Monday, April 30, 2012

"Wiped Off The Map" - The Rumor of the Century


Across the world, a dangerous rumor has spread that could have catastrophic implications. According to legend, Iran's President has threatened to destroy Israel, or, to quote the misquote, "Israel must be wiped off the map". Contrary to popular belief, this statement was never made, as the following article will prove.  

     BACKGROUND:

On Tuesday, October 25th, 2005 at the Ministry of Interior conference hall in Tehran, newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a speech at a program, reportedly attended by thousands, titled "The World Without Zionism". Large posters surrounding him displayed this title prominently in English, obviously for the benefit of the international press. Below the poster's title was a slick graphic depicting an hour glass containing planet Earth at its top. Two small round orbs representing the United States and Israel are shown falling through the hour glass' narrow neck and crashing to the bottom. 

Before we get to the infamous remark, it's important to note that the "quote" in question was itself a quote— they are the words of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Revolution. Although he quoted Khomeini to affirm his own position on Zionism, the actual words belong to Khomeini and not Ahmadinejad. Thus, Ahmadinejad has essentially been credited (or blamed) for a quote that is not only unoriginal, but represents a viewpoint already in place well before he ever took office.  

     THE ACTUAL QUOTE:

    So what did Ahmadinejad actually say? To quote his exact words in farsi:

  "Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."

That passage will mean nothing to most people, but one word might ring a bell: rezhim-e. It is the word "Regime", pronounced just like the English word with an extra "eh" sound at the end. Ahmadinejad did not refer to Israel the country or Israel the land mass, but the Israeli regime. This is a vastly significant distinction, as one cannot wipe a regime off the map. Ahmadinejad does not even refer to Israel by name, he instead uses the specific phrase "rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods" (regime occupying Jerusalem).

So this raises the question.. what exactly did he want "wiped from the map"? The answer is: nothing. That's because the word "map" was never used. The Persian word for map, "nagsheh", is not contained anywhere in his original farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase "wipe out" ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran's President threatened to "wipe Israel off the map", despite never having uttered the words "map", "wipe out" or even "Israel".


     THE PROOF:

  The full quote translated directly to English:

     "The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".

  Word by word translation:

    Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).


    Here is the full transcript of the speech in farsi, archived on Ahmadinejad's web site

 
     THE SPEECH AND CONTEXT:

While the false "wiped off the map" extract has been repeated infinitely without verification, Ahmadinejad's actual speech itself has been almost entirely ignored. Given the importance placed on the "map" comment, it would be sensible to present his words in their full context to get a fuller understanding of his position. In fact, by looking at the entire speech, there is a clear, logical trajectory leading up to his call for a "world without Zionism". One may disagree with his reasoning, but critical appraisals are infeasible without first knowing what that reasoning is.

In his speech, Ahmadinejad declares that Zionism is the West's apparatus of political oppression against Muslims. He says the "Zionist regime" was imposed on the Islamic world as a strategic bridgehead to ensure domination of the region and its assets. Palestine, he insists, is the frontline of the Islamic world's struggle with American hegemony, and its fate will have repercussions for the entire Middle East.

Ahmadinejad acknowledges that the removal of America's powerful grip on the region via the Zionists may seem unimaginable to some, but reminds the audience that, as Khomeini predicted, other seemingly invincible empires have disappeared and now only exist in history books. He then proceeds to list three such regimes that have collapsed, crumbled or vanished, all within the last 30 years:

(1) The Shah of Iran- the U.S. installed monarch
(2) The Soviet Union
(3) Iran's former arch-enemy, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein

In the first and third examples, Ahmadinejad prefaces their mention with Khomeini's own words foretelling that individual regime's demise. He concludes by referring to Khomeini's unfulfilled wish: "The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. This statement is very wise". This is the passage that has been isolated, twisted and distorted so famously. By measure of comparison, Ahmadinejad would seem to be calling for regime change, not war.


    THE ORIGIN:

One may wonder: where did this false interpretation originate? Who is responsible for the translation that has sparked such worldwide controversy? The answer is surprising.

The inflammatory "wiped off the map" quote was first disseminated not by Iran's enemies, but by Iran itself. The Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran's official propaganda arm, used this phrasing in the English version of some of their news releases covering the World Without Zionism conference. International media including the BBC, Al Jazeera, Time magazine and countless others picked up the IRNA quote and made headlines out of it without verifying its accuracy, and rarely referring to the source. Iran's Foreign Minister soon attempted to clarify the statement, but the quote had a life of its own. Though the IRNA wording was inaccurate and misleading, the media assumed it was true, and besides, it made great copy.

Amid heated wrangling over Iran's nuclear program, and months of continuous, unfounded accusations against Iran in an attempt to rally support for preemptive strikes against the country, the imperialists had just been handed the perfect raison d'être to invade. To the war hawks, it was a gift from the skies.
  
