A Centennial Celebration of a Warfare State

On April 6, 2017, President Trump kicked off the festivities for a Centennial Celebration. The President dropped over $50 million worth of bombs on a sovereign nation. On April 6, 1917, exactly one hundred years to the day, the United States Congress declared war upon the German Empire. President Woodrow Wilson, a peace promising progressive, lead us into World War 1. The consequences from what the world has not recovered.

In 1916 Wilson was narrowly re-elected on the bogus campaign slogan, “He kept us out of war.” But Wilson was deceitful man, his actions were contrary to his campaign slogan. The truth was that he had been violating neutrality throughout his first term by providing armaments and money to the Allied powers fighting against Germany since 1914.

Wilson’s push for an official entry into the war began in February of 1917.  Germany announced that they intended to resume a policy to torpedo all supply ship moving war goods to England, making American carriers in the line of fire. After this decree, Wilson introduced bill after bill that aimed at increased military expenditures for war preparedness, measures for war security, wartime repression, spying, and information control.

When England released the Zimmermann’s Note it became a done deal. The Note contained instructions from the Foreign Office in Berlin to their Ambassador in Mexico to approach the Mexican government about entering the war in alliance with Germany and in return it would agree to Mexico’s re-conquest of “the lost territory in Texas”.  Wilson finally got his reason, off to war we go!

“Over There” – The Yanks are Coming

In his war speech to Congress, Wilson hailed the U.S. government as “one of the champions of the rights of mankind” and proclaimed that “the world must be made safe for democracy.”

Wilson immediately demonstrated his contempt of both democracy and the constitution by unleashing ruthless censorship of any criticism. The first battle that Wilson fought was against the US citizens’ civil liberties.

He urged Congress to set up detention camps to quarantine “alien enemies.” Anyone who spoke publicly against military conscription was likely to get slammed with federal espionage or sedition charges. Possessing a pamphlet entitled, “Long Live the Constitution of the United States,” earned six months in jail for a Pennsylvania malcontent.

Censorship was buttressed by a fanatic propaganda campaigns led by the Committee on Public Information, a federal agency whose motto was “faith in democracy… faith in fact.” The creation of a posters campaign of “Uncle Sam – I Wants You” and patriotic songs like “Over There” promoted the Wilson’s war.

The US involvement in World War 1 shifted all momentum away from Germany in favor of the Allied Forces. Until the US entry into the Great War it appeared that the outcome would be a stalemate. The US’s alliance with England and France would prove to be the impetus for victory in Europe.

 Treaty of Versailles – The Gift That Keeps on Giving

The US and its European allied victors: France, England and Italy were empowered with the responsibility to fix the world. The US suddenly became a player at the politics table, a position it was unfamiliar with. Due to the US’s impact on WW1, Wilson would help to create and manage entangling alliance, draw arbitrary lines on maps to create country borders and hand out punishment to the guilty.

Wilson and his 14 Points for Peace were front in center in dictating what Europe, the Middle East and the World would become. Wilson, of the US; Clemenceau of France; Lloyd George of England and Orlando of Italy, authored the Treaty of Versailles (Paris Treaty of 1919). The results of which set in motion a flawed plan that we have continually been fixing for 100 years.

Sowing the Seeds of WW2

Many historians point out that World War 2 began in 1919 at the Paris negotiating conferences held during the Treaty of Versailles. The treaty prepared the soils for dictatorships that the World War 2 participants would eventually declare as enemies.

Wilson and his gang unleashed an environment that allowed for tyrannical regimes to grow; Communism in Russia under Stalin, fascism in Italy under Mussolini, hysteria in Germany under Hitler. The treaty also became the root cause of much of the instability we have in the Middle East.

The Treaty nullified the 1915-1916 McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, (promise for Arab rule) in favor of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Secretive Agreement. (re-established colonialism in the Middle East) It divided up the lands in the Middle East between England and France like one would slice a pie. The treaty installed British mandating in Palestine, making good on the Balfour Declaration for a Zionist Jewish state at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian Arabs.

Then in 1947, the United States and the United Nations would push even harder for the Jewish state. Using UN Resolution 181, it turned Palestine into two states, establishing Israel as a nation. This imposition forced at least 700,000 Palestinian refugees from their homes. eight recognized wars, two Palestinian intifadas, and a series of armed conflicts between Arab–Israeli combatants. The Israeli – Palestinian conflict continues today.

The Paris Treaty attempted to establish a hierarchy of superpowers, through the League of Nations. (forerunner to the United Nations) The gang punished Germany for being responsible for World War 1. The treaty forced Germany to take the brunt of blame for World War 1. It required Germany to make unreasonable restitutions for their involvement that would bring economic chaos that the Germans could not tolerate.

The people of Germany responded by supporting a madman, Hitler and his nationalistic promises. He was just what the desperate Germans were looking for, a road back to dignity. Hitler, at the expense of many, filled that need. His expansive invasions and atrocities to man created World War 2.

Déjà vu – all over again

The US’s entry into World War 2 played out much like World War 1. The US stayed on the sidelines until the Japanese provided the US with a good reason to engage. Roosevelt, another peace loving progressive, after years of strategic economic sanctions applied to obstruct Japan’s economy, finally squeezed them tight enough to goad Japan into bombing Pearl Harbor.

On December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor, the US Congress declared War on Japan. Germany, with an alliance with Japan, wasted no time to reciprocate. On December 11, 1941 Germany declared war on the US. Roosevelt’s immediately followed Woodrow Wilson’s lead by attacking civil liberties. Like a true Wilson disciple, he rounded up 120,000 Japanese-Americans and put them into internment camps, prisons.

Waxing – not much waning

Preparations for war required a build-up of personal, military armaments and supplies. After World War 1, the Spanish American War, the Civil War and all other wars dating back to the Revolutionary War the US disassemble its military. At the end of WW2, the US briefly began to disassemble its war machine. However, Truman transitioned from fighting Nazism and Fascism to a War on Communism.

In 1947, the President issued his Truman Doctrine. He declared that the US would contain all communist expansion around the world, the Cold War begins. Military escalation grew with every containment; 1948 the communist take-over of Czechoslovakia; 1948 the Berlin Crisis, the communist conquest of China, the Soviet nuclear test, the formation of NATO; the Korean War; the Vietnam War, the list goes on. These events provided the US with a sizable military presence in Europe and Far Eastern Asia.

Bases – What Bases?

The events, listed above, acted to camouflage US’s military expansion around the world. Seventy years after World War II and 62 years after the Korean War, there are 174 US “base sites” in Germany, 113 in Japan, and 83 in South Korea. Hundreds of more bases can be found in 80 countries. The best estimate is that 800 US bases exist outside the 50 states.

The Pentagon’s overseas military personal presence has also increased. There are US troops or other military personnel in about 160 foreign countries and territories with nearly 250,000 troops deployed on these installations costing an estimated $85 billion.

While bases are costly for taxpayers, they are profitable for the country’s privateers of twenty-first-century war corporations. Scholar and former CIA consultant Chalmers Johnson wrote, “Our installations abroad bring profits to civilian industries,” which win billions in contracts annually to “build and maintain our far-flung outposts.”

This global collection of bases enabled the launching of military interventions, drone strikes, and any other war of choice. By making it easier to wage foreign wars, bases overseas have ensured that military action is an attractive option. Anthropologist Catherine Lutz once said, “when all you have in your foreign policy toolbox is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.”

Middle East

Oil reserves in the Middle East created a rush to secure influence and power in the Arab States. World War 2 diminished Britain’s and France’s capabilities to re-establish their presence in the Middle East. The elimination of both created a “vacuum of power”. The US felt a need and saw the opportunity to fill the void.

To become a power broker, the US would need to have Western friendly regimes. The United States began to orchestrate regime change in the Middle East. The newly formed CIA found success in Iran when it helped to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister Mosaddeq and delivered the Shah into power.

The US initiated a series of moves to secure influence in the Middle East. The US propped up dictators, removed dictators, crushed democracies and installed democracies creating less and less stability at the expense of the people. The follows sequence of coups culminated into what we have today:

1949, 1954, 1966 coups in Syria led to the 1970 start of the Assad regime;

1958, 1963 and 1968 coups in Iraq paved the way for Saddam Hussein;

1953 the CIA coup in democratic Iran, led to the 1979 Hostages Crisis

 Use it or lose it

The collapse of the Soviet Union ended the Cold War. During the Cold War years, an estimated $8 trillion was spent, with about 100,000 Americans losing their lives. Reagan ensured the Soviet failure by built up the US military muscle to unprecedented levels. The collapse of the Soviet Union made the muscle of the US military available.

