Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Obama Gets His War

Great Pharaoh, who, in his role as god on earth, was going to reverse the centuries-long rise of the oceans, finally got his divine war in Syria. Just last year President Obama announced he was going to bomb Syria back to the stone age to help rebels oust Syrian President Assad. This was in response to a chemical weapons attack attributed to Assad but which turned out to be a false flag attack carried out by the rebels. War-weary Americans overwhelmingly rose up and overruled Obama. Russian President Putin rescued Obama with a plan for Assad to surrender his chemical weapons to be destroyed, which he did.
But our petulant president wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to attack Syria, and he needed to convince the pesky people to support his war. At that time nobody had heard of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). A search of Google News turns up only one mention of ISIS or ISIL (substitute Levant for Syria) in 2013. Now a day doesn’t go by without government’s propagandists crying hysterically that ISIS is the greatest threat the US has ever faced.
That’s not a coincidence. ISIS roared into prominence because the US and its regional allies funded, armed and trained ISIS fighters to be the highly successful terrorists they are today so they could defeat Assad. ISIS isn’t an enemy of the US. It’s a tool of the US. Obama is using ISIS; ISIS is using Obama; and everybody is suffering as a result.
The US camouflaged its arming of ISIS by supplying, arming and training supposedly moderate rebels. The problem is there are no moderate rebels. The personnel in the rebel militias are fluid. Moderate groups funnel weapons to fierce militias like ISIS. At the same time, ISIS fighters pretend to be moderates to obtain training and weapons. It’s a charade designed to fool the American people, and all parties understand it.
A month ago Obama himself said there were no real moderate rebels. “With ‘respect to Syria,’ said the president, the notion that arming the rebels would have made a difference has ‘always been a fantasy,’” The New York Times reported. “‘This idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth, and that they were going to be able to battle not only a well-armed state but also a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, a battle-hardened Hezbollah, that was never in the cards.’”
Yet today Obama claims he will defeat both ISIS and Assad by arming those same doctors, farmers and pharmacists to be the boots on the ground supported by US bombs. Pat Buchanan comments, “The strategy that President Obama laid out Wednesday night to ‘degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL,’ is incoherent, inconsistent and, ultimately, non-credible.” No kidding. Nobody, not even Arab countries threatened by ISIS, will send their troops to fight. That’s because Obama’s strategy is a sham.
The key to understanding this is understanding Iran is the ultimate target. Obama doesn’t want to destroy ISIS. He wants to help ISIS topple Assad because toppling Assad will further isolate Iran.
Obama admitted he already used ISIS to oust Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, who was tightly aligned with Iran. The Times reported, “The reason, the president added, ‘that we did not just start taking a bunch of airstrikes all across Iraq as soon as ISIL came in was because that would have taken the pressure off of [Prime Minister Nuri Kamal] al-Maliki.’” This also explains reports that Iraqi troops were mysteriously ordered to retreat instead of fighting ISIS when ISIS first invaded Iraq.
But the advance of ISIS in Iraq still didn’t convince the American people to support Obama’s newest war. He needed more propaganda, so he sent Secretary of Defense Hagel to fearmonger. Reuters reported, “Asked if the hardline Sunni Muslim organization posed a threat to the United States comparable to that of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Hagel said it was ‘as sophisticated and well-funded as any group we have seen.’”
Considering al Qaeda had about 500 fighters in 2001, and ISIS currently has over 20,000, this is a stark admission of the failure of the US policy of perpetual war to make us safer. Clearly, Hagel is saying it has made us less safe. ISIS helped Hagel by shortening its name to Islamic State to make it appear they threatened the US.
But Hagel’s claims still didn’t convince the American people. It took two videos of Americans being beheaded to finally push Americans over the edge and give Obama the support he needed. What went largely unreported was the claim by the family of Steven Sotloff that Obama’s moderate Syrian rebel buddies, who recently signed a non-aggression pact with ISIS, sold him to ISIS and the beheading videos were faked.
