Choice America Network

Ron Paul Rocks!

I am ashamed to admit that I’ve been watching Ron Paul’s recent political acts with fingers and toes crossed, breathless.

Seeing Ron Paul educate Wolf Blitzer earlier this week, after his astoundingly fantastic performance in the second Republican debate, makes me sorry I had lost my faith in the power of truth, the power of courage. I’m sorry that I didn’t believe in the possibility that a serious person in the American political arena would commit that most radical act of speaking truth to power.

And in doing it, not only survive, but thrive!

A famous Orwell quote captures what is happening. "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." And while many have been working to prepare ground for truth and freedom in this country, I think we will note that the first shots in this revolution have been fired by Ron Paul.

Orwell had glimpsed what would become the modern political state, globally engaged in endless wars, fighting shadowy enemies who constantly change, because they never really mattered anyway. What mattered, and what still matters, is war, with its handmaidens Fear and Public Amnesia. Without fear and amnesia, holding on to domestic political power in the American neoconservative oligarchy becomes risky, uncertain.

Ron Paul is speaking truth to the whole world, with patience and patriotism flowing in equally generous portions. Like the young David, he is received by the dogs of war with sneers, self-important snarling, threatening stares. Like David, he seems almost unarmed and even unprepared for the great battle to come. But like David, he is unafraid. Like David, he understands what he believes in and knows it to be consistent with all that is good and just.

On the other hand, his political opponents, in both parties, do not truly believe in what they are saying. The neoconservative evangelical Republican Party seeks the 2008 presidency and the neoconservative socialist Democratic Party seeks the 2008 presidency. It isn’t because they believe in something – instead, they seek to access domestic power and maintain the status quo – an enriching and profitable status quo for people and organizations in power, I might add.

I’m not just saying this because I am excited about Ron Paul’s candidacy and the possibility of his presidency. Recall if you will, the first Republican debate, when the candidates were asked about National ID cards. Some of the other candidates began to respond, clonelike, each confusing the national ID card with some vague undeveloped ideas they have about security for the country. Their reptilian brains were drumming "Security, Security, Must Look Good on Security."

Then Ron Paul gets to answer the national ID card question. It is unnecessary and would have little to nothing to offer in terms of national security. Oh, and then he firmly rejected it. Like a real man!

Immediately, the candidates – even some who had already spoken, rushed and stumbled to agree or at a minimum, move toward the Ron Paul position. I recall Giuliani saying something like he would only have a national ID card for aliens. Huh? My mother says if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. Let me then say this: Rudy Giuliani has the biggest reptilian brain of all the candidates.

Ron Paul offers real change, and a real way ahead for America that includes not just an embrace of the original constitutional outline of small government, but something we can really partake of each day – free economics, free speech, free will. Further, Ron Paul promises something that is valuable and precious to Americans who belong to a political party – any political party. Ron Paul offers a chance to share a real sense of our country as glorious and honorable, a joyful, fearless land of opportunity and of peace.

Because make no mistake, the United States has not been glorious and wonderful, and certainly not free and peaceful, for many decades.

I am excited about Ron Paul and his campaign. I have ritualistically voted since 1978, usually as a Republican, later as a libertarian, and last fall I voted for Virginia Senator Jim Webb, a Democrat. I’ll ritualistically vote for Ron Paul in 2008, if I can. But far more than that, I am pleased to be humbled by each new day of the Ron Paul campaign – to witness the raw power of ideas and debate – after such a long hiatus of ideas and debate from the American political game.

The Greek concept of happiness, eudaimonia, keeps coming to mind whenever I think of Ron Paul as President. It is about faithful and right action, not human exultation or social extremes. It is about the happy and fulfilling marriage of knowledge and virtue. It is about reality over fantasy, faith over existentialism, doing good over doing evil.

In other words, Ron Paul rocks!

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

Karen Kwiatkowski Archives

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

Unmasking of the Authoritarians

By Manuel Valenzuela

Phoenix Rising

Can you smell the putrid fumes of authoritarianism rising like smoke from burning trash, filling our senses with the toxins of despotism?  Do you see these clouds of tyranny surpassing the morning horizon, their darkened haze making blind our eyes, deaf our ears and ignorant our minds? Can you hear the America of yesterday screaming in agonizing pain as the cancer of the authoritarian personality slowly devours her from within? If so, you are not alone, for evolving within our shores since 9/11 lies a most ominous and frightening reality, namely, the rise and acceptance of American-style authoritarianism.  

Conceived through the neoconservative Mein Kampf, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” birthed through the controlled demolition of skyscrapers that gave rise to the New Pearl Harbor and nurtured through the psychological war of fear and terror upon the American populace, conveniently labeled the War on Terror, authoritarianism, and an absolute belief in it, has planted itself firmly upon American shores. The emergence of this pathogen, – for that is what it is – usually contained and restrained within the minds of millions of individuals, has dramatically shifted the personality and beliefs of American society, perhaps forever altering the makeup and psyche of the nation.

Thanks in large measure to an overwhelming propaganda campaign by the neocon controlled corporatist media, an onslaught of manipulation upon the American populace has resulted in the acceptance of authoritarian tendencies in a large segment of the citizenry. In present day American media, neocon anchors, reporters, talking heads and stenographers are allowed to parade uninterrupted and unobstructed, day after day, parroting neocon talking points and propaganda, stirring fear and insecurity and hatred and anger, hiding truth and disseminating fictions, all systemically done to condition the people into accepting Machiavellian-style governance. 

For in the neocon ideology, democracy is but a hindrance, an obstacle to be eliminated, for the will of the people interferes with the decisions of those in power.  Democracy, therefore, must become a charade, an illusion designed to convey in the masses the feeling that their votes count, that their voice is heard.  In fact, the opposite is true, for only those that count the votes have their voice heard.  The neocon belief structure believes that in order for leaders to govern effectively, freedom and rights must be curtailed, and the people must be subjected to surveillance and greater police powers.  Hence, America’s quite obvious flirtation with authoritarianism.  Truth is anathema in the neocon lexicon, for the people must be kept in the dark at all times, for we are too stupid to know better.  This is why truth was the first casualty of 9/11.  The lie, too, is a fundamental principle of neocon dogma and, as such, is used repeatedly and consistently to catapult the propaganda. The noble lie is thus created by the delusional to keep the people from knowing uncomfortable and harsh truths. This is done in our interest and for our protection, of course.

Using the corporatist media to hide truth, engender perpetual lies and create new realities, the neocon movement is methodically molding together an army of virulent warmongers, submissive and acquiescent to the dictates of the state, choosing the sacrifice of rights and freedoms in order to have security and so-called protection.  The neocons are using the media, in print, radio and television, to reach out to and condition the weak minded among us, those who lack the courage and conviction to make extinct fear, those who prefer to live in the comfort of fiction rather than confront the difficulty of reality.  The neocon movement, desiring imperial hegemony and perpetual war, seeking destruction of Israel’s enemies, wishing for an authoritarian state lead by a benign dictator, is thus using a vast arsenal of propaganda to create millions of subservient and loyal followers.  They are molding a standing army of authoritarian personalities.

