Archives for posts with tag: david patraeus

COUNTERFEIT COIN

May 26, 2014 //
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Former FBI Coleen Rowley on Counterfeit Coin: “Wow, very well put and comprehensive. I tend to agree with your assessments“

Deep State series, part five of eight

COUNTERFEIT COIN

(The alliance of economics & counter-insurgency)

“If the Soviet Union were to disappear off the face of the map, the United States would quickly seek out new enemies to justify its own military-industrial complex” -CIA officer John Stockwell, 1980

What I had learned based on studying my special forces operations assignment is, counter-insurgency does not work. Insurgency is largely sustained by social inequities, and counter-insurgency, more often than not, props up the status quo. The result? Prolonged civil war with attending process of radicalization in the populace. So it should come as no surprise the U.S. military’s counter-insurgency [COIN] manual’s ‘don’t create more enemies than you eliminate’ is factually unobtainable. Consequently, when the manual states…

“The conclusion of any counterinsurgency effort is primarily dependent on the host nation and the people who reside in that nation. Ultimately, every society has to provide solutions to its own problems. As such, one of the Army and Marine Corps’ primary roles in counterinsurgency is to enable the host nation.”

…is a classic case of what George Orwell aptly called ‘doublethink.’ USA supported counter-insurgency is the farthest possible thing from allowing societies solve its own problems, particularly when a society’s grassroots insurgency has determined the incumbent powers cannot be otherwise influenced to social equity. The resultant counter-insurgency effect of radicalizing of social elements with the propping up of corrupt regimes, metastasizes and leads to events such as ‘global jihad’, example given.

In my day, our Special Operations Forces had not yet become pervasively criminalized but we did see the beginning of this process when Special Forces elements coordinated with the CIA and PHOENIX. Apart from this initial perversion, we saw ourselves more along the lines of an elite Peace Corps working the most hazardous territories of a Cold War world. Critical to our mission was pacification of populace in the areas we worked, and pacification is and was a straightforward word. We worked to bring peace to neighborhoods in conflicts. John Wayne stereotype aside, the military aspects were honest endeavor to provide self-defense training to remote villages with an objective the populace could not be easily exploited by irregular militia, but that was never going to be accomplished in any case, except that we understood and respected and even integrated to the local customs and culture. Our primary work was focused on action anthropology, providing health care and education in an indigenous social context.

That we had elite, lethal training, was primarily survival oriented, yes, there were the occasional ‘special operation’ to perhaps decapitate the leadership of a particular guerrilla group or undertake sabotage behind enemy lines in the course of our work, examples given, but this was the exception, not the rule.

Primarily our superior skills were required to operate small teams in areas where we might meet with considerably stronger numerical force. The highly honed and elite skills of the 1960s and 1970s Green Berets teams were more often than not, more than equal to a larger irregular force. If vastly out numbered, we knew how to inflict savage and costly casualties on our pursuers in the course of evasion. In our pacification work, Action Anthropology …

“committed to collaborative work, social justice, and a pragmatic view of social scientific knowledge … envisioned the possibility of simultaneously advancing such knowledge and helping the subjects of ethnographic fieldwork articulate and accomplish their own goals”

… was the norm of the day. We integrated to our human and social environment. We were armed educators, medical providers and social workers. We were not primarily meant to be offensive, to the contrary, restraint was a big piece of our discipline and training. Cowboy mentalities were not tolerated.

It is quite clear things have changed away from this ideal (and somewhat self-propagandized) focus, dramatically, for the military applications of special operations forces, in the approximately four decades since Vietnam. Firstly, one must consider a flipped circumstance; the Cold War world, or one might say the previous ‘bi-polar’ world, was a world where the rug had since been pulled out from numerous societies stability. Into the vacuum created by the dismantling of the Soviet Union and its many aligned satellite states political structures around the world, greed is stepping in as the western democracies ‘capitalize’ on this circumstance. Consequently, as opposed to a primary focus on the ‘liberation’ of oppressed peoples (recalling the Special Forces motto ‘De Opresso Liber’ or ‘liberate the oppressed’) from totalitarian rule, the actuality has become the reverse- openly propping up corrupt regimes whose relationship to us is one of inter-exploitation. Example would be mining Corporations and the Toronto Stock Exchange:

The corrupt regimes handing us (in the western democracies) raw resources on the cheap are no less dependent on us than we are dependent on corrupt regimes to keep the value of our stocks competitive. It is a trap, where if the western democracies allow for social equity to be realized, and must pay a fair market value for resources consequently, the value of stocks will drop in the market ‘adjustment’ to the new circumstance. In a situation of many cases of exploitation, concerning many nations and hundreds of stocks at the exchanges in Frankfurt,  London, Toronto and Wall Street (among other exchanges), a drop in these values reflecting a fair market value wealth redistribution necessary to achieve social stability in the developing nations, would also see a dramatic drop in the stocks of the military-industrial sector which is inter-dependent with the corruption and associated expenditures on counter-insurgency necessary to prop up the corrupt regimes providing resources on the cheap.

As this process accelerates and widens, recently the example is Ukraine with Western democracies intelligence agencies laundering operations with professional mercenaries assisting the new regime in Kiev with COIN tactics employed in the ethnic Russian areas of the south and east, this raises a question; at what point has the corruption become so endemic to the cycle, that to break the cycle of corruption would collapse the economic engines of the western democracies, which have become dependent on arms sales feeding associated aggression required to prop up the (profitable to us) necessarily unstable, corrupt regimes?