It should be noted that in other references to the conference, the IRNA's translation changed. For instance, "map" was replaced with "earth". In some articles it was "The Qods occupier regime should be eliminated from the surface of earth", or the similar "The Qods occupying regime must be eliminated from the surface of earth". The inconsistency of the IRNA's translation should be evidence enough of the unreliability of the source, particularly when transcribing their news from Farsi into the English language. 

    THE REACTION: 

The mistranslated "wiped off the map" quote attributed to Iran's President has been spread worldwide, repeated thousands of times in international media, and prompted the denouncements of numerous world leaders. Virtually every major and minor media outlet has published or broadcast this false statement to the masses. Big news agencies such as The Associated Press and Reuters refer to the misquote, literally, on an almost daily basis. 

Following news of Iran's remark, condemnation was swift. British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed "revulsion" and implied that it might be necessary to attack Iran. U.N. chief Kofi Annan cancelled his scheduled trip to Iran due to the controversy. Ariel Sharon demanded that Iran be expelled from the United Nations for calling for Israel's destruction. Shimon Peres, more than once, threatened to wipe Iran off the map. More recently, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, who has warned that Iran is "preparing another holocaust for the Jewish state" is calling for Ahmadinejad to be tried for war crimes for inciting genocide. 

The artificial quote has also been subject to additional alterations. U.S. officials and media often take the liberty of dropping the "map" reference altogether, replacing it with the more acutely threatening phrase "wipe Israel off the face of the earth". Newspaper and magazine articles dutifully report Ahmadinejad has "called for the destruction of Israel", as do senior officials in the United States government.

President George W. Bush said the comments represented a "specific threat" to destroy Israel. In a March 2006 speech in Cleveland, Bush vowed he would resort to war to protect Israel from Iran, because, "..the threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel." Former Presidential advisor Richard Clarke told Australian TV that Iran "talks openly about destroying Israel", and insists, "The President of Iran has said repeatedly that he wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth". In an October 2006 interview with Amy Goodman, former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter referred to Ahmadinejad as "the idiot that comes out and says really stupid, vile things, such as, 'It is the goal of Iran to wipe Israel off the face of the earth' ". The consensus is clear.

Confusing matters further, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pontificates rather than give a direct answer when questioned about the statement, such as in Lally Weymouth's Washington Post interview in September 2006:

Are you really serious when you say that Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth?

We need to look at the scene in the Middle East — 60 years of war, 60 years of displacement, 60 years of conflict, not even a day of peace. Look at the war in Lebanon, the war in Gaza — what are the reasons for these conditions? We need to address and resolve the root problem.

Your suggestion is to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth?

Our suggestion is very clear:... Let the Palestinian people decide their fate in a free and fair referendum, and the result, whatever it is, should be accepted.... The people with no roots there are now ruling the land.

You've been quoted as saying that Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth. Is that your belief?

What I have said has made my position clear. If we look at a map of the Middle East from 70 years ago...

So, the answer is yes, you do believe that it should be wiped off the face of the Earth?

Are you asking me yes or no? Is this a test? Do you respect the right to self-determination for the Palestinian nation? Yes or no? Is Palestine, as a nation, considered a nation with the right to live under humane conditions or not? Let's allow those rights to be enforced for these 5 million displaced people.

The exchange is typical of Ahmadinejad's interviews with the American media. Predictably, both Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes and CNN's Anderson Cooper asked if he wants to "wipe Israel off the map". As usual, the question is thrown back in the reporter's face with his standard "Don't the Palestinians have rights?, etc." retort (which is never directly answered either). Yet he never confirms the "map" comment to be true. This did not prevent Anderson Cooper from referring to earlier portions of his interview after a commercial break and lying, "as he said earlier, he wants Israel wiped off the map". 

Even if every media outlet in the world were to retract the mistranslated quote tomorrow, the major damage has already been done, providing the groundwork for the next phase of disinformation: complete character demonization. Ahmadinejad, we are told, is the next Hitler, a grave threat to world peace who wants to bring about a new Holocaust. According to some detractors, he not only wants to destroy Israel, but after that, he will nuke America, and then Europe! An October 2006 memo titled Words of Hate: Iran's Escalating Threats released by the powerful Israeli lobby group AIPAC opens with the warning, "Ahmadinejad and other top Iranian leaders are issuing increasingly belligerent statements threatening to destroy the United States, Europe and Israel." These claims not only fabricate an unsubstantiated threat, but assume far more power than he actually possesses. Alarmists would be better off monitoring the statements of the ultra-conservative Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who holds the most power in Iran.

As Iran's U.N. Press Officer, M.A. Mohammadi, complained to The Washington Post in a June 2006 letter:

It is not amazing at all, the pick-and-choose approach of highlighting the misinterpreted remarks of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in October and ignoring this month's remarks by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that "We have no problem with the world. We are not a threat whatsoever to the world, and the world knows it. We will never start a war. We have no intention of going to war with any state."