“Use it or lose it” is a concept to keep muscles strong. This same concept applies to military muscle. Atrophy of the Defense Department, the Armed Forces, the State Department and the Industrial Military Complex would have an adverse effect on the Warfare State. Too many jobs, too many politicians, too many bureaucrats, too many US dollars budgeted, too many Industrial Military Corporation profits would be lost. Peace was not an option.

The US quickly changed from fighting a Cold War against Communism to hot war in Iraq. In 1990, George W Bush launched Operation Desert Storm. This invasion helped to create the retaliatory terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. *See below

 War on Terror

On 9/1/2001 the terrorist invasion at the World Trade center terrorist murdered 3,000 civilians. This event prompted the other Bush to declare the “War on Terrorism.”  Just what the Gods of War ordered, a free reign to invade anywhere in the world to battle terrorism.  By 2001 the US was the only surviving superpower, there was not a country to stop it.

In 2002, an operation in Afghanistan to search and destroy terrorist training sites and to get Osama bin Laden turned into a war that continues today. (15 years and running) In 2003, a full-scale invasion of Iraq to search and destroy the weapons of Mass Destruction “ended” in 2011 but we are still there –go figure. The newest adult generation, in their lifetime, has not experienced one day of peace. This is tragic!

Since 9/11 and the subsequent “War on Terror” we have allowed the Military, the Defense Department, the State Department and the Intelligence Community to metastasize into a cancer that is directly or indirectly responsible for:

• 4,491 U.S. service members killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2014
• 2,386 U.S. military deaths from the War in Afghanistan.
• 165,000 civilians in the Iraq war caused by the US and its allies
• 173,000 total deaths in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2001

Today the US citizens need to be asking. “Should the US contribute to the 17,411 children and 10,847 women already killed in Syria?”

Journalist or Salesmen?

The media encourages the Warfare State while keeping the public shielded from the reality that war is murder. Mainstream media, the “real news”, is today’s version of Wilson’s Committee on Public Information. They formulate a narrative and edit the news to support it.

Their most recent project is the war in Syrian. Their narrative is that Assad “must go”. The justification is the same that Wilson proclaimed 100 years ago. The US is “one of the champions of the rights of mankind” and it is our obligation to ensure that “the world must be made safe for democracy.”

War is immoral and killing innocent people is the product of this immoral act. The media selectively covers the atrocities of war. Their professionals abuse video of gassed children to support their narrative while under reporting civilian being murdered by US led coalitions. The story line that supports the narrative get top billing and those that don’t get buried.

Example abound, On April 7^th, at two locations in northern Syria a US led coalition bombed and killed at least 21 people, including a woman and her six children. Killing is killing! It is immoral to determine that one type of killing is either less or more moral than another. The media has an obligation to discourage all murder. A moral media would promote peace and not solicited retaliation.

A cabal of governmental departments have allied to create an unofficial Warfare State. Permanent government bureaucrats, elected politicians, the industrial military complex with its lobbyists conspire with most mainstream media to sell war. War has become the drug of choice, it is the heroin that the keeps the bureaucracy alive. The US has murdered, lied, cheated and stolen for it. This drug will destroy a nation that is too young to die.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions”

Wilson’s intervention into World War 1 was an outright rejection of our founders’ wisdom. It not only ignored President Washington’s warning, “to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world” it violated Thomas Jefferson’s pledge of “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”

World War 1 was billed as the War to end all Wars, it proved otherwise. We need to look at the geography of the world. The US is surrounded by oceans and allies, Mexico to the south and Canada to the north. America is the border for our defense, not Europe, not Africa, not the Middle East and not the Far East.

Let us Celebration a Bi-centennial Event

Two hundred years ago, John Quincy Adams became Secretary of State under President James Monroe. In 1817, as Secretary of State, Adams delivered a speech on U.S. Foreign policy.

“Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”

Peace and prosperity are linked together for a reason. Our forefathers’ voices are being silenced by the drum beats of war. We must return to the days of moral actions and benevolent purpose. It is time to exorcise the dictatress that has captured our spirit.

 

*Bin Laden’s 3 reason for the 9/11 attack on that World Trade Center and the Pentagon:

            One: US troops in the Islamic holy lands of Saudi Arabia;

            Two: US bombing and killing of Muslim Arabs:

            Three: US’s support for Israeli apartheid government’s treatment of the Palestinians

 Please note: President Bill Clinton’s almost continuous bombings of Iraq throughout the late 1990’s contributed to the response.

 

The “White Towel”?

I do not like General Flynn, in my opinion he is an Iran hater, anti-Islamic and a “shoot first ask questions later” type guy. That said, he became the first casualty in the intelligence community’s (IC) soft coup against Trump. Leaking SIGINT 1 information of Flynn’s conversation with a Russian diplomat was a vindictive targeting of a political foe. This whistleblowing was a political assassination and not an action of noble intent.

We have just witnessed the first round of a heavy weight boxing match. The two heavy weight contestants throwing punches to feel each other out. The IC began with a few jabs connecting Trump’s Presidency to Russian influence. Trump counters with a flurry of threats to cut $80 billion per annum intelligence budget, (larger than Russia’s defense budget) talks of rooting waste out of the Pentagon’s almost trillion-dollar budget, spending less on NATO, and ending some of America’s imperial wars and the Cold War. Trump has even made a comparison between the CIA and the NAZI’s.

The IC, reeling from this exchange, delivered a low blow. The leaking of highly classified SIGINT intercepts is devious but affective. It heightens our awareness and fear of Russian spying while curtailing Trump’s initiatives towards Russia. It also conceals the hypocrisy in Washington over alleged Russian espionage and manipulation. This is all accomplished while portraying our intelligence community as a protectorate of the American people.

The US intelligence community has been “protecting” the American people buying and manipulating foreign governments since 1945. They were recently caught tapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone and just this past week WikiLeaks issued an actual intercept, not hearsay, on CIA spying and manipulation of France’s 2012 election. Silence!

The Russian skeptics continues to do whatever they can to disrupt any attempt to improve the relationships between Washington and Moscow. The anti-Russian hysteria has demonization Vladimir Putin, as other bullies like Netanyahu get a pass. These skeptics are obsessed with associating Trump and his administration to a diabolical plot with Russia.

Rules do not matter when you hold the perspective that Moscow’s hacking determined the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election and guilt is determined by association. The “Russians did it” threat is on par with Sen. Joe McCarthy’s Cold War pursuit of “communists” that infiltrated the U.S. government and those that encourage a better working relationship with Putin are “Russian apologist” or “Moscow stooges.”

Flynn’s firing/resignation may have been a defensive move by Trump Administrations to survive the first round. Flynn took one for the team, he fell on his sword like all loyal general are expected to do. What surprises me is Trump’s strategy. Why did he choose not to appeal the low blow? Has he given in to the powers of the intelligence community? Or will he come out swinging in round 2?

The IC has not released the tapes so we are relying on hearsay. Besides, it is not clear that Flynn lied. In his resignation letter, he stated that when talking to Vice President Pence, he did not deliberately leave out elements of his conversations with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. And besides the future National Security Advisor talking to diplomats from foreign counties just might be in Flynn’s job description.

Reports indicate that the conversations with the the Russian ambassador raised the Obama’s sanctions to Flynn. Flynn responded that the Trump administration would be taking office in a few weeks and would review Russia policy and sanctions. That does not sound to be neither illegal nor improper. Attempting to temper Russia’s response to new seems to be diplomatic and not treasonous.

Senators like John McCain and Lindsey Graham salivate at any opportunities to threaten military action or economic sanctions against Russia. The media has been making on an anti-Putin binge ever since his actions aimed at Georgia’s in 2008. Since then the rhetoric has increased with every new event that finds the US and Russia on opposite sides. Whether it’s in Ukraine, Syria or the annexation of Crimea the media constantly encourages a re-escalation of the Cold War.

The Intelligence Community has an incurable case of Russophobia. They believe that we should return to the way it was in the old days with the Soviet Union. Washington views Russia as our enemy. Obama played along with this belief, right up until his final days in office, by imposing more sanctions and expelling Russian diplomats. Akin to planting an IED in the White House for the Trump Presidency as a welcoming present.

