|
The surprise appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to look into allegations of Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election has shocked Washington and the nation. Will we get a quick resolution to the claims about Russian involvement, or will it be a never-ending "investigation" that will hobble President Trump's foreign and domestic agenda?
 By Liberty Report Staff President Trump has decided to take his first foreign trip, and apparently without any shame, he has chosen Saudi Arabia! Here are some things that the president most likely will not be saying to the Saudis. They're just mere words for us lowly Americans. In 2011, Trump wrote in his own book about Saudi Arabia: "It's the world's biggest funder of terrorism. Saudi Arabia funnels our petro dollars, our very own money, to fund the terrorists that seek to destroy our people while the Saudis rely on us to protect them." Keeping that thought in mind, the president is expected this weekend to announce a $350 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, one of the largest arms deals ever! Think about that... What else has Trump said to pushover Americans? He once tweeted the following about Al-Waleed bin Talal, a prominent member of the Saudi royal family: Dopey Prince @Alwaleed_Talal wants to control our U.S. politicians with daddy’s money. Can’t do it when I get elected. When Hillary Clinton accepted $25 million from the Saudis (yes, they butter both sides of the bread), Trump said they were: “people that push gays off … buildings. These are people that kill women and treat women horribly and yet you take their money." “It wasn’t the Iraqis that knocked down the World Trade Center … because they have papers in there that are very secret, you may find it’s the Saudis, okay?” Trump was referring to the declassified 28 pages.
So....just add this turn of events to the growing list of Trump reversals. While we stew in our Obamacare, at the least the Saudis will be happy. America is nowhere close to becoming great again. 
By John W. Whitehead
Who designed the malware worm that is now wreaking havoc on tens of thousands of computers internationally by hackers demanding a king’s ransom? The US government. Who is the biggest black market buyer and stockpiler of cyberweapons (weaponized malware that can be used to hack into computer systems, spy on citizens, and destabilize vast computer networks)? The US government. What country has one the deadliest arsenals of weapons of mass destruction? The US government. Who is the largest weapons manufacturer and exporter in the world, such that they are literally arming the world? The US government. Which is the only country to ever use a nuclear weapon in wartime? The United States. How did Saddam Hussein build Iraq’s massive arsenal of tanks, planes, missiles, and chemical weapons during the 1980s? With help from the US government. Who gave Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida “access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry”? The US government. What country has a pattern and practice of entrapment that involves targeting vulnerable individuals, feeding them with the propaganda, know-how and weapons intended to turn them into terrorists, and then arresting them as part of an elaborately orchestrated counterterrorism sting? The US government. Where did ISIS get many of their deadliest weapons, including assault rifles and tanks to anti-missile defenses? From the US government. Which country has a history of secretly testing out dangerous weapons and technologies on its own citizens? The US government. Are you getting the picture yet? The US government isn’t protecting us from terrorism. The US government is creating the terror. It is, in fact, the source of the terror. Just think about it for a minute: almost every tyranny being perpetrated against the citizenry—purportedly to keep us safe and the nation secure—has come about as a result of some threat manufactured in one way or another by our own government. Cyberwarfare. Terrorism. Bio-chemical attacks. The nuclear arms race. Surveillance. The drug wars. In almost every instance, the US government has in its typical Machiavellian fashion sown the seeds of terror domestically and internationally in order to expand its own totalitarian powers. It’s time to wake up and stop being deceived by government propaganda. We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness. Rather, these are the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed. Case in point: For years now, the US government has been creating what one intelligence insider referred to as a cyber-army capable of offensive attacks. As Reuters reported back in 2013: Even as the US government confronts rival powers over widespread Internet espionage, it has become the biggest buyer in a burgeoning gray market where hackers and security firms sell tools for breaking into computers. The strategy is spurring concern in the technology industry and intelligence community that Washington is in effect encouraging hacking and failing to disclose to software companies and customers the vulnerabilities exploited by the purchased hacks. That's because US intelligence and military agencies aren't buying the tools primarily to fend off attacks. Rather, they are using the tools to infiltrate computer networks overseas, leaving behind spy programs and cyber-weapons that can disrupt data or damage systems.
As part of this cyberweapons programs, government agencies such as the NSA have been stockpiling all kinds of nasty malware, viruses and hacking tools that can “steal financial account passwords, turn an iPhone into a listening device, or, in the case of Stuxnet, sabotage a nuclear facility.”
