Condoleeza Rice met with her Canadian and Mexican counterparts in Ottawa over the weekend to discuss plans for a North American Union at a secretive Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) meeting that has received scant media coverage outside of a few Canadian news outlets.

During a joint press conference with MacKay, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Mexican Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa, two dissenters, who had infiltrated, took to the stage in an effort to protest against the secretive and backhanded manner in which the SPP movement is being conducted. The two were quickly escorted off the premises.

Click here for a short video.

A Canadian report describes the SPP as "an international framework for trilateral and bilateral cooperation in North America" that is "not a formal international treaty" or "an overarching binding legal agreement." But what is an "international framework" that commits U.S. officials from various federal agencies to working with officials of two other countries? Why is such a process not subjected to congressional scrutiny and approval?

Last September we reported that Journalist Jerome Corsi has received the first documents pertaining to a FOIA request asking for full disclosure of the SPP office in its activities towards creating a Pan American Union.

According to a report by World Net Daily, the documents reveal that the Bush administration is running a "shadow government" without congressional oversight in conjunction with Canada and Mexico under the guise of a program "to increase security and to enhance prosperity among the three countries through greater cooperation."

Corsi asserts that a wide range of US administrative law is being re-written in stealth under this program to "integrate" and "harmonize" with administrative law in Mexico and Canada.

The documents contain references to upwards of 13 working groups within an entire organized infrastructure that has drawn from officials within most areas of administrative government including U.S. departments of State, Homeland Security, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Transportation, Energy, Health and Human Services, and the office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Corsi also reported that at a recent high-level confab in Banff, an assistant U.S. secretary of state, Thomas A. Shannon , chaired a panel that featured a presentation by Prof. Robert Pastor, author of a book promoting the development of a North American union as a regional government and the adoption of the amero as a common monetary currency to replace the dollar and the peso.

According to reports, last Friday at the SPP meeting, Pastor declared that a "very small group" of conservatives is unfairly accusing him of being at the center of a "vast conspiracy" to implement the idea of a "North American Union" by "stealth." He called the charges "absurd."

Yet at the same meeting Pastor acknowledged that he is pushing for a "North American Community", that he believes the U.S. Government doesn't want to enforce its immigration laws, and that the solution is not a fence or increased border security except in some isolated high-crime areas along the border, and it's not to punish companies for hiring illegal aliens, since identity documents can be too easily forged. He said the solution is a national biometric and fraud-proof identification card that identifies national origin and legal status.

Cliff Kincaid of The Post Chronicle also reported:

One speaker, Stephen Zamora of the University of Houston Law School, denounced the idea of a wall separating Mexico and the U.S., in order to control illegal immigration, asking, "What does citizenship mean anymore?" He expressed pleasant surprise when a Mexican in the audience said she had dual citizenship in Mexico and the U.S. Later, he said he was just as concerned about people living in Mexico as people living in the U.S.

Another speaker, Tom Farer, Dean of the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver, made a point of saying that his representative in Congress, Tom Tancredo (R-Col.), a staunch advocate of U.S. border security, was a backward thinker. Tancredo could be seen "dragging his knuckles along the ground," Farer said, trying to crack a joke.

The open plan to merge the US with Mexico and Canada and create a Pan American Union has long been a Globalist brainchild but its very real and prescient implementation on behalf of the Council on Foreign Relations is now finally being reported on by mainstream news outlets, most notably by Lou Dobbs of CNN who has described the ploy as "utterly mad".

The Union is the globalist cabal's meal ticket towards raping an entire continent of its resources and sovereign capabilities. Strengthening the borders is not on the Agenda here, the American Union is all about DISSOLVING the borders.

The framework on which the American Union is being pegged is the Trans-Texas Corridor Super Highway a four football-fields-wide leviathan that stretches from southern Mexico through the US up to Montreal Canada. Toll roads are to be placed upon existing roads in Security Prosperity Partnership agreements that bypasses Congress, agreements between the bureaucracies of the US and Mexican governments, to raise capital to build the Super highway that will go South of Texas and into Mexico.

 SPP documents reveal that out of 85 interstate highways, 83 of them are slated to go under this agreement and toll roads are going down on them already. The money from this operation with further fund the dismantling of US sovereignty by seizing the infrastructure at it's very heart in a bloodless coup.

They are not just in name merging the agencies and the laws and the regulations, they are physically getting rid of the borders by buying off and lobbying the politicians at the state level, who then hand the roads over to international bodies and their subsidiary companies.

At the end of January we reported on the revelation that one of the foreign toll road conglomerates, Macquarie, has agreed to buy dozens of newspapers in Texas and Oklahoma that have up until now been harsh critics of the Trans Texas Corridor superhighway. This indicates a clear example of influence peddling pointing to racketeering, and a desperate lunge to silence dissent against the sellout of American infrastructure and the North American Union.

The US is now being used as the primary tool of globalist corporate fascism and the world is wrongly blaming the people of America for all the ills that they perceive the US to be responsible for.

Coupled with Bush's blanket amnesty program, the Pan American Union is the final jigsaw piece for the total dismantling of America as we know it.