The exploitation of the Flynn was an opportunity to disruptive Trump’s attempt to get on better terms with a nation that has nuclear weapons pointed us and our allies. Avoiding squabbles and preventing misunderstandings over mundane issues should be a national objective.

Is it wrong to have a working relationship with Russia? A reset with Moscow should be the No. 1 national security objective. The Russophobes will continue to look for reasons to beat up Russia and Putin. The media will cooperate with their reports on Russian spy ships off the coast of Connecticut, Delaware and Virginia, Russian jets buzzing a U.S. warship in the Black Sea and Russian violations of the INF treaty.

The IC and the President should be in the same corner. They are not, they have begun to slug it out while shirking their responsibility to the US citizens. Who wins and who loses from the Cold War paradigm? Ramping up tensions with Russia divert taxpayer’s money into the Military-Industrial Complex to build a nuclear arsenal capable of an Armageddon that could eliminate life on the planet.

Stay tuned for Round 2: Will Trump answer the bell? or was Flynn’s firing the “white towel”?

*information taken from articles written by Philip Giraldi, a former CIA office of 18 years: Eric Margolis, and Eli Lake, Bloomberg; Robert Parry, Consortiumn News

 

1. (intelligence derived from electronic signals and systems used by foreign targets, such as communications systems, radars, and weapons systems)

Dysfunction of the Washington D.C. Brain

NATIONAL security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn, resign on Monday night. He was caught lying about whether he discussed sanctions in a December telephone call with a Russian diplomat.

We learned about Flynn’s lie because of a whistleblower(s). Someone inside the U.S. government committed a criminal act. They leaked the contents of Flynn’s “intercepted communications”, classified SIGINT information, “captured by routine U.S. eavesdropping targeting the Russian diplomats.” This is a crime.

Who will demand that the leaker(s) step forward to “face the music”, criminal prosecution? It will not be the Democrats. They will claim that officials leaking this information acted justifiably, despite the fact they violated the law. Their version will probably be supported by the network news, the mainstream media and Hollywood.

It will be the Republicans. Those that are promising investigations to find the leakers. Their noise will be amplified by Fox News and right-wing radio hosts, like Laura Ingraham, who are demanding to know why the leakers weren’t being hunted.

The truth is that the leaks revealed that a high government official, Gen. Flynn, blatantly lied to the public about his conversations with a Russian diplomat. The public has the right to know this.

Is it justified? The fact that the whistleblowing is illegal should not be used a reason to conceal information from the public. Many laws prohibit just acts. The revealing of this information is a just act. The only way to educate the public of powerful officials wrongful or deceitful actions is through information.

Lying to the public is a common practice in Washington. In D.C. lying is not viewed as a sin but it’s seen more as a job requirement. So, we should celebrate an illegal leak such as this. Whistleblowers should be protected so that we will be informed about “the work” of those who wield the greatest power.

Trump-supporting Republicans are insisting that the only thing that matters is rooting out the criminal leakers. Trump himself has echoed the Obama-era Democrats. He claims that “the real story” isn’t the lies told by his national security adviser but rather the fact that someone leaked information exposing them.

In the past month, with Trump as president, leaks have achieved some good. Leaks are illegal and hated by those in power because they want to hide evidence of their own wrongdoing. The ability to lie to the public with impunity and without detection is not something new.

Where have you been for the past eight years when President Obama was very vindictive and aggressive on prosecuting whistleblowers. As Leonard Downie, the Washington Post claimed that, “The [Obama] administration’s war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration.”

Those that choose whistleblowing put themselves at great risk. Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Tom Drake, were all Obama-era leakers. They were put in jail or forced to live in exile for leaking sensitive, classified information.

A similar case involving a government official happened during the Obama administration. President Obama’s top national security official, James Clapper, lied to the public and to Congress about a domestic surveillance program that courts ruled was illegal. Lying to Congress is a felony, but Clapper kept his job until the very last day of the Obama presidency.

The motive here, with General Flynn, is probably vindictive rather than noble but any leak that results in the exposure of high-level wrongdoing should be praised and not scorned or punished. It appears that this action is the intelligence community’s “shot across the bow” of the Trumps Presidency.

Some Washington politicians understand the powers and politics of the “deep state” more than they understand their own jobs. This was clearly demonstrated when Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer warned Trump that he was being “really dumb” to criticize the intelligence community because “they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” Ah, yes JFK lost that battle.

Those in power regard leaks as a crime, while those out of power regard them as righteous. Democrats have suddenly re-discovered the virtues of illegal leaking, while Trump’s people believe them to be criminal.

People often take opposite views based exclusively on whether it helps or hurts their party or their leaders. Thus, the very same Democrats who three months ago viewed illegal leaking as a sin today view it as an act of merit. Morals and principles should not change based upon which political party controls the White House.

• Much of this is taken from Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept

Happy Birthday George!

To celebrate Presidents Day, I decided to re-read George Washington’s Farewell Address. Our country’s first President, warned of the “continual mischiefs of the spirit of party” making it the “interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.” In 1796, President Washington cautioned against the dangers of political parties. We did not see what he knew.

Goethe said: “We See Only What We Know,” in other words, perception depends upon your knowledge.

When I look at a page of sheet music, I see a bunch of lines, dots, dashes, and other symbols that have no real meaning to me. When a musician looks at the same sheet music they see notes, chords, tempos, melodies, harmonies, etc. Why do I perceive nothing more than markings on a page while a musician perceives music? Because I lack the knowledge concerning sheet music.

The playing card paradigm

At Harvard in 1949, subjects were shown playing cards and asked to call out what they saw. They identified the cards correctly. After a while, the experimenters slipped in “incongruous cards” in which the colors red and black were switched, such as black hearts or diamonds and red clubs or spades.

The subjects did not perceive the incongruous cards, they saw normal playing cards, the cards they were expecting to see, they did not notice the incongruity. For example, when shown a black six of hearts, they called out, “six of hearts” or “six of spades,” neither of which was correct.

They misperceived something per the paradigm in which they were operating, “the playing card paradigm.” Their responses were based upon something that they already knew about playing cards. They called out the cards that they were looking for not what they were.

Only when subjects were forced to look at the incongruous cards for very long times did they “get” what was going on and saw what they were looking at. Suddenly, they realized that “the playing card paradigm” did not apply. They finally knew that reality included non-traditional cards. They thus became open to a new paradigm (that included black hearts etc.), and thereafter saw what was in front of their eyes.

The false paradigm

How does this apply to politics? Our paradigms cause us to see the world in ways that reinforce our beliefs. Some of our beliefs are reality based but many of our beliefs are perception. Most people’s perceptions are established by a combination of nature and nurture.

Liberty is not hard to sell or even difficult to understand: What is difficult is how to get people to unlearn their prevailing paradigm, that is a two-party paradigm, in which Republicans and Democrats together cover the full range of political space, while broadly opposing each other.

This paradigm is false: the two main parties are philosophically aligned on most issues. The rhetoric may differ but their actions do not. Both parties: grow government in the interest of their favored groups or worldview, promote security at the expense of liberty, militaristic interventionism, massive political gifting to interests with lobbyists and money, neglect of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and abuse the force of the State to impose its worldview, repress individual sovereignty and have no conscience when it comes to harming others.

Political paradigms, like all paradigms are utterly pervasive because it’s impossible to see anything except through one. When an old paradigm fails, as in the playing card experiment, people have no choice but to see the world in a whole new way. When paradigms do become unstuck, people become extraordinarily open and things become possible that at normal times can barely even be conceived of.

 The Donald and Bernie Experiment

The election of Trump can be the beginning of an awakening to the fact that the old paradigm has failed. His election exposed the cracks in the D-R liberal-conservative partisan paradigm. An authoritarian shook the partisan paradigm of the American electorate. Many voted for a party that they had not previously identified with.

This same phenomenon was also happening in the Democratic Party. However, the Democrats “took out” Bernie and choose to back a corrupt, connected and deplorable candidate, thus losing many of the Bernie voters that they could not afford to lose.

The voters had turned away from the political circus tents of elephants and donkeys but were still stuck with the choices that the duopolistic party paradigm offered. The two-party system, is weaker than it has been for generations. The two-party system has failed millions of Americans but will the American people listen to George Washington?

People mistakenly believe that their political allegiances follow their values. The reality is that people identify with politicians that they have an affinity of personality, appearance, culture or social. When they connect, the people are inclined to adopt the values of those leaders, groups or parties.

Judgment and justification are entirely different processes the former should precedes the latter, yet we experience the exact opposite. The processes are closely intertwined and the latter precedes the former.

