Best of the Web:


Vader

Best of the Web: Palestinian Village Ordered to Uproot 1,400 Olive Trees by May 1

Villagers relaxing in Deir Istiya, 2009.
© Genevieve LongVillagers relaxing in Deir Istiya, 2009.
Earlier this week, Israel ordered Palestinian farmers in Deir Istiya, a major West Bank olive producing village, to uproot 1,400 trees by the end of this month. By comparison, this order is 400 more trees than the total number uprooted in all of 2011.

"This is the largest order for uprooting trees that the farmers of Wadi Qana have ever been given," said the International Women's Peace Service (IWPS). And Amal Salem, 63, from Deir Istiya, but now living in St. Louis says unearthing olive trees effects everyone in the village, "When I visited last year, every house I went to has had uprooted trees."

Amal's family has farmed olive for five generations. It was their livelihood, and afforded her to attend school in Cairo. "I went to school because of the olive trees. I went to school because in Cairo because of the trees. My father had no other income but the olive trees." In Amal's family, Israeli authorities uprooted 300 trees of her 83-year old uncle's land. Amal described them as ancient growth, "1,000 years old," stemming from the Roman period. The day the bulldozers arrived, her cousins protested, clinging to the trees, although they were uprooted regardless. But within a day or two, her family proudly re-planted what was unearthed. Yet Amal's uncle has night terrors from this incident, stirring over the sight of seeing his child nearly smashed by a bulldozer.

Bad Guys

Best of the Web: U.S. Officials Continue to Shift Focus From al Qaeda to 'Home-Grown Extremists'

domestic extremist graphic
© n/a
Last year I broke down a report from the Homeland Security Policy Institute which not only lent support for increasingly harsh and widespread police state measures, but also served to shift attention away from the supposed threat posed by foreign terrorist groups towards the alleged threat of domestic terrorists.

One of the prime targets for demonization by both the establishment media and law enforcement has been the so-called "sovereign citizen" movement, something which I have written about previously here at End the Lie.

This is all part of a concerted effort to turn almost everything into a sign of potential terrorist activity while breeding a culture of delusional paranoia, citizen spying and ubiquitous surveillance.

Now U.S. government officials have said that al Qaeda's core organization cannot carry out another attack like the horrific events of September 11, 2001 and the likelihood of a chemical, biological, atomic or radiological attack over the next year are minimal.

Interestingly, this view expressed by the deputy director of U.S. National Intelligence Robert Cardillo conflicts with the ludicrous claims made recently about al Qaeda potentially planning another 9/11 in an attempt to justify an extended American military presence in Afghanistan.

Cardillo and other anonymous U.S. officials described their assessments on a conference call with journalists during which they claimed that the Arab Spring is also helping weaken the "core" al Qaeda organization.

Cult

Best of the Web: CIA Cults and the Global Brainwashing Experiment: The Untold Story of the Jonestown Massacre


Comment: The following report was written in 1985. Reading it, you will learn that the 1978 Jonestown "mass suicide" was in fact a massacre of over 900 men women and children by the CIA and its friends. Furthermore, the People's Temple cult was just one part of an ongoing mind control experiment, in which the 'Jonestown' concentration camp was just one of a network of camps located in countries the US national security state has subverted around the globe.

The ultimate victims of mind control at Jonestown are the American people. If we fail to look beyond the constructed images given us by the television and the press, then our consciousness is manipulated, just as well as the Jonestown victims' was. Facing nuclear annihilation, may see the current militarism of the Reagan policies, and military training itself, as the real "mass suicide cult." If the discrepancy between the truth of Jonestown and the official version can be so great, what other lies have we been told about major events?

History is precious. In a democracy, knowledge must be accessible for informed consent to function. Hiding or distorting history behind "national security" leaves the public as the final enemy of the government. Democratic process cannot operate on "need to know." Otherwise we live in the 1984 envisioned by Orwell's projections and we must heed his warning that those who control the past control the future.

The real tragedy of Jonestown is not only that it occurred, but that so few chose to ask themselves why or how, so few sought to find out the facts behind the bizarre tale used to explain away the death of more than 900 people, and that so many will continue to be blind to the grim reality of our intelligence agencies. In the long run, the truth will come out. Only our complicity in the deception continues to dishonor the dead.
Image
The stench of BS emanating from the Jonestown "mass suicide" was matched only by the stench of rotting flesh as 1,000 Americans were put out of their misery by their captors one November day in 1978.
Somewhere in the concrete canyons of New York City a recently formed rock group is using the name Jim Jones and the Suicides. Irreverent and disarming, the name reflects the new trend in punk rock, to take social issues head on. Cynicism about the Jonestown deaths and its social parallels abound in the lyrics of today's music. The messages are clear because we all know the story.

In fact, people today recognize the name "Jonestown" more than any other event, a full 98% of the population.1 The television and printed media were filled with the news for more than a year, even though the tale read like something from the National Enquirer tabloid. But despite all the coverage, the reality of Jonestown and the reasons behind the bizarre events remain a mystery. The details have faded from memory for most of us since November 18, 1978, but not the outlines. Think back a moment and you'll remember.