Throughout history the authoritarian personality has risen like a phoenix from the short silences of peace we offer ourselves between outbreaks of human wickedness.  It rises to the zenith of our skies when fear and insecurity thrive, when scapegoats are chosen, when hatred and anger abound.  It congregates within the elements of xenophobia, jingoism and patriotism, demanding the arrival of a police state or the permanency of dictatorship.  It falls easily to the propaganda of the state and the manipulations of the media, for fear and cowardice blind reason and logic.  Embedded in the psyche of millions of human beings, the authoritarian personality awakes and hibernates according to the patterns of human interaction and the manipulations of our leaders, rising regardless of time or place, ethnicity or religion.  

Its sinister intent does not reside inside every human being, however, but lingers like a personality trait, born through the intertwined connections of genetics or molded by the fated circumstances of environment.  Yet it exists in the human condition nonetheless, to the great detriment of our species, for its power grants sustenance to criminality and immorality, to those leaders of man who inevitably lead the human race spiraling to the nadir of wickedness.  It escapes the shackles which peace places on it and quickly assembles its army of like-minded personalities, conjoining in confluence towards the adoration of leadership and submissiveness to the state. Its large numbers guarantee that the Goebbels’ of the world succeed in bridging commonalities and connecting energies. Its large numbers guarantee that the Hitler’s of the world never go extinct, always finding a warm and gentle welcome among the army of authoritarian personalities.

The authoritarian personality is reincarnated with New Pearl Harbors and all commensurate acts of state terror upon the populace.  It awakens with the neocon manipulation of emotion, psychology and behavior, with the corporatist media acting as the hypnotizing glow giving instruction to the millions whose only comfort from fear is the supposed authority of the state.  With the awakening of the authoritarian personality through external threats, catalyzing events and selection of alien enemies, a lust for violence and a hunger for blood soon emerges.  With fear imprisoning the reason and logic of millions, warmonger leaders can easily proceed with long-standing plans for imperial hegemony abroad and authoritarian principles at home.  As long as humans exist, the authoritarian personality will linger, those taking advantage of its weak minded psychology will thrive and the threat of authoritarianism will, as always, remain to wreak havoc upon humankind.

Tectonic Shifts

In a sense, the architects of 9/11 and the fictional war on terror have been triumphant in the implementation of their Machiavellian plans.  In the six years since 9/11, the People have been impotent and unwilling to act as the nation has plunged, rather purposefully, into the throes of authoritarianism.  Laws marketed as offering protection and security from terrorism have instead been used to dismantle the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  Civil liberties continue to be eviscerated, while freedoms once thought sacrosanct continue to be made extinct.  The power of the executive continues to grow in strength, in essence creating a leader with dictatorial powers.  Against the will of the People wars continue to be waged, occupations continue to exist.  An emerging police state continues to evolve, seemingly without hindrances.  Hundreds of billions of dollars continue to be allocated to the military-industrial-energy complex, just as they are taken away from education, healthcare and social services, all while the treasury continues to be pillaged.  

The nation has systematically been made to shift away from its centrist traditions and has, thanks to the machinations of the cabal of criminality, instead taken a sharp, authoritarian and extreme right, headed into the realm of despotic undercurrents.  Today, the neocon agenda and ideology now commands the centers of power, as well as the platform of two-headed hydra, that political duopoly feeding from the same hand, enslaved to the same master.  The Republican Party has become a party of fascists, while the Democratic Party is now where true conservatives seek refuge. Sadly, this political duopoly serves not the People, but corporatist elements and the elite, becoming parties of money, power and corporations.  Progressives, dissenters and truth seekers, meanwhile, are now seen as enemies of the state, while the army of authoritarian personality is the new Republican base.  

For whatever the outcome of the Iraq debacle, America is now firmly entrenched in the desert of Mesopotamia, to remain there for decades to come.  This naturally amplifies all future confrontations with China and Russia, for Iraq is now one giant forward operating base, an aircraft carrier destined to serve as a staging ground to protect, conquer or acquire resources or lands deemed to be in the national security interest.  Meanwhile, the pretenders to the throne of the Empire, those from the political duopoly, enslaved to the corporatist world and the interests of Israel, along with the lifelong cheerleader still in power, continue to threaten Iran with military force, using, once again, the illusory threat of WMD – this time nuclear weapons – even though Iran poses no threat whatsoever to America.  

While transforming America into an authoritarian enclave even Machiavelli would be proud of, the architects of 9/11 and the fictional war on terror also assured themselves, and the military-industrial-energy complex (MIEC), of a nation that is fundamentally now, more than ever, a militarized Empire.  The tragedy of 9/11 has militarized the nation, along with millions of its citizens, and has enabled the MIEC to pillage and plunder the national treasury, converting American ingenuity into a conduit of death and destruction.  America now spends more in one year on military equipment than the entire world put together, and this will only increase in the years ahead as expenditures for the military only continue to grow.  The neocons would not have it any other way, for perpetual war naturally leads to perpetual profit.

The last six years have forced leaders of both parties to become much more militant in their ideology and platform.  The genius of 9/11, besides shifting the nation in the direction of authoritarianism, besides allowing the Empire to attack, invade and occupy Iraq and Afghanistan, is that it forced and exerted a tremendous amount of pressure on both parties to never relent and never put a stop to the fictional war on terror.  To do so would be political suicide, for the electorate, fearing for their lives and security, demand a stronger military and security apparatus.  For both parties, there thus exists a competition to outdo one another in terms of offering the best policy for protecting the so-called Homeland, for fighting the “war on terror,” and for defeating all enemies of the nation, be they real or imagined.  

Defense spending, in the wake of two parties force fed with bravado, filled with testosterone, obligated into ever-greater promises of militarization, will ultimately, and conveniently, only continue to increase.  Under such auspices, then, 9/11 assured the MIEC of a perpetual stream of money and profit, the Pentagon of ever-increasing power, the elite of greater wealth, and the corporatist world of incessant growth and greater control over the lives of the masses.

America has become more militarized, for a new enemy has been created, marketed and launched.  Of course fighting this new enemy conveniently allows the state to launch preemptive attacks and invasions wherever and whenever the dreaded bogeyman appears, granting warmongers a pretext to conquer the resources and lands it seeks. With an ambiguous enemy, unseen and hidden, belonging to no nation or land, intent on destroying our way of life, hating our freedoms and democracy, lurking behind every street corner and underneath every bed, the illusion of needed security, as always provided by the state, will methodically eradicate our rights and freedoms, altering the landscape of America from one of liberty to one of a burgeoning police state.  The more we are made to fear, the more insecure we are made to feel, the greater the assault on our civil liberties and rights will become.  With every threat, with every act of terror, real or concocted, our freedoms as Americans will dissipate, transforming our lives, corralling our destinies, controlled via the mechanisms of authoritarianism.  This, sadly, is the future that awaits us. 