Another critical consideration is, now that ‘liberty’ is become an increasingly obvious, patent lie (no longer a ‘half truth’ of previous era), what will be the end result of a power grab by corporate elites dedicated to maintaining the status quo?

“Mr. Snowden has brought home to us that, while we Americans do not yet live in a police state or tyranny, we are well along in building the infrastructure on which either could be instantly erected if our leaders decided to do so.  No longer protected by the law, our freedoms now depend on the self-restraint of men and women in authority, many of them in uniform.  History protests that if one builds a turnkey totalitarian state, those who hold the keys will eventually turn them” -former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman

With the Soviet Union no longer a justifiable geopolitical boogeyman to frighten us into vast arms and ‘security’ expenditures, ‘terror’ has replaced our past Cold War world’s enemies. But nearly everywhere you see a relationship to terror, you will also find a history of corrupt, authoritarian regimes propped up by the western democracies.

1) Authoritarian regime x resultant civil unrest x resultant hyper regime repression = insurgency

2) Insurgency x counter-insurgency = long term civil war

3) Long term civil war x resultant radicalized population metastasizes into terror and spreads

4) Western societies, bled by taxes and political lies propping up the status quo for what amounts to the sole benefit of western corporate oligarchs, become destabilized.

This returns us to the lie of COIN. The factual deceit in counter insurgency is, it must propagate, or be part and parcel of a larger web of lies (or self-deceits) in any case. Whether consciously or unconsciously, it cannot be admitted the wealth of the western democracies depends on exploitations, effective enslavement of entire societies, to prop up our so-called ‘liberties’ and associated economic freedoms which must be severely curtailed in the event of the actual fair, equitable and lawful redistribution of wealth required to cease the oppression of peoples around the world. People with eyes open call our system ’empire.’ People who live in illusion call our system ‘democracy’, however it is necessary to build a police state to maintain our so-called ‘democracy’ because of the raw hatred or ‘terror’ the system generates. And at the end of the day, the only meaningful vote is in the corporate boardroom and that does not bode well for our future because:

“In any democracy, ethics, self restraint, tolerance and honesty will always take a second seat to narcissism, avarice, bigotry & persecution, if only because people who play by the rules in any democracy are at a disadvantage to those who easily subvert the rules to their own advantage” –Ronald’s Maxim

Our poster child for this militarized society is General Petraeus. It is common political knowledge in Washington DC, that President Obama had appointed General Petraeus to head the CIA as a means of sidelining the General’s political ambitions over serious concerns Petraeus would hook up with the likes of Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachman in a run against Obama for the presidency in 2012. Either way you have it, a commander-in-chief, whether a military veteran or not, is a sword that can cut two ways. Obama’s naiveté in military affairs, having never served, is the 2nd worst possible circumstance in an America where naked fundamentalist ambition has overtaken the leadership of American military command structures, outside an out and out fundamentalist president. That Obama would, as a matter of political expediency, appoint Petraeus to head up the CIA with its historically out of control Operational Division working in close concert with the radicalized and criminalized Christian extremist special operations forces of today’s American military…

…was simply asking for disaster. General Petraeus was key [together with Robert Gates] in convincing Obama to radically beef up the USA’s special operations forces, at a time it was already decided the overall troop numbers would have to be reduced.

General Petraeus has had a close association with special operations forces throughout his career. When Petraeus had been appointed to DCI [Director of Central Intelligence or CIA] Admiral William H McRaven, overall boss of the special operations forces which these days are routinely assigned to CIA operational missions, had requested his forces be allowed to operate outside the traditional Department of Defense channels. This was, no doubt, a sleight-of-hand grab for these elite forces away from normal supervision via established Department of Defense structures, and away from any significant oversight by Congress, by Admiral McRaven and his close professional associate, then CIA Director Petraeus.

The myth of General Petraeus in the public purview is a demonstrable tactical lie. In fact the ‘surge that turned around the war in Iraq’ for which he became famous, was at best a deceit along the lines of a shell game or bait and switch. General Petraeus beefed up the American force, momentarily disrupted the insurgency with an all out push that could not be sustained in any case, and then pulled the bulk of the American forces back to their bases and took the Americans, for the first time, largely out of public circulation before the insurgents in Iraq could regroup. It is this removing the American soldiers from the everyday Iraqi life which had dramatically dropped the violence in Iraq, nothing more. The same could have been accomplished in 2004, and honestly at that, were it not for literally crusading extremist neo-con commanders and secular officers afraid to speak out and challenge the status quo at the CIA and Pentagon, to call a spade a spade, a career ending move. It is truly Faustian, if you speak out your career is over and you have been weeded from the ranks which only become more Christian extremist with the favored or ‘blessed’ replacements, if you keep your mouth shut, it all evolves towards fascism regardless.

Moving over to Afghanistan, notoriously there have been many special operations forces crimes, inclusive of attacking weddings and other incidents where fleeing women and kids had been shot in their backs, cold blooded murders. We pay the Afghans compensation but the root problem of anti-Islam fundamentalism in the American military is never effectively addressed and the hate for the Americans only spreads. General Petraeus had a large hand in keeping these American special operations independent of NATO, effectively exercising impunity and generating a strengthened Taliban when the Americans are seen as a worse curse. This is today’s COIN in action.

