Obama – Page 3 – praag.org

Al-Qaida-linked Syrian rebels hit Christian village

Syrian rebels fighting government forces

by Karin Laub and Zeina Karam

Al-Qaida-linked rebels have launched an assault on a regime-held Christian village in the densely populated west of Syria and new clashes erupted near the capital, Damascus – part of a brutal battle of attrition each side believes it can win despite more than two years of deadlock.

As the world focused on possible U.S. military action against Syria, rebels commandeered a mountaintop hotel in the village of Maaloula and shelled the community below Wednesday, said a nun, speaking by phone from a convent in the village. She spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The attack came hours before a Senate panel voted to give President Barack Obama authority to use military force against Syria – the first time lawmakers have voted to allow military action since the October 2002 votes authorizing the invasion of Iraq.

The measure, which cleared the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on a 10-7 vote, was altered at the last minute to support “decisive changes to the present military balance of power” in Syria’s civil war, though it ruled out U.S. combat operations on the ground. It was expected to reach the full Senate floor next week.

The Syria conflict, which began with a popular uprising in March 2011, has been stalemated, and it’s not clear if U.S. military strikes over the regime’s alleged chemical weapons use would change that. Obama has said he seeks limited pinpoint action to deter future chemical attacks, not regime change.

Obama has been lobbying for international and domestic support for punishing President Bashar Assad’s regime, which the U.S. says fired rockets loaded with the nerve agent sarin on rebel-held areas near Damascus before dawn on Aug. 21, killing hundreds of civilians.

So far, however, he has won little international backing for action. Among major allies, only France has offered publicly to join the U.S. in a strike.

In a parliament debate, France’s Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault made a passionate appeal for intervention in Syria, placing the blame for the alleged chemical attack on Assad and warning that inaction could let him carry out more atrocities.

The debate ended without a vote since President Francois Hollande can order a military operation without one.

Obama has called chemical weapons use a “red line,” and top administration officials argued before the Senate on Tuesday that Assad would take inaction by Washington as a license for further brutality against his people. The fighting has killed more than 100,000 Syrians and uprooted nearly 7 million from their homes.

During a visit to Sweden on Wednesday, Obama said a red line had been drawn by countries around the world that have backed a long-standing ban on chemical weapons. “I didn’t set a red line, the world set a red line,” he said.

With the Syria debate in Congress in full swing, questions arose around the administration’s assurances. It’s not clear, critics said, how the U.S. could expect to deliver surgical strikes in Syria’s chaotic battlefield or predict the repercussions, including possible Assad regime reprisals against Syria’s neighbors.

The civil war in Syria hit a stalemate almost from the start. The rebels control much of the countryside in the north, east and south, but the regime is hanging on to most urban centers in the west, where the majority of Syrians live.

Within that deadlock, each side has consolidated control over certain areas, said Peter Harling, a Syria expert at the International Crisis Group think tank.

Momentum “is always shifting enough for both sides to be able to convince themselves that victory is ultimately feasible,” he said. “In practice, both sides are stuck and can achieve very little militarily.”

The dawn assault on the predominantly Christian village of Maaloula was carried out by rebels from the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra group, according to a Syrian government official and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-regime group.

At the start of the attack, an al-Nusra fighter blew himself up at a regime checkpoint at the entrance to the village, said the Observatory, which collects information from a network of anti-regime activists.

The suicide attack was followed by fighting between the rebels and regime forces, the Observatory and a nun in the village said. Eventually, the rebels seized the checkpoint, disabled two tanks and an armored personnel carrier and killed eight regime soldiers in fighting, the British-based group said.

The nun said the rebels took over the Safir hotel atop a mountain overlooking the village and fired shells at it from there. “It’s a war. It has been going from 6 a.m. in the morning,” she said.

Some 80 people from the village took refuge in the convent, which houses 13 nuns and 27 orphans, she said.

A Syrian government official confirmed the assault and said the military was trying to repel the rebels. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give official statements.

Maaloula, a mountain village some 40 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Damascus, is home to about 2,000 residents, some of whom still speak a version of Aramaic, the ancient language of biblical times believed to have been spoken by Jesus.

The four-decade iron rule of the Assad clan over Syria has long rested on support from the country’s ethnic and religious minorities, including Christians, Shiite Muslims and Kurds. The Assad family and key regime figures are Alawites, followers of an offshoot of Shiite Islam, while most rebels and their supporters are Sunni Muslims.

In fighting in Damascus, a mortar shell fired by rebels hit a sports hall, killing a member of the national tae kwon do team, 27-year-old Mohammed Ali Neimeh, the state news agency SANA said. Neimeh had been training for an upcoming Islamic Solidarity Tournament in Indonesia this week.

Rebels and regime forces also clashed on the outskirts of the capital, according to amateur video. In the Daraya district, several fighters fired assault rifles from behind an earthen embankment. Smoke rose from the neighborhood of Barzek after the shelling.

There were new signs of rivalry among rebel groups that have been fragmented from the start. The two main camps are the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, which portrays itself as the largest fighting group, and jihadist fighters, including thousands from outside Syria, who have become increasingly dominant, particularly in the north and sparsely populated east.

Among the jihadists, there have been several splits in recent months, particularly between those loyal to commanders in Syria and those who pledge allegiance to al-Qaida-linked groups in Iraq.

In an amateur video posted online Wednesday, a foreign fighter was seen standing among other bearded men who he says have come to Syria from Russia and the Caucasus to wage jihad, or holy war.

“Our brigade is called the Mujahedin of the Caucasus and the Levant, and we have our brothers from all over the world with us,” he said in halting Russian translated into Arabic. He said his men had broken away from one of the jihadi blocs, known as ISIS, and that the group is also “independent from Jabhat al-Nusra and others.” – AP

—

Associated Press writer Albert Aji in Damascus contributed to this report.

‘US attack on Syria would be gross violation of international law’

Putin says US claims of Syrian responsibility for chemical attack is 'utter nonsense' — Putin: US claims that Syria is responsible for chemical attack is utter nonsense

Russia dramatically escalated its denunciations of American threats to attack Syrian military targets on Saturday, with President Vladimir Putin saying it would have been “utter nonsense” for the Syrian government to use chemical weapons as the Obama administration alleges.

The Foreign Ministry said a U.S. attack would be a “gross violation” of international law.

Speaking out for the first time since an apparent chemical weapons attack near Damascus on Aug. 21, Putin called on President Obama to find a nonviolent way out of the crisis.

“I would like to address Obama as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate: Before using force in Syria, it would be good to think about future casualties,” Putin told Russian news agencies in Vladivostok during a tour of the country’s flood-stricken Far East.

“Russia is urging you to think twice before making a decision on an operation in Syria,” he said.

Putin said he was sure the attack was the work of rebels trying to provoke international — and especially American — involvement in the Syrian conflict. The government of Bashar al-Assad, he said, would have had no reason to use chemical weapons at a time when it had gained the upper hand in the fighting.

Doing so, he said, would have been “utter nonsense’’ – with the clear implication that that is how he would characterize the American allegations.

On top of that, he said, the Obama administration’s “claims that proof exists, but is classified and cannot be presented to anybody, are below criticism. This is plain disrespect for their partners.”

