United States – Page 3

Detroit bankruptcy: a cocktail of white flight and black corruption

A house in Detroit, mirroring the black city's decay — A house in Detroit, mirroring the black city’s decay

by Tom Krishner and Dee-Ann Durbin

The city of Detroit, which for years paid its bills with borrowed money, is the largest city in U.S. history to file for bankruptcy protection. Here’s a look at how the city spiraled into financial ruin and why it’s in so much trouble:

What happened?

For decades, Detroit paid its bills by borrowing money while struggling to provide the most basic of services for its residents. The city, which was about to default on a good chunk of its $14 billion-plus debt, now will get a second chance in a federal bankruptcy court-led restructuring. Detroit’s budget deficit this year alone is estimated at $380 million, and Kevin Orr, its state-appointed emergency manager, chose bankruptcy over diverting money from police, fire and other services to make debt payments. The move conserves cash so the city can operate, but it will hurt Detroit’s image for years. It also leaves creditors with pennies on the dollar and places in jeopardy the pension benefits of thousands of city retirees.

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, after his federal indictment on corruption charges

Why did it happen?

It took decades of decay to bring down the once-mighty industrial giant that put the world on wheels. The city grew to 1.8 million people in the 1950s, luring them with plentiful jobs that paid good wages to stamp out automobiles for sale across the globe. But like many American cities, Detroit’s fall began late that decade as developers starting building suburbs. Then came the 1967 race riots that accelerated the number of white residents who moved to the cities north of Eight Mile Road, considered the region’s racial dividing line. At the same time, auto companies began opening plants in other cities, and the rise of autos imported from Japan started to cut the size of the U.S. auto industry. Detroit’s property values fell, tax revenue dropped, police couldn’t control a growing murder rate, and many middle-class blacks fled the city for safer suburbs with better schools. By 2009, the auto industry collapsed along with the economy as a whole, eventually pulling the city down with it. Government corruption under former black Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick only made things worse. In the 2000 census, Detroit’s population fell under 1 million in as the exodus continued. Today it’s barely above 700,000.

Did the auto industry’s fall drag down Detroit?

It’s a big factor. The city is littered with abandoned factories built in the postwar boom years, most of which have multiple stories. As the Japanese auto invasion began cutting into Detroit’s sales, General Motors, Chrysler, Ford and hundreds of auto parts companies looked outside the city to build one-story plants that could handle modern assembly lines. With every downturn, more companies abandoned the city, leaving the hulking buildings to squatters. Detroit’s tax base continued to erode. By the time the auto industry melted down in 2009, only a few factories from GM and Chrysler were left. GM is the only one with headquarters in Detroit, though it has huge research and testing centers with thousands of jobs outside the city.

Where else has this happened?

Before Detroit, the largest local government bankruptcy filing was in Jefferson County, Ala., in November 2011. The county cited more than $4 billion in debt, mostly from corrupt deals involving sewer financing that fell apart when the home mortgage crisis hit in 2008. The county is still trying to clean up the mess. Last month, commissioners sought a compromise that calls for paying creditors a little over half the money they’re due and raising sewer rates. They hope to exit bankruptcy by December. Jefferson County has nearly 700,000 people, which is similar in size to Detroit, and includes the city of Birmingham. The economic crisis also caused bankruptcies of smaller cities. The California cities of Stockton, San Bernardino, and Mammoth Lakes all filed for bankruptcy last year. Stockton and San Bernardino were hit by plummeting home values during the recession, which cut property and sales taxes, while Mammoth Lakes was overwhelmed by a $43 million breach-of-contract judgment brought against it by a developer.

General Motors rebounded after bankruptcy: can Detroit follow?

Maybe. In GM’s 2009 government-funded bankruptcy, the company was split in two, with money-making assets staying at GM and decrepit plants and billions in debt going to a separate company. GM reduced its debt from $46 billion to $8 billion and used the bankruptcy to close factories, shed brands and get more concessions from union workers. The new, leaner company has since racked up $17.2 billion in profits and added jobs in Detroit. For the city, the comeback will be much harder. Its decaying neighborhoods can’t be sent elsewhere. But creditors whom Detroit owes more than $14 billion will have to take pennies on the dollar. Thousands of retired city workers could lose at least part of their pension benefits. Concessions could be forced upon dozens of city unions, including pay and benefit cuts. Free of these financial burdens, Detroit will be able to concentrate its limited dollars on services such as basic police and fire protection. Better services could bring more people and lure more business investment. Already the downtown and an area to the north called Midtown are seeing business and residential growth — signs that Detroit has a future. – AP

NSA is more than just a spy network, it’s global fascism

by Patrick Henningsen

Despite the size and scope of Edward Snowden’s NSA whistleblowing, there’s little sign of Washington DC changing its practices, and even less of an indication that any of its European allies will actually hold it to account.

Germany Flip-Flops

Germany’s change of direction on this issue reveals a lot about the scale of the problem. Angela Merkel’s initial public response seemed to be that of outrage. “We are no longer in the cold war,” said Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert. “If it is confirmed that diplomatic representations of the European Union and individual European countries have been spied upon, we will clearly say that bugging friends is unacceptable”(Guardian July 1, 2013).

Merkel’s public façade didn’t hold up for long after Snowden revealed in Der Spiegel magazine only days later that the US and Germany were in fact partnering in the global spy network. “They are in bed with the Germans, just like with most other Western states”, the German magazine quotes Snowden as saying, adding that the NSA has a Foreign Affairs Directorate which is responsible for cooperation with other countries (RT July 8, 2013). The Der Spiegel report also indicated how German Federal Intelligence Service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) and NSA work together.

The embarrassment of this Snowden bombshell seemed to force Germany down a notch, with Merkel opting for a new policy of appeasement instead. So was the initial rift between the US and Germany mere political theatre?

Merkel told Die Zeit that there was “a need to discuss the balance between privacy and security, but protection against terrorism was not possible without the option of electronic surveillance”. She then added, “(I want) the necessary discussions with the United States to be conducted in the spirit which, despite the many justified questions, never forgets that America has been our most loyal ally over the decades and still is” (Reuters July 10, 2013).

But it’s Merkel’s last statement which indicates that she may be just as out of touch with public opinion as the culture of denial which still dominates Washington DC. “For me, there is no comparison at all between the state security (Stasi) of the GDR and the work of intelligence services in democratic states,”Merkel told Die Zeit (Reuters July 10, 2013). Incredible.

No real accountability

Putting the overall theme of government abuse of power into perspective, this week provided a solid example of what should happen in an advanced civilized democracy. Luxembourg’s long-serving Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker announced his resignation this week over a spying scandal involving illegal phone-taps, alongside a number other highly corrupt activities.

In normal times, what happened in Luxembourg should also happen in other countries like the US, or Great Britain – but these are far from normal times. What passes for normal in this bizarre epoch is anyone’s guess, and the same goes for what is deemed to be ‘legal’, especially in the United States.

Snowden’s revelations should have been a watershed moment, but instead in 2013, there appears to be no parliamentary controls to regulate the practice of warrantless digital surveillance and data theft on the part of government agencies, and even less chance of justice in the courts, where adjudicators have been rendered impotent to enforce the law which have been buried under an avalanche of emergency war-time edicts and executive orders.

Well before the Snowden affair this year, Germany effectively cleared the legal path for one of the corporations within the NSA collective. Through the use of administrative courts and the EU, the Administrative Court of Schleswig, Germany upheld two decisions on February 14th, 2013 which ruled that German data protection laws do not apply to data processing by Facebook (file numbers 8 B 60/12 and 8 B 61/1).These controversial judicial procedure were initiated by Facebook Inc. (USA) and by Facebook Ltd. (Ireland, EU), and reversed a previous order by the Independent State Center for Data Protection of Schleswig-Holstein (ULD) which had ruled to allow users to sign in on Facebook using a pseudonym and to unblock those user-accounts that had been blocked due to the users not using their real name and personal data. At the time this was seen as a victory for Facebook the corporation – when in fact it was really a victory for the NSA – who harvests its data from Facebook.

