Chris Hedges: Strategies for Revolution

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Dandelion Salad

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

LeighaCohen on Aug 28, 2014

Nov 19 March & Re-Occupy Oakland 038 Image by Ryan Van Lenning via Flickr

A meeting of 8 diverse panelists met on August 27th 2014 at Project Reach located in NYC to discuss Strategies for the Revolution. The meeting by Deep Green Resistance of New York.

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In this much edited video version of the entire 2 hour event, I feature Chris Hedges. The Panel discussion touched on topics such as Strategies for a revolution, the role of woman and indigenous people in a revolutionary struggle, and a view of the inherent failures associated with Capitalism.

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LUNCH WITH CHRIS CHRISTIE

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NJ Governor Chris Christie

Flintstone, meet Fred Flintstone

He’s a  histrionic personality

From his mansion in Trenton

He’ll do his best to destroy society

Let’s have lunch with twinkle toes

If you can eat and hold your nose

When your with Fred Flintstone

You’ll have a Yabba dabba doo time

A dabba do time

We’ll have a gay old time…………………….

NJ Governor Chris Christie, a former prosecutor ( no surprise ), and wishful 2016 Rethuglican Presidential contender has been battling his binge eating disorder for years, to no avail. He may be a nervous eater, a guy who eats when he’s happy, he eats when he’s sad, he eats when he feels guilty, and the eats whenever he can, perhaps in his sleep. He is a glutton, and a glutton for punishment too so it seems, and he may be eating guiltily more than ever since “BRIDGE GATE”. He brought it all on himself, like slovenly mashing down an oozing fat burger and slopping special sauce all down his starched, old spice scented, initialed cuff oxford cloth, pork stuffed shirt , or like picking his nose and eating it on TV, Mr. Flintstone has fucked himself with a sharp stick. 

Funny that Fred is in denial that he will never again aspire to the lofty position of Grand Pooba of the Loyal Order of Water Buffalos.  His only friend, besides his Mother, Barney Rubble, tried to tell him that he goofed big time, and that he might as well just can his campaign. All by his own doing, this  larger than your average fat guy with a narcissistic personality disorder, compels himself habitually to take risks like reaching for that bowling ball in the closet and having it hit him on the head, or reaching for that rack of ribs and tipping his car over, or reaching for his cell phone to see what revenge he may wreak on not only his political opponents, the public he has sworn to serve, using dirty malicious tricks and abuse of office. Fred just  thinks he can get whatever he wants, his way. These are careless risks a crooked prosecutor may be able to get away with against defendant’s without a lawyer, perhaps an incompetent public defender, but risks that politicians who aspire to higher office cannot take and survive if they get caught. Oh, if only it were that easy. When the fix is in, you can get away with murder. Read this to see how .

How The Bridgegate Investigation Ground to a Halt—And Let Chris Christie Zoom Off to Iowa

It was supposed to be the end of the line for the governor. But the investigators haven’t quite finished the job. And now their inquiry is going nowhere.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie arrived in Iowa on Thursday, surrounded by a media gaggle befitting a presidential front-runner, just as a new poll was released showing him trailing Hillary Clinton by a single point. It was Christie’s first visit to the caucus state in over two and a half years, and he unleashed his charms at GOP fundraisers and on Hawkeye locals, assuring them, “I will be back a lot.”

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Adrees Latif/Reuters

In Marion, at M.J’s Restaurant, the Des Moines Register reported, the governor “shook hands with just about everyone in the room, from waitresses to a baby girl whose mother was bonked by a cameraman’s equipment as reporters jostled for the best video footage.”

And more than 900 miles away from the excitement, Democrats in Trenton were proving Christie’s viability in a different way.

When evidence emerged linking Christie’s office to the plot to close the bridge lanes in the Hudson River town of Fort Lee, Democratic legislators were quick to organize. They formed a committee to investigate him, and since January, they have been calling witnesses and subpoenaing documents in an effort to uncover the sequel to “time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee”—the email read ’round the world.

The joint committee, led by Assemblyman John Wisniewski and Senator Loretta Weinberg, formed after it was decided that having separate committees in each branch of the legislature to investigate the lane closures would be a monumental waste of time and money. But now many, including some of the committees own members, are wondering if it’s been a waste anyway.

Asked what the point of the committee was, Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll, a Republican member and former Christie rival, said: “I’m glad you’re on the same page as I am, because I’ve been trying to figure that out for about six months.”

No one has admitted to corruption or obviously illegal behavior. The revelations have mostly been in the form of witnesses either contradicting themselves or other people in their efforts to remember timelines and correspondence. And they failed to force two key witnesses—Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Stepien—to produce documents. Another hit to the credibility of the committee: They have focused on what one member described as the “rinky-dink” operation to close the lanes, when there are other, potentially seriously damaging events being investigated by more legitimate entities.

I met Wisniewski in his hometown of Sayreville the morning that the committee was to be formed in late January, and rode shotgun as he drove to Trenton. Wisniewski had been serving on the Transportation Committee since he joined the Assembly in 1995, thus all matters of transportation in the state were of interest to him. He had co-sponsored the bill which made it illegal to talk on a hand-held cellphone while driving (though that did not stop him from twice breaking his own law when entertaining hand-held calls from “Loretta” [presumably Weinberg] during our hour-long trek to Trenton) and he had long kept a piercing blue eye on the notoriously disorganized Port Authority.

No one has admitted to corruption or obviously illegal behavior. And the investigators failed to force two key witnesses—Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Stepien—to produce documents.

Using his subpoena power as the transportation committee chairman, Wisniewski obtained the documents that uncovered the scandal, which indicated, at the very least, rampant incompetence at a large, powerful bi-state agency that bled into the administration, and, at most, perhaps, a colossal abuse of power from one of the most powerful governors in America. At the time, it made sense to most that there should be an investigative committee.

Eight Democrats and four Republicans formed the initial group, despite cries of a witch hunt from the outnumbered right wing and fears that politics would overtake the process. Some Christie-ites go as far as to charge that letting politics take over the process was Wisniewski’s plan all along. (Something he vehemently denies.)

Wisniewski has a statesman-like demeanor and pleasant appearance that lends itself well to television—something he has capitalized on.

Since November, he has appeared on television—mostly cable, mostly MSNBC—about 80 times. When I first started asking him for interviews in mid-January, they were often pushed back due to his TV schedule, which included traveling to Washington, D.C., to appear on Meet the Press. In his law office, there is an untouched conference room that looks straight out of the The West Wing—shiny, oak table; large American and New Jersey flags, freshly painted walls—which his spokesman told me they sometimes use for remote interviews.

Asked about criticism of his seemingly constant presence on television, Wisniewski said: “That’s an interesting question. You called me. I didn’t call you. It’s a naive, simplistic argument, because if I’ve been on TV, it’s not because I call up and say, ‘Hey, why don’t I come up tonight and talk to you about the bridge?’ These shows, they choose what they want to talk about, and they call me and they ask for information just like you are doing now.”

A network insider said they knew of at least one host who complained about Wisniewski’s aggressive outreach.

Wisniewski claims Republicans are refusing to cooperate with his investigation, and then blaming delays on him. Wisniewski said the governor’s office is engaged in a “protracted document production,” and that GOP committee members are constantly sending mixed signals about the direction of the investigation (one week, Wisniewski said, they’ll want to end the investigation, and then the next, they’ll ask to look into something else.) “If you can’t beat the message, then what you need to do is beat the messenger,” he told me. “I think what the Republicans are doing is they’re pounding on the table.”

Carroll told me he initially joined the committee to investigate the Port Authority and figure out how to reform it—but the group has, much to his dismay, instead focused solely on the lane closures.

“There just doesn’t seem to be a there there,” Carroll said. “If they’ve got a ‘gotcha!’ moment, it certainly hasn’t appeared. They found one email from Bridget—the ‘gotcha!’—and after that, everything’s been sort of on hold. Some of it doesn’t look good, but it certainly doesn’t look like it was corrupt or a crime.”

If there was a crime committed, that would be addressed by the United States Attorney, Paul Fishman, who is conducting his own investigation into the matter. While the scope and exact focus of Fishman’s investigation is not known—because his operation has been, if you are to believe him, devoid of legitimate leaks—it is known that the objective of any U.S. Attorney is to get indictments. 

Less clear is the end game for the committee, which calls into question the need for its existence. A relatively expensive existence: close to $800,000 at last count. Not much, compared to Christie’s legal fees, but nothing to scoff at. (Wisniewski said criticizing the committee for legal fees is wrong because of how much Christie has spent on his internal review.)

Wisniewski assures that the point of the committee is to secure checks and balances and also for the benefit of the public—because who knows what Fishman will ever reveal of his findings? There are questions, Wisniewski told me, that “may not ever be answered by the U.S. Attorney process.” But it seems likely that they may not ever be answered by the committee, either. (A spokesman for Christie, Kevin Roberts, declined to comment on the investigation, but noted that the administration planned to “continue to cooperate with appropriate investigations.”)

“Every witness we’ve heard from and every witness we’re likely to hear from gives us the same little speech—it’s 30 seconds long. They say, ‘I didn’t know anything about it,’ and then they spend the next five or six hours repeating that speech,” Carroll said, dismissively.

Within the bowels of the capitol on Thursday, in a high-ceilinged committee room, a modest crowd gathered to hear testimony from Regina Egea, Christie’s incoming chief of staff who served as his liaison to the Port Authority during the lane closures. She revealed that she texted the governor before the lane closures became a scandal, and then deleted the texts—something she said she often does.

It was an interesting piece of information for those watching the investigation closely—but nowhere approaching a smoking gun. It was not an indictment of Christie, nor did it imply Christie’s fingerprints were anywhere closer to the plot to close the lanes than had previously been known.

It was, in short, just another drip in the slow unraveling of so-far largely inconsequential information obtained by a committee that hasn’t made clear what, if anything, it plans to do with all it learns.