Last month it was also revealed that the US government has been SECRETLY paving the way for the funneling of billions of Social Security funds to illegal Mexican immigrants. As a result of lawsuits, the U.S. government released the actual U.S.-Mexico Social Security Totalization Agreement, an understanding signed between the Bush administration and the Mexican government in 2004.

Social Security, roads, military, intelligence gathering, regulations, federal agencies - all within the US, Canada and Mexico are being merged into one system at the cost of national sovereignty and the common law. What we were is being replaced with the new - no liberty, no due process, no freedom, no families, forced drugging, no jobs of any significance, no control of your own destiny - in short, total control of our lives.

Escalation of US Iran military planning part of six-year Administration push

Filed by Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane

A project of Raw Story Investigates

The escalation of US military planning on Iran is only the latest chess move in a six-year push within the Bush Administration to attack Iran, a RAW STORY investigation has found.

While Iran was named a part of President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” in 2002, efforts to ignite a confrontation with Iran date back long before the post-9/11 war on terror. Presently, the Administration is trumpeting claims that Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon than the CIA’s own analysis shows and positing Iranian influence in Iraq’s insurgency, but efforts to destabilize Iran have been conducted covertly for years, often using members of Congress or non-government actors in a way reminiscent of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.

The motivations for an Iran strike were laid out as far back as 1992. In classified defense planning guidance – written for then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney by then-Pentagon staffers I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, World Bank Chief Paul Wolfowitz, and ambassador-nominee to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad – Cheney’s aides called for the United States to assume the position of lone superpower and act preemptively to prevent the emergence of even regional competitors. The draft document was leaked to the New York Times and the Washington Post and caused an uproar among Democrats and many in George H. W. Bush’s Administration.

In September 2000, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) issued a report titled “Rebuilding America's Defenses,” which espoused similar positions to the 1992 draft and became the basis for the Bush-Cheney Administration's foreign policy. Libby and Wolfowitz were among the participants in this new report; Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other prominent figures in the Bush administration were PNAC members.

“The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security,” the report read. “While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein. . . . We cannot allow North Korea, Iran, Iraq or similar states to undermine American leadership, intimidate American allies or threaten the American homeland itself.”

This approach became official US military policy during the current Bush Administration. It was starkly on display yesterday when Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns noted a second aircraft carrier strike force headed for the Persian Gulf, saying, "The Middle East isn't a region to be dominated by Iran. The Gulf isn't a body of water to be controlled by Iran. That's why we've seen the United States station two carrier battle groups in the region."

The Structure

Almost immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Iran became a focal point of discussion among senior Administration officials. As early as December 2001, then-Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and the leadership of the Defense Department, including Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, allegedly authorized a series of meetings between Defense Department officials and Iranian agents abroad.

The first of these meetings took place in Rome with Pentagon Iran analyst, Larry Franklin, Middle East expert Harold Rhode, and prominent neoconservative Michael Ledeen. Ledeen, who held no official government position, introduced the US officials to Iran-Contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. According to both Ghorbanifar and Ledeen, the topic on the table was Iran. Ledeen told RAW STORY last year the discussion concerned allegations that Iranian forces were killing US soldiers in Afghanistan, but Ghorbanifar has claimed the conversation focused on regime change.

In January 2002, evidence that Iran was enriching uranium began to appear via credible intelligence and satellite imagery. Despite this revelation – and despite having called Iran part of the Axis of Evil in his State of the Union that year – President Bush continued to focus on Iraq. Perhaps for that reason, throughout 2002 the strongest pressure for regime change flowed through alternative channels.

In early 2002, Ledeen formed the Coalition for Democracy in Iran, along with Morris Amitay, the former executive director of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

In August 2002, Larry Franklin began passing classified information involving United States policy towards Iran to two AIPAC employees and an Israeli diplomat. Franklin pleaded guilty to the charges in October 2005, explaining that he had been hoping to force the US to take a harder line with Iran, but AIPAC and Israel have continued to deny them.

At the same time, another group’s political representatives begin a corollary effort to influence domestic political discourse. In August 2002, the National Council of Resistance of Iran – a front for a militant terrorist organization called Mujahedin-E-Khalq (MEK) – held a press conference in Washington and stated that Iran had a secret nuclear facility at Natanz, due for completion in 2003.

Late that summer , the Pentagon's Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz expanded its Northern Gulf Affairs Office, renamed it the Office of Special Plans (OSP), and placed it under the direction of Abram Shulsky, a contributor to the 2000 PNAC report.

Most know the Office of Special Plans as a rogue Administration faction determined to find intelligence to support the Iraq War. But that wasn’t its only task.

According to an article in The Forward in May 2003, “A budding coalition of conservative hawks, Jewish organizations and Iranian monarchists is pressing the White House to step up American efforts to bring about regime change in Iran. . . . Two sources [say] Iran expert Michael Rubin is now working for the Pentagon's 'special plans' office, a small unit set up to gather intelligence on Iraq, but apparently also working on Iran. Previously a researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East policy, Rubin has vocally advocated regime change in Tehran.”

Dark Actors/Covert Activities

While the Iraq war was publicly founded upon questionable sources, much of the buildup to Iran has been entirely covert, using non-government assets and foreign instruments of influence to conduct disinformation campaigns, plant intelligence and commit acts of violence via proxy groups.

