“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

                                          – Dwight Eisenhower, 1961 Farewell Address to the Nation

This speech by Eisenhower demonstrates reflection and honesty that is all too often missing from the Oval Office. The great and wonderful POTUS that we all have come to know nowadays, displaying an image of unreserved authority and grave conviction, is conspicuously missing here in Ike’s speech. Instead, in this brief, bizarre moment of time, we the people were given a glimpse into the little old man behind the curtain; small and stout in stature, yet honest, forthcoming and surprisingly human. Eisenhower’s warning was startling: he dared expose the looming beasts of fascism from within the very den where they dwell and multiply – dogs of war he himself had helped feed and grow over the course of his two terms in office.

How can the military-industrial complex be counterbalanced? It bears repeating: “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” This is precisely where journalism ought to come in, educating and alerting the masses so to keep their representatives in check through a sustained, coordinated effort of dissent. The corporatized for-profit Hill, however, has co-opted and annexed the Fourth Estate, providing a nice little addition that’s just down the hall and around the corner from Congress, where representatives can throw it a bone from time to time to keep it happy. Vietnam, The Gulf War, Iraq/Afghanistan – along with multiple covert operations in between, like Operation Cyclone and Iran-Contra, to name a few – clearly indicates war has never been so plentiful and profitable.  Had we an informed citizenry by way of a muckraking press, guarded with an intellectual ability to think critically about the powers that be, then perhaps these wars would have never been.

It would appear Eisenhower’s words of wisdom have fallen on deaf ears.

A disclaimer is in order: my intentions are not to nostalgically wax poetic about Eisenhower because quite frankly he did nothing short of solidifying the idea of not just an unchecked permanent armaments industry but also perpetual military/intelligence operations overseas in order to keep the balance in favor of Western norms and ideology. For instance, under Eisenhower, both Operation Ajax and Operation PBSUCCESS ousted two democratically elected leaders through coups orchestrated by the CIA; that being the Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, and President of Guatemala, Jacobo Árbenz. This set the precedent for dozens of more coups later on down the road, all in the name of stopping the red menace.

Eisenhower’s reign is an example of the deceptive “benevolent dictator” our framers of the Constitution had duly warned us about, unchained by the inherent checks and balances made explicit in the role of the Executive. Indeed, American foreign policy has effectively dethroned the rule of law, replacing it with the arbitrary whims of officials. The “law is king,” Paine once said; nowadays the order has been reversed, where elitist officials decide when to apply the law as they see fit. President Eisenhower, like our leaders today, said “trust me” to the rest of our governmental branches, conducting military strikes and operations without congressional oversight and thereby paying little mind to constitutional law. And as of recent, we have seen the same rationale entertained by the likes of Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama in their bid to conduct military strikes in Syria. They too have said “just trust us,” asserting that Assad used Sarin on his people without feeling the need to prove it as such.

Nevertheless Eisenhower had his moment of clarity in the Farewell Speech of 1961. But not only were his words a warning of the commodification of war itself, moreover it warns of the perpetual specter of war according to government narratives alone – with zero factual basis.  And with a disinformed citizenry, one has not the power to act because one is not in the know to begin with.  Just trust us, they say.  Here, embedded in the warning of Ike’s Farewell Address, we have the original prototype of the eventual Wolfowitz doctrine: a maximalist Executive that boxes out congressional oversight, engaging in covert and overt preemptive “operations” in order to prevent large scale wars in the future, operations based on so-called intelligence that never sees the light of day, top-secret and hushed – for elitist eyes only. Give us your uninformed consent; we promise to do the best we can with it.

The American political system has effectively substituted constitutional law for a pinky swear doctrine.

To say the least, our leaders didn’t get Ike’s memo. Or maybe they did – they just made it into a paper airplane, kicking their feet up on the table of discourse and reason, carelessly wielding their duties with a flick of the wrist. Indeed, to make matters worse, the soaring commodification of war has forayed into a sort of fetish for American officials, where they childishly revel in all things related to war on a superficial level that is astounding.

We now have the likes of NSA Chief Gen. Keith Alexander donning himself a modern day Picard by virtue of his spy facility modeled after the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek. And, furthermore, to add axe-murderer to Creep Street, the NSA facility is known as the “Information Domination Center.”