Putin’s comments were soon underlined by a stern statement from the Foreign Ministry. After U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul had finished a meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Saturday, the ministry declared, “Russia has expressed its conviction that any forceful action against Syria that the U.S. could carry out in circumvention of the U.N. Security Council would be an act of aggression and a gross violation of international law.”

Putin said he was surprised by the vote in Britain’s Parliament on Thursday not to join a U.S. attack on Syrian military targets. “It shows that there are people guided by common sense there,” he said.

Obama arrives in St. Petersburg for the G20 meeting on Thursday and leaves on Friday. The purpose of the gathering is to discuss economic growth, but the White House acknowledges there will be plenty of conversation about Syria on the side. There are currently no plans for a one-on-one meeting between Putin and Obama, who earlier this month decided not to attend a Moscow summit with the Russian president.

On Friday, the head of the foreign affairs committee of the lower house of parliament, Alexei Pushkov, said the Nobel committee should strip Obama of his 2009 Peace Prize if he launches an attack on Syria. – Washington Post

Syria: Another Western war crime in the making

by Paul Craig Roberts

Update:

The war criminals in Washington and other Western capitals are determined to maintain their lie that the Syrian government used chemical weapons. Having failed in efforts to intimidate the UN chemical inspectors in Syria, Washington has demanded that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon withdraw the chemical weapons inspectors before they can assess the evidence and make their report. The UN Secretary General stood up to the Washington war criminals and rejected their demand. However, as with Iraq, Washington’s decision to commit aggression against Syria is not based on any facts.

The US and UK governments have revealed none of the “conclusive evidence” they claim to have that the Syrian government used chemical weapons. Listening to their voices, observing their body language, and looking into their eyes, it is completely obvious that John Kerry and his British and German puppets are lying through their teeth. This is a far more shameful situation than the massive lies that former Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Colin Powell claims that he was deceived by the White House and did not know that he was lying. Kerry and the British, French, and German puppets know full well that they are lying.

The face that the West presents to the world is the brazen face of a liar.

Washington and its British and French puppet governments are poised to yet again reveal their criminality. The image of the West as War Criminal is not a propaganda image created by the West’s enemies, but the portrait that the West has painted of itself.

The UK Independent reports that over this past week-end Obama, Cameron, and Hollande agreed to launch cruise missile attacks against the Syrian government within two weeks despite the lack of any authorization from the UN and despite the absence of any evidence in behalf of Washington’s claim that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the Washington-backed “rebels”, largely US supported external forces, seeking to overthrow the Syrian government.

Indeed, one reason for the rush to war is to prevent the UN inspection that Washington knows would disprove its claim and possibly implicate Washington in the false flag attack by the “rebels,” who assembled a large number of children into one area to be chemically murdered with the blame pinned by Washington on the Syrian government.

Another reason for the rush to war is that Cameron, the UK prime minister, wants to get the war going before the British parliament can block him for providing cover for Obama’s war crimes the way that Tony Blair provided cover for George W. Bush, for which Blair was duly rewarded. What does Cameron care about Syrian lives when he can leave office into the waiting arms of a $50 million fortune.

The Syrian government, knowing that it is not responsible for the chemical weapons incident, has agreed for the UN to send in chemical inspectors to determine the substance used and the method of delivery. However, Washington has declared that it is “too late” for UN inspectors and that Washington accepts the self-serving claim of the al Qaeda affiliated “rebels” that the Syrian government attacked civilians with chemical weapons. See also Syria Accepts UN Inspectors, US Spurns Call as ‘Too Late’.

In an attempt to prevent the UN chemical inspectors who arrived on the scene from doing their work, the inspectors were fired upon by snipers in “rebel” held territory and forced off site, although a later report from RT says the inspectors have returned to the site to conduct their inspection.

The corrupt British government has declared that Syria can be attacked without UN authorization, just as Serbia and Libya were militarily attacked without UN authorization. In other words, the Western democracies have already established precedents for violating international law. “International law? We don’t need no stinking international law!” The West knows only one rule: Might is Right. As long as the West has the Might, the West has the Right.

In a response to the news report that the US, UK, and France are preparing to attack Syria, the Russian Foreign Minister, Lavrov, said that such unilateral action is a “severe violation of international law,” and that the violation was not only a legal one but also an ethical and moral violation. Lavrov referred to the lies and deception used by the West to justify its grave violations of international law in military attacks on Serbia, Iraq, and Libya and how the US government used preemptive moves to undermine every hope for peaceful settlements in Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

Once again Washington has preempted any hope of peaceful settlement. By announcing the forthcoming attack, the US destroyed any incentive for the “rebels” to participate in the peace talks with the Syrian government. On the verge of these talks taking place, the “rebels” now have no incentive to participate as the West’s military is coming to their aid.

In his press conference Lavrov spoke of how the ruling parties in the US, UK, and France stir up emotions among poorly informed people that, once aroused, have to be satisfied by war. This, of course, is the way the US manipulated the public in order to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. But the American public is tired of the wars, the goal of which is never made clear, and has grown suspicious of the government’s justifications for more wars.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll finds that “Americans strongly oppose U.S. intervention in Syria’s civil war and believe Washington should stay out of the conflict even if reports that Syria’s government used deadly chemicals to attack civilians are confirmed.” However, Obama could not care less that only 9 percent of the public supports his warmongering. As former president Jimmy Carter recently stated, “America has no functioning democracy.” It has a police state in which the executive branch has placed itself above all law and the Constitution.

This police state is now going to commit yet another Nazi-style war crime of unprovoked aggression. At Nuremberg the Nazis were sentenced to death for precisely the identical actions being committed by Obama, Cameron, and Hollande. The West is banking on might, not right, to keep it out of the criminal dock.

The US, UK, and French governments have not explained why it matters whether people in the wars initiated by the West are killed by explosives made of depleted uranium or with chemical agents or any other weapon. It was obvious from the beginning that Obama was setting up the Syrian government for attack. Obama demonized chemical weapons–but not nuclear “bunker busters” that the US might use on Iran. Then Obama drew a red line, saying that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrians was such a great crime that the West would be obliged to attack Syria. Washington’s UK puppets, William Hague and Cameron, have just repeated this nonsensical claim. The final step in the frame-up was to orchestrate a chemical incident and blame the Syrian government.

What is the West’s real agenda? This is the unasked and unanswered question. Clearly, the US, UK, and French governments, which have displayed continuously their support for dictatorial regimes that serve their purposes, are not the least disturbed by dictatorships. They brand Assad a dictator as a means of demonizing him for the ill-informed Western masses. But Washington, UK, and France support any number of dictatorial regimes, such as the ones in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and now the military dictatorship in Egypt that is ruthlessly killing Egyptians without any Western government speaking of invading Egypt for “killing its own people.”

Clearly also, the forthcoming Western attack on Syria has nothing whatsoever to do with bringing “freedom and democracy” to Syria any more than freedom and democracy were reasons for the attacks on Iraq and Libya, neither of which gained any “freedom and democracy.”

The Western attack on Syria is unrelated to human rights, justice or any of the high sounding causes with which the West cloaks its criminality.

