Week of May 28, 2012

Cooperative banking in the Aquarian Age

Ellen Brown

According to both the Mayan and Hindu calendars, 2012 (or something very close) marks the transition from an age of darkness, violence and greed to one of enlightenment, justice, and peace. It’s hard to see that change just yet in the events relayed in the major media, but a shift does seem to be happening behind the scenes; and this is particularly true in the once-boring world of banking.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6048

Washington’s hypocrisies

Paul Craig Roberts

The US government is the second worst human rights abuser on the planet and the sole enabler of the worst—Israel. But this doesn’t hamper Washington from pointing the finger elsewhere.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6046

Memorial Day 2012: A lesson not yet learned

Walter Brasch

Today is Memorial Day, the last day of the three-day weekend. Veterans and community groups will remember those who died in battle and, as they have done for more than a century, will place small flags on graves.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6043 

On Memorial Day weekend, America reckons with torture

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

Facing the truth is hard to do, especially the truth about ourselves. So Americans have been sorely pressed to come to terms with the fact that after 9/11 our government began to torture people, and did so in defiance of domestic and international law. Most of us haven’t come to terms with what that meant, or means today, but we must reckon with torture, the torture done in our name, allegedly for our safety.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6040 

It wouldn’t kill me to die

Missy Comley Beattie

A year and three months after the death of my husband Charles, I took a trip with Laura, my sister. Seated aboard a propeller plane and flying over water, we locked eyes. She said, “I really don’t like this.”

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6038

Systemic politics: Donkey dung and elephant manure

Larry Pinkney

As the U.S. Empire unravels, its viciousness at home and abroad will increase expedientially. Systemic contradictions and the concomitant sham of ‘democracy’ as embodied by the corporate owned Democratic and Republican parties will become ever more obvious.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6069

Israel, US at loggerheads over Iran nuclear issue

Dr. Ismail Salami

While Iran and the six world powers wrapped up their talks on Thursday in an atmosphere apparently meant to resolve the nuclear issue, US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and top negotiator on Iran Wendy Sherman rushed to Tel Aviv to brief the Israeli officials on the new nuclear developments and “reaffirm our [US] unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security.”

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6067

Facebook SOBs or … ‘don’t cry for me, Avaritia’

Ben Tanosborn

The sobs we have in mind are neither short, audible gasps of breath of those who are invested in Facebook stock, nor are they intended as a bastardly reference of those who, inside and/or outside of the company, put together and took to fruition this much-awaited IPO (Initial Public Offering). These mnemonic sobs we have in mind represent simply Shares-Of-Bubbly-Stock. For that’s what those 421.2 million shares of Facebook were: Overpriced, bubbly stock.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6065

Is the Whirling Dervish of TAPI politics finally spinning America’s way?

Peter Chamberlin

It had to eventually happen—Afghan politics have come full circle, and then some. It was only a matter of time before the TAPI pipe dream would once again be offered as a solution to the Afghan conflict. The Taliban are once again being handed the keys to the kingdom in exchange for partnering with Western oil giants as the means for ensuring TAPI pipeline security. The last time we heard the snake charmers make this offer was in 1996, when Marty Miller of Unocal tried to convince all the factions that the “pipeline was a conflict resolution process.” When this approach also failed to keep all parties satisfied, speculation arose that Unocal or another consortium partner gave secret support to the Taliban, in order to push-out the Northern Alliance forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud from their northern sanctuary, the location of the finalized pipeline route. What will happen this time, when the Taliban or the mega-corporations prove to be unmovable and the whole diplomatic episode is exposed as another charade? Karzai is a marked man, just as Rabbani before him was marked for termination by the medieval Taliban.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6058

Browbeating cyclops vs. Rambos

Linh Dinh

Whatever crimes, violations or discretions anyone admits to, he or she likely has done, is doing and will do worse. This is also true of governments. Washington can now snoop on your international emails and phone calls, without warrants, but do you seriously think they’d spare your domestic communications? Of course, not.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6055