In front of another capitol—Iowa’s—the Democratic National Committee staged a counter-attack to Christie’s warmly received visit, intended to remind people about Bridgegate. Undaunted, Christie went about his trip—perhaps proving to Iowa’s Democrats a lesson New Jersey’s have already learned themselves: Keeping a front-runner down is no easy task. 

READ MORE…

How banning gambling can save Atlantic City

August 17, 2014 | 12:01am 

It’s time for one last-ditch effort to save Atlantic City. They’ve tried everything else, so why not this one: Make gambling illegal.

Now is as good a time as any to call it: Atlantic City is dead. The 1970s gambling experiment is a dismal failure that failed to bring lasting economic development.

The Revel, a gigantic, 57-story casino and hotel that is the state’s second-tallest building, was meant to revitalize and rebrand the city, but this week it announced it will close its doors within a month, destroying 3,100 jobs after only two money-losing years.

Gov. Chris Christie lavished the project with $261 million in tax incentives.

That signaled a total reversal of the argument for legalized gambling — instead of an instance of government getting out of the way to allow private businesses to create jobs and tax revenue, it turned into government picking winners and channeling subsidies from taxpayers to multibillion-dollar banks and hedge funds.

As for employment, that $261 million government gamble represents $84,000 for each of those mostly menial two-year jobs.

Not that Christie is the one who created the Petri dish of corruption that is New Jersey. A state agency created to require casinos to reinvest their profits in the rest of the community was reconfigured in 1993 — to allow casinos to instead reinvest that money in…casinos.

The next time you get a chance to vote on legalized gambling, remember: The house always wins.

Revel is the fourth casino to close this year in AC, where only nine are left. Revenues are down by almost 50% since just 2006.

“On a recent visit,” reported Fox Business, “both ‘M’s in the brightly lit entrance to Trump Taj Mahal had burned out, leaving a huge welcoming sign that read Tru p Taj ahal.”

Donald Trump is suing to have his name taken off the joint, of which he no longer owns any part.

Legalizing gambling seemed like a strong idea in 1976, when the referendum that created a bettors’ mecca in AC passed.

People are always going to want to bet, and bringing that activity out into the open promised to attract splashy investment with dazzling new resorts and create lots of jobs that would pump up tax revenues.

These things happened. But the jobs were mainly dismal service gigs, the investment was limited to a thin ribbon of development on the boardwalk and the additional tax revenue came at a cost of so much sleaze and unease that other businesses, and their tax revenues, steered clear.

Economic development is a marathon; legalized gambling a can of Mountain Dew.

It may give you a spurt of energy, but it won’t get you to the finish line.

Gambling simply isn’t like other forms of entertainment — it feeds on desperation and addiction, creating pawn shops and trailer parks instead of a middle class.

You don’t see a row of seedy little stores offering to pay cash for jewelry across the street from the multiplex because “Transformers 4” customers don’t get so attached to the frenzy that they have to stay in the theater all day and all night.

Thirty-eight years into the gambling experiment, unemployment in AC is still at 18%. Median household income remains less than half of what it is in New Jersey as a whole.

The poverty rate in the city went from 22.5% in 1970 to 29.3% in 2011.

And the promised tax revenues? In the gambling era, New Jersey went from the fifth-most highly taxed state to second in the nation (behind New York).

Las Vegas managed to diversify beyond casinos, adding quality restaurants and nightlife. AC didn’t, and as competitors sprouted up in Pennsylvania and Connecticut — and even in Queens, where the Aqueduct racetrack casino near JFK Airport opened three years ago — its fortunes continued to sag.

Gambling (like porn) would create less blight if people participated in it privately online, at home, though you could argue that as a small element of a well-rounded economy, it doesn’t cause much harm to its surroundings.

But Atlantic City is Exhibit A for how not to do gambling, as the single attraction that is supposed to bring in suckers from outside.

What’s the point of throwing more taxpayer money at a failed experiment?

New Jersey should face the reality that AC has been a colossal loser and that it’ll be better off without its temples to addiction. Someday AC could revert to being a charming Jersey Shore destination with low-rise hotels and family fun.

But don’t count on it. Most likely, politicians will continue to talk up AC as though it’s a libertarian wonderland — while frantically shoveling in more taxpayer subsidies conditioned on decisions being made by government commanders in Trenton.

When it comes to gambling with other people’s money, politicians never know when to fold ’em.

Chris Christie is a de-regulator and a job destroyer. He signed off on de-regulating the  Atlantic City , NJ Casino Control Act, the statute that legalized gambling in Atlantic City in 1978. This statute specified how many Games supervisors, Pit Bosses, Shift Managers , and Executive positions were required by law to operate a casino based on the number of table games. With a stroke of the pen, Fat Bastard destroyed 1000’s of lifetime careers and put these pit bosses, shift managers and floor people out on the street- or on the unemployment roles. Christie made big friends in the mega corporate world of bottom line profit conscious CEO’s and political contributions flowed into his pockets. These people worked their whole life  20-30 years to reach the positions they held, these were experienced managers that were paid from 50 to 125,000 a year, and the cuts saved the corporations tens of millions in compensation. Casinos are closing in Atlantic City. Revel the 2.5 Billion dollar boondoggle mega resort that cannot  turn a profit enough to cover the interest on it’s financing, let alone operating expenses was given hundreds of millions of dollars in deferred tax obligations by Christie to help get it open and given extensions so they could try to sort out their mismanagement and turn a profit. This failed project never should have been built. None of these obligations will be satisfied and the NJ taxpayers are left with the shortfall. Trump Plaza and Harrah’s Showboat casinos are also closing and there will be an additional  6,000 people out of work with no place to find employment in the state. The remaining employees in the other casinos face layoffs, loss of benefits, elimination of full time status and reduced incomes. So what does Fred Flintstone do but approve new casinos in North Jersey at the Meadowlands sports complex in Rutherford, his home turf. The political contributions keep flowing into chubby’s pockets and all he can do is smile and say kiss the bunny rabbit between the ears.

As much as we all hate him and laugh at his ambitions, beware. Nice guys come in last. This is a dangerous dictator, a ruthless Murder Faced, pay to play Rethuglican, who wants to prosecute his enemies and that means everyone who does not lick his balls. Chris Christie is an unstable, spoiled Momma’s boy, a corpulent corporate graft seeker, an extroverted individual looking for an agenda, a guy that will do as he is told, by his handlers for money and power, a despotic tyrant that if given more power, will abuse it more on a national level, to benefit his corporate supporters, much to the detriment of the people.

 

America’s Nazi Allies in Israel and Ukraine

snakeREVOLUTIONiscoming

“The world of men is dreaming, it has gone mad in its sleep, and a snake is strangling it, but it can’t wake up.”

-D. H. Lawrence

America’s Nazi Allies in Israel and Ukraine

Eric Zuesse

The U.S. is now the chief sponsor of two nazi, ethnically cleansing, nations. In one of them (Ukraine), the U.S. President, Barack Obama, himself placed nazis into control there; the nazi control was imposed by him, via his agents. In the other (Israel), nazis have controlled for decades, and Obama merely extends their control by continuing American support.

The difference between nazism and mere fascism is that, as exemplified by Mussolini, fascism is pure “corporationism” (see page 426 there), not necessarily racist; whereas nazism, as exemplified by Hitler, is a profoundly and ineradicably racist, usually religious-based, form of  fascism. It’s “corporationism” plus  ethnic bigotry. Hitler’s version of nazism happened to be focused against Jews, but that’s not necessary to nazism; any racist fascism is nazi. (NOTE: a lower-case “nazi” is any  nazi, but an upper-case one, a “Nazi,” refers to a member of Hitler’s Party, which was Germany’s  nazi party, the first-ever nazi party, the original “Nazi Party.” Similarly, Mussolini’s party was the Italian “Fascist” party, the first fascist party, but other nations have their own fascist and/or nazi parties.)

ISRAEL:

People of any ethnic group can be nazis, and Jews are no different from other ethnicities in that regard. For example, on July 21st, Jonathan Cook headlined from Nazareth, “Calls for genocide enter Israeli mainstream,” and he documented his headline-claim by quoting Jewish nazis around Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

First, Cook quoted Ayelet Shaked. From 2006 to 2008, she had been the Office Manager for Prime Minister Netanyahu. In January 2012, Netanyahu’s Likud Party appointed her to be their “Coordinator.” A half-year later, in June, she co-founded her own right-wing Party, “My Israel.” In 2013, Israelis elected her to the Knesset, their parliament, as a Jewish Home Party leader.

On 1 July 2014, she posted to facebook an article by Uri Elitzur, who “was also close to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, helping him in his 1996 campaign, and took a leave of absence from his journalistic activities to work in the Prime Minister’s Office, which he headed in 1998-99.” So: Elitzur had been Shaked’s mentor. She introduced his article by saying that it was “Relevant today as it was then.” Here are excerpts from it, in the Bing translation at her facebook page:

“The Palestinian people has declared war on us, and we need to fight back. … Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people. Why? You ask him, he started [the war]. … All the Palestinian people is the enemy. All war is between two peoples. … All the enemy fighters and bleeding in the head. It’s also the mothers of the martyrs, that send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They need to follow them [to die], there’s nothing in it. They need to go [die], and the physical House [in] which they raised the snake [must be destroyed]. Other small snakes grow more [if that house stands]. … Each bomber should have known he was taking with him both his parents and his home and neighbors. All UM Jihad hero that sends her son to hell needs to know that she’s going with him. Along with the House and all that.”

In short: she was (and he was) saying to exterminate the Palestinian “people,” and to destroy “the House and all that.” Extermination-intent is clear. Shaked and Elitzur clearly are Jewish nazis, and not merely  Jewish fascists. What Hitler was to Jews, Elitzur and Shaked are to Palestinians. Their “war” is against an entire “people,” and victory means exterminating it, killing “the snake,” so that there will be no “small snakes.”