The Western media, and least of all the American presstitutes, never ask Obama, Cameron, or Hollande what the real agenda is. It is difficult to believe than any reporter is sufficiently stupid or gullible to believe that the agenda is bringing “freedom and democracy” to Syria or punishing Assad for allegedly using chemical weapons against murderous thugs trying to overthrow the Syrian government.

Of course, the question wouldn’t be answered if asked. But the act of asking it would help make the public aware that more is afoot than meets the eye. Originally, the excuse for Washington’s wars was to keep Americans safe from terrorists. Now Washington is endeavoring to turn Syria over to jihad terrorists by helping them to overthrow the secular, non-terrorist Assad government. What is the agenda behind Washington’s support of terrorism?

Perhaps the purpose of the wars is to radicalize Muslims and, thereby, destabilize Russia and even China. Russia has large populations of Muslims and is bordered by Muslim countries. Even China has some Muslim population. As radicalization spreads strife into the only two countries capable of being an obstacle to Washington’s world hegemony, Western media propaganda and the large number of US financed NGOs, posing as “human rights” organizations, can be counted on by Washington to demonize the Russian and Chinese governments for harsh measures against “rebels.”

Another advantage of the radicalization of Muslims is that it leaves former Muslim countries in long-term turmoil or civil wars, as is currently the case in Iraq and Libya, thus removing any organized state power from obstructing Israeli purposes.

Secretary of State John Kerry is working the phones using bribes and threats to build acceptance, if not support, for Washington’s war crime-in-the-making against Syria.

Washington is driving the world closer to nuclear war than it ever was even in the most dangerous periods of the Cold War. When Washington finishes with Syria, the next target is Iran. Russia and China will no longer be able to fool themselves that there is any system of international law or restraint on Western criminality. Western aggression is already forcing both countries to develop their strategic nuclear forces and to curtail the Western-financed NGOs that pose as “human rights organizations,” but in reality comprise a fifth column that Washington can use to destroy the legitimacy of the Russian and Chinese governments.

Russia and China have been extremely careless in their dealings with the United States. Essentially, the Russian political opposition is financed by Washington. Even the Chinese government is being undermined. When a US corporation opens a company in China, it creates a Chinese board on which are put relatives of the local political authorities. These boards create a conduit for payments that influence the decisions and loyalties of local and regional party members. The US has penetrated Chinese universities and intellectual attitudes. The Rockefeller University is active in China as is Rockefeller philanthropy. Dissenting voices are being created that are arrayed against the Chinese government. Demands for “liberalization” can resurrect regional and ethnic differences and undermine the cohesiveness of the national government.

Once Russia and China realize that they are riven with American fifth columns, isolated diplomatically, and outgunned militarily, nuclear weapons become the only guarantor of their sovereignty. This suggests that nuclear war is likely to terminate humanity well before humanity succumbs to global warming or rising national debts.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

Originally published on Paul Craig Roberts – Institute for Political Economy. Reproduced with the author’s permission. Contact information for syndication rights.

Benghazi: CIA sent missiles to jihadis

Despite evidence showing the Benghazi attack was staged by a State Department hired jihadist security outfit in connection with an arms transfer to al-Qaeda mercenaries in Syria, the US MSM is pretending it does not know what happened in Libya on September 11, 2012.

The corporate media has yet to point out that the Obama administration attempted to cover-up the real reason for the murder of ambassador Stevens – U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and the State Department initially pointing to a lame anti-Muslim video – and has consistently downplayed the incident and characterized it as a non-event not requiring congressional investigation and the impeachment of President Obama.

A number of guests appearing on the Alex Jones Show following the attack have built an indisputable case that the CIA was shipping arms from U.S.-controlled facilities located at the U.S. mission in Benghazi to its mercenaries in Syria and the murder of ambassador Stevens was carried out by an al-Qaeda affiliated group as part of a turf war between the CIA and elements in the Pentagon.

In May, former government insider Steve Pieczenik explained how a Pentagon effort to derail a CIA operation may have occurred.

All the evidence points to the Pentagon doing nothing to stop the attack on the compound. Martin Dempsey, chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted during a Senate hearing in June that highly trained Special Forces were stationed a few hours away from Benghazi on the night of the attacks but were not deployed.

This contradicts comments made by Gregory Hicks, the former top U.S. diplomat in Benghazi, who told Congress in May that officials from Special Operations Command-Africa ordered the units to stand down.

In May, Infowars.com posted an article reporting the fact the Benghazi attack and the murder of ambassador Stevens had nothing to do with an absurd anti-Islam video, as the establishment media and the Obama administration insisted, but was directly connected to the shipment of arms from Libya to the mercenaries in Syria.

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, appearing on the same show, alleged that Turkey partnered with the CIA to take down Bashar al-Assad in Syria and, hours before the compound was attacked and Stevens and others lost their lives, the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin met with the U.S. ambassador.

According to Egyptian security officials, Stevens was instrumental in recruiting jihadists for the CIA’s war in Syria and “served as a key contact with the Saudis to coordinate the recruitment by Saudi Arabia of Islamic fighters from North Africa and Libya. The jihadists were sent to Syria via Turkey to attack Assad’s forces,” writes Aaron Klein.

It has been widely reported that the Syrian mercenaries belong to the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate.

It was learned after the attack that the February 17th Martyrs Brigade was paid by the State Department to protect the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi. The group had “clear al-Qaida sympathies, and had prominently displayed the al-Qaida flag on a Facebook page for months before the deadly attack,” Max Rosenthal reported for Newsmax in May. The February 17th Martyrs Brigade, it was latter learned during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, are in league with Ansar al-Sharia, said to be linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Part of the operation involving Stevens included sending surface-to-air missiles to al-Qaeda in Syria. “Speculation on Capitol Hill has included the possibility the U.S. agencies operating in Benghazi were secretly helping to move surface-to-air missiles out of Libya, through Turkey, and into the hands of Syrian rebels,” CNN also reported late last week.

The Obama administration announced in late September that “it planned to expand a program to secure and destroy Libya’s huge stockpile of dangerous surface-to-air missiles” and that “the U.S. State Department has one official on the ground in Libya, as well as five contractors who specialize in ‘explosive ordinance disposal,’ all working with the rebel Transitional National Council to find the looted missiles,” ABC News reported.

In fact, the State Department, under the guidance of ambassador Stevens, was moving to round up the missiles and send them to al-Qaeda in Syria. Prior to this, in December, 2011, the U.S. claimed to have secured 5,000 surface-to-air missiles and destroyed them outside of the village of Sidi Bin Nur in Libya. Doubtless, instead, they became part of the CIA’s cache destined for Syria.

CIA was ‘running arms smuggling team in Benghazi’

The CIA has been subjecting operatives to monthly polygraph tests in an attempt to suppress details of a US arms smuggling operation in Benghazi that was ongoing when its ambassador was killed by a mob in the city last year, according to reports.

Up to 35 CIA operatives were working in the city during the attack last September on the US consulate that resulted in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, according to CNN.

The circumstances of the attack are a subject of deep division in the US with some Congressional leaders pressing for a wide-ranging investigation into suspicions that the government has withheld details of its activities in the Libyan city.

The television network said that a CIA team was working in an annex near the consulate on a project to supply missiles from Libyan armouries to Syrian rebels.