A few weeks prior to the Iraq invasion, in February 2003, Iran acknowledged that it was building a nuclear facility at Natanz, saying that the facility was aimed at providing domestic energy. However, allegations that Iran was developing a nuclear weapons program would become louder in the course of 2003 and continue unabated over the next three years.

That spring, then-Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) opened a channel on Iran with former Iranian Minister Fereidoun Mahdavi, a secretary for Ghorbanifar. Both Weldon and Ledeen were told a strikingly similar story concerning a cross border plot between Iran and Iraq in which uranium had been removed from Iraq and taken into Iran by Iranian agents. The CIA investigated the allegations but found them spurious. Weldon took his complaints about the matter to Rumsfeld, who pressured the CIA to investigate a second time, with the same result.

In May 2003, with pressure for regime change intensifying within the US, Iran made efforts to negotiate a peaceful resolution with the United States. According to Lawrence Wilkerson, then-Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, these efforts were sabotaged by Vice President Cheney.

"The secret cabal got what it wanted: no negotiations with Tehran," Wilkerson said.

The US was already looking increasingly to rogue methodology, including support for the Iranian terrorist group MEK. Before the US invasion, MEK forces within Iraq had supported Saddam Hussein in exchange for safe harbor. Despite this, when they were captured by the US military, they were disarmed of only their major weapons and are allowed to keep their smaller arms. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld hoped to use them as a special ops team in Iran, while then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and State Department officials argued against it. By 2005, the MEK would begin training with US forces in Iraq and carrying out bombings and assassinations in Iran, although it is unclear if the bombings were in any way approved by the US military.

The Pressure is On: 2004 – 2006

For a variety of reasons – ranging from the explosion of the insurgency in Iraq following the high point of "Mission Accomplished" to Iran's willingness to admit IAEA inspectors – the drumbeat for regime change died down over the summer of 2003. In October 2003, with Iran accepting even tougher inspections, Larry Franklin told his Israeli contact that work on the US policy towards Iran which they had been tracking seemed to have stopped.

Yet by the autumn of 2004, pressure for confrontation with Iran had resumed, with President Bush telling Fox News that the US would never allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. By then, the Pentagon had been directed to have a viable military option for Iran in place by June 2005.

This phase of pressure was marked by increased activity directed at Congress. An "Iran Freedom Support Act" was introduced in the House and Senate in January and February of 2005. Neoconservatives and individuals linked to the defense contracting industry formed an Iran Policy Committee, and in April and May presented briefings in support of MEK before the newly-created Iran Human Rights and Democracy Caucus of the House of Representatives.

In March 2006, administration action became more overt. The State Department created an Office of Iranian Affairs, while the Pentagon created an Iranian Directorate that had much in common with the earlier Office of Special Plans. According to Seymour Hersh, covert US operations within Iran in preparation for a possible air attack also began at this time and included Kurds and other Iranian minority groups.

By setting up the Iranian Directorate within the Pentagon and running covert operations through the military rather than the CIA, the administration was able to avoid both Congressional oversight and interference from then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, who has been vocally skeptical about using force against Iran. The White House also successfully stalled the release of a fresh National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which could reflect the CIA's conclusion that there is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

In sum, the Bush Administration seems to have concluded that Iran is guilty until proven innocent and continues to maintain that the Persian Gulf belongs to Americans – not to Persians – setting the stage for a potential military strike.

Click here to read the full timeline of the decades-long buildup to Iran

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

The Second Great Depression

By Mike Whitney 

 

“The US economy is in danger of a recession that will prove unusually long and severe. By any measure it is in far worse shape than in 2001-02 and the unraveling of the housing bubble is clearly at hand. It seems that the continuous buoyancy of the financial markets is again deluding many people about the gravity of the economic situation.” Dr. Kurt Richebacher

“The history of all hitherto society is the history of class struggles.” Karl Marx  

This week’s data on the sagging real estate market leaves no doubt that the housing bubble is quickly crashing to earth and that hard times are on the way. “The slump in home prices from the end of 2005 to the end of 2006 was the biggest year over year drop since the National Association of Realtors started keeping track in 1982.” (New York Times) The Commerce Dept announced that the construction of new homes fell in January by a whopping 14.3%. Prices fell in half of the nation’s major markets and “existing home sales declined in 40 states”. Arizona, Florida, California, and Virginia have seen precipitous drops in sales. The Commerce Department also reported that “the number of vacant homes increased by 34% in 2006 to 2.1 million at the end of the year, nearly double the long-term vacancy rate.” (Marketwatch)

The bottom line is that inventories are up, sales are down, profits are eroding, and the building industry is facing a steady downturn well into the foreseeable future.

The ripple effects of the housing crash will be felt throughout the overall economy; shrinking GDP, slowing consumer spending and putting more workers in the growing unemployment lines.

Congress is now looking into the shabby lending practices that shoehorned millions of people into homes that they clearly cannot afford. But their efforts will have no affect on the loans that are already in place. $1 trillion in ARMs (Adjustable Rate Mortgages) are due to reset in 2007 which guarantees that millions of over-leveraged homeowners will default on their mortgages putting pressure on the banks and sending the economy into a tailspin. We are at the beginning of a major shake-up and there’s going to be a lot more blood on the tracks before things settle down.

