Stephen Lendman

Though a long shot at best, her doggedness during hard times makes anything possible. However, the notion of President Bachmann should chill everyone to fight it at a time America already is no fit place to live in. Imagine it under her, making Washington Christian fascist occupied territory. Don't rule her out.

Frances Fitzgerald titled her 2000 book on Reagan's Star Wars Strategic Defense Initiative, "Way Out There in the Blue," leaving [it] unsaid but letting readers conclude that America during his tenure was run by right wing extremists.

He and most others around him were ideologically hard right, their legacy including:

● disdain for working Americans;
● contempt for the rule of law, civil liberties, human rights, and democratic freedoms; and
● support for concentrated wealth, power and budget-busting militarism.

They backed:

● sweeping deregulation;
● destructive "free trade;"
● offshoring high-paying manufacturing, service, and other jobs;
● the war on drugs - in fact, a war on poor minorities, escalating America's prison population to the highest by far in the world, two-thirds in it Blacks and Latinos, most for nonviolent offenses;
● tax cuts for the rich;
● draconian social program cuts;
● support for global despots, apartheid South Africa, star wars, death squads, proxy wars in Central America, Africa, Afghanistan, and Middle East by helping Iran and Iraq wage war; and
● contempt for gays, lesbians, people of color, the poor and disadvantaged, and more.

Age 24 in 1980, Bachmann voted for Reagan and worked for his campaign. In Congress and as a Tea Party presidential candidate, her extremism may be unrivaled.

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Paul Craig Roberts

This is economic destruction. It always occurs when an oligarchy seizes control of a government. The short-run profits of the powerful are maximized at the expense of the viability of the economy.

Recently, the bond rating agencies that gave junk derivatives triple-A ratings threatened to downgrade US Treasury bonds if the White House and Congress did not reach a deficit reduction deal and debt ceiling increase. The downgrade threat is not credible, and neither is the default threat. Both are make-believe crises that are being hyped in order to force cutbacks in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

If the rating agencies downgraded Treasuries, the company executives would be arrested for the fraudulent ratings that they gave to the junk that Wall Street peddled to the rest of the world. The companies would be destroyed and their ratings discredited. The US government will never default on its bonds, because the bonds, unlike those of Greece, Spain and Ireland, are payable in its own currency. Regardless of whether the debt ceiling is raised, the Federal Reserve will continue to purchase the Treasury’s debt. If Goldman Sachs is too big to fail, then so is the US government.

There is no budget focus on the illegal wars and military occupations that the US government has underway in at least six countries or the 66-year old US occupations of Japan and Germany and the ring of military bases being constructed around Russia.

The total military/security budget is in the vicinity of $1.1-$1.2 trillion, or 70% -75% of the federal budget deficit.

In contrast, Social Security is solvent. Medicare expenditures are coming close to exceeding the 2.3% payroll tax that funds Medicare, but it is dishonest for politicians and pundits to blame the US budget deficit on "entitlement programs."

Entitlements are funded with a payroll tax. Wars are not funded. The criminal Bush regime lied to Americans and claimed that the Iraq war would only cost $70 billion at the most and would be paid for with Iraq oil revenues. When Bush’s chief economic advisor, Larry Lindsey, said the Iraq invasion would cost $200 billion, the White House Moron fired him. In fact, Lindsay was off by a factor of 20. Economic and budget experts have calculated that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have consumed $4,000 billion in out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs. In other words, the ongoing wars and occupations have already eaten up the $4 trillion by which Obama hopes to cut federal spending over the next ten years. Bomb now, pay later.

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Charles E. Carlson

Walid Shoebat, available for your anti-Islam shindig...

Anderson Cooper on CNN News’ show, Anderson Cooper 360o, exposed a former Palestinian school boy named Walid Shoebat, who has become a manufactured "terror expert" promoting anti-Islamist hysteria among federal law enforcement officers and in Evangelical, Christian Zionists churches. The CNN piece[1] focused on unraveling Shoebat's claimed history as a "terrorist" into a pile of yarn, showing it consisted of not even half truths. It also revealed how much money Shoebat is being paid by US taxpayers to train federal police and American Christian Zionists.

CNN stopped short of saying what will be tough to prove… that Shoebat is a de-facto Israeli agent operating in the USA. Furthermore, it is likely he was recruited here, because it appears that Israel never heard of him when he lived with his family in Beit Lahor, near Bethlehem, where he claims to have been a "terrorist" trying to kill Jews.