General Petraeus had been the hand that guided today’s COIN manual creation, one of the most, perhaps THE most influential military publication in modern American military strategy. When testifying to Congress, where it is essential the success of a counter-insurgency strategy lie be maintained, the COIN manual stating…

 “The general rule for the use of force for the counterinsurgents is ‘do not create more enemies than you eliminate with your action’”

…cannot be squared with General Petraeus ties to CIA dirty wars…

…and bringing in veteran professional killers to oversee secret torture centers and and running death squads in Iraq as established by the (above linked) Guardian/BBC Arabic exposé. But that is the real nature of the militarized beast that would rule our society.

Steven Aftergood, at the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy (a whistle-blower site), has written a recent piece on the updated COIN manual. Among several astute observations are his conclusion:

“perhaps the severest criticism of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine derives from actual record of counterinsurgency programs. The continuing violence and instability in Iraq and Afghanistan would seem to indicate that existing counterinsurgency doctrine is either misconceived or that, for whatever reason, it cannot be effectively implemented”

Aftergood sets out two premise in his conclusion, ‘misconceived’ and ‘cannot be effectively implemented.’ Based on my own Special Forces operations assignment, and related studies in social psychology, I can make the case it is not one or the other, but is both. Counter-insurgency in any case, creates more enemies than it eliminates for the very fact of its inter-dependence with propping up western corporate capitalism’s profit line with necessary support for corrupt and authoritarian regimes. The idea of countering ‘terror’ with COIN is a lie.

Similar to Gladio, the American COIN doctrine is a virus that has escaped the lab. Essentially, COIN generates the terror it self-justifies for its existence, practically speaking, a military-industrial employment insurance package that means you will never be out of a job. A practical application of this is, COIN provides the very skills used to fight insurgency, to the insurgents themselves.

Shia death squads set up under Petreaus command in Iraq, followed on with General Petraeus responsible for training and arming the so-called Sunni ‘awakening councils‘, strengthened al-Qaida in Iraq & Levant (now operating in Syria and Iraq under the banner of ISIS since breaking with al-Qaida) empowering both parties to the civil war that followed the USA’s exit from Iraq:

“Crazy as it may seem, to an [American military trained but now unemployed] Iraqi who’s been left high and dry to fend for himself by his “liberators,” killing his fellow citizens to feed his family is a viable option.  Al Qaeda knows this, and is taking full advantage of the situation”

Reiterating the fact General Petraeus ‘surge’ in Iraq appeared to work on paper for the reason the U.S withdrew to its bases after, and violence dropped because the Americans were out of public exposure for the first time since invasion (and why the Iranian aligned Iraqi Shia cleric al-Sadr declared his ceasefire, relating to the Americans) points to the insurgency having had national roots in a society where all sides wanted the Americans out, first and primarily. In the mix of this, the so-called ‘awakening councils’ put into practice by the Petraeus written COIN doctrine (no matter if it were initiated by subordinate generals on location in Iraq during Petraeus interim assignment at the Pentagon) is what eventually empowered today’s ISIS at the apex of Iraq’s widening civil war, a civil war initiated by Petraeus earlier (1st Iraq tour), when setting up the Shia death squads, he had trained al-Sadr’s militia (as documented in the the above linked Guardian/BBC Arabic exposé “Searching for Steele”.) COIN training, consequently, had been responsible for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq from both Shia and Sunni elements. Both had sent numerous members to be trained in the two programs. The same COIN model has been taken advantage of by radicalized insurgents in Syria, where special operations training has been offered to the ‘opposition’ and now you see the fruits of this spilled back into Iraq (again.)

The Petraeus COIN doctrine presently, enthusiastically, embraced by Obama (not only by Bush and too many other neo-conservatives and neo-liberals to count) is the tool of choice with side effect responsible for what you see coming apart at the seams (blow-back) from Ukraine to Iraq to Africa, and ultimately is policy of military-industrial corporate boards and used for propping up stock values from Frankfurt to London to Toronto to Wall Street. Also, it would appear the several western democracies military and intelligence agencies have elements answering to corporate boards as opposed to executive or legislative oversight with strong evidence this has gone on for a very long time.

Destabilized nations are ripe for rip-off, and the recipe is, desperate for cash related to ‘security’, corrupt regimes propped up by the western democracies are inclined to sell their resources on the cheap and use the proceeds to buy military equipment necessary to beat back insurgency and stay in power, so the money they received from selling their resources to the western democracies are returned to the western democracies military-industrial coffers (noting it is not only the USA in this game.) This model has been initiated in Ukraine and if there were successful regime change accomplished in Syria, you would see it happen there, all a criminal enterprise heavily subsidized by the American taxpayer (not to mention soldiers deaths in the thousands) to the benefit of the stockholder bottom line (profit.)

