From Bill Whittle:
From Stefan Molyneaux:
I could say more, but, at this point, what difference would it make?!?!?
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From Bill Whittle:
From Stefan Molyneaux:
I could say more, but, at this point, what difference would it make?!?!?
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 
June 14, 2014 at 10:57
OMG, that first video is so stupid I could not get more than 2 minutes.
The people killed at these other embassies where working for the US embassy, guarding the US embassy or visiting the US Embassy. These people are victims and their lives mattered to somebody. Clearly not Republicans.
Also..the worst terrorist attack on American soil happened on Bush’s watch and he was warned before the attack and did little to stop it. Even when told … “Mr President, a second plane hit the World Trade Center… the US in under attack” .. the doofus sat there for 20 minutes doing NOTHING but pretend to read a children’s book.
Where is the outrage about that???
June 14, 2014 at 14:10
Bush didn’t just sit there, reading a book – that was camouflage while he had his lackeys bundle up and get out of the country the families of the hijackers!!!
After all, they were great buddies with Bush and his cronies!
June 21, 2014 at 13:41
I think you are talking about the Bin Laden family that was allowed to flee the US a few days after the attack.
As far as I know, and I have done extensive reading on 9-11, the actual hijackers had no family in the US.
Bush froze because he was waiting for Cheney to tell him what to do. The man was mostly a puppet of Cheney until the 2nd term when he realized Cheney was giving him horrible advice.
June 21, 2014 at 18:02
Good point, VOR, you are quite correct.
And please, don’t get me started on the evil troll that is Cheney…
What this all boils down to – Republican or Democrat, both US political parties are members of the same statist totalitarian clique.
June 17, 2014 at 14:08
Voice of Reason (sic):
Your indictment of George Bush is completely justified.
Indeed, the main reason people are so outraged with Barack Obama is because he failed to correct the perfidies of George Bush. Not only failed to correct them, but made them worse and added a whole mess of new ones.
Trying to frame this in terms of Bush vs. Obama serves only to distract attention from the issue that really matters:
With each administration – be it Republican or Democrat – the lies, corruption and violation of people’s rights become more severe and more blatant.
Benghazi matters, first and foremost, because of what it reveals to the American people about their own government.
June 18, 2014 at 00:38
..the worst terrorist attack on American soil happened on Bush’s watch and he was warned before the attack and did little to stop it.
Clinton/Gore were warned in 1996:
Executive Decision
Tellingly, Director Stuart Baird was not arrested.
Are you suggesting that between February and September 2011 Mr. Bush should have established the TSA for the purpose of screening airline passengers inside America – or worse, profiling passengers ?
That would have gone over well, especially after the debacle of the 2000 election.
The inconvenient truth is that the above film was closer to reality than to fiction, yet who would dare to release a similar film today ?
June 18, 2014 at 01:46
Maikeru,
I’m sorry, but I don’t know the film you are referring to…
However, it remains indisputable that both Bush administrations as well as the Clinton ones, continuing into the Obama/Hillary Clinton years, the statism (big government) forces have been left unchecked, growing, wielding more and more power…and transferring this power over to un-elected bureaucrats who use their unchecked powers within less and less defined borders, to oppress more and more rights of more and more peoples…with no oversight and no accountability to the taxpayer whatsoever!!!
It is ‘taxation (and regulation) without representation’ all the way to the ‘corporatist/crony-capitalist’ trough!!!
June 18, 2014 at 04:53
Xanthippa,
Executive Decision was released in 1996, and five years later came immediately to my mind as details of 9/11 began to emerge.
I think of it every time I read some fashionable socialist comment that the then President ‘was warned and did little to stop 9/11’- a claim that could only be made by ignoring the reality that the 2000 election was the so contentious that pResident Bush was a common smear throughout his first term.
Anyone who was old enough to travel by air before 9/11 knows full well how the public would have reacted to the sort of security measures in place today, absent that horrendous attack – and especially were such measures applied to ‘in country’ flights.
And speaking of fashionable socialists, the fellow who lost in 2000 went on to become the de facto President of the United Flakes, fêted by statists the world over, including/especially the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.
I don’t argue that American Presidents have been increasingly statist since President Reagan, during whose term America lost 241 armed service personnel to a suicide bomber in Lebanon – an event which also came to mind with the announcement that 275 Armed Forces personnel are being shipped to Iraq to deal with ISIS.
