President Barack Obama gave his national security speech that tried his best to justify the Western Empire. I give him credit. He is a great orator and his rhetoric is interesting. Yet, the truth must be known and we know the truth. The tyrannical DHS and the TSA will be exposed by real Patriots and all other truth-seekers for real. There is not a single justification for talking about no excuses for the victims of oppression, but refusing to say no excuses to the big banks or members of Wall Street. He made his historical speech at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. He offered a tortured defense of extra judicial assassinations. He in the first time publicly acknowledged the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in September 2011. He was an U.S. citizen. He outlined a contradiction. He tried to defend drone assassination while acknowledging the argument of their illegality and the illegality of much of what the American government has done over the past decade. If his actions were legal and moral, why is he asking for reforms of his policies? The White House is in the defensive about much of their foreign policy ideologies. They are aware of this. The ruling class has known this. The White House and the ruling elite know that many of these foreign policy procedures are illegal. One woman interrupted the speech and denounced the administration's policy on drone assassinations and the detention center at Guantanamo Bay (which Obama wants to end in the future). The words on Awlaki were mentioned as a means for the administration to try to make the assassination program a fixture of U.S. policy. “America’s actions are legal,” Obama insisted, referring to extra-judicial assassinations. “We were attacked on 9/11. Within a week, Congress overwhelmingly authorized the use of force. Under domestic and international law, the United States is at war with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces.” President Barack Obama knows full well that the assassination program is unconstitutional and illegal. You don't go around killing or assassinating U.S. citizens without due process of law. He was briefed on the events of strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress has been briefed on these actions. Al Awlaki was an U.S. citizen and he was assassinated or killed without due process of law. The Fifth Amendment means something. The White House refuses to talk about the kill lists extensively. The government has never provided any evidence of its allegations in the court of law. The White House doesn't refer to the due process of law as a means to justify the killings. He talks about the due process which excludes the intervention of the courts, but only uses the executive branch (and his closest advisers). The President didn't want him to use drone in U.S. soil. “That’s who Anwar Awlaki was,” Obama alleged, before making a series of unproven accusations. “He was continuously trying to kill people. He helped oversee the 2010 plot to detonate explosive devices on two US-bound cargo planes. He was involved in planning to blow up an airliner in 2009. When Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber, went to Yemen in 2009, Awlaki hosted him, approved his suicide operation, helped him tape a martyrdom video to be shown after the attack, and his last instructions were to blow up the airplane when it was over American soil.” None of this gets to the essential issue. The Constitution requires that charges of illegal activity be proven in a court of law. No court has ever determined the validity of any of these claims, and therefore the killing of Awlaki was unconstitutional. A reform of the drone attacks have been proposed by the White House as a means to give it a rubberstamp to carry out imperialism. It is true that Western society has caused a dangerous precedence of torture, illegal wars, and other evils in our midst. The President wants to have military commissions in America as a means to end Guantanamo Bay. He said that we must confront terrorism when the US/NATO alliance has funded terrorists in Libya, Syria, and throughout the Earth. The CIA is a terrorist organization. So, the truth is that there is no justification for the war crimes in Iraq or Afghanistan. There is no justification for the torture in various sites globally. There is no justification for neoliberalism or imperialism done in the globe as well. Token cosmetic changes can never justify this war on terrorism at all. This imperialism done by the West has nothing to do with democratic values or freedom. It has to do with the oligarchy gaining more profit, a neoliberal version of globalization to be enhanced, and for human beings to be controlled more by the elite in the world.
Eric Schmidt believes that Google AI will be indistinguishable from humans within a decade. Eric is the CEO of Google. He wants his company to be capable of developing artificial intelligence for its programs. He wants it to be indistinguishable from a human being within 5-10 years. He talked about these issues in a question and answer session at Google's Big Tent event. This took place at the week at the luxury Grove Hotel in Watford, UK. He responded to the question, “How soon before Google Now passes the Turing test?” The Turning test was a concept that was introduced in 1950 by the British mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing. It measures a machine's ability to exhibit behavior equivalent to a real human being. He mentioned that IBM's Watson computer won Jeopardy. Schmidt said that Google could do it in five to ten years. The Big Tent event is the more public version of Google Zeitgeist, a private function that features a rat of influential speakers from the world of technology, business, academia, and politics. Google's primarily vehicle for its artificial intelligence technology could be Google Now. That is the voice recognizing search product which is being hyped as a tool that will eventually be able to manage almost every aspect of your life. Eric Schmidt has never shied away from his vision. This can be dystopic to some. Transhumanists believe where robots will play a central role in managing human affairs. The Google CEO wants to swallow nanobots every morning that would regulate the functioning of his body. He wants to send his robotic clone to social functions. Some top futurists like Ray Kurzweil have embraced Schmidt's vision and took it even further writing that within decades man will merge with machines. He said that by 2099 the entire planet will be run by artificially intelligent computer systems which are smarter than the entire human race combined similar to the Skynet system fictionalized in the Terminator franchise. These predictions are allied with Schmidt's drive to see them come to fruition. Ironically, Kurzweil was hired by Google last year to oversee the company's project to produce an artificial brain. Kurzweil spoke the following words in an interview with Wired, “A lot of (sci-fi) movies about artificial intelligence envision that AI’s will be very intelligent but missing some key emotional qualities of humans and therefore turn out to be very dangerous.” It is also important to realize that we should fight for action in society. The White House has made errors in society, but even the White House is not to be blamed for all evils in America or the world. Many reactionary Republicans refuse to spend money on infrastructure development or a jobs program nationwide. America ought to be rebuilding of its bridges, roads, hospitals, and other forms of its powerbase. Now, we do count. Never let anyone tell you that you do not count. The reason is that Rosa Parks and other heroes counted when they put their lives on the line in order to cause America to be a fairer and just society. We have every right to have hope in society and to do action as a means to make the whole better.