If you wonder whether the western democracies corporate body might learn its lesson from having trained al-Qaida and other Salafist militia (preceding notes on the ‘awakening councils’), the answer is obviously NO. Previous to this, the CIA had employed American special operations forces for provision of advanced training to Mexican military officers who’d ultimately defected to the drug cartels and it was not long before they’d formed a cartel of their own, Los Zetas:

“Los Zetas’ training as a local version of the Green Berets constitutes their foremost asset. In cooperation with their U.S. counterparts, the Mexican military created the Gafes in mid-1990s. Foreign specialists, including Americans, French, and Israelis, instructed members of this elite unit in rapid deployment, aerial assaults, marksmanship, ambushes, intelligence collection, counter-surveillance techniques, prisoner rescues, sophisticated communications, and the art of intimidation”

And now, following on having trained al-Qaida in Iraq & Los Zetas in Mexico as special operations commandos who in turn can train their own future generations of recruits, the USA is repeating the same behavior in Africa:

“The secretive program, financed in part with millions of dollars in classified Pentagon spending and carried out by trainers, including members of the Army’s Green Berets and Delta Force, was begun last year to instruct and equip hundreds of handpicked commandos in Libya, Niger, Mauritania and Mali”

Epilogue

Restated in the simplest possible terms, the USA’s ‘vital national interests’ (and western democracies generally) is euphemism for corporate welfare, corporate welfare is all about the bottom line (profit) and profit historically has happened when we take raw material at gunpoint from disadvantaged nations. Modern corporate neo-colonialism creates social unrest and consequent fighting back which has evolved to ‘terror’, which in turn strengthens the market place in the ‘security’ or arms industry. The overthrow of Gaddafi (for reasons including he wasn’t buying high end weapons from France, following his ‘rehabilitation’) started brush fires (e.g. Mali) with his now unemployed mercenaries, ‘lost’ weapons flow and western trained guerrillas/insurgents moved on to instances of  ‘jihad’ the western powers feel must be in turn stamped out. This strengthens the cycle of spreading ‘terror’ which again strengthens the outlay for security, propping up western economies in what has become a war of civilizations.

In the case of Djibouti and a one billion dollar USA drones base built there, there is yet a French Foreign Legion presence hanging on from colonial era with the region surrounding nearby Somalia in process of destabilizing since Charles Grassley’s efforts provided a vast arsenal of American weapons to the regime of Mohammed Said Barre nearly 30 years ago. Barre in turn employed those weapons to wreak a biblical terror on his own nation. This has impacted from Ethiopia to Kenya and beyond.

The result at home? ‘Terror’ propaganda leading to the loss of civil liberties and increasing consolidation of the corporate-power corrupt over the vast and spreading malignancy of the entire cycle. This fact can only lead to our national demise when you factor in the western democracies own ‘jihadis’, i.e. extreme ‘Christian Taliban’ personalities attracted to the ‘security’ business. Now days the Pentagon is fundamentalist Christian crusader central and has moved from ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian’ to ‘the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim’ as a matter of policy in a pursuit of world-wide “manifest destiny.” And so reality is created for us and reality is pointed to literal Armageddon, the consequence of living beyond our means.

The other side of this coin is, if the arms and related ‘security’ expenditures were halted, the resulting jobs loss would finish collapsing the western democracies economic engines, where the armaments industries are a critical component of the dynamic propping up our infrastructure.

What are the chances the western democratic leaders will surrender ego to reality and begin dismantling this hydra? Not good when reality is we should be moving towards construction of changed climate Hobbit burrows to survive.

What’s happening isn’t rocket science, but it is a trap

If you want stronger evidence for the criminal insanity of the western democracies counter-insurgency policies (a core component of what’s known as ‘humanitarian violence‘) you likely need psychiatric help-

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The USA’s criminal military-industrial complex policies are certainly consistent; judging by the 1935 speech of General Smedley Butler (‘war is a racket’ that has gone on for a very long time.)

Deep State I Background

Deep State II FBI complicity

Deep State III CIA narcotics trafficking

Deep State IV NATO & Gladio

Deep State VI Opus Dei & Christian Dominion

Deep State VII The Coe Cult & ‘The Donald’ Election Scam

Deep State VIII Pentagon Papers, CIA and the Lie of Daniel Ellsberg

GLADIO

Profits of War The Israeli connection

Fear of Minor Debris On 9/11

The Alpha Chronology my narrative as a Deep State survivor

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A former Special Forces Sergeant of Operations and Intelligence, Ronald Thomas West is a retired paralegal/investigator (living in exile) whose work focus had been anti-corruption and human rights. Ronald is published in International Law as a layman (The Mueller-Wilson Report, co-authored with Dr Mark D Cole) and has been adjunct professor of American Constitutional Law at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany (for English credit, summer semester 2008.) Ronald’s formal educational background is primarily social psychology.

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Categories assassinations, CIA, corruption, counter intelligence, crime, culture, information operations, intelligence, international law, philosophy, politics, propaganda, psychology, social responsibility, transcendent warfare, treason, Uncategorized, war crimes

If The Left Are Sheep, The Right Are Fish

June 23, 2013 //
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Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s -Jesus

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If The Left Are Sheep, The Right Are Fish

I was, quite frankly, astounded when then Senator Obama voted to give the telecoms immunity from liability during his run for the presidency. Obama is supposedly a Constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago, a position he holds, if not actively, to this day. But life for me has been, as it has been for many of you, and should be for everyone who wishes to grow in their understanding of our national circumstance, an exercise in the death of naivety