I have two questions for our trekkie NSA Chief:

While conducting unreasonable searches and seizures, when an analyst inquires whether or not to hack somebody’s private information, do you say “make it so!” whilst swiveling in your armchair? Also, when shredding everything the Fourth Amendment in the Constitution stands for with, presumably, photon torpedos, if you miss the target do you reenact the Annoyed Picard meme? Really, I’m seriously interested.

Likewise, we have Obama and his so-called Terror Tuesdays, where he meets with top national security officials and flips through baseball cards of bad guys, greenlighting drone strikes with an arbitrary point of the finger. Clearly the former Constitutional lawyer must be dyslexic, because he thinks that you are presumed guilty until proven innocent, rather than the other way around. Also, seeing that these hits are based primarily on intelligence reports that are not vetted by any congressional oversight, I do hope nobody is throwing Obama a Curveball.

Actually, check that, it would appear the al-Majala massacre was just that, a curveball by way of faulty intelligence – and Obama whiffed. But I’m sure he was just doing the best he could with what he had. Mistakes happen. I mean, maybe he just pointed to the wrong baseball card because he was too busy working on his dance moves for the Ellen DeGeneres Show.

While it’s all fun and games for armchair government officials, for those serving on the front lines of war, it’s dead serious. Yet since our media has been bought like a cheap suit, the citizenry isn’t privy to instances where the likes of Seal Team Six pick bullets out of the skulls of innocent victims in a special ops raid gone bad so as not to be held culpable for murder. Nope, in a world where fluffy disinformation is rife and the fetishist military-industrial complex runs amok in all its glory, the Gardez massacre got zero fucking traction by news outlets.

Preeminent war exercised through a permanent arms and intelligence industry, in theory, is supposed to stymie future wars. But whether it’s special operations in the dark of night or drones used via the disposition matrix, there is no such thing as a surgical and precise war. As the anti-war activist meme goes, bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity.  Make no mistake about it, we invade countries to harvest their resources, build bases and gain a geopolitical foothold against other superpowers like Russia.

Here’s a rule of thumb: whenever politicians promise their efforts are good and just when it comes to military action, you can be damn sure they have something up their sleeve. That is the simple fact.

And that is precisely why we shouldn’t just trust them.

Yet while officials of yesteryear had the decency to button up their hegemony and jingoism in some semblance of reality and reason, like Eisenhower, nowadays officials just flaunt it braggadocio-style and care not about the ramifications of their actions. The likes of Obama and Alexander have zero compunction when it comes to the actual cost of war because both of them have been deluded by their own power and prestige as indispensable do-gooders in the world.

A similar delusion was enjoyed by Roman elites. They too dedicated their glory to games and reenactments of old battles in the Colosseum; meanwhile they crumbled within, due to a morally bankrupt autocrat and defanged Senate. Sound familiar?

Written by Mike Micklow for Media Roots

I’m sure you’ve played the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. In a post-Snowden world, we are playing a game similar to that – only it’s much more dangerous. In these dark times, simply by virtue of being associated with somebody that is thought to be an agitator of the hushed and hallowed grounds of “matters of national security,” you can be detained without due process.

If you are a truth-seeker under the sprawling shadow of the American empire, you are now playing the game One Degree of Dissident.

This isn’t just some innocuous game that’s played to pass the time. As Glenn Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, can testify, this is serious. As Barret Brown can testify, who is facing over a century in jail for simply copying-pasting a hyperlink which contained data that had previously been hacked and thus already made public, this is serious.

Apparently you no longer need to be complicit in the crime itself in order to be charged; only a sympathizer of it.

You know, that oh-so tired cultural meme regurgitated by bubbling, aspiring “entrepreneurs” – you just gotta get out there and network. Networking is the buzzword of our gloriously fast, hyper-real times. But aside from thinking up the next million dollar app, which will probably only serve to warp us into something resembling a vegetable as we waste away our precious time with an amazing apparatus of technology that could otherwise be used for purposes of uniting human beings via exponentially raising awareness and consciousness… aside from that.. networking with those whom are not aligned with the official narrative or which *gasp* go against the official narrative may very well get yourself on a list in some random shadowy database, waiting to be analyzed and processed. Or worse, as in Brown’s case.

