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Neocons; The echo of German Fascisim

German Exceptionalism
The belief in German Exceptionalism was the starting point, not the ending point, for the Conservative Revolutionaries just as it is with today’s Republicans such as Sen. Tom Cotton or Sen. Lindsey Graham. This Exceptionalist ideology gives the nation the right to interfere in other country’s internal affairs for whatever reason the “exceptional” country deems necessary, such as desiring more living space for their population, fearing the potential of some future security threat, or even just by denying the “exceptional” country access within its borders — or a “denial of access threat” as the U.S. government terms it.
The fundamental ideas of the Conservative Revolutionaries have been described as vehement opposition to the Weimar Republic (identifying it with the lost war and the Versailles Treaty) and political “liberalism” (as opposed to Prussia’s traditional authoritarianism).
This “liberalism,” which offended the Conservative Revolutionaries, was democracy and individual rights against state power. Instead, the Conservative Revolutionaries envisaged a new reich of enormous strength and unity. They rejected the view that political action should be guided by rational criteria. They idealized violence for its own sake.
That idealization of violence would have meant “state” violence in the form of military expansionism and suppression of “enemies,” domestic and foreign, by right-thinking Germans. Neocons; The echo of German Fascisim

German Army officers even had authority to punish civilians for failing to show “proper respect.”

Lets Discuss.....

level of givin’er.

The Only Truly Compliant, Submissive Citizen in a Police State Is a Dead One

By John W. Whitehead

“Do exactly what I say, and we'll get along fine. Do not question me or talk back in any way. You do not have the right to object to anything I may say or ask you to do, or ask for clarification if my demands are unclear or contradictory. You must obey me under all circumstances without hesitation, no matter how arbitrary, unreasonable, discriminatory, or blatantly racist my commands may be. Anything other than immediate perfect servile compliance will be labeled as resisting arrest, and expose you to the possibility of a violent reaction from me. That reaction could cause you severe injury or even death. And I will suffer no consequences. It's your choice: Comply, or die.”— “‘Comply or Die’ policing must stop,” Daily KOS

March 25, 2015 "ICH" - Americans as young as 4 years old are being leg shackled, handcuffed, tasered and held at gun point for not being quiet, not being orderly and just being childlike—i.e., not being compliant enough.
Americans as old as 95 are being beaten, shot and killed for questioning an order, hesitating in the face of a directive, and mistaking a policeman crashing through their door for a criminal breaking into their home—i.e., not being submissive enough.
And Americans of every age and skin color are being taught the painful lesson that the only truly compliant, submissive and obedient citizen in a police state is a dead one.
It doesn’t matter where you live—big city or small town—it’s the same scenario being played out over and over again in which government agents, hyped up on their own authority and the power of their uniform, ride roughshod over the rights of the citizenry. In turn, Americans are being brainwashed into believing that anyone who wears a government uniform—soldier, police officer, prison guard—must be obeyed without question.
Franklin Graham, the heir to Billy Graham’s evangelical empire, offered up this “simple” piece of advice for “Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and everybody else” hoping to survive an encounter with the police:

Most police shootings can be avoided. It comes down to respect for authority and obedience. If a police officer tells you to stop, you stop. If a police officer tells you to put your hands in the air, you put your hands in the air. If a police officer tells you to lay down face first with your hands behind your back, you lay down face first with your hands behind your back. It’s as simple as that. Even if you think the police officer is wrong—YOU OBEY.

Clearly, Graham’s message resonated with a core group of Americans: almost 200,000 individuals “liked” the message on Facebook, with an astounding 83,000 fans sharing his words of advice with their own friends, none of whom seem to recall that Jesus Christ, whom they claim to follow and model their lives after, not only stood up to the police state of his day but was put to death for it.
It’s not just mainstream evangelicals who have been brainwashed into believing that a good citizen is a compliant citizen and that obedience will save us from the police state. In the wake of a grand jury’s decision not to indict the police officer responsible for the choking death of Eric Garner, Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, declared:

“We have to teach our children, our sons and our daughters, no matter what they look like, to respect New York City police officers, teach them to comply with New York City police officers even if they think it’s unjust.”

Similarly, Officer Sunil Dutta of the Los Angeles Police Department advises:

“If you don't want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don't argue with me, don't call me names, don't tell me that I can't stop you, don't say I'm a racist pig, don't threaten that you'll sue me and take away my badge. Don't scream at me that you pay my salary, and don't even think of aggressively walking towards me.”

