Kevin Barrett

There is no worse place to be a dissident than in the USA.

In many countries, people who cross the line in opposing the government risk incarceration, torture, or murder.

Until recently, it was hard for American dissidents to cross that line. If they wanted to get arrested for saying something subversive, mere ideas weren't enough; they would have to actually threaten to physically harm the President or another high official.

But the post-9/11 USA is no longer a beacon of human rights. As former President Jimmy Carter recently wrote in the New York Times, “The United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.” In his article, Carter points out that top US officials are now openly targeting US citizens for political assassination, “disappearance,” unlimited surveillance, and other forms of gross human rights abuse.

Since we now know that a secret National Security committee is ordering the murder of American citizens, and since we know the CIA has the power to easily simulate deaths from illness and accident, we might as well assume that every time a dissident dies unexpectedly, he or she has been murdered by the US government.

Consider the chilling words of Obama's information czar Cass Sunstein, who openly advocates that the US government should “disable the purveyors of conspiracy theories.” Sunstein's article “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures” argues that “conspiracy theories” (by which he means the 9/11 truth movement) are so dangerous that the government should “cognitively infiltrate” 9/11 truth groups, “disable” those who spread these ideas, and possibly even make the ideas illegal.

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Justin Raimondo

Which historical analogy fits the present moment?

We hear cries of “another Munich” with very little provocation: it’s the War Party’s pat response to any attempt to negotiate or otherwise engage our alleged enemies. It was a favorite neoconservative trope during the cold war era, one that greeted every diplomatic approach to the reds, from Nixon’s China trip to Reagan at Reykjavik. This analogy persisted long after the Soviets landed in history’s dustbin: indeed, its use has increased over the years, with every Enemy of the Moment, from Slobodan Milosevic to Saddam Hussein, routinely likened to Hitler and the Nazis. With the Israelis conjuring visions of a second Holocaust at Iranian hands, ghosts from the 1930s haunt the current foreign policy debate: in the unlikely event the ongoing negotiations with Tehran generate an agreement, odds are it will be characterized as “another Munich” by All the Usual Suspects.

Yet as Pat Buchanan was the first to point out in the run up to the first Gulf War, Saddam was no Hitler: the German leader conquered Europe from the Pyrenees to the Urals, while Saddam’s “empire” consisted of the tiny enclave of Kuwait. Hitler commanded the mighty Wehrmacht, while the best of Saddam’s army, the Republican Guards, melted away before the American assault.

As a historical analogy for the present moment, the 1930s are a natural reference point for neoconservative intellectuals, the original authors and most vocal advocates of the series of Middle Eastern wars that have kept us preoccupied since the end of the cold war. After all, neoconservatism was itself born in that tumultuous era of war and depression, in Alcove 1 at the City College cafeteria, or, at least, its seeds were sown. World War II was the defining moment of a whole generation of leftist intellectuals, whose storied journey from the anti-Stalinist left to the neoconservative right has been lovingly chronicled by themselves in endless memoirs.

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Justin Raimondo

Israel's "rebel group" in Iran, Jundallah, threatened to
execute 16 Iranian security workers, June 19, 2008.

Will Israel succeed in dragging us into war with Iran?

If not, it won’t be for lack of trying. Their influential lobby in the US has been agitating for a US strike since the last year of the Bush presidency, when they almost succeeded in pulling it off: fortunately for us, Bush demurred, perhaps because he didn’t want his legacy to be two unwinnable and disastrous wars instead of just one.

Israel was to be the spearhead, with the US providing back up support, as the Guardian reported at the time:

“Israel gave serious thought this spring to launching a military strike on Iran’s nuclear sites but was told by President George W Bush that he would not support it and did not expect to revise that view for the rest of his presidency, senior European diplomatic sources have told the Guardian.”

Deterred from firing the first shots of World War III, the Israelis didn’t give up. Instead, they turned to other less direct means to achieve their goal. As Mark Perry reports on foreignpolicy.com:

“Buried deep in the archives of America’s intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush’s administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives – what is commonly referred to as a ‘false flag’ operation.”

