The Holy Inquisition: A Defender of Civilization

By Ioannis Auxentiou 

Alternative Right: There is, probably, no other institution in the medieval world that has been slandered as much, as the Holy Inquisition. Enlighteners, Protestants, and Jews managed for a long time to tarnish this very important institution in every possible way. Even in our own day, Hollywood continues to produce movies that reinforce this view.

But, as the saying goes, “lies have small feet.” Modern historical research has proved that a lot of the so-called “truths” that were widely believed about the actions of this institution were just myths created by modernity.

Important in this act of historical revision were the works of historians: Henry A. Kamen, a member of the Royal Historical Society, Edward Peters, professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Bartolomé Bennassar, professor at the University of Toulouse, and many more.

In the short article that follows, the reader will have the chance to understand the causes behind the slanders against the Holy Inquisition, but also to learn about some parts of its activity that are unknown to a wider audience.

The Seal of the Spanish Holy Inquisition

To defend and justify the Holy Inquisition is the exact opposite of Political Correctness. But as I have nothing to do with PC, I am happy to present the real history of this medieval institution.

Even the biggest critic of the Holy Inquisition, the American Quaker historian Henry C. Lea (1825 – 1909), was forced to admit that “The aim of the Holy Inquisition was the same as the aim of Civilization.” Indeed, even the most fanatical anti-Catholics, agree that the Holy Inquisition effectively countered:

• the suicidal beliefs of the Cathars, who were against childbirth
• the vandalism of the Anabaptists, who believed in destroying all art works
• the murderous tendencies of Fra Dolcino, who wished to kill every sinner
• the “Brothers of the Free Spirit,” who wished to remove from public office everyone who was not “enlightened”

All these victories for sanity were due to the Holy Inquisition. Today, no-one would be crazy enough to believe that God created some just to damn them for eternity. But, that was for centuries, the protestant dogma, and the cause of terrible wars that bled Europe. It is due to the Holy Inquisition, that Spain wasn’t touched by such have religious wars.

We should also remember that the famed University of Salamanca (one of the best and oldest in Europe), was created by an Inquisitor, and that the conversation about the rights of American Indians took place under the aegis of the Spanish Holy Inquisition. In this, we could even say that the Holy Inquisition was one of sources of modern day international human rights.

To understand how the Spanish Inquisition developed we have to understand Spanish history. In 1492 that country had just completed its national Reconquista, after eight centuries of occupation of a large part of its territory by the Moors. It thus had two really powerful national minorities in it: one of the biggest Jewish communities in the world as well as the Muslims. The first group had managed to concentrate a major part of the financial power in its hands, while the second, did not hide its dreams of vengeance.

The “Marranos” and the “Moriscos” were two in-between categories, made up of pseudo-Christians, meaning Jews and Muslims, who had – only in name – been converted to Christianity. Many of these had managed to occupy high offices in the Spanish hierarchy, both secular and ecclesiastic. This situation was full of danger, threatening the submission of the country to those hostile minorities, as well as causing intense friction and clashes with the real Christians, who saw that those pseudo-Christians were not only using their networks to control positions and offices, but were also taking economic advantage of them. Because of this, the country was in danger of civil war.

So the leadership of Spain thought it essential to intervene so that ne cives ad arma veniant (the citizens would not take arms). It therefore instituted the Holy Inquisition, and, in order for it to be impartial, the first High Inquisitor was Tomás de Torquemada, a man from a “converso” background (genuine converts to Christianity). In the case of Torquemada’s family, the conversion had been from Judaism. The main aim of the Holy Inquisition was to clarify things, making Jews declare that they are Jews and Muslims to declare that they are Muslims. In other words, no one bothered with the Jews that remained Jewish and the same went for Muslims.

Much has been written, said, and implied about the torture methods of the Holy Inquisition. There is no historian, worthy of that title, who does not recognize the fact that the Holy Inquisition was a rather mild and fair court, that it respected the procedures and was honestly interested in the salvation of the guilty.

As far as tortures go, they were rarely used, and were accompanied by medical controls, and only for the purpose of proving guilt. In any case, they were not overly harsh by the standards of the day. The accused was lifted high off the ground with ropes and left to fall down – three times maximum. If he could withstand the pain, the procedure stopped there. When the police arrest a criminal today, it is not unusual for the apprehended individual to be beaten and restrained.

Let us consider the prisons of the Holy Inquisition in Rome. The Italian historian Luigi Firpo mentions that there were a change of sheets twice per week, beer for those who could not drink wine, leave for the prisoners to see their parents, for work, and for medical care. The sentence of “continuous imprisonment,” in the language of the inquisitors, actually meant only three years in prison.

As far as France is concerned, it is known why the Holy Inquisition was established in that country. This was due to the heresy of the Cathars, which had managed to gain control of whole provinces, and had even princes convert to it. In short, the real reason for the existence of the Holy Inquisition in Europe was the to counter that era’s version of “Trotskyists,” meaning Gnostic movements and crypto-Jews, that were applying, then as now, their favorite technique of Entryism.

Before we finish, a small mention of the Galileo Galilei case. The Catholic Church supported the Aristotelian - Ptolemaic earth-centered theory for the movement of the celestial bodies, while Gallilei believed in the Copernican heliocentric theory. The Holy Inquisition, did not call Gallilei to condemn him, but asked him to prove his theory, and if he did the church would accept it. What happened, and was kept in silence for many years, was that Gallilei could not give irresistible scientific proof. Today every scientist knows that. This is not the right place to present the whole case. It is enough to read what Arthur Koestler, a Jew himself and thus no fan of the Catholic Church, writes about Gallilei:

“There is no doubt that the theory of tides by Gallilei was based on an unconscious fraud. But there is no doubt that the theory of tides, by Gallilei was a deliberate effort to confuse and deceive... As we have seen, academics are always prone to manias and obsessions and tend to falsify details. But fraudsters like Gallilei are rare in the chronicles of science...”

(Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, New York, 1959).

Would you like to know the penalty that the court of the Holy Inquisition forced on Gallilei? Five months of detainment in the tower of the Grand Duke of Tuscany Francesco Niccolini and the recitation of some religious psalms. Finally there was a “deal” and the psalms were recited by his daughter Maria Celeste. A bit later, after Gallilei disobeyed the orders to not spread his unproven theories, they were forced to isolate him in his villa, (known as “The Jewel”) in which he lived with every comfort.

Another big lie is the famous phrase that Gallilei supposedly used after his conviction: “Yet, it moves”. This phrase was not used by Gallilei, but was invented by the author Giussepe Baretti, who invented the incident for the purposes of anti-Catholic propaganda for the British public in an anthology published in London in 1757.

The End of the Cathars

But somebody is sure to ask: Did the Holy Inquisition go to no extremes? Did it not abuse its power at all? Of course it did, as is the case in any human activity, whether religious, political or military. The death penalties that the Holy Inquisition declared (in reality the Holy Inquisition decided if someone was guilty or not, the death penalty was an issue of the state and not of the Church) were limited to serious offences and anyway were quite less than the number of death penalties that the civic courts declared in that time.

