A sobering assessment by @seanmdav of post-9/11 actions by the US government in response to that fateful day. https://thefederalist.com/2023/09/11/was-9-11-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-the-american-empire/
There was a time after 9/11 I was all about those actions: the War on Terror, the Patriot Act, and so on, justifying every aspect, annoyingly so I might add. My brother fought in both theatres. In Iraq twice. It had to mean something, in light of 9/11, but also for our soldiers’ sacrifices.
Excerpt from It’s the establishment vs the web, written in 2010, just as relevant today:
‘Western system hollowed out’
What WikiLeaks is really exposing is the extent to which the western democratic system has been hollowed out. In the last decade its political elites have been shown to be incompetent (Ireland, the U.S. and U.K. in not regulating banks); corrupt (all governments in relation to the arms trade); or recklessly militaristic (the U.S. and U.K. in Iraq). And yet nowhere have they been called to account in any effective way. Instead they have obfuscated, lied or blustered their way through. And when, finally, the veil of secrecy is lifted, their reflex reaction is to kill the messenger.
http://fee.org/articles/j-gresham-machen-a-forgotten-libertarian/
“Everywhere there rises before our eyes the spectre of a society where security, if it is attained at all, will be attained at the expense of freedom, where the security that is attained will be the security of fed beasts in a stable, and where all the high aspirations of humanity will have been crushed by an all-powerful state.”
“Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations.” – Joseph Pulitzer
For a few years now, I’ve had a thought going that counters what we’re told in the media concerning the “war on terror,” including that which is put out by FOX News and other neo-conservative outlets: the real geo-political battle we face and have always faced is two major empires battling it out for resources, land, and economic superiority. That battle is East versus West and more specifically, the Western empire, consisting of the US and Europe as well as Australia, versus the Eastern empire consisting of Russia, China, Iran, Syria and a few other smaller nations. We are now seeing signs that these theories are proving to be true. I don’t mean to say I have exclusively thought of these things, because I haven’t. There are a number of commentators who have made similar calls long before I have.
After the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a political and economic restructuring they had to go through. This took time and it took a while to get on their feet again after such a great fall. But it’s been two decades now. They never lost their nuclear status and have maintained some semblance of a core infrastructure from which to build upon. On top of that, China has risen strong and mighty, a nuclear power, extremely technological, and innovative themselves (or at least really good with corporate and military espionage in the West). Iran is still peeved at us for our CIA’s 1953 coup d’etat. And Syria just thumbs their noses at us and calls on Russia to bow up to us, especially in the wake of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I would expect more to join this Eastern bloc in the near future.
We have a very strong staging area in the Middle East now, but for what? Looking back over the past 15 years, reading over information even before 9/11 occurred, we had the Middle East in our sights all along. 9/11 sped that process up, whatever the causes and forces were that brought that event about. The Iraqi invasion was planned in the late 1990’s. The Patriot act had also been written in the same time frame, before 9/11. Yeah, I was shocked to find these things out too. There are a number of other things I won’t go into. But long story short, we have bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel of course, UAE, Kuwait, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and I’m sure I’m missing some. On top of this, we are setting up even more missiles pointed in an offensive posture toward Russia in Eastern Europe and a number of other places. So militarily we have them surrounded to some degree. We’re at the very least lining Russia’s southern and western borders.
Now with all of that said and barring the lack of humanity the Syrian government has toward its own people and the authoritarian nature of that state, how ironic it is for Krauthammer, on FOX News tonight, to get so agitated and offended that Putin would bow up to the US and essentially say, “Syria is ours.” This is exactly what we’ve been doing throughout the Middle East for more than a decade! And even before that, it’s the very thing we tried to do in Iran in 1953, which back-fired in 1979 (or what the CIA calls “blowback”), and to this day is one of the reasons they hate us, cited even by Ahmadinejad! Of course, when it’s us doing the empire and resource building for our own interests, it’s right, right? Iraq and Afghanistan then become “humanitarian” missions or “freedom” missions for the “cause of liberty,” PR and marketing designed to persuade the masses into acquiescing to whatever our elite, empire-building leaders want. “You love this country don’t you? Then you’ll see the necessity of war and spreading democracy. And support the troops in our endeavor! If you don’t you must not love this country.”