NSA and GCHQ: A Joint Venture

Based on these latest Snowden leaks, we’ve learned more about the true nature of America’s NSA and Britain’s GCHQ partnership in this international spy network, sharing their data and communications. Through the UK Government’s Communications Headquarters known as TEMPORA, the British agency is able to tap over 200 fiber optic cables landing in the UK, saving everything – up to 27 petabytes a day, which are then parsed out to 300 GCHQ analysts and 250 NSA colleagues who then sift through it.

Over a decade of Patriot Acts, FISA laws and Wikileaks cables has left Americans and Europeans alike in a precarious state akin to Stockholm Syndrome, where their love of digital communications almost trumps their concerns for privacy. This same ambiguity has been echoed by Obama and Merkel, who both claim that protection against terrorism is not possible without the option of electronic surveillance. But the narrative which was originally framed around Washington’s invasion of its citizens’ privacy has since gone international. It’s now about governments partnering with each other – and with corporations, in the largest global digital dragnet imaginable.

The extent of the US National Security Agency (NSA) overseas spying in Europe has stunned the European public for sure, and appears to have rattled the political classes in Germany and Brussels – but only for now.

According to Edward Snowden’s revelations in the German magazine Der Spiegel last week, the NSA snoops through approximately 20-60 million German phone connections, and 10 million internet data sets a day. According to the Snowden report, all in all, the NSA combs through around half a billion German phone calls, emails and text messages on a monthly basis.

To add insult to injury, it’s been said the US intelligence regards Germany as a “third class partner”, on par with the likes of China and Iraq, making them fair game for NSA targeting. It’s not just Berlin, as the NSA are also said to have bugged EU diplomatic offices and gained access to EU internal computer networks.

So where is the crisis of international diplomacy between the US and Europe? Under normal circumstances, this might morph into a major diplomatic crisis pitting the EU members on one side and the US on the other – but alas, these are not really normal times. Germany and the EU came out swinging, well, sort of.

President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz hit out immediately stating:

“If the allegations prove to be true, it would be an extremely serious matter which will have a severe impact on EU-US relations”.

Brussels immediately passed a non-binding resolution, which said that unless the US provided full disclosure about its email and communications data, then two EU-US transatlantic information-sharing deals could be revoked. Those deals are the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) and Passenger Name Records (PNR). Both were rammed through the EU Parliament during the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. It gives the US Treasury carte blanche on all European stored data on international financial transfers, and gives US Homeland Security carte blanche on all passenger check-ins and ticket bookings on flights.

Few believe that the EU will actually make good on their threats, seeing the initial reaction as a mere face-saving exercise, leading to no real action by MEPs in Brussels.

Global Data Industry: A Digital Cartel

The corporate aspect should not be underrated in terms of its central role in the international digital data trade. Edward Snowden’s PRISM revelations of government controlled NSA wiretapping and data theft are nothing new, as former CIA analyst Russell Tice prove almost a decade ago in 2005 by showing that the NSA were engaged in unlawful and unconstitutional wiretaps on American citizens. But the NSA cannot operate without the partnership of these companies – all of whom have offices and operational hubs in most foreign markets.

Herein resides the key aspect in all of this – that in order for agencies like the NSA and GCHQ to get easy access to all of our digital communications and data, they still need the cooperation of corporations to do it. In the US, it’s now known what role major ISPs and mobile carriers like Verizon and AT&T play in this equation within US borders, including the existence of NSA-controlled SG3 collection rooms embedded within the companies facilities. Shocking enough, but not nearly as shocking if you consider the role of transnational corporations in enabling the NSA access to your digital threads.

Internationally, citizens have already signed over most of their privacy simply by using the digital services of US multinationals like Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Skype, Yahoo and others. All of these corporation operate within a ‘profit-first’ ethical vacuum where, in many cases, they are actually charging the NSA for the privilege of consuming their customers’ communications and data. According to the recent Snowden leaks, the level of collusion between Microsoft Corp and the NSA is astonishing, where Microsoft allows the NSA to skirt encryption protocols on Outlook, Skype video and cloud services, and where data captured by the NSA is routinely passed on to both the FBI and the CIA (Guardian July 12, 2013).

The horrible irony here is too obvious to ignore: the US government, through its NSA, is giving away taxpayer dollars so these corporations can profit from handing over all of your personal communications and data.

Such an unholy alliance between partnering governments and transnational corporations could be defined as fascism, but the global nature of this operation might require a new term to define what means as a global phenomenon.

Amidst the international Snowden media circus, it’s important not to forget that what has enabled agencies like the NSA and GCHQ to act with impunity, is the fact that both these governments have excelled in capitalising on a post-September 11th paranoia that has hijacked the national consciousness in both the US and the UK. The entire basis upon which their relentless war-time remit has been erected can be described in three words: “War on Terror”.

It’s already clear to the global citizenry that the US federal government and its NSA are out of control, and should be reined in as soon as possible in order to preserve any remaining moral standing for a country which has exhausted nearly all of its goodwill internationally – as well as domestically.

Judging by Washington’s stoic and unapologetic stance thus far, goodwill doesn’t seem to be a high priority yet. Until the problem is properly addressed, there will remain a gaping hole of moral leadership in the international community.

What political leaders are slow the realize is that when the goodwill has been exhausted, so has the trust, and that’s a very slippery slope indeed.

Patrick Henningsen is a writer, investigative journalist, and filmmaker and founder of the news website 21stCentury Wire.com.

This piece originally appeared on RT.com

Snowden: Fresh allegations against the British, Germans

For weeks now, officials at intelligence services around the world have been in suspense as one leak after another from whistleblower Edward Snowden has been published. Be it America’s National Security Agency, Britain’s GCHQ or systems like Prism or Tempora, he has been leaking scandalous information about international spying agencies. In an interview published by SPIEGEL in its latest issue, Snowden provides additional details, describing the closeness between the US and German intelligence services as well as Britain’s acquisitiveness when it comes to collecting data.

In Germany, reports of the United States’ vast espionage activities have surprised and upset many, including politicians. But Snowden isn’t buying the innocence of leading German politicians and government figures, who say that they were entirely unaware of the spying programs. On the contrary, the NSA people are “in bed together with the Germans,” the whistleblower told American cryptography expert Jacob Appelbaum and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras in an interview conducted with the help of encrypted emails shortly before Snowden became a globally recognized name.

Snowden describes the intelligence services partnerships in detail. The NSA even has a special department for such cooperation, the Foreign Affairs Directorate, he says. He also exposes a noteworthy detail about how government decision-makers are protected by these programs. The partnerships are organized in a way so that authorities in other countries can “insulate their political leaders from the backlash” in the event it becomes public “how grievously they’re violating global privacy,” the former NSA employee says.

SPIEGEL reporting also indicates that cooperation between the NSA and Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, is more intensive than previously known. The NSA, for example, provides “analysis tools” for the BND to monitor signals from foreign data streams that travel through Germany. Among the BND’s focuses are the Middle East route through which data packets from crisis regions travel.

BND head Gerhard Schindler confirmed the partnership during a recent meeting with members of the German parliament’s control committee for intelligence issues.

But it’s not just the BND’s activities that are the focus of the interview with Snowden.

The 30-year-old also provides new details about Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). He says that Britain’s Tempora system is the signal intelligence community’s first “full-take Internet buffer,” meaning that it saves all of the data passing through the country.

The scope of this “full take” system is vast. According to Snowden and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Tempora stores communications data for up to 30 days and saves all content for up to three days in a so-called Internet buffer. “It snarfs everything in a rolling buffer to allow retroactive investigation without missing a single bit,” Snowden says.

Asked if it is possible to get around this total surveillance of all Internet communication, he says: “As a general rule, so long as you have any choice at all, you should never route through or peer with the UK under any circumstances.”