Political allegiance means an allegiance to the Republican or Democratic Party and the political paradigm that goes with the territory. Neither party is committed to the freedom and rights of the individual. These alliances may be hard to break but are necessary to save our nation.

A paradigm of values

Question your political allegiance. Now is the time to look at a paradigm of values.  Do not follow a blind allegiance, open your minds to assessing arguments and options based on core principles and human experiences without bias toward a political tribe or mediation by a felt political identity.

The election of 2016 exemplifies the failure of our two-party system. Now is the time to “open up” to a new way of seeing. It is up to us to unlearn what we have been “taught”, reject partisanship and learn the paradigm of values.

The “perception of incongruity” was only correctly amended when the students examined and studied the incongruous cards. Maybe our perception of the political party will be amended when we examine and study their incongruence in liberty.

A birthday present for George

George Washington is our nations first National Hero. It stands to reason that we listen to the wisdom he imparted to his “Friends and Citizens” in his Farewell Address, of 1796.

President Washington warned that the party will become “potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” Happy Birthday!

*much of this blog is from an article written by Robin Koerner

 

A Cycle of Stupidity

“We are officially putting Iran on notice,” with that Gen. Michael Flynn drew the line in the sand. Translation: “Iran we are looking for reasons to bomb you!” The cycle of stupidity continues.

Is it a crime for Iran to test ballistic missiles within its borders? No! Is it a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 (the Iran Nuclear Treaty)?  No! So, why are we threatening Iran? Maybe history can shed some light.

Like other U.S. Presidents, Donald Trump and his “boys” are cherry picking historical events to support further hostilities, most recently Iran. The Saudi’s and Israelis understand this and take full advantage of our historical amnesia.

Israel with a “never let a good crisis go to waste” policy and the Saudi’s with the US petro-dollar connection are the first to push us into open conflict with the Iranians. After all, “Iran is the principal source for world terrorism and regional disorder.”

Our relationships with Israel and Saudi Arabis is amplified by the fact that President Trump choose to surround himself with Israeli-Saudi cheerleaders. Both Flynn and “Mad Dog” Mattis, are full pledged belligerents towards Iran.

General Flynn keeps repeating that Iran’s clerical regime cannot be reformed and that the only way to deal with it is to bring about a regime change.

Meanwhile Mattis calls Iran the “most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle East,” and “the single most belligerent actor in the Middle East”. Mattis also has described Iran as “not a nation state (but) a revolutionary cause devoted to mayhem.”

Can Flynn’s and Mattis’ hatred be trace back to the he 1983 Beirut Barracks Bombings that killed 241 of Mattis’ fellow US Marines? After all the suicide driver of that explosive laden truck was an Iranian national.  It is believed that the “newly formed” Islamic Republic of Iran (1979) was heavily involved in this bomb attack.

Many believe that this attack was “blowback” orchestrated from Iran for two reasons. First, Iran suffered greatly from America’s support of Iraq in the 1980 Iran–Iraq War.  Thats right, back in the day we aided and abetted Saddam Hussein against Iran. Secondly, during that war the U.S. extended a $2.5 billion trade credit to Iraq while halting the shipments of supplies, arms and other needed exports to Iran.

In the 1980’s the US’s policy was heavily influenced by the 1979 Iranian revolution when Iranian students protested that the US allowed the  “Shah” to enter the US for medical treatment.

The students protests culminated with the taking of more than 60 US hostages for 444 day. The students demanded that the leader of the tyrannical Pahlavi (Shah) Regime be extradited to stand trial for crimes committed against the people of Iran.

This demand put the US in a dilemma, a “Catch-22″,  after all, the Shah was installed into power after a 1953 US/CIA backed coup that overthrew the very popular Prime Minister Mosaddegh’s government.

In 1951, Mosaddegh was overwhelmingly elected prime minister in a fair democratic process. However, he quickly fell out of favor when he proposed to nationalize the Iranian oil industry. So, in 1953 he was out. History, you cannot ignore it.

Examining the 3 reasons for Flynn putting “Iran on Notice.”

Reason #1 “Recent Iranian actions, including a provocative ballistic missile launch.” The reference here is that Iran is in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 2231.

Resolution 2231 was the result of the negotiations between six world powers – (the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany) and Iran. There was never any linkage between Iran’s nuclear program and its ballistic missile programs.

The limiting of Iran’s missiles was discussed early in the proceedings but after Iran balked at the proposed restriction of domestic ballistic testing the United States dropped the matter. It did not seem to be a problem, since the United Nations and other international organizations already had some missile restrictions in place.

However, Resolution 2231 rescinded six previous resolutions aimed at Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. It negated Resolution 1929, which instructed that “Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology, and that States shall take all necessary measures to prevent the transfer of technology or technical assistance to Iran related to such activities.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency—the organization responsible for monitoring Resolution 2231—has confirmed this. The Iranian foreign ministry statement indicates that missile tests “are an integral component” of Iran’s self-defense.”

The Security Council resolution enacted after negotiation of the nuclear agreement did include a hortatory clause “calling” on Iran to lay off the missile tests.  This is at best a stretch to call the latest test a “violation” of this resolution, and it certainly is not a violation of the nuclear agreement or any other agreement that Iran has signed.

Logically, it makes sense that country should be allowed to develop their ballistic missile defensive capabilities. I do believe that Iran has one or two enemies in the Middle East and beyond.

Besides, if the nuclear agreement is upheld and Iran does not develop nuclear weapons, the Iranian ballistic missiles are of minor importance because they do not pose a threat to U.S. interests. All indications support the fact that Iran has, to date, complied with Resolution 2231.

Iran has a large missile arsenal with no long-range ballistic missiles; three of its regional neighbors do. Iran has no nuclear warheads for its missiles; two of its regional neighbors do. Iran does not have a large and modern air force as an alternative means of projecting force as do Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Reason #2 “an attack against a Saudi naval vessel conducted by Iran-supported Houthi militants”

The Saudis have been bombing the Houthi rebels and Yemen since March of 2015, when a coalition of Gulf countries led by Saudi Arabia, supported by the United States, began an aggressive campaign, known as Operation Decisive Storm, aimed at restoring their “guy” back into power.

The Saudi’s blockades and bombings have devastated the Yemeni people. The Saudi’s bombing campaign destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure. They have destroyed bridges, roads, schools, hospitals, water wells and reports indicate that even farms and orchards have all been targeted.

The Saudi Arabian coalition enforcement of a naval blockade on Yemen has shut down its imports. Ninety percent of food and medicine required by the Yemeni has virtually disappeared. The United Nations estimates that more than 80 percent of Yemen’s population of 23 million are in immediate need of humanitarian assistance.

By the way Gen. Flynn, we are right there behind the Saudi’s operation. We supply the bombs, the intelligence and the maintenance that allow their aircraft to wreak havoc on Yemen. * Recent history of Yemen

The Houthi and the Saudis are at war. In war the combatants attack each other. A US General knows this, why use “miss-information”. In this war, the Saudis are not immune from any of Yemen’s or Houthi retaliation. In fact, I would be more surprised if the Houthis did not try to go after Saudi forces at sea as well as on land.

Is there evidence that Iran had a role in the Red Sea attack on the Saudi ship?                  

Did Flynn disregard the fact that whatever aid Iran gives to the Houthis pales in comparison to the direct military intervention by the Saudis and Emiratis, which is responsible for most of the civilian casualties in Yemen.

Gen. Flynn you can not disregard that the Houthis are not obedient clients of Iran. In the past the Houthis have ignored Iran when they advised them to restraint their operations and ignored them when they suggested not to attack Sana.

There has not been any evidence whatever, at least not among what is publicly known, that Iran had anything to do the attack on the Saudi ship. Even if Iran supplied the hardware or even the intelligence for the attempted bombing of the Saudi vessel how does this pose a threat to U.S. assets in the area?

Nor was anything said that the major U.S. terrorist concern in Yemen, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is also an enemy of the Houthi.  Nor is there any mention that the former president and longtime U.S. counterterrorist partner Ali Abdullah Salih is allied with the Houthis. Does Flynn understand this quagmire?

Come on man! Pulling the Houthi-Iran card out is ridiculous. Don’t beat around the bush just come out and say it. You can even quote General Curtis LeMay, “they’ve got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression, or we’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.”

Reason #3 “Iran’s destabilizing behavior across the Middle East.”