In other words, it doesn’t matter if you’re in the right, it doesn’t matter if a cop is in the wrong, it doesn’t matter if you’re being treated with less than the respect you deserve. If you want to emerge from a police encounter with your life and body intact, then you’d better comply, submit, obey orders, respect authority and generally do whatever a cop tells you to do.
In this way, the old police motto to “protect and serve” has become “comply or die.” As I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State and in my forthcoming book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is the unfortunate, misguided, perverse message being beaten, shot, tasered and slammed into our collective consciousness, and it is regrettably starting to take root.
Despite the growing number of criminal charges (ranging from resisting arrest and interference to disorderly conduct, obstruction, and failure to obey a police order) that get trotted out anytime a citizen voices discontent with the government or challenges or even questions the authority of the powers that be, the problems we’re experiencing in terms of police shootings have little to do with rebellion or belligerence or resistance.
Rather, the problem arises when compliance doesn’t happen fast enough to suit the police.
For instance, 15-year-old Jamar Nicholson was shot in the back by police after they spotted him standing next to a friend holding a toy gun. “Officers ordered the boy to drop the weapon multiple times,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “When he didn’t comply, one of the officers opened fire.”
Martese Johnson, a 20-year-old college student, unarmed and in the process of walking away from a bar where he’d just been denied entry for being underage, was tackled by police and had his head slammed to the ground and bloodied, allegedly for being intoxicated, belligerent and using a fake ID. Johnson, who it turns out was polite, had a legal ID and was not drunk, survived the encounter after 10 stitches to his head.
And then there was Christopher Lollie, who was tasered, arrested and charged with trespassing, disorderly conduct and obstruction of the legal process for refusing to identify himself to police while waiting to pick his children up from their daycare. Footage of the encounter shows Lollie asking, “Why do I have to let you know who I am? I don’t have to let you know who I am if I haven’t broken any laws.” The charges against Lollie were eventually dropped.
Nicholson, Johnson and Lollie aren’t the only Americans being taught a hard lesson about compliance at the end of a government-issued gun.
World War II veteran John Wrana, 95 years old, dependent on a walker to get around, and a resident of an assisted living center, was rushed by five police officers—one with a Taser and riot shield, others with handguns and a 12-gauge Mossberg pump shotgun—after refusing treatment for a urinary tract infection and brandishing a shoehorn. One of the officers, allegedly fearing for his safety, fired multiple beanbag rounds at Wrana at close range, who bled to death from internal injuries.
James Howard Allen, 74 years old and recovering at home from a surgery, was shot and killed by police who were asked by family members to do a welfare check on him. When police crashed through the man’s back door, they found Allen, perhaps having just awoken and fearing a burglary, armed with a gun.
These shootings and deaths, and many more like them, constitute a drop in the proverbial bucket when it comes to police killing unarmed American citizens, and yet you’d be hard-pressed to find exact numbers for how many unarmed citizens are killed by police every year. Indeed, while police go to great lengths to document how many police are killed in the line of duty, police agencies aren’t actually required to report the number of times police officers engage in homicide. Suffice it to say, however, that the numbers are significantly underreported.
One website estimates that police kill on average three citizens a day in the United States. In 2014, 1100 individuals were killed by police in the U.S. That’s 70 times more than other first-world nations, and almost 20 times more than the number of U.S. troops killed in the same year in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Rarely are these officers given more than a slap on the wrist. More often than not, they operate with impunity, are shielded from justice by the governmental bureaucracy, and are granted qualified immunity by the courts.
A recent report by the Justice Department on police shootings in Philadelphia, which boasts the fourth largest police department in the country, found that half of the unarmed people shot by police over a seven-year span were “shot because the officer saw something (like a cellphone) or some action (like a person pulling at the waist of their pants) and misidentified it as a threat.”
Now it’s one thing for those who back the police—no matter what the circumstance—to insist that if you just obey a police officer, you’ll be safe. But what happens when compliance isn’t enough?
What happens if you play it safe, comply and do whatever a police officer tells you to do, don’t talk back, don’t threaten, and don’t walk away—in other words, don’t do anything that even hints at resistance—and still, you find yourself staring down the wrong end of a government agent’s gun? After all, the news is riddled with reports of individuals who didn’t resist when confronted by police and still got tasered, tackled or shot simply because they looked at police in a threatening manner or moved in a way that made an officer “fear” for his safety.
For instance, Levar Jones, pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt, was shot after complying with a police officer’s order to retrieve his license. The trooper justified his shooting of the unarmed man by insisting that Jones reached for his license “aggressively.”
What more could Jones or anyone have done to protect himself in that situation? How does a citizen protect himself against a police officer’s tendency to shoot first and ask questions later, oftentimes based only on their highly subjective “feeling” of being threatened?
The short answer is you can’t.
The assurance of safety in exchange for compliance is a false, misguided doctrine that has us headed towards a totalitarian regime the likes of which the world has seen before.
Rest assured, if we just cower before government agents and meekly obey, we’ll find ourselves repeating history. However, history also shows us a different path, one that involves standing up and speaking truth to power. Jesus Christ walked that road. So did Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and countless other freedom fighters whose actions changed the course of history.
Indeed, had Christ merely complied with the Roman police state, there would have been no crucifixion and no Christian religion. Had Gandhi meekly fallen in line with the British Empire’s dictates, the Indian people would never have won their independence. Had Martin Luther King Jr. obeyed the laws of his day, there would have been no civil rights movement. And if the founding fathers had marched in lockstep with royal decrees, there would have been no American Revolution.
The long answer, therefore, is that we must adopt a different mindset and follow a different path if we are to alter the outcome of these interactions with police.
No matter what path you follow, it will be fraught with peril. America is in the midst of a nervous breakdown, brought about by prolonged exposure to the American police state, and there are few places that are safe anymore.
A good test is this: if you live in a community that has welcomed the trappings of the police state with open arms (surveillance cameras, forced DNA extractions, Stingray devices, red light cameras, private prisons, etc.), all the while allowing its police forces to militarize, weaponize and operate beyond the reach of the Constitution, then you don’t live in a democratic republic—you live in a microcosm of the American police state.
If you have no real say in how your local law enforcement operates, if the only oversight of police actions is carried out by fellow officers, if any attempt to criticize the police is edited out or not covered by your local newspaper or TV station, drowned out by your fellow citizens, or intimidated into silence by your local police, then you have no recourse when it comes to police abuses.
Finally, if, despite having done nothing wrong, you feel nervous during a police encounter, you fear doing or saying the wrong thing in front of an officer will get you shot, and your local police dress and act like extensions of the military and treat you like a suspect, then it’s safe to say that you are not the one holding the upper hand in the master-servant relationship anymore.
This is the death rattle of the American dream, which was built on the idea that no one is above the law, that our rights are inalienable and cannot be taken away, and that our government and its appointed agents exist to serve us.
John W. Whitehead is an attorney and author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law and human rights. Whitehead's concern for the persecuted and oppressed led him, in 1982, to establish The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties and human rights organization whose international headquarters are located in Charlottesville, Virginia. Whitehead serves as the Institute’s president and spokesperson. https://www.rutherford.org
Copyright 2015 © The Rutherford Institute