Unholy alliance forming against Syria

Dr. Ismail Salami

Syria is bracing for more political chaos as all antagonistic forces appear to have entered into an unholy alliance to bring the government to its knees by ingeniously choreographing massacres and attributing them to the Syrian government, thereby turning the country into fertile soil for a US-led invasion.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6084

Of children and inkblots: Trayvon Martin and the psychopathology of whiteness

Tim Wise

Write this down if you need to.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6081

Disorganised moderates may gift Egypt to Islamists

Linda S. Heard

How on earth did the Muslim Brotherhood’s unprepossessing candidate manage to scoop the edge during the presidential election? That has to be the question on many Egyptian liberals’ lips these days. The organisation’s charismatic first choice, Khairat Shater, was disqualified by the electoral committee, leaving the majority of voters fairly certain that the Brotherhood was out of the race. How wrong they were!

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6077

No need for NATO

Bob Fitrakis

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) exists today not to defend against aggressive authoritarian Communism, but to steal resources from weaker non-European countries by military force. Its two most recent military actions made the May 2012 NATO Summit in Chicago a gathering of war criminals.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6075

Political pressure stopped Scott County biomass burner

Citizens packed meetings, confronted the mayor, ran for office

Linda Greene

On an unremarkable day in July 2009 the residents of Scottsburg and surrounding Scott County, in southern Indiana, read an unusual notice in the Scott County Journal.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6073

Hillary finally brings bureau of spy/diplomatic liaisons out of the closet

Peter Chamberlin

Hillary Clinton finally brings the secret military/State Dept. covert operations out into the open (SEE: Clinton Goes Commando, Sells Diplomats as Shadow Warriors). This is the logical outcome of a process started long ago, during the Reagan administration, when Congress put restrictions on the CIA’s shadow wars in Central America. It was then that this so-called “smart policy” began, thereafter, all of the CIA’s illegal operations were contracted out to private interests.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6108

Chicago NATO Summit: Obama showcases American fascism

Wayne Madsen

President Obama wanted to showcase his adopted hometown of Chicago to the leaders of 60 NATO members and partnership countries. Instead, with his former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel holding the political reins as mayor of Chicago, Obama showed the foreign heads of state and the international media a city in total police state lockdown.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6103

How the post office is being destroyed by a phony budget crisis

Congress, not the post office itself, is the problem

David Morris

As every 6-year-old learns, there is real and there is make believe. The massive Post Office deficit that is driving its management to commit institutional suicide by ending 6-day mail delivery, closing half of the nations’ 30,000 or so post offices and half its 500 mail processing centers, and laying off over 200,000 workers, is make believe.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6098

Freedom Rider: The lie of American democracy

Margaret Kimberley

Most Americans are convinced, mistakenly, that they live in a democratic nation. The idea of democracy is upheld with reverence, making it one of the most cherished of all mythologies, but its true meaning is obscured in a country where money is king. There have been many times in history when America was anything but democratic, when the country’s original inhabitants were slaughtered, or when millions were enslaved, or during the reign of Jim Crow and lynch law, or when women couldn’t vote. We are accustomed to thinking that because those days are over, we continue to make progress and that our country is improving over time.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6095

Religion and spirituality as the opiate of the masses

Carla Binion

When Karl Marx said “religion is the opiate of the masses” (or the “opium of the people”) he was referring to the idea that powerful politicians and corporate leaders rely on religion to keep the public complacent about social injustice and political corruption. Genuine spirituality, as opposed to religious dogma, doesn’t make people politically unaware and docile. However, when religion is misinterpreted as meaning the individual should live in denial and ignore the outer world, or when it becomes virulently authoritarian and anti-intellectual, it can create a passive, easy-to-manipulate populace.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6093

Is the NYPD exploiting the Etan Patz murder?