Altered Duopoly

What was once known as the Republican Party has mutated into an authoritarian and corporatist political entity, since 9/11 shifting to the extreme right of the political spectrum.  That is to say, it has morphed itself into a political arm of the Pentagon and of the authoritarian elements presently ensconced throughout government and the corporate world.  The Republican Party of yesteryear has ceased to exist.  In its wake now lies an entity that has shred the Bill of Rights, burned the Constitution, made legal torture, once-illegal wiretapping, domestic spying and false imprisonment and made illegal various aspects of free speech, freedom of assembly and due process.  It is this party which has declared habeas corpus null and void, has spat upon the Geneva Convention and international law, and has embarked on the ideology of the neoconservative movement. It is this party that now applauds lies and deceit, fictions and myths, and castigates truth and reality.  It is this new party that mocks true and honest conservatives, vilifying them when they speak inconvenient truths.

As a result, millions of loyal Republicans, most honorable and good people, (most liberal and progressive on most issues, yet through years of fear, conditioning and manipulation turned to support the Republican platform) do not recognize what was once their party.  To millions of lifelong Republicans who do not subscribe to the neocon delusions of imperial hegemony, offensive, preemptive warfare, military buildup and the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Republican Party has long since been made extinct.  To them, their party is unrecognizable, becoming a mutated monster of Machiavellian ideology.  

The party has transformed itself into a purveyor of human wickedness, with its cast of pretenders to the 2008 throne trying to outdo themselves in a competition of who could become more immoral, debased and criminal.  From doubling Guantanamo – where it has been proven that most prisoner are innocent – to allowing torture in interrogations – when torture to extract confessions does not work – to unleashing more wars of conquest to making extinct more civil rights and freedoms, today’s cast of pretenders sound more like Nazis than Republicans.  Fear, fear and more fear has become the Republican selling point, its one and only platform, the only way it can maintain tens of millions of authoritarian personality-types from returning to hibernation.  In macabre symphony it has tried to monopolize and abuse the horrors of 9/11, constantly regurgitating its memories in hopes the American people can continue to be manipulated.

Catering to the base has never been so much fun, being that millions of authoritarian personalities have become blood-thirsty warmongers whose once hidden racism, xenophobia and lust for violence have suddenly sprouted from the clouds of 9/11.  Hating has never been so much fun, either, nor openly accepted and praised.  The hatred and unjustifiable anger millions of authoritarians have for Iraqis, or all Arabs for that matter, not to mention Persians and Afghanis, – people who had nothing to do with 9/11 and thus remain innocent – is a traditional trait of authoritarians everywhere.  

Once the state and its corporatist press select a convenient enemy to scapegoat and unleash a barrage of propaganda to condition the authoritarian personality masses, the army of authoritarians easily lines up behind the charades of the state. Because authority dislikes Arabs, because it blames them for 9/11, the army of authoritarians will exhibit hostility against Arabs. Because racists and xenophobes in power use Latino undocumented workers as scapegoats for society’s ills, the army of authoritarians will likewise exhibit hostility to these minorities, especially if it is believed that this group might threaten or change traditional values. Combined with ignorance and manufactured consent, an authoritarian personality will ignite the flames of hatred and anger against the enemy of leaders or of the state.  

Most egregious of all is FOX News, a fascist propaganda machination masquerading as a news and media channel.  Owing its success to the incessant jingoism, patriotism, war cheerleading and fear mongering in the days and years after 9/11, FOX News has only served to brainwash, condition and make ignorant millions of authoritarian personalities.  This network has accumulated a collection of the most vile, despicable and nefarious authoritarian personalities in the country, a group of little Goebbels’ who are proud to serve as propaganda loudspeakers and stenographers of the emerging American corporatist state. This collection of immoral midgets and schizophrenic sycophants has made the Nazi propaganda machine look like the Brady Bunch.

These charlatans have regressed debate so much in America, they have devolved political opinion so enormously, they have dumbed down the population to such a high degree, yet have become successful because they satiate the very craving and appetite of the authoritarian personality that longs to hear the talking points of tyranny rising and fascism spreading.  Indeed, the authoritarian personality seeks comfort and security in the demented and delusional opinions of FOX News personalities, needing the validation of beliefs to assuage his insecure and feeble mind.

The success of FOX News, with its group think mentality, its obvious distortions, manipulations and lies, its smearing of opposition, its virulent hate mongering and dissemination of extreme right-wing corporatist venom, has had the effect of spreading its corrosive propaganda to other networks as these seek to replicate Rupert Murdoch’s formula for success and profit.  Consequently, these networks, in imitating the formula for success used by FOX, became conduits of propaganda and stenographers of the state, thereby exacerbating ignorance, compounding hatred and destroying free thought.

Acting as the Ministry of Truth, at a time of perceived and manufactured fear and terror, FOX News offered stability in an unstable world, drawing in millions of authoritarian personalities that needed to hear and see that the world, although inherently evil, was being protected by the state.  Thus, FOX News became the main stenographer and defender of the party in power.

With millions of viewers tuning in, needing a fix of bravado and schoolyard bully newspeak and behavior, corporations wanting to cash in joined the FOX News orgy of hatred, fear mongering and xenophobia, spending millions of dollars so the army of authoritarian personality would watch their advertisements and invariably, purchase their products.    

By appealing to the authoritarian personality at a time when to do so is appealing and expected, especially with the fortuitous luck of 9/11 having molded, created and awakened so many authoritarians in hibernation, FOX has helped push the nation down the precipice of authoritarianism, steering the nation’s mood to the hard, authoritarian right, and in the process shifting ideology towards the parameters of accepted despotism.  For while the good Germans of yesteryear allowed the Nazi regime to flourish and commit monstrous atrocities, they did not have the power or scope or reach of a FOX News, corporatist media type propaganda machine from which to gather and be brainwashed.  Indeed, their army of authoritarian personality, much smaller than ours, was conditioned on much less, without the use of television and its many powers of persuasion, yet it is America’s army of authoritarian personality that has been molded via the airwaves to become a dangerous and growing entity. The television has thus proven a most useful tool to the neocons, just as it is to any fascist regime.

But for the army of authoritarianism tuning in religiously on a daily basis, however, FOX would have never survived, thrived and grown to become the greatest tool of propaganda the nation, and the world, has ever seen.  Like two organisms in a symbiotic relation, therefore, one entity fed the other, growing together in power and scope, sustaining each other through one entity’s addiction to insecurity and the other’s immediate and hypnotic fix.

