Imagine for a moment that somewhere in the middle of Texas there was a large foreign military base, say Chinese or Russian. Imagine that thousands of armed foreign troops were constantly patrolling American streets in military vehicles. Imagine they were here under the auspices of “keeping us safe” or “promoting democracy” or “protecting their strategic interests.”

Imagine that they operated outside of US law, and that the Constitution did not apply to them. Imagine that every now and then they made mistakes or acted on bad information and accidentally killed or terrorized innocent Americans, including women and children, most of the time with little to no repercussions or consequences. Imagine that they set up checkpoints on our soil and routinely searched and ransacked entire neighborhoods of homes. Imagine if Americans were fearful of these foreign troops, and overwhelmingly thought America would be better off without their presence.

Imagine if some Americans were so angry about them being in Texas that they actually joined together to fight them off, in defense of our soil and sovereignty, because leadership in government refused or were unable to do so. Imagine that those Americans were labeled terrorists or insurgents for their defensive actions, and routinely killed, or captured and tortured by the foreign troops on our land. Imagine that the occupiers’ attitude was that if they just killed enough Americans, the resistance would stop, but instead, for every American killed, ten more would take up arms against them, resulting in perpetual bloodshed. Imagine if most of the citizens of the foreign land also wanted these troops to return home. Imagine if they elected a leader who promised to bring them home and put an end to this horror.

Imagine if that leader changed his mind once he took office.

The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is as offensive to the people that live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas. We would not stand for it here, but we have had a globe-straddling empire and a very intrusive foreign policy for decades that incites a lot of hatred and resentment towards us.

According to our own CIA, our meddling in the Middle East was the prime motivation for the horrific attacks on 9/11. But instead of re-evaluating our foreign policy, we have simply escalated it. We had a right to go after those responsible for 9/11, to be sure, but why do so many Americans feel as if we have a right to a military presence in some 160 countries when we wouldn’t stand for even one foreign base on our soil, for any reason? These are not embassies, mind you, these are military installations. The new administration is not materially changing anything about this. Shuffling troops around and playing with semantics does not accomplish the goals of the American people, who simply want our men and women to come home. 50,000 troops left behind in Iraq is not conducive to peace any more than 50,000 Russian soldiers would be in the United States.

Shutting down military bases and ceasing to deal with other nations with threats and violence is not isolationism. It is the opposite. Opening ourselves up to friendship, honest trade and diplomacy is the foreign policy of peace and prosperity. It is the only foreign policy that will not bankrupt us in short order, as our current actions most definitely will. I share the disappointment of the American people in the foreign policy rhetoric coming from the administration. The sad thing is, our foreign policy WILL change eventually, as Rome’s did, when all budgetary and monetary tricks to fund it are exhausted.

Imagine!: speech written & given by Ron Paul
should you be a US citizen in support of Ron Paul: http://revolutionpac.com/defense

We have all witnessed a media syllabus unfold before our eyes these past few days, a demonstration of the paradigm that keeps the world locked into this false anti-terror paradigm, in which the terror is always manufactured by the people who claim to be fighting the terror. Do you get it yet? The only Muslim terrorists you ever hear about all work for the Mossad and the CIA.

You watched it. First Wolf Blitzer, the notorious Israeli agent anchorman, comes on CNN and announces that the Norway mass murders were done by Al-Qaeda, providing yet another reason, he says, why we should ramp up the War on Terror.

Shortly thereafter, when the mythmakers realize that story won’t fly, it is announced that the Norway massacre was carried out by some unknown party. Never, in any newspaper in the United States, is there a mention that the Norway atrocities were carried out by Israel, by Jews, by “friends” of Israel and Jews.

This is the implementation of cognitive dissonance at its finest, as the blurring of political categories keeps everyone confused. Jewish diversity at its best. CNN’s story about al-Qaeda doing the Norway murders is about as credible as Saddam having weapons of mass destruction, or Germans gassing 6 million Jews during a period of time, demographics has shown, when the Jewish population of Europe increased.

Uncountable TRILLIONS of dollars have been stolen by Israel, by Jews, by “friends” of Israel and the Jews, and continue to be stolen as we speak, in a million different ways, while anesthetized Americans find any excuse to look the other way, fearful of forfeiting their paychecks from whatever employer is facing the inevitable question: If I offend the Jews, will they put me out of business? Answer is: they will. And that’s why the United States is essentially out of business today: a hundred years of intense Jewish parasitism have totally erased any claim to morality Americans ever pretended to have.

Now, the host, our country, is about to expire, bled to death by those who worship the bottom line and don’t care about anything else. Congratulate yourself for the role you have played in all this, and the silence you have displayed while participating.

The young people killed in Norway were the finest, most caring and most intelligent, that Norway had to offer. Norway had recently gone on record as nourishing the Palestinians by recognizing their ambassador and criticizing Israel’s treatment of them publicly. Judging by the response in Israeli newspapers, Jews generally believe that Norway got what it deserved.

What does that mean?

Compare what happened right after 9/11 to the past week.

Remember the kneejerk reactions of the planted TV interviewees while 9/11 was happening? “Oh, it must have been Al-Qaida.” Worldwide Jewish media is still singing the same tune.

The murderous Norway caper pretty much blows away the remaining fragments over the long-discredited story that the 9/11 attacks were done by Muslims to provide the lame excuse for the War on Terror against the entire Islamic world. Can’t you get it through your heads? All the terror attacks — 9/11, Madrid, London, Bali, Mombasa, Yemen and now Norway, all of them false flag operations coordinated by the real axis of evil in the world: the Mossad, the CIA and MI-6, to convince the world that it is threatened by terror.

True, the world is threatened by terror. Only the people fighting terror are the ones manufacturing terror so they can fight it. This is a very Jewish philosophy, it’s what they do, it’s what they have always done and will continue to do.

But because the Jews own ALL the media in the world — ALL the media in the world, you heard it right; consider the distribution networks — you don’t hear that. You hear blind allegiance to the official version of events, or you will be ruined, if not killed.

The Norway psyop mass murders, in an epidemiological way, also resemble the recent public floggings of journalists Helen Thomas and Rick Sanchez, whose ordinary remarks about Jews earned them heaps of Jewish media scorn and more importantly, conveyed to the public that it would never be profitable to say anything about Jews. The Roman orator Cicero said almost the same thing almost two thousand years ago.

The underlying psyop message to the world from the Norway abomination is that if you actively work to oppose the Jews, you could be gunned down at any time by Jewish sayanim or mind-controlled Gentile slaves who are programmed or drugged to repress their human instincts and become solely an instrument of Jewish policy — which, in case you haven’t yet learned, Jewish policy is to kill or enslave every non Jew in the world. You can look it up. It’s in the Soncino Talmud (1929).

But then, that’s not such a change in the facts on the ground. People have always been getting killed for their political beliefs. Many writers have commented that assassination has been the one political tool that has governed American history more than anything else.

From Jack Ruby to Dylan Klebold. When you dig deeply, it seems like all the assassinations that ever happened were carried out by Jews, or by people operated by Jews. Consider that when you consider the Norway assassinations, 68 of them.

The policy of keeping silent, most Americans are afraid to contemplate, always eventually results in your own murder. It’s up to you to determine if you want to defend yourself and admit what’s really going on.

It’s checkout time for the Jews. Or, you can continue to take your cue from all those astute Jewish commentators who still insist the system can be fixed if you just accept their well-considered suggestions.

And for the non Jews, it’s seriously past time to ask an even more serious question. Now that we know this rancid system can’t be fixed, look yourself in the eye and ask yourself if this hollow, ravaged, insincere, oblivious, poisoned, and looted vestige of what America used to be is, and I mean this sincerely, even worth saving?

All America has become today in the world is a giant robotized Jewish war machine that kills people unjustly while its drugged and deluded populace looks the other way, refusing to admit they have become mindless puppets in a giant game show in which the host, picked at random from a giant pool of Jewish sayanim (many of whom are now federal judges), gets to say who lives or dies.

As Walter Cronkite used to say: “You Are There!”

By John Kaminski

pseudoskylax@gmail.com

http://johnkaminski.info/

Dagbladet.no confirms that the capital is hit by a bomb attack, which has killed more people.

Several people were killed in the attack , but damage is still unclear. – We do not know how many people have died, according to the Oslo police. Chief of Staff Einar Aas and Acting Police Chief Sveinung Sponheim oriented in the afternoon bomb attack at a press conference at the police station in Oslo. - This situation is very unclear and we now have one important message to the public: Get out of the city center and avoid large gatherings. Stay home.

Norway is under attack!: The arrest does not affect the police’s preparedness. – It will absolutely not cause any reduction in response, said Sponheim. He will not say anything about the identity or nationality of the man who has been arrested on Utøya.

So far, seven people confirmed dead after bomb attack in its ministries.

Shortly after it was fired at Labour Youth League summer camp at Utøya in Buskerud. More people are killed, police said, but it is still unclear how many. – We have received information that there may be about ten. But this is still very uncertain, says Bjorn Erik Sem Jackobsen, information manager at Nordre Buskerud Police District, told Dagbladet little before at 21

What you see now is only the beginning and more will come: Threats made at Al-Qaeda forum for the bomb in Oslo. Currently there is no clarity about the bombing of its ministries earlier today, especially in relation to who is behind it all. While no one has officially taken the blame for what most likely is an attack, there are several sites online now appeared sympathy for the attack and other threats against Norway.

On twitter account @ IntelTweet follows terror expert Evan Kohlmann movements of terrorist organization Al-Qaeda. The last hour, he has also brought out a number of disturbing messages that have been posted on the forums linked to al-Qaeda.

Among other things, the Al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Shamukh forum turned up threats to Norway from the user, “Amir Grozny” suspected of fighting with insurgents in Afghanistan. - The Prime Minister of Norway: You have only a few moments for you to remove your troops from the Necropolis of Khorasan , otherwise you will see blood flowing in the streets.

Also the notorious extremist Abu Suleiman al- Nasser has spoken out after news of the possible terrorist attack in Oslo. - Today, Norway was a target, which serves as a lesson and an example for the rest of the nations of Europe.

