Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War
Lindsey A. O’Rourke
Cornell University Press, 2018
330 pages
Lindsey O’Rourke has given us a devastating indictment of the foreign policy of the United States during the Cold War and after. O’Rourke, who teaches political science at Boston College, is not a principled non-interventionist in the style of Ron Paul. To the contrary, she sympathizes with the “Offensive Realism” of John Mearsheimer, under whom she studied at the University of Chicago. Accordingly, she does not oppose the efforts of states to increase their power over other states but rather regards this as inevitable.
Her argument is that a key element of American foreign policy has failed to achieve its purpose. The United States has often aimed at “regime change,” both overt and covert. The latter type of regime change has been especially unsuccessful, and, to show that this is so, the bulk of the book analyzes in detail a number of instances of covert regime change during the Cold War.
She states her conclusion in this way: “The vast majority of America’s overt and covert regime changes during the Cold War did not work out as their planners intended. Washington launched these regime changes to resolve security-oriented interstate disputes by installing foreign leaders with similar policy preferences. American experiences during the Cold War, however, illustrate that this was often quite difficult in practice. Thirty-nine out of sixty-four covert regime changes failed to replace their targets, and because America’s role in most of these failed attempts generally did not remain a secret, they further soured Washington’s already negative relationship with the target state. Even nominally successful covert operations — where the US backed forces assumed power — failed to deliver on their promise to improve America’s relationship with the target state.”
Readers of Ludwig von Mises will at once recall this pattern of argument. Just as Mises argues that economic interventions such as minimum wage laws fail to achieve the stated goals of their proponents, so does O’Rourke maintain that regime change, especially of the covert variety, suffers from the same flaw. Again, just as Mises does not challenge the stated goal of higher wages without unemployment, so does O’Rourke accept the goal of an increase in the power of the United States.
In order to grasp the way O’Rourke reaches her conclusion, we must first understand her use of terms. By “regime,” she means “either a state’s leadership or its political processes and institutional arrangements.” A covert regime change “denotes an operation to replace the political leadership of another state where the intervening state does not acknowledge its role publicly. These actions include successful and failed attempts to covertly assassinate foreign leaders, sponsor coups d’état, influence foreign democratic elections, incite popular revolutions, and support armed dissident groups in their bids to topple a foreign government.”…
O’Rourke, one gathers, hopes that the United States will learn from the failure of covert regime change and instead pursue the inevitable grasp for power in a more rational manner. In this she resembles her mentor John Mearsheimer, who hopes that America will abandon ideological crusades in favor of “offshore balancing.” Those of us who, like Murray Rothbard and Ron Paul, favor a noninterventionist foreign policy will not be satisfied with this. Instead, we need to ask deeper questions. Is the pursuit of power in the international system indeed inevitable? Does it not depend rather on human free choice? If so, the time has come to abandon completely a failed policy. “Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground?”
People frequently allege that, under capitalism, people aren’t paid what they are worth to employers. As a measure of how frequently that gets repeated, a Google search of “underpaid” I just did turned up 1,770,000 hits. And there is one sense in which that allegation may be true. But the commonly-drawn implication that state coercion will improve things is false.
The competitive market process does not guarantee that your payment equals your value to your employer. It guarantees you are paid at least as much (adjusted for a host of other circumstances and preferences) as your next-best known alternative.
Say Bob and Bill are your potential employers. Bob offers you $50,000. If Bill values your additional productivity at $70,000, what will he offer you? It is indeterminate. All we know is that it must be enough to outbid Bob, other things equal, to attract you. Bill need not pay you what you are worth to him. But even if you are paid less than your value to Bill, your supposed “underpayment” does not harm you. You are made better off than you would have been by any offer you accept from Bill.
If, however, Barbara joins those who seek your services, and offers you $60,000, Bill will have to beat that, rather than $50,000, to keep your services. If Betty then also joins the pursuit of your labor services at $69,000, that becomes the number that must be beaten. In other words, the more competitive the market for your labor becomes, the closer your pay approaches what you are worth to your employer, because the value of your alternatives approaches your value to your chosen employer. And only the free market guarantees that you will be paid that well.
Better Wages Come from More Competition Among Employers
This reveals why government coercion is not the path to increased worker well-being. Governments and their “big labor” progeny are constantly advancing mandates that impose barriers to entry and competition for their favored groups from other workers. When reduced barriers to entry and increased competition are the means by which workers become paid nearly what they are worth to employers, such coercive government “solutions” actually guarantee that many workers will be paid far less than they would otherwise have been.