In other words, Snowden says, one can only prevent GCHQ from accessing their data if they do not send any information through British Internet lines or servers. However, German Internet experts believe this would be almost impossible in practice.

The attempt to conduct total data retention is noteworthy because most of the leaks so far in the spying scandal have pertained to so-called metadata. In the interview, Snowden reiterates just how important metadata — which can include telephone numbers, IP addresses and connection times, for example — really are. “In most cases, content isn’t as valuable as metadata,” Snowden says.

Those in possession of metadata can determine who has communicated with whom. And using the metadata, they can determine which data sets and communications content they would like to take a closer look at. “The metadata tells you what out of their data stream you actually want,” Snowden says.

It is becoming increasingly clear to recognize the way in which surveillance programs from the NSA and GCHQ — including Prism, Tempora and Boundless Informant — cooperate. The metadata provides analysts with tips on which communications and content might be interesting. Then, Snowden says, with the touch of a button they can then retrieve or permanently collect the full content of communications that have already been stored for a specific person or group, or they can collect future communications. But a person can also be “selected for targeting based on, for example, your Facebook or webmail content.” – Der Spiegel

Independence and the Declaration of Secession

by Ilana Mercer

“Tea party,” “patriot,” “Constitution” and “Bill of Rights”: these keywords are the very stuff of the American Revolution, which took place during the last half of the 18th century. They are also some of the words that cued the “Infernal Revenue Service” to target the philosophical descendants of the Revolutionaries, in 21st century America.

Had they been aware that in 2012 not all Americans are created equal, the targeted not-for-profit organizations, aiming to fly beneath the IRS radar, would have also avoided any references to “The Declaration of Independence,” whose proclamation, on July 4, 1776, we celebrate as Independence Day.

Ordinary Americans of a certain age are already in compliance with the anti-American program carried out by their government, Democratic or Republican. Having been conditioned by our country’s many Orwellian Ministries of Truth, they celebrate July 4th firecrackers, fire-sale prices and cookouts. The Declaration doesn’t feature. As this column once remarked, contemporary Americans are less likely to read the Declaration of Independence now that it is easily available on the Internet, than when it relied on horseback riders for its distribution.

Back in 1776, gallopers carried the Declaration through the country. As historian David Hackett Fischer recounted in “Liberty and Freedom,” printer John Dunlap had worked “through the night” to set the full text on “a handsome folio sheet.” And John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, urged that the “people be universally informed.”

And so the people were.

“From the beginning,” wrote James McClellan, “American Constitution-makers had the general support of their countrymen. The principles of government they espoused during the Revolution and implemented after the British surrender at Yorktown were widely shared in every town and village. It was on the basis of this remarkable consensus, this serene moment of creation, this fertile ground of American political experience, that the new Constitution was established.” (page 59)

The excerpt is from McClellan’s magisterial “Liberty, Order, And Justice: An Introduction to the Constitutional Principles of American Government,” published by Liberty Fund. Like many of this country’s greatest patriots, McClellan wrote from a farm in Virginia.

While Mark Levin, the radio man lauded by his Republican adherents as “The Great One,” has denounced the secessionists among us (check), McClellan (a real scholar) seconded the Declaration’s secessionist impetus. The Declaration’s first part, he argued, “offered a philosophical justification for secession, based on the theory that all men are entitled to basic rights, that the purpose of government is to protect those rights, and that the people have the right to abolish that government if it fails to fulfill its obligation.” (page 122)

The provision of the Declaration of Independence that has aroused the greatest controversy is Thomas Jefferson’s statement “that all men are created equal. This was a poor choice of words,” admits McClellan, for “neither Jefferson nor any other members of the Continental Congress seriously believed that all people are equal.”

“Nor could Jefferson have possibly had in mind the “type of ‘égalité’ proclaimed by the French revolutionaries a decade later – that is, a radical leveling of society to a common stratum through government imposition of political, social, and economic equality.”

According to McClellan, the florid phrase “all men are created equal” meant only that “the American people, as a nation, were entitled to the same rights as Englishmen.” This demand for equal rights is the main thrust of the Declaration of Independence.

Order lIana Mercer’s brilliant polemical work, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa”

“Some forms of equality,” explained McClellan, “are clearly compatible with individual liberty, equality before the law or equal rights being the most obvious. … These forms of equality are generally consistent with the ideal of individual liberty because they may be attained without coercion.”

“Social and economic equality, on the other hand, finds no support in the Constitution or in the political tradition that grew out of the Declaration of Independence. … To reduce the entire American population to a single class of people, devoid of all social and economic distinctions, would have required massive and interminable coercion, resulting in a loss of individual liberty.”

Such “drastic measures” drove the Jacobin French Revolution. “They were never contemplated by those who wrote and approved the founding documents.” (page 136)

With the Declaration of Independence, the colonists were advancing a constitutional argument whereby Americans would be “entitled to the rights of Englishmen”: “the right to trial by jury, the right to self-government, the right of taxation by consent, and the right against quartering troops in private household. Theirs was a philosophical appeal resting on the claim of equal rights and the republican principles of government by consent.” (page 137)

The tenet of equality before the law served as a catalyst for the anti-slavery movement. Equally and justifiably is the preamble invoked “to support secession, the theory being that the States in 1861, as in 1776, had a fundamental or natural right to ‘change their form of government and institute a new [or no] government whenever necessary for their safety and happiness.”

Sadly – and as the existence of the IRS, an agency devoted to legalized thuggery attests – what remains of the sublime ideals “shared in every town and village” in early America is a deracinated, fragmented and demoralized people, managed to their detriment by a despotic State.

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, called it “an expression of the American Mind.” Judging from their enemy lists, unceasing evil and dark schemes, IRS apparatchiks and their masters in government consider the Declaration an expression of a subversive American mind.

Rapper 50 Cent denies kicking ex-girlfriend

Rapper 50 Cent denies allegations he attacked his ex-girlfriend and trashed her condo.

The “In da Club” singer’s lawyer says there’s no warrant outstanding on the domestic violence and vandalism charges against 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson.

If convicted, he faces up to five years in jail and $46,000 in fines.

The woman told police that during a June 23 argument, Jackson began destroying property at her condo before she locked herself into a bedroom. She says Jackson kicked open the bedroom door and kicked her, causing injury.

Police estimated about $7,100 in damage to the home.

The woman told police she had been in a three-year relationship and has a baby with Jackson.

His arraignment is July 22. – AP

The US and Britain’s proxy war in Syria threatens planetary civilisation

by Dan Roodt

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The news that the UK, US and allies will provide ‘urgent military support to Syrian rebels’ has signalled the prolongation and possible escalation of the Syrian civil war. Not surprisingly, it was followed by news that Russia (is) to supply advanced weapons to Syria.

The so-called “Friends of Syria” group comprises Britain, France, the US, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. We can safely say that America and Britain are the driving forces behind the initiative and that the other countries have merely been roped in to lend some international legitimacy to what is turning into a proxy war between the US-UK and Russia.

The Syrian conflict represents a threat to world peace. In fact, it could lead to the end of civilisation as we know it!

That may sound like an outrageous statement, but let me explain.

The civil war in Syria is not only a proxy war between the Atlantic powers (or Atlanticists) and Russia, but once Syria falls, the next target will be Iran and after that Russia itself.

Putin understands this. He is also correct when he accuses the American and British governments of disregarding the sovereignty of other states and nations. Especially Democratic and Labour governments have in recent decades embraced the doctrine of “regime change” whereby the two Anglo-Saxon powers see fit to start wars and uprisings in other countries to serve their own interests. However, a lot of the time they are not even serving their own interests but are acting to promote the new Soviet ideology of multiculturalism. Racial equality, or “equality of outcomes” is to the Atlanticists what class equality was to the former totalitarian states of Eastern Europe.