In my case, the naivety which had begun to die going to the above noted event, concerns the pure, concentrated and unmitigated gall that the votes of over fifty lawmakers who happen to be senators, a certain famous constitutional law professor among them, could thumb their nose at any oath to uphold the constitution with a ‘yea’ voting in a law that has three constitutional violations on it’s face, an ‘ex post facto’, ‘legislative pardon’ that violates our citizens ‘right to petition for redress’ by denying ‘suit at equity’ or access to the courts via lawsuit

Let me explain

The telecoms played ball with criminals in the Bush administration by participating in what amounted to warrant-less searches and eves-dropping without court order, stealing and handing over peoples personal information in criminal acts Americans had been historically protected from by our constitution and pertinent laws. This opened the telecom corporations to both criminal penalties and civil liabilities. There were crimes committed which should have been prosecuted and people have a right to sue. The potential liability looked pretty big and the telecoms lobbied for immunity

1) ex post facto. Our constitution specifically prohibits Congress making any “ex post facto” law, as typically or historically applied that means a behavior cannot be criminalized after the fact and applied retroactively, or more broadly, new laws cannot be made governing an event that is in the past. In this 2nd instance we have a valid constitutional claim prohibiting making a law excusing past criminal civil liberties violations against our citizens, violations which had created liabilities. What is required for the criminal aspect solely, is a PARDON

2) legislative pardon: Congress cannot give pardons to the individuals within the telecoms who’d signed off on and perpetrated the crimes, that is reserved by our constitution to the president and neither can the congress or the president pardon corporations in any manner excusing civil liability, the corporations must be held accountable and seek any leniency based on possible mitigation factors from the courts, because [3 & 4 combine to make a constitutional principle]

3) the” right to petition for redress” is promised to every citizen who has been wronged and

4) “suit at equity”, that is, the courts existing to do what is right by the citizen, is the avenue provided by our constitution to fulfill the promise of every wronged citizen’s ‘right to petition for redress’ or it should be said there is no right of corporate or government impunity. Citizen’s petitions for remedies and compensation may not be preemptively denied fair hearing, in our courts of law by the Congress

The oath to uphold our constitution had been meant to prevent such patently wrong laws in the first instance. That oath is become patently meaningless to the trained lawyers and professionals who should know these things and make up the congress, points squarely to the core of corrupt process usurping our rule of law

Now, what I’d point out to my conservative friends regarding the Senator Obama vote in the case of the Congress patently and illegally extending immunity to the telecoms in violation of every ‘yea’ voting senator’s oath to uphold the constitution of these United States is: that farcical and patently criminal vote violating our most fundamental rights passed with a majority of Republican senators backing. The Democrats voting in favor of the law were a distinct minority. YOUR conservative people’s representatives are primarily responsible for this particular travesty of justice, which has the effect of trashing our Bill of Rights particularly, and other provisions of our constitution generally

Get comfortable with that thought because now I am going to point to some more Republican chicanery undermining our foundational law that is going to hurt some more if you keep reading and are open and honest and willing to look at what has overcome us all, not at the hands of liberals or conservatives, but on account of all ourselves buying into the protected free speech that is political lies

The American constitution, any and all neo-con ‘Liars for Jesus’ notwithstanding, is based on secular ethics, not Christian morality. There IS a difference and that difference is sometimes quite pronounced, as I will demonstrate was the case with the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law forbidding gays serving openly in our military

As a heterosexual secular ethicist, I tolerate male homosexuals and actually get on quite well with lesbians. They very thought of sex with another man revolts me but that is largely beside the point. What I recognize, and what our founding law supports, is the idea a free society mostly cannot legislate morality. Time should have taught us this, as there have been numerous bigoted and unconstitutional laws in the history of our nation made by fundamentalists of one generation to the next.. but what it all boils down to is, it is our constitution’s demand that it is none of our business if a couple of guys practice fellatio, or lesbians cunnilingus, in the privacy of their home

If they are good citizens in a secular sense, perform their civic duties responsibly and don’t push their private sexual life in peoples face, we have to respect they have a right to their lifestyle and a right to be seen affectionately in public together no differently to my own behaviors with a woman in my life. Do I copulate in public with my opposite sex partner? No. Do they perform sex acts in public with their same sex partner? No. No differently, if I can kiss my woman in public, so may they kiss their same sex partner in public. I don’t have to watch and neither do you.. and insofar as influencing children, there is no more a rude thing to do to a child than force them into denial of our world’s realities, a form of lying, you do not raise aware citizens that way

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” crossed our constitution’s demand that there be “equal protection” of all citizens before the law. A law that allows heterosexual expression of one’s sexual preference only, violates the rights of gays. It is quite clear and it is that simple

Before I go into how President Obama and the Senate Republicans BOTH had subverted out rule of law and damaged our constitution with using the “don’t ask, don’t tell” as a political football, it is in order here to give a further short exam of the secular ethics our law is based upon, versus religious, or in the USA, largely Christian morality

Our nation was founded by people with varying experiences at the hands of religion, with nearly all of those experiences negative. It was not only the persecuted religious minority by the religious majority which migrated to what became the USA, but also the political dissident and intellectual who left a country with officially sanctioned state religion used as a tool of repression, such as employed by the Church of England and the Church at Rome, and the free or secular thinkers who abandoned Germany, France, Italy or Spain among many other nations where religious intolerance persecuted anyone who stepped out of the officially sanctioned lines of thinking. The result is what you see in our First Amendment, it is no accident that lumped together there, are freedom of expression, that protects the secular people particularly, and the freedom of people to practice ANY religion and very importantly, in the same paragraph religion is altogether forbidden in the affairs of state. This was the ‘original intent’ of our founders, again, any ‘Liars for Jesus’ notwithstanding