What destabilization? Hezbollah, Hamas, supporting Assad in Syria or is it the Houthi connection? All I can say Israel, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who bitterly opposed the 2015 nuclear agreement, immediately condemned the Iranian missile test on last Monday. He said he would press the Trump administration to renew economic sanctions on Tehran when he visits Washington this month.

Bibi Netanyahu hailed Flynn’s statement, calling Iran’s missile test a flagrant violation of the U.N. resolution and declaring, “Iranian aggression must not go unanswered.” What aggression? Never let a good crisis go to waste, may have been a more appropriate response from Netanyahu.

The Saudi king spoke with Trump last Sunday. Did he persuade the president to get America more engaged against Iran? After all Riyadh and the United States are unquestioningly sided in their rivalry with Iran.

Our relationship has endorsed “A four-decade long, $100 billion global Saudi effort to box in and undermine, a post-1979 revolution Iranian system of government. The Saudi’s see the Islamic Rule of Iran as an existential threat to the autocratic rule of the Al Saud family. The Saud family in turn has funded ultra-conservative political and religious groups has contributed to the rise of supremacism, intolerance and anti-pluralism across the Muslim world and created potential breeding grounds of extremism.”

Meanwhile many of the US neo-cons in Congress like Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker and Paul Ryan are delighted with the White House tough talk. How can US Congressmen fail to realize that it is not good diplomacy to back a country into a corner?

A public threat against  Iran, “putting them on notice”, makes it almost impossible for Iran, or Trump, to put the toothpaste back into the tube. Tehran is almost obliged to defy it. Sovereignty allows for nations to test conventional missiles for their defense within their borders.

In 1983, after the Beirut Barracks Bombing, President Reagan realized that we did not belong and he withdrew our troops. He did not submit to escalation, he prudently allowed for extrication. Please review the very brief history of non-intervention and ignore the voice of General LeMay.

Please just step off the cycle of stupidity.

 

* Recent history of Yemen: The country that we have been droning since the 2002; the country that just last week we lost a Navy seal in Trump’s first boots on the ground attack: the country that just last week we killed civilian women and children: the country that we have executed US citizens ranging from ages 40 years old to 8 years old: the country where we bomb the AQAP (al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula) while supporting al Qaeda in Syria.

 

“A time comes when silence is a betrayal” 

Martin Luther King Jr. is arguable one of the greatest men in American history. In his brief thirty nine years on this planet he made a difference. His legacy is primarily built upon his fight for civil rights, unfortunately, his stance against war is often overlooked. Dr. King’s position as an antiwar advocate should be revisited.

The following speech is Martin Luther King’s, “Why I Am Opposed to the Vietnam War” giving on April 30, 1967, at the Riverside Church in New York. Many believe that this speech was the first step toward his rendezvous with death on that fateful day in Memphis one year later.

This speech is as relevant today, 50 years later, as it was in 1967. Dr. King  discusses his seven reasons for opposing the Vietnam War.

I have edited Dr King speech.  I removed his references to the Vietnam War and added Middle Eastern: countries, groups and locations in hopes that his message is heard in 2017. *I removed a few words and phases to make his oral presentation read smoother. The content was not changed.

Interventional Wars may vary in location but the formula used by governments to garner support and  justification remains consistent.

Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s 1967 speech:                                                                                 “The sermon which I am preaching this morning is not the usual kind of sermon. I will be discussing today one of the most controversial issues confronting our nation. I’m using as a subject from which to preach, “Why I Am Opposed to the War”

I see war as an unjust, evil, and futile. I preach to you today on war because my conscience leaves me with no other choice. The time has come for America to hear the truth about tragic war.

In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism.

He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth. “Ye shall know the truth,” says Jesus, “and the truth shall set you free.”

I’ve chosen to preach about war because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war.

Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing, as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we’re always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony. But we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for in all our history there has been dissent during war, by the American people.

Polls reveal that Americans explicitly oppose the war. Additional millions cannot bring themselves around to support it. And even those millions who do support the war half-hearted, confused, and doubt-ridden.

This reveals that millions have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism, to the high grounds of firm dissent, based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history.

Now, of course, one of the difficulties in speaking out today grows the fact that there are those who are seeking to equate dissent with disloyalty. It’s a dark day in our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent.

But something is happening, and people are not going to be silenced. The truth must be told, and I say that those who are seeking to make it appear that anyone who opposes the war is a fool or a traitor or an enemy of our soldiers is a person that has taken a stand against the best in our tradition.

Yes, we must stand, and we must speak. I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of war.

Many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns, this query has often loomed large and loud: “Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent?” Peace and civil rights don’t mix, they say.

And so, this morning, I speak to you on this issue, because I am determined to take the Gospel seriously. And I come this morning to my pulpit to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation.

This sermon is not addressed to (Syria, or Iraq). It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy. Nor is it an attempt to make ISIS or the “moderate rebels” paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in a successful resolution of the problem.

This morning, however, I wish not to speak with (Damascus, Aleppo, Mosul or Bagdad), but rather to my Americans, who bear the greatest responsibility, and entered a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

Now, since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing war into the field of my moral vision. There is very obvious and almost facile connection between the war and the struggle I and others have been waging in America.

A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed that there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the Poverty Program. There were experiments, hopes, and new beginnings. Then came the build-up of war.

I watched the program broken as if it was some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like (Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria) continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube.

And you may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hope of the poor at home. It was sending their sons, and their brothers, and their husbands to fight and die in extraordinarily high proportion relative to the rest of the population.

We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties … which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. We have been repeatedly faced with a cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same school room.

So we watch them in brutal solidarity, burning the huts of a poor village. But we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago or Atlanta. Now, I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years–especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems.

I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action; for they ask and write me, “So what about Iraq?” “So what about Afghanistan?” They ask if our nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems to bring about the changes it wanted.

Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.

For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence I cannot be silent.

Been a lot of applauding over the last few years. They applauded our total movement; they’ve applauded me. America and most of its newspapers applauded me in Montgomery. And I stood before thousands of Negroes getting ready to riot when my home was bombed and said, we can’t do it this way. They applauded us in the sit-in movement–we non-violently decided to sit in at lunch counters. The applauded us on the Freedom Rides when we accepted blows without retaliation.

They praised us in Albany and Birmingham and Selma, Alabama. Oh, the press was so noble in its applause, and so noble in its praise when I was saying, Be non-violent toward Bull Connor; when I was saying, Be non-violent toward [Selma, Alabama segregationist sheriff] Jim Clark.

There’s something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that will praise you when you say, Be non-violent toward Jim Clark, but will curse and damn you when you say, “Be non-violent toward little brown Arab children. There’s something wrong with that press!

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964. And I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace Prize was not just something taking place, but it was a commission–a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the brotherhood of Man.

This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances. But even if it were not present, I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me, the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war.

Could it be that they do not know that the Good News was meant for all men, for communists and capitalists, for their children and ours, for black and white, for revolutionary and conservative.

Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved His enemies so fully that he died for them? What, then, can I say to the Iraqi, or to Syrians, or to Kurds, as a faithful minister to Jesus Christ? Can I threaten them with death, or must I not share with them my life?”

Finally, I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be the son of the Living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood. And because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned, especially for His suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come today to speak for them.

As I ponder the madness of war and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of the (middle east).

I speak not now of the soldiers of each side, not of the military government, but simply of the people who have been under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know these people and hear their broken cries.

Now, let me tell you the truth about it. They must see Americans as strange liberators.”

Dr. King, at this point in his speech, gives a brief history of Vietnam. I have omitted that part of his speech. However, in a future blog I will discuss the similarities between Vietnam and the Middle East. 

 

 

Dr. King continues: “The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support and all the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform.

Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Arabs, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps, where minimal social needs are rarely met.

They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go, primarily women, and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops.

They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the towns and see thousands of thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals.

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation.

This is a role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolutions impossible but refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that comes from the immense profits of overseas investments.

I’m convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.

When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act.

One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be changed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway.

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation.

It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.”

The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.”

This business of bombing, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Oh, my friends, if there is any one thing that we must see today is that these are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born.

The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. They are saying, unconsciously, as we say in one of our freedom songs, “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around!”

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of radical Islam, our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries.

This has driven many to feel that only radical Islam has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, radicalism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated.

Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.

With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo, we shall boldly challenge unjust mores, and thereby speed up the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing, unconditional love for all men.

This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of mankind.

When I speak of love I’m not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality.

It is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of John: “Let us love one another, for God is love. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.”