Elsewhere on this website, Felicity Arbuthnot quotes Sbigniew Brzesinski as saying that the United States is courting “large-scale disaster” in Syria:

“Having covertly provided arms and equipment to insurgents from numerous different countries for over two years, they have now moved to the overt stage, a move over which even arch hawks such as former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, and former Republican Senator Richard Luger, six term leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urged caution.

“Luger said such action would boost extremists, with Brzezinski dismissing Obama’s talk of ‘red lines’ as thoughtless and risking “a large-scale disaster for the United States.”

The geostrategic scenario predicted by Russian writer and commentator Aleksandr Dugin, is being realised. I posted his essay The Great War of Continents on my personal blog some time ago. Dugin was influenced by the great German legal philosopher, Carl Schmitt, who was skeptical of democracy. In fact, we can see how democracy plays hardly any role in the decisions taken by the Atlanticists as the populations of both the US and the UK are vehemently opposed to further wars. A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that Americans (are) overwhelmingly against arming Syrian rebels. Schmitt also wrote a book on Land and sea in which he theorised about the conflict between the Atlantic “sea powers” and the Eurasian “land powers”.

However, I think the Syrian conflict, together with the so-called “Arab Spring”, colour revolutions, as well as the South African revolution of 1994 portend a major movement with the ultimate objective of abolishing the nation state as we know it. Almost all of these revolutions were fomented from the outside by Atlanticists who discerned weaknesses in the ethnic, religious and multinational compositions of the states being attacked. The use of media and the arming or financing of “rebels” and terrorists were features of all these revolutions or “regime changes”.

Apart from the thalassocratic elements identified by Schmitt and Dugin – the USA and the UK being maritime powers – there is another, archaic driver behind Atlanticist overreach and that is the resurrection of a kind of Zombie British Empire (ZBE). America, being a republic, has always been ill at ease with its role as the New Rome. Americans are not well-versed in foreign languages, customs and geography. The average intern or staffer in Washington would not be able to find Syria on a map, let alone appreciate the ethnic, religious and political complexities of that society.

But in its economic and geostrategic decline, Britain has become the tail wagging the dog. It is clearly seeking to influence and direct the United States in re-establishing its nineteenth-century dominance as a global imperium. Earlier this year, an Historic strategy meeting between the USA and the UK was announced. More recently, it was revealed by Edward Snowden that the British are worse than US in spying. Just yesterday, it appeared that the UK (was) tapping the EU’s data flows and the “German Justice Minister… called the British spy agency’s massive eavesdropping of international fiber-optic cables ‘a catastrophe’.”

There is a long-standing hostility towards the nation state in Britain, which has become deeply rooted in academia, the media, the ubiquitous left-wing NGOs and especially in the Labour Party. European nationalism or the historical desire of European peoples to exercise their right to self-determination is routinely equated with Hitlerism. But even in the United States where Woodrow Wilson is remembered as a champion of self-determination and the nation state, there is another school of thought expressed by Wilson’s secretary of state, Robert Lansing, in the aftermath of World War I:

“The more I think about the President’s declaration as to ‘self-determination’, the more convinced I am of the dangers of putting such ideas into the minds of certain races. It is bound to be the basis of impossible demands on the Peace Congress, and create trouble in many lands. What effect will it have on the Irish, the Indians, the Egyptians, and the nationalists among the Boers? Will it not breed discontent, disorder and rebellion?”

The successful suppression of Afrikaner self-determination or “Boer nationalism” over more than a century, as well as the so-called “peaceful regime change” in South Africa in 1994, has emboldened neo-imperialists in the UK and the US to engineer many more regime changes, starting in Iraq, but also the Maghreb and Egypt, with the focus now on Syria.

This is what opponents of the Obama administration in the United States are starting to call the “New World Order”. The adherents of the NWO envisage such a radical change in global government, coupled with Big Brother spying techniques and sci-fi mind control, that we are indeed seeing the end, not only of Wilsonian self-determination, but even of the European order that arose at the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648. The so-called “Peace of Westphalia” in 1648 established national sovereignty and religious freedom as the two inviolable principles of European statecraft.

Under its current government, there is religious freedom in Syria, unlike in other Muslim states. On the other hand, we have seen Christian churches being attacked by the so-called rebels. The question has already been asked on this website: Who will the US really arm in Syria? Quoting from that RT report, we can only conclude that it must be radical Islamists opposed to the current modern-Arab regime of Bashar al-Assad:

“The US decision to arm the Syrian rebels fighting government troops has sparked feuds among various rebel factions dominated by radical Islamist fighters. As internal schisms among the rebels deepen, fighters from the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front have reportedly assassinated a large number of officers of the Free Syrian Army.”

The love-hate relationship that the USA is entertaining with Al-Qaeda may be conceptually difficult to grasp. But not if one takes a step back to look at the big picture, both present and past. On the one hand and especially after 9/11, Al-Qaeda was Enemy No. 1, the target for Bush’s “war on terror”. On the other hand, Al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and similar fundamentalist groups are being funded, supported and armed by the United States to take over Arab countries and establish a form of theocracy, including shariah. Are the US and the UK being run by idiots who simply do not understand what they are doing?

The answer is no. The ostensible paradox of modern, so-called Western states with same-sex marriage laws, equality of the sexes, religious and political pluralism, aiding and abetting mediaeval, theocratic groups is no paradox at all.

Some years ago I realised with a shock that globalist capitalism would succeed where communism had failed, in establishing a denationalised, internationalist empire. Two Marxists, one American and one Italian – a former member of the Red Brigades – wrote a book looking forward to this global imperium being created by the United States, appropriately entitled Empire. We all know that Lenin was apparently funded by a New York banker called Jacob Schiff.

Like globalism, fundamentalist Islam is also a doctrine that does not recognise secular government within a nation state, of the form established in Europe and America after 1648. Arabic Islamic culture is already transnational, as opposed to the Nasserist nationalist regimes of a Saddam Hussein or a Bashar al-Assad that must be destroyed at all costs. What the proponents of the New World Order, or the Atlanticists, are telling us is that Muslims and Arabs have no need of nation states. Neither do Europeans, Asians or Africans, for that matter. Within the globalist, new-world-order logic, only transnational entities such as the UN, the EU or the African Union matter. The nation state must be razed to the ground.

It follows that a failed state is always preferable to a functional one. Iraq was attacked and in its wake there is now a failed state, more or less bordering on chaos. Africa is littered with failed states, including Zimbabwe, the creation of British foreign policy. Many of these states cannot even supply potable water to their citizens, yet they are praised to high heaven as examples of “postcolonial democracy”. The New York Times recently declared Zimbabwe’s disastrous “land reform” a “success”, during which the property of private white land owners was confiscated. South Africa too, is on its way to becoming a failed state with rampant, crime, corruption and marauding bandits attacking houses and farms, often torturing white farmers to death. But South Africa is the darling of the Anglo-American world, as a transnational state with more or less open borders – that which is envisaged for the whole planet as peoples, races and cultures mingle and we all sit at McDonald’s having a Coke. However, some of us will be wearing the burka and others will be sacrificing a goat outside to appease the forefathers.

Apart from the ideological imperative to destroy national identities and nation states wherever they are to be found, the globalist powers also have an economic imperative. As we all know, the United States has to a large extent transferred its manufacturing to China and the Far East. Both American and Britain have financial and service economies that depend on capital flows and trade. Up to a quarter of British GDP is generated in the City of London, by bankers, brokers, traders, consultants, accountants and other economic parasites that produce absolutely nothing. They are so-called “intermediaries”.

The British bank HSBC, one of the world’s largest, has been described as a criminal enterprise, for its role in money laundering.

The two bellicose countries are also bankrupt, amassing mountains of government and private debt. Successive bailouts of the banking industry have left them with amounts of debt that normal handheld calculators cannot even process unless one leaves out substantial numbers of zeroes. It is an old adage that war is the only way out of a prolonged economic downturn and financial melt-down. After the failure of quantative easing to kickstart the US economy, war is all that America has left.