Of course our founders realized we live in an imperfect world and what they attempted to do was in fact establish a libertarian society which would create an environment for elevated awareness and advancement of the future generations with a generous opportunity for our citizenry- given in our founding law. Thomas Jefferson looked at the New England Puritans as hopelessly backward people living out a primitive demonic fantasy, whereas John Adams had a revulsion similar to homophobia in relation to Benjamin Franklin’s libertine philosophies and lifestyle, examples given, but they and other founders all did one thing very well, they tolerated one another, setting aside differences to both: win the revolution and write our constitution intended to preserve the rights of one and all despite their differences. As a group, these men realized there is a sole avenue to any positive future and that avenue is tolerance. This is driving purpose behind our having established secular republic where religious morals are deliberately allowed no part of government and those recent Supreme Court Justices who best personified these secular principles of tolerance were Republican or Republican appointed, Justice Brennan and Justice Stevens

Now, if the left and right both forget Jesus’ admonition not to throw stones, that is, when we have begun throwing our found(er)ing law through windows like rocks with notes attached, and that is where we are now as a political culture,  with smears coming in the name of our constitution, particularly on the right because of “Liars for Jesus” rewriting American history, and stones thrown from the left because of a snotty disdain for any and all things conservative which had been smeared hopelessly by association with the criminal Bush, no matter the fact there are yet many fine and honorable people on the right, all is in a fine mess. And with the people distracted with fighting like a saloon brawl, money and it’s associated personalities in politics are having a field day while narcissistic politicians pandering to corporate greed are running away with our republic

Now, money in politics played off conservative Christian morality against liberal secular ethics with “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and both right & left of the American people lost and money in politics won with people divided and hating

Erstwhile constitutional law professor and faux commander-in-chief Obama had a court ruling in his pocket which flatly stated “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Now, if indeed Obama is commander-in-chief of our military, it was his undeniable duty to simply ORDER “Don’t ask, don’t tell” to be discontinued. But no, manipulative Chicago politicians don’t play the constitutional rules of the game straight, so he has his own Attorney General’s United States Department of Justice hold up the ruling with an appeal, while the senate neo-con Republicans threatened and blustered over repeal of what they know was patently unconstitutional “Don’t ask, don’t tell” law by the congress, an act that would make the court order moot

This play motivated both left and right, rank and file, to fight and pour tremendous energy into hating each other over whether a soldier can get his blow job from a man rather than a woman, and when nobody is looking at that. I hope you all suddenly feel real bright over why real problems this country faces, never get solved, all the while money runs amok in politics and Citizens United is not addressed with a constitutional amendment

But it is actually much, much more than that

It so happens both George Sr and George W Bush had a very close and intimate friend of decades in a real dilemma over “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Obama’s Evangelical Secretary of  Defense Robert Gates, a man epitomized in the warning President Eisenhower gave us about the “Military/Industrial Complex” and its power to corrupt our republic, had asked the Congress to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” in a move to buy time for his religious extremist generals belonging to the right wing “Officers Christian Fellowship.” The “Officer’s Christian Fellowship is behind the acts causing the U.S. military to be repeatedly sued via the Military Religious Freedom Foundation by over 33,000 active duty United States soldiers because the soldiers are being force fed extremist religious right hate propaganda by their superiors.  These extremist officers literally believe “Muslims are the children of Satan” and have pushed the USA efforts in Afghanistan as a religious crusade in an army where recently soldiers who sought combat stress psychological counseling were instead sent to a chaplain who told them their problems would be solved if only they would become “born again in Jesus” and “kill Muslims for Christ.” Small wonder there is epidemic suicide in the United States military not to mention the noted salient facts making an ongoing lie of Obama’s claims the USA is repairing relations with the Islamic world

Of course, in extremist Christian morality homosexuals are aberrant perverts deserving of nothing less than death according to primitive mosaic law and now we will have a whole new class of persecution in our military because the Congress repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell” while Obama’s Attorney General kept the case tied up in appeals, it was much easier for Robert Gates to sweep the related unconstitutional religious morals repression of gays by our extreme Christian generals and their religious extremist officer-minions under the rug. Now, illegal persecutions will fall under military justice structures and be much more difficult to bring justice into line with constitutional principle when gays are beaten or murdered with ‘friendly fire’ and lesbians beaten and raped with the tacit encouragement of the extreme homophobic “Officer’s Christian Fellowship” whose mission is a ‘Godly military’ in a crusade to “kill Muslims for Jesus Christ” in a military which already covers up not only rampant rape of its woman soldiers, but the murder of women as well– and going so far as the leadership at the Pentagon had ordered its top expert on sexual abuse not to testify before the Congress:

“But when it came time for the military to defend itself, the panel was told that the Pentagon’s top official on sexual abuse, Dr. Kaye Whitley, was ordered not to show up despite a subpoena.

Rep. John Tierney, the panel’s chairman and a Democrat from Massachusetts, angrily responded, “these actions by the Defense Department are inexplicable.”