History should be judged on the same basis as pharmaceuticals. A medicine is evaluated by comparing its healing abilities against its negative side effects. If we judge the Holy Inquisition by the same rule, then we will have to admit that if its spirit had been kept throughout Europe steadily and for a longer time, then maybe today we might not be living in our present age of darkness. In other words we would be free of Puritanism and thus Capitalism, and from WASPs like G.W. Bush, freemasonry, as well as every leftist ideology.

This article was originally published in Greek on the Theodotus blog. It was translated into English by Dimitrios Papageorgiou for Alternative Right.

Iran vs the Empire: Fighting dollarization

By Eric Walberg

The West's attempts to destroy the Iranian economy through heightened sanctions—including most imports, oil exports and use of banks for trade operations—is having its affect. According to Johns Hopkins University Professor Steve Hanke, Iran is facing hyperinflation, with a monthly inflation rate of nearly 70% per month and its national currency, the rial, plummeting in value against western currencies. Iran is the latest casualty to be placed on his Hanke-Krus Hyperinflation Index, which includes France (1795), Germany (1922), Chile (1973), Nicaragua (1986), Argentina (1990), Russia (1992), Ecuador (1999) and Zimbabwe (2007), countries which experienced price-level increases of at least 50% per month.

Hanke, relishing his role as the world’s expert on this nightmarish phenomenon, has "played a significant role in stopping more hyperinflations than any living economist, including 10 of the 57 episodes" on his Index. He writes that Iran has three options: spontaneous dollarization (people unloading rials on the blackmarket for dollars, as happened in Zimbabwe), official dollarization (the government withdrawing the currency in favor of dollars, as in Ecuador), or a currency board issuing a new domestic currency backed 100% by—you guessed it—dollars. Hanke insists that the foreign currency doesn't have to be US dollars. Pitcairn Island, for instance, uses New Zealand dollars.

The inflation doctor admits vaguely that there are "foreign factors", without a hint of criticism of not only the sanctions, but the active subversion of Iran through everything from support of Iranian terrorists, assassinations of leading scientists, right up to war (the US encouraged Iraq to invade Iran in 1980). He emphasizes "Iran's complex system of subsidies, capital controls, and multiple exchange rates", but most of all "massive overprinting of money", though he complains that "the Central Bank of The Islamic Republic of Iran has not reported any such statistics for some time". As if a country living through a state of emergency is likely to divulge such sensitive information.

He coolly dismisses consumers' expectations influencing prices, since "fear surrounding military tensions is nothing new for Iranians". Indeed, the US has been targeting Iran for destruction ever since it threw off its colonial chains in 1979—a dangerous example for other, especially Muslim countries. It is miraculous that Iran has done so well economically since the revolution, given the unremitting victimization it has experienced. One can only marvel at the stubborn courage it has shown to build an Islamic society in the teeth of opposition by the world empire and even by other Muslim nations allied to the empire.

We indeed may ask why Iran's inflation rate has jumped so dramatically precisely in recent times. Of course, it is because of the sanctions. And why the sanctions? Is it really fears that Iran will develop a nuclear bomb, despite professions to the contrary and membership in the IAEA? No. Besides Iran’s role in inspiring the current 'Islamic Reawakening' in the Middle East, there is another very important reason, one which flies in the face of Hanke's 'three options' for Iran.

Those ‘options’ all amount to one: accept US-dollar dictatorship. Iran has been trying to trade oil in non-US dollar currencies since 2008, when it opened its Oil Bourse. Iraq did this in 2000, and the US reaction was invasion—dollarization at gunpoint. The point of the sanctions today is a last-ditch attempt by the US to force Iran to comply with the US world order, as epitomized by continued acceptance of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Hanke insists it is not necessary for Iran to use US dollars as its substitute currency, which in any case would be ridiculous under the circumstances. However, the alternative of using, say, New Zealand dollars finesses the reality that all currencies are tied to the US dollar, as the de facto international reserve currency. This has been the case in reality since the 1930s, when the world abandoned the gold standard. Acknolwedging this fact, over 20 countries call their legal tender 'dollars'.

Whether the government moves quickly to raise the white flag, as in Ecuador, or belatedly, as in Zimbabwe, or insists on printing pretty new paper scrip tied 100% to the US dollar through an exchange board, as did Argentina, merely confirms the obvious. In past cases, such as Chile, Nicaragua and Zimbabwe, the message was: your socialist policies are unacceptable. In Iran's case, the message is: take dollars for your oil.

Hanke's monetarist credo—printing money causes inflation—ignores the underlying causes of inflation. As he admits, Iranians have faced war fears for over three decades. The exchange controls and subsidies, "government monopolies, price controls, and Soviet-style economic planning", which Hanke calls "wrong-headed", are not the cause of inflation, but a way for the government to keep it under control. However, at a certain point, the "foreign factors" become so egregious that even such measures fail. That is what has happened now, as sanctions have created extreme pain for the average Iranian. Bare shelves and panic in the face of invasion threats means that the currency will devalue, however many rials the government prints.

This is what happened in Germany in 1922, when it was forced to export everything to buy the gold to pay the extortionate reparations. It ended by resorting to Hanke’s currency board and marks issued against gold, but the underlying cause—the extortion practiced by Britain and France—only ended when Hitler took power and canceled the reparations. The devastation cause by "foreign factors" led in that instance to the rise of fascism.

University of Missouri Professor Michael Hudson maintains that “every hyperinflation in history stems from the foreign exchange markets. It stems from governments trying to throw enough of their currency on the market to pay their foreign debts.” Canadian commentator Stephen Gowans calls it “warfare by other means”. Devaluing the enemy’s currency was used as a war tactic by Napoleon against the Russians and by the British against the American colonists.

A consideration of all the countries on Hanke's Hyperinflation Index can trace similar real causes and real ways to end the underlying problem that led to hyperinflation in each case. Ecuador finally took control of its economy and reduced its foreign debt in defiance of the IMF under President Rafael Correa, and is today the most popular political leader in all of the Americas. That is what created political stability and ended the ever-present threat of inflation there. The same goes for Argentina under President Nestor Kirschner and Russia under President Vladimir Putin.

Hanke is like the doctor telling the patient who was shot that he must have his leg amputated immediately. He refuses to condemn the sanctions as a violation of human rights, targeting the Iranian people without cause. He wants to cut off the patient's leg to save him, which he can do in a matter of hours. The Iranian government is trying to remove the bullet and use a strict regime of rehabilitation, something that requires patience and grit. There is no magic cure to solve inflation under these circumstances.

The possibility looms that the US will undertake yet another criminal invasion of a Muslim country, recapitulating its war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. The real analogy for Iran is wartime. During war, all countries ration scarce goods, and people unite and accept sacrifice in the face of the enemy. This is the only solution for Iran today unless it agrees to join the US-dollar denominated empire as a junior member. Hanke's patient could well die under the 'anesthesia' of US-Israeli bombs, but the Iranian people are proud and will fight for their dignity till their dying breath. The worries about hyperinflation will then pale in comparison to the real "foreign factors", and the US will face the revenge of history for its criminal actions.

Most countries are too afraid of the US wolf to stand up to it. There are exceptions. China, Russia, India and South Korea have not abandoned 'the patient'. Egypt is establishing diplomatic and economic relations with Iran in defiance of the US. Hopefully other 'Arab Spring' countries will join Iran in pursuing a policy of justice for the Middle East, working together to undo the horrendous legacy of US imperialism in the region. Someday, ‘dollarization’ will be a shibboleth, consigned to the ‘ash heap of history’.