A Felon for a Facebook Post:

The Abduction of Matthew Townsend

By William Norman Grigg
March 25, 2015 "ICH" - Matthew Townsend was made an offender for using a sidewalk without a police officer’s permission, and then accused of a felony for publishing a Facebook post about the incident. 
 

“Apparently, holding a protest sign, or condemning government abuse on Facebook, is enough to make somebody a terrorist now,” Matthew wearily observes. 
 

A small, wiry man with a luxuriant beard and a contemplative demeanor, Matthew is gainfully employed in Meridian, Idaho as a cook. That is to say, he feeds people, rather than feeding upon them. His abductor, Officer Richard Brockbank of the Meridian Police Department, makes neither butter, nor shoes, nor poetry; instead, he makes “offenders” out of people who have done no injury to anybody. 

 

Matthew at home (photo by A.J. Ellis)

On the evening of February 2, Matthew – a part-time liberty activist – was conducting a one-man protest outside the local branch office of the oxymoronically named Liberty Tax Service. That company often pays people to publicize its services by standing on a sidewalk dressed as the Statue of Liberty.
 

A devout believer in the principle of truth in advertising, Matthew attired himself in a Grim Reaper costume holding a protest sign. One side bore the inscription “Taxes [do not equal] liberty”; the other pointed out that “Taxes fund terrorism.”
 

“An officer pulled up and told me that I had to get out of the road, and that I couldn’t be blocking traffic,” Matthew recalled during an interview in his home. “He tried to get me to agree with him that I was blocking traffic. And I didn’t. He asked me for my name; I gave him my name. He asked me for my ID; I told him I didn’t have it on me.”
 

The officer, later identified as Richard Brockbank, continued to “build the stop” – that is to say, probing for an excuse to arrest someone who had not committed an actual crime. 
 

“He asked me if I had been drinking and … kept trying to get me to agree with him that I was blocking traffic,” Matthew continued. “He said, `Well, I saw you.’ I said, `Then charge me.’ And he was silent – just stops, silent. I turned around and hit the button [on the crosswalk signal light]. It said `Go,’ so I started crossing. Half-way across the intersection he starts yelling that he’s not done with me. I stopped on the next corner. He walked over there, and other officers pulled up, and I got arrested.”
 

At least two other officers responded to Brockbank’s urgent call for assistance. As he conversed with his supervisor, another officer took the opportunity to lecture Matthew about his civic responsibilities.
 

“He told me that I need to read the Constitution,” Matthew told me. Either out of politeness or a prudent desire not to antagonize his captor, Matthew refrained from pointing out that he has probably forgotten more about that document than the officer has ever learned. 
 

Although he doesn’t recall having any previous interactions with the officers who kidnapped him on February 2, he said it was “extremely likely” that such contacts had occurred.
 

“I’ve recorded hundreds of interactions with cops just here in Meridian,” Matthew notes, many of them occurring within a few blocks of his house – which until he became a part-time Cop Watch activist had been an exceptionally lucrative ambush spot for the blue-suited banditti.
 

“They used to hide out behind Les Schwab [a nearby tire store] and pull people over,” Matthew observes. “They don’t go there anymore because they know I’ll walk out there with a camera.” 
 

