stooges in US foreign policy circles, as well as big budget cuts coming at the Pentagon. There is much talk at Veterans Today (full disclosure, I am one of their featured columnists) that Israel has unleashed terror squads across the US in an attempted destabilization of the Obama Administration. If this is true, it is hard to understand how Obama could be unaware of this and why he would step into the gun control trap. Europe’s Black Nobility refuse to recognize the American Revolution, a battle won due to access to guns – mostly .22 rifles. Why is it that US liberals fight to defend all of the Bill of Rights, while mocking those who defend the 2nd Amendment? It can only be that they don’t understand the history of necessary armed struggle. Guns are an evil invention, which have enabled mankind to run roughshod over the planet, destroying nature and fellow man alike. I wish they did not exist, but they do. As such, Chairman Mao was right. Power emanates from the barrel of a gun. One cannot convert a bully or tyrant through reasoning. They only respect brute force. This understanding is what separates a revolutionary from a liberal. Imagine if Castro’s band of Cuban guerrillas did not have access to guns. Ditto the Sandinistas, Viet Cong, ZANU-PF, FMLN, FARC, or any other revolutionary group throughout history – including our Founding Fathers. I will gladly lay down my guns the day that the military-industrial complex mothballs all of its nuclear weapons, stealth bombers and fighter jets, drones, and all other instruments of war. Until then every US citizen has a Constitutional right to own whatever weapons they can get there hands on. Brain-dead liberals will say this is “too broad an interpretation of the 2nd Amendment”. OK. What about the First Amendment? Should we start banning the use of certain words? If I come out against that am I interpreting my right to free speech too broadly? What about unreasonable search and seizure or due process? Should we allow these to be incrementally “interpreted”. We already have and the result has been disastrous to our civil liberties. Beyond the obvious task of investigating Israeli/DARPA/Illuminati involvement in Sandy Hook and other massacres, I see two solutions to the madness which is occurring at America’s schools and one is not the nutty idea of further arming are schools, as proposed by the military-industrial contractor parading as citizens rights group known as the NRA. First and foremost, the US needs to drastically change its foreign policy. Since WWII, this nation’s children have grown up watching the example of a government which does not negotiate with countries it disagrees with. Instead it bombs them, invades them, overthrows their duly-elected leaders and hatches bloody covert operations where civilian casualties become “collateral damage”. Talk about desensitizing a nation to violence. If the US government continues to behave like a deranged global cop, our children will continue to grow up believing the “might-is-right” paradigm is normal. But it is not normal. It is sociopathic/psychopathic madness, which now plays out on America’s TVs and video games, in her homes and offices, at her sporting events and inside her schools. As Henry David Thoreau so eloquently stated, “For every thousand men hacking at the branches of a social ill, there is but one digging at the root”. The violence which permeates American culture has its roots in the US empirical imperative. We must slash our defense budget, back progressive governments instead of dictators, and pull back from our role as global cop on the beat for the global Illuminatioligarchy. Second, and in the spirit of the first item, we must demilitarize our schools. Where, along the slippery slope towards creeping fascism, did we begin to put metal detectors in all our schools, treat students like potential criminals and disrespect their basic human rights? Disempowered people, stripped of all dignity, do crazy things. If you treat kids like thugs, they will act like thugs. If you give them your trust, they become trustworthy. One thing is for sure. Both gun control-obsessed liberals and Lockheed Martin-sponsored NRA fat cats have it wrong. Leave the 2nd Amendment be, get the armed guards out of our schools, get Chuck Hagel in as Defense Secretary and maybe, just maybe, we can quit behaving like a military-industrial superpower overseas while flailing helplessly as our kids are sacrificed to the Illuminati Satanist agenda at home. Dean Henderson is the author of four books: Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network, The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries, Das Kartell der Federal Reserve & Stickin’ it to the Matrix. You can subscribe free to his weekly Left Hookcolumn @ www.deanhenderson.wordpress.com

Obama's Gun Control and Agenda 21

Think the recent hype and attention from the Federal government on gun control stems from the shootings in Sandy Hook, Aurora, Oregon, etc? What if there was a United Nations plan to disarm the United States? Have you read about Agenda 21?  Who are it's supporters and what do they have to do with US policy? How would Congress gain any support for such a policy?  Think that irresponsible US citizens are the primary culprits for shooting sprees and gun crime?  Who makes all those weapons and did they fund Obama's 2012 election campaign?

RT: [eksit101] Is the #ENDTHEFED victories the October surprise? Just all seems fishy. #NWO #RESTORETHEREPUBLIC http://t.co/UXpSahotsE f...
— #New World Order (@nwohashtag) October 1, 2013

Remember the ATF Fast and Furious scandal where ATF supposedly was running a sting operation and managed to let thousands of weapons slip into the hands of known drug cartels in Mexico? Over 50,000 dead in Mexico and guns are ILLEGAL.  99% of Mexican citizens do not have guns and there are over 50,000 dead.  The cash and guns come from the US and drugs flow through Mexico from all parts of Central and South America.