We have previously threatened with operations like “Battle in Stockholm,” and we demanded that European nations withdraw their forces, writes abu Suleiman said Kohlmann. The “Battle in Stockholm” refers abu Suleiman to earlier threats lodged against NATO .

Although this is not can be considered to assume responsibility for the bombing, Suleiman has his theories about why the attack took place.

When it comes to the reasons for attacking Norway … most important is the country’s participation in the occupation of Afghanistan, and insult our prophet. We say to them, you Shopping Cart for the demands of the mujahideen , because what you see now is only the beginning and more will come.

The first time I remember hearing the question “is it real?” was when I went as a young boy to see a traveling show put on by “professional wrestlers” one summer evening in the gym of the Forks River Elementary School in Elmwood, Tennessee.

The evidence that it was real was palpable: “They’re really hurting each other! That’s real blood! Look a’there! They can’t fake that!” On the other hand, there was clearly a script (or in today’s language, a “narrative”), with good guys to cheer and bad guys to boo.

But the most unusual and in some ways most interesting character in these dramas was the referee: Whenever the bad guy committed a gross and obvious violation of the “rules” — such as they were — like using a metal folding chair to smack the good guy in the head, the referee always seemed to be preoccupied with one of the cornermen, or looking the other way. Yet whenever the good guy — after absorbing more abuse and unfairness than any reasonable person could tolerate — committed the slightest infraction, the referee was all over him. The answer to the question “Is it real?” seemed connected to the question of whether the referee was somehow confused about his role: Was he too an entertainer?

That is pretty much the role now being played by most of the news media in refereeing the current wrestling match over whether global warming is “real,” and whether it has any connection to the constant dumping of 90 million tons of heat-trapping emissions into the Earth’s thin shell of atmosphere every 24 hours.

Admittedly, the contest over global warming is a challenge for the referee because it’s a tag-team match, a real free-for-all. In one corner of the ring are Science and Reason. In the other corner: Poisonous Polluters and Right-wing Ideologues.

The referee — in this analogy, the news media — seems confused about whether he is in the news business or the entertainment business. Is he responsible for ensuring a fair match? Or is he part of the show, selling tickets and building the audience? The referee certainly seems distracted: by Donald Trump, Charlie Sheen, the latest reality show — the list of serial obsessions is too long to enumerate here.

But whatever the cause, the referee appears not to notice that the Polluters and Ideologues are trampling all over the “rules” of democratic discourse. They are financing pseudoscientists whose job is to manufacture doubt about what is true and what is false; buying elected officials wholesale with bribes that the politicians themselves have made “legal” and can now be made in secret; spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year on misleading advertisements in the mass media; hiring four anti-climate lobbyists for every member of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. (Question: Would Michael Jordan have been a star if he was covered by four defensive players every step he took on the basketball court?)

This script, of course, is not entirely new: A half-century ago, when Science and Reason established the linkage between cigarettes and lung diseases, the tobacco industry hired actors, dressed them up as doctors, and paid them to look into television cameras and tell people that the linkage revealed in the Surgeon General’s Report was not real at all. The show went on for decades, with more Americans killed each year by cigarettes than all of the U.S. soldiers killed in all of World War II.

This time, the scientific consensus is even stronger. It has been endorsed by every National Academy of science of every major country on the planet, every major professional scientific society related to the study of global warming and 98 percent of climate scientists throughout the world. In the latest and most authoritative study by 3,000 of the very best scientific experts in the world, the evidence was judged “unequivocal.”

But wait! The good guys transgressed the rules of decorum, as evidenced in their private e-mails that were stolen and put on the Internet. The referee is all over it: Penalty! Go to your corner! And in their 3,000-page report, the scientists made some mistakes! Another penalty!

And if more of the audience is left confused about whether the climate crisis is real? Well, the show must go on. After all, it’s entertainment. There are tickets to be sold, eyeballs to glue to the screen.

Part of the script for this show was leaked to The New York Times as early as 1991. In an internal document, a consortium of the largest global-warming polluters spelled out their principal strategy: “Reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact.” Ever since, they have been sowing doubt even more effectively than the tobacco companies before them.

To sell their false narrative, the Polluters and Ideologues have found it essential to undermine the public’s respect for Science and Reason by attacking the integrity of the climate scientists. That is why the scientists are regularly accused of falsifying evidence and exaggerating its implications in a greedy effort to win more research grants, or secretly pursuing a hidden political agenda to expand the power of government. Such slanderous insults are deeply ironic: extremist ideologues — many financed or employed by carbon polluters — accusing scientists of being greedy extremist ideologues.

After World War II, a philosopher studying the impact of organized propaganda on the quality of democratic debate wrote, “The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false.”

Is the climate crisis real? Yes, of course it is. Pause for a moment to consider these events of just the past 12 months:

• Heat. According to NASA, 2010 was tied with 2005 as the hottest year measured since instruments were first used systematically in the 1880s. Nineteen countries set all-time high temperature records. One city in Pakistan, Mohenjo-Daro, reached 128.3 degrees Fahrenheit, the hottest temperature ever measured in an Asian city. Nine of the 10 hottest years in history have occurred in the last 13 years. The past decade was the hottest ever measured, even though half of that decade represented a “solar minimum” — the low ebb in the natural cycle of solar energy emanating from the sun.

• Floods. Megafloods displaced 20 million people in Pakistan, further destabilizing a nuclear-armed country; inundated an area of Australia larger than Germany and France combined; flooded 28 of the 32 districts that make up Colombia, where it has rained almost continuously for the past year; caused a “thousand-year” flood in my home city of Nashville; and led to all-time record flood levels in the Mississippi River Valley. Many places around the world are now experiencing larger and more frequent extreme downpours and snowstorms; last year’s “Snowmaggedon” in the northeastern United States is part of the same pattern, notwithstanding the guffaws of deniers.

• Drought. Historic drought and fires in Russia killed an estimated 56,000 people and caused wheat and other food crops in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan to be removed from the global market, contributing to a record spike in food prices. “Practically everything is burning,” Russian president Dmitry Medvedev declared. “What’s happening with the planet’s climate right now needs to be a wake-up call to all of us.” The drought level in much of Texas has been raised from “extreme” to “exceptional,” the highest category. This spring the majority of the counties in Texas were on fire, and Gov. Rick Perry requested a major disaster declaration for all but two of the state’s 254 counties. Arizona is now fighting the largest fire in its history. Since 1970, the fire season throughout the American West has increased by 78 days. Extreme droughts in central China and northern France are currently drying up reservoirs and killing crops.

• Melting Ice. An enormous mass of ice, four times larger than the island of Manhattan, broke off from northern Greenland last year and slipped into the sea. The acceleration of ice loss in both Greenland and Antarctica has caused another upward revision of global sea-level rise and the numbers of refugees expected from low-lying coastal areas. The Arctic ice cap, which reached a record low volume last year, has lost as much as 40 percent of its area during summer in just 30 years.

These extreme events are happening in real time. It is not uncommon for the nightly newscast to resemble a nature hike through the Book of Revelation. Yet most of the news media completely ignore how such events are connected to the climate crisis, or dismiss the connection as controversial; after all, there are scientists on one side of the debate and deniers on the other. A Fox News executive, in an internal e-mail to the network’s reporters and editors that later became public, questioned the “veracity of climate change data” and ordered the journalists to “refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question.”

But in the “real” world, the record droughts, fires, floods and mudslides continue to increase in severity and frequency. Leading climate scientists like Jim Hansen and Kevin Trenberth now say that events like these would almost certainly not be occurring without the influence of man-made global warming. And that’s a shift in the way they frame these impacts. Scientists used to caution that we were increasing the probability of such extreme events by “loading the dice” — pumping more carbon into the atmosphere. Now the scientists go much further, warning that we are “painting more dots on the dice.”  We are not only more likely to roll 12s; we are now rolling 13s and 14s. In other words, the biggest storms are not only becoming more frequent, they are getting bigger, stronger and more destructive.

“The only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change,” Munich Re, one of the two largest reinsurance companies in the world, recently stated. “The view that weather extremes are more frequent and intense due to global warming coincides with the current state of scientific knowledge.”

Many of the extreme and destructive events are the result of the rapid increase in the amount of heat energy from the sun that is trapped in the atmosphere, which is radically disrupting the planet’s water cycle. More heat energy evaporates more water into the air, and the warmer air holds a lot more moisture. This has huge consequences that we now see all around the world.

When a storm unleashes a downpour of rain or snow, the precipitation does not originate just in the part of the sky directly above where it falls. Storms reach out — sometimes as far as 2,000 miles — to suck in water vapor from large areas of the sky, including the skies above oceans, where water vapor has increased by four percent in just the last 30 years. (Scientists often compare this phenomenon to what happens in a bathtub when you open the drain; the water rushing out comes from the whole tub, not just from the part of the tub directly above the drain. And when the tub is filled with more water, more goes down the drain. In the same way, when the warmer sky is filled with a lot more water vapor, there are bigger downpours when a storm cell opens the “drain.”)

In many areas, these bigger downpours also mean longer periods between storms — at the same time that the extra heat in the air is also drying out the soil. That is part of the reason so many areas have been experiencing both record floods and deeper, longer-lasting droughts.

Moreover, the scientists have been warning us for quite some time — in increasingly urgent tones — that things will get much, much worse if we continue the reckless dumping of more and more heat-trapping pollution into the atmosphere. Drought is projected to spread across significant, highly populated areas of the globe throughout this century. Look at what the scientists say is in store for the Mediterranean nations. Should we care about the loss of Spain, France, Italy, the Balkans, Turkey, Tunisia? Look at what they say is in store for Mexico. Should we notice? Should we care?

Maybe it’s just easier, psychologically, to swallow the lie that these scientists who devote their lives to their work are actually greedy deceivers and left-wing extremists — and that we should instead put our faith in the pseudoscientists financed by large carbon polluters whose business plans depend on their continued use of the atmospheric commons as a place to dump their gaseous, heat-trapping waste without limit or constraint, free of charge.

The truth is this: What we are doing is functionally insane. If we do not change this pattern, we will condemn our children and all future generations to struggle with ecological curses for several millennia to come. Twenty percent of the global-warming pollution we spew into the sky each day will still be there 20,000 years from now!