Mr. Cook then quotes a scholar in Israel, who was not censured by his university for saying: “A terrorist, like those who kidnapped the boys [in the West Bank on June 12] and killed them, the only thing that will deter them, is if they know that either their sister or mother will be raped if they are caught. What can we do? This is the culture that we live in [surrounded by Muslims].” That person, Mordechai Kedar, a lecturer on Arabic literature at Bar Ilan University, is also a nazi. Hitler, too, blamed his racism on the ethnicity that he hated, and he cited the Bible as justifying it (both the Old and New Testaments, both of which are racist; and he knew the Bible well, and cited more than a hundred of its passages, as I documented in my WHY the Holocaust Happened).

Finally, Cook quotes Moshe Feiglin, a deputy speaker of the Israeli parliament and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud: “The IDF [Israeli Defense Force] will conquer the entire Gaza, using all the means necessary to minimize any harm to our soldiers, with no other considerations. … The enemy population that is innocent of wrong-doing and separated itself from the armed terrorists will be treated in accordance with international law and will be allowed to leave. Israel will generously aid those who wish to leave.” Similarly, Hitler had long entertained proposals to expel some Jews instead of to exterminate them all. However, because of his hatred of Jews, he ultimately rejected all such proposals, and just killed them. He called them “snakes,” and even “the international snake”: Hitler was as collectivist a thinker about Jews, as Israel’s nazis are about Palestinians.

Albert Einstein called zionists themselves, “fascists,” but what really galled him about zionists was their racism; he simply didn’t distinguish between mere “fascists” and full-fledged “nazis.” Jews in Palestine/Israel at that time went far beyond their rights in the way that they treated local Arabs. The day after the Deir Yassin massacre — the massacre of the Arab town of Deir Yassin on 9 April 1948 by Yitzhak Shamir’s Stern Gang and Menachem Begin’s Irgun organization — Einstein sent a letter to the American Friends of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, declining their offer to meet with him, by saying: “When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsible for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the Terrorist organizations build [sic: built] up from our own ranks [referring here to Stern and Irgun]. I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people.” Later, on December 4th of the same year, The New York Times published a letter dated two days earlier and signed by Einstein and other Jewish intellectuals, saying: “The terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin.” This letter explicitly called Menachem Begin a Jewish “Fascist,” and regretted “that a large segment of America supports Fascist elements in Israel.” (The New York Times excluded that letter from its online archives, and so independent opponents of censorship posted it as “To The Editors of The New York Times” “December 2, 1948”.) Einstein would have been shocked that Israelis subsequently elected Mr. Begin Prime Minister. He would be revolted by current America’s fascism represented now no longer merely by the Republican Party but also by a “Democratic” U.S. President, who continues the $3 billion annual military aid to that “fascist” regime, even after the Jonathan Pollard case. Einstein was anti-zionist till the end of his days, and never respected Israel. Alfred Lilienthal’s 1953 What Price Israel? quotes Einstein (p. 130) as having said in 1946 “I have always been against it.” The United States, which has none of the guilt for the Holocaust, especially has no moral obligation to Israel, and merely besmirches America by funding it, a vile thing this country does. The very idea of a “Jewish State,” like that of a “Christian State,” or of an “Islamic State,” is racist-fascist, or nazi, and was repulsive to Einstein, who considered them all, “fascist.” That characterization was correct, but they’re also nazi, which is even worse.

After Christian anti-Semitism nearly exterminated all Jews in World War II, Britain and other Christian-majority nations shoved surviving European Jews off onto a majority-Muslim area, “Palestine,” and racist Jews were eager to take the offer, though decent Jews took it only because majority-Christian nations, which had actually perpetrated and cooperated with the Holocaust, wouldn’t accept more Jews. Those decent Jews, tragically, had no choice.

There is no real “Jewish State.” There is only a nazi police-state that claims to be “the Jewish Home.” It invites decent Jews there in order to add to the population and so help more to crush the non-Jewish natives. But it’s Jewish nazism, or “zionism.” The very basis of nazism is the idea of an ethnic state: a caste system, in which some people, by their birth or ethnicity, possess more rights than do other people. Nazism is the exact opposite of the progressive state, the latter being the state where equality of opportunity is the law, and where inequality of opportunity is despised instead of embodied in the Law. Any form of privilege versus non-privilege, caste system, is abhorent to all decent people; and nazism epitomizes evil everywhere — Israel just as much as Germany. Only a racist would say that Jews (or any other ethnic group) are somehow exempt from the universal ethical rule.

Robert Barsocchini headlined on 12 July 20124, “Facts All US Citizens Need to Know About Israel and Palestine,” and he accurately summarized the foul history of this “Israel.” The United States was founded by committed democrats, and with a real Constitution (which Israel doesn’t even have, because a constitution would conflict with the Torah; democracy is impossible in Israel for the same reason it’s impossible in Iran or Saudi Arabia: it runs up against “God’s Law”). (The Iranian and Saudi Constitutions impose the Quran as the Supreme Law, and so are merely fake pass-through “constitutions,” actual dictatorships. Israel’s “constitution” — if any — is the Torah; Iran’s and Saudi Arabia’s is the Quran. Such states are theocracies, fake “democracies.”) A democracy shouldn’t be allied with a theocracy in any way, especially militarily, because it then puts us on the side of nazis against their victims. A democracy doesn’t want to be at war against theocracies, but certainly cannot be allied  with any. Trade with a theocracy is acceptable, but alliance with it is certainly not. The original sin of the majority-Christian countries regarding Israel is their having caused the problem and then dumped the consequences of it onto the poor people who lived in the area that today is called “Israel.” Any decent Jew wants to leave from there, and any decent majority-Christian country is obliged to welcome those decent “Israelis” in, as refugees from nazism, and to apologize wholeheartedly to them for having participated in causing that gross injustice, “Israel,” via Christian  anti-Semitism, for which today’s Palestinians are bearing the final tragic burden, in the form of Israel’s pass-through to those unfortunates of Germany’s original Nazism against Jews.

UKRAINE:

Since I have previously written extensively about U.S. President Obama’s installation of the nazi regime in Ukraine via his coup there in February, and his sponsorship of the regime’s ethnic cleansing program to get rid of the ethnic-Russian voters for the man whom Obama had overthrown there, that won’t be repeated. However, it needs to be noted in the present context, simply to indicate that Obama doesn’t merely support Israel’s nazism, but that he has even installed Ukraine’s — and no previous U.S. President ever installed  nazism, anywhere, before. Obama is thus the first full-fledged nazi U.S. President. He desecrates the Party of the anti-fascist and passionately anti-nazi, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Obama has made himself a profound stain upon his nominal Party — a stain that only that Party can remove.

CONCLUSION: 

nazimericanflag

Consequently, the U.S. is the world’s leading state sponsor of nazism in our time. The aristocratically controlled U.S. “news” media don’t report this ugly fact (America’s fascist and even nazi leadership) to the American public, but it’s true nonetheless. Readers here are thus encountering here American “samizdat.” It’s banned truth, but of the U.S. variety, instead of the U.S.S.R. variety. There’s no difference: Like in the Soviet Union, Hitler’s Germany, and other dictatorships, our “news media” are actually propaganda-media.

One might have thought that FDR had won his battle against nazism and fascism, but those ideologies — even nazism — unfortunately survived (due to the constant propaganda from our aristocracy) and have thrived in the U.S. to such an extent that, in a sense, what FDR fought for, which is progressive democracy, has since been destroyed, right here inside the United States itself. It has been destroyed not only by the Republican Party (which at least after Nixon has had an actual fondness for fascism, and even for nazism), but also by the recent “Democratic” Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, rotting the Democratic Party from its very topmost, best-funded pro-aristocratic level, the Party’s financial pinnacle, even if not yet from its middle and lower levels, which still remain rather progressive populist, though that too will soon be gone if no Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives soon brings forth a resolution to impeach Obama, as he must be impeached, if America (and especially the Democratic Party itself) is to retain any honor, and if democracy is not totally to die here. Republicans could not disown George W. Bush because he really was a Republican. If Democrats do not disown Barack Obama, then Democrats display themselves as being equally despicable and unpatriotic, and now is our only remaining chance to separate ourselves from Republicans in a way that’s more than merely rhetorical, more than merely “lesser-of-two-evils” fake “liberalism” (or whatever else Democrats might then emptily claim  to be).

BAROCKEFELLER1

President Obama is not only the very first U.S. President to install an outright nazi government anywhere, but he is going so far as to try to strong-arm European leaders to accept it (his Ukrainian nazi regime) into the EU. In a sense, therefore, he is even out-doing George W. Bush and his murderous, vile, and totally unwarranted, invasion of Iraq, for which Bush should be in prison, if this nation has any honor, or any real hope.

Without accountability, there can only be dictatorship. America must now choose whether to restore its democracy, for we have certainly lost it. Today’s America would have this nation’s great Founders twisting in their graves. We can do better. We must — if we are  Americans, as they  (our Founders) did all they could, hoping that we would  be. It can be done, and it should be done. And the available time-window to do it is fast closing. And only we  can do it. (Republicans, in their own self-interest, refuse to do it.)

[NOTE: This news report and analysis were offered as an exclusive to the following, none of which accepted it for publication, nor responded in any way: The Daily Beast, Salon, Slate, Huffington Post, Mother Jones, Progressive, The Nation, Harper’s, The Atlantic, New Yorker, New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, The New Republic, TIME, McClatchy, Guardian, Bloomberg, AP. It was then submitted in the regular way to all news-outlets.]

———-

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010,  and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Puppets Tap Dance to Fear of ISIS and All That Jazz

 puppet21twins copy

More Bullshit, you know , the global fear mongering  war propaganda about the head lopping savages, swarming like the golden horde across  Syria and Iraq, carving out a new caliphate in the sand, slaughtering innocent Christians and civilians, and threatening Exxon Mobil , Chevron, Royal Dutch  Shell, Royal  BP, and the royal investor class with losing something more than their heads.

