MEDIA ROOTS – I was recently interviewed by Aaron Dykes on the Info Wars Nightly News to discuss several issues: the Bilderberg Group and the evolution of the global protest movement; Stuxnet and the CIA’s covert warfare in Iran; the US government’s fearmongering about cyberterrorism; the increasing irrelevancy of the corporate media and the rise of citizen journalism; the alternative media becoming the new mainstream; information as power and applying your passion to effect positive change.
MEDIA ROOTS – In a surprising turn of events last Thursday, Senator Rand Paul came out on the Sean Hannity Show on Fox news to make a special announcement: his endorsement for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The announcement was a blow to the Ron Paul liberty movement who are still rallying for Ron Paul until the very end of the game. Despite his statement of concession in a recent newsletter, many die hard Ron Paul fans are still hoping that there’s a chance for him to win the nomination with unbound delegates in Tampa.
But what does it say when his own son comes out to endorse his rival? Many are theorizing that the endorsement signifies Rand Paul “selling out” to the war mongering establishment that has worked to shut out his father’s libertarian ideals for so long. Others are stating that it’s simply a political strategy to bring the liberty ideas into the mainstream. I explore the issue in three segments below for RT TV, all with varying guest opinions and theories.
Love him or hate him, Ron Paul is unique in his political authenticity, and that unwavering genuineness of ideals is currently unmatched by any sitting representative. Above all else, this endorsement further elucidates that the American people cannot count on the members of the political establishment to do the bidding of the people–we can only count on ourselves to change the world around us. Wasting countless hours and precious energy on electing political representatives with the hope that they will “create change from the inside” may lead to only greater disillusionment, disempowerment and disengagement.
The political establishment has proven itself time and time again to represent the corporate bottom line of profit maximization, despite the consequences for humanity. Voting is important, a civic duty if you will, but it is literally the least thing anyone can do to participate. The votes that truly matter happen in our daily actions: the way in which we choose to live our lives, the businesses we support or don’t support, the dialogue in which we engage with our community. Finding and voicing your passion will impact the world more than casting a ballot into an inherently flawed political system ever will.
Abby
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Jack Hunter, official blogger for Ron Paul 2012, argues that the endorsement of Romney was a smart political move by Rand.
Lew Rockwell of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute talks about the need to work outside the system to effect change.
Even though Ron Paul himself sent out a concession letter admitting to not having enough delegates to win the nomination, Paco Elijah of Occupy the Media and Robert Vaughn, CA coordinator for Ron Paul’s campaign, argue that Ron Paul still has a chance to win. The youtube comments against me in this video are vicious, simply for calling out obvious truths.
MEDIA ROOTS — The drums of war can be heard in the distance as the mainstream media begins to grease the wheels of the war machine. This time Iran finds itself in the crosshairs of Western aggression as Israel is perched ready to strike. The United States military, now firmly in the grasp of the United Nations, will undoubtedly support Israel’s efforts both directly and indirectly. In fact, the collusion between America and Israel against Iran is already deeply entrenched. The use of the Stuxnet computer worm is an excellent example of both the collusion and existence of an already occurring shadow war.
“Cyber warfare against physical infrastructure is absolutely feasible,” said Carey Nachenberg of the Symantec Corporation during a recent lecture at Stanford University. He is referring to the most complicated piece of malicious software (malware) ever built–Stuxnet. More expansive than any other computer virus ever created, the Stuxnet weapon has new techniques of penetration, sleeping and stealth. And it was reported by the Institute for Science and International Security to be responsible for the sudden Iranian replacement of roughly 1,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility.
One must be very careful when considering these “expert” reports, cited by the mainstream media as fact. The founder of the Institute for Science and International Security and co-author of the previously mentioned report, David Albright, has walked both directions on this path before. In 2003, Albright argued that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs in the lead up to the Iraq war. Conversely, Albright argued that centrifuge tubes found in Iraq were likely not to be for uranium enrichment. To his credit Albright said, “…In this case, I fear that the information was put out there for a short-term political goal, to convince people that Saddam Hussein is close to acquiring nuclear weapons.”
It appears Albright is sensitive to exacerbating intelligence to promote or justify an entrance to war, on the other hand we can see he has some experience perpetuating erroneous intelligence to satiate the war hawk appetite. Nonetheless, we can safely assert that Stuxnet is more non-fiction than the fictional Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. On November 23, 2010, Ali Akbar Salehi, Iranian Foreign Minister confirmed that malware had indeed attacked Iran when he said, “One year and several months ago, Westerners sent a virus to [our] country’s nuclear sites.”
While the mainstream media characterizes the war against Iran as an act yet to occur, it can be said Stuxnet is a weapon of war already deployed alongside the use of targeted assassination. The Stuxnet worm and assassinations of nuclear scientists are indeed Declarations of War that violate Iran’s sovereignty. One can only imagine if this scenario was reversed finding Israel and the United States the subject of equivalent Iranian attacks, it would most definitely be viewed as a Declaration of War.