Jerry Mazza

Way back on May 25, 1979, New York City was shocked to its roots. A six-year old boy named Etan Patz went off to wait for the school bus for the first time, as his mother watched from the balcony of their residence, holding a cup of coffee, thinking those feelings any parent would feel on that first day. She had given Etan a dollar to buy a soda for his lunch. She went inside the residence before the bus came. Tragically, she never saw Etan again.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6127

Out of the mouths of babes: 12-year-old money reformer tops a million views

Ellen Brown

The YouTube video of 12-year-old Victoria Grant speaking at the Public Banking in America conference in April has gone viral, topping a million views on various websites.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6124

Starving and broke: Yemen’s renewed ‘War on Terror’

Ramzy Baroud

Yemeni forces continue to push against fighters affiliated with al-Qaeda. Their major victories come on the heels of the inauguration of Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi, who is now entrusted with the task of leading the country through a peaceful transition. A new constitution and presidential elections are expected by 2014.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6122

Root of evil

Rand Clifford

As such a useful tool of exchange, money is not inherently evil. Money can be a springboard to such evil as bailout-begging banks too monstrous to fail gambling with taxpayer wealth—you know, private profits, public risk. Casino financialization with taxpayers as a backstop. The $700 billion TARP bailout actually being a$23.7 trillion bailout. But the root of all evil is the human brain.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6119

Class or crass: India’s middle class

Rakhee Ghelani

One of the biggest culture shocks I am now experiencing relates to what is considered to be “class” or behaviour that represents economic and social status. It isn’t something I saw much of when I was backpacking, but now that I am settled into a rather middle class life in Mumbai, I am really struggling with what appears to be considered appropriate behaviour amongst the middle class here compared to what I have grown up with in Australia.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6117

Week of May 21, 2012

Tribunal finds Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their lawyers guilty of war crimes

Kéllia Ramares-Watson

Beginning on Monday, May 7, 2012, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal held an historic proceeding against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and five of their legal advisers: Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo, to try them on charges of torture and other war crimes. After four full days of legal argument and presentation of evidence, including the live testimony of three witnesses, the tribunal found all eight defendants guilty in a 21-page opinion they issued on the afternoon of Friday, May 12, 2012, local time.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5969

In a global economic system that is ‘too big to fail,’ does Greece really matter?

Larry Pinkney

As everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in the United States are painfully beginning to realize, no entity, no bank, and no nation that is tied in to this global economy, based upon systemic fraud and concomitant greed, is too big to fail. Indeed, to the contrary, failure is ultimately inevitable. But the brunt of such ‘failures’ are borne on the backs of ordinary everyday men, women, and children, be it in this nation or elsewhere.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5966

Are Americans catching on, waking up, unplugging?

Paul Craig Roberts

In response to the question in the title, I can report that most of my readers are. Almost everyone got the point of the last column. They see the absurdity of the government’s claim that the identity of the tough, macho Navy SEALs, who allegedly murdered Osama bin Laden, has to be kept secret in order to protect our fierce warriors from reprisals from Muslim terrorists, while those government officials responsible for the torture and deaths of large numbers of Muslims can walk around, identity known, unprotected and safe.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5964

Who are the evil ones?

No freedoms to hate us for anymore

Missy Comley Beattie

Remember that they (the evil ones) hate our freedoms.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5962

Blown up election

Linh Dinh

If family values are in the news, you can be sure an American election is just around the corner. According to Republicans, gay marriage is a glory hole puncturing the sanctity of the nuke-clear family, so for backing such a ghastly proposal, with ring, no less, Obama is the “gayest president,” according to Rand Paul, or “The First Gay President,” per Newsweek. Anything to sell that particularly brand of rectum tissues, I suppose, although I’d rather use corncobs.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5960

As schools crumble: Quiet call for revolution in Philly

Ellen Brown

Last week, the city of Philadelphia’s school system announced that it expects to close 40 public schools next year, and 64 schools by 2017. The school district expects to lose 40% of its current enrollment, and thousands of experienced, qualified teachers.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5991

Why India needs a patriotic and not a nationalist media

Prakash Kona

The distinction George Orwell makes between nationalism and patriotism in his essay “Notes on Nationalism” is true of the media as well. A nationalist according to Orwell is basically a power-monger and nationalism an ego-centered discourse whereas patriotism stands for “devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally.”