The end of Christendom

What you don't understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.

Boris Pasternak (Dr. Zhivago)

Presidential Debates and Bi-partisan Mendacity

The media attention to US Presidential debates mainly focuses on the appearance and emotional state of the contestants. This is understandable in view of the absence from the debates of substance relevant to the general public.

Thus, during this year's debates, it was generally agreed that Obama displayed a diffident and even defeatist stance during the first confrontation, roused himself to a punchy insolence in round two, and achieved in Debate three a state of such exhilaration as to suggest the use of a banned substance. Romney, in contrast, seemed calm and at ease during the first debate, but declined in energy level during the following rounds, so frequently licking his lower lip during the final debate as to suggest he might at any moment flick out a lizard tongue and snag a passing fly.

That the public is compelled to rate the candidates on their physiological state rather than any policy differences of substance is not necessarily a bad sign. In a democracy, the major parties must fight for the middle ground, which means that there will be little difference between them in their proclaimed objectives. Then debate will inevitably come down to nitpicking about inconsistency, or charges of incompetence.

What is remarkable about US politics and the politics of the Western democracies in general is that public policies do not converge on the middle ground, which is to say the ground dictated by the public interest. On the contrary, the Western democracies are governed very largely in contempt of public opinion. Mass immigration, endless wars, political correctness, TSA groping and humiliating millions of Americans and foreign visitors to the United States, the destruction of family values through state education. All of these aspects of public policy are opposed by the majority of the people.

What the West has, then, is clearly not democracy, yet the political parties nevertheless cleave to a common line in almost all policy areas. The reason for this is easily perceived if one relates the sources of party political funding and of after-office rewards of political life to the policies pursued.

To hear Obama and Romney out-Zionisting one another during the debates leaves no question as to one of the major determinants of Western government policy: Zionist campaign funding including, in Romney's case, $35 million from a single individual. David Cameron's recent groveling expression of unfailing allegiance to Israel, while 590,000 immigrants entered Britain during the first nine months of last year in the face of overwhelming public opposition, tells the same story of treason in high office.

On the economy, Obama offers his pathetic record in job creation against Romney's almost equally pathetic promise of twelve million jobs in four years, at a time when there are several tens of millions unemployed and several million new jobs are needed each year merely to keep up with population growth.

Neither candidate will discuss the reason for the current depression, which is globalization and the off-shoring of jobs and the outsourcing of supply both of goods and services that puts Western workers in direct and impossible competition with billions in the third world working for pennies an hour under often appalling conditions. But globalization has been immensely profitable for the international corporations and we know how much funding the candidates receive from Wall St.

On foreign policy, other than overt subservience to the interests of a shitty little, racist, apartheid state with nukes, the candidates contested mainly on the degree to which they are ready to pursue the war-criminal drive for global hegemony. Obama continues to threaten Iran with nukes if they dare to continue enriching uranium that might be used to build a nuke that might very well deter an American or Israeli nuclear first strike. Romney, regrets Obama's reluctance to pour gasoline on the flames of civil war ignited by US proxies in Syria. Bot men agree on the merits of killing people in countries, allied or enemy, using drones operated by techies in Virginia often unable to distinguish women and children from terrorists planting bombs and, apparently, not caring.

What we saw was bi-partisan mendacity to make sure the cattle go on voting, while the interests of the money power continue to be served.

See also
Noonan: When Americans Saw the Real Obama

A Poet for the New World Order

Czeslaw Milosz (2011-–2004), pronounced Cheshlaff Meelosh, was born and raised in Vilnius, Lithuania, which after WW1 was part of Poland. He spent the years of WW2 in Nazi occupied Warsaw, engaged in literary work with the Polish underground, but did not participate in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, a nationwide revolt against the Nazis.

After World War II, Milosz was appointed cultural attaché of the communist People's Republic of Poland in Paris. He defected to France in 1951 and emigrated to the United States in 1960. In 1961, he was appointed Professor of Polish literature in the Department of Slavic Languages at the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1953 Milosz received the Prix Littéraire Européen. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980.

The following poem by Milosz was written in Polish and translated into English by the author.

INCANTATION
Human reason is beautiful and invincible; (1)
No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books,
no sentence of banishment can prevail agaist it.
It establishes universal ideas in language
and guides our hand to write Truth and Justice (5)
with capital letters, and lie and oppression with small.
It puts what should be above things as they are
it is the enemy of despair and the friend of hope.
It does not know the Jew from the Greek or slave from master
giving us the estate of the World to manage. (10)
It saves austere and transparent phrases
from filthy discord of tortured words.
It says that everything is new under the sun,
opens the congealed fist of the past.
Beautiful and ver young are Philo-Sophia (15)
and poetry, her ally in the service of the Good.
As late as yesterday Nature celebrated her birth.
The news was brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo
Their friendships will be glorious, they have no limit.
Their enemies have delivered themselves to destruction. (20)

Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994), a distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley revealed the true New World Order essence of the poem in the following analysis.*

"Destruction" (20) threatens the opponents of a non-regional Reason intent on "manag[ing] the estate of the world" (10) without any "filthy discord of tortured words" (12), i.e., without democratic discussion. "Destruction" did indeed remove all those small and well-adapted societies that were in the way of the expansion of Western civilization, even thought they tried to defend their rights with "tortured words." Noble reason, on the other hand, is hardly "invincible" (1); prophets, salesmen, politicians, warriors, bent on torture, rape and murder trample it underfoot, the alleged friends of reason distort it to make it fit their intentions. The sciences of the past have showered us with useful and terrible gifts - but without employing a single unchangeable and "invincible" agency.

The sciences of today are business enterprises run on business principles - just remember the haggling about the financing of the human genome project and the Texas supercollider. Research in large institutes is not guided by Truth and Reason but by the most rewarding fashion and the Great Minds of today increasingly turn to where the money is, which for a long time meant military research.

Not "Truth" is taught at our universities, but the opinion of the influential schools. ... "Truth" written with "capital letters" (6) is an orphan in this world, withou power and influence and fortunately so, for the creature Milosz praises under this name could only lead to the most abject slavery. It cannot stand diverging opinions - it calls them "lies" (6); it puts iself "above" (7) the real lives of human beings, demanding, like all totalitarian ideologies, the right to rebuild the world from the height of "whatever should be" (7), i.e., in accordance with its own "invincible" (1) precepts. It fails, even refuses to recognize the many ideas, actions, feelings, laws, institutions, racial features which separate one nation (culture, civilization) from another and which alone give us people, i.e., creatures with faces (9).

The early philosophers, Xenophanes and Parmenides among them, took individual faces away from the gods and replaced them, by faceless principles. Milosz, the humanitarian, goes one step further. He takes faces away from people and replaces them by a faceless abstract and uniform notion of humanity.