Government is also a major source of other reasons why workers’ paychecks are less than their value to employers.
Government-mandated worker benefits provide one example. The costs of those benefits must ultimately come out of employees’ total compensation. So while government sponsors claim credit from recipients for mandated health coverage, worker training, family leave, workman’s compensation, etc., workers’ earnings are reduced to cover their added cost. But because these act as hidden taxes, employers get the blame for the lower wages that result.
Employer “contributions” for state unemployment and disability insurance, as well as their half of Social Security and Medicare taxes, are another source of such worker “underpayment.” Employers, knowing they will be on the hook for these bills, over and above wages paid, offer less in wages. Again, the money ultimately comes from employees’ pockets, but they blame their employers instead of the government for reducing what they take home as a result. When workers say “I was robbed,” they may be correct — but they finger the wrong suspect.
And these costs are substantial, An article in the September 29 Los Angeles Times noted that they can comprise 30% of employers’ labor costs.
Corporate taxes have similar effects. To the extent that such taxes’ effects reduce net-of-tax earnings, they reduce the value of workers to employers. Yet again, government gets the money and accolades from beneficiaries of added expenditures financed, while businesses are scapegoated as if they caused the underpayment. In, fact, Steven Entin summarized recent data-based studies on corporate tax incidence as showing that “labor bears between 50 percent and 100 percent f the burden of the corporate income tax, with 70 percent or higher the most likely outcome.”
The widespread assertion that people aren’t paid what they are worth to employers may be true in one sense, but not in the sense those making the assertion usually imply. “Greed” or some faulty “ism” is not to blame, and more government interferences provides no magic solution. The maximum such “underpayment” in a competitive labor market is the extent that your value to your highest valuing employer exceeds that of your second-highest valuing employer. And that difference gets smaller as labor markets get more competitive. On the other hand, there are many ways government’s coercive power reduces what workers take home well below their value to their employers (or how valuable they would be if they were freely allowed to compete for all jobs), in order to fill their treasuries and protect their “friends” from competition, while blaming others for what they have imposed. So, if being paid what someone is worth to an employer is the standard, government is the problem and competition is the answer.
In an October 2018 ruling unsealed and posted on October 8, 2019 by the Office of the Director of Intelligence, the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) found that the employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had inappropriately used data collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The FBI was found to have misused surveillance data to look into American residents, including other FBI employees and their family members, making large-scale queries that did not distinguish between US persons and foreign intelligence targets.
The revelation drew immediate outcry from privacy advocates and renewed calls for the termination of FISA and USA FREEDOM Act that authorized bulk intelligence collection. President Donald Trump signed a bill extending Section 702 collection authorizations for six years in 2018; the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced earlier this year that the administration would seek the extension of authority for collection of call data granted under the USA FREEDOM Act….
Among those instances of “non-compliance” were:
Between March 24 and 27, 2017, the FBI ran queries against intelligence data “using identifiers for over 70,000 communications facilities ‘associated with’ persons with access to FBI facilities and systems,” the court noted, “notwithstanding advice from the FBI Office of General Counsel (OGC) that they should not be conducted without the approval of the OGC and the National Security Division of the Department of Justice.”
On December 1, 2017, a redacted FBI division “conducted over 6,800 queries using the Social Security Numbers of individuals” against raw, unredacted FISA data. A week later, the same unit conducted 1,600 queries using another set of identifiers for US persons. The person who conducted the queries “advised he did not intend to run them against raw FISA information, but nonetheless reviewed raw FISA information returned by them.”
In February of 2018, the FBI searched raw FISA data for information, with about 30 queries regarding “potential [redacted] sources,” and conducted about 45 other queries on people “under consideration as potential sources of information.”
In an undated event, reported to the Department of Justice’s National Security Division in April of 2018, the FBI ran queries against raw FISA metadata using identifiers for “approximately 57,000 individuals” where it was not clear that the information would return foreign intelligence information.
Queries against individual US persons were run against the FISA data on a number of occasions, including people about to be served a FISA order—and “a small number of cases in which FBI personnel apparently conducted queries for improper personal reasons—for example, a contract linguist who ran queries on himself, other FBI employees, and relatives.”