The Israeli government has milked every drop of the spurious quote to its supposed advantage. In her September 2006 address to the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni accused Iran of working to nuke Israel and bully the world. "They speak proudly and openly of their desire to 'wipe Israel off the map.' And now, by their actions, they pursue the weapons to achieve this objective to imperil the region and threaten the world." Addressing the threat in December, a fervent Prime Minister Ehud Olmert inadvertently disclosed that his country already possesses nuclear weapons: "We have never threatened any nation with annihilation. Iran, openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia?"   

    MEDIA IRRESPONSIBILITY: 

On December 13, 2006, more than a year after The World Without Zionism conference, two leading Israeli newspapers, The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz, published reports of a renewed threat from Ahmadinejad. The Jerusalem Post's headline was Ahmadinejad: Israel will be 'wiped out', while Haaretz posted the title Ahmadinejad at Holocaust conference: Israel will 'soon be wiped out'.

Where did they get their information? It turns out that both papers, like most American and western media, rely heavily on write ups by news wire services such as the Associated Press and Reuters as a source for their articles. Sure enough, their sources are in fact December 12th articles by Reuter's Paul Hughes [Iran president says Israel's days are numbered], and the AP's Ali Akbar Dareini [Iran President: Israel Will be wiped out].
  
The first five paragraphs of the Haaretz article, credited to "Haaretz Service and Agencies", are plagiarized almost 100% from the first five paragraphs of the Reuters piece. The only difference is that Haaretz changed "the Jewish state" to "Israel" in the second paragraph, otherwise they are identical.

The Jerusalem Post article by Herb Keinon pilfers from both the Reuters and AP stories. Like Haaretz, it uses the following Ahmadinejad quote without attribution: ["Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out," he added]. Another passage apparently relies on an IRNA report:

"The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom," Ahmadinejad said at Tuesday's meeting with the conference participants in his offices, according to Iran's official news agency, IRNA.  

He said elections should be held among "Jews, Christians and Muslims so the population of Palestine can select their government and destiny for themselves in a democratic manner."

Once again, the first sentence above was wholly plagiarized from the AP article. The second sentence was also the same, except "He called for elections" became "He said elections should be held..".

It gets more interesting.

The quote used in the original AP article and copied in The Jerusalem Post article supposedly derives from the IRNA. If true, this can easily be checked. Care to find out? Go to: 
                          
www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-234/0612134902101231.htm 

     There you will discover the actual IRNA quote was: 

"As the Soviet Union disappeared, the Zionist regime will also vanish and humanity will be liberated".

      Compare this to the alleged IRNA quote reported by the Associated Press:

"The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom".

In the IRNA's actual report, the Zionist regime will vanish just as the Soviet Union disappeared. Vanish. Disappear. In the dishonest AP version, the Zionist regime will be "wiped out". And how will it be wiped out? "The same way the Soviet Union was". Rather than imply a military threat or escalation in rhetoric, this reference to Russia actually validates the intended meaning of Ahmadinejad's previous misinterpreted anti-Zionist statements.

What has just been demonstrated is irrefutable proof of media manipulation and propaganda in action. The AP deliberately alters an IRNA quote to sound more threatening. The Israeli media not only repeats the fake quote but also steals the original authors' words. The unsuspecting public reads this, forms an opinion and supports unnecessary wars of aggression, presented as self defense, based on the misinformation. 

This scenario mirrors the kind of false claims that led to the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq, a war now widely viewed as a catastrophic mistake. And yet the Bush administration and the compliant corporate media continue to marinate in propaganda and speculation about attacking Iraq's much larger and more formidable neighbor, Iran. Most of this rests on the unproven assumption that Iran is building nuclear weapons, and the lie that Iran has vowed to physically destroy Israel. Given its scope and potentially disastrous outcome, all this amounts to what is arguably the rumor of the century.
  
Iran's President has written two rather philosophical letters to America. In his first letter, he pointed out that "History shows us that oppressive and cruel governments do not survive". With this statement, Ahmadinejad has also projected the outcome of his own backwards regime, which will likewise "vanish from the page of time". 

Crowd Chants "Ron Paul" At Alaska State GOP Convention

This is right after the Senator endorses Willard Romney.

I can't wait till Tampa.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Veterans Stand Up For Ron Paul

Ron Paul On Cavuto 4/26/12

Win Or Bitch?

Which would you rather do? Win the nomination for Ron Paul and strike a blow to the marxists, or just sit back, give up and continue to bitch and moan about the loss of our country? I know a lot of people who are kind of once bitten twice shy about how this primary cycle has turned out. But the Truth is, NOTHING like this happened in 2008. Ron Paul's crowds are off the charts now, he raised more money in Q1 of 2012 than almost Newt and Sweatervest combined, but most importantly he is getting delegates.

We learned from 2008, and we all stayed organized and stayed in the fight. We continued to tell everyone we knew about Ron Paul and the message he has brought for decades. I bought his books and distributed them to anyone who was willing to take them, at every conversation I tried to at least slip something in about Ron Paul and I know you all did the same. And this work is now yielding fruits not only in the form of delegates but hundreds of thousands of informed people, truly informed.