You bet those memos are buried deep – lest Americans discover that their faithful “allies” are trying to implicate them in war crimes.

Jundallah is a terrorist organization, Sunni-oriented and linked to al-Qaeda, that has murdered Iranian civilians in bombings and other attacks within Iran: their ostensible goal is to “liberate” Iranian (and Pakistani) Baluchistan. According to the memos, the Israelis recruited these terrorists right out in the open in London, where Mossad operatives – posing as CIA officers – met with Jundallah officials. “It’s amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with,” Perry quotes one intelligence officer as saying. “They apparently didn’t give a damn what we thought.”

Of course not – and why should they? After all, we’ve given them a pass every time: when Jonathan Pollard stole what US officials described as the intelligence community’s “crown jewels” and passed them off to the Russians; when they stole our trade and military secrets and passed them off to China: when they were tracking the 9/11 conspirators and didn’t tell us what Mohammed Atta and his crew were up to. They took our “foreign aid” with one hand, and stabbed us in the back with the other.

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Scott Lazarowitz

Within days after my article on due process and presumption of innocence, the U.S. Senate voted to empower the U.S. military to apprehend and detain indefinitely anyone in America, based on the whim of the soldier or military commander, and it will probably eventually include any armed agent of government including local police. As Jacob Hornberger noted, this new provision will codify the U.S. as just another one of many dictatorships throughout world history.

But, even though al Qaeda is virtually non-existent, the Washington imbeciles want to expand and extend the "War on Terror" anyway and include the entire U.S. territory as a "battlefield." How can we explain this? As Justin Raimondo speculated, the real reason for this new dictatorial power may be because these senators know that America is headed for economic collapse and civil unrest. But as I pointed out in my article on martial law, whether there are terrorists or not, or whether there is a prosperous or collapsing economy, all human beings have inalienable rights, among them the right to presumption of innocence and due process. Any government violations of those rights are crimes against the people, pure and simple.

Sen. Lindsey Graham commented that, "If you’re an American citizen and you betray your country, you’re not going to be given a lawyer," in his un-American opposition to due process and his approval of apprehending and detaining innocent civilians indefinitely. But, as I asked in my earlier article: Who will determine whether or not one has "betrayed one’s country"? Graham and the other pro-dictatorship government bureaucrats do not seem able to distinguish between someone who actually has acted (or been found guilty of acting) against one’s fellow Americans and someone who is accused of doing so. Graham wants to empower all military personnel (and probably any armed government official) to detain indefinitely those who are merely accused of doing something, without evidence brought forward, without having a lawyer, without access to their families, no due process whatsoever. This is a banana republic dictatorship, and it is thoroughly un-American, thoroughly anti-liberty.

Additionally, Graham hinted at curtailing political expression as protected by the First Amendment, and thus, given past examples of government censorship since 9/11, Americans who criticize the U.S. government’s "war on terror" could be declared as "enemy combatants," and apprehended and detained without charges or trial. If these senators have their way, merely questioning the government’s actions and questioning the legitimacy of these wars would be considered "terrorism."

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Justin Raimondo

Former VP Cheney coming to sign his book.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case brought by Steven Howards, a Colorado man arrested by Secret Service agents when he confronted then-Vice President Dick Cheney at a shopping mall and told him he thought the Iraq war was “disgusting.” Howards happened to be in the mall when he noticed Cheney was there, signing books and posing for photographs with mall-goers: he phoned a friend and told him he was going to wait on line for a chance to pose with the Vice President and then tell him what he thought of the war: “I’m going to ask him [Cheney] how many kids he’s killed today.”

A Secret Service agent overheard him and put out an alert to watch for the man in the green t-shirt. Howards got in line, waited for his turn to pose with Cheney, and when it was his turn he delivered his message, to which Cheney replied, rather stupidly: “Thank you.”

What happened next is in dispute: the Secret Service claims he “pushed off” and even “slapped” the VP: Howards says he was merely patting the war criminal on the shoulder. In any case, Howards at first denied touching Cheney at all, later admitting he might have had a brief contact – and this was the pretext for his arrest.