Sources said that more Americans were hurt in the assault spearheaded by suspected Islamic radicals than had been previously reported. CIA chiefs were actively working to ensure the real nature of its operations in the city did not get out.

So only the losses suffered by the State Department in the city had been reported to Congress.

“Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency’s missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency’s workings,” CNN reported.

Frank Wolf, a US congressman who represents the district that contains CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, is one of 150 members of Congress for a new investigation into the failures in Benghazi.

“I think it is a form of a cover-up, and I think it’s an attempt to push it under the rug, and I think the American people are feeling the same way,” he said. “We should have the people who were on the scene come in, testify under oath, do it publicly, and lay it out. And there really isn’t any national security issue involved with regards to that.”

A CIA spokesman said it had been open about its activities in Benghazi.

“The CIA has worked closely with its oversight committees to provide them with an extraordinary amount of information related to the attack on US facilities in Benghazi,” a CIA statement said. “CIA employees are always free to speak to Congress if they want,” the statement continued. “The CIA enabled all officers involved in Benghazi the opportunity to meet with Congress. We are not aware of any CIA employee who has experienced retaliation, including any non-routine security procedures, or who has been prevented from sharing a concern with Congress about the Benghazi incident.”- The Telegraph

Americans against Congress: Over 80% dissaprove

Record-breaking numbers of Americans have lost support for Congress, according to a survey. Eighty-three per cent of respondents said they disapprove of the job its doing, while 57 per cent said they would replace every member of Congress if they could.

The poll (link to poll), conducted jointly by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, has illustrated new heights of vehement public distaste for the actions of the US government.

“There is a palpable unhappiness with Washington,” Republican pollster Peter D. Hart said upon learning the poll’s results. His Democratic counterpart concurred that “now is the summer of our discontent.”

At the same time, President Barack Obama has seen his approval rating slump to 45 per cent – down from 48 per cent last month. This marks his lowest rating since August 2011, when nearly every US politician suffered a blow on account of the debt-ceiling crisis, when Obama became embroiled in a heated debate with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other Republicans in Congress.

The reasons cited for the lack of support for Congress included the government ignoring the middle-class, gridlock, the inability for lawmakers to produce any tangible results, and President Obama’s policies and leadership in general.

However, these reasons invariably fall into different camps, with Republicans and Democrats citing different primary reasons. Democrats and independents are irritated with congressional gridlock and governmental inactivity, while Republicans are anti-Obama.

The poll used a cross section of 1,000 adults – including 300 cell phone only respondents – and was conducted between July 17-21.

Similar polls surrounding Obama’s popularity, conducted in recent weeks, seem to corroborate the results. A Gallup report released Monday revealed that Obama averaged a 47.9 per cent approval rating over the course of the past three months. A McClatchy-Marist national survey placed Obama’s overall approval rating closer to 41 per cent.- RT

Obama gets help from the Revolutionary Communist Party with Trayvon

The has Revolutionary Communist Party coordinated Trayvon Martin protests throughout the United States.

Many of the Trayvon Martin protests that are still taking place in major cities across the United States were organized by the Revolutionary Communist Party which is chaired by a Marxist who praised mass killers Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao.

In a lengthy exposé by the politically independent SF Weekly, columnist Rachel Swan documents how, “Members of the Berkeley-based Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) had, indeed, set the time and date for two consecutive Trayvon Martin rallies in Oakland, as well as the ones in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.”

Explaining how many of the demonstrations were adorned with Communist red flags, Swan notes how the RCP sent out email blasts urging people to attend the rallies, made protest signs and also used “viral marketing” to give the message a “veneer of spontaneity”.

“It turns out that Revolutionary Communists have coordinated — or perhaps infiltrated — Trayvon Martin protests throughout the country, often with more aggressive sloganeering than in Oakland. In Florida, they didn’t shy away from connecting Martin to larger, more abstract causes,” writes Swan, noting that the group has used the marches to denounce capitalism.

The Founder and current chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party is Bob Avakian, “an acolyte of Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin — he praises both of them in his 2005 autobiography,” writes Swan.

Despite the fact that between them the two dictators killed at least 50 million people, Avakian has been a consistent and vehement supporter of both Chairman Mao and Joseph Stalin.

Avakian protested the efforts of reformer Deng Xiaoping to lead China towards a market economy after Mao’s death in 1976, having backed the cultural revolution, during which historical relics and artifacts were destroyed, cultural and religious sites were ransacked and Mao’s political opponents were tortured and executed.

When the RCP was criticized by some on the left for creating a Mao-like “cult of personality” around Avakian, he responded, “I certainly hope so — we’ve been working very hard to create one.”

It is unsurprising that the Revolutionary Communist Party has backed the Obama administration’s efforts to create a furore around the Trayvon Martin case. Recall that it was the Justice Department which organized and paid for many of the original Trayvon Martin protests last year. Given that Barack Obama’s political career was launched in the living room of Weathermen Communist and domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, it makes perfect sense.

The RCP wasn’t similarly perturbed when Roderick Scott, a 42-year-old black man, shot and killed Christopher Cervini, a 17-year old white kid who broke into his car and tried to attack him, suggesting that their protests have little to do with justice for Trayvon Martin and everything to do with hijacking contrived racial tension in order to push their own warped political agenda. – prisonplanet.com

Gangs have increased by 40% since Obama took office

Newt Gingrich appeared on Candy Crowley’s State of the Union with Democratic Congressman Bobby Rush.

Throughout the 1960s, Rush was involved in the civil-rights movement and worked in civil-disobedience campaigns in the Southern United States. After co-founding the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers in 1968, he served as its “defense minister”. Rush has made statements saying “We needed to arm ourselves” and referring to the police as “pigs”.

He is U.S. Representative for Illinois’s 1st congressional district, serving since 1993. The district is located principally on the South Side of Chicago with its population percentage being 65% African-American, higher than any other congressional district in the nation.

A member of the Democratic Party, he holds the distinction of being the only person to defeat President Barack Obama in an election, as he did in the 2000 Democratic primaries.

NEWT GINGRICH: This fits perfectly with what I was going to say earlier. You have a congressman — and I respect Bobby Rush. You have a congressman who represents the most violent city in America. You have a congressman who represents the city in which over 500 people were killed last year, 74 percent of them African-American. You have a congressman who represents the city which is 80 percent of the killings, according to police, are by gangs. Gangs have increased — let me finish. Gangs have increased by 40 percent since this president was elected. There is no federal program to stop it. No one wants to have an honest conversation about it. And so you have a congressman whose own district is bleeding, who puts on a hoodie as a symbolic act, but he doesn’t do anything about the gangs in his own district.

REP. BOBBY RUSH (D-IL): Wait a minute.

CROWLEY: Hang on. First of all, congressman, let me let you —

RUSH: That’s a charge, Newt, that is not going to hold, doesn’t hold water. I have been working relentlessly since I’ve been in Congress, even when you were the speaker of the House and didn’t want to hear any of these matters. I have been working on trying to deal with this violence. I’m astounded and ashamed about this violence. But this is also systemic to an overall problem. Chicago will take care of this violence. That’s one of the reasons why on a Friday, the 26th, we’re having this National Summit on Urban Violence. This was before the verdict we had planned this. The congressional black caucus is coming into Chicago so that we can work on solutions to this problem.