Let me say finally that I oppose the war because I love America. I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world.

I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.

We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism. The home that all too many Americans left was solidly structured idealistically; its pillars were solidly grounded in the insights of our Judeo-Christian heritage.

All men are made in the image of God. All men are bothers. All men are created equal. Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. Every man has rights that are neither conferred by, nor derived from the State–they are God-given.

Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. What a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious and healthy place to inhabit. But America’s strayed away, and this unnatural excursion has brought only confusion and bewilderment. It has left hearts aching with guilt and minds distorted with irrationality.

It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to come back home. Come home, America. Omar Khayyam is right: “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.”

I call on Washington today. I call on every man and woman of good will all over America today. I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today to take a stand on this issue.

Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close. And don’t let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.

God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, “You’re too arrogant! And if you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I’ll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn’t even know my name. Be still and know that I’m God.”

Now it isn’t easy to stand up for truth and for justice. Sometimes it means being frustrated. When you tell the truth and take a stand, sometimes it means that you will walk the streets with a burdened heart. Sometimes it means losing a job…means being abused and scorned. It may mean having a seven, eight year old child asking a daddy, “Why do you have to go to jail so much?”

And I’ve long since learned that to be a follower to the Jesus Christ means taking up the cross. And my bible tells me that Good Friday comes before Easter. Before the crown we wear, there is the cross that we must bear. Let us bear it–bear it for truth, bear it for justice, and bear it for peace.

Let us go out this morning with that determination. And I have not lost faith. I’m not in despair, because I know that there is a moral order. I haven’t lost faith, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

I can still sing “We Shall Overcome” because: Carlyle was right: “No lie can live forever.”

We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant was right: “Truth pressed to earth will rise again.”

We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell was right: “Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.” Yet, that scaffold sways the future.

We shall overcome because the bible is right: “You shall reap what you sow.”

With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when the lion and the lamb will lie down together, and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid because the words of the Lord have spoken it.

With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all over the world we will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!”

With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all over the world we will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!”

With this faith, we’ll sing it as we’re getting ready to sing it now. Men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. And nations will not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war anymore.

I don’t know about you, I ain’t gonna study war no more.”

 

The “Moderated Rebels” in Syria

“This is a war on Syria, with terrorists from over 100 nations, waging their wicked and distorted version of Jihad in Syria, or just acting as paid and drugged out mercenaries.” Canadian journalist Eva Bartlett.

East Aleppo has been occupied by a number of groups backed by the United States, NATO and their allies in the Gulf, like Saudi Arabia, and Israel. “And we’re going to learn a lot more about the “rebels” whom we in the West – the US, Britain and our head-chopping mates in the Gulf – have been supporting.” Robert Fisk – The Independent

We know that the ‘rebels’ of eastern Aleppo have executed their enemies and have slit the throats of their prisoners. We know that the “rebels” include al-Qaeda (alias Jabhat al-Nusra, alias Jabhat Fateh al-Sham), the “folk” – as George W Bush called them – who committed the crimes against humanity in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on September 11^th 2001. Remember the War on Terror. Remember the “pure evil” of al-Qaeda.

“Does McCain Have Any Shred of Honor Left?”- The Atlantic

However, in Washington, we hear “How could the US stand by watching and not do anything?” The audacity of these interventionist, neocons and their mainstream media sock puppets. Hello! We did do something! We helped to created Aleppo and the Syrian tragedy because we did not stand by and watch. The US picked “sides” in the Syrian civil war. Our side is the side of the ‘moderate rebels” and a push for regime change in a sovereign country.

Remember when then Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama both called for regime change. Does that catch phase “Assad must go” ring a bell? Remember when war hawk Senator McCain was begging for funds and military support for any and all rebels groups fighting for “freedom” in Syria. We chose to support some of those rebels.

So who are these freedom loving rebels that want to spread democracy? In 2013, McCain entered Syria, probably illegally, to meet with the “moderate rebels”. It was a great photo opportunity to send pictures back home to the gang. There is nothing like a photo of some old war hawk hanging out with the rebels to get the blood flowing. It just like Viagra for the neocons.

Showing up in those “photo ops” were ISIS members, Al Qaeda and members of the Free Syria Army. In the McCain photos there were many high profile “rebel” commanders, including the leader of ISIS himself, Al Baghdadi. It was a virtual who’s who of murders.

McCain’s tweet describing the gallery was “Important visit with brave fighters in #Syria who are risking their lives for freedom and need our help” How can anyone even look at this buffoon let alone listen to him. He has no credibility but he continues to bang that drum. Earlier this month Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was joined by (maybe a bigger buffoon) Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to criticize the Obama administration for “inaction” on Syria.

As president Bashar Assad’s forces are reclaiming Aleppo from McCain’s rebel buddies, maybe the mainstream media should shine more light on the rebel groups. Under further scrutiny the rebels may be exposed as a group not quite living up to McCain’s billing as freedom fighters.

Aleppo

The battle of east Aleppo has been brutal. The Syrian military admits that it has killed civilians. But the civilian casualties of artillery shells on western Aleppo fired by the ‘rebels’ has been, until recently, almost totally ignored.

Civilians in the government-held area of western Aleppo describe these groups as “terrorists,” Most Syrians make no differentiation between any specific group. According to the Syrian civilians, these groups are made up of criminals, mercenaries and terrorists.

Canadian Eva Bartlett is one of the few independent Western journalists covering the horrific conflict in Syria has traveled to Syria six times in the last two years and three times in the last six months. She is currently touring the US with a coalition called Hands Off Syria.

Her full interview can be read at Consortium News:
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/20/extracting-aleppo-from-the-propaganda/

In the interview Eva describes the activities that the “moderate rebels” perpetrating on the Syrian people in Aleppo. “Terrorists that are in many ways backed by the West and Gulf nations, financially and otherwise, were, on a daily basis, firing a variety of bombs on the civilian areas of Aleppo, which we never hear about in the corporate media.”

In a first hand account of her stay in Aleppo she describes the damage that the US backed “moderate rebels” inflicted. “In May of this year the al-Dabit Maternity Hospital was destroyed by a terrorist’s fired rocket. And when it was destroyed, three women inside were killed, and many more were injured. This was not, to my knowledge, reported in the corporate media, although the media’s always talking about alleged (Russian/Syrian) strikes on hospitals in Aleppo.”

Ms. Bartlett refers the rebel groups as terrorist not moderate rebels. “I do mean terrorists from those groups and also from the so-called Free Syrian Army. The Free Syrian Army has been as heinous and as gruesome as ISIS and as al-Nusra.” The same rebel groups that Sen McCain’s had his picture taken with just a few years ago.

The “lackey corporate media”

Ms Bartlett talked about the tactic that the U.S. administration and their “lackey corporate media” use to whitewash the crimes of the terrorists as they vilify the (Syrian) government. They report the allegations but ignore the findings. The example she gives is in reference to the alleged gassing of Syrian citizens by the Assad government.

“The myths we’ve heard about Syria, over the years, the Syrian government has been accused of so many things, chemical weapons, they’ve been accused of massacring civilians. And every time there has been an investigation, all fingers have pointed to the rebels. Even Carla Del Ponte, who’s of the U.N. investigative team in a 2013 chemical attacks accusations, said, “No, it was the terrorists/rebels that had sarin.”

When asked what’s missing from the U.S. corporate media’s picture?  She responded, “what we’re not hearing, now, from the corporate media: The scenes, the voices of the people who have been liberated, saying “Thank you” to the (Syrian) army. The army, by the way are not Assad’s forces. The army, the Syrian army is actually made up of Syrian people. And it’s not simply Alawite. It’s Sunni, it’s Alawite, it’s Christian and the people in Aleppo… you will find footage of people praising the army. And people who have been terrorized for years by these terrorists that the West calls “moderates”.

Asked, “what would your advice be to U.S. officials dealing at this point? What would you want to see happen?” Ms Bartlett’s solution is to “stop arming the terrorists, stop whitewashing their crimes. Stop allowing Turkey to keep its borders open and terrorists to flood in and out through Turkey’s borders. Stop supporting the regimes of Saudi Arabia, which are in turn arming terrorists, which are brainwashing terrorists. Stop interfering in a sovereign nation.”

“Economic Terrorism”

Is the Syrian conflict just another NATO intervention, a dirty war being inflicted upon a sovereign nation, with the objective of “regime change”? Regardless of the why, the cost of this war is the bloodshed and devastating costs incurred by the Syrian people.