There is the global rendition program. A major study outlines new information on the CIA secret prisons. There is the launch of the Global Rendition System database and interactive map. It will be the most comprehensive resource so far in illustrating the CIA's program of rendition and secret prisons as part of the war on terror. The database was instituted as a means for the White House to continue its policy of rendition, detention, and interrogation. These likeminded programs are all over Asia and Europe with secret prison sites. This system sent over 800 men to Guantanamo Bay and 166 of them remain. The entire database is a collaboration between Reprieve and the Rendition Project being based at Kingston and Kent Universities. The database uses data from freedom of information requests, legal cases, published firsthand accounts, etc. The data is also found by investigations by NGOs and authoritative news reporting to detail dozens of prisoner transfers between secret black sites. The database proves that foreign nations are involved in it. There has been an analysis of more than 11,000 flights by over 120 aircraft linked to more than 50 private companies. Many companies tried to cover their routes by filing false flight plans or by switching aircraft halfway. The Reprieve and the Rendition Project gained documents from Reprieve's Renditions Inc. investigation with the previous work from others. They include the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Warsaw, the Human Rights Monitoring Institute in Vilnius, Access Inform Europe, and other NGOs and investigators worldwide. The site has information made public with search results that can be downloaded for more research and analysis. All of this research document corporate complicity in the rendition system. There is a recent report by the Constitution Project's Task Force on Detainee Treatment (which was chaired by former Bush era officials) massively criticized the U.S. program of rendition and torture. It pointed out the key role of European countries noting that the “CIA created its own…‘black sites’ in…Poland, Romania and Lithuania.” Sam Raphael from the Rendition Project said: “The sheer scope of the CIA’s rendition and torture system is brought to light as never before by our work, which shows in painstaking detail how terror suspects were kidnapped and transported to secret prisons across the globe for ‘enhanced interrogation’.” Crofton Black from Reprieve said: “This unprecedented database shows how false route filings, tarmac transfers, shell companies and the plausible deniability of executive jets masked a systematic programme of secret detention and torture run by the US with the active complicity of the UK and other European countries.” Therefore the truth is known. The policies of assassination, torture, and rendition have been occurring for decades. Folks have the right to understand the current expressions of that policy indeed. Nothing is new under the sun.
There is an epidemic of lax government. We know how fashionable it is to demonize government. At times, it is legitimate to criticize corrupt government. That is fine. Yet, some big think tanks use that reality as an excuse to demonize any government action as equivalent to a totalitarian takeover of all of the function of society. We should expose the mistakes of the IRS and the Justice Department. Also, we ought to know that runaway corporate power and greed. When these entities infiltrate the government, then they could try to undermine the very rules and regulations intended to keep us safe. Right now, there are inadequate inspections of food and the food related infections which killed 3,000 Americans every year and make 48 million sick. There was a new study from Johns Hopkins that shows elevated levels of arsenic known to increase a person's risk of cancer in chicken meat. There is another University's Center for a Livable Future. It mentioned the following information: “Arsenic-based drugs have been used for decades to make poultry grow faster and improve the pigmentation of the meat. The drugs are also approved to treat and prevent parasites in poultry… Currently in the U.S., there is no federal law prohibiting the sale or use of arsenic-based drugs in poultry feed.” The Washington Post exposed about how toxic, bacteria killing chemicals are used in poultry plants to clean more chickens more quickly to meet increased demand and make more money. Amanda Hitt is the director of the Government Accountability Project's Good Integrity Campaign. She mentioned that, “They are mixing chemicals together in these plants, and it’s making people sick. Does it work better at killing off pathogens? Yes, but it also can send someone into respiratory arrest.” The government has done next to nothing about solving the poisons in our food supply. There has been no comprehensive research on the possible side effects of these chemical or recordkeeping of the illness. The Post reported that they review the data provided by chemical manufacturers. The Department of Agriculture is about to allow the production lines to move even faster by as much as 25 percent. This means that more chemicals will cause more exposure in society and more sickness for human beings. There are about 85,000 industrial chemicals available today. Only a handful of those chemicals are being tested for safety. Ian Urbina writes for the New York Times. Ian wrote that, “Hazardous chemicals have become so ubiquitous that scientists now talk about babies being born pre-polluted, sometimes with hundred s of synthetic chemicals showing up in their blood.” We know about the horrific explosion of ammonium nitrate in the Texas fertilizer plant. 