Now, what I challenge you to, Newt, especially today, I want to challenge you and your Republican cohorts. Today is a Sunday. Today is a day of worship. We serve and worship the same God. In Michael 6:3 and 8, the words tell us that we should love justice, do mercy, and walk humbly with our God. Now, for those folks who are cheering the George Zimmerman verdict, I would challenge you and the rest of the, let us honor, and let us lift up the spirit of the words of Micah 6:8 to work together to have the conversation, but not just have the conversation. Let us deal with the disenfranchisement, and let us deal with the distortions as it relates to our nation.- Real Clear Politics

Zimmerman family suspects Obama is tapping their phones

In a media appearance Tuesday morning, the brother of the recently acquitted George Zimmerman said that he and his family have concerns that the Obama administration is tapping their communications.

Appearing on Fox News, Robert Zimmerman said “We do have concerns and always have of having our phones tapped, having our phones listened to by the administration or whomever.”

“A lot of the things that we do are connecting in person—that’s how we’ve managed to stay hidden for so long. It’s kind of old school, but it works…We’re back to what we were doing in March of 2012, because it’s right in everybody’s mind right now.” he added, referring to staying safe in the wake of several threats and acts of violence related to last week’s “Not Guilty” decision.

Zimmerman’s brother also stated that the family is worried that the Department of Justice is being pressured by certain white special interest groups to open a federal investigation into the case.

“I think Eric Holder is being pressured by some groups who were calling for, initially, just an arrest. These same groups keep moving around the goal posts: the NAACP, Al Sharpton, the Rainbow Push Coalition with Jesse Jackson.” Zimmerman noted.

“First they wanted just a simple arrest and that’s it, have his fair day in court and whatever the verdict is, we’ll respect it. Then when the verdict was coming they wanted him to be found guilty. But the verdict isn’t what they wanted, so now they’re moving the goal post again, and calling on the Department of Justice to investigate him more.” the brother added.

“I understand the Justice Department’s responding to pressure,” Zimmerman continued. “But I think that the American people need a little bit of time to digest those two words ‘Not Guilty.’ It doesn’t mean nothing happened. I think most of the people who were upset with that outcome didn’t actually pay attention to the trial.”

Obama’s gay ambassador pick freaks Dominicans

Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez

Opposition to President Obama’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic reached a fever pitch this week as religious organizers stage a “Lunes Negro” or Black Monday protest against James “Wally” Brewster.

If confirmed, Brewster will be the first openly gay ambassador to the country, a prospect that is not going over well with some segments of this conservative Christian country of 9 million people. Local reports indicate that church leaders are pressuring the government to reject Brewster’s nomination and calling on the faithful to dress in black on Monday in solidarity against him.

Praise Christian Church Pastor Sauford Medrano is quoted in Diario Libre as saying that Brewster could cause “the U.S. promotion of gender beliefs in the country.” That supposedly violates a general education law in the country that “all the Dominican education system is based on Christian principles.”

The report was flagged by Cable reader and Dominican expat Will Williams, an architect in New York City. He said he witnessed the animosity toward the ambassador in a visit last weekend. “I could confirm myself that the opposition has been even worse from what have been reflected in the news,” he said. “As a Dominican, I feel ashamed this is happening in my country … The evangelical church is convoking the general public to reject this ambassador … [It’s] asking the public to show a black band, black banner or ribbon on cars or dress showing rejection.”

In a statement to The Cable, Monica Trasandes, director of Spanish Language Media at GLAAD, defended the president’s pick. “We stand with LGBT advocates in the Dominican Republic, who are calling on leaders to quit categorizing their country’s population as homophobic,” she said. “We hope that James Brewster will help educate those still adversely affected by homophobia and applaud the work of LGBT advocates in the Dominican Republic.”

When news of opposition to Brewster first began, the Dominican embassy in Washington told The Cable that the country supports the president’s pick. “The Dominican Republic is a democracy with a vibrant media and a wide diversity of opinions on every conceivable topic,” the statement read. “However, it is the position of the Government of the Dominican Republic that a person´s sexual preference is strictly a personal matter and it looks forward to working constructively with Mr. Brewster in his official capacity once his nomination is approved by the U.S. Senate.”

In June, the AP spoke with Catholic and evangelical church leaders who opposed the nomination. “If he arrives, he’ll suffer and will be forced to leave,” Vicar Pablo Cedano, told the AP. He said the pick showed “a lack of respect, of consideration, that they send us that kind of person as ambassador.” Rev. Cristobal Cardozo, leader of the Dominican Evangelical Fraternity, said the appointment was offensive. “It’s an insult to good Dominican customs,” he said.

Catholic Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez called Brewster a “maricón” — a Spanish word usually translated as “faggot.”

Brewster was a fundraiser for Obama and currently works at the Chicago consulting firm SB&K. – Foreign Policy

Obama orders fed workers to spy on each other

In an initiative aimed at rooting out future leakers and other security violators, President Barack Obama has ordered federal employees to report suspicious actions of their colleagues based on behavioral profiling techniques that are not scientifically proven to work, according to experts and government documents.

The techniques are a key pillar of the Insider Threat Program, an unprecedented government-wide crackdown under which millions of federal bureaucrats and contractors must watch out for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers. Those who fail to report them could face penalties, including criminal charges.

Obama mandated the program in an October 2011 executive order after Army Pfc. Bradley Manning downloaded hundreds of thousands of documents from a classified computer network and gave them to WikiLeaks, the anti-government secrecy group. The order covers virtually every federal department and agency, including the Peace Corps, the Department of Education and others not directly involved in national security.

Under the program, which is being implemented with little public attention, security investigations can be launched when government employees showing “indicators of insider threat behavior” are reported by co-workers, according to previously undisclosed administration documents obtained by McClatchy. Investigations also can be triggered when “suspicious user behavior” is detected by computer network monitoring and reported to “insider threat personnel.”

Federal employees and contractors are asked to pay particular attention to the lifestyles, attitudes and behaviors – like financial troubles, odd working hours or unexplained travel – of co-workers as a way to predict whether they might do “harm to the United States.” Managers of special insider threat offices will have “regular, timely, and, if possible, electronic, access” to employees’ personnel, payroll, disciplinary and “personal contact” files, as well as records of their use of classified and unclassified computer networks, polygraph results, travel reports and financial disclosure forms.

Over the years, numerous studies of public and private workers who’ve been caught spying, leaking classified information, stealing corporate secrets or engaging in sabotage have identified psychological profiles that could offer clues to possible threats. Administration officials want government workers trained to look for such indicators and report them so the next violation can be stopped before it happens.

“In past espionage cases, we find people saw things that may have helped identify a spy, but never reported it,” said Gene Barlow, a spokesman for the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, which oversees government efforts to detect threats like spies and computer hackers and is helping implement the Insider Threat Program. “That is why the awareness effort of the program is to teach people not only what types of activity to report, but how to report it and why it is so important to report it.”

But even the government’s top scientific advisers have questioned these techniques. Those experts say that trying to predict future acts through behavioral monitoring is unproven and could result in illegal ethnic and racial profiling and privacy violations.

“There is no consensus in the relevant scientific community nor on the committee regarding whether any behavioral surveillance or physiological monitoring techniques are ready for use at all,” concluded a 2008 National Research Council report on detecting terrorists.