The court found a huge lack of oversight over the FBI’s querying of FISA metadata and ordered the FBI to revise its search procedures…
(Natural News) The polio vaccine has caused an escalating outbreak of polio in the Philippines, according to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, which issued a joint statement admitting the vaccine is causing polio.
“WHO and UNICEF said in a joint statement the polio outbreak in the Philippines is concerning because it is caused by vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2,” writes the Associated Press. “The weakened virus used in vaccines replicates for a short time in children’s intestines and is excreted in their feces.”
Polio vaccines are often cited as a success story proving that vaccines work to eliminate infectious disease. In truth, nearly all the cases of polio in the modern world are caused by polio vaccines themselves.
Stated plainly, more cases of polio are caused by polio vaccines than from wild polio.
Polio vaccines are creating “super polio” strains that threaten humanity
The alarming surge in vaccine-derived polio cases presents vaccine planners with a “quandary” or “conundrum”—because “The very tool you are using for [polio] eradication is causing the problem.” …Vaccine researchers have long known that these OPV-derived viruses can themselves cause polio, particularly when they get “loose in the environment.”
The Associated Press story admits that it has been over 25 years since polio in the Philippines was contracted from a “wild strain.” Since 1993, all the cases of polio in the Philippines have been caused by polio vaccines. Via AP:
[T]he last known case from a wild strain of the virus in the Philippines was in 1993…
Associated Press admits vaccines kill children
The AP also admits that vaccines kill children:
The government’s immunization programs were marred in 2017 by a dengue fever vaccine made by French drugmaker Sanofi Pasteur which some Philippine officials linked to the deaths of at least three children. Duque and other Philippine health officials say they have worked to restore public trust in vaccines since then.
Even worse, as the AP admits, vaccines for dengue fever were actually found to increase the risk of severe dengue infections:
The government halted the dengue immunization drive after Sanofi said a study showed the vaccine may increase the risk of severe dengue infections. More than 830,000 children received the Dengvaxia vaccine under the campaign, which was launched in 2016 and halted in 2017. Sanofi officials said the Dengvaxia vaccine was safe and would reduce dengue infections if the vaccination drive continued.
Vaccine “science” is a fraud
Modern vaccine “science” is a total fraud. Vaccines kill or maim millions of children around the world each year, yet any journalist who investigates the toxicity of vaccine ingredients or the science fraud behind vaccine propaganda is immediately banned from all major tech platforms, including Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest and even Vimeo.
No facts about vaccines are allowed to be shared or discussed. The corrupt, criminally-operated vaccine industry controls the narrative across all tech giants — including Wikipedia — as well as Hollywood, universities and medical journals.
The vaccine industry murders children for profit, then silences anyone who works to protect children from the scourge of dangerous immunizations carried out with toxic ingredients like aborted human fetal tissue, aluminum, mercury and chemical adjuvants.
Watch this shocking video revealing the truth about aborted human fetal cells used in vaccines, totally admitted by the CDC and vaccine manufacturers:
Where to learn the truth about vaccines in a world run by the vaccine deep state
Brighteon.com is rapidly becoming the go-to video hub for vaccine truth videos. New features roll out next week, including channel subscribes and video likes.
Censored.news is the destination for real-time news headlines for the most censored websites on the net, including Children’s Health Defense and Natural News.
A new vaccine truth documentary is being launched this November (stay tuned for details).
A new vaccine-related video website is launching in 2020 (stay tuned for details).
Stay informed and keep your children safe. The vaccine industry is causing the pandemics that the lying corporate media uses to stir up mass hysteria that pushes more vaccine sales.
On September 24, while the Ukraine corruption scandal was gathering momentum in Washington, the US Air Force’s 31 Fighter Wing deployed F-16 strike aircraft to Graf Ignatievo Air Base in Bulgaria as part of Exercise Rapid Buzzard which has the aim of improving the “joint warfighting capability” of the US and Bulgarian air forces. It is hardly coincidental that Bulgaria has undertaken to spend $1.27 billion on buying F-16s, resulting in the US State Department declaring that “We salute Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and the Bulgarian government on its commitment to modernize its military through the acquisition of these highly capable, NATO interoperable aircraft.”
The build-up of US-NATO offensive weapons continues unabated round Russia’s borders, with Bulgaria being described by the State Department as “a reliable ally in an area of strategic importance to the United States.” In New York, the day before the F-16 redeployment, US and Polish Presidents Trump and Duda signed a joint agreement to greatly increase military cooperation and “develop the plan to bolster Polish–United States military ties and United States defence and deterrence capabilities in Poland.”