The war economy is, by definition, a subsidised economy. The American taxpayer is funding the military-industrial complex, which can almost charge what it likes, having a captive market for its goods. Free weapons for Syrian rebels may therefore be seen as the latest round of quantitative easing and “stimulus”.

America will not attack China because, as some commentator put it the other day on a blog, that country represents “our T-bill sugar daddy”. China is the biggest buyer and holder of US debt, so for the moment no Chinese rebels will be armed.

Not so Russia, which competes with the USA in fhe only field where it has real industrial capacity left: armaments. With its military parades, patriotism and sense of tradition, Russia is the exact antithesis of globalist transnationalism. It also celebrates its own language, music and literature. In the USA and Britain, what passes these days for “literature” is mostly guilt-ridden, anti-white tracts attacking any sense of identity, tradition, genius or cultural standards. Nietzsche called it “nihilism”. Risking opprobium, one may even resuscitate a German term from the 1930s, Entartete Kunst or “degenerate art”. Let’s stick to “nihilism”.

The Nasserist, nationalist Arab regimes have fallen like the proverbial dominoes, pushed by American money and CIA tricks. Syria is proving a harder nut to crack. After Syria, Iran will be next, that citadel of Shiite power. Not only is Iran a country with a large population, but it also has a unique sense of self, with its religion and traditions.

However, the ultimate target is Russia. Whatever one may think of Russia and its role in the twentieth century, it is obvious that it has become a “guarantor of sovereignty” of sorts. Many Afrikaners muse today that we would have been better off if Vorster had surrendered to the Soviet Union in the 1970s than De Klerk’s capitulation to the Nordic and British-backed “rebels” of the ANC in 1994. Soviet nationalities policy was an enlightened way of allowing regional and national identities to flourish. Even as communists, Russians had respect for culture, including the culture of others.

Looking at pictures of Syrian churches being vandalised and sacked by the US-backed rebels, it saddens one to think that such acts are being condoned by some of the fresh-faced, all-American and probably Christian boys and girls that one still encounters in Washington offices, although they will probably soon be replaced by multicultural imports.

The modern civilisation whose fruits we are enjoying today came about during the European Renaissance and after the Peace of Wesphalia during 1648. French Socialist President François Mitterand was wrong when he stated: Le nationalisme, c’est la guerre. (“Nationalism means war.”) More often than not, nation states have created institutions, schools, universities, academies, opera houses, and theatres; such states have allowed peoples to determine their own destiny. As Woodrow Wilson put it to Congress a month after his famous Fourteen Points Speech, sometimes referred to as his “Four Point Speech” on 11 February 1918:

“National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. ‘Self-determination’ is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of action…”

In Syria and elsewhere, Obama and Cameron, like Bush and Blair before them, are pitting themselves against this principle and that of sovereignty. If the Atlanticists succeed, a global disaster might ensue which could take us back to a high-tech version of the Middle Ages. We will be subjected to and even forcibly converted to various faiths, of which fundamentalist Islam is one and multicultural leftism is another. Heretics will again be persecuted, stoned to death or simply executed by various uniformed militiamen, either belonging to rebel movements or government forces.

Perhaps some of the global corporations and oil companies, employing their own private armies for protection, will do quite well in such a postnational world. But the rest of us will be terrorised by gangs, mobs and armed “rebels”, as is happening in many parts of Africa already.

Of course, South Africa is the guinea pig country, the first open-border, transnational state with hardly any sovereignty where any government official may be bought. Organised crime and multinational corporations share the spoils. Private property is open to interpretation and any Marxist historian’s vague theories about exploitation could jeopardise your title deed.

Is this the kind of world we want?

If Germany and France want to follow the arming of rebels and the destabilisation of whole countries, we should start boycotting their cars and buy Korean or Japanese. Russia should also do its best to wake Europe up to the dangers of the New World Order unfolding before our very eyes. Patriotic Americans and Britons who oppose the inteventionist role of their countries in wrecking the states and societies of other peoples, should also make their voices heard. Many are already doing so, via radio staions and the internet, but if we are to stop the powerful insiders taking control of the globe, much more action and information are needed.

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White House wants Snowden extradited from Russia to America

The U.S. assumes National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden remains in Russia, and officials are working with Moscow in hopes he will be expelled and returned to America to face criminal charges, President Barack Obama’s spokesman said Monday. He declared that a decision by Hong Kong not to detain Snowden has “unquestionably” hurt relations between the United States and China.

Snowden left Hong Kong, where he has been in hiding, and flew to Moscow but then apparently did not board a plane bound for Cuba as had been expected. His whereabouts were a mystery. The founder of the WikiLeaks secret-spilling organization, Julian Assange, said he wouldn’t go into details about where Snowden was but said he was safe.

Snowden has applied for asylum in Ecuador, Iceland and possibly other countries, Assange said.

At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said the U.S. was expecting the Russians “to look at the options available to them to expel Mr. Snowden back to the United States to face justice for the crimes with which he is charged.”

“The Chinese have emphasized the importance of building mutual trust,” he added. “And we think that they have dealt that effort a serious setback. If we cannot count on them to honor their legal extradition obligations, then there is a problem. And that is a point we are making to them very directly.”

Snowden has given highly classified documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers disclosing U.S. surveillance programs that collect vast amounts of phone records and online data in the name of foreign intelligence, often sweeping up information on American citizens. He also told the South China Morning Post that “the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data.”

Snowden still has perhaps more than 200 sensitive documents, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said over the weekend.

He had been in hiding in Hong Kong, a former British colony with a degree of autonomy from mainland China. The United States formally sought Snowden’s extradition but was rebuffed by Hong Kong officials who said the U.S. request did not fully comply with their laws. The Justice Department rejected that claim, saying its request met all of the requirements of the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Hong Kong.

Said Carney: “We are just not buying that this was a technical decision by a Hong Kong immigration official. This was a deliberate choice by the government to release a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant, and that decision unquestionably has a negative impact on the U.S.-China relationship.”

The dual lines of diplomacy — harsh with China, hopeful with the Russians — came just days after Obama met separately with leaders of both countries in an effort to close gaps on some of the major disputes facing them.

Snowden arrived in Moscow on Sunday, but his whereabouts were thrown into question Monday when a plane took off from Moscow for Cuba with an empty seat booked in his name. The U.S. has revoked his passport.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said it would be “deeply troubling” if Russia or Hong Kong had adequate notice about Snowden’s plans to flee to a country that would grant him asylum and still allowed him leave.

“We don’t know, specifically, where he may head, or what his intended destination may be,” Kerry said, responding to a question during a news conference in New Delhi where he was discussing bilateral issues between the U.S. and India.

U.S. officials pointed to improved cooperation with the Russians in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing and to assistance the U.S. has given Russia on law enforcement cases.

“We continue to hope that the Russians will do the right thing,” Kerry told NBC News. “We think it’s very important in terms of our relationship. We think it’s very important in terms of rule of law. These are important standards. We have returned seven criminals that they requested for extradition from the United States over the last two years. So we really hope that the right choice will be made here.”

“We don’t know, specifically, where he may head, or what his intended destination may be,” Kerry said during a news conference in New Delhi.

Carney said the U.S. was in touch through diplomatic and law enforcement channels with countries through which Snowden might travel or where he might end up.

“The U.S. is advising these governments that Mr. Snowden is wanted on felony charges and as such should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him here to the United States,” Carney said.

An Aeroflot representative who wouldn’t give her name told The Associated Press that Snowden wasn’t on flight SU150 to Havana, which was filled with journalists trying to track him down.

In Moscow, security around the aircraft was heavy prior to boarding and guards tried to prevent the scrum of photographers and cameramen from taking pictures of the plane, heightening the speculation that Snowden might have been secretly escorted on board.

After spending a night in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, Snowden had been expected to fly to Cuba and Venezuela en route to possible asylum in Ecuador.