So it must be time for war again, if it pleases the corporate aristocracy and  Israel, who like Nazi’s burning the Warsaw ghetto, engage in genocidal war crimes against the Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Hamas is guilty too  of similar offenses, blah, blah, blah, it is a broken record with these arch enemies, but ISIS now here is a threat the whole billionaire boys club must light a cigar and pour a cognac over.  What an opportunity for interventionist war profiteering, and it is good for Israel, to keep the global guilt trip alive, that God willing or God forbid, ISIS may march on the plains of Armageddon .The puppets are dancing to the tune of “I’m in the Money”. The protocols of the new world empire are being executed act by act, as the Puppet Masters’ Musical Theatre opens the curtains to a full house.

The conglomerated military-industrial-congressional-financial-intelligence-national security complex and the puppet stringed politicians all agree it would be a great time for some more war. Profits will surge, the economy will get a boost in manufacturing and war always creates all sorts of jobs, and government contacts to be paid by the taxpayer. The citizens who do not want war or brutal military police in their neighborhoods,  or the NSA spying on everyone’s every word written in a text or spoken, or drones spying on civilians, or being used by police against protesters, have no say in the matter, they sit way up in the balcony without opera glasses, or were left out on the street without tickets to the show.

However, the puppet masters and their minions want all this, and more. Yes, the ruling elite that own the theater of universal suffering also own all the gold, the oil, the banks, the land, the water, the guns, the girls, the drones,  tanks, planes, aircraft carriers and tomahawk missiles. The 1% hold all  the power and absolute control of the media. The maniacs in charge of choreography get  to print their own money, and write their own rules. They never have to serve in combat or pay for their crimes. They are Teflon Tyrants.

They do pay for lobbyists and think tanks and foundations to draft legislation and pressure puppets , and buy elections, and publish disinformation and propaganda . They do spin their lies on all the major media networks that they control.

If only we could all just agree that we need more paramilitary combat units and  swat team gestapo  deployments in every town in America, America would be a happier place for them. This enhanced security will deter terrorism and keep the rich people safe from the have nots, and it is always the have nots that are the terrorists.

There are always lucky winners and sore losers, just like Cowboys and Indians, right ?  The ruling class might be right that we need cameras on every corner, and in your home too, and microphones to keep everyone, especially the children, safe from terror, or thoughts of revolution against the authoritarian plutocratic police state.  Life would be simpler, kinder and gentler if Fox News and CNN should be the only news allowed to be broadcast, so everyone knows the same truths and sees the same pictures, and hears the same viewpoints, over , and over, and over. This will build trust in freedom, and in the need for universal war, and the  ruling class corporations lust for obscene blood profits  will be sustained.

If everyone would drink poison American beer like Miller Light or Bud Light Lime and watch football, baseball, basketball and Ice Hockey, and eat at McDonalds, and Applebee’s frequently, and always have several large bags of  snack chips like Lays, and Doritos, cheese curls and  pork rinds in your pantry, and don’t forget several fridge packs of delicious Coca Cola, we would all be too loaded and fat to care and would die sooner, and have less time to worry about things we just have no control over anyway. And If you’re a spiller be sure to pick up several roles of Brawny paper towels, made by the  Koch Brothers, great American entrepreneurs.

Our  Imperial Nation, that bullies the world with military  super power, enforcing the will and private interests of  global corporations and royal multi-national banking dynasties is but a mercenary force , that rules by fear, and  protects and promotes these too big to jail entities that rape and poison the planet with their crooked capitalism and imperial protocols.

All nations including America itself,  are indentured for life to  universal war, institutionalized corruption, obscene usury, and  the 99% of mankind  are sold by the global slave market into a life of perpetual  cancerous debt. This  is an abomination to civilization. Life could be so much better, so enlightened, so peaceful, alive and loving . Greed has overtaken the collective conscience of our society and we are leading the world to the edge of suicide.

You don’t have to be a flag burner to know that it is time for swift and immediate relief from the suppression of  America’s democracy, freedom, justice and equality by the New World Empire’s protocols for global hegemony.

It is time to guillotine the wicked minds of the Imperial Puppet Masters and burn down the Theatre of Universal War.

 

 

 

THE INTERCEPT – Cash, Weapons and Surveillance: the U.S. is a Key Party to Every Israeli Attack

THE INTERCEPT

By 4 Aug 2014, 12:00 AM EDT 

The U.S. government has long lavished overwhelming aid on Israel, providing cash, weapons and surveillance technology that play a crucial role in Israel’s attacks on its neighbors. But top secret documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden shed substantial new light on how the U.S. and its partners directly enable Israel’s military assaults – such as the one on Gaza.

Over the last decade, the NSA has significantly increased the surveillance assistance it provides to its Israeli counterpart, the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU; also known as Unit 8200), including data used to monitor and target Palestinians. In many cases, the NSA and ISNU work cooperatively with the British and Canadian spy agencies, the GCHQ and CSEC.

The relationship has, on at least one occasion, entailed the covert payment of a large amount of cash to Israeli operatives. Beyond their own surveillance programs, the American and British surveillance agencies rely on U.S.-supported Arab regimes, including the Jordanian monarchy and even the Palestinian Authority Security Forces, to provide vital spying services regarding Palestinian targets.

The new documents underscore the indispensable, direct involvement of the U.S. government and its key allies in Israeli aggression against its neighbors. That covert support is squarely at odds with the posture of helpless detachment typically adopted by Obama officials and their supporters.

President Obama, in his press conference on Friday, said ”it is heartbreaking to see what’s happening there,” referring to the weeks of civilian deaths in Gaza – “as if he’s just a bystander, watching it all unfold,” observed Brooklyn College Professor Corey Robin. Robin added: ”Obama talks about Gaza as if it were a natural disaster, an uncontrollable biological event.”

Each time Israel attacks Gaza and massacres its trapped civilian population – at the end of 2008, in the fall of 2012, and now again this past month – the same process repeats itself in both U.S. media and government circles: the U.S. government feeds Israel the weapons it uses and steadfastly defends its aggression both publicly and at the U.N.; the U.S. Congress unanimously enacts one resolution after the next to support and enable Israel; and then American media figures pretend that the Israeli attack has nothing to do with their country, that it’s just some sort of unfortunately intractable, distant conflict between two equally intransigent foreign parties in response to which all decent Americans helplessly throw up their hands as though they bear no responsibility.

“The United States has been trying to broker peace in the Middle East for the past 20 years,” wrote the liberal commentator Kevin Drum in Mother Jones, last Tuesday. The following day, CNN reported that the Obama administration ”agreed to Israel’s request to resupply it with several types of ammunition … Among the items being bought are 120mm mortar rounds and 40mm ammunition for grenade launchers.”

The new Snowden documents illustrate a crucial fact: Israeli aggression would be impossible without the constant, lavish support and protection of the U.S. government, which is anything but a neutral, peace-brokering party in these attacks. And the relationship between the NSA and its partners on the one hand, and the Israeli spying agency on the other, is at the center of that enabling.

Tally of UN Vote on July 22, 2014 to investigate violations of international law in West Bank and Gaza (Credit: Ken Roth, Human Rights Watch)

Last September, the Guardian revealed that the NSA “routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens.” The paper published the full top secret Memoranadum of Understanding between the two agencies governing that sharing. But the NSA/ISNU relationship extends far beyond that.

One newly disclosed top secret NSA document, dated April 13, 2013 and published today by the Intercept, recounts that the “NSA maintains a far-reaching technical and analytic relationship with the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU) sharing information on access, intercept, targeting, language, analysis and reporting.”

Specifically, “this SIGINT relationship has increasingly been the catalyst for a broader intelligence relationship between the United States and Israel.” Moreover, “NSA’s cyber partnerships expanded beyond ISNU to include Israeli Defense Intelligence’s [Special Operation Division] SOD and Mossad.”

Under this expanded cooperation, the Americans and Israelis work together to gain access to “geographic targets [that] include the countries of North Africa, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, South Asia, and the Islamic republics of the former Soviet Union.” It also includes “a dedicated communications line between NSA and ISNU [that] supports the exchange of raw material, as well as daily analytic and technical correspondence.”

The relationship has provided Israel with ample support for both intelligence and surveillance: “The Israeli side enjoys the benefits of expanded geographic access to world-class NSA cryptanalytic and SIGINT engineering expertise, and also gains controlled access to advanced U.S. technology and equipment via accommodation buys and foreign military sales.” Among Israel’s priorities for the cooperation are what the NSA calls “Palestinian terrorism.”

The cooperation between the NSA and ISNU began decades ago. A top secret agreement between the two agencies from July 1999 recounts that the first formal intelligence-sharing agreement was entered into in 1968 between U.S. President Lyndon Johnson and Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, and informally began in the 1950s. But the relationship has grown rapidly in the last decade.

In 2003 and 2004, the Israelis were pressuring the NSA to agree to a massively expanded intelligence-sharing relationship called “Gladiator.” As part of that process, Israel wanted the Americans to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to fund Israeli activities. The specific proposed “Gladiator” agreement appears never to have been consummated, derailed by Israeli demands that the U.S. bear the full cost, but documents in the Snowden archive pertaining to those negotiations contain what appear to be two receipts for one or more payments of $500,000 in cash to Israeli officials for unspecified purposes:

The surveillance-sharing relationship with Israel has expanded to include the NSA’s British and Canadian counterparts, GCHQ and CSEC, both of which actively participate in feeding the Israelis selected communications data they have collected. Several documents from early 2009, at the height of the Israeli attack on Gaza called “Cast Lead” that left more than 1,000 people dead, detail some of this cooperation.