Stories come out regularly about the MSM losing viewership by the day, whereas the alternative media is growing exponentially. As Tom Woods said, "we are the toothpaste that won't go back in the tube". Once you know about Ron Paul, and his message you don't think "well maybe I'll vote for Romney if it comes down to it", you think "Romney = Obama and I hate both the goldman sachs backed bastards"

Ron Paul has gotten anywhere from 2-500% more votes this time than in 2008, why? It sure wasn't the MSM talking him up, parading him around the airwaves. They do EVERYTHING they can to slander him, block him, demean him etc. No, Ron Paul got these votes because of us, because I told people, and you told people, and they told people and it snowballed. This snowball isn't going to stop, not until it tears a new one in this marxists babylonian system of enslavement we have.

So do not believe the lie, that Ron Paul "doesn't have a chance", we are seeing this through to Tampa. If you can donate, do it. If you can't, help in other ways, tell EVERYONE you meet, pass out flyers, spam craigslist, youtube and any other popular site, read up on his material so that you can answer peoples questions, volunteer for the campaign and anything else you can dream up but by God do something, do not sit and bitch and moan, fight to win.

Ron Paul Beats Romney In Fundraising In 10 States

SOURCE

Here’s something you hear on cable news all the time: Ron Paul hasn’t won a primary. He hasn’t won a caucus. Sure, he’s stealing a delegate at state conventions here and there, because his forces are well organized. But he’s lost. He should drop out and settle for an early-afternoon speaking slot at the Republican convention.

Here’s something you don’t hear: Representative Paul actually beat Mitt Romney in 10 states. In a manner of speaking.

What are we talking about? Money, that’s what. Political pros are fond of talking about the “money primary,” in which candidates compete, not for votes, but for campaign donations. It’s a crucial part of any nomination race, because a candidate without cash is like a shark that’s not moving forward, if you understand what we’re saying.

Look at Newt Gingrich: Don’t you think that deep down he really doesn’t want to drop out? But his campaign has run up millions of dollars in debt. He’s a sinking shark. (He loves zoos and aquariums, too, so he’d understand the reference.)

Paul, on the other hand, is still swimming. In the money primary context, the GOP nomination race has almost always been a two-man contest between Mr. Romney and Paul. Through the first quarter of 2012, Romney raised $87 million and Paul $37 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Mr. Gingrich’s soon-to-be-extinct effort garnered $22 million, while Rick Santorum raised $21 million before he dropped out.

What’s more, Paul currently has about $1.7 million cash on hand, and debts of $0. Gingrich has $1.2 million cash on hand, and debts of $4.3 million, according to the latest public figures.

OK, OK, presumptive nominee Romney has $10 million in the bank, no debts, and a general election looming on the horizon. But before we pivot toward November, let’s remember that Paul outraised Romney in 10 states, including some that will be key battlegrounds in the fall, according to figures compiled by Eric Ostermeier, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey Center for the Study of Politics and Governance.

“Ron Paul leads Mitt Romney in large donor itemized fundraising in 10 states, representing all four geographical regions from the northeast (Maine), the South (Arkansas), the Midwest (Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin) and the West (Alaska, Hawaii, New Mexico),” writes Mr. Ostermeier on his Smart Politics blog.

If small-donor contributions were rolled into the figures, it is likely Paul would have won the money primary in a few other states, such as Vermont, Delaware, and Montana, Ostermeier writes.

Of course, Romney had a big cash lead in rich states such as New York and California. That’s how he ended up with all those tens of millions of campaign simoleons. But Paul did beat Romney somewhere, in something. You can take it to the bank.

Business Insider: Actually, Ron Paul Is Secretly Winning A Lot More Delegates Than You Think

SOURCE

Mitt Romney may have all but locked up the Republican nomination with his victories in the East Coast primaries this week, but Ron Paul and his army of acolytes aren't ready to give up the fight just yet.

As the rest of the political world's attention shifts to the general election, Paul is still quietly amassing delegates at district and county conventions, and is now poised to take a real bite — or at least a big nibble — out of Romney's delegate total.

In just the last week, Paul locked up 49 delegates, including five in Pennsylvania and four in Rhode Island, two states thought to be firmly on Romney's turf. In Minnesota, Paul won 20 of the 24 delegates awarded at last weekend's district caucuses, an impressive sweep that guarantees that Paul will control a majority of the state's delegation at the Republican National Convention.

And despite staunch opposition from the state Republican Party, Paul took 20 of the 40 delegates awarded in Missouri last weekend, according to campaign chairman Jesse Benton.

In at least five other states — Colorado, Nevada, Iowa, Washington, and Maine — Paul has done remarkably well at county and district conventions, and his supporters are expected to win a big chunk of the RNC delegates at the state conventions later this spring.