Dear citizen, if you play One Degree of Dissident, you most likely are or will be on a list, with all your shit being combed through and analyzed by some poindexter dweeb that’s probably wearing the same out-dated, thin metal-frame glasses that he had in the nineties during those oh-so troubled high-school years where anti-conformity was a thorn in his un-hipster side. And in between his usual creepy forays into 3D Hentai porn, you can find him doubled over a state-of-the-art laptop, downing energy drinks and watching your Skype sessions whilst rummaging through Facebook IM threads, looking for that nebulous smoking gun of sedition – a threat to “national security.” You can’t see him seeing you, as he exists inside a building engulfed in one-way glass and which systematically goes unchecked by Congressional oversight (aside from the likes of Mike Rogers, that pinky swears all is well). Nope, there’s no seeing him. But he can sure as shit see you.

Nobody is watching the watchers because peaking into what’s happening behind the one-way glass of intelligence firms – like Barret Brown did – gets you raided and detained, and the Constitutional right to petition your own government per the First Amendment is conveniently put aside and treated like an old, antiquated dog-eared document nostalgically preserved inside museum glass, no longer relevant in a digital age. Indeed, rather than exposing the cyber-industrial complex and its state-corporate fascism, you’re better off being the Pillowcase Rapist, who did a cool thirty and may now actually be released, a free man. Meanwhile Brown is facing life in a blaze orange jumpsuit — and then some.  This game is dangerous – it’s for keeps.

Sound paranoid? Well, it is. But guess what? In a post-Snowden era, paranoia is now a reality. In fact, if you aren’t paranoid, if you aren’t having those random “irrational” mindfucks which entertain off-the-wall conspiracies, then you’re taking the blue pill of bliss. You. Are. Not. Awake.

Despite the specter of state surveillance and despite “your shows” waiting to be watched on your DVR, it is time for change – real change – not that fake rhetoric that telegenic red-n-blue ties hide behind.  I mean the kind of change that is dangerous because it disrupts the rigged system enjoyed by elites. You, dear citizen, must have the audacity to cope, to see the big bad world for what it is and overcome the desire to simply exist comfortably in this world constructed by the elites. You must link up with other dissidents in order to shake off the chill of authoritarianism, one counteracted only through honest, articulate expressions of discourse and debate.

Yes, like Brown, you may be indefinitely detained. Sure, you may lose your Constitutional right of due process. But Barret Brown’s loss ought to be your gain, your inspiration to take up the slack and fill those hard-to-fill shoes of questioning authority no matter their threats in order to regain true accountability from that fascist Hill which incessantly wraps itself in stars and stripes, concealing the corporate logos tattooed across its solicitous, ungoverned body.

Written by Michael D. Micklow 

http://iheartdrones.wordpress.com/

MEDIA ROOTS- After using NATO’s Orwellian “humanitarian bombing” operation as the front for US intervention in Libya, the establishment is narrowing its sight on oil rich Syria next. Already the US and the EU have slapped economic sanctions on the country, citing President Bashar al-Assad’s human rights abuses during Syria’s recent protests. The corporate media is also beginning to ingrain propaganda about Syria’s stockpile of deadly weapons that is reminiscent of the propaganda surrounding the lead up to the Iraq war.

Earlier this month, Russia Today reported that the UN Security Council condemned “the widespread violation of human rights in Syria and the use of force against civilians by the country’s security forces,” while also urging the Damascus authorities to respect human rights and observe international law. “Those responsible for the violence should be held accountable,” the Council said in a presidential statement, the UN official website reports.

A great article by Global Research cuts through the misinformation regarding Syria and lays out some facts that don’t jive with what we are being told about their “democratic uprising”. Instead, reports suggest that the government and corporate press are fabricating a pretext for another NATO led humanitarian intervention in the region. Let’s not forgot that the United States pays the largest percentage of all NATO efforts, and wields the most influence on the shots being called on the grand chessboard.

Abby

***

GLOBAL RESEARCH– There is evidence of gross media manipulation and falsification from the outset of the protest movement in southern Syria on March 17th.