One cannot begin to understand the reasons behind Western targeting of Iran until you consider Britain’s role. Britain created Israel and dominates the trajectory of American foreign policy. In the dusk of the 19th Century, Iran was subjected to British and Russian aggression known as the “Great Game.” The British invaded again in the 20th Century, thus the Iranians have endured 200+ years of invasion, territorial concessions and castration of regional influence as a result of British and Russian imperialism. The seeds of distrust had been sewn for multiple generations.
In 1951, Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalized Iran’s petroleum industry. Britain’s Winston Churchill embargoed Iranian oil and enlisted American President Dwight D. Eisenhower to carry out Operation Ajax. This was the first time the United States had openly overthrown a democratically elected civilian government. The roots of distrust were now firmly taking hold as Uncle Sam lined up to slide down the slippery slope of imperialism. Indeed the clouds of war cast shades of history repeating itself.
Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini an expert in Islamic Law and jurisprudence, philosopher, poet, and Sufi mystic returned from 16 years of exile in 1979, to steamroll the provisional government and appoint his own interim government. Iran has been in control of its own destiny since this revolution and this has infuriated Western powers, especially Britain. In November of 2011, the British embassy in Tehran was stormed on the heels of an International Atomic Energy Agency report. The British-Iranian relationship is at a new low. Britain certainly has and will have a hand in assisting Israeli and/or American aggression, since it is the wizard behind the curtain.
The United States made it possible for India to acquire nuclear weapons, opaquely provided Israel with nuclear weapons, clumsily allowed Pakistan to acquire nuclear weapons, occupies countries on both the eastern and western borders of Iran and is quite likely the origin of at least pieces of Stuxnet. Iran is infinitely patient to endure centuries of imperialism and these modern Declarations of War. American citizens can only hope these years of diplomacy at the gates of war have provided Iran with the diplomatic savvy to negotiate an aversion to war. America cannot afford the blood and soul of one more American soldier in the interests of British and Israeli imperialism. Iran is sovereign and this sovereignty should be respected, engaged and the resulting goodwill harvested.
MEDIA ROOTS — During an episode of Media Roots Radio last year, Abby and I speculated on who might be behind the infamous ‘stuxnet’ virus, a sophisticated piece of computer malware designed to interfere with Iran’s uranium enrichment process. We guessed that it was perhaps the United States and Israel working in concert on a covert warfare effort with the shared goal of derailing any potentiality of Iran producing a nuclear bomb.
Well, it turns out that our assertions were correct. The United States and Israel essentially came out swinging, bragging about the success of this covert and highly sophisticated act of cyber terror against Iran.
“This account of the American and Israeli effort to undermine the Iranian nuclear program is based on interviews over the past 18 months with current and former American, European and Israeli officials involved in the program…… None would allow their names to be used”.
So there you have it, another PR campaign in the form of “anonymous sources.” It almost gives it a more exciting extra dimensional tone, instead of the boring old ‘known sources’ we usually rely on.
Software publications and programmers alike are decrying the US government for what they call “opening Pandora’s box.” Some have a more reasoned approach saying that similar clones of stuxnet can be used against corporations and businesses via industrial sabotage. Others declare that this opens the door for a new kind of cyber warfare that terrorists can and will use since we handed them the tools to do it. The latter theory rings of the all too familiar ‘blow back’ hypothesis, one which we try to avoid on this website. With our increasing power and surveillance technologies, where will the United States draw the line in disrupting the activities of other nation states? As long as US troops aren’t dying in battle, most likely no one will notice. And even if they do, people as a whole won’t care very much.
We can safely assume that stuxnet is just an additional tool in the arsenal for the covert war already being waged against Iran. In January of this year, 32-year-old Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a nuclear scientist working on the Iran nuclear program and his driver were assassinated with a sophisticated remote controlled magnetic bomb stashed underneath their car. On November 4th of 2011, an Iranian missile test accident caused the deaths of 14 people, including the head of Iran’s missile program, Gen. Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, at an integral military research site. Many speculate that this was again a sophisticated form of a computer virus like stuxnet or even stuxnet itself that altered the course of the launched rocket causing it to fly back down directly on top of the observers.
Another Media Roots article entitled ‘Stuxnet, A Declaration of War?‘ describes in detail how the US has been waging a consistent covert war against Iran since 2005 (Seymour Hersh wrote about it). The main difference now is that the US has directly admitted involvement in events that were long suspected to be the invisible hand of US intelligence and black ops. It’s now out in the open, perhaps intended as a game of cat and mouse where the intention is to see what happens when we throw the truth it in their face.
Robbie Martin for Media Roots
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NY TIMES – Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.
At a tense meeting in the White House Situation Room within days of the worm’s “escape,” Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, Leon E. Panetta, considered whether America’s most ambitious attempt to slow the progress of Iran’s nuclear efforts had been fatally compromised.
“Should we shut this thing down?” Mr. Obama asked, according to members of the president’s national security team who were in the room.
MEDIA ROOTS – For the last half century, an organization comprised of the .001% of the world’s elite called the Bilderberg Group has met annually around the world with almost no official press coverage. During the meetings, the top 140 of the world’s power brokers in banking, oil, food, media, defense, royalty and politics are believed to make policy decisions behind closed doors that affect the rest of the world.