"We are very pleased with the results," Benton told Business Insider. "We still have a long way to go, but we've done very, very well at the county caucuses and district conventions and that bodes well for our strength when we get to the state conventions. Now we need to keep our nose to the grindstone."

Even Rick Santorum, who earlier in the race accused Paul of shilling for Romney, acknowledged the Texas Congressman's impressive organization this week, telling CNN's Piers Morgan that "Ron Paul is working the delegates hard."

In a surprising twist, a lot of Paul's recent success can actually be attributed to Santorum's decision to suspend his campaign earlier this month. In many places, Santorum supporters have banded together with Paul organizers in an attempt to deny Romney delegates.

In Colorado, for example, Santorum supporters have bonded with their Paul counterparts over a shared skepticism of Romney's conservative values. Although the Colorado GOP won't select its RNC delegates until the state convention next month, Paul organizers have gotten many of Santorum's pledged delegates to commit to supporting Paul over Romney.

"In Colorado, there is a real anti-Establishment sense — they want to send a very conservative delegation to the national convention," Benton told BI. "We're fighting it out, and we think there are enough Santorum delegates that are sympathetic to Ron Paul who will come over to us."

In Washington, Santorum's county caucus organizer sent an open letter to his fellow supporters urging them to vote for Paul's delegates rather than Romney's.

Here's an excerpt of the letter, obtained by Business Insider:

Romney wants everybody to quit. Quitting may be his solution when his back is up to the wall, but it's not what we want from our leaders. Our country has it's back up against the wall! We need principled fighters and not a pretty boy in a suit. We nominate Romney and it's the equivalent of making him the starting quarterback because he simply looks good in the uniform. He's a defensive coordinators dream. The mere fact he wins in the same places liberals do in the general election says a lot.

At some point, and it might as well be now, people are going to reign back power from party leaders, unite and actually make something like a Paul/Santorum unity slate work. As I see it, it's the only way to balance power, restore it back to the people and take it away from big money.

Those against such an alliance, especially elected state delegates, might want to address future problems and complaints concerning government to the person in the mirror. I fail to see the logic in people not trusting such an arrangement that both Paul and Santorum's people have agreed to, yet they'll trust the same people running the party for years that have helped bring us to this junction in history.

That Santorum's supporters are taking a second look at Ron Paul rather than vote for Romney's delegates is an indication that the former Massachusetts governor still has major problems with his party's Republican base.

"The plurality of them just don't want to vote for Romney," Doug Wead, a senior advisor to the Paul campaign, told Business Insider. “A lot of people are upset that Romney has not reached out to them at all. [They feel like] 'Why in the hell should we support him when he’s not asking for our support or doing a single thing to get it."

Both Wead and Benton concede that it would be difficult — if not impossible — to deny Romney the delegate majority he needs to win the nomination. The goal now, Benton told BI, is "to win as many delegates as we possibly can."

"We want to have a strong, respectful presence that says 'We are here, we are are going to participate, and we are ready to talk about the party platform with you if you take our issues seriously," he said. "We're going to send a message that the liberty wing of the Republican party is strong, and that it isn't going anywhere."

The Romney campaign declined to comment on Paul's delegate wins. But if Paul continues his hot streak, the presumptive nominees might not be able to ignore the libertarian iconoclast and his army of delegates by the time the national convention rolls around.

Q1 2012 Debt To GDP

Presented without much commentary, because little is necessary: the only ratio that matters for the US economy, the change in US public debt ($359.1 billion) and US GDP ($142.4) in the first quarter, hit 2.52x and rising.

The numbers are all the more dire considering consumption makes up roughly 70% of GDP.


RT: Tasered To Death

Rachel Madcow "I Think Ron Paul Just Won Iowa" 4/23/12

Romney Is The SAME As Obama

I often hear people say "a vote for Ron Paul is a vote for Obama." Well I have news for you a vote for Romney is a vote for Obama because Romney and Obama ARE NO DIFFERENT.


Romney = Obama by TruthInOurTime

RAMZPAUL: Matthew Owens, Obama and Circles

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Paul Craig Roberts On RT's Capital Account 4/19/12

Stephen Leeb On RT's Capital Account 4/17/12

Suspect: I Beat Up White Man Because I Am Mad About Trayvon Martin Case




Maywood, Ill. - Alton L. Hayes III, a west suburban man charged with a hate crime, told police he was so upset about the Trayvon Martin case in Florida that he beat up a white man early Tuesday.

Hayes and a 15-year-old Chicago boy walked up behind the 19-year-old man victim and pinned his arms to his side, police said. Hayes, 18, then picked up a large tree branch, pointed it at the man and said, “Empty your pockets, white boy.”

The two allegedly rifled through the victim’s pockets, then threw him to the ground and punched him “numerous times” in the head and back before running away, police said. Hayes and the boy are black; the victim is white.