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Charles E. Carlson

Anders Breivik and Mossad agent Pamela Geller

Everyone has heard the legal explanation of when free speech becomes a crime. “You must not cry 'fire' in a crowded theater." According to the findings of the Norway court-appointed psychiatrists who examined Anders Breivik, he believes there is an immigration fire in his native country, so he killed or wounded some 80 Norwegian youths whose parents belong to the political party he blames for the migration of Muslims into Norway.

Note that Breivik, as far as we know, did not gain a single krone for his violent, well-planned deed. And he risked his own life to do it, for had the police shown up before he ran out of bullets [1], or if anyone on Utøya Island had had a gun, Breivik would likely have been shot down. As it stands, Breivik may be in a mental institution for a few years, or for the rest of his life.

Some good may come from the unfamiliar and seemingly overgenerous Norwegian law, because it will now bring focus on those who Breivik heard shouting “fire” and who influenced him to kill 74 youths. Unlike Breivik, many of them are well paid and rewarded for promoting war.

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Gilad Atzmon

Liam Fox resigned over links to close friend and 'adviser'
Adam Werritty. (Photo: PA)

[T]he tide has changed. The duplicity of our elected politicians and their ties with the Jewish lobby is now being closely scrutinized. The time has come for all of us in this country to put as much distance as we can between ourselves and Jerusalem.

A rather stinky Israeli espionage mole has just been exposed in Britain. Yesterday, Liam Fox the Defence Secretary resigned following revelations about his dubious relationship with Adam Werritty. Some 17 years younger than Fox, Werrity has been involved with Fox both in business and in the conservative Atlanticist think-tank ‘The Atlantic Bridge’. While Fox was Defence Minister, Werrity visited Fox at the Ministry on many occasions, accompanied Fox on numerous official trips, attended some of his meetings with foreign dignitaries and used official-looking business cards which announced him as an 'adviser' to Fox – and all despite having no official government post whatsoever. However, it has now also been revealed that Fox and Werritty were heavily financed by the Israeli lobby and ‘beyond’.

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Justin Raimondo

Following the money trail

What do we really know about Anders Behring Breivik, the Norway mass murderer who killed in the name of his anti-Muslim ideology, nearly a week after his horrific rampage? We know what he did, and why he did it: he left behind not only a 1,500 page manifesto, in which he pours out his hatred of Muslims, but also a day-by-day diary that details his elaborate preparations, in which he claims his crime was nine years in the making.

That’s an awfully long time for a "lone wolf" to keep his plans to himself, yet the head of Norway’s intelligence agency was quick to state Breivik acted alone – this is spite of Breivik’s own contention, in his online "book," that two other cells of his "Knights Templar Europe" exist. Furthermore, according to Breivik, the Knights were founded at a London meeting in 2002, at which his British "mentor" and representatives from across the continent were in attendance.

What we don’t know, however, is how he did it. Oh, he gives us a detailed account of his obsessive preparations, including how much protein he added to his weightlifting regimen. We know he set up a front company, Breivik Geofarm, supposedly devoted to the growing of tubers, which is how he managed to get the fertilizer that was a key component of his car bomb. What we don’t know, however, is where money came from.

Breivik hadn’t had much income recently, as detailed here – yet he seemed to have some assets. The exact source of these assets is unknown. According to him, he "earned his first million kroner as an entrepreneur at the age of 24." Yet a number of news accounts flatly contradict this, notably the Sydney Morning Herald, which reports:

"Government records suggest that despite his management qualifications, his early attempts at business were a failure until he established Breivik Geofarm in eastern Norway for the cultivation of ‘’vegetables, melons and tubers.’ The business would have given Breivik access to nitrogen-based fertilizer – one of the main ingredients of a fertilizer bomb."

Yet "Breivik Geofarm" was, according to Breivik, just a "front" company, a legal shell meant to shield his activities from prying eyes. We don’t know that he ever grew a single tuber.