Some analysts said it was likely that the Russians were questioning Snowden, interested in what he knew about U.S. electronic espionage against Moscow.

“If Russian special services hadn’t shown interest in Snowden, they would have been utterly unprofessional,” Igor Korotchenko, a former colonel in Russia’s top military command turned security analyst, said on state Rossiya 24 television.

The White House’s tough response to Hong Kong’s decision to let Snowden leave came just two weeks after Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jinping for two days of personal diplomacy in a desert retreat in California.

Carney said that after the U.S. sought Snowden’s extradition from Hong Kong, authorities there requested additional information from the U.S.

“The U.S. had been in communication with Hong Kong about these inquiries and we were in the process of responding to the request when we learned that Hong Kong authorities had allowed the fugitive to leave Hong Kong,” Carney said.

Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patino, said his government had received an asylum request, adding Monday that the decision “has to do with freedom of expression and with the security of citizens around the world.”

Ecuador has rejected some previous U.S. efforts at cooperation and has been helping Assange avoid prosecution by allowing him to stay at its embassy in London.

But Assange’s comments that Snowden had applied in multiple places opened other possibilities of where he might try to go.

WikiLeaks has said it is providing legal help to Snowden at his request and that he was being escorted by diplomats and legal advisers from the group.

Icelandic officials have confirmed receiving an informal request for asylum conveyed by WikiLeaks, which has strong links to the tiny North Atlantic nation. But authorities there have insisted that Snowden must be on Icelandic soil before making a formal request. – AP

Fisher ruling: ‘Affirmative action lives on by a thread’

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court today issued its long-awaited ruling on affirmative action — but didn’t offer a definitive opinion on whether colleges may consider the use of race in admissions.

Ruling 7-1, the court found that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit erred in not applying “strict scrutiny” to the policies of the University of Texas at Austin. The case is Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, in which Abigail Fisher, a white woman rejected for admission by the university, said that her rights were violated by UT-Austin’s consideration of race and ethnicity in admissions decisions. Fisher’s lawyers argued that the University of Texas need not consider race because it has found another way to assure diversity in the student body.

The decision said that “good faith” by the university would not be enough to justify the consideration of race. But the decision — by Justice Anthony Kennedy — does not offer an opinion on whether the University of Texas can produce sufficient evidence. Rather, it faults the appeals court for not reviewing that question using the high bar of “strict scrutiny” for the consideration of race.

The Supreme Court did not — as some thought it might — reverse past decisions that allowed colleges to consider race. In fact, the conclusion of the decision states that colleges must meet the requirements previously given by the court to justify the use of race. Quoting from the landmark 1978 Bakke decision, today’s ruling says: “In order for judicial review to be meaningful, a university must make a showing that its plan is narrowly tailored to achieve the only interest that this Court has approved in this context: the benefits of a student body diversity that ‘encompasses a . . . broa[d] array of qualifications and characteristics of which racial or ethnic origin is but a single though important element.'”

It is likely that today’s ruling could mean that — after another round at the Fifth Circuit — the case could return to the Supreme Court.

Moments after the decision was handed down, Michael Olivas, an expert on higher education law (and a defender of affirmative action) e-mailed: “Affirmative action lives on by a thread, and demography will start to assert itself.” Olivas is director of the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance at the University of Houston and author of Suing Alma Mater: Higher Education and the Courts (Johns Hopkins University Press).

The Record So Far

This website, maintained by the University of Texas at Austin, includes briefs and prior rulings in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, in which Abigail Fisher, a white woman rejected for admission by the university, said that her rights were violated by UT-Austin’s consideration of race and ethnicity in admissions decisions.

Fisher’s argument was that past Supreme Court decisions have allowed colleges and universities to consider race and ethnicity only if diversity could not be achieved in race-neutral ways, so the University of Texas had no legal need to consider race. The university in turn said that the percent plan provided it with only a limited level of diversity and that it had the right to take additional measures to assure a greater level of diversity. Most major college associations backed the University of Texas, as did many civil rights organizations. Asian-American groups split on the case. – Inside Higher Ed. Read the full article here.

Arms for rebels ‘very dangerous’: Syrian foreign minister

Walid-al-Moallem, Syria s foreing minister — Walid-al-Moallem, Syria
s foreing minister

The decision by the United States and its allies to arm rebel groups in Syria is “very dangerous” and will prolong the violence and killing on the ground, Syria’s foreign minister said Monday.

Walid al-Moallem said sending more weapons to the opposition will also hinder efforts to bring both sides to the table in a planned peace conference in Geneva. He said his country remains ready and willing to take part but added President Bashar Assad will not step down.

Al-Moallem’s comments came two days after an 11-nation group that includes the U.S. met in the Qatari capital of Doha and agreed to step up military and other assistance to the Syrian rebels. He said all those who met in Doha “have Syrian blood on their hands.”

U.S. Secretary of States John Kerry, who took part in the conference, would not disclose details of the aid, saying only that it would re-balance the fight between the rebels and the government. Assad’s better-equipped forces are increasingly backed by fighters from Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group.

“We are not scared,” al-Moallem said of the decision. “If they dream or are delusional about achieving a balance with the Syrian Arab Army, I think they need to wait years and this won’t be achieved.”

“They will not be victorious no matter how much they conspire,” al-Moallem added. He said arming the rebels “is a dangerous decision because it aims at prolonging the crisis, prolonging the violence and killing and encouraging terrorism.”

The Friends of Syria gathering in Doha was Kerry’s first meeting with his counterparts on the practicalities of assisting the Syrian rebels since President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. would send lethal aid to the opposition. The decision came despite concerns that the weapons could fall into the hands of Islamic extremists in the rebel coalition.

Obama’s change of policy was partly based on a U.S. intelligence assessment that Assad had used chemical weapons, but Kerry expressed deeper concern about Damascus’ foreign support. He said that Iranian as well as Hezbollah fighters had joined the war.

Al-Moallem denied categorically that any Iranian fighters were in Syria. Damascus admits that Hezbollah is assisting government troops.

The foreign minister said his regime was willing to take part in any peace conference, but will go to Geneva not to hand over power to the other side but rather to establish “a real partnership” and a national unity government that includes representatives of all Syrian society.

“President Bashar Assad will not step down,” he said. “If anyone has such illusions on the other side, my advice to them is not to go to Geneva,” he said. He nonetheless called the conference an “opportunity that should not be missed.”

He defiantly said Syria will not accept any solutions or even ideas dictates from the outside.

More than 93,000 people have been killed in Syrian conflict that started in March 2011 as largely peaceful protest against Assad’s rule. The uprising turned into a bloody insurgency in response to a military crackdown by regime forces on the protest movement. In the past year, the war has taken on increasingly sectarian overtones. – AP

Thank you for your service, Mr. Snowden

A heroic American whistleblower chooses, oh-so wisely, to expose Uncle Sam’s usurpations to the veteran reporters of the British Guardian and not to the partisan hacks of the American press. This fact tells you all you need to know about US presstitutes.

Confirmation of the degree to which American media has been co-opted by power came on June 10, again, via a British newspaper. The Mail Online divulged that Edward Snowden had “first approached the Washington Post with his leaks but the newspaper refused to comply with his publishing demands.” You see, the Washington Post had to hotfoot it back to Big Brother Obama before it would do its journalistic due diligence. “The Post broke the story on PRISM two weeks later, on Thursday, after consulting with government officials,” confirmed the Mail Online.

Even after being scooped by the Guardian, the Obama embeds at the Washington Post saw fit to inform their readers about PRISM on a purely need-to-know basis, “reprinting only four of the 41 PRISM PowerPoint slides,” and generally misrepresenting the nature of the program known as PRISM. The manufactured-in-America version of PRISM thus contradicts the “internal NSA documents” leaked to the Guardian.