This is the attitude that destroyed Indian cultural achievements in the USA without as much as a glance in their direction; this is the attitide that later destroyed may non-Western cultures under the guise of "development." Conceited, self-satisfied and utterly blind is this faith in Truth and Reason for which a democratic discussion is but a "filthy discord of tortured words" (12) - and also very uninformed: philosophy was never the "ally" (15) of poetry; not in antiquity when Plato sple of the "ancient battle between philosophy and poetry" (Republic 607b6f), not today when Truth is sought in the sciences, when poetry is reduced to the expression of feelings and when philosophy is interpreted (by deconstructionists) as a poetry not aware of its true nature. It is amazing how many idiocies can be stuffed into a single poem - it can't have been "a unicorn and an echo" that brought "the news" - it most certainly was an old and decrepit donkey.

* Paul Feyerabend, the Tyranny of Science, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2011.

And, as Feyerabend might have added had he written today, this is the attitude of those intent on the destruction of the Western nation states, their identities, and their heritage, cultural, religious and racial.

Se also:
New Labor and the Genocide of the English

CanSpeccy: Europe's New Genocide

Why America Nuked Japan

Image source

Atomic Weapons Were Not Needed to End the War or Save Lives
Washington's Blog, October 14, 2012: Like all Americans, I was taught that the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to end WWII and save both American and Japanese lives.

But most of the top American military officials at the time said otherwise.

The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey group, assigned by President Truman to study the air attacks on Japan, produced a report in July of 1946 that concluded (52-56):

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.

General (and later president) Dwight Eisenhower – then Supreme Commander of all Allied Forces, and the officer who created most of America’s WWII military plans for Europe and Japan – said:

The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.

Newsweek, 11/11/63, Ike on Ike

Eisenhower also noted (pg. 380):

In [July] 1945… Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. …the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude….

Admiral William Leahy – the highest ranking member of the U.S. military from 1942 until retiring in 1949, who was the first de facto Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and who was at the center of all major American military decisions in World War II – wrote (pg. 441):

It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

General Douglas MacArthur agreed (pg. 65, 70-71):

Read more

Nobel Prize for Genocide: Farage on the EU and the Destruction of the European Nation States

Meantime: Switzerland arms in preparation for EU meltdown.

And: The IMF admits the austerity it has promoted will kill the EU economy

And: from the President of the Czech Republic "The new push for a European Union federation, complete with its own head of state and army, is the "final phase" of the destruction of democracy and the nation state."

And: The EU is not a "Person": Granting the Nobel Prize to the European Union is in Violation of Alfred Nobel’s Will

Meantime: Greeks Welcome Angela Merkel

Image source:

Ambrose Evans Pritchard: The wrong Europe wins the Nobel Peace Prize

How the NeoCons Made America the Most Hated Nation

The Soviet Empire collapsed not solely because of corruption and decay, but because even the Commie bosses could see that a free society was incomparably more productive and, thus, more powerful than their own ramshackle totalitarian system that was incapable of managing a high tech economy without endless malfunctions, misallocations  and disasters.

Thus the Free World, and particularly the US, won the Cold War.

And as the victor in a near bloodless struggle with a hated system of monstrous tyranny, the US was not only the World's wealthiest and most powerful nation, but the World's most admired nation.The entire World wanted to wear jeans and sneakers, and visit Disney World.

Image source

The Neocon authors of the Project for the New American Century sought to exploit the opportunity thus created to transform America from a wealthy, powerful nation state, where free speech and personal liberty were respected, into a global empire that would serve the interests of an international plutocratic elite. The strategy was simple: to establish American hegemony over the Middle East and Central Asia, where most of the World's proven hydrocarbon energy reserves are located, and thus to control the World by controlling the distribution of energy.

The project was to be self-financing. Profits from the exploitation of the oil and gas reserves to be appropriated would cover the military costs of empire. The payoff was to come in the form of security for corporations operating globally under the terms of the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, now institutionalized as the World Trade Organization. That is to say, corporations operating with complete freedom to move capital and technology to wherever labor is cheapest and workplace health and safety standards weakest, to move products to wherever profits are highest,  and to move profits were taxes are lowest.

The consequences of the imperialist project have been as follows:

Unlawful killings: Source

America has spent trillions on multiple wars, suffered large numbers of military casualties, including six thousand killed in action and around 150 thousand suicides among war vets.

Globalization of trade has devastated the American and European economic middle-class, roughly the middle 50% of the population, through job losses, loss of job security, or reduction in wages and benefits, all the direct result of allowing Western corporations to move capital, technology and jobs to the Third World, where labor costs remain less than one tenth of those in the West.

Europe's new people: Image source

Workers throughout the West have been further harmed by mass Third World immigration, which intensifies competition for work, housing and the use of public facilities including schools, hospitals, highways, etc. As a result, in part, of mass immigration, the people of England now occupy and average of less than half an acre each, or a patch of ground around 45 meters square.

Opposition to war and globalization has been suppressed by (a) false flag attacks on Western nations; (b) the use of terror tactics against citizens, including the sexual assault and X-irradiation of travelers by the US TSA, (c) the firing of academics and journalists who challenge state and corporate propaganda about globalization, imperialism and the rise of Western domestic tyranny.

A genocidal program for the destruction of the nation state, which means concerted efforts to trivialize religious and cultural traditions. To hear it from the corporate lick-spittles such as Tony Blair, there is really no such thing as Christianity, or Islam or Hinduism: they are all one and the same, mere "spirituality."

Goldman Sex: Image source

So will the United States be forced to blunder on, contrary to the innermost feelings of the great majority of her people? Will the tiny corporate oligarchy, the Soros's the Rockefeller's, the financial pimps and prostitutes at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and the other great financial institutions that largely fund America's presidential elections continue to impose their will through puppet politicians whose elections they finance, the media -- news, books, movies, broadcasting -- that they own, and the education system they control?

Or is the whole edifice of lies, corruption and cruelty about to collapse as did that of the Soviet Union?  

The Nazi TSA welcomes you to the USA

The question is no longer in the hands of the American people, or the people of any other, so-called, democracy. The people are brainwashed, bullied and borne down with economic adversity. They have little understanding, and little energy to fight. Only outright starvation will create a general revolt, and that will be staved off with food stamps.

The question, thus, is in the hands of the elite. A handful of people, really. A few in the military, in the intelligence world and at the top of the financial heap.

Will these people drive the nations of the Earth into a system of eternal slavery?

Or will they acknowledge the horror of what they have wrought and pull back while there is still time to save the beautiful and creative diversity of the nations, races and religions of the World, and allow all nations to pursue their own destiny, within a global system that restores the concept of civility and law in the relations between nations?

Goldman Sachs Profiting From Under-Age Prostitution

By Nicholas D. Kristof

Image source

The New York Times, March 31, 2012:THE biggest forum for sex trafficking of under-age girls in the United States appears to be a Web site called Backpage.com.

This emporium for girls and women — some under age or forced into prostitution — is in turn owned by an opaque private company called Village Voice Media. Until now it has been unclear who the ultimate owners are.

That mystery is solved. The owners turn out to include private equity financiers, including Goldman Sachs with a 16 percent stake.

Read more:

See also: Goldman sex! 'God's bank' offloads shares in firm linked to prostitution after deciding it was 'uncomfortable with direction of the company'

"The bad publicity was driving down our market cap. faster than selling kids for sex was racking up our profits" -- Golden Sex spokesperson.