The banks and mortgage lenders are scrambling for creative ways to keep people in their homes but the subprime market is already teetering and foreclosures are on the rise.

There’s no doubt now, that Fed chairman Alan Greenspan’s plan to pump zillions of dollars into the system via “low interest rates” has created the biggest monster-bubble of all time and set the stage for a deep economic retrenchment. Greenspan’s inflationary policies were designed to expand the “wealth gap” and create greater economic polarization between the classes. By the time the housing bubble deflates, millions of working class Americans will be left to pay off loans that are considerably higher than the current value of their home. This will inevitably create deeper societal divisions and, very likely, a permanent underclass of mortgage-slaves.

A shrewd economist and student of history like Greenspan knew exactly what the consequences of his low interest rates would be. The trap was set to lure in unsuspecting borrowers who felt they could augment their stagnant wages by joining the housing gold rush. It was a great way to mask a deteriorating economy by expanding personal debt.

The meltdown in housing will soon be felt in the stock market which appears to be lagging the real estate market by about 6 months. Soon, reality will set in on Wall Street just as it has in the housing sector and the “loose money” that Greenspan generated with his mighty printing press will flee to foreign shores.

It looks as though this may already be happening even though the stock market is still flying high. On Friday, the government reported that net capital inflows reversed from the requisite $70 billion to AN OUTFLOW OF $11 BILLION!

The current account deficit (which includes the trade deficit) is running at roughly $800 billion per year, which means that the US must attract about $70 billion per month of foreign investment (US Treasuries or securities) to compensate for America’s extravagant spending. When foreign investment falters, as it did in December, it puts downward pressure on the greenback to make up for the imbalance. Everbank’s Chuck Butler put it like this:

“Not only did the buying stop in December by foreigners in December, but the outflows were huge! Domestic investors increased their buying of long-term overseas securities from $37 billion to a record $46 billion. This is a classic illustration of ‘lack of funding’. So, the question I asked the desk was… ‘Why isn’t the euro skyrocketing?’”

Why, indeed? Why would central banks hold onto their flaccid greenbacks when the foundation which keeps it propped up has been removed?

The answer is complex but, in essence, the rest of the world has loaned the US a pair of crutches to bolster the wobbly dollar while they prepare for the eventual meltdown. China and Japan are currently hold over $1.7 trillion in US currency and US-based assets and can hardly afford to have the ground cut out from below the dollar.

There are, however, limits to the “generosity of strangers” and foreign banks will undoubtedly be pressed to take more extreme measures as it becomes apparent that Team Bush plans to produce as much red ink as humanly possible.

December’s figures indicate that foreign investment is drying up and the world is no longer eager to purchase America’s lavish debt. The only thing the Federal Reserve can do is raise interest rates to attract foreign capital or let the dollar fall in value. The problem, of course, is that if the Fed raises rates, the real estate market will collapse even faster which will strangle consumer spending and shrivel GDP. In other words, we are at the brink of two separate but related crises; an economic crisis and a currency crisis. That means that the unsuspecting American people are likely to be ground between the two mill-wheels of hyperinflation and shrinking growth.

In real terms, the economy is already in recession. The growth numbers are regularly massaged by the Commerce Department to put a smiley face on an underperforming economy. Industrial output continues to flag (In January it was down by another .5%) while millions good paying factory jobs are being air-mailed to China where labor is a mere fraction of the cost in the USA. Also, automobile inventories are up while factory production is in freefall.

In addition, new jobless claims soared to 357,000 in the week ending February 10. 44,000 more desperate workers have been given their pink slips so they can join the huddled masses in Bush’s Weimar Dystopia.

December’s net capital inflows are a grim snapshot of the looming disaster ahead. As the housing bubble loses steam, maxxed-out American consumers will face increasing job losses and mounting debt. At the same time, foreign investment will move to more promising markets in Asia and Europe causing a steep rise in interest rates. This is bound to be a stunning blow to the banks which are low on reserves ($44 billion) but have generated $4.5 trillion in shaky mortgage debt in the last 6 years.

It’s all bad news. The global liquidity bubble is limping towards the reef and when it hits it’ll send shock-waves through the global economic system.

Is it any wonder why the foreign central banks are so skittish about dumping the dollar? No one really relishes the idea of a quick slide into a global recession followed by years of agonizing recovery.

Maybe that’s why Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson has reassembled the Plunge Protection Team and installed a hotline to his Chinese counterpart so he can quickly respond to sudden gyrations in the stock market or a freefalling greenback; two of the calamities he could be facing in the very near future.

Greenspan has successfully piloted the nation into virtual insolvency. In fact, the parallels between our present situation and the period preceding the Great Depression are striking. Just as massive debt was accumulating in the market from the purchase of stocks “on margin”, so too, mortgage debt between 2000 and 2006 soared from $4.8 trillion to $9.5 trillion. In both cases the “wealth effect” spawned a spending spree which looked like growth but was really the steady, insidious expansion of debt which generated economic activity. In both periods wages were either flat or declining and the gap between rich and working class was growing more extreme by the year. As Paul Alexander Gusmorino said in his article, “Main Causes of the Great Depression”:

"Many factors played a role in bringing about the depression; however, the main cause for the Great Depression was the combination of the greatly unequal distribution of wealth throughout the 1920's, and the extensive stock market speculation that took place during the latter part that same decade".