Obama’s propaganda campaign worked. It got him his latest war. Joseph Goebbels would be proud.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Hilarity in Huber Heights

A recent Dayton Daily News headline read, “Huber expected to OK $1.25 million in music center upgrades”. Of course they were. The boondoggle isn’t even built yet, and Huber Heights’s rulers are already upgrading it. But this was a fait accompli. The history suggests Huber’s rulers met with Music and Event Management, Inc. executives, the boondoggle’s eventual manager, smoked $100 cigars and drank 90-year-old scotch purchased with taxpayers’ money, and agreed to use this music venue boondoggle to soak the taxpayers of Huber Heights for every penny they could loot from them before proposing the project.
The article’s sub-head reads, “Supporters say additional work will pay for itself”. Of course they do. They always say that. They said the same thing about their aquatic center boondoggle. The DDN tells how that is working out, “Attendance at the Kroger Aquatic Center at The Heights has dipped again for the second year in a row...” It also reports, “In 2013, the aquatic center — 8625 Brandt Pike — had a net loss of $35,159 and drew 29,282 people with 201 season passes.” So it lost money two years in a row, two out of three it’s been in existence. Rulers blame the weather without mentioning the inherent inability of socialists to perform economic calculation and therefore to effectively manage any project. Taxpayers are the gift Huber’s rulers force to keep on giving.
Sure, this summer was cool, as was last summer. If an investor lost his own money on a pool project because he didn’t do his homework to determine the Earth was entering a cool climate cycle, nobody else would get hurt. But since rulers steal money from taxpayers in the form of taxes, every taxpayer in Huber Heights is getting hurt by this pool boondoggle and now the music boondoggle.
After reviewing how Huber’s rulers hoodwinked taxpayers into paying for this boondoggle, the evidence it was a scam from the beginning is overwhelming. First, the rulers misled taxpayers about the cost. On Dec. 7, 2012 the DDN reported, “A $10 million music center has been proposed to anchor the $220 million Heights development here, and construction could start as early as next year, city officials said.” Three days later the DDN reported the price mysteriously nearly doubled to $18 million. It’s not credible Huber’s rulers learned the real price immediately after publicizing a grossly wrong one.
At the same time they compared it to Riverbend Music Center in Cincinnati. They allocated $100,000 to a management company to determine feasibility which turned out to be the same company that ran Riverbend and now manages Huber’s boondoggle. That’s a shameless conflict of interest. You’d have to be hopelessly naive not to realize this deal was pre-determined before anything was reported. Every meeting, every so-called debate on this boondoggle, has been a sham.
On March 5, 2013, the DDN reported Goodsports Enterprises would build a hotel and sports complex next to the boondoggle. Rulers led Huber’s taxpayers to believe the boondoggle was already producing benefits. That turned out to be phony too. The reality is rulers secretly paid for Goodsports to be part of their boondoggle, but Goodsports never committed to show up. The DDN reports, “Huber Heights officials are investigating why the city spent nearly $300,000 to prepare a building pad for GoodSports Enterprises’ $22 million fieldhouse/hotel — when the development agreement did not require it.” So the same rulers who made and paid for the deal are supposedly investigating themselves to discover why they did it. This scam is so transparent, they should be embarrassed. Meanwhile, Goodsports is a no-show. I apologize to Huber‘s taxpayers who are being robbed, but I can’t help but laugh.
The subsequent “scandal” regarding the “proposed” $1.25 million VIP upgrades makes me laugh out loud. While pretending they hadn’t yet decided to fund the upgrades, Huber’s rulers were already secretly paying for them. The DDN reports, “The two change orders totaling $323,751 impacting the two main concession stands and the VIP concession stand were approved in May and June of this year.” City council subsequently, unanimously approved the additional spending. Big surprise. The outrage and debate exhibited over discovering those payments was another scam. This boondoggle was going to cost $19.25 million, that we know of, all along.
Huber’s rulers have Romanesque delusions of grandeur. In a region where extravagant looting by local rulers is the norm, Huber Heights stands out, and there are negative consequences. The DDN reports, “Huber Heights officials are in the early stages of looking to revitalize the center of town that city leaders say points to a commitment to the entire community and not just the growth north of Interstate 70.” Baloney. This shows Huber’s rulers have looted Huber Heights into decline to enrich themselves and their cronies, and they plan to continue, using the town’s center next. Nobody can loot others into prosperity.