“Doing something similar about predicting future leakers seems even more speculative,” Stephen Fienberg, a professor of statistics and social science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and a member of the committee that wrote the report, told McClatchy.

The emphasis on individual lifestyles, attitudes and behaviors comes at a time when growing numbers of Americans must submit to extensive background checks, polygraph tests and security investigations to be hired or to keep government or federal contracting jobs. The U.S. government is one of the world’s largest employers, overseeing an ever-expanding ocean of information.

While the Insider Threat Program mandates that the nearly 5 million federal workers and contractors with clearances undergo training in recognizing suspicious behavior indicators, it allows individual departments and agencies to extend the requirement to their entire workforces, something the Army already has done.

Training should address “current and potential threats in the work and personal environment” and focus on “the importance of detecting potential insider threats by cleared employees and reporting suspected activity to insider threat personnel and other designated officials,” says one of the documents obtained by McClatchy.

The White House, the Justice Department, the Peace Corps and the departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Education refused to answer questions about the program’s implementation. Instead, they issued virtually identical email statements directing inquiries to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, declined to comment or didn’t respond.

Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said in her statement that the Insider Threat Program includes extra safeguards for “civil rights, civil liberties and privacy,” but she didn’t elaborate. Manning’s leaks to WikiLeaks, she added, showed that at the time protections of classified materials were “inadequate and put our nation’s security at risk.”

Reply from the National Security Council

Even so, the new effort failed to prevent former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden from taking top-secret documents detailing the agency’s domestic and international communications monitoring programs and leaking them to The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers.

The initiative goes beyond classified information leaks. It includes as insider threats “damage to the United States through espionage, terrorism, unauthorized disclosure of national security information or through the loss or degradation of departmental resources or capabilities,” according to a document setting “Minimum Standards for Executive Branch Insider Threat Programs.”

McClatchy obtained a copy of the document, which was produced by an Insider Threat Task Force that was set up under Obama’s order and is headed by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Attorney General Eric Holder. McClatchy also obtained the group’s final policy guidance. The White House, the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined requests for both documents, neither of which is classified.

Although agencies and departments are still setting up their programs, some employees already are being urged to watch co-workers for “indicators” that include stress, divorce and financial problems.

When asked about the ineffectiveness of behavior profiling, Barlow said the policy “does not mandate” that employees report behavior indicators.

“It simply educates employees about basic activities or behavior that might suggest a person is up to improper activity,” he said.

“These do not require special talents. If you see someone reading classified documents they should not be reading, especially if this happens multiple times and the person appears nervous that you saw him, that is activity that is suspicious and should be reported,” Barlow said. “The insider threat team then looks at the surrounding facts and draws the conclusions about the activity.”

Departments and agencies, however, are given leeway to go beyond the White House’s basic requirements, prompting the Defense Department in its strategy to mandate that workers with clearances “must recognize the potential harm caused by unauthorized disclosures and be aware of the penalties they could face.” It equates unauthorized disclosures of classified information to “aiding the enemies of the United States.”

All departments and agencies involved in the program must closely track their employees’ online activities. The information gathered by monitoring, the administration documents say, “could be used against them in criminal, security, or administrative proceedings.” Experts who research such efforts say suspicious behaviors include accessing information that someone doesn’t need or isn’t authorized to see or downloading materials onto removable storage devices like thumb drives when such devices are restricted or prohibited.

“If you normally print 20 documents a week, well, what happens if the next week or the following week you have to print 50 documents or 100 documents? That could be at variance from your normal activity that could be identified and might be investigated,” said Randy Trzeciak, acting manager of the Computer Emergency Response Team Insider Threat Center at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute.

“We’ve come up with patterns that we believe organizations might be able to consider when determining when someone might be progressing down the path to harm the organization,” said Trzeciak, whose organization has analyzed more than 800 cases and works with the government and private sector on cyber security.

But research and other programs that rely on profiling show it remains unproven, could make employees more resistant to reporting violations and might lead to spurious allegations.

The Pentagon, U.S. intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security have spent tens of millions of dollars on an array of research projects. Yet after several decades, they still haven’t developed a list of behaviors they can use to definitively identify the tiny fraction of workers who might some day violate national security laws.

“We are back to the needle-in-a-haystack problem,” said Fienberg, the Carnegie Mellon professor.

“We have not found any silver bullets,” said Deana Caputo, the lead behavioral scientist at MITRE Corp., a nonprofit company working on insider threat efforts for U.S. defense, intelligence and law enforcement agencies. “We don’t have actually any really good profiles or pictures of a bad guy, a good guy gone bad or even the bad guy walking in to do bad things from the very beginning.”

Different agencies and departments have different lists of behavior indicators. Most have adopted the traditional red flags for espionage. They include financial stress, disregard for security practices, unexplained foreign travel, unusual work hours and unexplained or sudden wealth.

But agencies and their consultants have added their own indicators.

For instance, an FBI insider threat detection guide warns private security personnel and managers to watch for “a desire to help the ‘underdog’ or a particular cause,” a “James Bond Wannabe” and a “divided loyalty: allegiance to another person or company or to a country besides the United States.”

A report by the Deloitte consulting firm identifies “several key trends that are making all organizations particularly susceptible to insider threat today.” These trends include an increasingly disgruntled, post-Great Recession workforce and the entry of younger, “Gen Y” employees who were “raised on the Internet” and are “highly involved in social networking.”

Report from Deloitte

Some government programs that have embraced behavioral indicators have been condemned as failures. Perhaps the most heavily criticized is the Transportation Security Administration’s Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques, or SPOT, program.

The program, which has cost $878 million and employs 2,800 people, uses “behavior detection officers” to identify potential terrorists by scrutinizing airline passengers for signs of “stress, fear or deception.”

DHS’ inspector general excoriated the program, saying in a May 2013 report, “TSA cannot ensure that passengers at United States airports are screened objectively, show that the program is cost-effective or reasonably justify the program’s expansion.”

Interviews and internal complaints obtained by The New York Times quoted TSA officers as saying SPOT has led to ethnic and racial profiling by emphasizing certain profiles. They include Middle Easterners, Hispanics traveling to Miami and African-Americans wearing baseball caps backward.

Another problem with having employees report co-workers’ suspicious behaviors: They aren’t sure which ones represent security threats.

“Employees in the field are not averse to reporting genuine security infractions. In fact, under appropriate conditions they are quite willing to act as eyes and ears for the government,” said a 2005 study by the Pentagon’s Defense Personnel Security Research Center. “They are simply confused about precisely what is important enough to report. Many government workers anguish over reporting gray-area behaviors.”

Even so, the Pentagon is forging ahead with training Defense Department and contractor managers and security officials to set up insider threat offices, with one company emphasizing how its course is designed for novices.

“The Establishing an Insider Threat Program for Your Organization Course will take no more than 90 minutes to complete,” says the proposal.

Officials with the Army, the only government department contacted by McClatchy that agreed to discuss the issue, acknowledged that identifying potential insider threats is more complicated than relying on a list of behaviors.

Response from the Army

“What we really point out is if you’re in doubt, report, because that’s what the investigative personnel are there to do, is to get the bottom of ‘is this just noise or is this something that is really going on?’” said Larry Gillis, a senior Army counterintelligence and security official.