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

Now we know it: Goldman Sachs rules the World

Eric Hobsbawm: the Commie Traitor Who British Lefties Loved

He hated Britain and excused Stalin's genocide. But was a hero of the BBC and the Guardian. Was Eric Hobsbawm a TRAITOR too?

Historian defended the Soviet killing of millions in the name of Communism When he was at Cambridge in the 1930s he knew Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess and other Soviet agents, who were recruited by Marxists.

Four years before his death said he wanted to see MI5 files on him to find out who had 'snitched on him.'

By A.N. Wilson

Daily Mail, October 2, 2012:Eric Hobsbawm once described himself as an 'unrepentant communist' and was a towering figure on the British Left for decades

On Monday evening, the BBC altered its programme schedule to broadcast an hour-long tribute to an old man who had died aged 95, with fawning contributions from the likes of historian Simon Schama and Labour peer Melvyn Bragg.

The next day, the Left-leaning Guardian filled not only the front page and the whole of an inside page but also devoted almost its entire G2 Supplement to the news. The Times devoted a leading article to the death, and a two-page obituary.

You might imagine, given all this coverage and the fact that Tony Blair and Ed Miliband also went out of their way to pay tribute, that the nation was in mourning.

Yet I do not believe that more than one in 10,000 people in this country had so much as heard of Eric Hobsbawm, the fashionable Hampstead Marxist who was the cause of all this attention. He had, after all, been open in his disdain for ordinary mortals.

Hobsbawm came to Britain as a refugee from Hitler’s Europe before the war, but, as he said himself, he wished only to mix with intellectuals. ‘I refused all contact with the suburban petit bourgeoisie which I naturally regarded with contempt.’ Naturally.

If the name Hobsbawm rings a bell at all, people might recollect that it was also the name of Julia Hobsbawm, a PR expert who, in collaboration with the future Mrs Gordon Brown, was one of the spin doctors who sold New Labour to this country.

There is a world of difference between the ideology of Julia’s sleek, modern New Labour ideas and her father’s hard-nosed Stalinism, but one of the things they had in common was contempt for ‘ordinary people’.

Read more

Meltdown: What Really Happened at Fukushima?

By Jake Adelstein and David McNeill

The Atlantic, July 2, 2011: It’s been one of the mysteries of Japan’s ongoing nuclear disaster: How much of the damage did the March 11 earthquake inflict on Fukushima Daiichi’s reactors in the 40 minutes before the devastating tsunami arrived? The stakes are high: If the quake alone structurally compromised the plant and the safety of its nuclear fuel, then every other similar reactor in Japan is at risk.

Throughout the months of lies and misinformation, one story has stuck: “The earthquake knocked out the plant’s electric power, halting cooling to its reactors,” as the government spokesman Yukio Edano said at a March 15 press conference in Tokyo. The story, which has been repeated again and again, boils down to this: “after the earthquake, the tsunami – a unique, unforeseeable [the Japanese word is soteigai] event - then washed out the plant’s back-up generators, shutting down all cooling and starting the chain of events that would cause the world’s first triple meltdown to occur.”

But what if recirculation pipes and cooling pipes, burst, snapped, leaked, and broke completely after the earthquake -- long before the tidal wave reached the facilities, long before the electricity went out? This would surprise few people familiar with the 40-year-old Unit 1, the grandfather of the nuclear reactors still operating in Japan.

The authors have spoken to several workers at the plant who recite the same story: Serious damage to piping and at least one of the reactors before the tsunami hit. All have requested anonymity because they are still working at the plant or are connected with TEPCO. One worker, a maintenance engineer in his late twenties who was at the Fukushima complex on March 11, recalls hissing and leaking pipes. “I personally saw pipes that came apart and I assume that there were many more that had been broken throughout the plant. There’s no doubt that the earthquake did a lot of damage inside the plant," he said. "There were definitely leaking pipes, but we don’t know which pipes – that has to be investigated. I also saw that part of the wall of the turbine building for Unit 1 had come away. That crack might have affected the reactor.”

The reactor walls of the reactor are quite fragile, he notes. “If the walls are too rigid, they can crack under the slightest pressure from inside so they have to be breakable because if the pressure is kept inside and there is a buildup of pressure, it can damage the equipment inside the walls so it needs to be allowed to escape. It’s designed to give during a crisis, if not it could be worse – that might be shocking to others, but to us it’s common sense.”

A second worker, a technician in his late 30s, who was also on site at the time of the earthquake, narrated what happened. “It felt like the earthquake hit in two waves, the first impact was so intense you could see the building shaking, the pipes buckling, and within minutes, I saw pipes bursting. Some fell off the wall. Others snapped. I was pretty sure that some of the oxygen tanks stored on site had exploded but I didn’t see for myself. Someone yelled that we all needed to evacuate and I was good with that. But I was severely alarmed because as I was leaving I was told and I could see that several pipes had cracked open, including what I believe were cold water supply pipes. That would mean that coolant couldn’t get to the reactor core. If you can’t sufficiently get the coolant to the core, it melts down. You don’t have to have to be a nuclear scientist to figure that out.”

Read more

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder

The prosecutor in the case is Vincent Bugliosi who claims to show in a NY Times best selling book that, beyond reasonable doubt, Oswald killed Kennedy.

The Kennedy assassination(s) appears to have been a CIA project, ably covered up by the Warren Commission under the guidance of Allen Dulles, who as head of the CIA, had just been fired by Kennedy.

George Bush's NeoCon Iraq war was launched on the basis of preposterous lies about Saddam's WMD's that made the CIA appear incompetent.

Taking these facts together suggests a certain logic concerning the literary and film-making activities of Mr. Bugliosi.

The Bush's, it may be thought in some circles, have become unduly independent -- as did the Kennedy's before them.

See also: Vincent Bugliosi Assassinates Kennedy Again: The Military and Warren Commission Cover-up.

The Debate: Did Obama Blow It or Throw It

Candidates' debates are rarely informative and often incredibly dull. Participants are uptight and heavily programed to avoid saying any thing off script.

Last night's debate seemed different. Both Obama and Romney spoke calmly, almost conversationally, despite the strict alternation of two, three or one minute speaking slots. Both candidates were polite: as Obama spoke Romney smiled; as Romney spoke Obama often nodded as if in full agreement.

But strangely, for an experienced and polished political performer, Obama perpetrated several remarkable blunders.

During an argument about corporate taxes, Obama charged that American companies receive tax incentives to move jobs offshore, but then remained silent when Romney declared Obama's claim to be entirely fictitious. Does Obama not know what he is talking about? Does he routinely spout nonsense off the top of his head? And if what he said were true, how does the failure of his administration to eliminate such a job-killing provision reflect on his own competence?

In fact, Romney could have made much more of this than he did, for the only tax incentive that American companies have to offshore jobs is the tax that Obama wants to increase on profits of corporations located in the US. Romney did state that the corporation tax is a job killer, but he failed to make the point in the context of Obama's assertion that the corporations received tax incentives to offshore jobs. What corporations face are tax disincentives, which Obama intends to increase, to locating jobs in the United States. Which is why GE, for example, employs over 900 accountants and lawyers to determine where in the world it is most tax-efficient to locate their operations.