So successful has the conditioning of FOX and its imitators been, so dangerous has the end result turned into, that today over 100 million individuals have been transformed into an army of authoritarians, their personality being such that easy followers of criminality do they become. At the drop of a hat, these individuals would chose slavery over freedom, security over rights, ignorance over knowledge, war over peace and tyranny over liberty. In a world of unintended consequences, the army of authoritarian personality can help turn freedom’s bells into fascism’s sirens. 

Army of Authoritarian Personalities

To the authoritarian personality, those millions living among us as neighbors, friends, co-workers and family, the arrival of authoritarianism into our lives will be welcomed without even a hint of dissent.  For these individuals believe everything emanating from their television monitors, treating those words spoken by stenographers and propagandists as sacrosanct and truth.  To these millions, blind faith in government and in criminal leaders is a way of life, for the myths of the American state caring for its people, being an altruistic entity, is a certainty rooted in life-long brainwashing.  To these millions, the myths of and faith in American exceptionalism are just as strong as those myths, faiths and beliefs in a primitive and unseen deity.  To the authoritarian personality, the fables of American history, and of the American government, are deeply embedded in the mind, never able to be exorcised from within.

To this individual, the state is the ultimate arbiter of human interaction, and its leaders, the personification of religious deities themselves.  Indeed, traumatic events such as 9/11 systematically alter the behavior and psychology of an authoritarian personality.  This individual could mutate from moral and honorable man to warmongering and xenophobic psychotic.  He could go from once being a thinking and knowledgeable person to easily brainwashed and manipulated, made to believe a vast array of lies and deceptions, creating a barricade within that prevents all truth and reason from entering. It is calamities such as 9/11 that like a snap of a finger transform normalcy and decency into hate and fear, causing the carrier of the authoritarian personality to alter his or her psyche.  As if hypnotized by unrecognizable powers, this individual does not even become aware of his sinister and oftentimes self-destructive metamorphosis.

To the authoritarian personality, fear of Arab bogeymen, that dreaded evildoer known as al-Qaeda, marketed as seeking the complete destruction of America, controls all aspects of emotion and psychology, resulting in the complete submission of his mind to authority.  Thus, if the state requests that a microchip be implanted into his head, he will immediately comply.  If the state decides to suspend the Constitution, he will provide a flame.  If Muslims, Arabs, dissidents and other undesirables are forced into ghettos or are rounded up, he will gladly volunteer. If curfews or checkpoints or martial law is declared, he will finally feel protection from fear.  If his rights and freedoms are taken away, he will live life content.  If the state desires to attack a foreign land, he will ask for the use of nuclear weapons.  If the dear leader asks for volunteers to defend the homeland, he will immediately purchase a brown shirt.  If he is told to be vigilant in his neighborhood, he will take that as instruction to spy on neighbors.  If he is told his wife or mother are enemies of the state, he asks where to turn them in.

Such is the corrosive interaction between the authoritarian personality and the manipulative powers of the state.  Such is the danger of authoritarian personalities intertwining their numbers with engineered, catalyzing events. Such is the potential damage of authoritarian personalities to tomorrow’s freedom that the sacrifice of their progeny’s long-term rights and liberties is a small price to pay for the short-term comfort of their own manufactured fears.

Authoritarian personalities are the submissive peons of power, the cowards of corporatism, and the blood-thirsty barbarians of warmongers. They are, quite simply, one of the greatest threats to the republic, a collection of intellectually hollow, willfully ignorant followers of criminality.  Born natural followers, selfish and greedy, uncurious and apathetic, devoid of reason and logic, lacking courage and free-thought, unwilling to ever question authority, eager to place blind faith in both the unseen and the unproven, in adulthood becoming the ignorant sheeple easily obeying the dictates of leaders, with authoritarian tendencies running through their veins, these individuals have come out into the open, like cockroaches rising from the sewers, the propaganda and conditioning by the corporatist media becoming the hypnotic flute beckoning them forward.  

This authoritarian personality, deeply embedded in the psyche of millions of individuals, for years buried, sequestered and controlled by the fictions and fantasies of the American Dream, was resurrected from the catacombs of the mind with the psychological war against the American people begun on 9/11.  Like, zombies, the army of authoritarianism rose from the dead, thereby transforming America’s character for the worse. Crossing party lines, both Democrats and Republicans, liberal and conservative, from all socioeconomic, ethnic and religious groups, these individuals suddenly saw the world with different eyes.  Millions became blinded to reality, building bubbles of infallibility from where truth was banished.  The lies of the corporatist state became accepted through blind faith. Anyone who disagreed with the state or its leader became a traitor, a terrorist sympathizer, a treasonous enemy in the eyes of these people.

Spoon fed a potion of FOX News propaganda and corporatist manipulations, authoritarian personalities have fallen under the spell of neocon thinking.  Unable to think for themselves, these people incorporate as their own any and all talking points spewed by the neocon, authoritarian media.  Thus the lies and propaganda of corporatists and neocons becomes the belief and world view of these ignorant personalities.  The views emanating from the talking heads and stenographers of authoritarianism are quickly embedded into the mindset of the authoritarian personality, who because of his great timidity is made to fear the dreaded, evil and dark skinned Arab enemy concocted by the creators of reality.

Possessing little logic or ability to reason, with fear controlling emotions and thoughts, this personality is quickly made to believe the lies, deceit, and deceptions of the neocon media, and thus eagerly accepts the destruction of his civil rights, freedoms and liberties in the name of security and state sponsored protection.  This personality would rather live in a police state, serving under tyranny, rather than confront his own, and oftentimes manufactured fears and insecurities.  He would rather remain ignorant than accept truth, preferring to dwell in fiction than in reality.  Confronting the truth of his so-called leaders, along with the reality outside his bubble is unfathomable, lest his beautiful mind be molested of its fantasy and comfort.

Lacking conviction, strength, courage and bravery, all alien afterthoughts to him, this person would much rather live inside the comfortable charade created by the state than confront a reality of the world around him that might disrupt his delusions.  He would much rather attach a meaningless car magnet “supporting the troops” than enlist to fight a war he approves of and wages from his comfortable couch, even as he supports leaders who care nothing for soldiers. This personality is made to cower in fear of an enemy created exclusively to control and oppress him, an enemy he purposefully refuses to know and understand, study, listen to and research, preferring to remain in darkness, preferring to believe the drivel emanating from his monitor than know the truth of the evildoer he hates so much yet comprehends so little.  

The rise and spread of authoritarianism has been rapid and as yet unstoppable, growing from its 9/11 birth, reared through years of fear and terror conditioning, and maturing through perpetual wars, concocted enemies and eviscerated rights.  Like a contagion passing from host to host, American authoritarianism is spreading, afflicting perhaps 100 to 150 million citizens, anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of the population, many of whom seem oblivious to the threats to their ways of life they themselves are engendering.