I will argue that President Bush was more cognizant of that portion of the American electorate which voted for his opponent than has been the case with the current administration.
I’ll also argue that Canadian media has force-fed Canadians a steady stream of ‘Democrats good – Republicans bad (never more evident than when John Dean gave the keynote address at the 2006 Liberal convention which produce Stéphane Dion as their then contender for the PMO)
If one views the 20th Century objectively, it’s apparent that collectivism/big government is the defining mantra, and ‘total war’ the blunt evidence of where that leads.
June 19, 2014 at 17:30
Maikeru,
it has been demonstrated in several studies that ‘progressives’ have little or no awareness of what the ‘conservatives’ actually think while the ‘conservatives’ are well versed in the ideas of ‘progressives’.
Actually, there was a study done recently where people were asked to answer a set of questions ‘as if they were’ first ‘conservative’, then ‘moderate, and then ‘progressive’ (I may have the labels not perfectly down, but the gist was this). Then, they were asked which group they would self-identify as.
People who self-identified as ‘progressive’ had no clue what either the moderates or the conservatives actually thought, while the other two groups were quite right on…
One explanation for this is that while ‘conservatives’ think that ‘progressives’ are wrong, ‘progressives’ think that ‘conservatives’ are ‘evil’…..and why bother studying evil ideas?
But, yes – the 20th century belongs to growing statism, regardless of the stated ideology of the governments in place.
June 22, 2014 at 00:23
Maikeru:
Believe me when I tell you that I am no socialist.
June 19, 2014 at 15:37
Maikeru:
Bush had no need to screen anyone, because he knew exactly what was going to happen and who was going to be behind it.
Admittedly, the fact that Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (father of Osama bin Laden) and George Bush Sr. sat together on the board of the Carlyle Group is only circumstantial evidence. However…
It is well documented that the Americans were warned by the Israelis, the British, the Germans, the French, the Egyptians, the Sudanese, and who knows who else. See They Tried to Warn Us: Foreign Intelligence Warnings Before 9/11.
And I believe it was John Brennan (then Deputy Director, now Director, of the CIA) who flew from Washington to Texas in August 2001 for the express purpose of warning George Bush about the imminent attack. See August 6, 2001: President Bush Tells CIA Regarding Bin Laden Warning, ‘You’ve Covered Your Ass, Now’.
It is painfully obvious that Bush knew what was coming and let it happen in order to create a context that would allow the US to pursue its geopolitical objectives in the Middle East and also allow the passage of the Patriot Act, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and the wholesale violation of the US Constitution. See In Secret, FISA Court Contradicted US Supreme Court on Constitutional Rights.
What all this boils down to is that the CIA is in cahoots with the Wahabis for the same reason the DEA is in cahoots with the Sinaloa cartel:
It advances the agenda of the globalist totalitarian plutocracy.
June 19, 2014 at 15:47
Xanthippa:
You could not be more right!
It has been gathering momentum for a long time. The “war on terror” is Richard Nixon’s “war on drugs” writ large. Both feed what they purportedly fight while destroying everything worth saving about America and bringing about its descent into a totalitarian police state.
What’s astonishing about the Obama administration is how blatant they have become in their utter disregard for propriety and discretion.
Benghazi, Syria, Ukraine, Snowden, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, IRS political persecution, and so on, and so forth…
People simply can’t ignore it anymore.
And that may be the one good thing to come out of Barack Obama’s occupation of the White House.
June 19, 2014 at 17:22
CodeSlinger,
you are the eternal optimist!
However, I disagree.
We have permitted strangers to sexually assault our children in front of our eyes for the privilege of using an airplane ticket we have paid for, and we have ignored it.
If we are willing to turn a blind eye to that, there’s no going back!
June 20, 2014 at 00:27
Xanthippa:
Yes. Well. There is that.
But there is also this: US House approves new Benghazi inquiry.
So it seems we aren’t the only ones who think Benghazi matters.
And it seems that Obama has finally alienated the press. For example: NSA, DEA, IRS Lie About Fact That Americans Are Routinely Spied On By Our Government: Time For A Special Prosecutor.
If this were Alex Jones, it could be dismissed as an isolated cry from the lunatic fringe.
But this is Forbes.
So perhaps a bit of cautious optimism is called for…
June 20, 2014 at 01:46
CodeSlinger,
I SOOOOOO wish I could agree with you. There is nothing I would rather be proven to be wrong about….