According to the guardian of American freedoms at the Guardian, reporter Glenn Greenwald, the 41-slide PowerPoint presentation he acquired from Snowden has been authenticated as a document “used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program.” The presentation, pictorials with captions, handed out by the National Security Agency, boasts of having “direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, PalTalk, YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL, and other servers.”

Contrary to what you’re being told, “the world’s largest surveillance organization” can and does “obtain targeted communications without having to request them from the service providers and without having to obtain individual court orders.” And it is contrary to the Bill of Rights, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, in particular. It specifies that “warrants shall issue” only “upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Tellingly, the tools of Big Media and big government are not apprising you of these facts. Like a tortoise in its shell they’ve retreated from the watersheds that are the AP, the IRS and the NSA scandals, informing you only of what New York and Northeast elites think is important: “Most of you still like Obama.”

In light of “the disclosure that the federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation,” the Gray Lady endeavored, fleetingly, to shake off a flea or two, and adopt a slightly less reverential tone toward the godhead Obama. The New York Times quickly lay down with dogs again; the paper rushed to restore Obama’s bona fides the following day.

As to other “nimble” minds in media: Andrea Tarantula, one of the interchangeable females on a Fox News idiot’s extravaganza called “The Five,” said that, “If they are competent with my information; they can have it. If not, let me have my freedoms back.” To Andrea (who is, admittedly, not as invincibly stupid as the statist Dana Perino), the inviolable “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” is subject to the efficiency of a naturally illicit search.

Not for Greg Gutfeld are arguments from principle. Sitting in for Bill O’Reilly, Gutfeld declared that “this” was not about surveillance but about a progressive government that could not be trusted. The majority of Americans are equally adrift, oblivious to the individual liberties American Constitution makers bequeathed them. The individuals questioned by the polling professionals at the Pew Research Center were inclined to approve of the phone-call tapping of millions, if conducted by the party for which they voted.

Lawrence O’Donnell and his entourage at MSNBC—Alex Wagner and Chris Hayes, the most enthusiastic Obama bobbleheads on TV—acted all surprised about rudderless America, never implicating their daily, partisan promotionals in the process. The hosts harped on the fact that no harm had come from the NSA PRISM program. And, after all, was Obama not obligated to continue the incursions into liberty begun by Bush? C’est la vie. Wagner did display a modicum of remorse for her cover-up. She admitted that Obama had gone beyond the call of duty in expanding counterterrorism and state surveillance.

Neoconservatives such as Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard and the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal; retired United States Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, and radio talker Hugh Hewitt—all pronounced the NSA data sweep a non-scandal. Another neocon, Charles Krauthammer, saw Obama’s infractions as a vindication of Bush’s. The columnist invited Democrats now excusing Obama to pardon Bush and … party on.

Snowden came forth, in his words, “to reveal criminality.” But Fox News’ Megyn Kelly chose to mine crime from the ore of virtue. Kelly summoned a two-bit profiler, allegedly from the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit—who sounded like she’d been plucked from the set of Criminal Minds—to expose “this guy.” Not to be outperformed by Kelly, the profiler unloaded terms like “loser” and “drop-out” on a man who has held many responsible positions within the intelligence community in his young life.

Yet another Fox News personality, Neil Cavuto, went on to compare Snowden to celebrity seducer Roman Polanski, who, in 1978, sought asylum in France after being convicted of sleeping with an American minor. Chimed Cavuto, “We don’t know why [Snowden] did what he did.”

Oh yes we do. Contra Cavuto, Snowden forsook creature comforts and worldly possessions to speak truth to power—and not to any power. The 29-year-old National Security Agency contractor has gone up “against the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies,” as he stated soberly. Snowden understands his chances of prevailing are not good. “[T]ey’re such powerful adversaries that no one can meaningfully oppose them. If they want to get you, they will get you in time.”

In Snowden’s poignant words, “You can’t wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realized that leadership is about being the first to act.” “I’m neither traitor nor hero. I’m an American,” he summed-up so simply.

Yes, we need fewer personalities like Cavuto and more men of character like Snowden.

Those who’re not suspended in the moral abyss with mainstream media already know that Edward Snowden is the best of America. Let us prove ourselves worthy of his sacrifice. Come every Memorial Day—more aptly called “Dying For Nothing Day”—we direct a commonplace saying at members of a military that has not defended authentic American liberties for decades. It is, however, to a young man such as this that we should say:”Thank you for your service, Mr. Snowden.”

Read Ilana Mercer’s blog.

US seizure of journalist records called ‘chilling’

The US government’s secret seizure of Associated Press phone records had a “chilling effect” on newsgathering by the agency and other news organizations, AP’s top executive said Wednesday.

“Some longtime trusted sources have become nervous and anxious about talking with us,” AP president and chief executive Gary Pruitt said in a speech to the National Press Club.

“In some cases, government employees we once checked in with regularly will no longer speak to us by phone. Others are reluctant to meet in person … This chilling effect on newsgathering is not just limited to AP.

“Journalists from other news organizations have personally told me that it has intimidated both official and nonofficial sources from speaking to them as well.”

Pruitt spoke one month after the US news agency revealed that it had been notified after the fact that the US Justice Department had secret subpoenas of two months of phone records from its news operations.

The AP has said US authorities appeared to have sought out the records as part of a criminal investigation into leaked information contained in a May 2012 AP story about a foiled terror plot.

Pruitt, who previously called the seizure “a massive and unprecedented intrusion” into newsgathering, said the Justice Department “violated its own rules” on how it handles investigations of leaks to news media.

He said the collection of records pertaining to more than 100 journalists was “an overbroad and sloppy fishing expedition” and failed to follow procedures on notification.

Pruitt said that authorities maintained that by notifying the AP ahead of the sweep “it would have tipped off the leaker” but argued “that kind of reasoning would apply in every single case.”

This rationale would mean news organizations would never know when its records are being obtained, news sources would become less willing to speak and “the public will only know what the government wants them to know.”

The Justice Department has told the AP “that our phone records have been and will continue to be walled off, protected and used for no other purpose other than the leak investigation,” Pruitt said.

“We appreciate these assurances. But that does not excuse what they did. We need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

The AP chief said the US administration should reaffirm the right of advance notice to news organizations, and use the courts to adjudicate any disputes on whether certain records are needed.

He also called for a “federal shield law with teeth” to ensure that journalists are not prosecuted for doing their jobs.

“We do not dispute that the government has the right to pursue those who leak classified information,” he said.

But he argued that “no one in this country should ever be prosecuted for committing journalism.”

Last month, Attorney General Eric Holder said the leak which prompted the seizure of journalist phone records was a “very serious” matter which “puts the American people at risk.”

Pruitt said Wednesday however that the AP waited five days before publishing the article, until after it had been assured by US officials that “the national security risk had passed.

The US administration under President Barack Obama has been aggressive in pursuing leaks of secret government information.

Authorities have said they had opened a probe into Edward Snowden, the former government contractor who leaked details about a cast US government electronic surveillance program.

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou was sentenced in January to two and a half years in prison for leaking the name of a secret agent implicated in harsh interrogations of Al-Qaeda suspects. – AP

Obama defends US surveillance programs in Berlin

Barack Obama and German chancellor Angela Merkel

Trying to tamp down concerns about government over-reach, President Barack Obama on Wednesday defended U.S. Internet and phone surveillance programs as narrowly targeted efforts that have saved lives and thwarted at least 50 terror threats.

“This is not a situation in which we are rifling through ordinary emails” of huge numbers of citizens in the United States or elsewhere, the president declared during a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He called it as a “circumscribed, narrow” surveillance program.

“Lives have been saved,” Obama said, adding that the program has been closely supervised by the courts to ensure that any encroachment of privacy is strictly limited.

Merkel, for her part, said it was important to continue debate about how to strike “an equitable balance” between providing security and protecting personal freedoms.

“There has to be proportionality,” she said. She added that their discussion on the matter Wednesday was “an important first step” over striking a balance.