After being arrested, Hayes told police he was upset by the Trayvon Martin case and beat the man up because he was white, Cook County State’s Attorney’s office spokeswoman Tandra Simonton said, citing court records.

Martin, 17, was fatally shot Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla., by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who was charged April 11 with second-degree murder. Zimmerman is Hispanic, while Martin was black.

Hayes, 18 of the 1200 block of North Woodbine Avenue in Oak Park, was charged with attempted robbery, aggravated battery and a hate crime, all felonies, Oak Park police Detective Cmdr. Ladon Reynolds said.

Hayes was ordered held on $80,000 bond and remained in the Cook County Jail on Friday. He will next appear in court May 11. The boy was referred to juvenile court.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Ron Paul Leaves Others “In the Dust” in Military Donations

It’s no secret that those employed by the armed forces have been leaning in favor of someone considered something of a political outlier: Ron Paul.

Now, a review by Human Events of the latest campaign donation reports shows that financial support from that sector has intensified to such a degree that Paul has left the other candidates, as well as President Barack Obama, in the dust…

As of Sept. 30, 2011, Paul had received $95,567 from members of the military, edging out President Barack Obama’s $72,616, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. By Feb. 29, that lead had more than doubled to $315,109 compared to Obama’s $148,308.

The closest runner-up to Paul in the Republican race is Romney, who reported $13,300 in military-related donations as of Sept. 30, and $36,108 from those employed by the military as of Feb. 29.

In contrast, Paul received more than $220,000 from military donors from October to February…

Data Mining You

 SOURCE

By Tom Engelhardt

April 03, 2012 "Tom Dispatch" -- I was out of the country only nine days, hardly a blink in time, but time enough, as it happened, for another small, airless room to be added to the American national security labyrinth. On March 22nd, Attorney General Eric Holder and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Jr. signed off on new guidelines allowing the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), a post-9/11 creation, to hold on to information about Americans in no way known to be connected to terrorism -- about you and me, that is -- for up to five years. (Its previous outer limit was 180 days.) This, Clapper claimed, “will enable NCTC to accomplish its mission more practically and effectively.”

Joseph K., that icon of single-lettered anonymity from Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, would undoubtedly have felt right at home in Clapper’s Washington. George Orwell would surely have had a few pungent words to say about those anodyne words “practically and effectively,” not to speak of “mission.”

For most Americans, though, it was just life as we’ve known it since September 11, 2001, since we scared ourselves to death and accepted that just about anything goes, as long as it supposedly involves protecting us from terrorists. Basic information or misinformation, possibly about you, is to be stored away for five years -- or until some other attorney general and director of national intelligence think it’s even more practical and effective to keep you on file for 10 years, 20 years, or until death do us part -- and it hardly made a ripple.

If Americans were to hoist a flag designed for this moment, it might read “Tread on Me” and use that classic illustration of the boa constrictor swallowing an elephant from Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. That, at least, would catch something of the absurdity of what the National Security Complex has decided to swallow of our American world.

Oh, and in those nine days abroad, a new word surfaced on my horizon, one just eerie and ugly enough for our new reality: yottabyte. Thank National Security Agency (NSA) expert James Bamford for that. He wrote a piece for Wired magazine on a super-secret, $2 billion, one-million-square-foot data center the NSA is building in Bluffdale, Utah. Focused on data mining and code-breaking and five times the size of the U.S. Capitol, it is expected to house information beyond compare, “including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails -- parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital ‘pocket litter.’”

The NSA, adds Bamford, “has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the trillions of words and thoughts and whispers captured in its electronic net.”

Which brings us to yottabyte -- which is, Bamford assures us, equivalant to septillion bytes, a number “so large that no one has yet coined a term for the next higher magnitude.” The Utah center will be capable of storing a yottabyte or more of information (on your tax dollar).

Large as it is, that mega-project in Utah is just one of many sprouting like mushrooms in the sunless forest of the U.S. intelligence world. In cost, for example, it barely tops the $1.7 billion headquarters complex in Virginia that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, with an estimated annual black budget of at least $5 billion, built for its 16,000 employees. Opened in 2011, it's the third-largest federal building in the Washington area. (And I’ll bet you didn’t even know that your tax dollars paid for such an agency, no less its gleaming new headquarters.) Or what about the 33 post-9/11 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work that were under construction or had already been built when Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin wrote their “Top Secret America” series back in 2010?

In these last years, while so many Americans were foreclosed upon or had their homes go “underwater” and the construction industry went to hell, the intelligence housing bubble just continued to grow. And there’s no sign that any of this seems abidingly strange to most Americans.

A System That Creates Its Own Reality

To leave the country, of course, I had to briefly surrender my shoes, hat, belt, computer -- you know the routine -- and even then, stripped to the basics, I had to pass through a scanner of a sort that not so long ago caused protest and upset but now is evidently as American as apple pie. Then I spent those nine days touring some of Spain’s architectural wonders, including the Alhambra in Granada, the Mezquita or Great Mosque of Cordoba, and that city’s ancient synagogue (the only one to survive the expulsion of the Jews in 1492), as well as Antonio Gaudí’s Sagrada Família, his vast Barcelona basilica, without once -- in a country with its own grim history of terror attacks -- being wanded or patted down or questioned or even passing through a metal detector. Afterwards, I took a flight back to a country whose national security architecture had again expanded subtly in the name of “my” safety.