I compliment the DDN on dozens of articles conveying Huber’s rulers’ perspective. Unfortunately, it hasn’t reported any other perspective, let alone the full story.

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Government Does Not Work Us

Arguably the most successful lie rulers have brainwashed the people into believing is government works for us. People frequently say we have to remind government agents they work for us. They say we pay their salaries. Police cars proclaim “To Protect and Serve”.
But this is demonstrably false. The only way one can work for another is if he does so voluntarily. Taxes aren’t voluntary. The government extracts them from us at the point of its gun. If you don’t pay, armed men storm your house, shoot your dog, and stick guns in your face and in the faces of everybody you live with. If you survive the assault, they’ll lock you in a cage and steal your money in an inherently corrupt, socialist court run by the same brigands stealing your money.
Our rulers no more work for us than slave-masters worked for slaves. Your civics teacher lied.
Police don’t protect and serve us. They protect and serve our rulers. For example, if you want to peacefully buy raw milk, the police won’t protect you while you do so. They will attack you for doing so because our rulers might lose a couple dollars if you buy healthy, raw milk from a local farmer instead of buying dead, industrial milk, shipped halfway across the country, from a giant food corporation.
Some people claim we are a nation of laws, ruled by the rule of law, so cops have to attack people for performing peaceful but illegal activities. This is false too. The rule of law means the law applies equally to everybody. This has never been true in the US. It can never be true when government enforcers are allowed to commit crimes like stealing money assaulting peaceful people. Government corrupted law to legalize its acts of aggression. Like all socialist systems, the US has a two-tiered set of laws, one for serfs and one for rulers. For example, if a mom with a gun permit from Pennsylvania carries her weapon into New Jersey, she is aggressively prosecuted. Enforcers who do the same are not.
As one former cop admits in an email, police are first and foremost uniformed tax collectors. “The amount of officers dedicated strictly to revenue generating would shock most people. Most of my reports were after the crime was committed that went nowhere,” he wrote. “I would laugh when people would ask if we were looking for their car, property, missing loved one or the person that just assaulted or robbed them. We had no time to do these investigations and was as you stated simply for insurance purposes. [sic] Only high crimes such as serious assault, murder and rape are investigated by the detective bureau or prosecuted by a district attorney.”
The second priority of enforcers is to protect rulers from the people. That’s why the NSA and police forces spy on every American. That’s why there’s surveillance cameras on every corner except where our rulers live. That’s why police violently shut down protests.
The third function of enforcers is to provide the illusion of legitimacy for government. That’s why they capture and convict somebody, whether it’s the right person or not, whenever a serious crime is committed, but they laugh when you ask them to recover your stolen goods.
One of the easiest ways for police to generate revenue is to troll for young black men under the guise of fighting crime, shake them down, then charge them with selling drugs. Whether the charge is true or not doesn’t matter because it’s easy to convince a white jury, as nearly all are, to convict young black men. This is why cops charge black men with drug crimes at outrageously higher rates than whites even though blacks and whites do drugs at about the same rate. If cops trolled for young white men, there’d be an uproar. When they troll for young black men, they’re congratulated for fighting crime, and their budgets increase. The systematic aggression of the war on drugs, along with socialist education, minimum wage aggression, and interventionist economic policies, is perfect for oppressing and persecuting blacks.
Ubiquitous police aggression is the context for the killing of a young, unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri, the killing of a young black man carrying a toy gun in Walmart in Beavercreek, and the killing of all young, unarmed black men by cops. But the legalized, systematic aggression of cops against all serfs, regardless of race, is the root problem. The racial aspect is a symptom. Cops exhibit the rapist’s mentality: submit to their aggression or die, and the most successful are rewarded with promotions.
The biggest mistake blacks have made in resisting police brutality is mistaking race as the primary factor. It alienates the majority of the population and ignores the root problem. But it makes race agitators like Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson rich, so it continues.
Cops legally kill over 400 Americans a year. Only 96 are blacks killed by white officers. To stop the carnage, we must recognize the root cause is the systematic aggression inherent in socialist policing.