The increase in US military commitment to Poland involves establishment of six bases, from Poznan is the west to Lubliniec in the south, accommodating forces including a divisional headquarters, an attack drone squadron, a combat aviation brigade and a special operations force “facility”. Discussions are taking place about “the most suitable location in Poland for an armoured brigade combat team.”
Meanwhile, in sanity land, Deutsche Welle reported on 2 October that “news of an agreement reached Tuesday between Ukraine and pro-Russia separatists was met with optimism in Russia and Germany” with Chancellor Merkel, arguably the most able leader in Europe, saying that it is an “important step.” The move towards rapprochement resulted from agreement by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to allow local elections in the Donbass regions of Luhansk and Donetsk where there has been an uprising against the Kiev government by Russian-speaking, Russia-cultured separatists.
This welcome development resulted in further optimism that there will be another series of discussions in the near future between Presidents Zelenskiy, Putin and Macron together with Chancellor Merkel, reviving the “Normandy Format” aimed at resolving the situation in eastern Ukraine on the lines of the peace agreement signed in Minsk in 2015.
Not much appeared in the western media about these initiatives, but Xinhua reported the French foreign ministry as stating that “France welcomes this progress, which was facilitated by the intense negotiations conducted over the last few weeks within the so-called Normandy format between France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia. The conditions have now been met for the forthcoming meeting of heads of state and government in the Normandy format aimed at making progress toward a lasting settlement of the conflict in Ukraine,” involving the separatists in the east of the country.
Although the modest progress was generally welcomed in Europe, there was no endorsement from Washington. This is understandable, because the entire government and media of the United States are obsessed with a massive scandal involving President Trump’s intention to have Ukraine confirm that his main 2020 presidential election opponent, Joseph Biden, had been in some way involved in shady dealings with Ukraine’s government. Further, as Time magazine summed up matters, it is said that Ukraine had “found a way to conspire against [Trump] during the 2016 election, and to collude with his rival, Hillary Clinton, by hiding the Democratic National Committee’s email server and feeding her allies dirt about Trump.”
All this was decidedly awkward for the US media, which has made it clear in the past that Ukraine, although corrupt to the core and verging on ungovernable, must be seen as a shining light of democracy, while neighbouring Russia is intent on extinguishing its sparkling example of freedom and social advancement. Washington ignores such inconvenient agencies as Human Rights Watch which in its 2019 Report observed that “The Ukrainian government continued restrictions on freedom of expression, freedom of information, and media freedom… These ranged from threats and intimidation to restricting journalists’ access to information.”
In July the US Senate approved a Resolution “marking the fifth anniversary of Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity by honouring the bravery, determination, and sacrifice of the people of Ukraine during and since the Revolution, and condemning continued Russian aggression against Ukraine.” Tellingly, this drum-thumping ratification of aggression “applauds the progress that the Government of Ukraine has made since the Revolution in strengthening the rule of law, aligning itself with Euro-Atlantic norms and standards, and improving military combat readiness and interoperability with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.”
While the thrust of the Resolution was military confrontation, the most interesting paragraph concerns an important trade matter : the Nord Stream 2 pipeline which is intended to double the capacity of the existing pipeline conveying Russian gas to Germany. As Forbes noted in July, “Russia continues to dominate the global natural gas trade, accounting for 26% of global natural gas exports.”
The Senate disapproves of this impending improvement to the economies of Russia and Germany (and Europe as a whole) and alleges that in some strange fashion completion of the pipeline would “further undermine Ukraine’s economic stability, and threatens to increase the country’s vulnerability to further Russian military incursions.” There is no explanation offered as to how, exactly, the building of a gas pipeline of mutual benefit to provider and recipient can result in military incursions, but this sort of detail is irrelevant to deliberations and decisions in Washington.
What it all comes down to is the possibility of economic advantage to the United States, which would benefit enormously if Nord Stream 2 were cancelled, because Washington would then encourage Germany to import US gas, at a considerably higher price, with much profit to US producers.
Forbes notes that with “record production, and the most efficient and competitive natural gas industry in the world, the future shines bright for US gas exporters,” while “Although not as fast growing as China and India, Europe will remain a focus for US natural gas shippers.” Of course it is a focus, and it is not surprising that in July the US Senate legislated sanctions on companies and individuals involved in construction of the Russia-Germany Nord Stream 2.