Equally bizarre was his claim that the oil industry is subsidized. Technically, the claim is true, but as Romney pointed out, the subsidy of about $2 billion per year is trivial compared with the $90 billion in subsidies given by the Obama Administration to, so-called, green energy companies including the likes of Solyndra, the bankrupt solar cell maker, and the luxury car makers, Tesla and Fisker -- companies that contribute campaign funds to the Democratic Party.

The $35 Million estate said to be Obama’s next home (Source).

But were these blunders?

Obama's performance lacked not only energy but even engagement. He seemed like a man offering a mere pro forma performance, as though the succession had already been decided. It's the economy that matters and for the next four years America needs a corporate restructuring expert at the helm. Romney is the man with the credentials. Which raises the question: has the choice already been made? Is Obama just counting the days until he is free to retire to a luxury family compound in Hawaii?

We entertain no conspiracy theories without evidence. But Obama's debate performance was certainly suggestive, if not of a conspiracy to throw the race, at least of the absence of a serious determination to win it. 

Hillary Cinton and James Baker on China, Russia, Iran, Syria, Pakistan

Dull but informative. What this discussion suggests is that US policy on Iran is bipartisan, which in turn suggests that a Romney presidency will not necessarily launch the war on Iran that the NeoCons are working for. That may explain the NeoCon enthusiasm for a false flag attack on the US to justify the war on Iran that Israel's Government so desperately desires.

Did Sarkozy Order Ghaddafi's Murder?

By Felicity Arbuthnot

GlobalResearch.org, October 3, 2012: This weekend a detailed article in the Daily Mail (i) suggested that a: “French secret serviceman, acting on the express orders of the then President Sarkozy, is suspected of  the murder of Colonel Quaddafi”, on 20th October last year.

While bearing in mind that the NATO-backed insurgents now in power who have destroyed, de-stabilised, and terrorized much of Libya and who hope to carve up Libya’s resources for their own benefit have every reason to wish to disassociate themselves from the butchery of Colonel Quaddafi’s terrible death, the new allegations illuminate interesting points.

The French assassin, it is claimed, infiltrated the mob rabidly manhandling the Colonel, and shot him in the head.

“The motive, according to well placed (Libyan) sources”, was to prevent any chance of interrogation into Sarkozy’s links with Colonel Quaddafi.

The Mail previously revealed (ii) quoting a French governmental briefing note published by an investigative website, that fifty million euros has been: “laundered though bank accounts in Panama and Switzerland … from Colonel Quaddafi, to fund (Sarkozy’s 2007) election as President”, which if correct: “would have broken political financing laws.” Sarkozy’s: “numerous visits to Libya” were also cited.

Further claims are that: “The Swiss account was opened in the name of the sister of Jean-Francois Cope, the leader of Mr Sarkozy’s ruling UMP party, and the President’s right-hand-man.”

Quaddafi’s son, Saif alIslam, whose life hangs in the balance and no doubt further so, should he be subject to the Libyan “judicial system”, has stated unequivocally regarding the Sarkozy campaign funding: “We have all the details and are ready to reveal everything … We funded it.”

No wonder Saif, also a generous funder (£1.5 million) to his former place of advanced study, the prestigious London School of Economics – where he also delivered the annual Ralph Miliband Lecture in May2010, named for the renowned academic and father of the former UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband and his brother Ed, current Leader of the Labour Party – has been abandoned by the Western powers who had formerly welcomed him – then conspired in another illegal coup, this time in his country.

Sarkozy, on becoming President, memorably welcomed Colonel Quaddafi on a State Visit to Paris in December 2007, greeting him as “Brother Leader” and hosting his famed Bedouin tent next to the Elysee Palace.

Tony Blair, visited Quaddafi on many occasions, even flying in the Colonel’s private plane, pushing mega business deals. He too is mute on the horrors of the death and the fate of his children, grandchildren and country.

The Mail also makes the points that: “The United Nations mandate which sanctioned (the misnamed ‘no fly zone’) expressly stated that the Western allies could not interfere in the internal politics of the country.”

“Instead the almost daily bombing runs ended with Quaddafi’s overthrow, while both French and British military ‘advisors’ were said to have assisted on the ground.”

“Now Mahmoud Jibril, who served as interim Prime Minister following Gaddafi’s overthrow, has told Egyptian TV: ‘It was a foreign agent who mixed with the revolutionary brigades to kill Gaddafi.’ “

Another Tripoli source, according to the paper, stated: “Sarkozy had every reason to try to silence the Colonel and as quickly as possible”, with a further “diplomatic source” also stressing Quaddafi’s threats to reveal the financial details of the funding to the 2007 French Presidential elections donations.

An interesting point, if correct, is made by Rami El Obeidi, the : “former head of foreign relations for the Libyan Transitional Council (who) said he knew that Quaddafi had been tracked through his satellite telecommunications system as he talked to: “the Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.” Which raises the question of what connection exists between the murderous Western backed rampages against Libya and Syria?

How much of alleged murky financial deals does Syria’s President also know?

Sarkozy has consistently denied receiving money from the Libyan Leader and was unavailable for comment in response to the Mail's article.

Worthy of mention is that in November 2007, just before Quaddafi’s Paris visit: “A US State Department cable had warned that those ‘who dominate Libya’s political and economic leadership are pursuing increasingly nationalistic policies in the energy sector’ and that there was ‘growing evidence of Libyan resource nationalism.’ ”

“The cable cited a 2006 speech in which Quaddafi said: ‘Oil companies are controlled by foreigners who have made millions from them. Now, Libyans must take their place to profit from this money.’ ”

“Quaddafi’s government had forced oil companies to give their local subsidiaries Libyan names. Worse, ‘labor laws were amended to ‘Libyanize’ the economy’, that is, turn it to the advantage of Libyans.”

“Oil firms ‘were pressed to hire Libyan managers, finance people and human resources directors.’ ” (iii)

Perhaps then it is no wonder, that, on hearing of Colonel Quaddafi’s horrific death, President Nobel Obama declared it was a: “momentous day.” (BBC, 20th October 2011.) Madam Clinton followed with a raucous laugh and: “We came, we saw, he died.”

There is only one certainty, in the whole shaming “regime change” in Libya, there are no clean hands.

And where is Colonel Quaddafi’s body?

How globalization is destroying the livlihood of Western youth

Image source

Greek Youth Unemployment Hits 55%

The economic elephant in the room that no Nobel-Prizing-winning economist dare mention is globalization and the offshoring and outsourcing of Western jobs to the Third World.

See also:
CanSpeccy: Obarmy Is a Tyrant But Romney Could Be Worse
Sep 08, 2012
In fact, offshoring is the gift of what was US GDP to China, India, and the other countries to which US corporations locate their production that they sell to Americans. US GDP goes down, the GDP of the countries who make the ...

CanSpeccy: The New Conrad Black: On the Stupidity of the Last four American Administrations ...
Aug 30, 2012
A few months behind bars seem to have done former Canadian Citizen, his Lordship, Conrad Black much good. Other newspaper proprietors would no doubt benefit from the same experience. By Conrad Black The Financial ...