His pickup truck prominently displays an “Ada County Copwatch” bumper sticker, and a few years ago Matthew organized a campaign to recall Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney. During last year’s election, Townsend paid a small filing fee to become a candidate for the position of Ada County Coroner. His campaign consisted of displaying a single sign in his front yard that attracted national press attention. 
 

Previously, Matthew ran for the Meridian City Council in the hope of making police officers more accountable to the public. Since becoming a Cop Watch activist in 2010, Matthew has made himself locally conspicuous and has done nothing to disguise or attenuate his entirely commendable contempt for the process of armed revenue-harvesting.
 

 

“If you are unfortunate to encounter an initiator of violence this evening, please remember to check their ID so you know it’s okay for them to kill you,” he advised New Year’s Eve revelers in a YouTube video. “It would be a shame to be killed by a costumed thug who was only pretending to be an official costumed thug.” 
 

At no point during the February 2 encounter did Matthew offer any resistance, nor did he “obstruct” Brockbank in any way – unless a refusal to admit to a non-existent offense qualifies for that description. 
 

Overkill as the default: SWAT raid at a Meridian yard sale.

No statute requires a citizen to agree with a police officer, admit to an accusation made by one, or to stand in rapt, docile silence waiting for permission to leave when an officer has refused to charge him with a crime. Brockbank’s attempt to detain Matthew was rooted in a sense of proprietary privilege, not the law. 
 

Matthew had every legal right to leave, but Brockbank was a State-commissioned agent of aggressive violence who couldn’t countenance a perceived slight to his “authority.” 

“I was arrested for `contempt of cop,’” Matthew wryly – and correctly – concludes. 
 

His kidnappers demanded a $300 ransom – or, as they would insist on calling it, “bond” – and designated March 19 as the date for a court hearing to validate the abduction.  
 

On the eve of that pretrial hearing, Matthew posted a notice on his Facebook page describing Brockbank’s actions as “terroristic in nature and in other ways unconstitutional and criminal.” 
 

“The cop refused to charge me for said `crime’ that he was accusing me of and so I walked away,” he explained, “and was soon after kidnapped and hauled away by several costumed State goons for my disrespect of officer Brockbank's harassment towards me.”
Given that the charge against him was entirely devoid of merit, Matthew continued, he would seek its dismissal. If this didn’t happen, he advised, “I will begin a non-violent and legal shame campaign that will be remembered. HOA [Home Owners Association]`upsets,’  protests in the aggressors neighborhoods (I know where you all live- this is notification of knowledge and future protests, not a threat), mailers, door hangers, online ads, local and (hopefully) national media- I've done it before and I can do it again as well as other peaceful, but... annoying avenues will commence.”

Nothing in that post constituted a threat or an incitement to violence. It was a pure exercise of what we are told is the constitutionally protected right to petition for a redress of grievances – in this case, armed abduction under color of “law.” When Matthew showed up for his hearing a few hours later, however, his court-appointed attorney informed him that the Ada County Sheriff’s Office was prepared to arrest him at the courthouse.
 

Officer Shannon Taylor with Ada County DA Jan Bennets.

Matthew’s Facebook post was being treated as a “terroristic threat” – and a warrant was sworn out by Meridian Police Officer Shannon Taylor accusing him of “attempted intimidation of a states [sic] witness.”

The post was tagged to dozens of people and Facebook pages – including many mainstream and independent media outlets. Ironically, the sole “witness” to Matthew’s purported offense, and supposed victim of his alleged threat, was not among those tagged in the post.

“I put the `at’ sign in my post on Facebook and I tagged the Brockbanks that showed up on my phone,” Matthew recalls. Officer Brockbank apparently doesn’t have a Facebook page, so “he wouldn’t have seen the post unless it was sent to him by a friend or a relative.”

During the March 19 hearing, “the prosecutor told the judge that new information was discovered, and they wanted to increase my bond and charge me with [the] felony [of] intimidating a witness,” Matthew recalls.  District Judge James Cawthon, presiding at the hearing, apparently considered the charge to be risible: “He wouldn’t allow the no-contact order to go through at that moment, or the other charges.”

However, the Meridian PD and prosecutor’s office approached another judge in an ex parte proceeding and obtained both an arrest warrant and no-content order. That judge’s identity remains a mystery: The affidavit and warrant were immediately placed under a judicial seal, and the signature on the no-contact order is an indecipherable scrawl.

That order forbids Matthew to come within 100 feet of the pitiable being known as Officer Richard Brockbank. The warrant was executed at a time, and in a fashion, best suited to the purpose of intimidation.

“When I heard the knock, I was asleep, and the dogs went crazy,” Matthew relates. The dogs were “my biggest concern” – a fact made obvious by the notice posted on his front door advising police officers that his dogs are harmless and instructing any visiting cops not to shoot them on a whim.