But….
Despite all this, all the scandals, all the screw ups, all the evil….Hillary Clinton STILL looks like THE most likely NEXT US President!!!!!
Excuse me as I empty the contents of my digestive system for having written this, but – besides that statist/corporatist bitch, there really is no other candidate likely to grasp the proverbial brass ring.
And…even IF there were someone – the ‘arm’s length’ bureaucracy is so powerful now that it hardly matters who appears to be at the helm!!! Their ‘regulations’ are an extralegal (well, extraconstitutional, but still legally enforcable) means to enslave us.
And there is no appeal – for, even when the courts (in a jury trial) find for the citizen, the ‘regulators’ are not bound by the judicial decisions and can impose their will on the now enslaved citizenry!!!!
Hence my (rather objective) despair.
June 19, 2014 at 20:08
Codeslinger:
re:
”Bush had no need to screen anyone, because he knew exactly what was going to happen and who was going to be behind it.”
Much the same has been said of FDR regarding the 1941/12/07 attack on Pearl Harbour.
Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy on 1940/09/27, the former being actively engaged in expansionist warfare since 1939/09/01.
Japan in turn was engaged in expansionist warfare by the turn of the century, making their ‘great leap forward’ in 1905 by defeating the Russian navy, and making Korea a Japanese protectorate.
On 1941/12/06, a year after FDR had been returned to office by 5 million more voters than isolationist candidate Wendell Wilkie, America was playing water boy for England and testing fighter planes for combat in China.
One can say he knew, or ought to have known, every last detail beforehand, but so what – 45% of Americans had signed on for isolationism, and weren’t about to give up their life and liberty to the government over any ‘potential’ threat.
That’s rather a large portion of Americans to drag screaming into war absent any direct attack on Americans beyond Uboat misadventures.
…Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (father of Osama bin Laden) and George Bush Sr. sat together on the board of the Carlyle Group…
Many large families have a child who brings hardship and/or shame to their parents and siblings.
IIRC, Osama was bin # 53, which only ups the odds.
It is painfully obvious that Bush knew what was coming and let it happen in order to create a context that would allow the US to pursue its geopolitical objectives in the Middle East and also allow the passage of the Patriot Act, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and the wholesale violation of the US Constitution.
I’m with except for ‘and let it happen in order tocreate a context’.
Much like FDR, GWB was forced to remain ‘isolationist’, following the lead of prior administrations since President Carter, until some actual and horrendous event justified a call to ‘total’ war – which in 1941 meant converting Americans into a ‘collectivist’ society, ruled by an elite, which had the absolute power over individual life and liberty.
What moviegoers watching ‘Executive Decision’ in 1996 had in common with fellow Americans on Sept 10,2001 was the belief that flights could be hijacked, and that human scuds existed – elsewhere.
Japan resorted to human scuds in desperation, and they were the weapon most feared by American naval forces.
Use of same by Islam may be a similar indication of an ideology failing under duress, as western values increasingly intrude upon religious dogma.
I took the time to skim the linked documents you graciously provided, but resonated most to this sentence found therein:
We know that US intelligence was suffering “warning fatigue” from so many notifications of an upcoming al-Qaeda attack.
At the same time, the American public were suffering ‘warning fatigue’ from election attack ads and post-election political squabbling.
June 19, 2014 at 23:51
Maikeru:
Well, of course, there is no actual proof to be found at our pay grade, but there is ample evidence to support the assertion that both FDR and GWB deliberately orchestrated – or at least callously allowed – an “actual and horrendous event” in order to justify not only a call to war, but also an increasingly totalitarian restructuring of American society.
Especially when we ask, cui bono? (who benefits?)
In Bush’s case, the trail is fresher, so the evidence is much more compelling. Take, for example, the report published in September 2000 by the Project for a New American Century, entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses. On page 51, we read
“Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”
So, yes, it is most apt that you should make the comparison to FDR and Pearl Harbor.
June 20, 2014 at 18:50
Codeslinger:
there is ample evidence to support the assertion that both FDR and GWB deliberately orchestrated – or at least callously allowed – an “actual and horrendous event” in order to justify not only a call to war, but also an increasingly totalitarian restructuring of American society.
A totalitarian restructuring of society is evidence of a call to war.