Al Qaeda is a pawn in our chess game with the other rising super powers who are consolidating power. When it suits us, we buddy up with Al Qaeda and use them as tools (like in Egypt and Libya over the past year), who we essentially created, trained and funded beginning in the 1980’s to fight (oddly enough in this discussion) the Soviet Union. There again, when it suits us we attack Al Qaeda when we need to gain more ground “for the cause of liberty,” aka empire-building and creating a defensive posture toward the Eastern bloc of power.
Why do we Americans think we’re somehow any different as an empire than other empires that have come and gone throughout history? Granted, we have had a great thing going with our Republic in its Constitutional form, but we’re quickly losing that. What remains then? Power, exerted by forces outside of democratic control.
Cold War Redux http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iIgesHH9fg (New Russian ICBM test-fired) … I mean there are more spies in this country now than at the height of the Cold War after all http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57431837/more-spies-in-u.s-than-ever-says-ex-cia-officer/ … sending a message to the US/European/NATO alliance? Still makes me wonder if the real geo-political chess battle is merely East versus West and the Middle East has always just been caught in the middle. We have a NATO missile defense shield in Eastern Europe, we have bases in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Turkey(?) to the south of Russia. Iran, China and Russia are regularly meeting, trading arms, having joint governmental conferences. Russia has been doing war games exercises near the arctic circle recently. Two Russian subs were spotted off the Atlantic coast last year doing reconnaissance. It has been reported that Russia is sending arms to Syria. If you want to see what is really going on in the world, you forget what the leaders say and watch what they do.
Whereas the authors of these videos paint the scenes as the ultimate utopia of sustainability and green living (minus Sprawl-ville which paints what will happen if we don’t move to sustainability), the reality to me is one more of dystopia. Global centrally planned food, government, told where you can and can’t go, certain amount of calories one can use in a day. These would be funny and ridiculous if there weren’t actual plans in the works to convert major cities throughout the world into some along these lines. Those plans go under the United Nations name Agenda 21. These videos try to paint a nice face on that while creating fear if we don’t. For me they’re just chilling.
And last of all, if you don’t know what Agenda 21 is, here is a quick run-down; otherwise, read it for yourself:
“I’m Bill Gross And I Endorse Ron Paul For President”
Well well well, looky there who supports Ron Paul fellers: Bill Gross, Mr. bond market himself, CNBC’s mainstream goto man for all things related to the treasury market … I wonder if he’s a conspiracy theorist too 🙂 So let me get this straight: we have former CIA officers, one of which who worked for Reagan and briefed him daily on intelligence matters, a former DIA officer (Able Danger anyone? Look it up), former CIA chief over the BIN LADEN unit in Afghanistan (you heard me), scores of military personnel giving campaign contributions adding up to more than any other candidate combined, nationally renowned law scholar Jonathan Turley giving hints on C-SPAN and elsewhere (if not right out endorsement, haven’t searched for one) … and scores of other high profile individuals who support Ron Paul.
What am I missing here when people call him “kooky” or “loony” or “old man conspiracy theorist?” Yes, I realize some of his ideas are not tenable or, if we’re honest, even possible in terms of support. But as with theology debates, those are secondary issues, if you get my drift. The guy supports freedom more than anyone, something under assault in our day, he’s a true conservative (not a neo-conservative, there is a difference), something none of the other candidates seem concerned about, and he’s pro-life. Yes, he has a different way of going about addressing that, but his pro-life stance is clear.
I just don’t get it. The fear-mongering over Iran is an exact mirror of the Iraq situation, in which we now have Colin Powell saying if we knew they didn’t have WMD’s we wouldn’t have gone in. The intelligence was skewed, either intentionally (many people’s contention, mirroring what we now know about the CIA in the 1970’s and intelligence related to the USSR in terms of their capabilities) or by pure negligence. But I digress.
It’s unfortunate the Romney’s, Gingrich’s and the Fox News’s have essentially hijacked any chance this great man might have had. If Bill Gross endorses Paul, the writing is on the wall in terms of what he thinks of the US debt situation. We’re in deep … well, debt. A debt-to-GDP ratio of over 100% must have pushed him over the edge.
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Gosnell Versus “Clean Abortions”
By David Westerfield
On May 13, 2013
In Commentary, Culture, Politics, Society
The babies “born alive” that were murdered by Kermit Gosnell are the same babies alive in the womb, everyday, who silently scream and fight for their lives when viewed on ultrasound. Out of sight, out of mind. Don’t stick your head in the sand about what happens during an abortion. Know what you’re supporting.