“It was totally dark outside” when three Ada County deputies arrived and told Matthew they had a warrant for his arrest. He walked up to the front door and placed his hands out to be cuffed.

“They tried some silly things to get permission to search the house,” he noted with a disgusted chuckle. “I didn’t give it to them. I know their game better than that.”

Denied the opportunity to discover or plant “evidence,” the deputies had to be satisfied with seizing and transporting a political prisoner in a fashion worthy of their Soviet forebears.

Under Idaho Criminal Rule 41, an arrest warrant “shall be served in the daytime, unless the issuing authority, by appropriate provision in the warrant, and for reasonable cause shown, authorizes its execution at times other than daytime.” Since the timid, paling specimen known as Officer Richard Brockbank was already cowering in the shelter of a protection order, the nighttime arrest couldn’t be justified as a protective measure.

Additionally, as the Idaho Supreme Court pointed out in its 2011 ruling in Idaho v. Skurlock, at night time people “have a heightened expectation of privacy that should not be disturbed by a knock on the door and the presentation of a search warrant.”

Analyzing the question from the perspective of “officer safety,” the most important policy consideration in the known universe, the Court also advised that executing a warrant at night “increases the likelihood of violence because nighttime searches cause an abrupt intrusion on sleeping occupants in a home, thus increasing the potential for a violent reaction from the occupants.”

The choice to execute the arrest warrant on a Friday night had nothing to do with the severity of Matthew’s purported offense, or the safety of the officers who took him to jail. The psychological purpose of a night-time arrest of this kind was limned memorably by Solzhenitsyn:

“The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is a center of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you: `You are under arrest.’”

An individual dragged from the warmth and security of his bed and taken away, shackled, in the darkness by armed strangers is supposed to feel tiny, powerless, and insignificant. These conditions are intended to demonstrate the hopelessness of someone fed into the apparatus of violence and misery called the State.

When this is done on a Friday evening, the expectation is that the victim will spend an entire weekend in a government cage, under the scrutiny of, and subject to, the whims of State-licensed dispensers of violence.

Or, as summarized in marginally literate fashion by a contemporary police apologist: “They are the repo men, you're the car. Shut the f*ck up and get towed and the court is your only recourse." The point of yanking a person from his home and imprisoning him at night is to assert the State’s ownership over him, and the ease with which everything can be taken from him – including his life. 

Unlike the functionaries who seized and caged him, Matthew has an honest job – one he may have lost if his mother hadn’t been able to pay a significant fraction of $25,000 bail that had been imposed on him as an accused felon.

Owing to his mother’s sacrificial intervention, Matt was at work just a few hours after his most recent abduction, serving the community preyed upon by the people who are trying to send him to prison without a particle of justification.

 Matthew’s arraignment on the “intimidation” charge – which is a patently transparent act of official retaliation – is scheduled for March 25. His trial for “resisting and obstruction charge” – or, more honestly described, contempt of cop – is slated to begin on June 4^th. His court-appointed attorney is trying to persuade him to waive his right to a trial by jury and settle for a bench trial. Matthew doesn’t appear interested in that option, nor should he be, in my view.

Juries in Idaho, as elsewhere in the soyuz, tend to be much too deferential to prosecutors. The case against Matthew involves such exuberant claims of official privilege – and such obvious malice --that it might trigger the gag reflex of an Idaho jury. It could also precipitate an avalanche of well-earned public ridicule for the incurably self-important people responsible for this travesty, beginning with the bold and valiant – yet oddly timid and fragile – Officer Richard Brockbank.

Matthew’s case brings to mind one salient fact that has emerged from the miasma of racial politics in Ferguson, Missouri. The municipal police department in that town operated a seamless racket in which minor misconduct was monetized for the benefit of the city government.

In December 2014, roughly seventy-five percent of the town’s residents were the subject of arrest warrants. In 2013, there were 1.5 offenses per city resident in Ferguson – not because the city was beset with actual crime, but rather because of what one commentator correctly calls the “gangsterish `shakedown’ methods” of the city’s police department and court system.

Ferguson police were vividly aware of opportunities to issue citations that would harvest revenue from the poor on behalf of the local political elite – and they never let such an opportunity elude them.

Matthew Townsend’s experience was a product of the same predatory policing. Out of a non-existent “offense,” Meridian’s municipal plunderbund has already extracted thousands of dollars from Matthew and his mother, and they intend to turn the handle on the wringer until they have extorted the utmost farthing.

