Barack Obama: No Jack Kennedy

Barack Obama: No Jack Kennedy

June 10, 2015

Exclusive: A half century ago – at the peak of the Cold War – President Kennedy appealed to humankind’s better nature in a daring overture to Soviet leaders, a gamble that brought bans on nuclear testing and a safer world, a bravery that President Obama can’t seem to muster, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

By Ray McGovern

Democratic Sen. Lloyd Bentsen’s “you’re no Jack Kennedy” put-down of Republican Sen. Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice presidential debate springs to mind on a day on which I cannot help but compare the character of President Barack Obama to that of John Kennedy, the first President under whom I served in the Army and CIA.

On this day 52 years ago, President John Kennedy gave a landmark speech at American University, appealing for cooperation instead of confrontation with the Soviet Union. Kennedy knew all too well that he was breaking the omerta-like code that dictated demonization of the Soviet leaders. But the stakes could not have been higher – a choice of an endless arms race (with the attendant risk of nuclear conflagration) or bilateral cooperation to curb the most dangerous weapons that jeopardized the future of humankind.

President John F. Kennedy at the American University commencement on June 10, 1963.

Forgoing the anti-Soviet rhetoric that was de rigueur at the time, Kennedy made an urgent appeal to slow down the arms race, and then backed up the rhetoric with a surprise announcement that the U.S. was halting nuclear testing. This daring step terrified those sitting atop the military-industrial complex and, in my opinion, was among the main reasons behind Kennedy’s assassination some five months later.

Kafka-like Persecution of Julian Assange July 31, 2015 by John Pilger

Kafka-like Persecution of Julian Assange

July 31, 2015

In an era when powerful institutions demonize decent people – and the mainstream media joins in, piling on the abuse – legal proceedings have become another Kafka-esque weapon of coercion. Few cases are more troubling than the persecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as John Pilger describes.

By John Pilger

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at a media conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. (Photo credit: New Media Days / Peter Erichsen)

The siege of Knightsbridge is both an emblem of gross injustice and a grueling farce. For three years, a police cordon around the Ecuadorean embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. It has cost £12 million (about $18.7 million). The quarry is an Australian charged with no crime, a refugee whose only security is the room given him by a brave South American country. His “crime” is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war.

The persecution of Julian Assange is about to flare again as it enters a dangerous stage. From Aug. 20, three quarters of the Swedish prosecutor’s case against Assange regarding sexual misconduct in 2010 will disappear as the statute of limitations expires. At the same time Washington’s obsession with Assange and WikiLeaks has intensified. Indeed, it is vindictive American power that offers the greatest threat – as Chelsea Manning and those still held in Guantanamo can attest.

The Americans are pursuing Assange because WikiLeaks exposed their epic crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale killing of tens of thousands of civilians, which they covered up, and their contempt for sovereignty and international law, as demonstrated vividly in their leaked diplomatic cables.

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Ron Paul: "All Wars Are Paid For Through Debasing The Currency"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/31/2015 21:15 -0400

 

Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

And at some point, all empires crumble on their own excess, stretched to the breaking point by over-extending a military industrial complex with sophisticated equipment, hundreds of bases in as many countries, and never-ending wars that wrack up mind boggling levels of debt. This cost has been magnified by the relationship it shares with the money system, who have common owners and shareholders behind the scenes.

As the hidden costs of war and the enormity of the black budget swell to record levels, the true total of its price comes in the form of the distortion it has caused in other dimensions of life; the numbers have been so thoroughly fudged for so long now, as Wall Street banks offset laundering activities and indulge in derivatives and quasi-official market rigging, the Federal Reserve policy holds the noble lie together.

Ron Paul told RT:

Seen from the proper angle, the dollar is revealed to be a paper thin instrument of warfare, a ripple effect on the people, a twisted illusion, a weaponized money now engaged in a covert economic warfare that threatens their very livelihood.

The former Congressman and presidential candidate explained:

Why Russia Shut Down NED Fronts by Robert Parry

Why Russia Shut Down NED Fronts

July 30, 2015

Exclusive: The neocon-flagship Washington Post fired a propaganda broadside at President Putin for shutting down the Russian activities of the National Endowment for Democracy, but left out key facts like NED’s U.S. government funding, its quasi-CIA role, and its plans for regime change in Moscow, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

The Washington Post’s descent into the depths of neoconservative propaganda – willfully misleading its readers on matters of grave importance – apparently knows no bounds as was demonstrated with two deceptive articles regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin and why his government is cracking down on “foreign agents.”

If you read the Post’s editorial on Wednesday and a companion op-ed by National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, you would have been led to believe that Putin is delusional, paranoid and “power mad” in his concern that outside money funneled into non-governmental organizations represents a threat to Russian sovereignty.

Russian President Vladimir Putin laying a wreath at Russia’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on May 8, 2014, as part of the observance of the World War II Victory over Germany.

The Post and Gershman were especially outraged that the Russians have enacted laws requiring NGOs financed from abroad and seeking to influence Russian policies to register as “foreign agents” – and that one of the first funding operations to fall prey to these tightened rules was Gershman’s NED.

The Post’s editors wrote that Putin’s “latest move, announced Tuesday, is to declare the NED an ‘undesirable’ organization under the terms of a law that Mr. Putin signed in May. The law bans groups from abroad who are deemed a ‘threat to the foundations of the constitutional system of the Russian Federation, its defense capabilities and its national security.’