Washington’s combination of military confrontation and economic sanctions in its campaign against Russia has no moral basis, and Ukraine has no reason to be confident that it will benefit in any way from the current uproar over the 2016 election fandangos. As a Washington Post Editorial had it on 4 October: “the White House was conditioning security assistance on Ukraine’s promise to conduct the politically motivated investigations.” That is not the way allies operate, but then Washington isn’t an ally to anyone unless there is a promise of economic advantage to the Military-Industrial Complex. That is why the Washington Establishment prefers confrontation to dialogue and cooperation.
I asked her why it was that the professor could make a record player out of a coconut but he couldn’t fix a fu#&ing hole in a boat! She burst out in laughter…
I retired from the NYPD and moved to Florida like many NYC policemen and firemen do- there is no state income tax here and it doesn’t snow. I decided I needed a job so I worked for a local Sheriff’s office for three years.
Policemen always have their hands full when they deal with emotionally disturbed persons (EDP’s in NYPD parlance). It was no different in south Florida.
While working in Florida I had seen many incidents where an EDP was wrestled into handcuffs, pepper sprayed, or even shot with a taser. But I handled EDP’s much differently than the average cop. And, since I didn’t like to wear all that crap on my belt, I never wore a taser. So that wasn’t an option for me. I was, an continue to be unorthodox in my ways but I always looked to get the job done with as little force as necessary.
This particular true story started when I was in my training period after starting out in the sheriff’s office. My training officer, who hailed from New York, and I were dispatched as backup to a call of an emotionally disturbed woman who refused to be handcuffed and taken to the local mental health facility. Apparently she threatened to kill herself and needed professional help. I waited patiently as my colleagues ordered her to stand up and be handcuffed. She was screaming at them and they were screaming at her. A Deputy took out his pepper spray and another took out his taser. My training officer then intervened and told the others to let me talk to the woman. He told me, “work your mojo on her.” He was a wise cop.
I got down on the ground next to the woman and quietly told her my first name. I told her I wasn’t there to hurt her but that I couldn’t speak for these other “hillbilly cops.” I told her I worked previously with the New York City Police Department. She became quiet and looked up at me with interest. I can’t blame her. Who wouldn’t be interested in a retired NYPD cop who called his co-workers “hillbillies.” I saw she was about my age. I asked her if she ever saw the television show “Gilligan’s Island.” She said she had. I asked her if I could ask her a question about the show. She nodded her head yes. I asked her why it was that the professor could make a record player out of a coconut but he couldn’t fix a fu#&ing hole in a boat! She burst out in laughter and in a short while she was handcuffed, seated in the back of the police car, and smiling. No yelling, no scuffling, no pepper spray, and no taser. No brutality!
I’ve used this tactic many times and thankfully it has never failed me. They should teach it in the police academy.
Alas, they will refuse to teach this tactic or anything like it because it offends the senses of today’s militarized police.
It still amazes me that back in the 80’s and early 90’s in the heart of Harlem cops I worked with used tactics like this all the time. My precinct encompassed less than one square mile (with about 70 homicides per year) and may have been the most violent precinct in the country-per capita. When a precinct is that small every cop knows about every other cop. You know if there is brutality. You know if there is corruption. You just can’t hide it in a precinct that small. I was fortunate to have worked there. Brutality and corruption were almost non-existent. Policemen were proud to wrestle a gun away from someone instead of shooting them. It was a point of honor. Twenty six men of honor were killed in the line of duty in that small precinct alone. Much more than any other precinct in the city and probably the entire country. That is why reader’s will see that my pride still stands for the cops I worked with in what was nicknamed “The Tomb of Gloom.”
But my pride in the profession of policing is now gone. As the saying goes, “oh how far down we done fell” since that time.
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Picture this: The Flyers are going through a February slump. The orange and black just inexplicably lost a 5-1 home game to the New York Islanders.
You need to blow off some steam before sitting in traffic.
So you go into the Wells Fargo Center’s Disassembly Room and smash some dishes, take a sledgehammer to a TV and unleash your rage upon everything in sight.
That’s right. The Wells Fargo Center has unveiled the first-ever rage room in a major professionals sports arena.