So what good does it do to take away guns from US citizens?  It creates an arms prohibition, jacking up prices and putting the guns strictly in the hands of government and criminals.

Who is the world's largest small arms exporter?  The USA.

Read Obama's recent White House memoranda and action plan on gun control:



The following is a list, provided by the White House, of executive actions President Obama plans to take to address gun violence.

1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.

2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.

3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.

4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.

5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.

6. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.

7. Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.

8. Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).

9. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.

10. Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.

11. Nominate an ATF director.

12. Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.

13. Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.

14. Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.

15. Direct the Attorney General to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies.

16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.

17. Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.

18. Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.

19. Develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education.

20. Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.

21. Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges.

22. Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations.

23. Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.

Ever notice how disease always kills before, during, and after war...Pandemic

The thing is, that pharmaceutical companies have been able to predict or create pandemics for at least 100 years.

If the Nazi's could do it in the 1940's, then why couldnt the fourth reich do it in the 21st? 2000-2020, great years for the pharmaceutical industry.  With all the war breaking out and toxic chemicals being created to pump out plastic consumable nonsense being shipped over from China, the legal drug industry has barely been able to keep up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic

You see they kick them off every year with a news report here and a spotlight there.  An article in the WSJ, a guest appearance on CBS, NBC, or FOX.

More and more death and misery, so get your flu shot and your vaccinations.

Who watches the pharmaceutical industry financials? Neither Lauren Lyster, nor Max Keiser, nor Reggie Middleton, nor Bloomberg Radio will talk about it detail.  They can't say the names of the families that run the legal and illegal drug industries either.

How convenient.

Next on TwistedPolitix: Is your healthcare system a FEMA plan to put us all in camps? Because that would remind me of 1936.  

Lord Rothschild fund joins World Gold Council

Original article here.

Lord Rothschild fund joins World Gold Council to put £12.5m into BullionVault

An investment fund backed by Lord Rothschild has joined the World Gold Council to put £12.5m into BullionVault, the online gold investment platform.

Investment demand for gold has risen on concerns that sovereign debt problems could spread Photo: EPA

By Garry White

11:26PM BST 20 Jun 2010

Comment

Tim Levene of Augmentum Capital, a fund backed by Lord Rothschild's RIT Capital Partners, said the investment was not a bet on the gold price but on "the future growth of the BullionVault platform", which stores physical gold for private clients in London, New York and Zurich. RIT currently has 9pc of its assets in physical gold.

Investment demand for the metal has risen on concerns that sovereign debt problems could spread and the value of currencies plunge. The gold price hit a new nominal all-time high above $1,260 on Friday and analysts expect the price will continue to rise.

In return for the £12.5m investment, the World Gold Council and Augmentum will receive an equity stake in BullionVault.

Marcus Grubb, managing director of investment at the World Gold Council, said taking the BullionVault stake was part of the Council's strategy of "increasing its portfolio of successful platforms for gold investment". Mr Levine and Mr Grubb will join BullionVault's board.

BullionVault has about $800m (£540m) of gold under management for 20,000 customers from more than 90 countries. The average holding is around £30,000.

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The World Gold Council's previous investment vehicle, a gold exchange-traded fund, now has 1,306 tonnes of the metal under management, worth $52.3bn. This makes it the world's second-largest exchange-traded fund. If the fund was a central bank, it would be sixth largest in the league table of gold holders.

BREAKING: Central Bank Report Advocates the Official Remonetization of Gold

Originally I found this article on MaxKeiser.com, you can find it here.


OMFIF Report Advocates the Official Remonetization of Gold

BY JOHN BUTLER01/11/2013

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In a report published today, the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), a global organization of central banks and sovereign wealth funds, recommends that gold be remonetized for use as international money, alongside major currencies. OMFIF gives a number of reasons for this but they boil down it to gold's historical role in establishing and maintaining confidence and stability in international monetary relations. Such confidence and stability have dramatically declined as a result of the global financial crisis that began in 2008, to the detriment of the global economy. Falling back on the solid foundation of gold is the best available way to eventually move forward with healthy and sustainable growth in global trade, to all countries' mutual benefit, and to bring an end to the escalating 'currency wars' that increasingly threaten the global economy.

The link to the report, Gold, the Renminbi and the Multi-Currency Reserve System, can be found here.