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Justin Raimondo

Anders Behring Breivik and the Axis of Hate

Suggestions that the “counter-jihadist” ideology spread by such websites as Frontpagemag.com, run by neocon David Horowitz, and the affiliated “Jihad Watch,” inspired – and provoked – the Norway killer Anders Behring Breivik have been met with cries of outrage by the neoconservative Right. This is hardly surprising: confronted with the sight of someone who put their hateful and inherently violent ideology into practice, what else are they supposed to do? There is, however, a superficially reasonable case to be made against drawing any larger lesson from the Norwegian tragedy. As Gene Healy, a vice president of the Cato Institute, put it:

“In general, invoking the ideological meanderings of psychopaths is a stalking horse for narrowing permissible dissent. Former New York Times columnist Frank Rich provided a classic in the genre with his February 2010 piece ‘The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged,’ in which he railed against the dangerous climate of anti-government rhetoric and warned that a ‘tax protester’ who flew a plane into an Internal Revenue Service building in February may be a dark harbinger of Tea Party terrorism to come. (No such luck, Frank.)

“But blaming Sarah Palin for Jared Loughner, or Al Gore for the Unabomber makes about as much sense as blaming Martin Scorsese and Jodie Foster for inciting John Hinckley. There’s little to be learned from the acts of ‘the obsessed and deranged.’ But these incidents ought to teach us not to use tragedy to score partisan points.”

All of which is true – up to a point. This is generally true, but in the case of Breivik, however, what Healy misses is the specific content of the ideas expounded in the killer’s online manifesto [.pdf], and the video which summarizes his stance. For what Breivik and the counter-jihadists are saying is that Islam is at war with the West – and that a “culture of appeasement” prevalent on our side of the barricades is delivering us to the Enemy. If you go through the material published by Robert Spencer, who is quoted in some 64 instances by Breivik, one central idea leaps out at you: we are at war with the one billion Muslims on the planet Earth. Not that we should be at war, or will be at war – the battle, in Spencer’s view, has already commenced, not on account of anything we in the West have done, but because Islamic doctrine is inherently violent and expansionist. Likewise, Pamela Geller, his collaborator in “Stop the Islamization of America” – and its European affiliate, which Breivik supported – denies the very existence of moderates in the Muslim camp.

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Stephen Lendman

Obama's March 28 television address wreaked of hypocrisy, lies and disdain for basic democratic values, making an indefensible case for naked aggression against a non-belligerent country. America's media approved.

On March 28, New York Times writer Helene Cooper headlined, "Obama Cites Limits of US Role in Libya," saying:

Obama "defended the American-led military assault in Libya on Monday, saying it was in the national interest of the United States to stop a potential massacre that would have 'stained the conscience of the world,' " even though no threat existed until:

● Washington showed up with co-belligerents France and Britain;
● beginning in 2010, armed and funded so-called "rebels" who, in fact, are cutthroat killers, rapists and marauders, terrorizing every area they control, including their Benghazi stronghold; and
● support them with daily "shock and awe" terror attacks, causing increasing numbers of deaths and injuries, as well as destruction and contamination of all areas struck by depleted uranium bombs, missiles and shells, spreading radiation over wide areas.

Despite Pentagon denials, conservative estimates put civilian deaths at over 100, besides combatants killed and unknown numbers murdered by rebel allies. Since March 19 air attacks began, nearly 1,500 sorties have been flown, that number to rise exponentially as daily strikes continue under US command, running all NATO operations under AFRICOM's General Carter Ham. Alleged new commander, Canada's Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, is his subordinate, a Pentagon figurehead.

The alleged handover is fabricated. NATO is code language for America/the Pentagon. Obama lied announcing otherwise, saying Washington's role will be limited to stop potential "slaughter and mass graves" in Benghazi. In fact, he supports and/or ignores rebel terror killings against defenseless civilians, making him complicit in their crimes, besides widespread ones caused by NATO, America's missile. US attacks, in fact, will continue throughout the campaign, perhaps lasting months at an enormous cost, besides hundreds of billions annually in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Making an indefensible case, Obama said, "For more than four decades, the Libyan people have been ruled by a tyrant - Muammar Gaddafi," ignoring the numerous regional and global ones America supports, including rogue Israeli regimes, lawlessly terrorizing Palestinians for over six decades with generous US support and funding.

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