The Western media has presented the events in Syria as part of the broader Arab pro-democracy protest movement, spreading spontaneously from Tunisia, to Egypt, and from Libya to Syria. 

Media coverage has focussed on the Syrian police and armed forces, which are accused of indiscriminately shooting and killing unarmed “pro-democracy” demonstrators. While these police shootings did indeed occur, what the media failed to mention is that among the demonstrators there were armed gunmen as well as snipers who were shooting at both the security forces and the protesters.

The death figures presented in the reports are often unsubstantiated. Many of the reports are “according to witnesses”. The images and video footages aired on Al Jazeera and CNN do not always correspond to the events which are being covered by the news reports.

There is certainly cause for social unrest and mass protest in Syria: unemployment has increased in recent year, social conditions have deteriorated, particularly since the adoption in 2006 of sweeping economic reforms under IMF guidance. The IMF’s “economic medicine” includes austerity measures, a freeze on wages, the deregulation of the financial system, trade reform and privatization.

With a government dominated by the minority Alawite (an offshoot of Shia Islam), Syria is no “model society” with regard to civil rights and freedom of expression. It nonetheless constitutes the only (remaining) independent secular state in the Arab world. Its populist, anti-Imperialist and secular base is inherited from the dominant Baath party, which integrates Muslims, Christians and Druze.

Moreover, in contrast to Egypt and Tunisia, in Syria there is considerable popular support for President Bashar Al Assad. The large rally in Damascus on March 29, “with tens of thousands of supporters” (Reuters) of President Al Assad is barely mentioned. Yet in an unusual twist, the images and video footage of several pro-government events were used by the Western media to convince international public opinion that the President was being confronted by mass anti-government rallies.

The “Epicenter” of the Protest Movement. Daraa: A Small Border Town in southern Syria 

What is the nature of the protest movement? From what sectors of Syrian society does it emanate? What triggered the violence?

What is the cause of the deaths?

The existence of an organized insurrection composed of armed gangs involved in acts of killing and arson has been dismissed by the Western media, despite evidence to the contrary.

The demonstrations did not start in Damascus, the nation’s capital. At the outset, the protests were not integrated by a mass movement of citizens in Syria’s capital.

The demonstrations started in Daraa, a small border town of 75,000 inhabitants, on the Syrian Jordanian border, rather than in Damascus or Aleppo, where the mainstay of organized political opposition and social movements are located. (Daraa is a small border town comparable e.g. to Plattsburgh, NY on the US-Canadian border).

The Associated Press report (quoting unnamed “witnesses” and “activists”) describes the early protests in Daraa as follows:

The violence in Daraa, a city of about 300,000 near the border with Jordan, was fast becoming a major challenge for President Bashar Assad, …. Syrian police launched a relentless assault Wednesday on a neighborhood sheltering anti-government protesters [Daraa], fatally shooting at least 15 in an operation that began before dawn, witnesses said.

At least six were killed in the early morning attack on the al–Omari mosque in the southern agricultural city of Daraa, where protesters have taken to the streets in calls for reforms and political freedoms, witnesses said. An activist in contact with people in Daraa said police shot another three people protesting in its Roman-era city center after dusk. Six more bodies were found later in the day, the activist said.

As the casualties mounted, people from the nearby villages of Inkhil, Jasim, Khirbet Ghazaleh and al–Harrah tried to march on Daraa Wednesday night but security forces opened fire as they approached, the activist said. It was not immediately clear if there were more deaths or injuries. (AP, March 23, 2011, emphasis added)

The AP report inflates the numbers: Daraa is presented as a city of 300,000 when in fact its population is 75,000; “protesters gathered by the thousands”, “casualties mounted”.

The report is silent on the death of policemen which in the West invariably makes the front page of the tabloids.

The deaths of the policemen are important in assessing what actually happened. When there are police casualties, this means that there is an exchange of gunfire between opposing sides, between policemen and “demonstrators”.

Who are these “demonstrators” including roof top snipers who were targeting the police.

Israeli and Lebanese news reports (which acknowledge the police deaths) provide a clearer picture of what happened in Daraa on March 17-18. The Israel National News Report (which cannot be accused of being biased in favor of Damascus) reviews these same events as follows:

Seven police officers and at least four demonstrators in Syria have been killed in continuing violent clashes that erupted in the southern town of Daraa last Thursday.