The same factors are at work today except that the speculation is in real estate rather than stocks. Just as in the 1920’s the equity bubble was not created by wages keeping pace with productivity (the healthy formula for growth) but by the expansion of personal debt. Also, one could buy stocks without the money to purchase them, just as one can buy a $600,000 or $700,000 house today with zero-down and no monthly payment on the principle for years to come. The current account deficit ($800 billion) could also weigh heavily in any economic shake-up that may be forthcoming. Bob Chapman of The International Forecaster made this shocking calculation about America’s out-of-control trade deficit:

"US debt was up 10.1% to $4.085 trillion and accounts for 58.8% of all the credit issued globally last year. That means the US expanded credit at a much faster rate than the economy grew. This was borrowing to maintain a higher standard of living and attempt to pay for it tomorrow."

Think about that; the US sucked up nearly 60% of ALL GLOBAL CREDIT in one year alone. That is truly astonishing.

There are many similarities between the pre-Depression era and our own. Paul Alexander Gusmorino says:

"The Great Depression was the worst economic slump ever in U.S. history, and one which spread to virtually all of the industrialized world. The depression began in late 1929 and lasted for about a decade....The excessive speculation in the late 1920's kept the stock market artificially high, but eventually lead to large market crashes. These market crashes, combined with the misdistribution of wealth, caused the American economy to capsize.

(The income disparity) between the rich and the middle class grew throughout the 1920's. While the disposable income per capita rose 9% from 1920 to 1929, those with income within the top 1% enjoyed a stupendous 75% increase in per capita disposable income…A major reason for this large and growing gap between the rich and the working-class people was the increased manufacturing output throughout this period. From 1923-1929 the average output per worker increased 32% in manufacturing8. During that same period of time average wages for manufacturing jobs increased only 8% (This ultimately causes a decrease in demand and leads to growth in credit spending)

The federal government also contributed to the growing gap between the rich and middle-class. Calvin Coolidge's (pro business) administration passed the Revenue Act of 1926, which reduced federal income and inheritance taxes dramatically…(At the same time) the Supreme Court ruled minimum-wage legislation unconstitutional.

The bottom three quarters of the population had an aggregate income of less than 45% of the combined national income; while the top 25% of the population took in more than 55% of the national income...Between 1925 and 1929 the total credit more than doubled from $1.38 billion to around $3 billion”. (Just like now, the growing wage gap has spawned massive speculative bubbles as well as a steady up-tick in credit spending. Wage stagnation forces workers to seek other opportunities for getting ahead. When wages fail to keep pace with productivity then demand naturally decreases and business begins to flag. The only way to spur more buying is by easing interest rates or expanding personal credit, and that is when equity bubbles begin to appear. That's what happened to the stock market before 1929 as well as to the real estate market in 2007. The availability of credit has kept the housing market afloat but, ultimately, the result will be the same.

On Monday October 21, 1929, the over-valued stock market began its downward plunge. It managed a brief mid-week comeback, but 7 days later on Black Tuesday it plummeted again; 16 million shares were dumped and there were no buyers.

The game was over.

Confidence evaporated overnight. People stopped buying on credit, the bubble-economy collapsed, and the mighty locomotive for growth, the American consumer, hobbled into the Great Depression. Tariffs were thrown up, foreigners stopped buying American goods; banks closed, business went bust, and unemployment skyrocketed. Tens years later the country was still reeling from the implosion.

Now, 77 years later, Greenspan has led us sheep-like to the same precipice. The economic dilemma we’re facing could have been avoided if the expansion of personal credit had been curtailed by prudent monetary policy at the Federal Reserve and if wealth was more evenly distributed as it was in the ‘60s and ‘70s. But that’s not the case; so we’re headed for hard times.

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

CAN A U.S. WAR WITH IRAN BE PREVENTED?

Even after a long winter of orchestrated chanting and battlegroup repositioning, springtime American attacks on Iranian territory are not written in stone. Such a war is not predetermined, except in the minds of neoconservatives in this country and some politicos in Tel Aviv.

We should remember that these people do not run the country, ostensibly still a Republic. True, this mindset of war-economics and benign super-dominance of the world is appealing to many in Congress. Those with the ability to deliver votes, and take them away, seem to want this next iteration of creative destruction. More dangerously, this mindset grips the military-industrial complex and even many diplomats for reasons of self-actualization. War makes them relevant, prosperous, significant.

If we were a kingdom, George W. Bush would be our King. If George W. Bush were our King, a war with Iran would indeed be inevitable. To stop that war, we would need to stop the king himself – and stopping a king is often something that requires bold action on the part of those with access to him.

If we were a kingdom trying to stop a troublesome king, we might look to the person closest to him. For us, this would be the vice president, Dick Cheney. However, if we were a kingdom today, we would be witness to a power behind the throne in the form of a well-placed civilian with a mystical reputation for force of personality, and a posse of loyal samurai willing to kill and die for him. Other empires have had their Grigori Rasputins, their Agrippinas, their de Richelieus. If we were a kingdom, we would have Dick Cheney.