One top secret 2009 GCHQ project named “YESTERNIGHT” involved “Ruffle,” the British agency’s code name for ISNU. According to the document, the project involved a “trilateral (GCHQ, NSA and Third Party RUFFLE) targeting exchange agreement covering respective COMSAT accesses.” One of the “specific intelligence topics” shared between the parties was “Palestinians”, although the GCHQ document states that “due to the sensitivities” of Israeli involvement, that particular program does not include direct targeting of Palestinians and Israelis themselves. Another GCHQ document from February, 2009, describes “a quadrilateral meeting for RUFFLE, NSA, CSEC and GCHQ.”

The British agency noted in early 2009 that it had been spying on emails and telephone numbers specifically requested by ISNU, “and they have thanked us many times over.”

The NSA and GCHQ receive intelligence about the Palestinians from many sources. The agencies have even succeeded in inducing the U.S.-supported Palestinian Authority Security Forces (PASF) to provide them with surveillance and intelligence about other Arab groups in the region. One July 2008 GCHQ document states:

Jordan also feeds surveillance data about the Palestinians to the NSA. One classified NSA document from 2013 describes how “NSA’s partnership with EWD [the Jordanian Electronic Warfare Directorate] is a well established, long-standing and trusted relationship dating back to the early 1980’s.” Specifically, the two agencies “cooperate on high-priority SIGINT targets of mutual interest” that includes the Palestinian Security Forces.

The document continues: “EWD provides high-interest, unique collection on targets of mutual interest, such as the Palestinian Security Forces; EWD is the sole contributor to a large body of NSA’s reporting on this target.”

Jordan

But even as the NSA and its partners are directed by political branches to feed the Israelis surveillance data and technology, they constantly characterize Israel as a threat – both to their own national security and more generally to regional peace. In stark contrast to the public statements about Israel made by American and British officials, the Snowden archive is replete with discussions of the Israelis as a menace rather than an ally.

NSA documents previously published by the Guardian stated that “one of NSA’s biggest threats is actually from friendly intelligence services, like Israel.” Another notes that the National Intelligence Estimate ranked Israel as “the third most aggressive intelligence service against the U.S.”

British officials have a similar view of the Israelis, describing them as a “very real threat to regional stability.” One top secret GCHQ planning document from 2008 notes that “policy makers remain deeply concerned over the potential threat that Israel poses to a peaceful resolution of the Iran problem, and to some of Israel’s less desirable activities in the region.” Moreover, “Israel’s thinking on the long-term threat offered by Iran to its fundamental foreign policy strategy of armed deterrence may create very real threats to regional stability in 2009.”

israel

The NSA’s 2007 Strategic Mission List, identifying priorities for surveillance targeting, repeatedly identifies Israel as one of the leading threats in a diverse range of areas, including: “Combating the threat of development of weapons of mass destruction” and “delivery methods (particularly ballistic and nuclear-capable cruise missiles).” The “focus area” for that concern is “WMD and missile proliferation activities,” and one of the leading threats is listed as “Israel (cruise missiles).”

The NSA internal discussion from that document regarding “Mastering Cyberspace and Preventing an Attack on U.S. Critical Information Systems” includes a subheading on “FIS [financial/banking system] threats.” The nations identified as the leading FIS threats include India, North Korea, Cuba and Israel. Similarly, Israel appears on the list of countries believed by the NSA to be “Enabling EW (producers/proliferators).”

Another section of the threat assessment document is entitled “Foreign Intelligence, Conterintelligence; Denial & Deception Activities: Countering Foreign Intelligence Threats.” It is defined as “Espionage/intelligence collection operations and manipulation/influence operations conducted by foreign intelligence services directed against U.S. government, military, science & technology and Intelligence Community.” The countries posing the greatest threat: “China, Russia, Cuba, Israel, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, France, Venezuela, and South Korea.”

Asked about its cooperative relationship with Israel, an NSA spokesperson told the Intercept: “We are not going to comment on specific intelligence activities and relationships.  The fact that intelligence services sometimes cooperate in a lawful and appropriate manner mutually strengthens the security of both nations.  Whenever NSA shares intelligence information or technology, we comply with all applicable laws and rules.” A GCHQ official refused to comment on the record beyond the agency’s standard boilerplate claiming its activities are legal and subject to “rigorous oversight.”

Legal or not, the NSA’s extensive, multi-level cooperation with Israeli military and intelligence agencies is part of a broader American policy that actively supports and enables Israeli aggression and militarism. Every Israeli action in Gaza has U.S. fingerprints all over it. Many Americans may wish that the Israeli attack on Gaza were a matter of no special relevance or concern to them, but it is their own government that centrally enables this violence.

Andrew Fishman provided additional reporting for this article

The NSA’s New Partner in Spying: Saudi Arabia’s Brutal State Police

Dispatches

By and 25 Jul 2014, 4:19 PM EDT 316

The National Security Agency last year significantly expanded its cooperative relationship with the Saudi Ministry of Interior, one of the world’s most repressive and abusive government agencies. An April 2013 top secret memo provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden details the agency’s plans “to provide direct analytic and technical support” to the Saudis on “internal security” matters.

The Saudi Ministry of Interior—referred to in the document as MOI— has been condemned for years as one of the most brutal human rights violators in the world. In 2013, the U.S. State Department reported that “Ministry of Interior officials sometimes subjected prisoners and detainees to torture and other physical abuse,” specifically mentioning a 2011 episode in which MOI agents allegedly “poured an antiseptic cleaning liquid down [the] throat” of one human rights activist. The report also notes the MOI’s use of invasive surveillance targeted at political and religious dissidents.

But as the State Department publicly catalogued those very abuses, the NSA worked to provide increased surveillance assistance to the ministry that perpetrated them. The move is part of the Obama Administration’s increasingly close ties with the Saudi regime; beyond the new cooperation with the MOI, the memo describes “a period of rejuvenation” for the NSA’s relationship with the Saudi Ministry of Defense.

In general, U.S. support for the Saudi regime is long-standing. One secret 2007 NSA memo lists Saudi Arabia as one of four countries where the U.S. “has [an] interest in regime continuity.”

But from the end of the 1991 Gulf War until recently, the memo says, the NSA had a “very limited” relationship with the Saudi kingdom. In December 2012, the U.S. director of national intelligence, James Clapper, authorized the agency to expand its “third party” relationship with Saudi Arabia to include the sharing of signals intelligence, or “SIGINT,” capability with the MOD’s Technical Affairs Directorate (TAD).

“With the approval of the Third Party SIGINT relationship,” the memo reports, the NSA “intends to provide direct analytic and technical support to TAD.” The goal is “to facilitate the Saudi government’s ability to utilize SIGINT to locate and track individuals of mutual interest within Saudi Arabia.”

Even before this new initiative in 2012, the CIA and other American intelligence agencies had been working with the Saudi regime to bolster “internal security” and track alleged terrorists. According to the memo, the NSA began collaborating with the MOD in 2011 on a “sensitive access initiative… focused on internal security and terrorist activity on the Arabian Peninsula”; that partnership was conducted “under the auspices of CIA’s relationship with the MOI’s Mabahith (General Directorate for Investigations, equivalent to FBI).”

The NSA’s formal “Third Party” relationship with the Saudis involves arming the MOI with highly advanced surveillance technology. The NSA “provides technical advice on SIGINT topics such as data exploitation and target development to TAD,” the memo says, “as well as a sensitive source collection capability.”

The Saudi Ministry of Defense also relies on the NSA for help with “signals analysis equipment upgrades, decryption capabilities and advanced training on a wide range of topics.” The document states that while the NSA “is able to respond to many of those requests, some must be denied due to the fact that they place sensitive SIGINT equities at risk.”

Over the past year, the Saudi government has escalated its crackdown on activists, dissidents, and critics of the government. Earlier this month, Saudi human rights lawyer and activist Waleed Abu al-Khair was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a so-called “terrorist court” on charges of undermining the state and insulting the judiciary. In May, a liberal blogger, Raif Badawi, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes; in June, human rights activist Mukhlif Shammari was sentenced to five years in prison for writing about the mistreatment of Saudi women.

At the time of the al-Khair sentencing, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki issued a statement saying, “We urge the Saudi government to respect international human rights norms, a point we make to them regularly.”

Asked if the U.S. takes human rights records into account before collaborating with foreign security agencies, a spokesman for the office of the director of national intelligence told The Intercept: “Yes. We cannot comment on specific intelligence matters but, as a general principle, human rights considerations inform our decisions on intelligence sharing with foreign governments.”

Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth : The Evidence

http://www.ae911truth.org/en/home.html

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”~ John Adams

The Evidence

 

Click Here to Download PDF Version of this Brochure

I. Videos
  Videos by AE911Truth   Video Interviews Featuring AE911Truth
  WTC Demolition Raw Footage   Videos Opposing AE911Truth
  Foreign Language Translations   Videos by Others
       

II. Multimedia
  NIST Slideshows   AE911Truth Slideshows
  Flash Brochure    
III. Audio
  Interviews    
       
IV. Documents
  NIST   Technical Articles
  AE911Truth Evidence Brochure   Foreign Translations
  9/11 Investigator Newspaper    


 

I. Videos

Videos by AE911Truth

AE911Truth’s 9/11: Blueprint For Truth:

  Watch the 9/11: Blueprint For Truth Trailer.  
   
  The 9/11: Blueprint For Truth Movie(10 minute version.)Download WMV (39MB)
Download MOV (79MB)
 
   
  The 9/11: Blueprint For Truth Movie(30 minute version.)Download WMV (127MB)
Download MOV (277MB)
 
   
  The 9/11: Blueprint For Truth Movie(60 minute version.)  
   
  The 9/11: Blueprint For Truth MovieTotal Time: Approx. 2 hours.  