On Thursday, May 31st – Sunday, June 3rd, the annual Bilderberg Conference took place at the Westfields Marriot in Chantilly, Virginia, a city located right next to Washington, DC. I went to cover this year’s Bilderberg Conference and mass protests that took place all weekend for RT TV. People across many political spectrums–including Ron Paul libertarians to Occupy Wall Street protesters–joined together to rally against the covert meeting of the minds, in which the protesters claim sets a global agenda to perpetuate their own power structure at the subjugation of humanity.
Abby
Abby Martin reports on the history of the Bilderberg Group and cites some of its most notable attendees from past years.
Abby Martin covers the first day of the Bilderberg Group to find out why people are protesting. Featuring interviews with Dan Dicks of Press for Truth TV, Luke Rudkowski of WeAreChange, Mattew Medina of Truth Exposed Radio and Alex Jones of InfoWars.
Abby Martin reports from the second day of the Bilderberg Conference protests during a torrential downpour.
After Bilderberg came to a close, Abby Martin wraps up the event and gives some insight on what transpired over the weekend.
INFOWARS – “Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both…”
To be absolutely clear –Any citizen without United States authority who speaks intentionally of influence with foreign government officials about disputes or controversies any country has with America shall be fined and imprisoned.
Americans attending the Bilderberg conference in Chantilly, Virginia this past weekend violated the Logan Act. Given this is America these individuals are innocent until proven guilty, however that is a process for the courts. Each American citizen attending the meeting should prove to a jury of his or her peers that in fact they did not engage discussion with foreign government officials with the intent to influence the conduct of that foreign government in the context of an existing dispute or controversy with the United States. It is not up to executive branch officials, legislators, police, military or media to decide their guilt or innocence –it is up to the courts. That being said, it seems clear sufficient probable cause, motive and opportunity exists to issue arrest warrants.
Historical Origins of the Logan Act
The Logan Act all begins with a treaty between America and Britain called the Jay Treaty. You can research the contents and reasons behind the Jay Treaty on your own, it is only important here to understand that it angered the French who had been a staunch ally of America since the 1778 Treaty of Alliance. America had declared neutrality in the conflict between Britain and France and the Jay Treaty violated that neutrality. Pouring salt into that wound America also refused to re-pay debts owed to France, suggesting the debt was owed to the French monarchy and not to the newly founded Republic of France. The French were furious and began seizing American trade ships and refused to accept an American ambassador to negotiate. This spurred the Quasi-War.
Along comes a physician, farmer and future United States Senator named George Logan. As the founder of the Democratic-Republican society in 1793 he was not well liked by the coalescing and strengthening Federalist Party who lusted for an American central bank. In 1798, Logan travelled to Paris and met with the infamous French diplomat Charles “lame devil” Talleyrand and former exile Philippe Merlin de Douai, who held the highest political office in the new French republic. Like modern American Bilderberg participants Logan identified himself as merely an American citizen and like modern Bilderberg meetings they discussed matters of general dispute, controversy and interest to the French foreign power.
George Logan reported an expanding American anti-French sentiment, while he insisted that he did not intend to explain America’s position nor criticize French positions. He was merely there to discuss general matters emanating from the controversy and dispute evident in the mutual relations between France and America. The success of Logan’s trip is largely due to the timing as the French were anxious to extricate themselves from foreign entanglement to focus on domestic issues. Only days after Logan’s departure American seamen held in French jails were released and the trade embargo was lifted. Praise was showered upon Logan by Democratic-Republican newspapers and this drew the ire of the dominant Federalist Party.
Then Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, charged with conducting the nation’s foreign policy, suggested to Congress that they act to curb individual interference with sovereign foreign affairs. With very little debate the Logan Act glided through the Federalist majority House and Senate. George Logan would become a United States Senator representing Pennsylvania from 1801 to 1807. Irony would later see George Logan dispatched on an unsuccessful private diplomatic mission to avoid the War of 1812. So, the Logan Act was historically conceived by a Secretary of State to protect the State Departments authority.
Today the State Department allows their responsibility to be hi-jacked by foreign lobbyists, corporate interests, privately conceived and controlled “think tanks,” and international legislative bodies such as the United Nations. This is the very premise for convening the annual Bilderberg meeting and the corresponding premise for the Logan Act. The mainstream media facilitates the dilution of sovereign American foreign policy by ignoring the facts and history, disguising it with misguided articles that place the word “conspiracy,” or by suggesting nothing tangible is being accomplished.
MEDIA ROOTS – 
MEDIA ROOTS — The drums of war can be heard in the distance as the mainstream media begins to grease the wheels of the war machine. This time Iran finds itself in the crosshairs of Western aggression as Israel is perched ready to strike. The United States military, now 
MEDIA ROOTS — During an episode of 
MEDIA ROOTS – For the last half century, an organization comprised of the .001% of the world’s elite called the Bilderberg Group has met annually around the world with almost no official press coverage. During the meetings, the top 140 of the world’s power brokers in banking, oil, food, media, defense, royalty and politics are believed to make policy decisions behind closed doors that affect the rest of the world.