And now we learn that the NSA is responsible for the latest threat posed by the “WannaCry” or “Wanna Decryptor” malware worm which—as a result of hackers accessing the government’s arsenal—has hijacked more than 57,000 computers and crippled health care, communications infrastructure, logistics, and government entities in more than 70 countries already. All the while the government was repeatedly warned about the dangers of using criminal tactics to wage its own cyberwars. It was warned about the consequences of blowback should its cyberweapons get into the wrong hands. The government chose to ignore the warnings. That’s exactly how the 9/11 attacks unfolded. First, the government helped to create the menace that was al-Qaida and then, when bin Laden had left the nation reeling in shock (despite countless warnings that fell on tone-deaf ears), it demanded—and was given—immense new powers in the form of the USA Patriot Act in order to fight the very danger it had created. This has become the shadow government’s modus operandi regardless of which party controls the White House: the government creates a menace—knowing full well the ramifications such a danger might pose to the public—then without ever owning up to the part it played in unleashing that particular menace on an unsuspecting populace, it demands additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threat. Yet the powers-that-be don’t really want us to feel safe. They want us cowering and afraid and willing to relinquish every last one of our freedoms in exchange for their phantom promises of security. As a result, it’s the American people who pay the price for the government’s insatiable greed and quest for power. We’re the ones to suffer the blowback. Blowback: a term originating from within the American Intelligence community, denoting the unintended consequences, unwanted side-effects, or suffered repercussions of a covert operation that fall back on those responsible for the aforementioned operations.
As historian Chalmers Johnson explains, “blowback is another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows.”
Unfortunately, “we the people” are the ones who keep reaping what the government sows. We’re the ones who suffer every time, directly and indirectly, from the blowback. We’re made to pay trillions of dollars in blood money to a military industrial complex that kills without conscience. We’ve been saddled with a crumbling infrastructure, impoverished cities and a faltering economy while our tax dollars are squandered on lavish military installations and used to prop up foreign economies. We’ve been stripped of our freedoms. We’re treated like suspects and enemy combatants. We’re spied on by government agents: our communications read, our movements tracked, our faces mapped, our biometrics entered into a government database. We’re terrorized by militarized police who roam our communities and SWAT teams that break into our homes. We’re subjected to invasive patdowns in airports, roadside strip searches and cavity probes, forced blood draws. This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls. We can persuade ourselves that life is still good, that America is still beautiful, and that “we the people” are still free. However, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the moment you tune out the carefully constructed distractions—the year-round sports entertainment, the political theatrics, the military’s war cries, the president’s chest-thumping, and the techno-gadgets and social media that keep us oblivious to what’s really going on in the world around us—you quickly find that the only credible threat to our safety and national security is in fact the government itself. As science fiction writer Philip K. Dick warned, “Don’t believe what you see; it’s an enthralling—[and] destructive, evil snare. Under it is a totally different world, even placed differently along the linear axis.” In other words, all is not as it seems. The powers-that-be are not acting in our best interests. “We the people” are not free. The government is not our friend. And America will never be safe or secure as long as our government continues to pillage and plunder and bomb and bulldoze and kill and create instability and fund insurgencies and police the globe. So what can we do to stop the blowback, liberate the country from the iron-clad grip of the military industrial complex, and get back to a point where freedom actually means something? For starters, get your priorities in order. As long as Americans are more inclined to be offended over the fate of a Confederate statue rather than the government’s blatant disregard for the Constitution and human rights, then the status quo will remain. Stop playing politics with your principles. As long as Americans persist in thinking like Republicans and Democrats—refusing to recognize that every administration in recent years has embraced and advanced the government’s authoritarian tactics—then the status quo will remain. Value all human life as worthy of protection. As long as Americans, including those who claim to value the sanctity of human life, not only turn a blind eye to the government’s indiscriminate killings of innocent civilians but champion them, then the status quo will remain. Recognize that in the eyes of the government, we’re all expendable. As long as we allow the government to play this dangerous game in which “we the people” are little more than pawns to be used, abused, easily manipulated and just as easily discarded—whether it’s under the guise of national security, the war on terror, the war on drugs, or any other manufactured bogeyman it can dream up—then the status quo will remain. Demand that the government stop creating, stockpiling and deploying weapons of mass destruction: nuclear, chemical, biological, cyber, etc. As long as the government continues to use our tax dollars to create, stockpile and deploy weapons of mass destruction—whether those weapons are meant to kill, maim or disable (as in the case of the WannaCry computer virus)—we will be vulnerable to anyone who attempts to use those weapons against us and the status quo will remain. Finally, stop supporting the war machine and, as Chalmers Johnson suggests, “bring our rampant militarism under control”: From George Washington’s “farewell address” to Dwight Eisenhower’s invention of the phrase “military-industrial complex,” American leaders have warned about the dangers of a bloated, permanent, expensive military establishment that has lost its relationship to the country because service in it is no longer an obligation of citizenship. Our military operates the biggest arms sales operation on earth; it rapes girls, women and schoolchildren in Okinawa; it cuts ski-lift cables in Italy, killing twenty vacationers, and dismisses what its insubordinate pilots have done as a “training accident”; it allows its nuclear attack submarines to be used for joy rides for wealthy civilian supporters and then covers up the negligence that caused the sinking of a Japanese high school training ship; it propagandizes the nation with Hollywood films glorifying military service (Pearl Harbor); and it manipulates the political process to get more carrier task forces, antimissile missiles, nuclear weapons, stealth bombers and other expensive gadgets for which we have no conceivable use. Two of the most influential federal institutions are not in Washington but on the south side of the Potomac River–the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. Given their influence today, one must conclude that the government outlined in the Constitution of 1787 no longer bears much relationship to the government that actually rules from Washington. Until that is corrected, we should probably stop talking about “democracy” and “human rights.”