The New Pearl Harbor, besides acting as the catalyzing event needed by the cabal of criminality to unleash imperial hegemony, also acted as the hypnotizing awakening of authoritarianism, becoming the deafening siren triggering the emergence of a once hibernating authoritarian personality. With the rise of this army of authoritarianism also came a monumental shift in the direction of fascist tendencies and policies, so much so that at no other time in America’s history has the threat of fascism been more apparent, and prevalent.

This phenomenon also gives us pause, for in its existence can we see how the totalitarian monsters of the past were allowed to flourish, how they were allowed to unleash carnage upon the world.   They also offer us a window into the future, into how tomorrow’s tyrants can be contained and stopped before they once more open the gates of human wickedness. And, of course, in the unmasking of the authoritarians we can also see the present, and how America has allowed herself to descend into the frontier of authoritarianism, the badlands of despotism.

The unmasking of the authoritarians commences with introspection and a look into the mirror, understanding how 9/11 affected each of us, studying how its subsequent barrage of propaganda and manipulations by the corporatist state altered our psychology and emotions, researching what its emotional effects and consequences were.  By seeing 9/11 for what it is, an inside job whose purpose was a psychological war against us by a cabal of criminality intent on controlling our minds, we can better comprehend the individuals that comprise the authoritarian personality that have had such a pivotal role in our descent into authoritarianism.  Perhaps we can learn how to prevent this army from rising again once it returns into prolonged hibernation.  

In the end, introspections as a nation are a good thing, especially in times of universal deceit and criminality, for they teach us about ourselves and our neighbors. Perhaps next time, and there will be a next time, we will prevent criminality and the rising tentacles of authoritarianism from submerging us into the ocean of impotence.  Perhaps, if we learn our lessons and our history, instead of ignoring both, we will be able to prevent another attempt to plunge us deeper into the abyss of fascism.  

Only by knowing ourselves and our American personality better will we succeed. Only by understanding the manipulations and the propaganda of our masters, and how they affect us, will we be triumphant.  Never in our history has a mirror been more needed. Never has its use been more sought.  

What we might see reflected back might be uncomfortable, it might frighten and enrage us, it might send chills down our spine.  Yet in this reflection we might also see hope, possibility and promise; we may see our true selves. By looking directly into the mirror, the unmasking of America can thus commence.

Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst and Internet essayist. His articles as well as his archive can be found at his blog, http://www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com  and at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info as well as at other alternative news websites from around the globe.  Mr. Valenzuela is also author of Echoes in the Wind, a fiction novel. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net.

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Authoritarian 

au•thor•i•tar•i•an

Pronunciation: (u-thôr"i-târ'ē-un,  u-thor"-) —adj.
1. favoring complete obedience or subjection to authority as opposed to individual freedom: authoritarian principles; authoritarian attitudes.
2. of or pertaining to a governmental or political system, principle, or practice in which individual freedom is held as completely subordinate to the power or authority of the state, centered either in one person or a small group that is not constitutionally accountable to the people.
3. exercising complete or almost complete control over the will of another or of others: an authoritarian president/dictator.

—n.   a person who favors or acts according to authoritarian principles. see George W. Bush. 

 



CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

E X P O S I N G 

THE SECRET GOVERNMENT

By Derek Wilson

A small number of extremely wealthy people, descendants of wealthy families in Europe and the U.S, own a major part of the material wealth of the world. This power is concentrated in London which is the centre of the world banking system. The control they exercise is kept within the original families and passed down from generation to generation. They are highly organised, operating in secret through a web of 'private' organisations.

This group is known as the Global Elite.

Their wealth is accumulating on a compound basis. They determine the course of history, through virtual control of the world economy.

They are working to a 'grand plan' which is now well-advanced.

The common reaction of people when first hearing of the global elite and their operations is one of disbelief and a refusal to give the claim credibility as it appears so outrageous. But during the last few years there has been an increasing volume of books, articles and essays, all with the same story. All are based on well-documented research. The information revealed is consistent with the events of recent history, leaving no room for doubt. It is the "New World Order" taking shape - the Global Elite strategy.

For our purposes. the concentration of control over financial resources started with the Industrial Revolution. The 18th century saw the emergence and rapid rise of the House of Rothschild - the largest and most powerful financial empire - built on money embezzled by Mayer Amschel Bauer (later Rothschild) from William IV, who had stolen it from the soldiers he had hired out to the British government to fight Napoleon's armies. Rothschild sent the money to England, bought vast quantities of gold from the East Indian Company, used this to finance the Duke of Wellington's exploits and, working through the Brotherhood network, manipulated governments and created wars and revolutions. He lent money to both sides of the conflicts in what became a standard practice of the banking elite. Rothschild's influence can hardly be overstated, for it was the precursor of today's vast transnational corporations and banking empires which have extended their control to the four corners of Earth in the long-term agenda of the Brotherhood. As Historian John Reeves puts it:

Little could Mayer Amschel have anticipated that his sons would in after years come to exercise such an unbounded sway that the peace of nations would depend upon their nod; that the powerful control they exercised on the European money markets would enable them to pose as the arbiters of peace and war, since they could at their pleasure withhold or furnish the percuniary [sic] means required to carry on a campaign.

But this, incredible as it may seem, was what their vast influence, combined with their enormous wealth and unlimited credit, enabled them to do, for no firms existed strong enough to oppose them for any length of time, or rash enough to take up a business which the Rothschilds had refused. To reach this exulted position, Mayer Amschel and his sons required the cooperation of the states, but, when once he had climbed over their banks and reached the height of his ambition, he was independent of all aid and could act with the greatest freedom, whilst the states remained in a suppliant attitude at his feet.

The Rothschild approach was reportedly summed up by Mayer Amschel himself: "Give me control of a nation's currency and I care not who makes the laws." When Rothschild's son Nathan died, his eldest son, Lionel, took over, making massive loans to the British and American governments and others, including some $80 million to Britain to finance the Crimea War. Lionel was succeeded by the second Nathan, the first Lord Rothschild, who took his seat in the House of Lords in 1885. He became the governor of the Bank of England (the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street) with unlimited power over the world's financial system. That power has not diminished - far from it - it has simply expanded with new empires like that of Morgan and Rockefeller, so that in the closing decade of this century the power and the control of the world's financial system behind its many 'fronts' is completely in the hands of the Global Elite and is enormous.

But to return to the start of the Industrial Revolution. At its beginning, the ruling powers in Great Britain embarked on one of the most sustained efforts to destroy community life ever undertaken. From 1770 to 1830 some 3,280 enclosure bills were passed putting into private hands for private gain more than six million acres of commonly-held lands. By 1830 not a single country had more than three percent of its land open to public use. According to historian George Sturt:

To the enclosure of the commons more than to any other cause, may be traced all the changes which have subsequently passed over the village. It was like knocking the keystone out of an arch.