We do have another choice. Renewable energy sources are coming into their own. Both solar and wind will soon produce power at costs that are competitive with fossil fuels; indications are that twice as many solar installations were erected worldwide last year as compared to 2009. The reductions in cost and the improvements in efficiency of photovoltaic cells over the past decade appear to be following an exponential curve that resembles a less dramatic but still startling version of what happened with computer chips over the past 50 years.

Enhanced geothermal energy is potentially a nearly limitless source of competitive electricity. Increased energy efficiency is already saving businesses money and reducing emissions significantly. New generations of biomass energy — ones that do not rely on food crops, unlike the mistaken strategy of making ethanol from corn — are extremely promising. Sustainable forestry and agriculture both make economic as well as environmental sense. And all of these options would spread even more rapidly if we stopped subsidizing Big Oil and Coal and put a price on carbon that reflected the true cost of fossil energy — either through the much-maligned cap-and-trade approach, or through a revenue-neutral tax swap.

All over the world, the grassroots movement in favor of changing public policies to confront the climate crisis and build a more prosperous, sustainable future is growing rapidly. But most governments remain paralyzed, unable to take action — even after years of volatile gasoline prices, repeated wars in the Persian Gulf, one energy-related disaster after another, and a seemingly endless stream of unprecedented and lethal weather disasters.

Continuing on our current course would be suicidal for global civilization. But the key question is: How do we drive home that fact in a democratic society when questions of truth have been converted into questions of power? When the distinction between what is true and what is false is being attacked relentlessly, and when the referee in the contest between truth and falsehood has become an entertainer selling tickets to a phony wrestling match?

The “wrestling ring” in this metaphor is the conversation of democracy. It used to be called the “public square.” In ancient Athens, it was the Agora. In the Roman Republic, it was the Forum. In the Egypt of the recent Arab Spring, “Tahrir Square” was both real and metaphorical — encompassing Facebook, Twitter, Al-Jazeera and texting.

In the America of the late-18th century, the conversation that led to our own “Spring” took place in printed words: pamphlets, newsprint, books, the “Republic of Letters.” It represented the fullest flower of the Enlightenment, during which the oligarchic power of the monarchies, the feudal lords and the Medieval Church was overthrown and replaced with a new sovereign: the Rule of Reason.

The public square that gave birth to the new consciousness of the Enlightenment emerged in the dozen generations following the invention of the printing press — “the Gutenberg Galaxy,” the scholar Marshall McLuhan called it — a space in which the conversation of democracy was almost equally accessible to every literate person. Individuals could both find the knowledge that had previously been restricted to elites and contribute their own ideas.

Ideas that found resonance with others rose in prominence much the way Google searches do today, finding an ever larger audience and becoming a source of political power for individuals with neither wealth nor force of arms. Thomas Paine, to take one example, emigrated from England to Philadelphia with no wealth, no family connections and no power other than that which came from his ability to think and write clearly — yet his Common Sense became the Harry Potter of Revolutionary America. The “public interest” mattered, was actively discussed and pursued.

But the “public square” that gave birth to America has been transformed beyond all recognition. The conversation that matters most to the shaping of the “public mind” now takes place on television. Newspapers and magazines are in decline. The Internet, still in its early days, will one day support business models that make true journalism profitable — but up until now, the only successful news websites aggregate content from struggling print publications. Web versions of the newspapers themselves are, with few exceptions, not yet making money. They bring to mind the classic image of Wile E. Coyote running furiously in midair just beyond the edge of the cliff, before plummeting to the desert floor far beneath him.

The average American, meanwhile, is watching television an astonishing five hours a day. In the average household, at least one television set is turned on more than eight hours a day. Moreover, approximately 75 percent of those using the Internet frequently watch television at the same time that they are online.

Unlike access to the “public square” of early America, access to television requires large amounts of money. Thomas Paine could walk out of his front door in Philadelphia and find a dozen competing, low-cost print shops within blocks of his home. Today, if he traveled to the nearest TV station, or to the headquarters of nearby Comcast — the dominant television provider in America — and tried to deliver his new ideas to the American people, he would be laughed off the premises. The public square that used to be a commons has been refeudalized, and the gatekeepers charge large rents for the privilege of communicating to the American people over the only medium that really affects their thinking. “Citizens” are now referred to more commonly as “consumers” or “the audience.”

That is why up to 80 percent of the campaign budgets for candidates in both major political parties is devoted to the purchase of 30-second TV ads. Since the rates charged for these commercials increase each year, the candidates are forced to raise more and more money in each two-year campaign cycle.

Of course, the only reliable sources from which such large sums can be raised continuously are business lobbies. Organized labor, a shadow of its former self, struggles to compete, and individuals are limited by law to making small contributions. During the 2008 campaign, there was a bubble of hope that Internet-based fundraising might even the scales, but in the end, Democrats as well as Republicans relied far more on traditional sources of large contributions. Moreover, the recent deregulation of unlimited — and secret — donations by wealthy corporations has made the imbalance even worse.

In the new ecology of political discourse, special-interest contributors of the large sums of money now required for the privilege of addressing voters on a wholesale basis are not squeamish about asking for the quo they expect in return for their quid. Politicians who don’t acquiesce don’t get the money they need to be elected and re-elected. And the impact is doubled when special interests make clear — usually bluntly — that the money they are withholding will go instead to opponents who are more than happy to pledge the desired quo. Politicians have been racing to the bottom for some time, and are presently tunneling to new depths. It is now commonplace for congressmen and senators first elected decades ago — as I was — to comment in private that the whole process has become unbelievably crass, degrading and horribly destructive to the core values of American democracy.

Largely as a result, the concerns of the wealthiest individuals and corporations routinely trump the concerns of average Americans and small businesses. There are a ridiculously large number of examples: eliminating the inheritance tax paid by the wealthiest one percent of families is considered a much higher priority than addressing the suffering of the millions of long-term unemployed; Wall Street’s interest in legalizing gambling in trillions of dollars of “derivatives” was considered way more important than protecting the integrity of the financial system and the interests of middle-income home buyers. It’s a long list.

Almost every group organized to promote and protect the “public interest” has been backpedaling and on the defensive. By sharp contrast, when a coalition of powerful special interests sets out to manipulate U.S. policy, their impact can be startling — and the damage to the true national interest can be devastating.

In 2002, for example, the feverish desire to invade Iraq required convincing the American people that Saddam Hussein was somehow responsible for attacking the United States on September 11th, 2001, and that he was preparing to attack us again, perhaps with nuclear weapons. When the evidence — the “facts” — stood in the way of that effort to shape the public mind, they were ridiculed, maligned and ignored. Behind the scenes, the intelligence was manipulated and the public was intentionally deceived. Allies were pressured to adopt the same approach with their publics. A recent inquiry in the U.K. confirmed this yet again. “We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence,” Maj. Gen. Michael Laurie testified. “To make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence, the wording was developed with care.” Why? As British intelligence put it, the overthrow of Saddam was “a prize because it could give new security to oil supplies.”

That goal — the real goal — could have been debated on its own terms. But as Bush administration officials have acknowledged, a truly candid presentation would not have resulted in sufficient public support for the launching of a new war. They knew that because they had studied it and polled it. So they manipulated the debate, downplayed the real motive for the invasion, and made a different case to the public — one based on falsehoods.

And the “referee” — the news media — looked the other way. Some, like Fox News, were hyperactive cheerleaders. Others were intimidated into going along by the vitriol heaped on any who asked inconvenient questions. (They know it; many now acknowledge it, sheepishly and apologetically.)

Senators themselves fell, with a few honorable exceptions, into the same two camps. A few weeks before the United States invaded Iraq, the late Robert Byrd — God rest his soul — thundered on the Senate floor about the pitiful quality of the debate over the choice between war and peace: “Yet, this Chamber is, for the most part, silent — ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing.”

The chamber was silent, in part, because many senators were somewhere else — attending cocktail parties and receptions, largely with special-interest donors, raising money to buy TV ads for their next campaigns. Nowadays, in fact, the scheduling of many special-interest fundraisers mirrors the schedule of votes pending in the House and Senate.

By the time we invaded Iraq, polls showed, nearly three-quarters of the American people were convinced that the person responsible for the planes flying into the World Trade Center Towers was indeed Saddam Hussein. The rest is history — though, as Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Because of that distortion of the truth in the past, we are still in Iraq; and because the bulk of our troops and intelligence assets were abruptly diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq, we are also still in Afghanistan.

In the same way, because the banks had their way with Congress when it came to gambling on unregulated derivatives and recklessly endangering credit markets with subprime mortgages, we still have almost double-digit unemployment, historic deficits, Greece and possibly other European countries teetering on the edge of default, and the threat of a double-dip recession. Even the potential default of the United States of America is now being treated by many politicians and too many in the media as yet another phony wrestling match, a political game. Are the potential economic consequences of a U.S. default “real”? Of course they are! Have we gone completely nuts?

We haven’t gone nuts — but the “conversation of democracy” has become so deeply dysfunctional that our ability to make intelligent collective decisions has been seriously impaired. Throughout American history, we relied on the vibrancy of our public square — and the quality of our democratic discourse — to make better decisions than most nations in the history of the world. But we are now routinely making really bad decisions that completely ignore the best available evidence of what is true and what is false. When the distinction between truth and falsehood is systematically attacked without shame or consequence — when a great nation makes crucially important decisions on the basis of completely false information that is no longer adequately filtered through the fact-checking function of a healthy and honest public discussion — the public interest is severely damaged.

That is exactly what is happening with U.S. decisions regarding the climate crisis. The best available evidence demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that the reckless spewing of global-warming pollution in obscene quantities into the atmospheric commons is having exactly the consequences long predicted by scientists who have analyzed the known facts according to the laws of physics.

The emergence of the climate crisis seems sudden only because of a relatively recent discontinuity in the relationship between human civilization and the planet’s ecological system. In the past century, we have quadrupled global population while relying on the burning of carbon-based fuels — coal, oil and gas — for 85 percent of the world’s energy. We are also cutting and burning forests that would otherwise help remove some of the added CO2 from the atmosphere, and have converted agriculture to an industrial model that also runs on carbon-based fuels and strip-mines carbon-rich soils.