This article was originally published at The Rutherford Institute.
   By Chris Rossini
America's health care crisis did not begin with Obamacare. That was just the latest patchwork scam concocted by politicians and crony businesses. Trumpcare (if we ever see it) is just Obamacare with a different wrapper, so the health care crisis is going nowhere either way. The problem with health care, however, did not begin in 2008, but rather when the government became a major player in the medical industry with the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid. In other words, the seed of government's destruction were planted decades ago. We're just feeling the sting now, and that sting will only increase. These immoral, inefficient, corrupt and unconstitutional programs are the roots of America's healthcare crisis, and someday they will have be uprooted. How they are uprooted is still within our power to control. Will it be done in a painful and catastrophic manner, in the midst of financial calamity? Or will sound decisions be made to help a dependent population wean itself off the government yoke? It's rather naive to think that a government that is $20,000,000,000,000 in debt will be able to fulfill the promises that it has made (and continues to make). Something is eventually going to break, and when it does, we're not going to get a heads-up warning. There won't be an announcement. When a severe financial crisis happens, it happens. Ideally, Americans would look squarely at the fact that the U.S. federal government has both an unsustainable welfare state at home AND an unsustainable military empire abroad. Both of these cannot continue ad infinitum. Something is going to break someday and keeping these two monsters going will only hasten that day. Unfortunately, no one ever wants to give an inch. Once a person is on the receiving end of government money, whether it be for welfare or for warfare, just the thought of cutting a single penny is denounced with shrieks and hysteria. Ron Paul has always suggested that the first logical step out of this mess would be to cut the military empire first. The U.S. has no constitutional authority to do what it does overseas, and it fails miserably at trying to conquer and remake the world. Cutting the military empire first would free up trillions of dollars that can be used to tide over a dependent American population. So instead of cutting who have become dependent at home in a ruthless manner, they can be weaned off in a sane and gradual way by first getting rid of the militarism. Young individuals could be given the ability of opting-out of government's failed socialist programs. They could get out of the Ponzi schemes while they're young. This would be the easy way out. The other option is not easy at all, and would involve a lot of pain. It would mean keeping the status quo as it is, and running the welfare and warfare until burnout. Once the inevitable financial crisis hits, counting on promises from government will go right out the window. At that point, there will be no choice, and there will be no mercy. Government will have to cut because it literally has no other choice. All we have to do is look at the news from other failed socialist states. This isn't anything new. People have been making the same mistakes over and over again. You still can't have the government rob someone else to your benefit for very long. Yes, some generations will be able to get away with it at first, and some have. But it's the same old story. Once people latch on to the idea that it's OK for government to rob others on their behalf, everyone wants in on the game. There's a mad rush. Everyone wants government to rob others for them. Take one glance at American politics today, and it's easy to see that we're not at the beginning stages of the robbery game. It's matured and has racked up quite a price tag....the biggest ever! So we'll either stop this by logically unwinding the military empire first, and giving people a chance to wean off of dependency and return to reality, or we'll wait until reality bites us harder than ever before. History is replete with examples of people choosing the latter. It's like watching a dog chase its tail. But it doesn't have to be that way.
By Liberty Report Staff
Dr. Paul joined Maria Bartiromo's Fox Business program this morning to discuss the President Trump's challenges, along with issues like healthcare, a border tax, and the coming financial crisis: Ten years ago this week, at a South Carolina GOP debate, Rep. Ron Paul dared challenge the cherished shibboleth that "they attack us because we are rich and free." No, it is our foreign policy that provokes hatred and inspires attacks like 9/11, he dared say. That was too much for then-frontrunner Rudy Giuliani. That short exchange made history -- and was also a shot in the arm for the non-interventionist movement. Ron Paul reflects on that moment and what it means for us today.