Krugman is either crazy, or part of the Cartel that runs the Central Banks of the World

Minting coins is a great idea.  It is better than asking the Federal Reserve to loan us money. The coin, however, should not be 1 single coin deposited at the Fed, it should be several hundred million, and they should be refunded to taxpayers to spend across the economy. 

Krugman is giving America and Congress a veiled threat of financial terrorism with the bomb metaphor, just like IMF economic hitmen.

Rape, pillage, and plunder, while threatening war and catastrophe if their demands aren't met.

He should be arrested for treason, along with many others.

OP-ED COLUMNIST Coins Against Crazies

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Paul Krugman

By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: January 11, 2013

So, have you heard the one about the trillion-dollar coin? It may sound like a joke. But if we aren't ready to mint that coin or take some equivalent action, the joke will be on us - and a very sick joke it will be, too.

Let's talk for a minute about the vile absurdity of the debt-ceiling confrontation.

Under the Constitution, fiscal decisions rest with Congress, which passes laws specifying tax rates and establishing spending programs. If the revenue brought in by those legally established tax rates falls short of the costs of those legally established programs, the Treasury Department normally borrows the difference.

Lately, revenue has fallen far short of spending, mainly because of the depressed state of the economy. If you don't like this, there's a simple remedy: demand that Congress raise taxes or cut back on spending. And if you're frustrated by Congress's failure to act, well, democracy means that you can't always get what you want.

Where does the debt ceiling fit into all this? Actually, it doesn't. Since Congress already determines revenue and spending, and hence the amount the Treasury needs to borrow, we shouldn't need another vote empowering that borrowing. But for historical reasons any increase in federal debt must be approved by yet another vote. And now Republicans in the House are threatening to deny that approval unless President Obama makes major policy concessions.

It's crucial to understand three things about this situation. First, raising the debt ceiling wouldn't grant the president any new powers; every dollar he spent would still have to be approved by Congress. Second, if the debt ceiling isn't raised, the president will be forced to break the law, one way or another; either he borrows funds in defiance of Congress, or he fails to spend money Congress has told him to spend.

Finally, just consider the vileness of that G.O.P. threat. If we were to hit the debt ceiling, the U.S. government would end up defaulting on many of its obligations. This would have disastrous effects on financial markets, the economy, and our standing in the world. Yet Republicans are threatening to trigger this disaster unless they get spending cuts that they weren't able to enact through normal, Constitutional means.

Republicans go wild at this analogy, but it's unavoidable. This is exactly like someone walking into a crowded room, announcing that he has a bomb strapped to his chest, and threatening to set that bomb off unless his demands are met.

Which brings us to the coin.

As it happens, an obscure legal clause grants the secretary of the Treasury the right to mint and issue platinum coins in any quantity or denomination he chooses. Such coins were, of course, intended to be collectors' items, struck to commemorate special occasions. But the law is the law -and it offers a simple if strange way out of the crisis.

Here's how it would work: The Treasury would mint a platinum coin with a face value of $1 trillion (or many coins with smaller values; it doesn't really matter). This coin would immediately be deposited at the Federal Reserve, which would credit the sum to the government's account. And the government could then write checks against that account, continuing normal operations without issuing new debt.

In case you're wondering, no, this wouldn't be an inflationary exercise in printing money. Aside from the fact that printing money isn't inflationary under current conditions, the Fed could and would offset the Treasury's cash withdrawals by selling other assets or borrowing more from banks, so that in reality the U.S. government as a whole (which includes the Fed) would continue to engage in normal borrowing. Basically, this would just be an accounting trick, but that's a good thing. The debt ceiling is a case of accounting nonsense gone malignant; using an accounting trick to negate it is entirely appropriate.

But wouldn't the coin trick be undignified? Yes, it would - but better to look slightly silly than to let a financial and Constitutional crisis explode.

Now, the platinum coin may not be the only option. Maybe the president can simply declare that as he understands the Constitution, his duty to carry out Congressional mandates on taxes and spending takes priority over the debt ceiling. Or he might be able to finance government operations by issuing coupons that look like debt and act like debt but that, he insists, aren't debt and, therefore, don't count against the ceiling.

Or, best of all, there might be enough sane Republicans that the party will blink and stop making destructive threats.

Unless this last possibility materializes, however, it's the president's duty to do whatever it takes, no matter how offbeat or silly it may sound, to defuse this hostage situation. Mint that coin!

What do 9/11, AIG, the Federal Reserve, the CFR, and the UN have in common?

What do 9/11, AIG, the Federal Reserve, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the United Nations have in common?

Agenda 21.

The goal is to bankrupt America, just as is happening to Greece, Spain, the UK, Italy, and France right now.  The same has happened in Africa, Asia, and all across the world.

First your money, your government, then your guns and your liberties.

Don't believe the hype.  Educate yourself.  Search "AIG and 911" and go from there.