In Matthew’s case, the casual cruelty that typifies this system has been replaced with an obvious determination to destroy someone whose commitment to principle and civic activism have made him an unbearable nuisance. His abductors would take great satisfaction in crushing a Copwatcher.  William Norman Grigg publishes the Pro Libertate blog and hosts the Pro Libertate radio program

Copyright © 2015 William Norman Grigg

A Family Business of Perpetual War

Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan have a great mom-and-pop business going. From the State Department, she generates wars and – from op-ed pages – he demands Congress buy more weapons. There’s a pay-off, too, as grateful military contractors kick in money to think tanks where other Kagans work, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry
March 21, 2015 "ICH" - "Consortium News" -  Neoconservative pundit Robert Kagan and his wife, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, run a remarkable family business: she has sparked a hot war in Ukraine and helped launch Cold War II with Russia – and he steps in to demand that Congress jack up military spending so America can meet these new security threats.
This extraordinary husband-and-wife duo makes quite a one-two punch for the Military-Industrial Complex, an inside-outside team that creates the need for more military spending, applies political pressure to ensure higher appropriations, and watches as thankful weapons manufacturers lavish grants on like-minded hawkish Washington think tanks.
Not only does the broader community of neoconservatives stand to benefit but so do other members of the Kagan clan, including Robert’s brother Frederick at the American Enterprise Institute and his wife Kimberly, who runs her own shop called the Institute for the Study of War.
Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution (which doesn’t disclose details on its funders), used his prized perch on the Washington Post’s op-ed page on Friday to bait Republicans into abandoning the sequester caps limiting the Pentagon’s budget, which he calculated at about $523 billion (apparently not counting extra war spending). Kagan called on the GOP legislators to add at least $38 billion and preferably more like $54 billion to $117 billion:
“The fact that [advocates for more spending] face a steep uphill battle to get even that lower number passed by a Republican-controlled Congress says a lot — about Republican hypocrisy. Republicans may be full-throated in denouncing [President Barack] Obama for weakening the nation’s security, yet when it comes to paying for the foreign policy that all their tough rhetoric implies, too many of them are nowhere to be found. …
“The editorial writers and columnists who have been beating up Obama and cheering the Republicans need to tell those Republicans, and their own readers, that national security costs money and that letters and speeches are worse than meaningless without it. …
“It will annoy the part of the Republican base that wants to see the government shrink, loves the sequester and doesn’t care what it does to defense. But leadership occasionally means telling people what they don’t want to hear. Those who propose to lead the United States in the coming years, Republicans and Democrats, need to show what kind of political courage they have, right now, when the crucial budget decisions are being made.”
So, the way to show “courage” – in Kagan’s view – is to ladle ever more billions into the Military-Industrial Complex, thus putting money where the Republican mouths are regarding the need to “defend Ukraine” and resist “a bad nuclear deal with Iran.”
Yet, if it weren’t for Nuland’s efforts as Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, the Ukraine crisis might not exist. A neocon holdover who advised Vice President Dick Cheney, Nuland gained promotions under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and received backing, too, from current Secretary of State John Kerry.
Confirmed to her present job in September 2013, Nuland soon undertook an extraordinary effort to promote “regime change” in Ukraine. She personally urged on business leaders and political activists to challenge elected President Viktor Yanukovych. She reminded corporate executives that the United States had invested $5 billion in their “European aspirations,” and she literally passed out cookies to anti-government protesters in Kiev’s Maidan square.
Working with other key neocons, including National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman and Sen. John McCain, Nuland made clear that the United States would back a “regime change” against Yanukovych, which grew more likely as neo-Nazi and other right-wing militias poured into Kiev from western Ukraine.
In early February 2014, Nuland discussed U.S.-desired changes with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt (himself a veteran of a “regime change” operation at the International Atomic Energy Agency, helping to install U.S. yes man Yukiya Amano as the director-general in 2009).
Nuland treated her proposed new line-up of Ukrainian officials as if she were trading baseball cards, casting aside some while valuing others. “Yats is the guy,” she said of her favorite Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Disparaging the less aggressive European Union, she uttered “Fuck the EU” – and brainstormed how she would “glue this thing” as Pyatt pondered how to “mid-wife this thing.” Their unsecure phone call was intercepted and leaked.
Ukraine’s ‘Regime Change’
The coup against Yanukovych played out on Feb. 22, 2014, as the neo-Nazi militias and other violent extremists overran government buildings forcing the president and other officials to flee for their lives. Nuland’s State Department quickly declared the new regime “legitimate” and Yatsenyuk took over as prime minister.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had been presiding over the Winter Olympics at Sochi, was caught off-guard by the coup next door and held a crisis session to determine how to protect ethnic Russians and a Russian naval base in Crimea, leading to Crimea’s secession from Ukraine and annexation by Russia a year ago.
Though there was no evidence that Putin had instigated the Ukraine crisis – and indeed all the evidence indicated the opposite – the State Department peddled a propaganda theme to the credulous mainstream U.S. news media about Putin having somehow orchestrated the situation in Ukraine so he could begin invading Europe. Former Secretary of State Clinton compared Putin to Adolf Hitler.
As the new Kiev government launched a brutal “anti-terrorism operation” to subdue an uprising among the large ethnic Russian populations of eastern and southern Ukraine, Nuland and other American neocons pushed for economic sanctions against Russia and demanded arms for the coup regime. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis.”]