The rage room allows fans and guests to let out some stress by breaking, smashing and crushing items inside of the brand new Disassembly Room. Some of the breakable items even include the opposing team’s logos…
…the five Israelis arrested “were conducting a Mossad surveillance mission and that their employer, Urban Moving Systems of Weehawken, NJ, served as a front.” At least two of the men arrested were determined to have direct links to the Mossad
NEW YORK — For nearly two decades, one of the most overlooked and little known arrests made in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks was that of the so-called “High Fivers,” or the “Dancing Israelis.” However, new information released by the FBI on May 7 has brought fresh scrutiny to the possibility that the “Dancing Israelis,” at least two of whom were known Mossad operatives, had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Shortly after 8:46 a.m. on the day of the attacks, just minutes after the first plane struck the World Trade Center, five men — later revealed to be Israeli nationals — had positioned themselves in the parking lot of the Doric Apartment Complex in Union City, New Jersey, where they were seen taking pictures and filming the attacks while also celebrating the destruction of the towers and “high fiving” each other. At least one eyewitness interviewed by the FBI had seen the Israelis’ van in the parking lot as early as 8:00 a.m. that day, more than 40 minutes prior to the attack. The story receivedcoverage in U.S. mainstream media at the time but has since been largely forgotten.
The men — Sivan Kurzberg, Paul Kurzberg, Oded Ellner, Yaron Shimuel and Omar Marmari — were subsequently apprehended by law enforcement and claimed to be Israeli tourists on a “working holiday” in the United States where they were employed by a moving company, Urban Moving Systems. Upon his arrest, Sivan Kurzberg told the arresting officer, “We are Israeli; we are not your problem. Your problems are our problems, The Palestinians are the problem.”
For years, the official story has been that these individuals, while they had engaged in “immature” behavior by celebrating and being “visibly happy” in their documenting of the attacks, had no prior knowledge of the attack. However, newly released FBI copies of the photos taken by the five Israelis strongly suggest that these individuals had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center. The copies of the photos were obtained via a FOIA request made by a private citizen.
According to a former high-ranking American intelligence official who spoke to the Jewish Daily Forward in 2002, the FBI concluded in its investigation that the five Israelis arrested “were conducting a Mossad surveillance mission and that their employer, Urban Moving Systems of Weehawken, NJ, served as a front.” At least two of the men arrested were determined to have direct links to the Mossad after their names appeared in a CIA-FBI database of foreign intelligence operatives. According to one of their lawyers, one of the men, Paul Kurzberg, had previously worked for the Mossad in another country prior to arriving in the United States. Another of those arrested, Oded Ellner, subsequently stated on Israeli TV that the five Israelis had been in New York at the time “to document the event,” meaning the attack on the World Trade Center.
The FOIA release of the photos is notable because responses to prior FOIA requests to the Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, had previously claimed that all of the photos taken by the Israeli nationals had been destroyed in January 2014. The photos themselves are heavily redacted, making it impossible to see the Israelis’ facial expressions. However, previously declassified yet heavily redacted FBI reports state that the Israelis are “visibly happy” in nearly every photo, even when the burning towers are in the background. The photos released are also not original copies and instead appear to be photocopies of photocopies of the original pictures. In addition, of the original 76 pictures developed by authorities from the camera in the Israelis’ possession, only 14 were released…
…
crowded dance floor
While the case of the “Dancing Israelis” has long been treated as an outlier in the aftermath of September 11, what is often overlooked is the fact that hundreds of Israeli nationals were arrested in the aftermath of the attacks.
According to a FOX News report from December 2001, 60 Israelis were apprehended or detained after September 11, with most deported, and a total of 140 Israelis were arrested and detained in all of 2001 by federal authorities. That report claimed that the arrests, ostensibly including the “Dancing Israelis,” were in relation to an investigation of “an organized [Israeli] intelligence gathering operation designed to ‘penetrate government facilities.’”
The report also added that most of those arrested, in addition to having served in the IDF, had “intelligence expertise” and worked for Israeli companies that specialized in wiretapping. Some of those detained were also active members of the Israeli military; and several detainees, including the “Dancing Israelis,” had failed polygraph tests when asked if they had been surveilling the U.S. government.
Watch | FOX News December 2001 report on Mossad spying prior to 9/11
A key aspect of that report, compiled by journalist Carl Cameron, also states that federal investigators widely suspected that Israeli intelligence had prior knowledge of the September 11 attacks. In the report, Cameron stated:
The Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are ‘tie-ins’ but when asked for details he flatly refused to describe them saying: ‘Evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you about the evidence that has been gathered. It is classified information.’”