If we were a kingdom, a key source of power with excellent access to a wayward or delusion king would be the head of the king’s army. Marine General Peter Pace has recently stated that he "believes" Iran is involved in Iraq against our troops, but he sees no need for "kinetic action against Iran." Well, I suppose that’s comforting. In a kingdom, the top military officer would be exceptionally loyal to his king. In a republic, he would be loyal to the Constitution, or perhaps, the "people." The jury is out on Perfect Peter, but somehow I think he will be of little assistance this time.

If we were a kingdom, we might seek the help of trusted advisors to the king, and call on their persuasive skills to realign the kingdom towards fiscal sanity, peace, and civility. The modern American serfs might set their hopes on the lovely Condi Rice, ostensibly holding an important position and personally close to the president. However, her latest obfuscations to the Congress should leave the serfs less than inspired.

If we were a kingdom, those who speak for the serfs might truly be our salvation. In a republic, a congress may represent the people, and in ours, holds the sole charter to declare wars and to impeach incompetent and corrupt officials. If we were a kingdom, we would have something similar, perhaps a parliament that exists to advise the king, but rarely if ever overrule him. It might be called a parliament of whores, to borrow a moniker popularized by P.J. O’Rourke. Not much help, if we were a kingdom.

If we were a kingdom, we would be in dire straits. We would be saddled with a crazed and warlike fantasist as king, a powerful warlike fantasist as his right hand man, a perfect peter as top military man, an über-loyal diplomatic advisor, and a parliament of whores standing alert and ready like trained dogs.

Are we not a republic? A republic would, in response to the desires of a supermajority, turn back our carrier battle groups, and bring our troops home from Iraq and elsewhere in the world where they occupy unwanted garrisons. A republic would seek constitutional inspiration and hard truth in order to make foreign policy. A republic would take action to impeach corrupt officials, and remove from power those who have proven to be both criminal and grossly incompetent in their public duties.

If we were still a republic, reversing the stupidity and hubris of this administration and bringing troops home, much less avoiding this so-called inevitable attack on Iran, would be achievable, and even normal.

If we are still a republic, I am not justified in advocating harsher and more radical action.

But if we are no longer a republic, then more radical action by individuals and groups is surely appropriate. Today, those who wish for good government and a wise foreign policy charitably march on Washington during the weekend, disrupting no traffic, and seeing few lawmakers. If we are not a republic, it is legitimate to act in a less charitable manner, perhaps by shutting down traffic around the White House Monday through Friday, and disrupting the everyday activities of our monarchy and their lackeys in other creative ways.

If we are not a republic, we have already lost a great deal of that for which we fight as a nation – and thus we ought to feel no obligation to fight solely for an unpopular king. If we are no longer a republic, we should be supporting the troops not by sending sunscreen and love letters but by encouraging desertion, insubordination, and rebellion at every turn.

If we are a kingdom, or an empire ruled by our own special Nero, then we have nothing to gain by following the rules of republican citizenship, and everything to gain by ignoring them.

I don’t know if we will attack Iran or other countries from the sea, the air, and our lily-pads in puppetized post-Saddam Iraq and post-Taliban Afghanistan. I don’t believe it is inevitable, exactly. If we were a republic, we would not do it.

Sadly, habit and evidence both point in a different direction, one of more murder, more death, more destruction – and it demands that each of us begin to learn and practice new and more frightening ways to be patriots and republicans.

LRC columnist Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, has written on defense issues with a libertarian perspective for MilitaryWeek.com, hosted the call-in radio show American Forum, and blogs occasionally for Huffingtonpost.com and Liberty and Power. Archives of her American Forum radio program can be accessed here and here. To receive automatic announcements of new articles, click here.

Copyright © 2007 Karen Kwiatkowski

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Hillary Mann, the former National Security Council Director for Iranian and Persian Gulf Affairs under the Bush Administration from 2001 to 2004, has issued a sober warning to the public today concerning the Bush Administration's intentions with Iran.
 

In an interview this morning on CNN⁽¹⁾, she accused the Bush Administration of "trying to push a provocative, accidental conflict," as a pretext to justify "limited strikes" on crucial nuclear and military infrastructures, as opposed to a large ground war as is the case with Iraq.
 
When asked why the Bush Administration was seeking to do this, she responded that it is a part of Bush's broader agenda for the Middle East to bring about a "democratization... peace and stability", to the region.

Of course, one only has to look back to history to see the Bush Administration's real agenda behind confronting Iran. Iran is only one piece of the puzzle in a broader, century long struggle by the US, Britain, and it's Western allies to secure the Middle East’s oil reserves.
 
1951: Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh succeeds in leading an Iranian movement to nationalize the countries' oil industry, becoming Iran's first democratically elected leader when he becomes Prime Minister as a result from this central issue. This ends the immensely profitable monopoly that Britain controlled through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company since 1909, eventually becoming British Petroleum Company in 1954, or more commonly known as BP.
 