This control of finite resources, and with it the diminution of democracy, was well advanced by 1901 when Morgan and Rockefeller, who headed the two main financial groups in America, amalgamated 112 corporate directorates, combining $22.2 billion in assets - a massive sum in those days. In 1910 eight financiers, including the host, met in absolute secrecy at the private hunting club of J.P Morgan - the Jekyll Island Club off the coast of Georgia - "to shoot ducks". News of this meeting did not leak for six years, but from then on snippets of information were made public. For example, on 18 January 1920, The New York Times made a most revealing statement about the Federal Reserve System, the basic plan for which those secretive bankers had proceeded to draft back in 1910: "The Federal Reserve is the fount of credit, not of capital." This meant that Reserve notes, instead of being backed by precious metal or other suitable commodity which would provide capital funds for the betterment of industry and commerce, are backed by paper loaned at interest.

On 25 July 1921, Senator Owen stated in the same paper: "The Federal Reserve Board is the most gigantic financial power in the world. Instead of using this great power as the Federal Reserve Act intended that it should, the board ....delegated this power to the banks,...." In 1931 on 3 May, when commenting on the death of one of J.P Morgan's closest associates, The New York Times remarked: "One-sixth of the total wealth of the world was represented by members of the Jekyll Island Club." This reference was to just those men who were part of Morgan's group and members of his Club. It excluded the Rockefeller group and the European financiers. Among those "duck shooters" present back in November 1910 were Benjamin Strong, head of J.P Morgan's Bankers Trust Company and from 1914 till his death in 1928 Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank, and Paul Warburg, who not knowing one end of a gun from the other had carried a borrowed shotgun onto the train that night at Hoboken, New Jersey. Warburg, who had exceptionally powerful banking connections in New York, England, France, Germany and the Netherlands, was the real power behind the Federal Reserve throne. His brother Max was head of the German Secret Service during World War I.

J.P Morgan and his "duck shooters" proceeded to draft the basic plan for the Federal Reserve System with five objectives:

• Stop the growing competition from the nation's newer banks.
• Obtain a franchise to create money out of nothing, for the purpose of lending.
• Get control of the reserves of all the banks.
• Get the taxpayer to pick up the cartel's inevitable losses.
• Convince Congress that the purpose of the FRS was to protect the public.

It succeeded brilliantly. As Anthony Sutton remarks about one of the more blatant scams in history: "The Federal Reserve System is a legal private monopoly of the money supply operated for the benefit of the few under the guise of protecting and promoting the public interest."

Space does not permit any exploration of the secret machinations and malfeasance, including the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, organised by Montague Norman, Governor of the Bank of England from 1916 to 1944, and Benjamin Strong, with a little help from their friends. Nor is there room to examine the wider implications of the actions of these Robber Barons and their support for Germany in the First World War (Nurse Edith Cavell was shot by the Germans upon the insistence of the British authorities for her "inconvenient" exposure that "Belgian Relief" supplies were being shipped to Germany to feed its army), and for Hitler's subsequent rise to power.

Prior to assuming real power, Montague Norman had had a nervous breakdown in 1912 and, as was fashionable, had gone to Switzerland to be treated by Jung.

When people of this class are stricken by guilt feelings while plotting world wars and economic depressions which will bring misery, suffering and death to millions of the world's inhabitants; they sometimes have qualms. These qualms are jeered at by their peers as "a failure of nerve". After a bout with their psychiatrists, they return to their work with renewed gusto, with no further digression of pity for "the little people" who are to be their victims.

It should be noted, according to Eustace Mullins, that the same all-powerful names, the same closed shop responsible for the foundation of the Federal Reserve System, still manage the world's closely interlinked finances, "with profits for themselves but with disastrous results for everyone else".

Next we jump to Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, 1944, and the first United Nations International Monetary Conference. It hammered out the final agreement for the post-war New World Order under which in due course there would be a further massive shift in power out of the hands of nation states and democratic governments and into the hands of banks and transnational corporations. William Pitt, more than two centuries ago, summarised what has taken place: "Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it" - a dictum which is more generally known from Lord Acton's statement of 1887; "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

The Bretton Woods conference also structured Anglo-American hegemony over world oil supplies and led to the creation of the all-powerful International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) which, under the control of the US Federal Reserve System, since then, deliberately and ruthlessly, have put most of the so-called Third World into extreme debt. It has been said that the WB and IMF "have arguably done more harm to more people than any other non-military institutions in history." As Jesse Jackson put it in 1993: "They no longer use bullets and ropes. They use the World Bank and the IMF." Between 1982 and 1990, debtor countries paid back more than $1,300 billion but began the nineties 61 percent more in debt than they were in 1992. Sub-Saharan African debt alone increased by 113 percent." In 1993, for every one pound given in aid, rich nations took back 3 pounds in debt payments. Nigerian writer and environmentalist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, roundly condemned the World Bank's position:

The World Bank has to accept that its real instrument of torture is its insistence on growth, its economic theorising at the expense of human welfare...

The sooner debtor nations realise the political nature of the World Bank, the sooner they will be able to face the bogus economic theories of the Bank with an equivalent weapon -people's power.

Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists were hanged on 10 November 1995 by Nigeria's dictator, General Abacha. In case the message is not clear, the 1988 registration of former senior IMF economist Davison Budhoo, should leave no doubt. Budhoo resigned in disgust, hoping, he said, to "wash my hands of the blood of millions of poor and starving people."

The IMF was never designed to help the Third World or end poverty. It was established by the Bretton Woods conference of 1944 to restore economic and financial order to the Western world. There was no element of compassion for humanity in its formulation. The Fund's aim is first and foremost to assure the interests of developed countries. We make or break human life every day of every year as probably no other force has ever done in the past or will ever do again.

Coupled with these two exceptionally powerful organisations are the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), formulated shortly after the WB and IMF, and finally signed in 1993, and the new World Trade Organisation (WTO) of 1995. This quadruplet is now able to enforce throughout the world the doctrine of corporate libertarianism - a transnational corporate bill of rights - and God help any country that gets in the way.