When directed against outside forces it’s been an appropriate response.
When civil war erupts, it’s evidence that a totalitarian condition exists.
During FDR’s second term, and before Pearl Harbour, America lent armed advice to China, placed harsh sanctions on Japan , and in August 1941 signed the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFITxAgoKTk>Atlantic Charter.
No civil war was triggered in America by those actions.
As it turned out, Admiral Yamamoto was a more immediate and credible naval threat to America than Admiral Doenitz, but from 1939/09/01 until 1941/12/07, Americans were focussed on events unfolding in the Atlantic, Europe, and the USSR.
GWB became President to a nation obsessed with sex. lies, and Y2K – and to whom the middle east meant dates, oil, and car bombs right up until 911.
Take, for example, the report published in September 2000 by the Project for a New American Century, entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses. On page 51, we read
“Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”
Absent surrounding context, what that sentence states is that transformation flows from reaction to the status quo.
In 1855 Japan was a moribund feudal state, by 1905 a Colonial power, and by 1955 an American protectorate.
In 1855 America was poised for Civil War, by 1905 a robust free state, and by 1955 the UN’s landlord.
One would hope by Y2K that think tanks were looking forward to what ‘new age’ influences might be at play ‘in country’ and around the globe.
Had the 1997 Kyoto Protocol been about limiting the rise of Islam rather than oceans it would still be relevant today.
And speaking of 1941, Benghazi springs to mind as a key objective for both Axis and Allies efforts, being ‘captured’ first by one then the other no less than 4 times that year.
Fast forward to 2011, and Benghazi is is the key objective for a Civil War which kills hundreds, stuttering on until decided by the French Air Force bolstered by a hundred plus Tomohawk cruise missiles, courtesy of UN Pieceskeepers.
History is trying, unsuccessfully it seems, to teach us something.
June 20, 2014 at 21:06
Maikeru:
I a not remotely qualified to comment on the whole long-term history thing, but I do know a little about the Kyoto thing and, for the sake of accuracy, I think I need to chime in.
Had the 1997 Kyoto Protocol been about limiting the rise of Islam rather than oceans it would still be relevant today.
The Kyoto protocol was NEVER about the environment, never ever.
Kyoto protocol was the culmination of a process officially kicked off in Rio. Now, while my father-in-law and Maurice Strong never agreed on anything and strongly detest each other, he was one of the delegates in Rio (by virtue of then being the special economic adviser to the head of Canada’s nuclear energy industry). I recall, when he came home, he was so disgusted…so frustrated and angry about what was going on…
Anyway, to make a long story short… When he returned, he said this had nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with building a crisis to lay the groundwork for global governance which would result on a very invasive world government.
Now, my father in-law is no libertarian – he’d penned the wording of much Liberal legislation under Lester B. and only left the Liberal Party over Trudeau Sr.’s so called ‘energy policy’. But even a Keynsian big-government Liberal like my dad-in-law was sickened by this whole charade!
P.S. – yes, he and I often battle over the souls of the next generation in our family…and get into loud and lively discussions over things like whether there exists such a thing as ‘public good’!
June 23, 2014 at 03:53
Xanthippa
I expect anything associated with Mr. Strong to be worthy of closer inspection, yet he remains an unknown to most Canadians.
There have been several extended threads on FreeDominion referencing the man.
I didn’t mean to infer that there was any merit in attempting to ‘stop the rise of oceans’ by wordly legislation, nor has there been since King Canute demonstrated the futility of same back in the 12th Century.
June 23, 2014 at 11:57
Maikeru,
King Canute was disgusted by the simpering sycophants at his court who kept telling him he could do no wrong and everyone and everything was happy to follow each and every one of his commands. He had himself brought to the beach and ordered the tide not to come in in order to prove the limitations of a king!!!
Obama, on the other hand, truly believes that he can stop the rising oceans…
June 21, 2014 at 14:39
Maikeru:
I’m not sure what point you’re making, but you seem to be saying that both FDR and GWB were forced to act by the exigencies of power. But it’s much more likely that events were orchestrated to make it appear that way.
And you seem to think that there can be no totalitarianism without civil war. Yet it’s quite clear that Western society is being carefully engineered to facilitate the gradual descent into totalitarianism without any need for a glorious revolution.
Or maybe not so gradual anymore. Look around you. Is this the country you grew up in? Does it still feel like a free country?