“The charge against the NED is patently ridiculous. The NED’s grantees in Russia last year ran the gamut of civil society. They advocated transparency in public affairs, fought corruption and promoted human rights, freedom of information and freedom of association, among other things. All these activities make for a healthy democracy but are seen as threatening from the Kremlin’s ramparts. …

“The new law on ‘undesirables’ comes in addition to one signed in 2012 that gave authorities the power to declare organizations ‘foreign agents’ if they engaged in any kind of politics and receive money from abroad. The designation, from the Stalin era, implies espionage.”

But there are several salient facts that the Post’s editors surely know but don’t want you to know. The first is that NED is a U.S. government-funded organization created in 1983 to do what the Central Intelligence Agency previously had done in financing organizations inside target countries to advance U.S. policy interests and, if needed, help in “regime change.”

The Greek Coup: Liquidity as a Weapon of Coercion by Ellen Brown

The Greek Coup: Liquidity as a Weapon of Coercion

Posted on July 30, 2015 by Ellen Brown

“My father made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Luca Brasi held a gun to his head and my father assured him that either his brains, or his signature, would be on the contract.”                                                                                                                                                 — The Godfather (1972)

In the modern global banking system, all banks need a credit line with the central bank in order to be part of the payments system. Choking off that credit line was a form of blackmail the Greek government couldn’t refuse. 

Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis is now being charged with treason for exploring the possibility of an alternative payment system in the event of a Greek exit from the euro. The irony of it all was underscored by Raúl Ilargi Meijer, who opined in a July 27^th blog:

The fact that these things were taken into consideration doesn’t mean Syriza was planning a coup . . . . If you want a coup, look instead at the Troika having wrestled control over Greek domestic finances. That’s a coup if you ever saw one.

Let’s have an independent commission look into how on earth it is possible that a cabal of unelected movers and shakers gets full control over the entire financial structure of a democratically elected eurozone member government. By all means, let’s see the legal arguments for this.

So how was that coup pulled off?

We’re All Greeks Now - 07.22.15 - audio interviw to Dr. Ellen Brown

We’re All Greeks Now - 07.22.15

It isn’t just the Greeks, or the Cypriots, or the Irish, or the Icelanders suffering the price of financial terrorism – the extractive demands of global central banks on display in Greece are actively draining the marrow of impoverished communities the world over. 

Ellen speaks with author and expert Stephen Lendman about the financial powers forcibly overruling Greek democracy, and their intentions to do so everywhere.  

Co-host Walt McRee speaks with an official of one California county government pushing back against convicted bank felons, and later discusses new human evolutionary awareness about our relationship with money with philosopher Robert Bows.  

And Matt Stannard discusses our myths about “the Great American Entrepreneur” on the Public Banking Report.

Ellen Brown, author, attorney, speaker, activist

Ellen Brown is the founder of the Public Banking Institute and the author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles. She developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In the best-selling Web of Debt, she turned those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She showed how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back.

In The Public Bank Solution, the 2013 sequel, she traces the evolution of two banking models that have competed historically, public and private; and explores contemporary public banking systems globally.

Greece – And the Horror of Europe By Peter Koenig

 

Greece– And the Horror of Europe

By Peter Koenig

July 31, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - - Hellas, Greece - According to UNHCR about 50 million refugees are on the move every day on our globe. This is most likely an understatement, as this figure doesn’t take into account what takes place in the almost hermetically closed-off Central Africa, Congo, Zaïre, where western corporations are exploiting for a pittance and with millions of slaves precious metals, uranium, hydrocarbons and rare earths – and where millions have died over the past ten years, by butcher regimes supported and armed by the west – and where millions are on the run.

The real figure of refugees on the run is easily 60 to 65 million; forced migrants in temporary camps, in transit to nowhere and under the most horrible human and abject hygienic conditions, no running water, hardly any medical attention, sparse food if any. At least a quarter of them originate in the Middle East.

And most, if not all of these tens of millions, are fleeing countries destroyed directly or by proxy by the US empire and its European vassals. They try to escape as their homes have been burned to the ground, their families in many cases decimated. They are under constant threat of being bombed, by the ISIS and sorts, all fully funded by Washington, the EU, Turkey, the Saudis, Qatar – and militarily supported and trained by the CIA, Pentagon and NATO. This is not new. It has been known for years. But known to whom? The truth does still not penetrate the brain of most people. – Why? – Because the west is totally brainwashed with lies and distortions by its own corporate presstitute media.

I fully subscribe to Andre Vltchek’s  plea to the world – we must demand that at least public places like airports, railway stations, hotel lobbies switch channels from the bought rightwing, CNNs and BBCs of this world –to TeleSUR, CCTV, PressTV, RT and other emerging truth news channels. People must wake up. A growth swell of truth must engulf our western society – if we have any chance to be salvaged from ourselves.

When people are confused and ask in desperation – how to stop this flow of refugees? – The answer is simple:

stop the wars and conflicts, stop NATO; and for those who are NATO members like Greece and Turkey – quit NATO! – Stop the eternal war machine; stop the western business of killing – launch truth news against the propaganda lies, destroy them economically…