 

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Press Conferences:

 

  This event at the Marine’s Memorial Club & Hotel in San Francisco celebrated the milestone that 1,000 architects & engineers have taken a close look at the evidence and concluded that the government’s cover story does not resolve the facts.  
   
  AE911Truth held an historic press conference at the National Press Club on September 9th 2010. Iran’s English speaking press agency was among those present to cover the story of the 1,000+ architects & engineers who are calling for a real investigation into the destruction of the 3 WTC high-rises on 9/11.  

 

Explosive Testimony:

 

  Physicist JeffFarrer, one of the scientists who found thermite in the World Trade Center dust. He discusses his process of discovery using the scientific method. This video alsocontains raw footage of one of theworld class experts appearing in our upcoming documentary, ‘9/11: Explosive Evidence — Experts Speak Out’.Total Time: Approx.45 min.  
   
  Physicist Steven Jones was one of the scientists who found thermite inside the World Trade Center’s dust. Chain of custody of theWTC dust andnanothermite are discussedin depth. He appears in the upcoming documentary, ‘9/11 Explosive Evidence —Experts Speak Out’.Total time: Approx. 30 min.  
   
  Chemical Engineer Mark Basile is another scientist who found thermite in the World Trade Center dust. He discusses in-depth his process of discovery using the scientific method. This interviewcontains footage from the upcoming documentary, ‘9/11: Explosive Evidence — Experts Speak Out’Total Time: Approx. 14 min.  

More…

Scott Grainger, Fire Protection Engineer: This interview is some raw footage of one of the world class experts appearing in Architects and Engineer’s upcoming hard hitting documentary, “9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out”. Watch now!

Tom Sullivan, Former Explosives Loader for Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI): This interview is some raw footage of one of the world class experts appearing in Architects and Engineer’s upcoming hard hitting documentary, “9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out”. Watch now!

Stephen Barasch, High-rise Architect: This is a AE911Truth exclusive interview. Watch now!

Les Young, High-rise Architect: This is a AE911Truth exclusive interview. Watch now!

Robert McCoy, High-rise Architect: This interview is some raw footage of one of the world class experts appearing in Architects and Engineer’s upcoming hard hitting documentary, “9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out”. Watch now!

^ Top  

 

Washington, D.C., The Mock Debate:

 

  Debating the reasons for the collapse of the 3 buildings at the World Trade Center at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on September 9th, 2010.Total Time: Approx. 105 min.  
   
  Former Senator, Mike Gravel showing support forAE911Truth at the Washington DC National Press Club with DaveSlesinger and Richard Gage, AIA.Total Time: Approx. 20 min.  
^ Top  

 

Short Evidentiary Videos:

 

  Eyes Wide Shut: Exposé of NIST’s gross negligencein regard to molten steel on 9/11.Total Time: Approx. 3 min.  

 

Videos About Our Outreach Efforts:

 

 

 

 

 

 

^ Top  

 

 


Videos Featuring AE911Truth

George Galloway’s ‘The Real Deal’ hosting Richard Gage, AIA

New Zealand TV program ‘Close-up’ interviews Richard Gage, AIA

CBC’s ‘The Fifth Estate’ hosts Richard Gage, AIA

Dick Gregory Supporting AE911Truth

Richard Gage, AIA on The Standard

Richard Gage, AIA on CCTV

Iranian “Press TV” covers AE911Truth’s Washington DC Press Conference

Richard Gage, AIA is on the Reality Report with Gary Franchi

Richard Gage, AIA is interviewed on Fox News Detroit

 

^ Top  

 

Videos by Others

AE911Truth’s David Chandler, Physics Professor:

David Chandler’s ‘WTC7 in Freefall

David Chandler’s ‘The North Tower Exploding’

David Chandler’s ‘Downward Acceleration of the North Tower’

NIST Admits Freefall

Let Me Know When You See Fire

Niels M. Harrit – TV 2 News Interview

 

^ Top  

 

Videos Opposing AE911Truth

National Geographic Interview With Richard Gage, AIA

(206 MB, Windows Media Format)

 

^ Top  

 

WTC Controlled Demolition Raw Footage

World Trade Center Buildings 1 and 2

CBS footage of World Trade Center Building 1 Collapsing
(9 seconds, 4.7 MB., MPEG Format)

World Trade Center Building 2 Demolition – South View
(1 min and 53 seconds, 53 MB, AVI Format)

World Trade Center Building Demolition – North East View
(45 seconds, 20 MB, MPEG-4 Format)

World Trade Center Building 2 – molten metal and base smoke
(2 min. and 43 sec., 72.7 MB, MPEG-4 Format)

WTC2 Demolition – South East View
(2 min. and 32 sec., 29 MB, MPEG-4 Format)

News Video of WTC2 Demolition Waves
(1 min. and 11 sec., 83.7 MB, Windows Media Format)

WTC1 – Explosions Highlighted
(5 min. and 31 sec., 30 MB, MPEG-4 Format)

WTC1 Collapse – North East View
(18 sec., 3 MB, MPEG-4 Format)

WTC1 Demolition
(56 sec., 70 MB., Windows Media Format)

WTC1 Collapse – CBS News Clip
(40 sec, 16 MB, MPEG-2 Format)

PBS Footage of WTC1 Demolition
(55 sec., 69.8 MB, Windows Media Format)

North View of WTC2 Collapse from ABC News
(36 sec., 15 MB, MPEG-2 Format)

World Trade Center Building 7

World Trade Center Building 7 Implosion
(18 sec., 9.2 MB., MPEG-2 Format)

Dan Rather from CBS News Reports about WTC #7(25 sec., 4.4 MB, MPEG-4 Format)

 

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II. Multimedia

 

NIST Slideshows

NIST WTC 7 Technical Briefing (PDF)

NIST Technical Briefing and Slide Show Concerning WTC 7 (Aug. 2008) (Video)

 

^ Top  

 

AE911Truth Slideshows

AE911Truth Online Slide Show Presentation:

10 Minute (144 Slides, 13 Videos)

30 Minute (208 Slides, 23 Videos)

1 Hour (337 Slides, 30 Videos)

2 Hour (567 Slides, 58 Videos)

Flash Brochure

 

View online or download now.

 

^ Top  

 

 

III. Audio

 

Radio Interviews

“A Firefighter, A Demolition Expert, and an Architect Look at Ground-Zero” with firefighter and founder of Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, Erik Lawyer; controlled demolition expert, Tom Sullivan; and architect and founder of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Richard Gage. Streaming Archive Here.

Guns & Butter with Bonnie Faulkner, Apr ’10


WBZ, a CBS affiliate, is the largest AM radio station in Boston. This interview was aired to millions across the East Coast and we consider it to be our most successful 1-hour radio show.

NightSide with Dan Rea, Mar ’10


Richard Gage, AIA on Progressive Radio Network with Gary Null.

The Gary Null Show, Mar ’10


MERIA – Internet Radio for the alternative thinker – Commercial free talk with interviews, real news and alternative views. (meria.net)

The Meria Show, Mar ’10


Richard Gage, AIA on Truth News Radio Australia interviewed by Hereward Fenton. (truthnews.com.au)

An interview with Richard Gage, AIA, Nov ’09


AE911Truth is attacked heavily during this interview, but they prevail! This station is the premier Radio News broadcaster in New Zealand.

Richard Gage, AIA with Kim Hill on Radio New Zealand, Nov ’09


KGO’s Morning News is the number one rated morning program in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Cristine Craft KGO NewsTalk 810 AM, Mar ’08

 

For more radio interviews, please visit our full archive.

For video interviews, click here.

^ Top  

 

 

IV. Documents

 

NIST

The NIST Analyses: A Close Look at WTC 7, Mar 2010

 

^ Top  

 

 

AE911Truth 9/11 Investigator Broadsheet Newspaper

911 Investigator banner

 

^ Top  

 


Technical Articles

World Trade Center Blueprints

World Trade Center Tower A Architectural Drawings

29 Structural/Civil Engineers Cite Evidence for Controlled Explosive Demolition in Destruction of All 3 WTC High-Rises on 9/11, June ’09

Republic Magazine — Evidence for the Explosive Demolition of World Trade Center, Building 7 on 9/11, Sept ’09

Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe, 2009

Thermite: The Smoking Gun, Sept ’09

World Trade Center Tower A Electrical Drawings

Explosives Found in World Trade Center Dust
Jim Hoffman

Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe
Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, and others

(German translation)

(Spanish translation)

Why The Red/Gray Chips Are Not Primer Paint
By Niels H. Harrit, May 2009

Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials
By Kevin R. Ryan, James R. Gourley, & Steven E. Jones

Mysteries of the Twin Towers
R. Herbst

The Missing Jolt: A Simple Refutation of the NIST-Bazant Collapse Hypothesis
By Prof. Graeme MacQueen and Tony Szamboti

Scientists, Scholars, Architects & Engineers respond to NIST
By 16 scientists, scholars, architects, and engineers

Public comments on the NIST WTC 7 draft report. Submitted to NIST 09/11/08.
Jonathan Cole P.E.

Journal of Engineering Mechanics:

Discussion of “Progressive Collapse of the World Trade Center: A Simple Analysis” by K.A. Seffen
Dr. Crockett Grabbe

Momentum Transfer Analysis of the Collapse of the Upper Stories of WTC 1
Gordon Ross Journal of 9/11 Studies

Direct Evidence for Explosions: Flying Projectiles and Widespread Impact Damage
Dr. Crockett Grabbe

Lies about the WTC by NIST and Underwriters Laboratories
Kevin Ryan – U.L. whistleblower – former Site Manager

Physical Chemistry of Thermite, Thermate, Iron-Alum-Rich Microspheres at Demise of WTC 1 & 2
Jerry Lobdill 6/15/2007

The Destruction of WTC 7
Vesa Raiskila

The NIST WTC Investigation — How Real Was The Simulation?
Eric Douglas, Architect

Revisiting 9/11/2001 — Applying the Scientific Method
Prof. Steven E. Jones, Ph.D., Physics

DR. BAZANT – NIST’s 911 FALL GUY
by Gordon Ross, ME [1], June 4, 2007*

Open Letter to Purdue President France Córdova
Kevin Ryan, B.S. Chem.