The cumulative result is a radically new reality — and since human nature makes us vulnerable to confusing the unprecedented with the improbable, it naturally seems difficult to accept. Moreover, since this new reality is painful to contemplate, and requires big changes in policy and behavior that are at the outer limit of our ability, it is all too easy to fall into the psychological state of denial. As with financial issues like subprime mortgages and credit default swaps, the climate crisis can seem too complex to worry about, especially when the shills for the polluters constantly claim it’s all a hoax anyway. And since the early impacts of climatic disruption are distributed globally, they masquerade as an abstraction that is safe to ignore.

These vulnerabilities, rooted in our human nature, are being manipulated by the tag-team of Polluters and Ideologues who are trying to deceive us. And the referee — the news media — is once again distracted. As with the invasion of Iraq, some are hyperactive cheerleaders for the deception, while others are intimidated into complicity, timidity and silence by the astonishing vitriol heaped upon those who dare to present the best evidence in a professional manner. Just as TV networks who beat the drums of war prior to the Iraq invasion were rewarded with higher ratings, networks now seem reluctant to present the truth about the link between carbon pollution and global warming out of fear that conservative viewers will change the channel — and fear that they will receive a torrent of flame e-mails from deniers.

Many politicians, unfortunately, also fall into the same two categories: those who cheerlead for the deniers and those who cower before them. The latter group now includes several candidates for the Republican presidential nomination who have felt it necessary to abandon their previous support for action on the climate crisis; at least one has been apologizing profusely to the deniers and begging for their forgiveness.

“Intimidation” and “timidity” are connected by more than a shared word root. The first is designed to produce the second. As Yeats wrote almost a century ago, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

Barack Obama’s approach to the climate crisis represents a special case that requires careful analysis. His election was accompanied by intense hope that many things in need of change would change. Some things have, but others have not. Climate policy, unfortunately, is in the second category. Why?

First of all, anyone who honestly examines the incredible challenges confronting President Obama when he took office has to feel enormous empathy for him: the Great Recession, with the high unemployment and the enormous public and private indebtedness it produced; two seemingly interminable wars; an intractable political opposition whose true leaders — entertainers masquerading as pundits — openly declared that their objective was to ensure that the new president failed; a badly broken Senate that is almost completely paralyzed by the threat of filibuster and is controlled lock, stock and barrel by the oil and coal industries; a contingent of nominal supporters in Congress who are indentured servants of the same special interests that control most of the Republican Party; and a ferocious, well-financed and dishonest campaign poised to vilify anyone who dares offer leadership for the reduction of global-warming pollution.

In spite of these obstacles, President Obama included significant climate-friendly initiatives in the economic stimulus package he presented to Congress during his first month in office. With the skillful leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and committee chairmen Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, he helped secure passage of a cap-and-trade measure in the House a few months later. He implemented historic improvements in fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles, and instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to move forward on the regulation of global-warming pollution under the Clean Air Act. He appointed many excellent men and women to key positions, and they, in turn, have made hundreds of changes in environmental and energy policy that have helped move the country forward slightly on the climate issue. During his first six months, he clearly articulated the link between environmental security, economic security and national security — making the case that a national commitment to renewable energy could simultaneously reduce unemployment, dependence on foreign oil and vulnerability to the disruption of oil markets dominated by the Persian Gulf reserves. And more recently, as the issue of long-term debt has forced discussion of new revenue, he proposed the elimination of unnecessary and expensive subsidies for oil and gas.

But in spite of these and other achievements, President Obama has thus far failed to use the bully pulpit to make the case for bold action on climate change. After successfully passing his green stimulus package, he did nothing to defend it when Congress decimated its funding. After the House passed cap and trade, he did little to make passage in the Senate a priority. Senate advocates — including one Republican — felt abandoned when the president made concessions to oil and coal companies without asking for anything in return. He has also called for a massive expansion of oil drilling in the United States, apparently in an effort to defuse criticism from those who argue speciously that “drill, baby, drill” is the answer to our growing dependence on foreign oil.

The failure to pass legislation to limit global-warming pollution ensured that the much-anticipated Copenhagen summit on a global treaty in 2009 would also end in failure. The president showed courage in attending the summit and securing a rhetorical agreement to prevent a complete collapse of the international process, but that’s all it was — a rhetorical agreement. During the final years of the Bush-Cheney administration, the rest of the world was waiting for a new president who would aggressively tackle the climate crisis — and when it became clear that there would be no real change from the Bush era, the agenda at Copenhagen changed from “How do we complete this historic breakthrough?” to “How can we paper over this embarrassing disappointment?”

Some concluded from the failure in Copenhagen that it was time to give up on the entire U.N.-sponsored process for seeking an international agreement to reduce both global-warming pollution and deforestation. Ultimately, however, the only way to address the climate crisis will be with a global agreement that in one way or another puts a price on carbon. And whatever approach is eventually chosen, the U.S. simply must provide leadership by changing our own policy.

Yet without presidential leadership that focuses intensely on making the public aware of the reality we face, nothing will change. The real power of any president, as Richard Neustadt wrote, is “the power to persuade.” Yet President Obama has never presented to the American people the magnitude of the climate crisis. He has simply not made the case for action. He has not defended the science against the ongoing, withering and dishonest attacks. Nor has he provided a presidential venue for the scientific community — including our own National Academy — to bring the reality of the science before the public.

Here is the core of it: we are destroying the climate balance that is essential to the survival of our civilization. This is not a distant or abstract threat; it is happening now. The United States is the only nation that can rally a global effort to save our future. And the president is the only person who can rally the United States.

Many political advisers assume that a president has to deal with the world of politics as he finds it, and that it is unwise to risk political capital on an effort to actually lead the country toward a new understanding of the real threats and real opportunities we face. Concentrate on the politics of re-election, they say. Don’t take chances.

All that might be completely understandable and make perfect sense in a world where the climate crisis wasn’t “real.” Those of us who support and admire President Obama understand how difficult the politics of this issue are in the context of the massive opposition to doing anything at all — or even to recognizing that there is a crisis. And assuming that the Republicans come to their senses and avoid nominating a clown, his re-election is likely to involve a hard-fought battle with high stakes for the country. All of his supporters understand that it would be self-defeating to weaken Obama and heighten the risk of another step backward. Even writing an article like this one carries risks; opponents of the president will excerpt the criticism and strip it of context.

But in this case, the President has reality on his side. The scientific consensus is far stronger today than at any time in the past. Here is the truth: The Earth is round; Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11; Elvis is dead; Obama was born in the United States; and the climate crisis is real. It is time to act.

Those who profit from the unconstrained pollution that is the primary cause of climate change are determined to block our perception of this reality. They have help from many sides: from the private sector, which is now free to make unlimited and secret campaign contributions; from politicians who have conflated their tenures in office with the pursuit of the people’s best interests; and — tragically — from the press itself, which treats deception and falsehood on the same plane as scientific fact, and calls it objective reporting of alternative opinions.

All things are not equally true. It is time to face reality. We ignored reality in the marketplace and nearly destroyed the world economic system. We are likewise ignoring reality in the environment, and the consequences could be several orders of magnitude worse. Determining what is real can be a challenge in our culture, but in order to make wise choices in the presence of such grave risks, we must use common sense and the rule of reason in coming to an agreement on what is true.

So how can we make it happen? How can we as individuals make a difference? In five basic ways:

First, become a committed advocate for solving the crisis. You can start with something simple: Speak up whenever the subject of climate arises. When a friend or acquaintance expresses doubt that the crisis is real, or that it’s some sort of hoax, don’t let the opportunity pass to put down your personal marker. The civil rights revolution may have been driven by activists who put their lives on the line, but it was partly won by average Americans who began to challenge racist comments in everyday conversations.

Second, deepen your commitment by making consumer choices that reduce energy use and reduce your impact on the environment. The demand by individuals for change in the marketplace has already led many businesses to take truly significant steps to reduce their global-warming pollution. Some of the corporate changes are more symbolic than real — “green-washing,” as it’s called — but a surprising amount of real progress is taking place. Walmart, to pick one example, is moving aggressively to cut its carbon footprint by 20 million metric tons, in part by pressuring its suppliers to cut down on wasteful packaging and use lower-carbon transportation alternatives. Reward those companies that are providing leadership.

Third, join an organization committed to action on this issue. The Alliance for Climate Protection (climateprotect.org), which I chair, has grassroots action plans for the summer and fall that spell out lots of ways to fight effectively for the policy changes we need. We can also enable you to host a slide show in your community on solutions to the climate crisis — presented by one of the 4,000 volunteers we have trained. Invite your friends and neighbors to come and then enlist them to join the cause.

Fourth, contact your local newspapers and television stations when they put out claptrap on climate — and let them know you’re fed up with their stubborn and cowardly resistance to reporting the facts of this issue. One of the main reasons they are so wimpy and irresponsible about global warming is that they’re frightened of the reaction they get from the deniers when they report the science objectively. So let them know that deniers are not the only ones in town with game. Stay on them! Don’t let up! It’s true that some media outlets are getting instructions from their owners on this issue, and that others are influenced by big advertisers, but many of them are surprisingly responsive to a genuine outpouring of opinion from their viewers and readers. It is way past time for the ref to do his job.

Finally, and above all, don’t give up on the political system. Even though it is rigged by special interests, it is not so far gone that candidates and elected officials don’t have to pay attention to persistent, engaged and committed individuals. President Franklin Roosevelt once told civil rights leaders who were pressing him for change that he agreed with them about the need for greater equality for black Americans. Then, as the story goes, he added with a wry smile, “Now go out and make me do it.”

To make our elected leaders take action to solve the climate crisis, we must forcefully communicate the following message: “I care a lot about global warming; I am paying very careful attention to the way you vote and what you say about it; if you are on the wrong side, I am not only going to vote against you, I will work hard to defeat you — regardless of party. If you are on the right side, I will work hard to elect you.”

Why do you think President Obama and Congress changed their game on “don’t ask, don’t tell?” It happened because enough Americans delivered exactly that tough message to candidates who wanted their votes. When enough people care passionately enough to drive that message home on the climate crisis, politicians will look at their hole cards, and enough of them will change their game to make all the difference we need.