In March 2015, a member of the Syrian parliament, Maria Saadeh, addressed the United Nations Human Rights Commission wrote “In 2011 the UN and its member states started to impose “economic sanctions” against the Syrian regime. These sanctions imposed have been a punitive action against the Syrian people”

In the document entitled ‘Economic Terrorism’ compared the results of terrorist organizations in Syria with the effects of coercive measures taken under the label of ‘economic sanctions.’ These sanctions violate international law in the same way as terrorism does. Their results and effects are the same; they attack Syrian society and violate human rights, especially the right to life.

As a result of the sanctions, unemployment has risen from 8.6% in 2010 to 50% in 2014; poverty reached 75% in 2013 where it was 9% in 2010; the number of children in primary education has fallen to 50%; the same number of hospitals and factories have closed as a result of the sanctions as a result of terrorism.

Ms. Eva Bartlett concludes, “So, you know, if U.S. officials, with all their crocodile tears, actually care about human rights in Syria, stop supporting the terrorists who are destroying the country.”  She went on to say, “nobody is saying the government (Syria) is perfect. Because no government is perfect.”  Not even the US Government.

Part 2 “America is killing the Yemeni people.”

Graffiti on walls across the Yemen capital of Sana reads: “America is killing the Yemeni people.” Why is the US being singled out? Could this be a cry of desperation? If it is the world is choosing not to listen. The graffiti is directed at the major supplier of the military arms to Saudi Arabia. There is no mistaken the United States is embroiled in another protracted War, this time in Yemen.

The United Nations human rights office reports that that air strikes by the Saudis coalition are responsible for an estimated 60 percent of the deaths in Yemen. A UN panel in January found 119 air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition potentially breached human rights law. Both the UN and human rights groups have discussed the possibility that the Saudi offensive constitutes war crimes.

To further exacerbating the growing humanitarian crisis, the Saudis coalition blockade of Yemen’s ports has prevented food and fuel aid into Yemen putting 80% of the country’s civilian population in need of humanitarian aid.

Publicly, the United States has kept its distance from the war, but its decades-old alliance with Saudi Arabia, underpinned by billions of dollars in weapons sales, has left American fingerprints on the air campaign.

Although U.S. forces are not “directly” involved in the fighting in Yemen, the U.S. has supplied weapons to Saudi Arabia. It is the weapons that have made the Saudi bombing campaign possible. The United States has been providing the Saudis with bombs, intelligence, and aerial refueling for its jets. The US Military advisers are often present in the Saudi-led campaign’s control room.

Since spring 2015, U.S. planes have flown more than 1,000 refueling sorties and offloaded tens of millions of pounds of fuel to Saudi aircraft. US officials have also provided advice on target development and training for the Saudi pilots.

Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest importer of arms. They spent $9.3 billion in 2015. Saudi Arabia in the past year has purchased Eurofighter Typhoon jets, F-15 warplanes and Apache helicopters, as well as precision-guided weapons, drones and surveillance equipment.

U.S. is the world’s top arms exporter.  The U.S. is the supplier of approximately one third of all the arms on this planet. In 2015 the US exported almost $23 billion worth of arms. Saudi Arabia is arguable it’s best customers. The business of producing and selling arms is solid.

One example of the world’s increasing demand for arms is Lockheed Martin. The company has recently signed several multi-billion deals with Saudi Arabia. The company’s sales revenue was $46.1 billion in 2015, up by around $500 million on 2014 sales.

The United States’ Department of Defense deals with Saudi Arabia since March of 2015.

• May 2015 MH-60R Multi-Mission Helicopters — $1.900 billion,
• July 2015 Ammunition RSLF $0.500 billion
• July 2015 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) Missiles — $5.400 billion,
• October 2015 Black Hawk Helicopters RSLF Aviation Command $0.495 billion
• October 2015 Multi-Mission Surface Combatant Ships $11.250 billion
• November 2015 Air-to-Ground Munitions RSAF $1.290 billion
• February 2016 MK 15 Phalanx Close-In Weapons Systems $0.154 billion
• February 2016 USMTM Technical Assistance Field Teams Support $0.200 billion
• August 2016 M1A2S Tanks and Related Equipment $1.150 billion
• 8, 2016 Chinook Cargo Helicopters and related equipment, training, and support. The estimated cost is $3.51 billion.

Marine General Smedley Butler published a book in the 1930’s called “War is a Racket”. In his book, General Butler, a two-time Medal of Honor recipient, discussed how warfare provided profiteering opportunities to business.

Another prominent US General, President Dwight Eisenhower, in his 1961 farewell warned the US citizens about the “unwarranted influence”, of the business, that he called the “military industrial complex”.

U.S. in Violation of International Law?

A report by Amnesty International identifies three of the bomb types in the U.S. arms sale as having been used in Saudi Arabia’s unlawful airstrikes. Yemenis often find the remains of American-made munitions, as they did in the ruins after a strike that killed more than 100 mourners at a funeral earlier this year. Remember the graffiti?

The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) was the first global treaty to regulate the conventional military arms trade. As of 1 July 2016, eighty-six (86) States had ratified or acceded to the ATT including the US. The ATT declares that “states are not allowed to sell weapons to a party engaged in armed conflict, if it knows the arms could be used “in attacks directed against civilians or other war crimes as defined by international law.”

In January 2016 the ATT concluded that some signatory States are in direct violation of the legally binding Treaty obligations when they supply arms to Saudi Arabia. The ATT concluded that there is clear risk that the arms sold to Saudi Arabia will be used in breach of international law in Yemen.

The UN Security Council on Yemen identified 119 coalition air sorties relating to violations of *International humanitarian law (IHL). The report states that airstrikes have targeted civilians and civilian objects, including residential areas, markets, schools, mosques, factories and food warehouses, and gatherings such as weddings. reports and stress to need for urgent action and the immediate halt of arms transfers to the Saudi-led coalition.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have produced evidence that US and UK munitions have been used in Saudi-led coalition airstrikes against several residential neighborhoods in Yemen.

In spite of this information the current administration has offered Saudi Arabia more than $115 billion in weapons, military equipment and training. The agreements included everything from small arms and ammunition to tanks, attack helicopters, air-to-ground missiles, missile defense ships, and warships. Washington also provides maintenance and training to Saudi security forces.

Just maybe President-elect Trump should make General Smedley Butler’s “War is a Racket” and President (General) Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 Farewell Address required readings for the Generals he has nominated for positions in his cabinet.

 

* This is the law that regulates “Conduct of War”.  It seeks to limit the effects of armed conflict by protecting persons who are not participating in hostilities, the civilians and children.

Oh Yemen! – Man It’s Hard Just to Live

There is a war going on in Yemen, just as brutal as the war in Syria. Yet, it has received very little media attention.

“Yemen is a media blackout,” said Jamie McGoldrick, the top U.N. humanitarian official in the country. “It’s not getting the attention it deserves. It’s not Aleppo. We don’t have drones flying over it showing the destruction. We don’t have a Mosul, which has BBC cameras 24-7 on it.”

In order to understand the real tragedy in Yemen, one must turn away from the US mainstream media’s “real news” and seek alternative “fake” media sources. A good start would be the powerful documentary by the BBC “Starving Yemen”, produced by Nawal Al-Maghafi.  (www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37423263) This documentary exposes the real causalities of war, the civilian, especially the children.

The chief executive of Oxfam, Mark Golding, stated: “Yemen is being slowly starved to death. First there were restrictions on imports including much need food. When this was partially eased, the cranes in the ports were bombed, then the warehouses, then the roads and the bridges. This is not by accident. It is systematic.”

Before, the current civil war began, Yemen was the poorest country in the Middle East, it still is. Yemen’s food and medicine has to be imported. More than 90 percent of it’s supplies must be imported and come into the country’s by way of it’s ports and airports.

The Yemen civil war can be traced back to the Arab Spring of 2011. Since then Yemen has reeled from one political shock to another. The Arab Spring resulted in it’s authoritarian leader President Saleh being ousted and “agreeing” to a power-transition deal he signed in 2011.

Saleh actually backed out of signing the GCC (Gulf Co-operation Council) power-transition deal three times. However, after a June 3, 2011 bomb attack on his presidential palace, which killed 14 bodyguards and government officials, he reconsidered.

From Saudi Arabia Saleh issued a decree, authorizing Hadi, who he had appointed as vice-president in 1994, to assume the role of acting president. Hadi would negotiate with the opposition to sign the GCC-brokered power transition deal.