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5988

Eliminating the ’99%’ can lead to a better message for social justice

Walter Brasch

It’s time to retire the 99 percent.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5985

Did Texas execute yet another innocent man?

Mary Shaw

A recent study by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review suggests that Carlos DeLuna, who was executed by the state of Texas in 1989 for the murder of Wanda Lopez, was actually innocent. The study concluded that a man named Carlos Hernandez actually committed the murder. In other words, the so-called justice system had convicted the wrong Carlos.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5983

Peace-making without mediators

Nicola Nasser

A surplus of mediators have been around all the time, including the heavy weight Quartet of the UN, U.S., EU and Russia, as well as heaps of terms of reference of UNSC resolutions, bilateral signed accords and “roadmaps,” in addition to marathon bilateral talks that have left no stone unearthed, international as well as regional conferences were never on demand to facilitate the “peace process,” which has been lavishly financed to keep moving.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5981

Finding Punt: Africa’s last, lost great civilization is in Eritrea

Thomas C. Mountain

After many years of often rancorous debate, Africa’s last, lost, great civilization, The Land of Punt, has been proven to be located in the modern East African country of Eritrea.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6007

Recovery or collapse? Bet on collapse

Paul Craig Roberts

The US financial system and, probably, the financial system of Europe, like the police, no longer serves a useful social purpose.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6005

In the name of my father: Requiem and renewal in the shadow of Wall Street, in the light of a Georgia spring

Phil Rockstroh

On May 1, after a day of May Day activities on the streets and avenues of Manhattan, my wife and I and a troop of other OWS celebrants marched into Zuccotti Park to jubilant exhortations of “welcome home” from a throng of fellow occupiers. The next day, my wife and I boarded a southbound Amtrak train to join family gathered at my dying father’s bedside to bid him farewell.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6003

A world without capitalists is necessary

Frank Scott

The unemployment rate in the USA is down to just over 8%. This is evidence that we are in a recovery from a recession. But that rate is actually higher than it was when this particular recession began.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6001

White living

Linh Dinh

Outside the Gallery, Philadelphia’s low-class shopping mall, Jimbo sits in a wheelchair and begs behind a large sign, “I AM A CANCER VICTIM. I CANNOT WORK. CAN YOU HELP ME”. Under a leather cowboy hat, his eyes are still alert, though a pinch of his lower lip has turned purple. A reader and thinker, Jimbo will talk your ears off about FDR’s foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor, the FBI’s infiltration of all protest movements and, especially, how the IMF has enslaved the world,

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5997

The spectre at the feast: A letter to White America

Pubali Ray Chaudhuri

This essay is a work in progress, because my life here in the USA is itself a work in progress—or so I should like to think. You will probably receive such letters from me as long as I continue to be a South Asian (I do not see that changing any time soon) and certainly as long as I continue to be an American and to live in America. I will add and edit as time goes on, but I wanted to write about this particular event while both it and the response it evoked are fresh in my mind. No real names have been used.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6022

Nano credibility and the reigning top ‘News’ story

Rand Clifford

It never really happened, the Top News Story of 2011. Seems that would annihilate any residual credibility mainstream corporate media (CorpoMedia) hadn’t washed off … but, perhaps too many Americans are determined to swallow, even digest, the News.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6020

Corporate media: The free press isn’t free enough

Carla Binion

This essay covers several reasons behind corporate media’s failure to cover the Occupy movement and other protests today. This is the bulk of an essay I wrote around the time of the Clinton impeachment. It was published widely on the Internet then, and most of it can easily apply now.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6017

Crosses to bear in Chicago

Being there

Missy Comley Beattie

Do protests and marches accomplish anything? Should I go? These questions collided in my head. One friend advised against. Another said I should. My children phoned, “If you do, be careful.” I knew. I just knew. I knew I would be in Chicago.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6015