Now, I don’t want to overdo it. In truth, those new guidelines were no big deal. The information on -- as far as anyone knows -- innocent Americans that the NCTC wanted to keep for those extra 4½ years was already being held ad infinitum by one or another of our 17 major intelligence agencies and organizations. So the latest announcement seems to represent little more than bureaucratic housecleaning, just a bit of extra scaffolding added to the Great Mosque or basilica of the new American intelligence labyrinth. It certainly was nothing to write home about, no less trap a fictional character in.

Admittedly, since 9/11 the U.S. Intelligence Community, as it likes to call itself, has expanded to staggering proportions. With those 17 outfits having a combined annual intelligence budget of more than $80 billion (a figure which doesn't even include all intelligence expenditures), you could think of that community as having carried out a statistical coup d'état. In fact, at a moment when America’s enemies -- a few thousand scattered jihadis, the odd minority insurgency, and a couple of rickety regional powers (Iran, North Korea, and perhaps Venezuela) -- couldn’t be less imposing, its growth has been little short of an institutional miracle. By now, it has a momentum all its own. You might even say that it creates its own reality.

Of classic American checks and balances, we, the taxpayers, now write the checks and they, the officials of the National Security Complex, are free to be as unbalanced as they want in their actions. Whatever you do, though, don’t mistake Clapper, Holder, and similar figures for the Gaudís of the new intelligence world. Don’t think of them as the architects of the structure they are building. What they preside over is visibly a competitive bureaucratic mess of overlapping principalities whose “mission” might be summed up in one word: more.

In a sense -- though they would undoubtedly never think of themselves this way -- I suspect they are bureaucratic versions of Kafka’s Joseph K., trapped in a labyrinthine structure they are continually, blindly, adding to. And because their “mission” has no end point, their edifice has neither windows nor exits, and for all anyone knows is being erected on a foundation of quicksand.

Keep calling it “intelligence” if you want, but the monstrosity they are building is neither intelligent nor architecturally elegant. It is nonetheless a system elaborating itself with undeniable energy. Whatever the changing cast of characters, the structure only grows. It no longer seems to matter whether the figure who officially sits atop it is a former part-owner of a baseball team and former governor, a former constitutional law professor, or -- looking to possible futures -- a former corporate raider.

A Basilica of Chaos

Evidently, it’s our fate -- increasing numbers of us anyway -- to be transformed into intelligence data (just as we are being eternally transformed into commercial data), our identities sliced, diced, and passed around the labyrinth, our bytes stored up to be “mined” at their convenience.

You might wonder: What is this basilica of chaos that calls itself the U.S. Intelligence Community? Bamford describes whistleblower William Binney, a former senior NSA crypto-mathematician “largely responsible for automating the agency’s worldwide eavesdropping network,” as holding “his thumb and forefinger close together” and saying, “We are that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.”

It’s an understandable description for someone who has emerged from the labyrinth, but I doubt it’s on target. Ours is unlikely to ever be a Soviet-style system, even if it exhibits a striking urge toward totality; towards, that is, engulfing everything, including every trace you’ve left anywhere in the world. It’s probably not a Soviet-style state in the making, even if traditional legal boundaries and prohibitions against spying upon and surveilling Americans are of remarkably little interest to it.

Its urge is to data mine and decode the planet in an eternal search for enemies who are imagined to lurk everywhere, ready to strike at any moment. Anyone might be a terrorist or, wittingly or not, in touch with one, even perfectly innocent-seeming Americans whose data must be held until the moment when the true pattern of eneminess comes into view and everything is revealed.

In the new world of the National Security Complex, no one can be trusted -- except the officials working within it, who in their eternal bureaucratic vigilance clearly consider themselves above any law. The system that they are constructing (or that, perhaps, is constructing them) has no more to do with democracy or an American republic or the Constitution than it does with a Soviet-style state. Think of it as a phenomenon for which we have no name. Like the yottabyte, it’s something new under the sun, still awaiting its own strange and ugly moniker.

For now, it remains as anonymous as Joseph K. and so, conveniently enough, continues to expand right before our eyes, strangely unseen.

If you don’t believe me, leave the country for nine days and just see if, in that brief span of time, something else isn't drawn within its orbit. After all, it’s inexorable, this rough beast slouching through Washington to be born.

Welcome, in the meantime, to our nameless new world. One thing is guaranteed: it has a byte.

Black Philly Teens Yell Slurs And Pull Whites Out Of Cab And Beat Them, Not Charged With Hate Crime


When is a hate crime not a hate crime? When the skin color of the villain(s) and victim(s) doesn’t fit the paradigm that prompted the creation of hate crime laws in the first place.