Handcuffs

Best of the Web: Epidemic of Incarceration Costs US Taxpayers $63.4 billion Annually

Image
© CBSA sign of overcrowding at Gadsden County Jail in Florida, where there are more inmates than beds.
Is it fair to call the United States the "incarceration nation"? That's what some experts say. And even some veteran law enforcement and correction officials think something's gone wrong. Our Cover Story is reported now by Martha Teichner:

At the Gadsden County Jail near Tallahassee, Fla., there are bunks, and mattresses on the floor.

The jail has a capacity of about 150 inmates, but there are presently 230 inmates in the facility right now.

Walter McNeil, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, sees the same story everywhere he goes in the U.S.

In one "pod" of Gadsen jail, in which there are 24 bunks, there are 28 inmates - and by the time the weekend comes, there will be five or six more inmates.

That's nothing compared to California. Overcrowding was so bad there, the U.S. Supreme Court called it "cruel and unusual punishment," and last May ordered the state to cut its prison population by more than 30,000.

Nationwide, the numbers are staggering: Nearly 2.4 million people behind bars, even though over the last 20 years the crime rate has actually dropped by more than 40 percent.

Red Flag

Best of the Web: Torture of US Citizens and the Complicity of Federal Judges

supreme court bldg
© AFP/Getty Images/File Win McNamee
The Supreme Court is asked to decide if government officials can be held accountable for torturing a US citizen

Two of the most under-discussed afflictions in American political life are inter-related: (1) the heinous, inhumane treatment of prisoners on American soil (often, though certainly not exclusively, Muslim political prisoners), and (2) the virtually complete abdication by subservient federal courts in the post-9/11 era of their duty to hold Executive Branch officials accountable for unconstitutional and otherwise illegal acts in the War on Terror context. Those two disgraceful American trends are vividly illustrated by juxtaposing two events, which I happened to be reminded of yesterday while looking for something else; first, from a January, 27, 2007, article in The Washington Post:
The prime minister of Canada apologized Friday to Maher Arar and agreed to give $9 million in compensation to the Canadian Arab, who was spirited by U.S. agents to Syria and tortured there after being falsely named as a terrorism suspect.

Arar, 36, a former computer engineer who was detained while changing planes at a New York airport in 2002 and imprisoned in a Syrian dungeon for 10 months, said after the announcement that he "feels proud as a Canadian". . . .

"We cannot go back and fix the injustice that occurred to Mr. Arar," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in issuing the formal apology in Ottawa. "However, we can make changes to lessen the likelihood that something like this will ever happen again." The head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police resigned over the affair, and the government has pledged to increase oversight of its intelligence agencies. . . .

The financial compensation settles a claim Arar made against the government for having provided exaggerated and false information to the United States that identified him as a terrorist suspect. Harper said the amount "is within this government's realistic assessment of what Mr. Arar would have won in a lawsuit." His attorneys also were awarded about $870,000 in legal fees.

"The evidence is clear that Mr. Arar has been treated unjustly. He should not be on a watch list," Harper said.
And then this Christian Science Monitor article from June 14, 2010:
A Canadian citizen has lost his bid to hold US officials accountable for their decision to label him an Al Qaeda suspect and deport him to Syria where he was held without charge for a year and allegedly tortured during US-directed interrogations.

The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up the case of Maher Arar, who was born in Syria but had lived in Canada since his teens. . . .

Arar filed a lawsuit in the US seeking to hold American officials accountable for their actions. . . . To date, the US government position on Arar has been to insist that Arar has no legal right to seek to hold American officials accountable for his ordeal.

In denying review of Arar's case, the high court lets stand a 7 to 4 ruling by the full Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. That court found that because of "special factors" involving national security, Arar's lawsuit should be dismissed.

Che Guevara

Best of the Web: People Power! Families Re-Occupy Vacant Homes

Image
© Liberate the SouthsideTene Smith prays at a press conference outside her re-occupied home on January 19.
Growing movements on both sides of the Atlantic try to turn bank-owned houses into homes.

In the U.S. today, a new wave of squatters is moving into vacant foreclosed properties in cities like Chicago, New York and Minneapolis.

After three years of staying in her sister's living room, Tene Smith decided to move her family into a home that had sat vacant on Chicago's South Side for more than two years.

With the help of Liberate the South Side, a Chicago-based organization that targets vacant homes for re-occupation and spent months renovating the house, Smith and her three children moved in during a public ceremony attended by community members and the media in January 2012. "I was fearful when I first made this commitment," she told In These Times, "but as the days passed I had a sense of independence that had eluded me for a long time."

The term "squatter" conjures images of the predominantly young, urban hipsters who in decades past claimed vacant property in areas such as New York City's Lower East Side. But with five times as many vacant homes as homeless people in the U.S. today, a new wave of squatters - just as likely to be hard-hit families like Smith's as young activists making a political statement - is moving into vacant foreclosed properties in cities like Chicago, New York and Minneapolis.