By Thomas L. Knapp
Like most monopolies, the US Postal Service isn’t interested in changing its business model. An enterprise hemorrhaging cash in a free market would cut prices, improve service, look for new revenue streams, or simply close its doors. The USPS solution, as usual, is to raise prices and hope for the best. Alternative proposal: Let’s put it out of its misery. The Service posted losses of $562 million in the first quarter of 2017, the Associated Press reports. This year will likely bring the Service’s sixth straight annual operating loss. While its package delivery revenues have grown, the areas in which it enjoys a monopoly — “first class” (letter) mail and “marketing” (junk mail) — are in decline thanks to the ascendance of email and other Internet technologies. That decline is terminal. The age of hand-delivered paper mail on the scale required to sustain the Postal Service model is coming to an end, and the market is already well-situated (via the likes of Federal Express and United Parcel Service) to handle ever diminishing future levels of emergency and vanity traffic of that kind. In truth, we’ve known for nearly 175 years that the Service’s government-granted monopoly is all that keeps it afloat. Its prices don’t reflect the market value of its services. In 1844, anarchist Lysander Spooner founded the American Letter Mail Company and turned a profit selling stamps for 6.25 cents each or 20 for a dollar versus the Post Office’s price of 12 cents, delivering mail up and down the eastern seaboard until the federal government shut it down. In the past, one excuse for a government monopoly on mail was to protect “universal service.” Spooner could make money serving Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, but the government’s postal monopoly used those “easy” routes to subsidize letter delivery to, for example, rural Kentucky and distant San Francisco, where private competitors would have had to charge prohibitively high rates. Today, however, nearly all US households have telephones (cell or land line). According to the Pew Research Center, 84% of American adults use the Internet, and most of the rest COULD use it. Even with no home connection, they could visit the library or any of numerous free wi-fi locations, just as citizens of rural communities once visited the Post Office to pick up mail in the absence of home delivery. If the Postal Service shut its doors today, taxpayers would still be on the hook for generous retirement and retiree health care commitments to its current and former employees. That’s no reason to keep throwing good money after bad forever. Neither is our natural nostalgia for the big blue corner mailboxes and the friendly neighborhood mail carrier. Let’s say goodbye to what’s clearly become a relic of a bygone age.
This article was originally published at The Libertarian Institute.
   By Whitney Webb
Last week, mainstream media outlets gave minimal attention to the news that the U.S. Naval station in Virginia Beach had spilled an estimated 94,000 gallons of jet fuel into a nearby waterway, less than a mile from the Atlantic Ocean. While the incident was by no means as catastrophic as some other pipeline spills, it underscores an important yet little-known fact – that the U.S. Department of Defense is both the nation’s and the world’s, largest polluter. Producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined, the U.S. Department of Defense has left its toxic legacy throughout the world in the form of depleted uranium, oil, jet fuel, pesticides, defoliants like Agent Orange and lead, among others. In 2014, the former head of the Pentagon’s environmental program told Newsweek that her office has to contend with 39,000 contaminated areas spread across 19 million acres just in the U.S. alone. U.S. military bases, both domestic and foreign, consistently rank among some of the most polluted places in the world, as perchlorate and other components of jet and rocket fuel contaminate sources of drinking water, aquifers, and soil. Hundreds of military bases can be found on the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of Superfund sites, which qualify for clean-up grants from the government. Almost 900 of the nearly 1,200 Superfund sites in the U.S. are abandoned military facilities or sites that otherwise support military needs, not counting the military bases themselves. “Almost every military site in this country is seriously contaminated,” John D. Dingell, a retired Michigan congressman and war veteran, told Newsweek in 2014. Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina is one such base. Lejeune’s contamination became widespread and even deadly after its groundwater was polluted with a sizable amount of carcinogens from 1953 to 1987. Read the rest at Mint Press News The unproven claim that the Trump Administration is somehow in cahoots with Russia's Putin is the story that won't go away. Every day the mainstream media churns out a new "gotcha" story said to prove this evil conspiracy. All sources, of course, are "unnamed." What's behind it? A real difference of opinion on policy? A battle between factions of the deep state? Politics?
By Liberty Report Staff
Here's the book by Hayek that Dick Morris mentioned:
 
h/t - TargetLiberty.com
|
Archives
October 2024
 
 
 
 
|
RSS Feed