The Secret Agenda

David Icke's book "...and the Truth Shall Set You Free" lists a summary of the basic themes of the Elite's plan following World War II:

• To introduce a world authority called the United Nations (with associated bodies like the World Health Organisation), which could evolve into a world government with powers to control the lives of everyone on the planet.
• To continue to cause conflicts across the world and to use the fear of the Soviet Union to massively increase spending on nuclear weapons and 'conventional' weapons, thus adding to the terror of nuclear war and demands for global security. To set up an American-European defence alliance (which was called the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)) and a United Nations 'peace' keeping force, which, through the engineering of conflicts, would eventually be fused together to form the world army.
• To create three 'free trade' regions in Europe, the Americas, and Asia, which would be sold to people initially as merely economic groupings. Gradually, however, these would be evolved into a centralised political unions, with one central bank and one currency. These would be stepping-stones to the introduction of the same institutions on a global scale. The European Economic Community, now the European Union, was the first of these, but the other two are now underway also.
• To advance the control of public opinion and to research and expand the understanding of how to manipulate the human psyche, individually and collectively. Today this agenda includes the microchipping of people and their permanent connection to a global computer.
• To create a welfare state while destroying alternatives to the economic system and, when the desired dependency had been achieved, to dismantle that state welfare support, so creating a vast underclass without help or hope.
• To make fantastic amounts of money in the course of realising all these ambitions via the Elite-controlled companies and banks.
• To continually add to the debt burden of people, business, and state, thus increasing the control exerted over them.

The approach which was followed to hoodwink public thinking was painfully predictable, but highly effective: Discredit the nation state. This was laid out during the War by the German economist and refugee, Hans Heymann, who produced his Plan for Permanent Peace using funds given by... the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

- Your Bush Shall Burn -
It is not only God that will be Blair's judge over Iraq

His cravenly pro-US policy on the Middle East misunderstood Bush's real agenda and resulted in catastrophic failure

By Avi Shlaim

Guardian

Tony Blair's opposition to an immediate ceasefire in the Lebanon war last summer precipitated his downfall. Now that he has announced the date of his departure from Downing Street, his entire Middle East record needs to be placed under an uncompromising lens.

Blair came to office with no experience of, and virtually no interest in, foreign affairs, and ended by taking his country to war five times. Blair boasts that his foreign policy was guided by the doctrine of liberal interventionism. But the war in Iraq is the antithesis of liberal intervention. It is an illegal, immoral and unnecessary war, a war undertaken on a false prospectus and without sanction from the UN.

Blair's entire record in the Middle East is one of catastrophic failure. He used to portray Britain as a bridge between the two sides of the Atlantic. By siding with America against Europe on Iraq, however, he helped to destroy the bridge. Preserving the special relationship with America was the be all and end all of Blair's foreign policy. He presumably supported the Bush administration over Iraq in the hope of exercising influence on its policy. Yet there is no evidence that he exercised influence on any significant policy issue. His support for the neoconservative agenda on Iraq was uncritical and unconditional.

Blair failed to understand that America's really special relationship is with Israel, not Britain. Every time that George Bush had to choose between Blair and Ariel Sharon, he chose the latter. Blair's special relationship with Bush was a one-way street: Blair made all the concessions and got nothing tangible in return.

American policy towards the Middle East was doomed to failure from the start, and the end result has been to saddle Britain with a share of the responsibility for this failure. The premise behind American policy was that Iraq was the main issue in Middle East politics and that regime change in Baghdad would weaken the Palestinians and force them to accept a settlement on Israel's terms. The road to Jerusalem, it was argued, went through Baghdad. This premise was wrong. Iraq was a non-issue; it did not pose a threat to any of its neighbours, and certainly not to America or Britain. The real issue was Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories and America's support for Israel in its savage colonial war against the Palestinian people.

When seeking the approval of the Commons for the war, Blair pledged that after Iraq was disarmed, he and his American friends would seek a solution to the Palestine problem. He has utterly failed to deliver on this promise.

True, Blair was the driving force behind the "road map" that envisaged the emergence of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2005. But Sharon wrecked the road map. In return for the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, Sharon exacted a written American agreement to Israel's retention of the major settlement blocs on the West Bank. Blair publicly endorsed the nefarious Sharon-Bush pact. This was the most egregious British betrayal of the Palestinians since the Balfour declaration of 1917.

Blair and Bush have also betrayed the Iraqi people. To begin with, there was much brave rhetoric about bringing democracy to Iraq and turning it into a model for the rest of the Arab world. But the rhetoric was empty. The neoconservatives who drove American policy were interested in overthrowing Saddam Hussein and in nothing else.

The allied invasion of Iraq was not an isolated episode but part of the so-called global war on terror. But the overthrow of the Ba'ath regime in Iraq only exacerbated the problem of terrorism. The invasion of Iraq has given a powerful boost to al-Qaida and its confederates by damaging Britain's reputation and radicalising its young Muslims. The London bombs may not have been a direct result of the Iraq war - but they are indisputably a part of the blowback.

What we have in Iraq today is chronic instability, an incipient civil war, endemic violence and anarchy, an upsurge of terrorist activity of every kind, and a national insurgency to which the allies have no answer. The neocons did not bother to plan for postwar reconstruction. Occupation was accompanied by devastation and destruction on a massive scale and a civilian death toll estimated by one source at 655,000.

The allies pride themselves on having brought democracy to the Iraqi people, but they have failed in the primary duty of any government: to provide security for the civilian population. The upshot is that America and its pillion passenger in the "war against terror" are now embroiled in a vicious, protracted and unwinnable conflict.

Blair has the audacity to say that God will be his judge over the Iraq war. This is a curious attitude for a democratic politician to adopt. History will surely pass a harsh judgment on Blair. He has the worst record on the Middle East of any British prime minister in the past century, infinitely worse than that of Anthony Eden, who at least had the decency to accept responsibility for the Suez debacle.

Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at St Antony's College, Oxford, and author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.

avi.shlaim@st-antonys.oxford.ac.uk

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007



CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

Patriotism

AMERICA'S NEW GENERATION OF LEADERSHIP

SGT. KEVIN BENDERMAN 

Why are you a patriot only if you believe we need to have war to determine our national identity?

We have allowed a group of people who want to use our military and economic resources on an ill-begotten war of choice to convince a lot of us that we are not patriotic if we do not believe everything they say about this war.  I want you to read the following mission statement and then take a good look at the names below this statement.

June 3, 1997

"American foreign and defense policy is adrift.  Conservatives have criticized the incoherent policies of the Clinton Administration.  They have also resisted isolationist impulses from within their own ranks.  But conservatives have not confidently advanced a strategic vision of America's role in the world.  They have not set forth guiding principles for American foreign policy.  They have allowed differences over tactics to obscure potential agreement on strategic objectives.  And they have not fought for a defense budget that would maintain American security and advance American interests in the new century. 

We aim to change this.  We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership.  As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world's preeminent power.  Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievements of past decades?  Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?  We are in danger of squandering the opportunity and failing the challenge.  We are living off the capital -- both the military investments and the foreign policy achievements -- built up by past administrations.  Cuts in foreign affairs and defense spending, inattention to the tools of statecraft, and inconstant leadership are making it increasingly difficult to sustain American influence around the world.  And the promise of short-term commercial benefits threatens to override strategic considerations.  As a consequence, we are jeopardizing the nation's ability to meet present threats and to deal with potentially greater challenges that lie ahead. 