Bad Guys

Best of the Web: The More Things Change Or Sarkozy Part Deux

Image
© Paul Delort/Le FigaroFrançois Hollande.
So the globalista have bowed to the inevitable. There is little they can now do to prevent the dreary quasi-socialist retread François Hollande from being elected as the next president of the French Republic.

The five-year interregnum of the strange jerky marionette Nicholas Sarkozy is over.

What we are now about to witness is an almost exact replay of the Obama succession in the United States.

Like Obama, Hollande peddles 'the audacity of hope' as a means of erasing the peculiar brand of neo-con a la francaise which has dominated French politics for the best part of four decades.

His election pledges are like something from the playbook of the French Revolution: Guillotine the rich. Bring home the troops from foreign wars. Revivify the Republic. Vive la France! Aux barricades!

Ordure, as they say in France. Safely installed in the Élysée Palace, Citoyen Hollande will make a splendid feast of all his election promises on the very first night before he slips between the crisp white sheets of the presidential grand lit.

By the time he gets to the NATO summit in Chicago in mid-May, then far from pulling the plug on further French immersion in foreign wars, he will be up for repeat helpings. That's the power game is it not?

Cult

Best of the Web: Dutroux Cover-up Protected Pedophile Networks

Image
The high-level pedophile network in Belgium prevented spontaneous White Marches in 1996 from developing into a peaceful revolution by the careful sabotage of the initial police and judicial investigations, which was investigating the abominable crimes of judges, policemen, bankers, doctors, lawyers, aristocrats and members of the royal family. Careful perception management and historical revisionism has created the official story of Dutroux as the 'lone pedo', when documentaries such as the following prove otherwise.
It was a tragedy that would spark national outrage and lead to rumours of conspiracy and corruption at the highest levels of the Belgian judicial system. More than ten years after the paedophile Marc Dutroux was jailed for the kidnap, imprisonment, rape, torture and murder of terrified young girls, questions about the case remain.


Bomb

Best of the Web: Gulf fisheries' survival at risk two years after BP oil disaster

Nearly two years after BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, fishermen and scientists say things are getting worse.


Hundreds of thousands of people living along the US Gulf Coast have hung their economic lives on lawsuits against BP.

Fishermen, in particular, are seeing their way of life threatened with extinction - both from lack of an adequate legal settlement and collapsing fisheries.

One of these people, Greg Perez, an oyster fisherman in the village of Yscloskey, Louisiana, has seen a 75 per cent decrease in the amount of oysters he has been able to catch.

"Since the spill, business has been bad," he said. "Sales and productivity are down, our state oyster grounds are gone, and we are investing personal money to rebuild oyster reefs, but so far it's not working."

Perez, like so many Gulf Coast commercial fisherman, has been fishing all his life. He said those who fish for crab and shrimp are "in trouble too", and he is suing BP for property damage for destroying his oyster reefs, as well as for his business' loss of income.

People like Perez make it possible for Louisiana to provide 40 percent of all the seafood caught in the continental US.

But Louisiana's seafood industry, valued at about $2.3bn, is now fighting for its life.

Bad Guys

Best of the Web: Prison Camp USA: Courtesy of The Federal Government

Giant Prison
© The Economic Collapse Blog
There has been no society in the history of the world that has ever been 100% safe. No matter how much money the federal government spends on "homeland security", the truth is that bad things will still happen. Our world is a very dangerous place and it is becoming increasingly unstable. The federal government could turn the entire country into one giant prison camp, but that would still not keep us safe. It is inevitable that bad stuff will happen in life. But we have a choice. We can choose to live in fear or we can choose to live as free men and women.

Our forefathers intended to establish a nation where liberty and freedom would be maximized. But today we are told that we have to give up our liberties and our freedoms and our privacy for increased security. But is such a trade really worth it? Just think of the various totalitarian societies that we have seen down throughout history. Have any of them ever really thrived? Have their people been happy?

Unfortunately, the U.S. federal government has decided that the entire country needs to be put on lock down. Nearly everything that we do today is watched and tracked, and personal privacy is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Many of the things that George Orwell wrote about in 1984 are becoming a reality, and that is a very frightening thing. The United States is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. Sadly, we are rapidly becoming the exact opposite of that.

I don't know about you, but I never signed up to live in North Korea. When I was growing up I was taught that repressive regimes such as North Korea are "the bad guys" and that America is where "the good guys" live.

So why do we want to be just like North Korea?

When they put in the naked body scanners at U.S. airports and started having TSA agents conduct "enhanced pat-downs" of travelers, I decided that I was not going to fly anymore unless absolutely necessary.

Then I heard about how "random bag checks" were being conducted at Metro train stations in the Washington D.C. area, and I was glad that I was no longer taking the train into D.C. anymore.

But now the TSA is showing up everywhere. Down in Houston, undercover TSA agents and police officers will now "ride buses, perform random bag checks, and conduct K-9 sweeps, as well as place uniformed and plainclothes officers at Transit Centers and rail platforms to detect, prevent and address latent criminal activity or behavior."

So now I have another thing to add to my list of things that I can't do anymore.

No more riding buses for me.

But the truth is that you can't escape this expanding security grid no matter how hard you try.