Merkel appeared to be looking to avoid a public rift with Washington over the surveillance program, particularly since Germans benefit from U.S. intelligence. Much of the German criticism of the program has come from her junior coalition partners, facing the prospect of losses in the September election and looking for an issue.

The two leaders spoke to the media after meeting privately on a range of issues confronting U.S. and European leaders, including the fragile effort to bring peace in Afghanistan, where peace talks with the Taliban are in the offing to find ways to end the nearly 12-year war. Earlier Wednesday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai suspended talks with the United States on a new security deal to protest the way his government was being left out of the initial peace negotiations with the Taliban.

Obama said the U.S. had anticipated “there were going to be some areas of friction, to put it mildly, in getting this thing off the ground. That’s not surprising. They’ve been fighting there for a long time” and mistrust is rampant.

Karzai said Wednesday that peace talks cannot begin amid “fighting and bloodshed.” But Obama said it was important to pursue a parallel track toward reconciliation even as the fighting continues, and it would up to the Afghan people whether that effort ultimately bears fruit.

On another world trouble spot, the 2-year-old Syrian civil war, the president declined to provide details on the type of military support the U.S. will provide to opposition forces. But he said the administration had been consistent in working toward the over-riding goal of a Syria that is “peaceful, non-sectarian, democratic, legitimate, tolerant.”

“I cannot and will not comment on specifics around our programs related to the Syrian opposition,” he said.

The president said while world leaders at the just-completed Group of 8 summit in Northern Ireland could not agree on whether Syrian President Bashar Assad must go, he believes Assad cannot regain legitimacy.

And the president offered reassurances on another issue of particular concern in Germany. In response to a question from a German reporter, Obama said the United States doesn’t use Germany as a launching point for unmanned drones to strike terrorist targets. He said he knows there have been some reports in Germany speculating that was the case, but it’s not so.

Later Wednesday, Obama planned to draw attention to his plan for a one-third reduction in U.S. and Russian arsenals, rekindling a goal that was a centerpiece of his early first-term national security agenda.

His 26-hour whirlwind visit to the German capital caps three days of international summitry for the president and marks his return to a place where he once summoned a throng of 200,000 to share his ambitious vision for American leadership.

Obama will make the case for his nuclear plan during a speech at Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate. His address comes nearly 50 years after John F. Kennedy’s famous Cold War speech in this once-divided city, and five years after Obama spoke in the city during his 2008 run for president.

The president has previously called for reductions to the stockpiles and is not expected to outline a timeline for this renewed push. But by addressing the issue in a major foreign policy speech, Obama is signaling a desire to rekindle an issue that was a centerpiece of his early first-term national security agenda.

Five years later, Obama comes to deliver a highly anticipated speech to a country that’s a bit more sober about his aspirations and the extent of his successes, yet still eager to receive his attention at a time that many here feel that Europe, and Germany in particular, are no longer U.S. priorities. A Pew Research Center poll of Germans found that while their views of the U.S. have slipped since Obama’s first year in office, he has managed to retain his popularity, with 88 percent of those surveyed approving of his foreign policies.

Obama also has an arc of history to fulfill.

Fifty years ago next week, President Kennedy addressed a crowd of 450,000 in that then-divided city to repudiate communism and famously declare “Ich bin ein Berliner,” German for “I am a Berliner.” Since then, presidents from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton have used Berlin speeches to articulate broad themes about freedom and international alliances.

Obama, fresh from a two-day summit of the Group of Eight industrial economies, placed his hand over his heart outside the sunny presidential palace as a German military band played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the American national anthem. He and German President Joachim Gauck inspected a lineup of German military troops before entering the palace, stopping to greet children who waved American and German flags.

The visit was attracting widespread attention in Germany. People waved and snapped photos as Obama sped by after his arrival and a thick cluster awaited the motorcade as it passed the Brandenburg Gate. An evening news show in Berlin devoted itself to the president’s visit, highlighting “Das Biest,” or “The Beast,” as the president’s armored limousine is called.

There have been a few small protests, including one directed against the National Security Agency’s surveillance of foreign communications, where about 50 people waved placards taunting, “Yes, we scan.”

Merkel has said she was surprised at the scope of the spying that was revealed and said the U.S. must clarify what information is monitored. But she also said U.S. intelligence was key to foiling a large-scale terror plot and acknowledged her country is “dependent” on cooperating with American spy services.

For Merkel, the visit presents an opportunity to bolster her domestic standing ahead of a general election in September.

The U.S. and the Germans have clashed on economic issues, with Obama pressing for Europe to prime the economy with government stimulus measures, while Merkel has insisted on pressing debt-ridden countries to stabilize their fiscal situations first.

But the two sides have found common ground on a trans-Atlantic trade pact between the European Union and the U.S. At the just-completed G-8 summit, the leaders agreed to hold the first talks next month in the U.S. – AP

South Africans top the global list for entrepreneurial capacity

Possibly as a result of extra pressure from anti-white discrimination due to affirmative action and Black Economic Empowerment, South African self-made entrepreneurs top the global list.

The creation myth of American wealth is almost always rooted in the entrepreneur.

It’s the two kids who start a computer company in their garage or dorm room. Or the former standup comic who creates form-shaping undergarments, or the South African immigrant who creates a new electric car and private space program.

But despite the high-profile examples, America may actually be falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to creating entrepreneurial wealth. A new study from Barclays, “Origins and Legacy: the Changing Order of Wealth Creation,” finds developing countries now lead the U.S. when comes to wealth creation by entrepreneurs.

(Read More: Entrepreneur Asia: A CNBC Special Report)

Worldwide, 40 percent of millionaires (which is defined as those with investable assets of $1.5 million or more) cited a “business sale or profit” from their business as their source of wealth. Only a quarter of the millionaires cited inheritance as their wealth source.

In the U.S., only 21 percent of millionaires cited business sale or profit as their source of wealth. A much larger percentage cited saved earnings or personal investments as their sources of wealth.

Where the entrepreneurs are: South Africa comes out on top, percentage-wise

In the Asia-Pacific region, 57 percent cited business sale or profit as a source of wealth—far more than in the U.S. South Africa (68 percent) and Latin America (58 percent) were also higher.

So is America losing its entrepreneurial mojo? There is some evidence that entrepreneurial activity is flagging. The latest data from the Kauffman Foundation found that there were 514,000 new business owners a month in 2012, down from 543,000 in 2011. The 2012 numbers marked the lowest in five years.

(Read More: Key to Wealth: Work, Risk or Luck?)

A report from the Hudson Institute found that brand-new companies added 2.34 million jobs in 2010 compared with an average of about 3 million a year dating back to 1977.

But the Barclays report said another difference between the U.S. and other countries could also be one of basic wealth cycles. Wealth in developing countries is newer, and therefore there is more wealth from freshly minted companies than from savings or investments.

“These [developing] markets have a much shorter history of widespread wealth creation and many of the high-net-worth individuals in these markets are first generation wealthy,” the report said.

Entrepreneurs were also more likely to increase their fortunes during the recession compared with those with inherited wealth or those who made their money from investments and savings.

They are also more prone to taking risks, given that risk-taking is key to entrepreneurial wealth. As a result, their fortunes are more volatile than the wealth made from savings and earnings.

“Entrepreneurs need to embrace volatility and recognize that fortunes can be lost as quickly as they were made,” the report said. – CNBC

Snowden regards it as an “honor” to be called a traitor by Cheney

US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden said on Monday that he was honored to have been branded a traitor by former vice president Dick Cheney and other senior politicians.

“Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American,” he said, in an online interview hosted by the Guardian newspaper.

The 29-year-old said Cheney had helped put in place the huge secret program to monitor telephone calls and Internet traffic that Snowden revealed last month when he fled to Hong Kong and began leaking secret US documents.

He accused former president George W. Bush’s conservative right-hand man of “deceitfully engineering” the Iraq war.

“If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school,” Snowden said, poking fun at his own relative lack of formal qualifications. – AFP