We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan Administration's success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities.  Of course, the United States must be prudent in how it exercises its power.  But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership or the costs that are associated with its exercise.  America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.  If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests.  The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire.  The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership.  Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today.  Here are four consequences:

- we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;
- we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;
- we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;
- we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity and our principles.

Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today.  But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.

Persian Gulf

In the decade since the end of the Cold War, the Persian Gulf and the surrounding region has witnessed a geometric increase in the presence of U.S. armed forces, peaking above 500,000 troops during Operation Desert Storm, but rarely falling below 20,000 in the intervening years.  In Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other neighboring states, roughly 5,000 airmen and a large and varied Fleet of Air Force aircraft patrol the skies of Operation Southern Watch, often complemented by Navy aircraft from carriers in the Gulf and, during the strikes reacting to Saddam Hussein's periodic provocations, cruise missiles from Navy surface vessels and submarines.  Flights from Turkey under Northern Watch also involve substantial forces, and indeed more often result in Combat actions.  After eight years of no-fly-zone operations, there is little reason to anticipate that the U.S. air presence in the region should diminish significantly as long as Saddam Hussein remains in power.  Although Saudi domestic sensibilities demand that the forces based in the Kingdom nominally remain rotational forces, it has become apparent that this is now a semi-permanent mission.  From an American perspective, the value of such bases would endure even should Saddam pass from the scene.  Over the long term, Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has.  And even should U.S.-Iranian relations improve, retaining forward-based forces in the region would still be an essential element in U.S. security strategy given the longstanding American interests in the region."

Elliott Abrams;  Gary Bauer;  William J. Bennett;  Jeb Bush;  Dick Cheney;  Eliot A. Cohen; Midge Decter;  Paula Dobriansky;  Steve Forbes;  Aaron Friedberg;  Francis Fukuyama;  Frank Gaffney;  Fred C. Ikle;  Donald Kagan;  Zalmay Khalilzad;  I. Lewis Libby;  Norman Podhoretz; Dan Quayle;  Peter W. Rodman;  Stephen P. Rosen;  Henry S. Row;  Donald Rumsfeld;  Vin Weber;  George Weigel;  Paul Wolfowitz.
(Project for the New American Century - PNAC)

Both of these statements should give you a clearer picture of just what these people are up to.  These people, in their desire to rule the world, are getting good Americans killed who have served this country to defend it.

I have to ask; is this the way we want to handle ourselves as Americans?  Is this what we really want for our nation?

When I enlisted in the military it was to defend the ideals of the Constitution and country from attack by anyone who would attempt to violate our constitutional rights and our home.  This current administration has done more to undermine the foundation of our country than any made-up terrorists ever could. 

The American people need to realize they have the authority to run this country and the government workers, to include the president and congress, are the employees of the citizenry of the United States.  This authority is given to them by the United States Constitution;

Amendment 9 - Construction of Constitution.  Ratified December 15, 1791.  The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People.  Ratified December 15, 1791.  Note: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The federal and state governments are, by the law of this land, subservient to the people of the United States.  The people we hire to manage our business have managed to make most of us believe they are the ones who know better than the rest of us and that we should let them guide us "lesser beings" because they know what is good for us.  I challenge Americans to stand up and take back their responsibility for running this country from the career politicians and demand they run the country within the laws of the Unites States Constitution.  If we stand by and let these people pervert our country then we have no right to complain about what they are doing.

It is a sad day in America when more people vote for the contestants of American Idol than in the last presidential election.  Everyone seems to want to have all the benefits of being American and none of the responsibility.  Well, I say you cannot have it both ways, either you accept the responsibility or you should not expect any of the rights.

There seems to be a large segment of our nation who is afraid to do the right thing and I do not understand this about the people of our nation, who have descended from the pioneers who had to face much harder living conditions than we now do.  there are people here who have descended from the slaves and we all know that the slaves had to endure much more harsh conditions than we now do and yet they fought with all of their being to be free of the madness they were faced with.

Are you asking me to believe that modern Americans with all of their conveniences cannot pull themselves up enough to stand up for what is right?  Are we so spoiled and out of touch with what is going on around us that we cannot see when we are being lied to outright?

Are we going to create another committee to talk about what is wrong or are we going to find it within ourselves to stand up and be counted for what we believe?

I, for one, have a much better vision of what we should be in this country and it is nothing like we have allowed ourselves to become in recent history.  I am going to continue to try and prevent our country from getting any worse than it is now.  I may not be able to affect a large scale change, but I am going to do what I can.  How about you, want to help?

Sgt. Kevin Benderman is a US Army veteran who served a combat tour in Iraq and who was recently released from prison after serving over one year for his outspoken opposition to this and all wars of choice.  Please visit www.BendermanDefense.org to learn more.

Kevin may be reached at info@BendermansBridge.org

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

Blueberry Growers

Feeling Sting of Honeybee Shortage

Maine blueberry growers expect to pay higher prices for honeybees to pollinate their fields this spring following a die-off of bees across the country.

Maine's blueberry crop requires about 50,000 beehives for pollination each year, with most of the hives brought to Maine from other states.

Spencer Allen of Allen's Wild Maine Blueberries in Blue Hill said he usually imports about 1,200 hives for 800 acres of crops.

Allen said his bee wrangler's bees are doing OK, but the national shortage of honeybee pollinators is causing prices to go up. The price he will pay has risen from about $50 to $70 -- a 40 percent increase -- for each hive placed in his fields, usually in mid-May.

"That adds up with 1,200 hives," Allen said.

Commercial beekeepers in 26 states have reported that they have lost between 50 and 90 percent of their bees to an unidentified disease. Scientists say the country's food supply might be at risk if die-off continues unabated.

Maine beekeepers have several thousand hives that are kept in the state year-round to pollinate apple orchards, strawberry fields, and other crops. But there are not enough to cover Maine's 60,000 acres of blueberry fields.

Marc Plaisted of Pittston has raised honeybees for 20 years and supplies hives to a dozen farmers for pollination.

He thinks the price could be $90 or more per hive by mid-May. Many migratory beekeepers are being lured to California, he said, where almond growers are paying as much as $200 a hive.

But Plaisted's bigger concern is making sure the disease does not come to Maine.

"We aren't seeing this disease here yet, but I'm very concerned about the migratory bees that are brought into Maine," he said. "Who knows what diseases they are bringing in here. If this disease is not here by the end of summer, I'd be very surprised."

Nat Lindquist of Jasper Wyman and Sons of Milbridge, one of the state's largest blueberry companies, said he will import 10,000 hives from seven beekeepers. Lindquist began monitoring the bee kill last fall when his largest supplier began reporting empty hives in Pennsylvania.

That beekeeper has lost more than 1 million bees.

The bees in 2,000 of his 2,900 hives have disappeared -- a 60 percent loss.

"He has assured us that we will have plenty of bees," Lindquist said. "We also want strong hives, and he has assured us of that."