This is not naive; trust me on this. It may take more individual voters to beat the Polluters and Ideologues now than it once did — when special-interest money was less dominant. But when enough people speak this way to candidates, and convince them that they are dead serious about it, change will happen — both in Congress and in the White House. As the great abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass once observed, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.”

What is now at risk in the climate debate is nothing less than our ability to communicate with one another according to a protocol that binds all participants to seek reason and evaluate facts honestly. The ability to perceive reality is a prerequisite for self-governance. Wishful thinking and denial lead to dead ends. When it works, the democratic process helps clear the way toward reality, by exposing false argumentation to the best available evidence. That is why the Constitution affords such unique protection to freedom of the press and of speech.

The climate crisis, in reality, is a struggle for the soul of America. It is about whether or not we are still capable — given the ill health of our democracy and the current dominance of wealth over reason — of perceiving important and complex realities clearly enough to promote and protect the sustainable well-being of the many. What hangs in the balance is the future of civilization as we know it.

This story is from Rolling Stone issue 1134/1135, available on newsstands and through Rolling Stone

There is nothing more sacred to the maintenance of democracy than a free press. Access to comprehensive, accurate and quality information is essential to the manifestation of Socratic citizenship – the society characterized by a civically engaged, well-informed and socially invested populace. Thus, to the degree that access to quality information is willfully or unintentionally obstructed, democracy itself is degraded.

It is ironic that in the era of 24-hour cable news networks and “reality” programming, the news-to-fluff ratio and overall veracity of information has declined precipitously. Take the fact Americans now spend on average about 50 hours a week using various forms of media, while at the same time cultural literacy levels hover just above the gutter. Not only does mainstream media now tolerate gross misrepresentations of fact and history by public figures (highlighted most recently by Sarah Palin’s ludicrous depiction of Paul Revere’s ride), but many media actually legitimize these displays. Pause for a moment and ask yourself what it means that the world’s largest, most profitable and most popular news channel passes off as fact every whim, impulse and outrageously incompetent analysis of its so-called reporters. How did we get here? Take the enormous amount of misinformation that is taken for truth by Fox audiences: the belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and that he was in on 9/11, the belief that climate change isn’t real and/or man-made, the belief that Barack Obama is Muslim and wasn’t born in the United States, the insistence that all Arabs are Muslim and all Muslims are terrorists, the inexplicable perceptions that immigrants are both too lazy to work and are about to steal your job. All of these claims are demonstrably false, yet Fox News viewers will maintain their veracity with incredible zeal. Why? Is it simply that we have lost our respect for knowledge?

My curiosity about this question compelled me to sit down and document the most oft-used methods by which willful ignorance has been turned into dogma by Fox News and other propagandists disguised as media. The techniques I identify here also help to explain the simultaneously powerful identification the Fox media audience has with the network, as well as their ardent, reflexive defenses of it.

The good news is that the more conscious you are of these techniques, the less likely they are to work on you. The bad news is that those reading this article are probably the least in need in of it.

1. Panic Mongering. This goes one step beyond simple fear mongering. With panic mongering, there is never a break from the fear. The idea is to terrify and terrorize the audience during every waking moment. From Muslims to swine flu to recession to homosexuals to immigrants to the rapture itself, the belief over at Fox seems to be that if your fight-or-flight reflexes aren’t activated, you aren’t alive. This of course raises the question: why terrorize your own audience? Because it is the fastest way to bypasses the rational brain. In other words, when people are afraid, they don’t think rationally. And when they can’t think rationally, they’ll believe anything.

2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem. Fox does not like to waste time debating the idea. Instead, they prefer a quicker route to dispensing with their opponents: go after the person’s credibility, motives, intelligence, character, or, if necessary, sanity. No category of character assassination is off the table and no offense is beneath them. Fox and like-minded media figures also use ad hominem attacks not just against individuals, but entire categories of people in an effort to discredit the ideas of every person who is seen to fall into that category, e.g. “liberals,” “hippies,” “progressives” etc. This form of argument – if it can be called that – leaves no room for genuine debate over ideas, so by definition, it is undemocratic. Not to mention just plain crass.

3. Projection/Flipping. This one is frustrating for the viewer who is trying to actually follow the argument. It involves taking whatever underhanded tactic you’re using and then accusing your opponent of doing it to you first. We see this frequently in the immigration discussion, where anti-racists are accused of racism, or in the climate change debate, where those who argue for human causes of the phenomenon are accused of not having science or facts on their side. It’s often called upon when the media host finds themselves on the ropes in the debate.

4. Rewriting History. This is another way of saying that propagandists make the facts fit their worldview. The Downing Street Memos on the Iraq war were a classic example of this on a massive scale, but it happens daily and over smaller issues as well. A recent case in point is Palin’s mangling of the Paul Revere ride, which Fox reporters have bent over backward to validate. Why lie about the historical facts, even when they can be demonstrated to be false? Well, because dogmatic minds actually find it easier to reject reality than to update their viewpoints. They will literally rewrite history if it serves their interests. And they’ll often speak with such authority that the casual viewer will be tempted to question what they knew as fact.

5. Scapegoating/Othering. This works best when people feel insecure or scared. It’s technically a form of both fear mongering and diversion, but it is so pervasive that it deserves its own category. The simple idea is that if you can find a group to blame for social or economic problems, you can then go on to a) justify violence/dehumanization of them, and b) subvert responsibility for any harm that may befall them as a result.

6. Conflating Violence With Power and Opposition to Violence With Weakness. This is more of what I’d call a “meta-frame” (a deeply held belief) than a media technique, but it is manifested in the ways news is reported constantly. For example, terms like “show of strength” are often used to describe acts of repression, such as those by the Iranian regime against the protesters in the summer of 2009. There are several concerning consequences of this form of conflation. First, it has the potential to make people feel falsely emboldened by shows of force – it can turn wars into sporting events. Secondly, especially in the context of American politics, displays of violence – whether manifested in war or debates about the Second Amendment – are seen as noble and (in an especially surreal irony) moral. Violence become synonymous with power, patriotism and piety.

7. Bullying. This is a favorite technique of several Fox commentators. That it continues to be employed demonstrates that it seems to have some efficacy. Bullying and yelling works best on people who come to the conversation with a lack of confidence, either in themselves or their grasp of the subject being discussed. The bully exploits this lack of confidence by berating the guest into submission or compliance. Often, less self-possessed people will feel shame and anxiety when being berated and the quickest way to end the immediate discomfort is to cede authority to the bully. The bully is then able to interpret that as a “win.”

8. Confusion. As with the preceding technique, this one works best on an audience that is less confident and self-possessed. The idea is to deliberately confuse the argument, but insist that the logic is airtight and imply that anyone who disagrees is either too dumb or too fanatical to follow along. Less independent minds will interpret the confusion technique as a form of sophisticated thinking, thereby giving the user’s claims veracity in the viewer’s mind.

9. Populism. This is especially popular in election years. The speakers identifies themselves as one of “the people” and the target of their ire as an enemy of the people. The opponent is always “elitist” or a “bureaucrat” or a “government insider” or some other category that is not the people. The idea is to make the opponent harder to relate to and harder to empathize with. It often goes hand in hand with scapegoating. A common logical fallacy with populism bias when used by the right is that accused “elitists” are almost always liberals – a category of political actors who, by definition, advocate for non-elite groups.

10. Invoking the Christian God. This is similar to othering and populism. With morality politics, the idea is to declare yourself and your allies as patriots, Christians and “real Americans” (those are inseparable categories in this line of thinking) and anyone who challenges them as not. Basically, God loves Fox and Republicans and America. And hates taxes and anyone who doesn’t love those other three things. Because the speaker has been benedicted by God to speak on behalf of all Americans, any challenge is perceived as immoral. It’s a cheap and easy technique used by all totalitarian entities from states to cults.

11. Saturation. There are three components to effective saturation: being repetitive, being ubiquitous and being consistent. The message must be repeated cover and over, it must be everywhere and it must be shared across commentators: e.g. “Saddam has WMD.” Veracity and hard data have no relationship to the efficacy of saturation. There is a psychological effect of being exposed to the same message over and over, regardless of whether it’s true or if it even makes sense, e.g., “Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States.” If something is said enough times, by enough people, many will come to accept it as truth. Another example is Fox’s own slogan of “Fair and Balanced.”

12. Disparaging Education. There is an emerging and disturbing lack of reverence for education and intellectualism in many mainstream media discourses. In fact, in some circles (e.g. Fox), higher education is often disparaged as elitist. Having a university credential is perceived by these folks as not a sign of credibility, but of a lack of it. In fact, among some commentators, evidence of intellectual prowess is treated snidely and as anti-American. The disdain for education and other evidence of being trained in critical thinking are direct threats to a hive-mind mentality, which is why they are so viscerally demeaned.

13. Guilt by Association. This is a favorite of Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart, both of whom have used it to decimate the careers and lives of many good people. Here’s how it works: if your cousin’s college roommate’s uncle’s ex-wife attended a dinner party back in 1984 with Gorbachev’s niece’s ex-boyfriend’s sister, then you, by extension are a communist set on destroying America. Period.

14. Diversion. This is where, when on the ropes, the media commentator suddenly takes the debate in a weird but predictable direction to avoid accountability. This is the point in the discussion where most Fox anchors start comparing the opponent to Saul Alinsky or invoking ACORN or Media Matters, in a desperate attempt to win through guilt by association. Or they’ll talk about wanting to focus on “moving forward,” as though by analyzing the current state of things or God forbid, how we got to this state of things, you have no regard for the future. Any attempt to bring the discussion back to the issue at hand will likely be called deflection, an ironic use of the technique of projection/flipping.

In debating some of these tactics with colleagues and friends, I have also noticed that the Fox viewership seems to be marked by a sort of collective personality disorder whereby the viewer feels almost as though they’ve been let into a secret society. Something about their affiliation with the network makes them feel privileged and this affinity is likely what drives the viewers to defend the network so vehemently. They seem to identify with it at a core level, because it tells them they are special and privy to something the rest of us don’t have. It’s akin to the loyalty one feels by being let into a private club or a gang. That effect is also likely to make the propaganda more powerful, because it goes mostly unquestioned.