15 human beings were killed and their little town was devastated. The magazine Mother Jones noted, “Inspections are virtually non-existent; regulatory agencies don’t talk to each other; and there’s no such thing as a buffer zone when it comes to constructing plants and storage facilities in populated areas.” For years, the Fertilizer Institute, described as “the nation’s leading lobbying organization of the chemical and agricultural industries,” resisted regulation and legislators went along. People can lose their lives when federal or state government winks at bad corporate practices – 4,500 workplace deaths annually at a cost to America of nearly half a trillion dollars. As columnist and author David Sirota observes, “If all this data was about a terrorist threat, the reaction would be swift — negligent federal agencies would be roundly criticized and the specific state’s lax attitude toward security would be lambasted. Yet, after the fertilizer plant explosion, there has been no proactive reaction at all, other than Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry boasting about his state’s ‘comfort with the amount of oversight’ that already exists.” There is a story from ProPublica's investigative reporter Abraham Lustgarten. His story describes information about an uranium company. This company wanted a mining project in Texas that threatened to pollute drinking water. The EPA resisted until the company hired as its lobbyist the Democratic fundraiser and fixer Heather Podesta. She is the favor of the White House. Her firm was paid $400,000, she pulled the strings. Later, the EPA allowed the pollution to continue. In fact, Pro Publica found that “the agency has used a little-known provision in the federal Safe Drinking Water Act to issue more than 1,500 exemptions allowing energy and mining companies to pollute aquifers, including many in the driest parts of the country.” This reality refutes the antiquated notion that we need no government intervention at every circumstance. There should be legitimate government oversight. Now, there are insufficient checks and balances on big business and its powerful lobbies. Without the oversight, there is corruption. When corporate power tries to buy off public officials, then it is an assault on democracy and a threat in or lives and health. There is a political system that persists to produce such huge injustices. We have a right to fight for truth.
We are not children anymore and our eyes are open. We know that unfettered capitalism has been a totally failed system that must be replaced. We have tried tinkering with the system. It has not worked as a means to end hunger or poverty in America at all. We realize that both major parties are ruled in their leadership by the same Western oligarchs. Elections have been exploited for years as a means for political agenda. It should be clear from anyone that the election coup d'état of the 2000 election documents how the political process has been subverted via plutocrats, oligarchs, and reactionaries. You have to win the Electoral College to win Presidential elections irrespective of the popular vote. There are legitimate activists in the world that want change. Also, there are also fake revolutions and contrived riots as a means to cause regime change or violate human civil liberties (resulting in a more authoritarian, police state like society). We know that the President Barack Obama is not to be blamed for all evils in America, but he is a puppet of this cabal system. The system of white supremacy use Obama as a means to make him a scapegoat of all of our oppression when our oppression existed long before he was in office (yet, the President is accountable on issues of civil liberties, foreign policy, economics, health, and other important issues in the globe though. Obama is used as a means for the elite to carry out their agenda under left wing cover. In other words, things are happening now that Bush Jr. could only dream of). We know about cartel capitalists using economic terrorism before too. Goldman Sachs has been caught robbing and thieving resources from the American people. Zombie banks have looted taxpayer money for thousands of years. Their crimes go unpunished. That is why the American economy has been heavily harmed via the criminal financial miscreancy. The events of dead workers in Bangladesh, the unemployment, the income inequality, tax doges, globalism, fascism, and other bailouts for the super-rich, then we know that we have a problem here in the world. Domestically, we have the further militarization of American society and the evil Patriot Act continuing forth in America. Change can only come via alternative political and economic systems like a cooperative commonwealth communities, etc. We see evil wars, torture, and other evils in the world. The government with an economy that promotes the general welfare of all citizens is better than reactionary lies and deception. Also, we should fight for better health. We should oppose GMOs in our food supplies without labels, dangerous chemicals in our water supply, and austerity in the world. We know that the New Deal saved America from potentially leading America into fascism. Yet, it also saved vulture capitalism from its own excesses. It was still left alive enough to continue to pillage the poor not only the working class. The homeless and all of the poor should have justice in the world not just the working class.
By Timothy
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