The Army implemented a tough program a year before Obama’s executive order after Maj. Nidal Hasan, a U.S.-born Muslim, allegedly killed 13 people in a 2009 rampage at Fort Hood, Texas. Hasan, who has not gone on trial, has said he was defending the Afghan Taliban.

Gillis said the Army didn’t want a program that would “get people to snitch on each other,” nor did it want to encourage stereotyping.

“We don’t have the luxury to make up reasons to throw soldiers out,” Gillis said. “It’s a big deal to remove a soldier from service over some minor issue. We don’t want to ruin a career over some false accusation.”

But some current and former U.S. officials and experts worry that Obama’s Insider Threat Program could lead to false or retaliatory accusations across the entire government, in part because security officials are granted access to information outside their usual purview.

These current and former U.S. officials and experts also ridiculed as overly zealous and simplistic the idea of using reports of suspicious behavior to predict potential insider threats. It takes years for professional spy-hunters to learn their craft, and relying on the observations of inexperienced people could lead to baseless and discriminatory investigations, they said.

“Anyone is an amateur looking at behavior here,” said Thomas Fingar, a former State Department intelligence chief who chaired the National Intelligence Council, which prepares top-secret intelligence analyses for the president, from 2005 to 2008.

Co-workers, Fingar said, should “be attentive” to colleagues’ personal problems in order to refer them to counseling, not to report them as potential security violators. “It’s simply because they are colleagues, fellow human beings,” he said.

Eric Feldman, a former inspector general of the National Reconnaissance Office, the super-secret agency that oversees U.S. spy satellites, expressed concern that relying on workers to report colleagues’ suspicious behaviors to security officials could create “a repressive kind of culture.”

“The answer to it is not to have a Stasi-like response,” said Feldman, referring to the feared secret police of communist East Germany. “You’ve removed that firewall between employees seeking help and the threat that any employee who seeks help could be immediately retaliated against by this insider threat office.” – McClatchy Washington Bureau

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/07/09/196211/linchpin-for-obamas-plan-to-predict.html#storylink=cpy

America’s image plunges

In a recent BBC World Service Country Rating Poll in 12 countries in which the survey has been conducted since 2005, the long-term trend line shows a net negative rating for the United States. The rating is calculated as the percentage of people with “mainly positive” views of the United States minus the percentage of people with “mainly negative” views.

The rating had bottomed out in 2007 at a net negative 30, climbed above zero after Obama was elected and then began to fall in 2012 – although it is still far higher than in 2007. That 12-nation survey included China, India, and Russia.

In a larger survey conducted between December 2012 and April 2013 of more than 26,000 people in 21 countries, 45 percent had a mostly positive view of the United States while 34 percent had a mainly negative view of the United States.

“Views in China have worsened (since last year): only one in five Chinese respondents (20%) hold positive views (down nine points). With 57 per cent holding negative views (up nine points), China has the third-most negative attitude towards the USA, after Pakistan (stable at 64%) and Turkey,” the report from the BBC World Service said.

A Gallup survey of public opinion in 130 countries published in March reached similar findings. It showed a decline in foreign views of U.S. leadership from 49 percent approval in 2009 to 41 percent last year. The sharpest falloff in the Gallup survey came in European countries, where 47 percent approved of U.S. leadership in 2009, but only 36 percent approved last year.

Not surprisingly regard for the United States is lowest in places where U.S. drone strikes have occurred, such as Yemen, where 59 percent disapprove of U.S. policies and Pakistan where 79 percent disapprove. On Wednesday, at least seventeen people, believed to be militants, were killed in a U.S drone attack in the North Waziristan tribal region in northwest Pakistan near the Afghan border.

In Egypt which is heavily depended on U.S. foreign aid and military sales, 62 percent of Egyptians disapprove of the United States.

But the Gallup survey also found that some of those who have benefited from U.S. support and liberation have a very positive view of America: nearly 90 percent of those surveyed in Kosovo approved of the United States. It was partly due to policies of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush that Kosovo became an independent nation in 2008.

The wide data collection efforts of the National Security Agency and Obama’s use of drones to kill terrorists in Yemen and other nations seem to be tarnishing the American image among Europeans.

Reacting to report in the German magazine Der Spiegel that the NSA conducted surveillance of European diplomats, French President Francois Hollande said Monday, “We cannot accept this kind of behavior from partners and allies.” In an apparent signal of its displeasure, the French government moved Wednesday to suspend trade negotiations between the United States and the European Union for two weeks.

Without confirming or denying the Der Spiegel report, Obama said Monday intelligence gathering was simply a part of real world politics: “I guarantee you that in European capitals, there are people who are interested in, if not what I had for breakfast, at least what my talking points might be should I end up meeting with their leaders.” – NBC News

Liberalism is the real cause of witchcraft murders in South Africa

by Dan Roodt

[followbutton username=’danroodt’ count=’true’ lang=’en’ theme=’light’]

Like Dan Roodt’s Facebook page

Apparently Barack Obama has signed an executive order authorising $10 million to be spent on stopping the poaching of wildlife in Africa, including rhinoceri that are being decimated at an alarming rate.

But, as the bumper sticker forlornly states: “Forget the rhino, save the white ou (guy).” Obama or any of his liberal entourage in America would never donate funds to stop the horrific farm murders taking place in South Africa. Because, as we know, the life of a white person is worth far less to a liberal than that of an animal. Especially a wild animal.

The liberal media in South Africa – the MSM as they are called – hardly ever record farm murders or other killings of whites. However, the Afrikaans dailies Beeld and Volksblad have some court reporters that normally expose us to the truly blood-curdling horrors of our liberal utopia. Just last week Beeld reported on a Witchdoctor who cooked farmer’s testicles declared a mental patient.

Normally South African liberals do not read much Afrikaans. In fact they have utter contempt for Afrikaans as a “parochial and tribal white language”. But this story was relayed via the newswire Sapa and so appeared on the radar screen of BDLive’s columnist, Gareth van Onselen. He relates the details of this muti (medicine) murder and then launches into a plea for balancing the constitutiion with “the more horrendous aspects of cultural belief”. After which he comes to the thunderous conclusion:

“In many respects, that is the fundamental challenge facing South Africa.”

Within the clichés of liberal discourse, there is always “one more challenge facing South Africa” before we taste the sweet fruits of paradise. In many small towns it is a challenge just to keep municipal services going and to supply potable water to the inhabitants, something which the previous, so-called “apartheid system” managed with surprising ease. But then in those days the services of town planners and engineers were not considered superfluous instances of racist employment practices. It was also before municipal government managed to evolve into permanent conferences and planning sessions held in luxury hotels where the hapless local taxpayer’s money gets spent by VIPs transported in luxury automobiles, living it up with an enviable air of insouciance.

I judged Van Onselen by his cover, or rather his Twitter profile where he describes himself as a “liberal” and a “humanist”. He sounded like the hordes of sub-intelligent sheeple churned out by the ANC’s universities where conforming to a mixture of petty hatred and PC dogma is usually enough to earn a postgraduate qualification in the social sciences. Or journalism, for that matter.