In considering these tactics and their possible effects on American public discourse, it is important to note that historically, those who’ve genuinely accessed truth have never berated those who did not. You don’t get honored by history when you beat up your opponent: look at Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln. These men did not find the need to engage in othering, ad homeinum attacks, guilt by association or bullying. This is because when a person has accessed a truth, they are not threatened by the opposing views of others. This reality reveals the righteous indignation of people like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity as a symptom of untruth. These individuals are hostile and angry precisely because they don’t feel confident in their own veracity. And in general, the more someone is losing their temper in a debate and the more intolerant they are of listening to others, the more you can be certain they do not know what they’re talking about.

One final observation. Fox audiences, birthers and Tea Partiers often defend their arguments by pointing to the fact that a lot of people share the same perceptions. This is a reasonable point to the extent that Murdoch’s News Corporation reaches a far larger audience than any other single media outlet. But, the fact that a lot of people believe something is not necessarily a sign that it’s true; it’s just a sign that it’s been effectively marketed.

As honest, fair and truly intellectual debate degrades before the eyes of the global media audience, the quality of American democracy degrades along with it.

Dr. Cynthia Boaz is assistant professor of political science at Sonoma State University, where her areas of expertise include quality of democracy, nonviolent struggle, civil resistance and political communication and media. She is also an affiliated scholar at the UNESCO Chair of Philosophy for Peace International Master in Peace, Conflict, and Development Studies at Universitat Jaume I in Castellon, Spain. Additionally, she is an analyst and consultant on nonviolent action, with special emphasis on the Iran and Burma cases. She is vice president of the Metta Center for Nonviolence and on the board of Project Censored and the Media Freedom Foundation. Dr. Boaz is also a contributing writer and adviser to Truthout.org and associate editor of Peace and Change Journal.First posted at Truthout

Via: lizziesliberation

Subverted Nation – It seems that people are having a hard time understanding how the deception works when it comes to jews and their agents.  Especially when people have been getting their information from these jews and jewish agents for such a long time, they come to a website like mine with a warped mentality, not unlike that of a child who is unable to discern fact from fiction.  They have many wild fantasies and misconceptions based on distorted information, and it is really a sad state of affairs.

Many people will argue (and boy do they ever try to), that Alex Jones, Mike Rivero, and other shills are “waking people up” to the problems we face. They will stamp their feet and scream that these shills have opened so many eyes to “government corruption” or to the “911 deception” or to “zionists” and a whole host of other topics, so surely, they must be some good!  The problem is, many of you don’t know how the deception works, and fail to realize that people are NOT “waking up” to anything, and instead, they are being put BACK TO SLEEP by these dream weavers.

As someone who had the opportunity to learn about close up and stage magic extensively, it’s actually quite easy to spot a ruse, a sleight, or misdirection.  As is the case with a magician performing his feats, these charlatans are fooling the masses into looking the wrong direction at the right time, but only the trained eye is able to pick up on it.  In magic, there are many things used to ensure the proper outcome of astounding the onlookers, and the reason these things work is this.  Often times the methods used to perform some of the most amazing feats, are just so down right simple that your mind will never catch it.

That’s right.  The methods used to deceive and manipulate are often so simple that your “logical” mind just simply can not pick conceive them. Sometimes the methods are not just simple, but balance on being so ridiculously absurd, that your “educated” mind is just not capable of decoding it. The methods of deception often rely on such blatant and obvious distortions that you would simply overlook them! That is IF and only IF, you should even come close to discovering them.

The magician, like many of the shills who purport to teach you the “truth”, already know that your perception, and your preconceived notions about reality, will work in their favor to help them produce the desired outcome.  In the case of the magician, he is only looking to “fool” you to entertain you; whereas in the case of the shill, he is looking to purposely make a fool out of you. The magician wants you to enjoy his chicanery, to see him as fun and entertaining.  The magician has a vested interest in making sure he doesn’t make you FEEL LIKE A FOOL because he tricked you, and in this, the shill and the magician share the same interest.

With websites like SN, you will often find that there is no room for debate. There are no forums for you to spew as you wish.  There is nobody that cares about your “opinion” or your “feelings” or your “ideas” or your “thoughts” or your “beliefs” relating to the facts, because SN is simply interested in sharing the FACTS, which do not even exist in the same realm as these types offallacies.  Not every poster’s comment is accepted, but unlike WRH, you don’t have to pay to comment.  All you have to do to get one published is tow the right line, stay focused solely on the jew, and support the message of the site.

The “politically correct” behaviors, fancy dress, and fake smile are often signs of deceivers, which many of you fail to notice.  The reason you fail to notice them is two fold. Your programming since a very early age, and your preconceived notions about what is “good” and “bad”.  Many think “cursing is bad, can’t listen to that guy” and thus you will never escape from the illusion you live in. Or maybe you think “he won’t allow my opinion, what happened to democracy” and thus you are for SN to prop up the things that are destroying you. Opinions have no weight in light of the facts presented, and as such are not needed or warranted in any way, shape, or form.

Fortunately for animals in nature, there are signs which help warn them of the danger of other creatures.  There are many insects which are brightly colored, and the color red is almost a sure sign of something poisonous if eaten. Some may carry giant spikes, or have huge claws and sharp teeth with a vicious scowl on their face. In nature, many brightly colored patterns on animals are meant to warn predators not to eat them, but also to warn all animals that they might be dangerous.

Also fortunate for humans, the jew comes with markers that should be like warning signs for us.  Certain traits and features that let us know these creatures are the poisonous ones, and should not be allowed amongst us, lest we would like to find ourselves poisoned and dying. The jews have many features like this, which will indeed be covered in upcoming articles. Things like the hook nose, the crooked eye balls, the joker smile, the weak pointy chin, the sloped forehead etc. Again, your perception and preconceived notions of your own reality, largely controlled and taught to you by the jew, have caused you to overlook these things as well.

SN doesn’t just try to beat you down with thoughts and news about how you are being screwed on a daily basis. No sirree! SN attempts to help show you how the deception works, how to identify the enemy, how to stay focused on the right target, who to blame, who these enemy’s are, and what to do about it all. Rather than beat around the bush, play nice, play politically correct, why not just come out and say what the problem is, then start looking for and offering solutions?  Haven’t you ever wondered why others never seem to do this?  THAT is a marker of the deception in it’s self right there. Does it really matter how many ways they screw you until Sunday, or does fixing it matter more?

Anyway, let’s get back to the deception, and some important points about it. In magic, there is a principle that goes sort of like this. The larger movement conceals the motion of the smaller one.  For example, bringing both hands rapidly together, can conceal smaller movements of the fingers on one hand. You can see something similar to this when it comes to the shills in the fake “anti-zionist” movement. The larger movement caused by shoving mounds of information and truth at you, conceals the smaller one which is the bullshit they slide in with the rest of it.

When it comes to this principle, the ruse is that these jewish shills pretend jews are not the problem. How could jews be the problem, if everyone telling us about the jew problem is jewish? Should we not then consider these jews as heroes, and make super hero toys based on them? Oh, it’s quite a slick ruse, but a ruse none the less. Not all jews are a problem if some of the jews are willing to stand up and speak out is what you are expected to believe. Thus, the larger movement of speaking out, covers the smaller movement of lacing it with bullshit to convince you it’s not really a jewish problem, but one of “zionists” or some other scape goat.

The larger movement of jews “leading” the truth “movement” (which purposely never moves), conceals the smaller movement, which is their intention to protect the tribe. The jews set themselves up to lead, and misdirect your attention on to meaningless off-shoots of the problem they have created like “zionism” or “jewdaism” or “neocons” or “communism” or anything they can come up with at the time. Anything that doesn’t put the heat on to theJEWISH RACE, or anything that gives you a problem to deal with which can not be solidly defined, fulfills the purpose of protecting the tribe, rather than helping you defeat it.

It’s funny (and sad) because adults are actually extremely easy to “trick” or to “fool” in the eyes of the magician. Adults have so many preconceived notions that make it hard for them to understand when a sleight has taken place, or how it could have possibly happened. Children on the other hand, have very few preconceived notions and ideas.  A young child does not know that an adult can’t just wave his hands and make something disappear. A young child doesn’t fully conceive that a coin shouldn’t pass through the solid top of an oak table.

Due to the fact that a child often assumes all things as possible (until they are taught otherwise), they tend to catch on to more of what’s happening in the moment.  The larger motion does not so easily conceal the smaller one for their wandering eyes.  The child is not bothered with the waving of the hand, and is not always intently watching where he was directed to watch, so things don’t always go over so well for the magician with a child.

I can honestly say I’ve been there in that position.  I’ve performed in front of children and in front of adults, and children are a formidable force to the practicing magician.  Sure, many working professionals spend their time doing children’s shows, but I guarantee all of them would rather perform for adults. Not only do children not have the preconceived notions, they don’t have the programmed chivalry to stay quiet when they do catch on to something. Having a child blurt out the secret to a trick can quickly ruin the effect.  Luckily, SN intends to continue blurting out how the deception works, and ruin the entire show like a crazed heckler!

The only reason for mentioning how a child sees things is this.  Once the child has grown to an adult, lived their daily life in this seemingly solid material reality, passed off his formidable years in indoctrination centers being convinced of the solidity of this reality, and sucked up years upon years of programming from teachers, his peers, and the automated brain washing machine we call televisions, all of this changes.

Now the child has “beliefs” and “feelings” and “ideas” and “opinions” about the way this reality works. These beliefs, feelings, and opinions eventually become so real to him, and so familiar, that it is hard for him to even conceive the fact that these ideas were GIVEN TO HIM by someone else. He is an adult now, and surely he has spent plenty of time pondering the things he learned.  He doesn’t feel stupid, or ignorant, he knows he paid attention and got the education he was supposed to. Certainly he did, but he never knew that education was designed with the very strict purpose of keeping them away from the truth, rather than helping them learn it.

The child was taught to trust his “elders” and his “teachers”, and he saw much of what he learned in writings he read himself. There it was, right there in his school books.  In all those volumes in the great libraries, and then later reinforced by hollywood, and the media. A lot of these things were reaffirmed yet again even by the statues of “heroes” in the parks, and in their names commemorated on street signs, and their likeness fashioned into monuments all around him.  Certainly truth can not be far off from what he knows, but it’s this “belief” that only serves to take him farther out to sea, like an un-piloted dingy drifting helplessly away from the safety of the shore.