Shoebat's written response, “I Confess…”, to Anderson Cooper’s telling exposé, was immediately spread far and wide by World Net Daily and other news sources in sympathy with Israel and Christian Zionists.[2]

Why is Shoebat so well paid? Here is an example of what he says to earn his money. CNN News researcher Drew Griffin recorded Shoebat's lecture to law enforcement and first respondent personnel in South Dakota. Griffin’s remarks included,

"Shoebat’s message to the law enforcement agencies, churches and universities that pay him to speak is to trust no Muslims, especially the ones that organize. 'All Islamic organizations in America should be the No. 1 enemy. All of them,' he said at the South Dakota conference."

Shoebat has a handler, but we cannot see him. His written rebuttal to CNN is revealing in that it is far more professional than he is capable of himself. Shoebat was stumbling, shamefaced and sometimes belligerent in his CNN interview with Drew Griffin; he could not even recall the names of his Board of Directors, and he had no explanation for why his alleged crimes and arrest time in Israel were unknown there.

Shoebat’s written rebuttal, however, is brilliant in its ability to avoid questions, while scoffing at the CNN documentary, and could only have been done by a PR pro who realized that a lie still has value so long as some will believe it. Shoebat cries, “poor me”, a persecuted philanthropist giving money to save Christians, who he says are being murdered by Muslims. He makes no mention of his largesse from the Department of Homeland Security. Too bad we can not uncover his agent and his writer. I would guess from their style that both are Israelis.

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Stephen Lendman

After months of ruling Al Khalifa family crackdowns against nonviolent protesters, political opponents, human rights activists, medical professionals, independent journalists, and others wanting democratic change, reports suggest Washington may move its Fifth Fleet elsewhere.

According to the Australian and London Times, "Sources in Washington and the Gulf confirm (a) growing consensus" around the idea of relocating away from Bahrain because of unease over violence and instability.

On July 21, Hugh Tomlinson said:

"Politicians in Washington are concerned the navy's continued presence a few kilometres from the centre of the capital Manama lends tacit support to Bahrain's suppression of the opposition, amid allegations of systematic human rights abuses."

Other concerns are that violence and instability may compromise base security. According to one source:

"There was talk on Capitol Hill about moving the fleet within days of the protests breaking out, and that increased in March and April as people realized that what was happening in Bahrain ran counter to our interests."

In mid-March, however, Obama backed Saudi troops invading Bahrain guns blazing, attacking peaceful protesters, arresting opposition leaders and activists, occupying the country, denying wounded men and women medical treatment, and enforcing Al Khalifa family imposed martial law.

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Philip Giraldi

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was at it again last week. She was in Turkey attending a NATO gathering dealing with what to do about the succession in Libya, based on the perhaps erroneous assumption that Muammar Gadhafi is on his way out. Clinton and NATO decided, based on their own admittedly partial view of the situation, that the Gadhafi regime is no longer legitimate and that the rebels who are trying to topple him are now to be regarded as the legal government. The “international recognition” will enable them to use the roughly $30 billion in frozen Libyan government assets, mostly located in American and European banks. Hopefully, things will go better than they did in Iraq back in 2003. Washington sent in a proconsul supported by a host of neocon Myrmidons to make sure things would run smoothly. More than $20 billion of Iraqi state “reconstruction” funds were unfrozen and then went missing after liberation took place. The Iraqi people are still waiting for the electricity to come back on.

Clinton also took some heavy-handed swipes at Syria, making clear that both she and her boss want to see regime change. Three hundred fifty representatives of Syrian dissident groups were perhaps not coincidentally present in Istanbul for a “National Salvation Conference,” so Clinton took the opportunity to denounce President Bashar al-Assad’s government as having “lost legitimacy.” The White House backed up Clinton’s possibly impromptu comment, and over at Foggy Bottom, Victoria Nuland, the State Department’s neoconnish press spokeswoman, made the case more explicitly, denouncing “a Syrian government that continues to beat, imprison, torture, slaughter its own people.”

If Syria sounds like any number of regimes that the United States has quite comfortable relationships with, it should. While it would seem that international conferencing and seeking to overthrow two regimes would make for a busy weekend for even the most peripatetic secretary of state, Hillary also decided to take on her host, Turkey.

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