Jones vs. Robertson: A Physicist and a Structural Engineer Debate the Controlled Demolition of the World Trade Center
Gregg Roberts, Associate Editor, 911Research.com

Another Structural Engineer Questions WTC Collapses
William Rice, P.E.

Can Physics Rewrite History?
Chuck Thurston

Reply to Protec’s “A critical analysis of the collapse of WTC towers 1, 2 & 7 from an explosives and conventional demolition industry viewpoint
Jim Hoffman

NIST’s World Trade Center FAQ: A Reply to the National Institute for Standards and Technology’s Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
Jim Hoffman

Building a Better Mirage: NIST’s 3-Year $20,000,000 Cover-Up of the Crime of the Century
Jim Hoffman

The Destruction of the World Trade Center: Why the Official Account Cannot Be True
David Ray Griffin

Another reason the 9/11 fire-mediated collapse theory is wrong
Joseph Smith

Popular Mechanics’ Assault on 9/11 Truth
Jim Hoffman

Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Completely Collapse?
Dr. Steven E. Jones

Proof That The Thermal and Gravitational Energy Available Were Insufficient to Melt Steel in the Twin Towers and 7 World Trade Center on 9/11/01
Terry Morrone

Report on Weidlinger Simulation
Leaked WTC Blueprints contain 3D simulations from the Weidlinger report that contradict the NIST report of the Twin Tower’s destruction

Engineering News Record: The World Trade Center

Bad Science: Keith Seffen And The WTC ‘Collapse’
Winter Patriot blog 9/14/07

UK Engineer: WTC ‘Collapses’ Were ‘A Very Ordinary Thing’
Winter Patriot blog 9/11/07

Explosions or Collapse? The Semantics of Deception and the Significance of Categories
C. Thurston

My Response to Ryan Mackey and the Self-Crushing Building Theory, “On Debunking 9/11 Debunking”
by Chuck Thurston

Frank Legge (Ph D) Logical Systems Consulting Perth, Western Australia.

High Velocity Bursts of Debris from Point-Like Sources in the WTC Towers
Kevin Ryan

Response to NIST on Control Demolition Investigation Failure
Crockett Grabbe © January 13, 2008 University of Iowa & SeaLane Consulting

Response to NIST on Energy and Momentum
Crockett Grabbe © January 18, 2008 University of Iowa & SeaLane Consulting

Collapse of the South Tower of the World Trade Center
Crockett Grabbe © December 23, 2007 University of Iowa & SeaLane Consulting

Science in the Bush: When Politics Displaces Physics
By Dr. Crockett Grabbe and Lenny Charles 9/08/07

9/11 and the Twin Towers: Sudden Collapse Initiation Was Impossible
Dec 23, 2007
by Frank Legge, PhD & Tony Szamboti, Mechanical Engineer

Dr Seffen Paper Proven Ludicrous
by Mick Meany
Feb, 2008

Extremely high temperatures during the World Trade Center destruction
Steven E. Jones, Jeffrey Farrer, Gregory S. Jenkins, Frank Legge, James Gourley, Kevin Ryan, Danial Farnsworth, and Crockett Grabbe
January 2007

Engineer Sees Evidence of Extreme Temperatures in WTC Steel
Submitted by Shoestring on Mon, 02/25/2008

The Sustainability of the Controlled Demolition Hypothesis for the Destruction of the Twin Towers
Tony Szamboti, ME — May, 2007

The Top Ten Connections Between NIST and Nano-Thermites

Kevin R. Ryan, 7-02-08

Response to ”Progressive Collapse of the World Trade Center: A Simple Analysis” by K.A. Seffen
Crockett Grabbe

How the Towers were Demolished
By Gordon Ross

How NIST Avoided a Real Analysis of the Physical Evidence of WTC Steel
By Andrea Dreger

 

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Foreign Language Translations

Videos on YouTube Translated Into 18+ Foreign Languages

 

9/11 Blueprint for Truth Translations

French:

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 10 min. version

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 33 min. version (1 of 3)

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 33 min. version (2 of 3)

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 33 min. version (3 of 3)

German:

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 10 min. version

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 33 min. version (1 of 3)

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 33 min. version (2 of 3)

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 33 min. version (3 of 3)

Dutch:

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 10 min. version

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 33 min. version (1 of 3)

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 33 min. version (2 of 3)

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 33 min. version (3 of 3)

Italian:

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 10 min. version

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 33 min. version (1 of 3)

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 33 min. version (2 of 3)

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 33 min. version (3 of 3)

Chinese:

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 10 min. version

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 33 min. version (1 of 3)

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 33 min. version (2 of 3)

9/11: Blueprint For Truth 33 min. version (3 of 3)

 

 

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Foreign Translations of Documents

Japanese:

Explosives Found in WTC Dust (WTCを破壊した高性能爆発物)

AE911Truth’s Street Brochure (日本語版)

German:

Active Thermitic Materials Found – Nachweis von reaktionsfähigem thermitischen Material im Staub der World Trade Center- Katastrophe vom 11. September 2001

Spanish:

Investigate 9/11 – Investigar el 11 de Septiembre

 

 

 

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This is the end of the evidence page.

 

U.S. Says ISIL Execution Of James Foley Was “Terrorist Attack”

http://www.the5thestate.asia/2014/08/us-says-isil-execution-of-james-foley.html

To the Obama criminals a dog pissing on a fire hydrant is a “terrorist attack;” this journalist was most likely assassinated by CIA/MI6 scum in an attempt  further support of the almost neutered CIA/FSA swine left in Syria

PRESS TV
08/22/2014

White House Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes has called the execution of American journalist James Foley by ISIL militants a “terrorist attack” against the United States.
Foley was beheaded and shown in a video, in which the Takfiri terrorists demanded the US to end its airstrikes.
Rhodes was asked on Thursday by a reporter if he agreed with former CIA deputy director Mike Morell who had said “this is ISIS’ first terrorist attack against the United States.”
“Well, absolutely,” Rhodes said. “When you see somebody killed in such a horrific way, that represents a terrorist attack against our country and against an American citizen.”
“Clearly, the brutal execution of Jim Foley represented an affront, an attack, not just on him, but he’s an American, and we see that as an attack on our country, when one of our own is killed like that,” he added.
“If you come after Americans, we’re going to come after you wherever you are,” Rhodes added.
Dozens of US special operations troops reportedly parachuted into Syria earlier this summer but failed to locate Foley and other captives held by ISIL.
An email published by a news website that employed Foley says the ISIL had asked for a hundred million Euros for his release.
But Rhodes said paying ransoms to free hostages is not the right policy. He claimed that Washington would not provide funds for terrorist organisms.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday that the ISIL poses a “threat beyond anything we’ve seen.”
Obama cowards had better remember THIS
Hagel and Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey said that the ISIL militants cannot be defeated unless the US or its allies attack them in Syria.
US lawmakers, including Senator John McCain and Senator Bill Nelson, have also pressed for the expansion of the US air campaign to hit ISIL bases in Syria.
The gruesome execution of Foley has drawn an angry, emotional reaction from members of Congress, with some calling on President Obama to redouble the fight against ISIL.
“Seldom is the descriptor ‘evil’ applied with perfect accuracy as it is with this monstrous group,’’ said US Representative Adam B. Schiff, a Democrat from California.

ISIL’s Western, Monarch Backers Playing ‘Very Dangerous Game.’

THE ONENESS of HUMANITY

Posted on August 22, 2014

by Jerry Alatalo

“There is but one sure way of ending war and that is the establishment, by common consent, of a central control which shall have the last word in any conflict of interests. For this two things are needed: first, the creation of such a supreme court of Judicature; second, its investment with adequate executive force. Unless the second requirement is fulfilled, the first is unavailing.”

– SIGMUND FREUD To Einstein, September 1932

aaa-13The Pope has apparently given the go-ahead to bomb ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), now calling themselves the “Islamic State” (IS), to kingdom come. U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said “we must keep all options open” and describes IS as perhaps the most barbaric terrorist organization in history. In the past few days, news of the beheading of an American journalist has gone around the world, opening…

View original post 1,044 more words

The Militarization of U.S. Police: Finally Dragged Into the Light by the Horrors of Ferguson

By

14 Aug 2014, 8:40 AM EDT

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/14/militarization-u-s-police-dragged-light-horrors-ferguson/

Featured photo - The Militarization of U.S. Police: Finally Dragged Into the Light by the Horrors of Ferguson Photo credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images

The intensive militarization of America’s police forces is a serious menace about which a small number of people have been loudly warning for years, with little attention or traction. In a 2007 paper on “the blurring distinctions between the police and military institutions and between war and law enforcement,” the criminal justice professor Peter Kraska defined “police militarization” as “the process whereby civilian police increasingly draw from, and pattern themselves around, the tenets of militarism and the military model.”

The harrowing events of the last week in Ferguson, Missouri – the fatal police shooting of an unarmed African-American teenager, Mike Brown, and the blatantly excessive and thuggish response to ensuing community protests from a police force that resembles an occupying army – have shocked the U.S. media class and millions of Americans. But none of this is aberrational.

It is the destructive by-product of several decades of deliberate militarization of American policing, a trend that received a sustained (and ongoing) steroid injection in the form of a still-flowing, post-9/11 federal funding bonanza, all justified in the name of “homeland security.” This has resulted in a domestic police force that looks, thinks, and acts more like an invading and occupying military than a community-based force to protect the public.

aclu2As is true for most issues of excessive and abusive policing, police militarization is overwhelmingly and disproportionately directed at minorities and poor communities, ensuring that the problem largely festers in the dark. Americans are now so accustomed to seeing police officers decked in camouflage and Robocop-style costumes, riding in armored vehicles and carrying automatic weapons first introduced during the U.S. occupation of Baghdad, that it has become normalized. But those who bear the brunt of this transformation are those who lack loud megaphones; their complaints of the inevitable and severe abuse that results have largely been met with indifference.