So, for many, the larger motion of jews bringing them what they perceive as “truth”, covers the smaller questionable movement that one should ask like, “why is it always jews bringing us the truth”? Why is that? Why is it that, not only are jews found to be in every position directly causing us problems, but then they also appear in every position as activists, community leaders, heads of human rights organizations, anti-establishment writers, and big mainstream “truthers”?

For the adult with preconceived notions, this poses a serious problem. Certainly not all of these jews can be bad if so many are found in positions like this!  Certainly there must be something good to them, because 98% of what they say is true, correct, and accurate!  To top it off, most people won’t notice the part that isn’t accurate until some wise guy like SN goes and points it out! Some of these information outlets contain so much information, and went to so much trouble, they couldn’t possibly be the enemy, could they? Yeah right.

Here’s the question though. If I were going to feed you a delicious meal, so delicious it was beyond your wildest dreams, would you eat of that meal knowing I had concealed just a smidgen of dung in it?  Would you?  Certainly the meals has a purpose as both nutrition, and a wonderful sensation for your taste buds, right?  Considering this, you can simply ignore the dung mixed in with it, can’t you?

What if you had been eating the meal already, and it was the best meal you had ever experienced in your life and THEN I came along and told you it was laced with dung? Even if I was factually correct, due to your perception of the meal and your chef, you might simply think it’s better to trust the chef than me, right? Hell, you might not even want to question the chef going on what I said, right? After all, the chef has been real good to you so far, as far you can tell!

I bet it’s starting to become clearer now isn’t it? It doesn’t matter how muchperceived “good” or value these liars seem to represent, for they are still liars, and their words are still tainted.  Even if you can’t taste the dung, knowing it’s there should be enough to keep you from eating it, right?  I mean, even if everything else about the meal is soheavenly you can’t help yourself, wouldn’t you resist eating of it, knowing the dung is in there somewhere? What if it’s only in a small portion of the meal somewhere, would you risk eating certain parts of the meal not knowing where the dung is?

Here is where the deception lies. These jewish “truthers”, related directly to the other jews causing all the problems, always magically show up on the scene as the purveyors of truth related to everything to do with the jew. Yet, somehow, these jews want us to believe the problem is only those dirty old “zionists”, and not the nature of the jew it’s self.  They are all too happy to join our side and lash out at those evil old “zionists”, yet they turn neurotic and psychotic when one of us points out that JEWS AS A WHOLE have been causing the SAME problems LONG BEFORE “zionism” ever showed up. (in 1898 for the record)

Magically, these jews are unable to account for over 175o+ years of jews being exiled and expelled, at the very least 109 times by 84 different countries. Where were all the jews warning us about their brethren then? Where were the jews to cry out against jewish ritual murder of people’s children, or jews drinking the blood then? In fact, where are those jews now? Right, they’re telling us to worry about those “zionists” while child services turns into a blood bank for vampire jews, and foster care magically makes children disappear faster than so-called dangerous, unfit parents!

The deception lies in the fact that anyone could be a “zionist”, and in fact, many non-jews are indeed unwitting “zionists”, but they are not the root of our problem.  Behind zionism is the same old jews.  The same old jewish bankers.  The same old jewish molesters.  The same old ritually murdering jews. The same old genocidal war mongering jews. The same old subversive communist jews in the media, hollywood, and government, and now, the same old jews pretending to be our friends whilst stabbing our backs at the same time.

The same is done with propaganda.  You are presented with anti-zionist material that gets your head nodding “yes”, and then slowly you are slighted with the idea that “not all jews are bad” or “we should love jews” or “we shouldn’t be like jews and start killing them”. Yet, at the same time, these jews are actively poisoning you and your children. They poison your air, water, food, and everything else around you. They are actively plotting to kill most of planet earth, and quite boldly so. They are actively attacking and destroying the environment which sustains you. They are actively getting you engaged in wars, and sending your children off to die. In Palestine, they are actively engaged in openly murdering humans for sport, (not to mention all of the assassinations and other killings like the Gaza aid flotilla incident) and all of this leads to yet another point.

The jew knows how your humanity works. He knows how your conscience works, because he helped train it to react specific ways with his propaganda, just like the magician trains his audience to think a sleight is just a legitimate motion of the hands. The jew knows, just like the magician, that you have deeply ingrained preconceived notions about not only humanity, and yourself, but about how you should react and treat others.

Like many other parasites, the jew mimics it’s host. It looks similar (but not exactly the same) and it can behave the same. Look at hollywood actors for instance, who can portray human emotion well enough to bring you to tears, many of which are jewish, and really don’t share the same painful emotion.  I could go on and on writing an entire novel on how the deception works, but I’ll leave you with this quote from wikipedia on parasites who mimic their hosts. Hopefully in the future, you will learn to pick up sleights, misdirections, and other ruses as I’ve explained above, but that’s up to how much of your preconceived notions and conditioning you are able to break free of.

“The entire Osama Bin Laden drama that you’ve played, was based on deception and lies. Why aren’t you telling the world what actually happened in Abbotabad?

Your helicopters were shot down, your troops were killed, but you will never acknowledge this…”

RT - While media reports paint a picture of the situation in Syria as a mass public uprising brutally suppressed by the dictatorial government, the events are viewed in a totally different way by those living there.

RT caught up with Ankhar Kochneva, director of a Moscow-based tourist firm specializing in the Middle East. She often travels to Syria, and stays in touch with hundreds of people in the region. She shared what her contacts say about the unfolding unrest and who they blame for the spreading violence.

RT: What’s happening in Syria? What have you seen? And that are the Syrians saying?

Ankhar Kochneva: Not even once did I come across anyone who would in any way support these riots; and mind you, in the line of my job, I deal with all sorts of people. There are many vehicles with the president’s portraits driving the streets throughout the country – ranging from old, barely moving crankers to brand new Porsches and Hummers. You can’t force people into hanging up portraits. It means that people, irrespective of their status and income, support the president rather than the rebellion. I saw quite a number of young people walking or driving around with Syrian flags. How can you force a young person hanging out with friends to wave flags? I think it’s difficult too. If you understand the mentality of the Syrians you can tell there is a sincere impulse from a forced obligation.

On March 29, I saw a rally in Hama to support the president – indeed, many thousands of men and women, with their children, and entire families went out. The streets were flooded with people. It was quite a shock to see Al-Jazeera presenting rallies in support of the president as if they were protests against him. It was just as surprising to see the Israeli websites post photos and videos of supporters’ rallies with comments saying those were opponents of the regime. There you have people holding portraits of Bashar al-Assad and flags, and we’re told that these people are against him.

RT: The media reports mass anti-government rallies.

A.K.: There’s a powerful misinformation swell going on. On April 1, the media reported a large anti-governmental rally in Damascus. I was in Damascus on that day. This rally never happened – I didn’t see it, and neither did the locals.

On April 16, Reuters news agency wrote that 50,000 opponents of the regime took to the streets of Damascus, and that they had been dispersed with tear gas and batons. Damascus’ residents realize that such a rally could not take place in the city unnoticed. How many policemen would it take to disperse it? And how come nobody saw it except Reuters? Five hundred people in the streets of Damascus are a large crowd. Reuters broadcast their material around the world, including Russia. One source lies, and then this lie is like a snowball rolling downhill creating a fake reality, and picking up rumor and speculation.

People in Syria watch the footage. What do they see? A picture allegedly from Yemen. A picture allegedly from Egypt. A picture allegedly from Syria. But the pictures all show people dressed in the same fashion. People in Syria can tell their fellow countrymen from their neighbors – both by their faces and their clothes.

There are videos on the internet showing how amateur footage of the so-called riots is made. There’s a parked car and nothing’s going on around. And there’s a man standing next to it throwing rocks. And people around are taking pictures.

There are a lot of staged videos. A Lebanese can tell the difference between footage taken in Lebanon and that taken in Damascus at a glance. And they show footage from Tripoli, or footage taken several years ago in Iraq, and say it is unrest in Syria.

There are many online forums for women in Arab countries. Women share information following TV reports on ‘mass unrests’. Women write – what’s happening outside your window? And they reply: we looked down from the balcony, and didn’t see anything that the TV was talking about.

Presently, a lot of young unarmed policemen get killed. The media propaganda immediately labels them as victims of the regime. I repeat, policemen are unarmed. The Syrian police are not too good with guns, because nothing like this has happened here for a long time. But the killed rookies are reported as either victims among the protestors, or as policemen who refused to shoot at their fellow countrymen, depending on the editors’ preference. Goebbels’ words seem to be true: the bigger the lie, the more easily they believe it.

RT:But why are policemen dying if there are no mass protests?

A.K.: Policemen die because they get shot by those who know that they are unarmed.

RT: Who shoots policemen?

A.K.: They talk a lot about it in Syria. Rumor has it that trained commandos came across the border from Iraq. People in Syria are well-aware that after the US occupied Iraq, they formed special squads there. They were killing people, stirring up conflicts between the Shiite and Sunni communities, and between Muslims and Christians; they were blowing up streets, markets, mosques and churches. Those terrorist attacks targeted civilians rather than the occupying regime.

Not long ago, they caught three such commandos in the outskirts of Damascus, when they were randomly shooting at people. They turned out to be Iraqis.

Syrian TV showed footage of somebody shooting at policemen and passers-by from bushes and rooftops. They occasionally get caught, and they either turn out to be Iraqis, or they admit that they were paid for it. Such militants were detained in Deraa and Latakia. They had US-made weapons.

The Lebanese security service intercepted several cars carrying weapons as they were coming into Lebanon. One such car was stopped coming from Iraq. There were American weapons in those cars too. Also there are reports about detained people who had large sums of money with them – with US dollars. These people carried expensive satellite phones that cannot be tapped by the Syrian security service.

In Syria, it is no longer a secret to anyone that the Americans have an unhindered opportunity to recruit and train the commandos in Iraq, and then send them wherever they want.
Hilary Clinton has already stated that if Syria cuts its relations with Iran and withdraws its support for Hamas and Hezbollah, the demonstrations would stop the next day. They don’t even bother to keep secret the hand instilling riots in Syria.