Cold feet over striking Iran

Linda S. Heard

Signs point to the US and its European allies in the process of adopting an ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ stance vis-à-vis their long-time stand-off with Tehran over its nuclear programme, one that is starkly out of sync with Israel’s.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6013

Journalist, plaintiff Chris Hedges calls ruling to block the NDAA’s ‘indefinite detention’ monumental

Jerry Mazza

Chris Hedges is not only a brilliant journalist, but a former correspondent for the New York Times and part of a team of reporters awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. The author of a number of books, including Death of the Liberal Class and The World as it is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress, and now, he is most notably the plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the most odious Section 1021 that allows the U.S. government to indefinitely hold U.S. citizens, strip them of due process, and detain them in military facilities, including our offshore Gitmo.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6034

The Greek affair: Symbol of the crisis of the European Union or paradigm of Europe’s salvation

Gaither Stewart

ROME—SYRIZA, an acronym signifying “Coalition of the Radical Left,” is favored to win upcoming elections following the inconclusive elections held last May 6. Today’s ungovernable and crisis-ridden Greece is shaking the foundation of the European Union.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6032

Redefining the ‘Arab Spring’: Is chaos overtaking revolution?

Ramzy Baroud

The age of revolutionary romance is over. Various Arab countries are now facing hard truths. Millions of Arabs merely want to live with a semblance of dignity, free from tyranny and continuous anxiety over the future. This unromantic reality also includes outside ‘players,’ whose presence is of no positive value to genuine revolutionary movements, whether in Egypt, Syria, or anywhere else.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6030

The Fountain of Recovery

Linh Dinh

Until 1982, Philadelphia had three daily newspapers, and the surviving two, the Inquirer and Daily News, are owned by the same company. Both are hurting. Fewer and fewer readers force extreme cost-cutting measures that reduce the quality of each rag, which means even fewer readers. Competition from the Internet, as well as the degraded reading habits it fosters, choppier and sloppier, are mostly to blame, but corporate greed and shortsightedness also played an important role.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6028

The New American Order: Using weapons of compliance to stamp out protest

John W. Whitehead

We’re entering the final phase of America’s transition to authoritarianism, a phase notable for its co-opting of civilian police as military forces. Not only do the police now look like the military—with their foreboding uniforms and phalanx of lethal weapons—but they function like them, as well. No longer do they act as peace officers guarding against violent criminals. And no more do we have a civilian police force entrusted with serving and protecting the American people. Instead, today’s militarized law enforcement officials, having shifted their allegiance from the citizenry to the state, act preemptively to ward off any possible challenges to the government’s power.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/6026

A personal medical odyssey

Let’s put it this way, if there is an adventure to be had—even in going to the hospital—it will find me or I will find it.

Big Greed

Fast forward. The Chinese labor model has come to the United States. Workers toil in dire conditions. Each must sign a pledge that he or she will not commit suicide. Still, suicide nets adorn factory facades.

Is this a possibility? Think about it.

Women are the new illegals

Those in the Republican Party who are intent on exercising a fervent grip on women’s reproductive rights by cutting off oxygen to Planned Parenthood, yes, those like leading presidential contender, Mitt Romney, who want to “get rid of it,” aren’t referring only to Planned Parenthood when they say “it,” but to half a century of gains women have made in the workplace.

Costly ‘freedom’ in Afghanistan: On morbid wars and logic

The Afghans are a proud people with a long and formidable history of resistance to foreign occupation. The fact that they have always prevailed, however, should not distract from the horror they still routinely experience. The latest atrocious episode against Afghans took place on March 11 in the village of Balandi, when accused US Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales killed 16 innocent people while they were sleeping peacefully.