…. On Friday police opened fire on armed protesters killing four and injuring as many as 100 others. According to one witness, who spoke to the press on condition of anonymity, “They used live ammunition immediately — no tear gas or anything else.”

…. In an uncharacteristic gesture intended to ease tensions the government offered to release the detained students, but seven police officers were killed, and the Baath Party Headquarters and courthouse were torched, in renewed violence on Sunday. (Gavriel Queenann, Syria: Seven Police Killed, Buildings Torched in Protests, Israel National News, Arutz Sheva, March 21, 2011, emphasis added)

The Lebanese news report, quoting various sources, also acknowledges the killings of seven policemen in Daraa: They were killed “during clashes between the security forces and protesters… They got killed trying to drive away protesters during demonstration in Dara’a”

The Lebanese Ya Libnan report quoting Al Jazeera also acknowledged that protesters had “burned the headquarters of the Baath Party and the court house in Dara’a” (emphasis added)

These news reports of the events in Daraa confirm the following:

1. This was not a “peaceful protest” as claimed by the Western media. Several of the “demonstrators” had fire arms and were using them against the police: “The police opened fire on armed protesters killing four”.

2. From the initial casualty figures (Israel News), there were more policemen than demonstrators who were killed: 7 policemen killed versus 4 demonstrators. This is significant because it suggests that the police force might have been initially outnumbered by a well organized armed gang. According to Syrian media sources, there were also snipers on rooftops which were shooting at both the police and the protesters.

What is clear from these initial reports is that many of the demonstrators were not demonstrators but terrorists involved in premeditated acts of killing and arson. The title of the Israeli news report summarizes what happened: Syria: Seven Police Killed, Buildings Torched in Protests.

The Daraa “protest movement” on March 18 had all the appearances of a staged event involving, in all likelihood, covert support to Islamic terrorists by Mossad and/or Western intelligence. Government sources point to the role of radical Salafist groups (supported by Israel)

Other reports have pointed to the role of Saudi Arabia in financing the protest movement.

What has unfolded in Daraa in the weeks following the initial violent clashes on 17-18 March, is the confrontation between the police and the armed forces on the one hand and armed units of terrorists and snipers on the other which have infiltrated the protest movement.

Reports suggest that these terrorists are integrated by Islamists. There is no concrete evidence as to which Islamic organizations are behind the terrorists and the government has not released corroborating information as to who these groups are.

Both the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (whose leadership is in exile in the UK) and the banned Hizb ut-Tahrir (the Party of Liberation), among others have paid lip service to the protest movement. Hizb ut Tahir (led in the 1980s by Syrian born Omar Bakri Muhammad) tends to “dominate the British Islamist scene” according to Foreign Affairs. Hizb ut Tahir is also considered to be of strategic importance to Britain’s Secret Service MI6. in the pursuit of Anglo-American interests in the Middle East and Central Asia. (Is Hizb-ut-Tahrir another project of British MI6? | State of Pakistan).

Syria is a secular Arab country, a society of religious tolerance, where Muslims and Christians have for several centuries lived in peace. Hizb ut–Tahrir (the Party of Liberation) is a radical political movement committed to the creation of an Islamic caliphate. In Syria, its avowed objective is to destabilize the secular state.

Since the Soviet-Afghan war, Western intelligence agencies as well as Israel’s Mossad have consistently used various Islamic terrorist organizations as “intelligence assets”. Both Washington and its indefectible British ally have provided covert support to “Islamic terrorists” in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Libya, etc. as a means to triggering ethnic strife, sectarian violence and political instability.

The staged protest movement in Syria is modelled on Libya. The insurrection in Eastern Libya is integrated by the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which is supported by MI6 and the CIA. The ultimate objective of the Syria protest movement, through media lies and fabrications, is to create divisions within Syrian society as well as justify an eventual “humanitarian intervention”.

Read more about Who is Behind The Protest Movement? Fabricating a Pretext for a US-NATO “Humanitarian Intervention”

Written by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

© 2011 Global Research

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