One exchange between Cameron and host Brit Hume included in the report is particularly telling:
HUME: “Carl, what about this question of advanced knowledge of what was going to happen on 9/11? How clear are investigators that some Israeli agents may have known something?”
CAMERON: “Well it’s very explosive information obviously and there is a great deal of evidence that they say they have collected. None of it necessarily conclusive. It’s more when they put it all together a big question they say is, ‘How could they have not known?’ — almost a direct quote, Brit.”
However, it is essential to note that Israeli intelligence did attempt to warn the U.S. government at least twice beginning in August 2001 as did the intelligence agencies of many other countries, including France, the UK, Egypt, Russia and Jordan. Yet, no people connected to any other intelligence agency other than Israel were caught celebrating the attacks as they took place in the area nor were accused by mainstream media of operating a large spy ring within the U.S. at the time. One theory to explain this discrepancy is that the Mossad elements of which the “Dancing Israelis” and other alleged Israeli spies could have been part of a specific section of Israeli intelligence that were acting independently as a rogue agency. Such a possibility is not unusual given that divisions of or groups within the CIA have been known to “go rogue” on several occasions…
Then again, years later In 2008, the Israeli newspaper Maariv reported that Netanyahu had stated that the September 11 attacks had greatly benefited Israel. He was quoted as saying: “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.”
Indeed, it goes without saying that the aftermath of 9/11 — which involved the U.S. leading a destructive effort throughout the Middle East — has indeed benefited Israel. Many of the U.S.’ post-9/11 “nation-building” efforts have notably mirrored the policy paper “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” which was authored by American neoconservatives — PNAC members among them — for Netanyahu’s first term as prime minister.
That document calls for the creation of a “New Middle East” by, among other things, “weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria” and “removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right.” As is known now, both of those main objectives have since come to pass, each withstrong Israeli involvement.
Update | This article was updated to include and accommodate alternative analyses of the newly released photos as well information on Israeli intelligence warnings to the U.S. prior to September 11, 2001 that came to the attention of MintPress after initial its publication.
“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” — James Madison
Eventually, all military empires fall and fail by spreading themselves too thin and spending themselves to death.
At the height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity largely led to its demise. As historian Chalmers Johnson predicts:
The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy. Britain chose to remain democratic and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.
The American Empire—with its endless wars waged by U.S. military servicepeople who have been reduced to little more than guns for hire: outsourced, stretched too thin, and deployed to far-flung places to police the globe—is approaching a breaking point.
As The Washington Postpoints out, “The United States is now the world’s largest producer — and its reliance on Saudi imports has dropped dramatically, including by 50 percent in the past two years alone.”
So if we’re not protecting the oil for ourselves, whose interests are we protecting?
The military industrial complex is calling the shots, of course, and profit is its primary objective.
America has long had a penchant for endless wars that empty our national coffers while fattening those of the military industrial complex.
Aided and abetted by the U.S government, the American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth.
Unfortunately, this level of war-mongering doesn’t come cheap to the taxpayers who are forced to foot the bill.
Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $32 million per hour.
Unfortunately, the outlook isn’t much better for the spending that can be tracked.
Consider that the government lost more than $160 billion to waste and fraud by the military and defense contractors. With paid contractors often outnumbering enlisted combat troops, the American war effort dubbed as the “coalition of the willing” has quickly evolved into the “coalition of the billing,” with American taxpayers forced to cough up billions of dollars for cash bribes, luxury bases, a highway to nowhere, faulty equipment, salaries for so-called “ghost soldiers,” and overpriced anything and everything associated with the war effort, including a $640 toilet seat and a $7600 coffee pot.
A government audit found that defense contractor Boeing has been massively overcharging taxpayers for mundane parts, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in overspending. As the report noted, the American taxpayer paid:
$71 for a metal pin that should cost just 4 cents; $644.75 for a small gear smaller than a dime that sells for $12.51: more than a 5,100 percent increase in price. $1,678.61 for another tiny part, also smaller than a dime, that could have been bought within DoD for $7.71: a 21,000 percent increase. $71.01 for a straight, thin metal pin that DoD had on hand, unused by the tens of thousands, for 4 cents: an increase of over 177,000 percent.
That price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire is a sad statement on how little control “we the people” have over our runaway government…
The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.