If anything positive can come from the Ferguson travesties, it is that the completely out-of-control orgy of domestic police militarization receives long-overdue attention and reining in.

Photo credit: Jeff Roberson/AP

Last night, two reporters, The Washington Post‘s Wesley Lowery and The Huffington Post‘s Ryan Reilly, were arrested and assaulted while working from a McDonald’s in Ferguson. The arrests were arbitrary and abusive, and received substantial attention — only because of their prominent platforms, not, as they both quickly pointed out upon being released, because there was anything unusual about this police behavior.

Reilly, on Facebook, recounted how he was arrested by “a Saint Louis County police officer in full riot gear, who refused to identify himself despite my repeated requests, purposefully banged my head against the window on the way out and sarcastically apologized.” He wrote: ”I’m fine. But if this is the way these officers treat a white reporter working on a laptop who moved a little too slowly for their liking, I can’t imagine how horribly they treat others.” He added: “And if anyone thinks that the militarization of our police force isn’t a huge issue in this country, I’ve got a story to tell you.”

Lowery, who is African-American, tweeted a summary of an interview he gave on MSNBC: “If I didn’t work for the Washington Post and were just another Black man in Ferguson, I’d still be in a cell now.” He added: “I knew I was going to be fine. But the thing is, so many people here in Ferguson don’t have as many Twitter followers as I have and don’t have Jeff Bezos or whoever to call and bail them out of jail.”

rise-of-the-warrior-copThe best and most comprehensive account of the dangers of police militarization is the 2013 book by the libertarian Washington Post journalist Radley Balko, entitled “Rise of the Warrior Cops: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces.”  Balko, who has devoted his career to documenting and battling the worst abuses of the U.S. criminal justice system, traces the history and underlying mentality that has given rise to all of this: the “law-and-order” obsessions that grew out of the social instability of the 1960s, the War on Drugs that has made law enforcement agencies view Americans as an enemy population, the Reagan-era “War on Poverty” (which was more aptly described as a war on America’s poor), the aggressive Clinton-era expansions of domestic policing, all topped off by the massively funded, rights-destroying, post-9/11 security state of the Bush and Obama years. All of this, he documents, has infused America’s police forces with “a creeping battlefield mentality.”

I read Balko’s book prior to publication in order to blurb it, and after I was done, immediately wrote what struck me most about it: “There is no vital trend in American society more overlooked than the militarization of our domestic police forces.” The Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim, in the outlet’s official statement about Reilly’s arrest, made the same point: “Police militarization has been among the most consequential and unnoticed developments of our time.”

In June, the ACLU published a crucial 96-page report on this problem, entitled “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing.” Its central point: “the United States today has become excessively militarized, mainly through federal programs that create incentives for state and local police to use unnecessarily aggressive weapons and tactics designed for the battlefield.”

aclu

The report documents how the Drug War and (Clinton/Biden) 1990s crime bills laid the groundwork for police militarization, but the virtually unlimited flow of “homeland security” money after 9/11 all but forced police departments to purchase battlefield equipment and other military paraphernalia whether they wanted them or not.  Unsurprisingly, like the War on Drugs and police abuse generally, “the use of paramilitary weapons and tactics primarily impacted people of color.”

Some police departments eagerly militarize, but many recognize the dangers. Salt Lake City police chief Chris Burbank is quoted in the ACLU report: “We’re not the military. Nor should we look like an invading force coming in.” A 2011 Los Angeles Times article, noting that “federal and state governments are spending about $75 billion a year on domestic security,” described how local police departments receive so much homeland security money from the U.S. government that they end up forced to buy battlefield equipment they know they do not need: from armored vehicles to Zodiac boats with side-scan sonar.

The trend long pre-dates 9/11, as this 1997 Christian Science Monitor article by Jonathan Landay about growing police militarization and its resulting abuses (“Police Tap High-Tech Tools of Military to Fight Crime”) makes clear. Landay, in that 17-year-old article, described “an infrared scanner mounted on [a police officer’s] car [that] is the same one used by US troops to hunt Iraqi forces in the Gulf war,” and wrote: “it is symbolic of an increasing use by police of some of the advanced technologies that make the US military the world’s mightiest.”

But the security-über-alles fixation of the 9/11 era is now the driving force. A June article in the New York Times by Matt Apuzzo (“War Gear Flows to Police Departments”) reported that “during the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.” He added: “The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments that already look and act like military units.”

All of this has become such big business, and is grounded in such politically entrenched bureaucratic power, that it is difficult to imagine how it can be uprooted. As the LA Times explained:

An entire industry has sprung up to sell an array of products, including high-tech motion sensors and fully outfitted emergency operations trailers. The market is expected to grow to $31 billion by 2014.

The dangers of domestic militarization are both numerous and manifest. To begin with, as the nation is seeing in Ferguson, it degrades the mentality of police forces in virtually every negative way and subjects their targeted communities to rampant brutality and unaccountable abuse. The ACLU report summarized: “excessive militarism in policing, particularly through the use of paramilitary policing teams, escalates the risk of violence, threatens individual liberties, and unfairly impacts people of color.”

Police militarization also poses grave and direct dangers to basic political liberties, including rights of free speech, press and assembly. The first time I wrote about this issue was back in 2008 when I covered the protests outside the GOP national convention in St. Paul for Salon, and was truly amazed by the war-zone atmosphere deliberately created by the police:

St. Paul was the most militarized I have ever seen an American city be, even more so than Manhattan in the week of 9/11 — with troops of federal, state and local law enforcement agents marching around with riot gear, machine guns, and tear gas cannisters, shouting military chants and marching in military formations. Humvees and law enforcement officers with rifles were posted on various buildings and balconies. Numerous protesters and observers were tear gassed and injured.

The same thing happened during the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011: the police response was so excessive, and so clearly modeled after battlefield tactics, that there was no doubt that deterring domestic dissent is one of the primary aims of police militarization. About that police response, I wrote at the time:

Law enforcement officials and policy-makers in America know full well that serious protests — and more — are inevitable given the economic tumult and suffering the U.S. has seen over the last three years (and will continue to see for the foreseeable future). . . .

The reason the U.S. has para-militarized its police forces is precisely to control this type of domestic unrest, and it’s simply impossible to imagine its not being deployed in full against a growing protest movement aimed at grossly and corruptly unequal resource distribution. As Madeleine Albright said when arguing for U.S. military intervention in the Balkans: “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” That’s obviously how governors, big-city Mayors and Police Chiefs feel about the stockpiles of assault rifles, SWAT gear, hi-tech helicopters, and the coming-soon drone technology lavished on them in the wake of the post/9-11 Security State explosion, to say nothing of the enormous federal law enforcement apparatus that, more than anything else, resembles a standing army which is increasingly directed inward.

Most of this militarization has been justified by invoking Scary Foreign Threats — primarily the Terrorist — but its prime purpose is domestic.

Police militarization is increasingly aimed at stifling journalism as well. Like the arrests of Lowery and Reilly last night, Democracy Now‘s Amy Goodman and two of her colleagues were arrested while covering the 2008 St. Paul protests. As Trevor Timm of the Freedom of the Press Foundation (on whose board I sit) explained yesterday, militarization tactics “don’t just affect protesters, but also affect those who cover the protest. It creates an environment where police think they can disregard the law and tell reporters to stop filming, despite their legal right to do so, or fire tear gas directly at them to prevent them from doing their job. And if the rights of journalists are being trampled on, you can almost guarantee it’s even worse for those who don’t have such a platform to protect themselves.”

amash

Ultimately, police militarization is part of a broader and truly dangerous trend: the importation of War on Terror tactics from foreign war zones onto American soil. American surveillance drones went from Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia into American cities, and it’s impossible to imagine that they won’t be followed by weaponized ones. The inhumane and oppressive conditions that prevailed at Guantanamo are matched, or exceeded, by the super-max hellholes and “Communications Management Units” now in the American prison system. And the “collect-it-all” mentality that drives NSA domestic surveillance was pioneered by Gen. Keith Alexander in Baghdad and by other generals in Afghanistan, aimed at enemy war populations.

warfighter1Indeed, much of the war-like weaponry now seen in Ferguson comes from American laws, such as the so-called “Program 1033,” specifically designed to re-direct excessive Pentagon property – no longer needed as foreign wars wind down – into American cities. As the Missouri Department of Public Safety proudly explains on its website, “the 1033 Program provides surplus DoD military equipment to state and local civilian law enforcement agencies for use in counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism operations, and to enhance officer safety.”

One government newsletter – from “the Law Enforcement Support Office (LESO), a little known federal agency that equips police departments with surplus military gear” – boasted that “Fiscal Year 2011 was a record year in property transfers from the US military’s stockpiles to police departments around the nation.” The ACLU report notes: “the Department of Defense operates the 1033 Program through the Defense Logistics Agency’s (DLA) Law Enforcement Support Office (LESO), whose motto is ‘from warfighter to crimefighter.’” The Justice Department has an entire program devoted to “supporting military veterans and the law enforcement agencies that hire them as our veterans seek to transition into careers as law enforcement officers.”

As part of America’s posture of Endless War, Americans have been trained to believe that everything is justified on the “battlefield” (now defined to mean “the whole world”): imprisonment without charges, kidnapping, torture, even assassination of U.S. citizens without trials. It is not hard to predict the results of importing this battlefield mentality onto American soil, aimed at American citizens: “From Warfighter to Crimefighter.” The results have been clear for those who have looked – or those who have been subject to this – for years. The events in Ferguson are, finally, forcing all Americans to watch the outcome of this process.