There’s plenty of evidence of foreign interference.

Finally, people say protestors are brought in from afar for the rallies. Those people speak and look differently from the locals. Nobody in the neighborhood knows them. Who rents the buses and finances the delivery of these people?  The question stands.

The former Syrian Vice-President Abdel Halim Khaddam had initiated the riots in the coastal regions. He had plundered half of the country. He was involved in corruption schemes and finally fled to the West. It was he who tried to accuse Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of assassinating the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. The Syrians firmly believe that Sayed Hariri had personally given a villa to Abdel Halim Khaddam for spreading this version of Rafic Hariri’s murder. But when that version fell apart and was not confirmed, the villa was taken away. Today, those who shot at cars in Banias are shouting: “We don’t want Bashar. We want Abdel Halim!”

There are peaceful and cultured opposition members in Banias who have been against al-Assad’s regime for many years. But they are shocked by what’s going on and do not support Khaddam at all. They say: “He’s a thief. He who stole most calls to fight corruption and thievery.”

RT: What role are Syrian emigrants playing in the Syrian destabilization?

A.K.: It’s an open question. There was a leak claiming that Dan Feldman, Hillary Clinton’s special representative for the Middle East, met representatives of the Syrian opposition in Istanbul in mid-April and suggested the tactics for assassinations of civil and military officials. In less than three days, on April 19, several military officials had been brutally killed in Syria.  Not only were they attacked and shot dead, some victims of the attacks, including three teenage children of a Syrian general, who were in a car with him, were cut to pieces with sabres.

Murders committed with a high degree of brutality are aimed at intimidating the population. The news that children had been cut to pieces served that purpose quite well.

RT: Media reports used to say that the riots started after the arrest in the city of Deraa, in southern Syria, of several children writing anti-government slogans?  Is it really so?

A.K.: All the children had been released very quickly. Moreover, the government-owned Syrian newspapers published the release orders.

RT: Have the troops been brought into Deraa?

A.K.: Yes, troops are there. After an Islamic emirate had been proclaimed in Deraa, the local residents asked the government for help. Troops have been brought in. I’ve just seen the videos. The demonstrators published them on the internet and shortly after erased them. But people made copies. There are soldiers, and people come to them and talk peacefully. Nobody shoots anyone.

RT: Is there a sentiment in Syria that if it gets rid of Hamas support and the Palestinians and strike a peace deal with Israel, all the riots will end immediately?
A.K.: No, there’s no such sentiment. There’s consolidation of society. The people are sticking together because they see that the enemy is extremely dangerous. For instance, previously I never heard anything except pop music and the recital of the Koran on the radio when I rode in a taxi. Now, patriotic music is coming from all cars. When Bashar al-Assad was speaking on television, the people who were listening to him at the market applauded him. You cannot force people to applaud a president who speaks on television.

RT: What has the public mood been in recent days?

A.K.: People are afraid of going out. In some regions, people risked their lives to record with a secret camera how unidentified persons sneaked into a car, moved off and started shooting in all directions. This is how they are sowing panic in residential areas.

Bandits blocked a bridge on the road near the coast. Soon, the military pushed them back. One of my Syrian contacts told me: “you don’t need many people to plunge the country into trouble.”
Putting five people on a major road would be enough to paralyze the whole area. People are unable to deliver foodstuffs or reach hospitals. And the whole country is in shock because of a handful of bandits.

Now, Syrian television is making live broadcasts from various parts of Damascus and other cities for people to see how the situation is unfolding and how life is getting back to normal, whatever the Western media show.

It’s noteworthy that bandits intentionally tried to rouse hatred among various communities.  Recently, a sheikh was insulting the Druze, particularly women, in an address to the residents of the south. This video is being broadcast by the foreign media and is advertized on the internet. Nothing like that ever happened in Syria before. Provocations failed in Damascus though attempts were made to set religious communities against each other. Provocateurs lack support in rural areas too – the sowing campaign has started there.

The most massive demonstrations in Dera gathered 500 people. But they say 450 people have been killed.

RT:Has the government launched any reforms?

A.K.: The government has lifted martial law and has allowed the staging of authorized rallies if permission for them is obtained five days ahead. Foreigners have been allowed to buy real estate. The Kurds have been granted citizenship. The Kurdish population didn’t have it before for a number of historical reasons. The government is opening business courses for women in northern Syria. Many provincial governors have been dismissed. Unfortunately, in some cases they were honest people. Like those who refused to free criminals from prison for bribes and had been targeted by smear campaigns in public for it.

RT:Have the number of flights to Syria been cut?

A.K.: There are no tickets for Syria.  We wanted to dispatch a group of tourists to Syria but there were no air tickets to Damascus for April 30. But Russians are not fleeing from Syria. I have full information about it for my job.

The News – While the Pakistani rulers haplessly watch the Washington-triggered drones causing massive casualties on their soil regularly, they can perhaps seek solace in the fact that in a persistent bid to establish its hegemony over the world and to display its superior military might for its corporate gains, America has intruded in the affairs of at least 50 countries of the world over 130 times during the last 121 years.

Research and calculations conducted by The News, with assistance sought from renowned US scholar Dr Zoltan Grossman’s book “From wounded knee to Libya: A Century of US military interventions,” and from celebrated author William Blum’s books “A brief history of US interventions: 1945 to Present” and a best seller “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II,” show than the unending American quest for supremacy has continued unabated since its first involvement in the affairs of Argentina in 1890.

While the US troops have intervened in the affairs of Panama eight times (1895, 1901-14, 1908, 1912, 1918-20, 1958, 1964 and 1989), they entered Nicaragua (1894, 1896, 1898, 1899, 1907, 1910, 1912-33), Honduras (1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1924-25, 1983-89) and China (1894-95, 1898-1900, 1911-14, 1922-27, 1927-34, 1948-49, 1958) some seven times each under one pretext or the other during this period under review.

The American forces sailed for Cuba (1898-1902, 1906-1909, 1912, 1917-33, 1961, 1962) six times, they went to Iran five times (1946, 1953, 1980, 1984, 1987-88), and they interfered on four different occasions in Haiti (1891,1914-34, 1987-94, 2004-05) Dominican Republic (1903-04,1914,1916-24,1963-66), Yugoslavia (1919,1946,1992-94,1991-93), Iraq (1958, 1963, 1990-91, 1991-93) and Philippines (1898-1910, 1948-54, 1989, 2002).

The US troops were dispatched thrice to Korea (1894-96, 1904-05, 1945-53), Libya (1981, 1986-89, 2011), Guatemala (1920, 1954, 1966-67), Yemen (2000, 2002, 2004) and Liberia (1990, 1997, 2003).

They were sent on foreign missions twice to nations like Chile (1891, 1964-73), Mexico (1913, 1914-18), Puerto Rico (1898, 1950), El-Salvador (1932, 1981-82), Germany (1948, 1961), Laos (1962, 1971-73), Somalia (1992-94, 2006) and Afghanistan (1998, 2001).

Apart from featuring prominently in World War I and II, the US combat forces have also been active at least once in countries like Argentina, Samoa, Russia, Guam, Turkey, Uruguay, Greece, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Oman, Macedonia, Syria, Pakistan, Bolivia, Virgin Islands, Zaire (Congo), Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Grenada, Angola, Sudan, Albania, Bosnia and Colombia.

In one of his published articles “A briefing on the history of US military interventions,” Dr Zoltan Grossman, a member of the South-West Asia Information Group in the United States, discusses at length how American policy makers have been intervening in other countries for a long time, the backgrounds of these actions and the loss of civilian lives as a result of these military offensives.

In his article, Dr Grossman writes,” Since the September 11 attacks on the United States, most people in the world agree that the perpetrators need to be brought to justice, without killing many thousands of civilians in the process. But unfortunately, the US military has always accepted massive civilian deaths as part of the cost of war. The military is now poised to kill thousands of foreign civilians, in order to prove that killing US civilians is wrong.”

He further states in this article published in the “Z magazine” of US in October 2001 and translated in Italian and Polish languages:” The media have told us repeatedly that some Middle Easterners hate the US only because of our “freedom” and “prosperity.” Missing from this explanation is the historical context of the US role in the Middle East, and for that matter in the rest of the world. This basic primer is an attempt to brief readers who have not closely followed the history of US foreign or military affairs, and are perhaps unaware of the background of US military interventions abroad, but are concerned about the direction of our country toward a new war in the name of “freedom” and “protecting civilians.”

Dr Zoltan Grossman maintains, “The United States military has been intervening in other countries for a long time. In 1898, it seized the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico from Spain and in 1917-18 became embroiled in World War I in Europe. In the first half of the 20th century it repeatedly sent Marines to “protectorates” such as Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. All these interventions directly served corporate interests, and many resulted in massive losses of civilians, rebels, and soldiers.”

Grossman goes on to write,” In the early 1960s, the US returned to its pre-World War II intervention role in the Caribbean, directing the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs exile invasion of Cuba, and the 1965 bombing and Marine invasion of the Dominican Republic during an election campaign. The CIA trained and harboured Cuban exile groups in Miami, which launched terrorist attacks on Cuba, including the 1976 downing of a Cuban civilian jetliner near Barbados. During the Cold War, the CIA would also help to support or install pro-US dictatorships in Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia and many other countries around the world.”

He asserts, “Even when the US military had apparently defensive motives, it ended up attacking the wrong targets. After the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in East Africa, the US “retaliated” not only against Osama Bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan, but a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that was mistakenly said to be a chemical warfare installation. Bin Laden retaliated by attacking a US Navy ship docked in Yemen in 2000. After the 2001 terror attacks on the United States, the US military is poised to again bomb Afghanistan, and possibly move against other states it accuses of promoting anti-US “terrorism,” such as Iraq and Sudan.”

In one of the concluding paragraphs of his afore-cited article, Dr Grossman views,” Such a campaign will certainly ratchet up the cycle of violence, in an escalating series of retaliations that is the hallmark of Middle East conflicts.

Afghanistan, like Yugoslavia, is a multiethnic state that could easily break apart in a new catastrophic regional war. Almost certainly more civilians would lose their lives in this tit-for-tat war on “terrorism” than the 3,000 civilians who died on September 11.”