This is exactly the scenario Eisenhower warned against when he cautioned the citizenry not to let the profit-driven war machine endanger our liberties or democratic processes:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
We failed to heed Eisenhower’s warning.
The illicit merger of the armaments industry and the government that Eisenhower warned against has come to represent perhaps the greatest threat to the nation today…
“You gotta remember, establishment, it’s just a name for evil. The monster doesn’t care whether it kills all the students or whether there’s a revolution. It’s not thinking logically, it’s out of control.”—John Lennon (1969)
John Lennon, born 79 years ago on October 9, 1940, was a musical genius and pop cultural icon.
He was also a vocal peace protester and anti-war activist and a high-profile example of the lengths to which the Deep State will go to persecute those who dare to challenge its authority.
Long before Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning were being castigated for blowing the whistle on the government’s war crimes and the National Security Agency’s abuse of its surveillance powers, it was Lennon who was being singled out for daring to speak truth to power about the government’s warmongering, his phone calls monitored and data files illegally collected on his activities and associations.
For a while, at least, Lennon became enemy number one in the eyes of the U.S. government.
Years after Lennon’s assassination it would be revealed that the FBI had collected 281 pages of files on him, including song lyrics. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI at the time, directed the agency to spy on the musician. There were also various written orders calling on government agents to frame Lennon for a drug bust. “The FBI’s files on Lennon … read like the writings of a paranoid goody-two-shoes,” observed reporter Jonathan Curiel.
As the New York Timesnotes, “Critics of today’s domestic surveillance object largely on privacy grounds. They have focused far less on how easily government surveillance can become an instrument for the people in power to try to hold on to power. ‘The U.S. vs. John Lennon’ … is the story not only of one man being harassed, but of a democracy being undermined.”
Indeed, all of the many complaints we have about government today—surveillance, militarism, corruption, harassment, SWAT team raids, political persecution, spying, overcriminalization, etc.—were present in Lennon’s day and formed the basis of his call for social justice, peace and a populist revolution.
For all of these reasons, the U.S. government was obsessed with Lennon, who had learned early on that rock music could serve a political end by proclaiming a radical message. More importantly, Lennon saw that his music could mobilize the public and help to bring about change. Lennon believed in the power of the people. Unfortunately, as Lennon recognized: “The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn’t represent the people. It controls them.”
However, as Martin Lewis writing for Timenotes: “John Lennon was not God. But he earned the love and admiration of his generation by creating a huge body of work that inspired and led. The appreciation for him deepened because he then instinctively decided to use his celebrity as a bully pulpit for causes greater than his own enrichment or self-aggrandizement.”
For instance, in December 1971 at a concert in Ann Arbor, Mich., Lennon took to the stage and in his usual confrontational style belted out “John Sinclair,” a song he had written about a man sentenced to 10 years in prison for possessing two marijuana cigarettes. Within days of Lennon’s call for action, the Michigan Supreme Court ordered Sinclair released.
What Lennon did not know at the time was that government officials had been keeping strict tabs on the ex-Beatle they referred to as “Mr. Lennon.” Incredibly, FBI agents were in the audience at the Ann Arbor concert, “taking notes on everything from the attendance (15,000) to the artistic merits of his new song.”
The U.S. government, steeped in paranoia, was spying on Lennon…
Among those most closely watched by the FBI was Martin Luther King Jr., a man labeled by the FBI as “the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.” With wiretaps and electronic bugs planted in his home and office, King was kept under constant surveillance by the FBI with the aim of “neutralizing” him. He even received letters written by FBI agents suggesting that he either commit suicide or the details of his private life would be revealed to the public. The FBI kept up its pursuit of King until he was felled by a hollow-point bullet to the head in 1968…
So what’s the answer?
Lennon had a multitude of suggestions.
“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.”
“War is over if you want it.”
“Produce your own dream…. It’s quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders…. You have to do it yourself. That’s what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshipped for the cover of the book and not for what it says, but the instructions are all there for all to see, have always been and always will be. There’s nothing new under the sun. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for you. I can’t wake you up. You can wake you up. I can’t cure you. You can cure you.”
“Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, Something you do, Something you are, And something you give away.”
“If you want peace, you won’t get it with violence.”
And my favorite advice of all: “Say you want a revolution / We better get on right away / Well you get on your feet / And out on the street / Singing power to the people.”
Be seeing you
Yes son, you too can grow up to be lying scum and hate black people.
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