To PBS, with (tough) love

Neither of us is old enough to have been fooled by the Trojan Horse (see Wikipedia). But we each have been working in public television decades enough to remember the days when distribution was handled by physically transporting bulky 2-inch videotapes from station to station—“bicycled” was the word—and much of the broadcast day and night was devoted to blackboard lectures, string quartets and lessons in Japanese brush painting: The old educational television versions of reality TV.

A medical emergency requires I suspend publishing until it is over

Yours truly is suffering a severe leg infection and treatment requires me to suspend publishing until it’s healed.

With any luck, that will be soon and Intrepid

U.S. bases loaded for empire

In February 2007, the noted military analyst Chalmers Johnson’s then new book, Nemesis: the Last Days of the American Empire, claimed “Once upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up colonies. America’s version of the colony is the military base: and by following the changing politics of global basing, one can learn much about our ever more all-encompassing imperial ‘footprint’ and the militarism that grows with it.”

A perimeter approach to security and the transformation of the U.S.-Canada border

A readout of Attorney General Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano’s visit to Ottawa explained that talks with their Canadian counterparts centered largely around promoting the perimeter security agreement. It highlighted, “efforts to develop the next-generation of integrated cross-border law enforcement operations, and improve information sharing practices.”

Afghan massacre: Lone gunman vs. just another night raid

The “Lone Gunman” story being peddled by the USA explaining how another dozen or two Afghan civilians got wasted during just another night raid in the AF-PAK war has several witness accounts saying it was a group of American soldiers that were part of the massacre.

It’s déjà vu all over again

By Gary G. Kohls, MD
Posted on March 16, 2012

Well this is the anniversary week of the infamous My Lai Massacre, March 16, 1968. 1968 was the year that “everything happened.”

Here is a short list of significant events: the Tet Offensive, the beginning of the defeat for the US in Vietnam; the Prague Spring anti-totalitarian revolt and its ultimate violent repression by the USSR; student antiwar revolts on college campuses; worldwide protests against the Vietnam War; pro-worker revolts in France; LBJ’s announcement to not seek a second term; MLK’s and RFK’s assassinations by alleged “lone gunmen”; the Democratic National Convention with police state-style repression (a la the USSR in Prague) against nonviolent antiwar protestors; the Biafra mass starvation; El Al jet airline hijackings; the Black Power salutes at the Mexico City Olympics; inner city riots against institutional poverty and racism, etc.

Reclaiming the commons: Taking human lessons in the era of H.R. 347, corporatism and perpetual war

With increasing velocity, since the advent of the post-Second World War national security state, then gaining speed with the incessant search and destroy mission waged on the U.S. Constitution known as the War on Drugs, and kicking into a runaway trajectory in the post Sept. 11, 2001, era—the increase in totalitarian impulses, among both the general population and corporate and governmental elite of the nation, has proceeded at an alarming rate. Yet, baffling as the fact remains to those possessing a modicum of political awareness, large numbers of U.S. citizens persist in believing they dwell in a representative republic, governed by the principles of individual rights and civil liberties.

The spurious left/right paradigm in the United States

By Larry Pinkney
Posted on March 15, 2012

The left/right political model or paradigm in the 21st century United States is a deadly trap. It is a spurious paradigm maintained for the specific purpose of keeping everyday people from being united and collectively creative in order to bring about genuine systemic change.

The fact is that both the Democrat and Republican parties are, in real terms, one party. They area a symbiotic party whose leadership uses fake skirmishes, hypocrisy and obfuscated rhetoric to ensnare and control everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people nationally and internationally. Sadly, much of the so-called Left in this nation has also bought into this insane scenario.

NSA continues to spy on U.S. citizens

(WMR)—The National Security Agency (NSA) continues to conduct warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens at a frenetic pace, according to informed NSA sources.

Much of the surveillance of American citizens and legal residents, known as “U.S. persons” in the NSA eavesdropping lexicon, is now being conducted under the aegis of the U.S. Cyber Command. NSA director General Keith Alexander doubles as the commander of the Cyber Command. Both agencies’ headquarters are located at Fort Meade, Maryland.