CanSpeccy: How globalization destroys Western prosperity
Jul 10, 2012
But what the shills for globalization fail to mention is that comparative advantage, as Ricardo defined it, presupposes immobility of capital, a condition that certainly does not apply in a globalized economy, where international ...

CanSpeccy: Niall Ferguson: The Failure of the European Union and ...
May 25, 2012
In an interview with Michael Posner for the Globe and Mail, Ferguson points out that it is globalization, i.e., free trade with four billion third worlders earning pennies an hour, that is impoverishing low-skilled european workers, ...

CanSpeccy: How the Rich Destroyed the Economy
Sep 27, 2011
Economic policy failed for three reasons: (1) policymakers focused on enabling offshoring corporations to move middle class jobs, and the consumer demand, tax base, GDP, and careers associated with the jobs, to foreign ...

CanSpeccy: Exporting the economy
Dec 02, 2011
“Free market economists” are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. http://canspeccy.blogspot.com/

Netenyahu Seeks to Elect the Next Neocon US President

By David Remnick

New Yorker Blogs, September 12, 2012: It is hard to overestimate the risks that Benjamin Netanyahu poses to the future of his own country. As Prime Minister, he has done more than any other political figure to embolden and elevate the reactionary forces in Israel, to eliminate the dwindling possibility of a just settlement with the Palestinians, and to isolate his country on the world diplomatic stage. Now Netanyahu seems determined, more than ever, to alienate the President of the United States and, as an ally of Mitt Romney’s campaign, to make himself a factor in the 2012 election—one no less pivotal than the most super Super PAC. “Who are you trying to replace?” the opposition leader, Shaul Mofaz, asked of Netanyahu in the Knesset on Wednesday. “The Administration in Washington or that in Tehran?”

Mofaz, a former Defense Minister, who participated in the fabled raid on Entebbe, in 1976, along with the Prime Minister’s brother, was reacting to Netanyahu’s outburst against the Obama Administration, at a news conference in Jerusalem. “The world tells Israel ‘Wait, there’s still time,’ ” Netanyahu told reporters in English. “And I say, ‘Wait for what? Wait until when?’ Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.”

No one had any illusions that Netanyahu was addressing anyone but Obama, with whom he has a tortured relationship, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had earlier said, “We are not setting deadlines,” but, rather, pushing forward on economic sanctions and diplomacy. Articles in the Guardian and elsewhere have set out the sorry recent episodes in this chaotic relationship. On a trip I took to Israel a few weeks ago for The New Yorker, the political philosopher Avishai Margalit told me that Netanyahu was a kind of “mythomaniac,” a politician utterly absorbed and guided by his sense of heroic mission, and dismissive of the opinions and analyses of even his closest advisers. This goes for his innate distrust of any and all Palestinians, as well as for the vast range of military and intelligence experts, both inside and outside the Israeli government, who are constantly telling him that a unilateral attack on Iranian nuclear facilities will end in political, diplomatic, and military disaster. Netanyahu’s opponents include the current leaders of the Israeli military and the major intelligence branches and their most recent predecessors, to say nothing of a decisive majority of the Israeli population. They fear consequences as dire as regional war and an Iranian regime unified and strengthened by a sense of common purpose. ...

Read more

See Also: White Man's Burden, How a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them Jewish launched the Iraq War

Why US Military Veterans Kill Themselves

By Luke Hiken and Marti Hiken

Progressive Avenues, September 28, 2012: Recent figures indicate that for every soldier killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, 25 veterans commit suicide upon their return to the U.S. That is an astonishing statistic! How can this be?

In 1971, Stanford University conducted a prison experiment to determine what the effects of imprisonment were on a selected group of students. One half of the students were chosen to act as prison guards while the other half were to be criminals convicted of serious crimes. The University had to bring the experiment to an abrupt end when it was discovered that the “prison guards” were becoming sadistic, violent oppressors, and the “criminals” were responding to the conditions of imprisonment in dangerously rebellious ways. The experiment underscored what happens to average, educated people, when they are treated without respect, and without protections. More importantly, it demonstrated the catastrophic effect that unrestrained authority, violence and corruption had on those entrusted with the roles of caretakers and guards.[1]

We are witnessing a similar breakdown of morality and judgment among U.S. troops presently carrying out our imperialist wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere throughout the Middle East. “The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology” recently issued the report that for every soldier who was killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East over the last 10 years, 25 more veterans have committed suicide.[2] Whether or not these suicide attempts are a result of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), mental health breakdowns, or the natural consequences of having good “soldiers” turn into murdering monsters because of the conditions they are placed under (i.e. the Stanford experiment), is debatable. Yet, what is more at issue here is the fact that over a ½ million soldiers and mercenaries (i.e. “civilian contractors”) have returned home to our communities from the Middle East, and the Pentagon opines that approximately 1/3 of them suffer from some form of PTSD.

What these statistics highlight, is the moral depravity resulting from all aspects of our involvement in the Middle East, and the impact our colonial assaults have, not only on the defenseless populations we have chosen to destroy, but also on the perpetrators of those assaults as well. It is impossible for soldiers to participate in unjustified mass murder, and not be scarred by it. One would have thought that our experiences in Vietnam would have provided a clue as to the disastrous results that unjustified wars have on the men and women asked to fight in them. But no, our Pentagon and “misleaders,” have learned nothing from Vietnam, the Russian and French failures in Afghanistan, or our deceitful and shameful attack on Iraq. These “misleaders” are unaffected by the cruelty and viciousness of their overseas forays, while many engaged in these wars will spend their days contemplating killing themselves.

Recent studies conducted by NYU and Stanford have documented the fact that hundreds more civilians have been killed by the U.S. drone attacks than the Pentagon acknowledges.[3] Yet some bull-headed bureaucrat in the Defense Department, named John Brennan, has the audacity to explain to Obama that these studies are inaccurate, and that our “pinpoint” accuracy with drones is only killing terrorists, and any unwarranted deaths are “extremely rare.” Are these pathologically absurd comments by Brennan designed to insulate Obama from his slaughter of hundreds of innocent women and children identified in the studies, or do we assume that Obama is even more of a scoundrel than we imagined, for setting up a clown like Brennan to rubber stamp the illegal use of drones?

A nation that murders civilians indiscriminately, wages wars of aggression against defenseless nations, and lies to its own people about our reasons for destroying governments around the world is not only subjecting its soldiers to resulting suicidal behavior, but destroying the moral integrity of the entire nation as well. At every sporting event where we see jet planes and U.S. flags displayed for purposes of propagandizing the American people to put up with our international war crimes, most of the people watching hang their heads in shame over the decline of what was once a great nation.

The Stanford prison experiment was a microcosm of what is happening to the U.S. worldwide. It demonstrates what happens to citizens who become international killers and to the nation that pays them to do so.  

FOOTNOTES

(1) The Stanford Prison Experiment - A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment Conducted at Stanford University, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

“The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted at Stanford University from August 14 to August 20 of 1971 by a team of researchers led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo. It was funded by the US Office of Naval Research and was of interest to both the US Navy and Marine Corps as an investigation into the causes of conflict between military guards and prisoners.