Van Onselen has really been elevated a few millimetres in my esteem. For there exists a tremendous taboo on just mentioning the race or ethnic background of any murderer in South Africa, let alone tying it to “cultural belief”. He has transgressed that taboo and cited some statistics from parliament to prove that muti murders are on the rise in South Africa. From 1994 to 2004 such murder cases increased by almost 6 000 percent!

However, before we rush to applaud a self-confessed liberal like Gareth van Onselen for showing an insight that most of us had already acquired on our tenth birthday, it would not be amiss to ask why these murders are indeed in the ascendant.

It is easy to blame “cultural belief”, more precisely tradtional African culture, as Van Onselen does. If I were a hypocritical, imbecilic liberal, I would immediately have let loose the pack dogs of the Inquisition myself and accused him of “racism”. All contemporary liberal thinking – as opposed to the forgotten nineteenth-century creed of tolerance going by that name – is predicated upon “racism”. Being a liberal is tantamount to having an obsessive disorder of which the most recognisable symptom is frequent shrieks of “racist!” of “burn him at the stake, pronto!”

In fact, formally, there is absolutely no difference between an African-style “witch-hunt”, which Van Onselen seems to be opposed to, and liberalism. Astonishingly, Van Onselen cites a piece of “apartheid legislation”, seemingly approvingly:

“…we do have longstanding witchcraft legislation in the country. The Witchcraft Suppression Act of 1957 makes it illegal for anyone to identify another person as a witch (as this inevitably leads to death or torture) or to instigate what is a called a ‘witch-sniffing ceremony’ (in which someone is called into a community to identify a witch).”

I myself was subjected to a liberal witch-hunt in 2005 upon being invited to be interviewed on my Afrikaans novel Moltrein at the arts festival known as the Woordfees in Stellenbosch. At least 15 professors and lecturers of Stellenbosch University, including the head of the English department (a left-liberal feminist) and journalist Max du Preez, subequently threatened me with banishment and even violence as they were going to get gangsters from surrounding black and Coloured areas to come and attack me. My crime was that I had precisely done what I am doing here, inquiring into the causes of South Africa’s sadistic violence, of which we see examples every day. I was declared a dissident, or a witch, which to anyone with even a smattering of anthropological knowlede, amounts to the same thing. Therefore I was hunted by sundry academics, journalists and self-styled guardians of good morals, foaming at the mouth, pointing shivering fingers at me as a “danger to society”.

As we can see from the statistics cited in parliament, witchcraft was under control under the previous government. I do not want to enter into another controversy on so-called apartheid, but the Afrikaner governments of the past practised sound epistemological principles in keeping the paradigms separate. Western science was one thing, or one set of beliefs, and traditional healing or witchcraft, invoking the ancestors and related practices, were another.

Along came liberalism and decreed, not only that “we are all the same”, but also: “all beliefs are the same”. South African liberalism is fundamentally irrational in not recognising differences between conceptual systems such as Western science and various tribal forms of witchcraft.

Liberalism is also anti-science. It fears science or any form of neutral, objective enquiry. Its obsessive principle, “racism”, is a kind of law of the universe against which everything must be measured. It follows that any attempt to regulate witchcraft or temper its more odious and murderous aspects, could equally be construed as “racism”.

Prior to the reign of liberalism, African culture never posed a problem to us in South Africa. I daresay we used to celebrate it as the healthy expression of the identity and age-old customs of the various peoples that inhabit this land. The study of African languages, as well as traditional dancing and so on, were encouraged. However, in 1970 the liberal English Academy of South Africa started agitating against African languages, in favour of English and an anglicisation policy. As we know all too well, in 1976 blacks rioted against, not only Afrikaans, but also against being taught in their own languages!

Without going into all the complexities of tribal culture in South Africa and without denying that this kind of murderous, sadistic witchcraft exist traditionally, the real cause of the explosion of muti murders, farm murders and general mayhem must be laid at the door of liberalism. In their quest for hegemony and domination, South African liberals have literally awakened all the demons. In vilifying Afrikaner, Western and white culture as “fascist, oppressive and racist”, and by putting “traditional healing” and Western medical science on the same footing, they have given the so-called sangomas immense power and prestige.

The anti-white propaganda and hatred sown by the liberals have also bolstered the dark side of black culture. Hence the macabre, occult murder rituals and cannibalism that are so much in resurgence at present.

While people in Europe complain about Islamic fundamentalism that represents a threat to them, including terrorist incidents, we must remember that South African liberals have always condoned and even encouraged terrorism against us. The liberal understands the “powers of horror” as well as the muti murderer. Engaging in witch-hunts is also second nature to him.

The combination of a fundamentalist political ideology, liberalism, and a set of occult beliefs espoused by the more radical sangomas, is a dangerous cocktail that is not just a “challenge” to South Africa. It threatens to further erode the very foundations of civilised society in our country.

[followbutton username=’danroodt’ count=’true’ lang=’en’ theme=’light’]

Like Dan Roodt’s Facebook page

Obama’s liberals were living in a fantasy world

Gideon Rachman writes in the FT that Obama’s liberals were living in a fantasy world of expectations. It has taken a long time, but the world’s fantasies about Barack Obama are finally crumbling. In Europe, once the headquarters of the global cult of Obama, the disillusionment is particularly bitter. Monday’s newspapers were full of savage quotes about the perfidy of the Obama-led US.

Der Spiegel, the German magazine that alleged that America’s National Security Agency has bugged the EU’s offices, thundered that “the NSA’s totalitarian ambition … affects us all … A constitutional state cannot allow it. None of us can allow it.” President François Hollande of France has demanded that the alleged spying stop immediately. Le Monde, Mr Hollande’s home-town newspaper, has even suggested that the EU should consider giving political asylum to Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower.

But if liberals wanted to compile a list of perfidious acts by the Obama administration, the case of the bugged EU fax machine should probably come low down the list.

More important would be the broken promise to close the Guantánamo detention centre and – above all – the massive expansion of the use of drone strikes to kill suspected terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, It has gradually dawned on President Obama’s foreign fan club that their erstwhile hero is using methods that would be bitterly denounced if he were a white Republican. As Hakan Altinay, a Turkish academic, complained to me last week: “Obama talks like the president of the American Civil Liberties Union but he acts like Dick Cheney.”

Obama campaigned with the human rights rhetoric of Jimmy Carter but has governed like Henry Kissinger.

It is not entirely Mr Obama’s fault that he became the vessel into which liberals all over the world poured their fantasies. Of course, like any politician, he pumped up expectations when running for office. But when Obama-mania really took off in 2008, it swiftly moved into a realm beyond reason. What was candidate Obama meant to say to the 200,000 Berliners who turned out to cheer him that year – “Go home guys, this is silly”? When the new president was given the Nobel Peace Prize, simply for existing, all he could do was graciously accept.

It is perfectly legitimate to argue that Mr Obama should have done more to cut back the rapidly growing secret state that he inherited when he took office. The combination of a “war on terror” and the new world of “big data” has created possibilities and pressures – and Mr Obama may have made some wrong calls in response. Yet the US president has had to balance a variety of pressures – including the continuing existence of a terrorist threat and the entrenched power of the intelligence world.

Mr Obama was living in a real universe, full of hard choices. It was his overheated critics who lived in a fantasy world. – FT