Amid the barrage of “information warfare” aimed at both the U.S. and world publics, a new Cold War took shape. Prominent neocons, including Nuland’s husband Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century which masterminded the Iraq War, hammered home the domestic theme that Obama had shown himself to be “weak,” thus inviting Putin’s “aggression.”
In May 2014, Kagan published a lengthy essay in The New Republic entitled “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire,” in which Kagan castigated Obama for failing to sustain American dominance in the world and demanding a more muscular U.S. posture toward adversaries.
According to a New York Times article about how the essay took shape and its aftermath, writer Jason Horowitz reported that Kagan and Nuland shared a common world view as well as professional ambitions, with Nuland editing Kagan’s articles, including the one tearing down her ostensible boss.
Though Nuland wouldn’t comment specifically on her husband’s attack on Obama, she indicated that she held similar views. “But suffice to say,” Nuland said, “that nothing goes out of the house that I don’t think is worthy of his talents. Let’s put it that way.”
Horowitz reported that Obama was so concerned about Kagan’s assault that the President revised his commencement speech at West Point to deflect some of the criticism and invited Kagan to lunch at the White House, where one source told me that it was like “a meeting of equals.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama’s True Foreign Policy ‘Weakness.’”]
Sinking a Peace Deal
And, whenever peace threatens to break out in Ukraine, Nuland jumps in to make sure that the interests of war are protected. Last month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande hammered out a plan for a cease-fire and a political settlement, known as Minsk-2, prompting Nuland to engage in more behind-the-scenes maneuvering to sabotage the deal.
In another overheard conversation — in Munich, Germany — Nuland mocked the peace agreement as “Merkel’s Moscow thing,” according to the German newspaper Bild, citing unnamed sources, likely from the German government which may have bugged the conference room in the luxurious Bayerischer Hof hotel and then leaked the details.
Picking up on Nuland’s contempt for Merkel, another U.S. official called the Minsk-2 deal the Europeans’ “Moscow bullshit.”
Nuland suggested that Merkel and Hollande cared only about the practical impact of the Ukraine war on Europe: “They’re afraid of damage to their economy, counter-sanctions from Russia.” According to the Bild story, Nuland also laid out a strategy for countering Merkel’s diplomacy by using strident language to frame the Ukraine crisis.
“We can fight against the Europeans, we can fight with rhetoric against them,” Nuland reportedly said.
NATO Commander Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove was quoted as saying that sending more weapons to the Ukrainian government would “raise the battlefield cost for Putin.” Nuland interjected to the U.S. politicians present that “I’d strongly urge you to use the phrase ‘defensive systems’ that we would deliver to oppose Putin’s ‘offensive systems.’”
Nuland sounded determined to sink the Merkel-Hollande peace initiative even though it was arranged by two major U.S. allies and was blessed by President Obama. And, this week, the deal seems indeed to have been blown apart by Nuland’s hand-picked Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, who inserted a poison pill into the legislation to implement the Minsk-2 political settlement.
The Ukrainian parliament in Kiev added a clause that, in effect, requires the rebels to first surrender and let the Ukrainian government organize elections before a federalized structure is determined. Minsk-2 had called for dialogue with the representatives of these rebellious eastern territories en route to elections and establishment of broad autonomy for the region.
Instead, reflecting Nuland’s hard-line position, Kiev refused to talks with rebel leaders and insisted on establishing control over these territories before the process can move forward. If the legislation stands, the result will almost surely be a resumption of war between military forces backed by nuclear-armed Russia and the United States, a very dangerous development for the world. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine’s Poison Pill for Peace Talks.”]
Not only will the Ukrainian civil war resume but so will the Cold War between Washington and Moscow with lots of money to be made by the Military-Industrial Complex. On Friday, Nuland’s husband, Robert Kagan, drove home that latter point in the neocon Washington Post.
The Payoff
But don’t think that this unlocking of the U.S. taxpayers’ wallets is just about this one couple. There will be plenty of money to be made by other neocon think-tankers all around Washington, including Frederick Kagan, who works for the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, and his wife, Kimberly, who runs her own think tank, the Institute for the Study of War [ISW].
According to ISW’s annual reports, its original supporters were mostly right-wing foundations, such as the Smith-Richardson Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, but it was later backed by a host of national security contractors, including major ones like General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and CACI, as well as lesser-known firms such as DynCorp International, which provided training for Afghan police, and Palantir, a technology company founded with the backing of the CIA’s venture-capital arm, In-Q-Tel. Palantir supplied software to U.S. military intelligence in Afghanistan.
Since its founding in 2007, ISW has focused mostly on wars in the Middle East, especially Iraq and Afghanistan, including closely cooperating with Gen. David Petraeus when he commanded U.S. forces in those countries. However, more recently, ISW has begun reporting extensively on the civil war in Ukraine. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Neocons Guided Petraeus on Afghan War.”]
In other words, the Family Kagan has almost a self-perpetuating, circular business model – working the inside-corridors of government power to stimulate wars while simultaneously influencing the public debate through think-tank reports and op-ed columns in favor of more military spending – and then collecting grants and other funding from thankful military contractors.
To be fair, the Nuland-Kagan mom-and-pop shop is really only a microcosm of how the Military-Industrial Complex has worked for decades: think-tank analysts generate the reasons for military spending, the government bureaucrats implement the necessary war policies, and the military contractors make lots of money before kicking back some to the think tanks — so the bloody but profitable cycle can spin again.
The only thing that makes the Nuland-Kagan operation special perhaps is that the whole process is all in the family.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.A Family Business f Perpetual Way