1953: The CIA conducts a series of covert actions under the name "Operation Ajax" (TP-AJAX), aimed at overthrowing Mossadegh to replace him with a friendlier US dictator. The tactics employed by the CIA include controlling the countries national newspapers to mislead the public with false propaganda, bribing government and military officials to gain allies against Mossadegh, funding opposition parties with money and weapons, controlling and organizing mobs and protests, and also distributing fake flyers made by the CIA that people thought were made by Mossadegh's government which said things like "UP WITH COMMUNISM" and "DOWN WITH ISLAM". After an initial failed coup attempt, a mob organized by the CIA is successful in ousting Mossadegh.
 
1953 to 1979: After their successful coup, the CIA re-installs Iran's exiled Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who is very friendly to the West and it's allies, once again ensuring a monopoly over Iran's oil fields for the West. Under the Shah's bloody reign, thousands of political opponents and innocent people suspected of being dissidents were rounded up by the Shah's CIA trained secret police, SAVAK, and put into their secret prison to be extensively tortures. SAVAK also assassinated countless political opponents and government officials to ensure the Shah's and the West's control over Iran.
 
1979 to Present: The CIA and their puppet government in Iran is thrown off by the Islamic Revolution that envelopes Iran, leading to the overthrow of the Shah and his government. This allowed Ayatollah Khomeini to return to Iran after years of exile, who would lead the Islamic Revolution of Iran that resulted in him becoming Supreme Leader of Iran. This once again ends the West's control over Iranian oil fields, and also their access to Iran's oil since they now refuse to do business or cooperate with the West.

Hillary Mann joins the ranks of a growing consensus of both former and current officials in various government, military, and intelligence agencies, who all agree that the US is actively involved in attempting to lure Iran into launching an attack on US forces, or worse.

Jim Webb, the freshman from Virginia who’s election day victory tipped the Senate in the Democrats favor, appeared on “Hardball with Chris Matthews”⁽²⁾ five days ago echoing the same warning given by Hillary Mann.

“If you look at the framers of the constitution, they wanted to give the president as commander in chief the authority to repel sudden attacks. That is totally different than conducting a preemptive war.

“And you know one thing, if you look at where we are in the Persian Gulf right now, when I was secretary of the Navy and until very recently, we never operated aircraft carriers inside the Persian Gulf because, number one, the turning radius is pretty close, and number two, the chance of accidentally bumping into something that would start a diplomatic situation was pretty high.

“We now have been doing that, and with the tensions as high as they are, I‘m very worried that we might accidentally set something off in there and we need, as a Congress, to get ahead of the ball game here.”

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former National Security Adviser under the Carter Administration from 1977 to 1981, came out on February 1st to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee⁽³⁾, blasting the Bush Administration’s handling of the war.

He called the War on Terror a “mythical historical narrative” used to justify a “protracted and potentially expanding war,” and accused them of trying to spread the conflict in Iraq to other parts of the Middle East by “deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.”


“A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran…”

“To argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the epicenter, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy,”

He also made note of the Bush Administrations ludicrous cronyism, saying, “I am perplexed by the fact that major strategic decisions seem to be made within a very narrow circle of individuals—just a few, probably a handful, perhaps not more than the fingers on my hand. And these are the individuals, all of whom but one, who made the original decision to go to war, and used the original justifications to go to war.”

Texas House Republican Ron Paul also had harsh words for the Bush Administration and Congress, giving an alarming speech before the House of Representatives⁽⁴⁾ on January 11. He accused them both of using “the talk of a troop surge and jobs program in Iraq” to “distract Americans from the very real possibility of an attack on Iran.”

“Our growing naval presence in the region and our harsh rhetoric toward Iran are unsettling. Securing the Horn of Africa and sending Ethiopian troops into Somalia do not bode well for world peace. Yet these developments are almost totally ignored by Congress.

“Rumors are flying about when, not if, Iran will be bombed by either Israel or the U.S.-- possibly with nuclear weapons. Our CIA says Iran is ten years away from producing a nuclear bomb and has no delivery system, but this does not impede our plans to keep ‘everything on the table’ when dealing with Iran.

“We should remember that Iran, like Iraq, is a third-world nation without a significant military. Nothing in history hints that she is likely to invade a neighboring country, let alone do anything to America or Israel. I am concerned, however, that a contrived Gulf of Tonkin- type incident may occur to gain popular support for an attack on Iran.

“Even if such an attack is carried out by Israel over U.S. objections, we will be politically and morally culpable since we provided the weapons and dollars to make it possible.

“Mr. Speaker, let’s hope I’m wrong about this one."

The “contrived Gulf of Tonkin- type incident” that Congressman Paul mentioned is his speech is one of many modern historical examples of false flag terrorism used by governments around the world to justify an illegitimate war to a terrified public, willing to accept whatever in the name of security.

Here’s a list of a few historically accepted examples of false flag terrorism, showing that the Bush Administration’s plans to provoke an attack from Iran is nothing new, but a common occurrence with a lot of precedent(5).

1846 - Mexican-American War: President James K. Polk sends General Zachary Taylor and 1,500 American troops to the Mexican border along the Nueces River, where he is ordered by the President to cross over into disputed territory to bait Mexico into attacking. They quickly fell for the bait and were easily repelled by US forces. Polk took advantage of this single, miniscule conflict to get Congress to declare war on Mexico and to mobilize public support for the war.
 