The deal called for forming a national unity government from the Yemeni ruling party GPC and the opposition coalition Joint Meeting Parties (JMP), each accounting for 50 percent representation and a presidential election to be held.

This deal made Yemen the first Arab Spring nation where an uprising led to a negotiated settlement brokered by a foreign coalition, the GCC. The Gulf Co-operation Council is made up of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. This deal was also backed by Washington DC, the European Union and the United Nations.

The “open and free” democratic election that followed was a bit suspect. Hadi was the only candidate on the ballot. Two of the most popular factions in Yemen, the Houthis in northern Yemen and the southern Ansar al-Sharia (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), both called for a boycott of the election. To cast an even larger shadow over the results, Yemeni police reports indicate that they arrested “hardliners” that alleged sought to forcefully prevent people from voting.

Then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed the 2012 Presidential election in Yemen and promised continuous support to the Arab nation as it confronts challenges ahead. She extended her congratulations to the Yemeni people on the “successful” presidential vote, and called the election “another important step forward” in Yemen’s democratic transition process.

Secretary of State Clinton, in a written statement, concluded that, “Today’s election sends a clear message that the people of Yemen are looking forward to a brighter democratic future.” Probable the same message the Secretary sent to Trump after the results of the 2016 US Presidential Election were learned.

Hadi was elected president but he had a country beset by a host of problems. Separatists and rebels rejecting the brokered GCC deal and not acknowledging the legitimacy of the single candidate election.

Reactions soon turned violent. The Houthis movement in the north and a growing threat from al-Qaeda in the south escalated.  In September of 2014, the Houthi rebels took power in Yemen and on  January 22, 2015, under Houthi arrest, Yemen President Hadi resigned from his office but is was not over.

Ex-president Hadi, escaped the Houthis’ house arrest and fled to Arden. In February 0f 2015, he  retracted his January resignation as president and reestablished himself as the President of Yemen.

By March 2015, with the Houthis advancing to the outskirts of Aden, Hadi left Yemen and took refuge in the Saudi capital Riyadh. Today Hadi’s provisional government resides in Saudi Arabia.  The GCC countries, the United Nations, the European Union and the US continued to back Hadi as the legitimate leader of Yemen.

By the end of March 2015, a coalition of Gulf countries led by Saudi Arabia and supported by the United States began an aggressive campaign, known as Operation Decisive Storm, aimed at restoring the Hadi government.

So as of March 2015, the civil war became multi-national when Saudi Arabia took sides in the Yemeni civil war in behalf of “Hadi’s legitimate government.” The results of their intervention has devastated the Yemeni people. The country has imploded even further as the Saudi-led coalition entered the fray with it’s blockades and bombings.

The Saudi’s  bombing campaign have laid waste to Yemen’s infrastructure. Their bombs have destroyed bridges, roads, schools, hospitals, water wells and reports indicate that farms and orchards have all been targeted. Saudi Arabian and its coalition partners have also established a naval blockade around Yemen.

The result of Saudi’s actions has shut down imports into Yemen. Thus the 90 percent of food and medicine required by the Yemeni has virtually disappeared. The United Nations estimates that more than 80 percent of Yemen’s population of 23 million are in immediate need of humanitarian assistance.

Why is Hadi government considered the “legitimate government”? Is it because he was “democratically” elected? Or is it because the Gulf Co-operation Council made up of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates says so? Or is it a way for Saudi Arabia to fight a proxy war against Iran? Or is it just a good market for the Industrial Military Complex?

How ever the legitimacy is rationalized none are addressing the popular sovereignty of the Yemeni people nor their welfare. Two final question about the legitimacy of Hadi’s leadership should be answered.

1. What kind of leader would allow a foreign coalition to devastate his country, kill his innocent civilians, starve his defenseless children and deny the Yemeni any medical supplies? 
2. Do we really think that Hadi could go back to Yemen and gain the support of the Yemeni people?

Oh Yemen! – Man It’s Hard Just to Live.

 

Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure is Amended

We have been taught in school that, “no taxation without representation” were the Colonists first cry for liberty. However, the first screams for liberty began when James Otis Jr. took action against illegal search and seizure.

John Adams sought to make sure that invasive searches and seizures were never carried out again when drafting the Fourth Amendment. In it, he wrote “a warrant must specify the “persons or objects of search, arrest, or seizure.”

An amendment to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure took effect on December 1^st. It now reads:  “A magistrate judge with authority in any district where activities related to a crime may have occurred has authority to issue a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media and to seize or copy electronically stored information located within or outside that district if: (A) the district where the media or information is located has been concealed through technological means; or (B) in an investigation of a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030, the media are protected computers that have been damaged without authorization and are located in five or more districts.”

The amendment is a game changer for the FBI’s regulation over search and seizure. This change will allow federal agencies to obtain a warrant for “remote-access” searches and seizures of digital materials. I would argue that it is a returned to the days when America was ruled by the King of England and the British Parliament.

To give some historical context, we need to go back in history to the the 1760s. British authorities were allowed to carry out searches of anyone at anytime, regardless of whether or not they were suspected of a crime.

The reason John Adams was so vehemently opposed to unwarranted searches and seizures was because he watched as James Otis Jr, a Boston attorney, challenge the British hierarchy on the legality of the searches and seizures afforded to the British officials and custom agents under the writ of assistance issued

A writ of assistance is a written order (a writ) issued by a court instructing a law enforcement official, such as a sheriff or a tax collector, to perform a certain task.

In the England, writs of assistance were first authorized by an act of the English Parliament in 1660 to help customs officials search for smuggled goods. These writs called upon sheriffs, other officials, and loyal subjects to “assist” the customs official in carrying out his duties.

The writs of assistance for the customs officials served as general search warrants. The writs were permanent and even transferable; the holder of a writ could assign it to another official. Any place could be searched at the whim of the holder, and searchers were not responsible for any damage they caused. In practice, this put anyone who had such a writ above the laws.

These writs of assistance were being used in an effort to curtail the “smuggling” by the merchants of Boston. The authority of the writ was used in an attempt to capture the taxes and gain control on the illegal goods being “smuggled” into Boston.

Colonists protested that the writs violated their rights as British subjects. The writs were challenged by a group of 63 Boston merchants represented by Attorney James Otis, Jr. Otis technically lost his challenge to the authority of the King and Parliament writs but made a strong impression on both Samuel Adams and John Adams as the watched the trials with great interest.

In a pamphlet published in 1765, Otis expanded his argument that the general writs violated the British unwritten constitution. The constitution opposed any law in violation of the Magna Carta or “natural law” was void.

Natural Law protects natural rights. *Natural rights are addressed in our Declaration of independence. They are called inalienable rights “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

 Otis’ next challenge came in September of 1766 when customs officials in Boston, with the help of a deputy sheriff, searched merchant Daniel Malcom‘s home. His home was also his place of business. They claimed the authority to do so by a writ of assistance issued to a British customs agent. The writ was issued based upon the information of a confidential informant.

Malcom allowed the agent and deputy sheriff to search, but denied them access to a locked cellar, arguing that they did not have the legal authority to break it open. Malcom threatened to use force to prevent them from opening the door. Malcom claimed that his threat was specific to his resisting an unlawful forced entry.

The officials left and returned with a specific search warrant, only to find that Malcom had locked his house. A crowd of Malcom supports had gathered around the house and were hostile to the customs officers when they returned.

The British officials described Malcom as acting in defiance of the law. His lawyer, James Otis Jr, argued that Malcom’s actions were lawful. Otis’ push against the validity of writs of assistance produced more challengers. In 1768, John Hancock, a wealthy Boston merchant, would resisted a search in a similar manner when customs officials attempted to search his ship Lydia.

Although no violence occurred during these defiant acts the British Governor of Massachusetts reports back to England created the impression that riots had taken place. These incidents furthered Boston’s reputation in Britain as a lawless town controlled by “mobs”.

This reputation would contribute to Parliament issuing a series of acts called the 1767 Townshend Acts. The Townshend Acts were met with further resistance in the colonies, prompting the occupation of Boston by British troops in 1768, which eventually resulted in the Boston Massacre of 1770.

Today law enforcement officials and proponents, of the amendment to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal, claim that this is just a necessary alteration which fits the digital age. It is not. It is a concession of another one of our “natural rights”. For the American citizens it is a loss of privacy.

In the 1760’s the enforcement of the writs of assistance for the custom officials’ illegal searches and seizures became the catalyst that prompted our founding father quest for liberty and independence. Today it is just a footnote.