“The Defense Department appears to be willfully and blatantly advising Dr. Whitley not to comply with a duly authorized congressional subpoena,” Tierney said.” -CNN

The ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ repeal had been preferred by the close Bush family friend and evangelical Robert Gates because he knows it rendered the Federal Court case moot and everything begins again from scratch with enforcing the rights of soldiers in the military system where his generals can finesse outcomes, and Gates also knows that his generals flipping their middle fingers at a federal judge’s court order overturning ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell” was a real risk because federal judges in theory can take over the operations of entire departments or even branches of government with a “Consent Decree”, pointed at people who refuse to bow to the rule of law and honor courts ordering our institutions into line with constitutional principles. Accordingly, the repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and attending loss of Federal Court jurisdiction is in actuality a closet victory for the neo-con leadership of the USA’s military who defies our Congress and Constitution

Meanwhile Robert Gates’ generals religious right support base in the senate played to their homophobic electorate at home which collectively flipped out over the vote throwing out an unconstitutional law and would do so over any other act to honor the constitutional rights of ‘fags’ and Gates’s generals escaped a real catch 22. But is it the WOMEN soldiers paying for this religious impunity with 26,000 sexual assaults in 2012 alone in a military with leadership believing the only proper place of any woman is the bedroom and not the workplace. This epidemic goes unaddressed because misogynist officers in the command structure oversee the disciplinary process

All the while, the progressive left had been backing the right thing to do by our constitution, and are the very people Obama’s Department of Justice had been fighting in the courts while holding up with appeal the Judge’s order throwing out ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and otherwise no player involved except this one judge had honored our constitution, for all of our conservative voters swallowing the bait of their candidates oath to our constitution and professed love for our “Bill of Rights” of which the congressional record of rip-off will hurt the right and left both on other constitutional issues, such as privacy and PRISM. Restated, when you support the congress undermining any aspect of our constitution you don’t like, you have emboldened the congress to undermine aspects of our constitution you hold dear to your heart

And so long as politicians on the right have to pander to voters who follow mental whack jobs like Ann Coulter to keep the conservative vote in one block, while the left can’t shake off the legacy of Chicago style politics, any truly sane center ground allowing for real progress on issues that matter is pie-in-the-sky

There you have it- how in a most perverted sense the Republican senators play a supportive game in cahoots with Obama when it comes to their common cause of keeping the right and left fighting, while money runs amok buying our elections with political lies and in the course of things, trashes our constitution and national sanity

And finally, considering Jesus instruction to ‘give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, the oath to uphold our secular constitution could not be a more clear obligation to those Christian conservatives who would prefer not to be labeled hypocrites ..

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Dominionism

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Categories corruption, crime, Law, male hierarchy, politics, religion, social responsibility, treason, Uncategorized

Crusaders and Complicity

April 26, 2013 //
0

“Onward Christian Soldiers” is a popular hymn in the more conservative churches of 21st Century America:

“Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus, going as before”

I recall this hymn from my childhood, it did not require any refreshing of my memory, I did not have to look up the lyrics. These are lyrics our Pentagon have taken to heart.

Here is example of this hymn’s inspiring hate in the most lethal military in today’s world:

“Michael Weinstein. You and the mfrr have nothing better to do than bully and fight the Christian soldiers who built this nation. From the wreckage of the indian savages? And made it the only shining light of the world? Have you forgotten history? Our soldiers are made strong because of their faith in Jesus Christ and Christianity. When America’s soldiers are strong America is strong. I am such a soldier. Proud of my Savior and the USA. One among many in my unit who know you for what you truely are. A bunch of us at chapel watched some of the speeches you gave. On you tube. We all noticed how much you resemeble the devil. Seriously you do. And you have the devils slippery powers of false persuasion too. You and the devil both hate Christ. You and the devil are the losers. You will both have hell as your home for all ages to come. Your life is totally a waste. Mr. Weinstein give it up and surrender to the Word of Christ. Our fighting forces fight with Jesus as our Lord and leader in all things. Deal with it. You try to mess with that and you totally deserve to suffer. Your fallen childrens deserve to suffer. Your fallen wife deserves to suffer. Your fallen parents deserve to suffer. All your fallen friends of the mfrr deserve to suffer too. And they will.”

What better evidence of crusaders than a meeting held in a United States military chapel instigating hate against the one man in America who’d taken a stand against the Christian extremist takeover of the United States military.

And then:

“My husband is a proud USMC sniper. We and our children and all the real marines in our unit are proud Christians. We all walk our life in the Lord’s Word. This means that it is our number one job to bring the lost to the Word and Grace of our Savior. By all the means necessary. If we fail to do so all who do not find Christ will burn in the darkness of hell. Mr. Mikey Wienstien has dedicated his earthly life to satan. To trying to stop marines and soldiers and the American forces from bringing the fallen world to Christ. And most of the world is fallen. Christ is the one and only way. This makes Mikey the number one enemy of the Savior. Mikey on tv. Mikey on the radio. Mikey in the magazines and newspapers and Mikey all over the internet. Mikey won’t stop defying Christ and persecuting his followers in the service. But Mikey’s earthly life will end one day soon we pray. It is then he will pay. It’s then we will sing and smile. Our prayer circle on base is large and effective. Our prayer circle prayer is a dream of a world with no Mikey Wienstein in it. The dream we share is of Mikey in hell on fire and screaming. And screaming and screaming and screaming. As the flames bake him. For all eternity as our Lord has proclaimed. And noone can hear him. Noone can help him. Watch Mikey sceam in our dream. Here Mikey scream in our dream. Forever in hell with his friends the homos, the muslems the communists, the leftists. And the gun haters and the abortion lovers. Christ makes all things new again. Christ answers the prayers of his faithful. and noone is more faithful to Christ than the USMC. Burn, burn Mikey burn. Halleluyah.