Unintended_Consequences.PDF

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U.S. police are killing more than all first world police forces combined

February 25, 2015
Hide your kids.  Hide your wife.  The cops are killing everybody this year.  It would seem that the police in the U.S. are commited to breaking a murder record 2015, as the total body count at the hands of police is up to 138.  That’s 1 person every 8 hours!  Moreover, every police officer killed this year was murdered by other cops.  Continue reading below for the gripping article from TheFreeThoughtProject.com with statistics sure to shock and enrage you. 

As of February 16, only a month and a half into 2015, there has been at least 138 individuals killed by police in the United States since the first of the year.
The frighteningly high number averages out to three killed per day, or someone killed every eight hours.  While there is no government-run database, Killed By Police has taken it upon themselves to keep track, and are doing a fantastic job thus far.
Just to put things into perspective, let’s take a look at the rates at which police in other countries kill their citizens.
Let’s look at our immediate neighbors to the north, Canada. The total number of citizens killed by law enforcement officers in the year 2014, was 14; that is 78 times less people than the US.
If we look at the United Kingdom, 1 person was killed by police in 2014 and 0 in 2013. English police reportedly fired guns a total of three times in all of 2013, with zero reported fatalities.
From 2010 through 2014, there were four fatal police shootings in England, which has a population of about 52 million. By contrast, Albuquerque, N.M., with a population 1 percent the size of England’s, had 26 fatal police shootings in that same time period.
China, whose population is 4 and 1/2 times the size of the United States, recorded 12 killings by law enforcement officers in 2014.

Let that sink in. Law enforcement in the US killed 92 times more people than a country with nearly 1.4 billion people. 

It doesn’t stop there.
From 2013-2014, German police killed absolutely no one. 
In the entire history of Iceland police, they have only killed 1 person ever. After exhausting all non-lethal methods to detain an armed man barricaded in his house who actually shot 2 police officers, police were forced to take the 59-year-old man’s life. The country of Iceland grieved for weeks after having to resort to violence.
Unofficially, it seems that American police kill more than all of the first world nations’ police departments combined!
That’s not the only mind-blowing perspective either. So far this year all cop killers have been other cops.  This year the police seem to be far more likely to die as a result of police brutality than at the hand of a violent suspect.
Just last week an officer responding to a domestic disturbance at a North Texas residence, shot and killed off-duty sheriff’s deputy Larry Hostetter, 41, shortly after midnight.At the end of January, we also reported on a Yonkers police officer who shot a suicidal officer from another precinct, claiming he feared for his safety.  We also reported on an undercover Albuquerque police officer who was shot by another officer during a drug bust over $60 worth of meth.  The media called it a “tragic accident” while, in reality, it was another example of police shooting someone who poses no threat to them.
There was also John Ballard Gorman was shot and killed by a fellow officer during a training exercise in Tunica, MS last month. The officer who shot Gorman failed to switch out his weapon for a training weapon and fired a real round into his fellow officer, killing him.
According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, the pro-police site that tracks every officer death, not a single police officer has been killed by a suspect so far this year.

Line of Duty Deaths: 14
Automobile accident: 5
Heart attack: 4
Struck by vehicle: 2
Vehicle pursuit: 1
9/11 related illness: 1
Gunfire (Accidental): 1

In fact, being a police officer isn’t even close to being in the top 10 most dangerous jobs in this country.  According to the 2013 report by the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics on work-related fatal injuries, “Police and sheriff’s patrol deputies” ranked as the 41st most dangerous occupation.
Also, according to an FBI report, Americans are less violent than ever; its the police who have been increasingly violent.
With job related danger so low, there is no excuse for the police to be so trigger happy, acting like they are Batman and every citizen is a violent villain hell bent on their death.
As Liberation News pointed out, a vast majority of those killed by the police in 2015 have again been young African Americans and Latinos. The two youngest were both 17-years-old, Kristiana Coignard of Texas and Jessica Hernandez of Colorado. The oldest was 87-year-old Lewis Becker from rural upstate New York.
Officers who cannot bring 17-year-old girls or 87-year-old men into custody safely have absolutely no business “protecting and serving” anyone.  A person who cannot control a situation with a 90 pound high school girl or an elderly gentleman, and “fear for their life” so severely that they need to pull a trigger, is not a hero, they’re a coward.

It is time for the United States to get over its love affair with idolizing the badge.