Twenty-four male students out of 75 were selected to take on randomly assigned roles of prisoners and guards in a mock prison situated in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. The participants adapted to their roles well beyond Zimbardo's expectations, as the guards enforced authoritarian measures and ultimately subjected some of the prisoners to psychological torture. Many of the prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, at the request of the guards, readily harassed other prisoners who attempted to prevent it. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his role as the superintendent, permitted the abuse to continue. Two of the prisoners quit the experiment early and the entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days. Certain portions of the experiment were filmed and excerpts of footage are publicly available.”

(2) Press TV, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/236543.html

“According to a New York Times article published on April 14, an American soldier dies every day and a half, on average, in Iraq or Afghanistan while veterans kill themselves at a rate of one every 80 minutes.

“The article also said more than 6,500 veteran suicides are logged every year -- more than the total number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq combined since those wars began.”

(3) Zucchino, David, Drone Strikes in Pakistan have Killed many Civilians, Study Says,” LA Times, latimes.com, 9-24-12 http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/24/world/la-fg-drone-study-20120925

______________________________
Marti Hiken is the director of Progressive Avenues. She is the former Associate Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and former chair of the National Lawyers Guild Military Law Task Force. She can be contacted at info@progressiveavenues.org, 415-702-9682.

Luke Hiken is an attorney who has engaged in the practice of criminal, military, immigration, and appellate law.

The Progressive Avenues website, www.progressiveavenues.org, is regularly updated in the “What’s Added, What’s New” link on the Home page, at http://www.progressiveavenues.org/Whats_New_Added.html

Pictures Worth a Thousand Words

Netenyahu Addresses the UN

The Netenyahu Salute

The Netenyahu Nuke. Afterwards, Bibi gave the picture to Romney to color in

Pictures Show Why US/Israel Hate Iran

(Image source)

If you want to know why US/Israel wish to destroy Iran, look at the people. Where are the Africans? Where are the Asians? Where's the diversity? There isn't any. Iranians are all white(ish). They're Aryans, you know, like Nazis.

The evidence is conclusive. Iran is a mono-ethnic nation state stubbornly intent on preserving its racial, cultural and religious heritage, something to which no nation but Israel is entitled to do.

Then there's the oil. One hundred and fifty billion barrels, or $15 trillion-worth at the wellhead. That's far too much cash for such a populous country in such a geostrategically important part of the world to invest in in its own development.

(Image source)

Iran must open voluntarily to the globalist system of corporate control or be opened up. They must eat bacon and hamburgers, Krispy Kreme donuts and Kentucky Fried Chicken whether they like it or not. They must acknowledge the superiority of multiculturalism over their age old civilization and allow low-wage Asian and African workers to flood their labor markets.

What's more, they have to restore control of the oil fields to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. (aka BP) and Exxon.

The Pretty Face of Genocide

By JAY

Norway appoints a Muslim woman "culture minister"

JewAmongYou, September 23, 2012: Norway has appointed a Muslim woman as its “culture minister”.  According to Alarabiya:

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg has appointed a Muslim woman as part of his government during a Cabinet reshufle this week.
Hadia Tajik, 29, from Pakistani decent, was appointed on Friday as Norway’s minister of culture.
Hadia has become the first ever Muslim cabinet member and youngest ever government minister in the Scandinavian country.
The newly appointed minister of culture has already publicized her program for the upcoming months and highlighted that cultural diversity should become an undisputable part of Norway’s everyday life.
In 2009 she was elected as MP for the Norwegian Labour Party that represented Oslo.

It’s not clear why there needs to be a government minister of culture in the first place, but if there is to be one, shouldn’t he represent the indigenous people of Norway? With traitors like Stoltenberg comprising the ruling class, it’s easy to understand the rage of Anders Behring [Breivik]. As for Tajik, my guess is she was hired for her good looks – to give genocide a pretty face.

The new face of Norway: Not Norwegian

Paid PR scandal erupts at Trikipedia

Or where would a wise man hide a pebble? 

By Violet Blue

CNet, September 18, 2012: Concerned Wikipedians raised the alarm Monday that two trusted men -- one a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation UK, the other a respected Wikipedian In Residence -- are allegedly editing Wikipedia pages and facilitating front-page placement for their pay-for-play, publicity-seeking clients.

Read more

Isn't that what Wikipedia has been about from the outset? A place where critical lies can be embedded in a mass of otherwise useful information gathered at no cost by naive unpaid contributors?

The life of Jesus: Does it matter?

...there is not a single fact about Jesus of which we can be certain, other than that, if he actually existed, his name would not have been Jesus...
 

C'mon guys, you try it. (Image source)

The four gospel and the Epistles of St. Paul, which are the core texts of the Christian faith, tell the story of Jesus' life: his birth;  his intellectually precocious youth; his recognition by John the Baptist as the long-awaited Jewish Messiah; his 40-day fast during which he wrestled with the temptations of the Devil and determined the path he would follow; his recruitment of disciples; his journeys throughout Palestine; his teachings and miracles; his conflicts with the Jewish authorities; and finally, his arrest, conviction, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension to Heaven.

Yet there is not a single fact about Jesus of which we can be certain, other than that, if he actually existed, his name would not have been Jesus, since no such name was known to the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine of that day.

There is not a single reference to Jesus in the historical record. The day and month of his birth are unknown. The year of his birth is uncertain, the place of his birth, Bethlehem or Nazareth, is a matter of debate. And the circumstances of his birth and life as recorded in the gospels so closely reflect those of the Persian god, Mithra, and the founders of  other religious cults that the literal veracity of the gospel story seems impossible to accept.

If, then, the story about Jesus is largely if not entirely myth, what possible interest can it have for people of the present day? To many, the answer is "none." On that view, Jesus, if any real person existed who inspired the gospel stories, must have been a mere mortal, born not of a virgin, unable to raise the dead or turn water into wine, who died as any crucified man dies, and whose death was as final as will be yours or mine.

Lev Tolstoy by Ilya Repin (Image source)

That, precisely, was the view of Russia's literary giant, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy. Yet Tolstoy made Jesus the focus of his religious life. 

Why? 

Because the teachings of Jesus remain a fact undeniable on the basis of any historical evidence. The teachings of Jesus have a validity and significance totally independent of their authorship, and even of how they may have been edited or re-written. One can accept or reject them, but one cannot deny their reality or their force in the world. 

For that reason Tolstoy made his own translation of the gospels from the Greek bible. In it he combined the teachings from the four gospels in a single narrative, which omits reference to the supposedly miraculous nature of Jesus' birth, the miracles Jesus is supposed to have performed and the miracle of his resurrection.This work is available in English translation as The Gospels in Brief.

Tolstoy's rejection of the magic and mystery of Christianity naturally enough alienated him from the Orthodox Church, which excommunicated and anathematized him. His rejection of violence as a means to political ends alienated him also from the dictatorship of the Tsar, which though fearing to take action against Tolstoy himself, persecuted his followers. 

His ideas were equally repugnant to the Communists who claimed Tolstoy as a great patriotic artist while suppressing his religious and political beliefs and punishing those who attempted to put into practice his ethical principles. The Soviets shot more than 100 Tolstoyans, while consigning many more to slave labor camps and mental hospitals. 

An account of the evolution of Tolstoy's religious beliefs is provided in Rosamund Bartlett's fine biography: Tolstoy, a Russian Life.