Notice that on top of the 1st hate mail directed at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation leader Michael Weinstein referring to “Indian savages”, the 2nd mail refers to that foundation’s work to protect (among others) the rights of Muslims.

In this context it is not a stretch at all to draw a comparison; the ordained minister Colonel Chivington’s massacre of the peaceful Cheyenne chief Black Kettle’s village at Sand Creek, Colorado and the torture and murder of thousands of Muslims in Iraq by James Steele at the direction of Rumsfeld & Cheney, under the supervision of General David Patraeus, as recently exposed in a lengthy documentary by the Guardian.

What is missing from the western democracies dialogue is American actions that inspire the terror aimed at us.

 We have our Iraq legacy of mass murders, torture, rape and humiliation by American military, and the perpetrators are not held accountable for the most part. We saw the occasional prosecution of a low level soldier or a few, but the generals associated with the systematic abuses, examples given Patraeus and McChrystal, effectively are immune, the proper term is impunity.

Whether Patraeus’ ‘dirty war’ death squad veterans,  or McChrystal’s Camp Nama abuses, et cetera, the responsible parties have walked free.

 In Afghanistan, featuring the same players, there have been numerous crimes as well. There, American (CIA associated or coordinated) special operations forces have basically behaved as they pleased, with their special status independent of normal NATO command structures.

Mix this up with mercenaries (CIA hires called “counter-terrorism pursuit teams”) and you get what we’ve seen; school boys bound and executed, families murdered including pregnant women with bullets cut out of their bodies to cover the tracks of their special operations killers, and the most recent event where a CIA officer running a paramilitary team was killed (the real story behind this next linked article’s spin) and the result was an act of spite in violation of the rules of war; an air strike called in that killed ten kids and a couple of women sheltering with them. These are not isolated incidents but representative of that war, with multiple cases, year in and year out.

 Why?

Extreme Christian fundamentalism overtaking our officer corps and security apparatus, the radical right “Officers Christian Fellowship” and such stellar cretans as Pentagon darling William Boykin, a poster child example; as well fundamentalist generals Patraeus and McChrystal with CIA associated special operations background, examples given.

When Muslims are not really considered human beings, the rules of war are not taken seriously consequently and with this infection spreading, it should be no surprise a dozen civilians, kids and women, who’d fled to the roof of a building Taliban had taken refuge in, in a firefight, do not stand in the way of a bomb dropped on that building consequently. This (or similar actions) have happened time and time again.

It could have been young men from any ethnic background having to do with consequently radicalized Islam inspired to strike back in Boston. 

Until this is a part of a new and international dialogue, and there is a consequent accountability, terror aimed at Americans particularly, and western democracies generally, will only rise.

German Interior Minister Han Peter Friedrich has stated:

“In Boston all indications are pointing to a dangerous phenomenon, which is causing us growing concern. Instead of large organizations, we will now be attacked by lone wolves and small groups who radicalize themselves. That is very unsettling”

This statement had been made in a context of video surveillance aimed at prevention of attacks, which is a band-aid fix in a case of a patient with cancer. I can personally assure you all, the German authorities have known about the egregious hate crimes against Islam as a whole by NATO associated American military, for quite some years, transited through American military bases situated on sovereign German territory; Ramstein, to name but one facility.

The Germans have also known for quite some time, Obama’s ‘look forward, not back’ policy of shielding international criminals has as much as anything to do with the top American leadership compromised and corrupt to the core.

FBI Director Robert Mueller had been central to covering up the terrorism money laundering BCCI scandal, Attorney General Eric Holder had been at the center of arranging concealing the identities of American corporate personalities who provided cash and machine guns to the right-wing Colombian AUC death squads who went on to murder approximately 4,000 people, and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts was not only appointed by Bush but is a personal friend of the lawyer who was Dick Cheney’s vice presidential general counsel when Cheney was engaged in his international crime spree.

The Germans also know justice will not be forthcoming from the USA, particularly now that Obama himself is compromised by deeds committed under advisement of his ‘counter-terrorism’ advisor (and now CIA Director) John Brennan.

I hate to think Germany is shirking its historic responsibility to confront these behaviors in NATO, despite the fact Germany has a law:

The Völkerstrafgesetzbuch or VStGB (“international criminal code”) is the German law that regulates the crimes against public international law. It was created to bring the German criminal law into accordance with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It was announced on 26 June 2002 and became law 30 June 2002. It covers the following offenses:

None of these are subject to a statute of limitations.

This law has NOT been applied by Germany, for reasons that must be construed as rank political cowardice. This is a primary reason this complaint to the International Criminal Court may be found to have standing. Germany should be obliged to apply this law or to be found complicit in these crimes.

About Ronald Thomas West

VE18

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Categories corruption, international law, social responsibility, Uncategorized, war crimes
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