Our friend Stephanie Farr of philly.com is back with the latest development in what she initially reported as “a horrific assault in Center City” in which “three teenagers who were spouting racial slurs pulled a man out of a cab to beat him.”
This time reporter Farr buries the lede only until the second paragraph, which follows:
The teens, who are black, were not charged with hate crimes because there was no evidence that the assault had been motivated by the race of the victims, who are white, said Tasha Jamerson, D.A. spokeswoman. Just shouting racial epithets during the commission of a crime doesn't rise to the level of ethnic intimidation, she said.
Jamerson is quoted as saying, "They just didn't have that in this case. If they had somebody who, two blocks before, heard them say, 'We're going to beat somebody up because they're white, brown or purple,' it might be different."
But the first hate-crime legislation in the “modern era,” Section 249 of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, contains no such stipulation. In fact, the language of the law is pretty broad, covering “offenses involving actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin” and specifying punishment for
[w]hoever, whether or not acting under color of law, willfully causes bodily injury to any person or, through the use of fire, a firearm, a dangerous weapon, or an explosive or incendiary device, attempts to cause bodily injury to any person, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin of any person.
It would appear that the crime—in which the perpetrators hurled “racially derogatory names” at the cabbie and passenger and “punched … in the face, kicked … and threw a liquid” on the driver—meet the criteria for a hate enhancement as spelled out in the law.

Black Suspects Charged In Lynching, "May" Face Hate Crime Charges

Bet nobody has heard of this black on White attack either, meanwhile trayvon is a household name....





On March 17th, three white men were leaving an Applebees restaurant after midnight in Seneca, South Carolina. One of the men, Terry Moore, 32, of Macon County, NC, went to the bathroom while his two friends went straight to their car. When Moore walked to the car alone, he encountered between 15 and 20 black men. The men allegedly yelled racial slurs at him like "tree honkey" and "cracker," then brutally attacked him.

Moore's friends say that he was zapped with a tazer and then stomped on after he fell to the crowd. The victim suffered several serious head injuries including a fractured eye socket and a dislocated jaw.

The attack ended when Moore's friends rushed to his aid. The victim is from out of town and did not know any of the attackers.

Seneca police, working with the county sheriff's department and SLED, has apprehended six of the suspects. They are facing state charges for assault and battery by a mob, which is also more commonly known as second degree lynching in South Carolina. The official name of the statute was changed in 2010 over complaints by black racial activists that the term "lynching" was offensive to black people. The statute was originally passed in 1951 at the request of the NAACP.

Yesterday, March 28th, Seneca Police Chief John Covington released a statement saying he believes the attack was racially motivated. He has forwarded the case to the FBI for possible Federal hate crime charges. South Carolina's anti-lynching law allows for judges to give harsher sentences when an assault is part of a mob attack.
Those charged are Teryn L Robinson, 18; Tray Devon Holland, 19; Justin Dimon Alexander, 20; Derick Lee Williams, 22; Kino Martinez Jones, 25; and Montrez Obrian Jones, 22.

Last June prosecutors charged four suspects in the attack on Carter Strange with second degree lynching. Carter Strange was assaulted at random by eight young black males in the Five Points area of Columbia, SC. He barely survived the attack. The assault is believed to have been motivated purely by racial hatred.

John Perkins On RT's Capital Account 4/5/12

I certainly do not agree with everything Perkins says, but there is some decent info in there.


GOP Hijacks ND State Convention

Ron Paul Rocks Berkeley

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Ron Paul on FOX News w/ Neil Cavuto 4/4/12

Ron Paul Draws Another Record Crowd 6000+

NBC "Apologizes" For Edited Zimmerman Phone Call

 SOURCE

"The Washington Post reports that NBC has completed its investigation into the Today show's mishandling of the police dispatcher's conversation with George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin case with a finding of error, plus an apology. The apology addresses the show's failure to accurately abridge the conversation between Zimmerman and the dispatcher in this high-profile case. This is how the program portrayed a segment of that conversation: Zimmerman: 'This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black' Here what was actually said: Zimmerman: 'This guy looks like he's up to no good. Or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about.' Dispatcher: 'OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?' Zimmerman: 'He looks black.' In an appearance on Fox News's Hannity, Brent Bozell, president of the conservative Media Research Center, called this omission on the part of Today an 'all-out falsehood' — not just a distortion or misrepresentation. 'On the good front, [NBC] acknowledges the mistake and apologizes to viewers for the bad editing. It's a forthright correction and spares us any excuses about the faulty portrayal. On the bad front, the statement is skimpy on the details on just how the mistake unfolded,' writes Erik Wemple. 'In light of all that's happened, Zimmerman may be a tough person for a news network to apologize to, but that's just the point: Apologies are hard.'"

BrotherJohnF: It's The FED Stupid 4/3/12

Why Not Just Print?