Do you think the change is accidental?
In September 2000, the Military-Industrial Complex called for a new Pearl Harbor. Within one year, they got exactly that.
Coincidence? I think not.
FDR was a Democrat. GWB was a Republican. Both took great strides toward totalitarianism under the guise of temporary necessity. But there was nothing temporary about the infringements of individual rights they brought about.
It’s not left against right.
It’s the system.
Against you.
June 21, 2014 at 18:08
CodeSliinger,
Right on. But don’t forget Woodrow Wilson – he was perhaps the most fascistic president before Obama…
June 21, 2014 at 23:32
Xanthippa:
How could I forget Woodrow Wilson?
He was the skunk who saddled America with the Federal Reserve.
There is more to that than meets the eye, though. In his book, The New Freedom, published in 1913 – the same year he signed the Federal Reserve Act into law – he wrote:
Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
As I said, it has been gathering momentum for a long time.
June 23, 2014 at 05:04
odeSlinger:
I’m not sure what point you’re making, but you seem to be saying that both FDR and GWB were forced to act by the exigencies of power. But it’s much more likely that events were orchestrated to make it appear that way.
The main thrust of my comparisons between FDR and GWB it to dispell the notion that either man initiated a ‘burning Reichstag’ event to induce totalitarian control of Americans.
I don’t doubt that there were/are many forces attempting to orchestrate public opinion, however any study of how history has played itself out illustrates that the best laid plans invariably go awry from unforeseen reactions which themselves may be orchestrated.
And you seem to think that there can be no totalitarianism without civil war. Yet it’s quite clear that Western society is being carefully engineered to facilitate the gradual descent into totalitarianism without any need for a glorious revolution.
I believe that Civil War springs from a perception held by dissidents, that their government is totalitarian, as indeed it may be.
Western society became collectivist from need brought about by warfare, as well as from losing a great portion of the best and brightest young men from two successive generations.
Or maybe not so gradual anymore. Look around you. Is this the country you grew up in? Does it still feel like a free country?
Do you think the change is accidental?
I was fortunate in being born and raised a citizen of the most blessed country on God’s green earth, during a period of relative peace hard won by my parents and grandparents.
I consider that the greatest single influence on changing social mores in the history of the world, let alone in my lifetime, was the introduction of the Pill.
If the ‘military-industrial complex’ had anywhere near the control of public opinion that folks give them credit for, then they failed miserably to prevent the use of that means to control one’s personal destiny.
A good friend once posited that the root cause of failure for the Russian military adventure into Afghanistan was that Russian families had shrunk similarly to western families, and that the loss of a single son to a family with only one son was a major disincentive to allowing the government to send one’s child into harm’s way.
In September 2000, the Military-Industrial Complex called for a new Pearl Harbor. Within one year, they got exactly that.
Coincidence? I think not.
I don’t believe they called for a catastrophic event so much as recognized that change was underway, and apparent, and that it was necessary to prepare for any/every contingency – including outside attack or inner turmoil
Hollywood was tuning into radical Islam long before 911, which was a welcome relief from the bad guys being evil nazis, corporations, russian spies or nuclear insects.
Since 911, it’s back to nazis and corporations as the Hollywood scoundrels one must be most wary of, while tv newscasts have displaced the moviehouse newsreels of yore for presenting carefully screened propaganda.
June 21, 2014 at 14:59
Xanthippa:
Yes. Global warming (or climate change, or whatever you want to call it) is yet another phoney “new Pearl Harbor” to motivate the citizens of the developed countries to accept their own impoverishment in order to strengthen the globalist totalitarian plutocracy.
As for the public good, I do think there is such a thing, but it is an emergent property. It emerges out of the private goods of a myriad of individual people in the same way as the temperature of a macroscopic body emerges out to the independent movements of a myriad of individual molecules.
June 21, 2014 at 18:13
CodeSlinger,
Well, we are getting a little off topic – I used this as an illustration of the type of battles over the souls of the next generation that my father-in-law and I wage. Mind you, we have immense respect for each other and often take more extreme positions during the discussions for rhetorical effect, and because we both believe that it is really good for the young ones to hear the arguments so that they think it through for themselves.
But, while we are at it – there is no such thing as ‘a public’ and it cannot be accurately compared to a macroscopic body because of inherent individual rights of the individuals in society, a concept that does not exist for molecules within a macroscopic body.