1898 - Spanish-American War: The US sinks it's own battleship, the USS Maine, in a harbor in Havana and blames it on Cuba. Newspapers, under the guise of the US government, help sensationalize the story to bolster public support for war against Cuba.
 
1915 - Sinking of the Lusitania: German submarines are blamed for sinking the RMS Lusitania, a British ocean liner. What the public wasn't told is that all the passengers on board the Lusitania were merely human shields to protect a shipment of US ammunition headed towards Great Britain during WWI, which is why the German's sank the ship. Many historians believe that Britain meant for the Lusitania to be attacked to get the US on their side in WWI by baiting Germans into sinking it, or that they might of sunk the ship themselves, seeing US involvement in WWI detrimental for not losing.
 
1931 - Mukden incident: Japanese officers fabricate a pretext for annexing Manchuria, which was under Chinese control at the time, by blowing up a section of their own railway and blaming it on the Chinese.
 
1939 - Gleiwitz incident: The Nazi's fabricate evidence of a Polish attack to mobilize German public opinion, and to fabricate a false justification for a war with Poland.
 
1939 - Shelling of Mainila: The Soviet Union shells it's own village of Mainila on the Finnish border, faking casualties, and blames the attack on Finland to justify a war.
 
1941 - Pearl Harbor: The US military decodes a message they intercepted from the Japanese outlining the attacks of Pearl Harbor weeks before the attacks. The message was a response to an insulting ultimatum that the US sent Japan that got the US the response they wanted, and attack on Pearl Harbor. "The question was: how we should maneuver [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot.” - Secretary of War Henry Stimson
 
1962 - Operation Northwoods: A plot authored by the Joints Chief of Staff, the top brass of the Pentagon, that involved scenarios such as hijacking a passenger plane and other staged terror attacks and campaigns that would be used to blame Cuba to mobilize public support for a war. It was never carried out since Kennedy refused to authorize the operation, and was later declassified under the Freedom of Information Act.
 
1964 - Gulf of Tonkin: President Johnson accuses North Vietnamese PT boats of attacking strike carries in the gulf, the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy. Documents and tapes released due to the Freedom of Information Act shows that President Johnson knew that there were no PT boats and no attacks, but still went ahead with lying to the American public on national TV to garner support for escalating the war in Vietnam.
 
1970's - Operation Gladio: Italian secret service agencies, under the training and direction of CIA and NATO forces, launch countless staged terror attacks that kills thousands and are used to blame leftist opposition groups and scare the public into supporting the right wing government.

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Political Power and the Rule of Law

By Ron Paul
by Ron Paul

With the elections over and the 110th Congress settling in, the media have been reporting ad nauseam about who has assumed new political power in Washington. We're subjected to breathless reports about emerging power brokers in Congress; how so-and-so is now the powerful chair of an important committee; how certain candidates are amassing power for the 2008 elections, and so on. Nobody questions this use of the word "power," or considers its connotations. It's simply assumed, in Washington and the mainstream media, that political power is proper and inevitable.

The problem is that politicians are not supposed to have power over us – we're supposed to be free. We seem to have forgotten that freedom means the absence of government coercion. So when politicians and the media celebrate political power, they really are celebrating the power of certain individuals to use coercive state force.

Remember that one's relationship with the state is never voluntary. Every government edict, policy, regulation, court decision, and law ultimately is backed up by force, in the form of police, guns, and jails. That is why political power must be fiercely constrained by the American people.

The desire for power over other human beings is not something to celebrate, but something to condemn! The 20th century's worst tyrants were political figures, men who fanatically sought power over others through the apparatus of the state. They wielded that power absolutely, without regard for the rule of law.

Our constitutional system, by contrast, was designed to restrain political power and place limits on the size and scope of government. It is this system, the rule of law, which we should celebrate – not political victories.

Political power is not like the power possessed by those who otherwise obtain fame and fortune. After all, even the wealthiest individual cannot force anyone to buy a particular good or service; even the most famous celebrities cannot force anyone to pay attention to them. It is only when elites become politically connected that they begin to impose their views on all of us.

In a free society, government is restrained – and therefore political power is less important. I believe the proper role for government in America is to provide national defense, a court system for civil disputes, a criminal justice system for acts of force and fraud, and little else. In other words, the state as referee rather than an active participant in our society.

Those who hold political power, however, would lose their status in a society with truly limited government. It simply would not matter much who occupied various political posts, since their ability to tax, spend, and regulate would be severely curtailed. This is why champions of political power promote an activist government that involves itself in every area of our lives from cradle to grave. They gain popular support by promising voters that government will take care of everyone, while the media shower them with praise for their bold vision.

Political power is inherently dangerous in a free society: it threatens the rule of law, and thus threatens our fundamental freedoms. Those who understand this should object whenever political power is glorified.

February 6, 2007

Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.

Get to know Congressman Ron Paul - visit his Archives below,...

Ron Paul Archives

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HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS

 

Before the U.S. House of Representatives 
 

February 6, 2007


 

Don't Do It, Mr. President

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